Bermuda, April 1888
My dear Ramabai,

The first time we met, you drew from me a promise to write something of my life for you, especially that part, relating to my work among the freed people of our Southern States.

Now that I am far from home, 700 miles from my native land, on this rocky perch in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, one of the group of the Bermuda Islands, away from cares that engross me, I remember my promise and essay to fulfill it.

To write of my own doings is a task untried before, and one of which I fear I shall acquit myself awkwardly, but your hope that somewhat in my record might prove helpful or inspiring to my sisters in India ought to make me eager to attempt it.

It may be well to preface my record by detail of some of the influences which shaped my life and must have fitted me and led me to whatever worthy work I may have been instrumental in doing.

Looking back to childhood I see, as chief among those who inspired my inner life, or swayed my actions, my father, my grandfather and the teacher under whose care I was placed when about nine years old. My father, in his government must have believed in a great deal of what some one has called "a wholesome letting along", his discipline was mostly of this sort. He seldom reproved or commended or even advised, he gave everyone about him a large measure of freedom to develop his or her own ideas. While he was intent on the pursuit of his own affairs, he was a man of the widest sympathies and the tenderest feelings, he was never too busy to render a kindness, and often put aside his own work to lend a neighbor, whose exigency he thought greater, the needed implement.

He was a member of the Society of Friends and believed heartily in the sect to which he belonged, without prejudice or bigotry in regard to the beliefs of others. I never heard him as though he thought that they were wrong and his views the true ones. He had the same large-heartedness in regard to races, all mankind was of our blood. He believed that our Declaration of Independence was vitally true. "All men are born free and equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." "All men", he understood to mean both men and women. These principles he held in the face of all opposition, scorn and contempt, proving that when he felt his views should be upheld, he could stand by them with immovable firmness.

Before the year 1864 human beings were held in bondage in the southern States of this Country, bought and sold like any other property. They were of African descent, sometimes however with but slight traces of that race discernible in their faces.

My readers cannot imagine the intense feeling which existed in the whole country on this subject. There were 4,000,000 slaves and many laws to make the slave-holder secure in his possession had found place on the statute book, in spite of the fine words I have quoted, which were uttered by the founders of the government. The slaves were in the South, but the spirit that held them in bondage pervaded the whole country. If any slave weary of his lot succeeded in escaping and reached one of the northern states, the man who claimed him as property could pursue him and require the people where he had found refuge, if he had not reached the Queens' dominions, to help to hunt the poor fugitive and return him to bondage.

It is plain that since there is a witness in every human being for what is right, Theodore Parker calls it, "the voice of God to the soul of man", that there must have been many people both north and south, who felt that their country was guilty of a terrible wrong, one which must surely bring the punishment of ruin. They saw with horror, that the slave-power not only ruled every branch of the government, so that no one could be appointed to the smallest office in its gift who did not make obeisance to this tyrant, but that it held the churches as strongly in its fatal clutch, and dictated what should or should not be taught a religious duties.

Many clergymen lent themselves to the task of trying to prove that slavery was right, and a good thing for the African race, books were written and sermons preached for this purpose. Our sacred book the Bible was quoted to defend it. But while this hideous wrong was tightening its grip on the liberties of the nation boasting that it was the freest one on the face of the earth, it was rousing the slumbering consciences of some of the people to efforts to resist its encroachments.

We should expect that all who accepted the golden rule given in our New Testament which says "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so unto them", would have felt compelled to oppose this giant evil, aptly called by John Wesley, (the founder of Methodism) "the sum of all villainies." But the selfishness blinds our eyes sadly to the wrongs and sufferings of others, when the world goes well with us. So it was only a small number of men and women that lifted up their voices against what we were pleased to call the "peculiar institution."

Among this small and hated band my father took his place and never faltered from his allegiance to the cause of the slave until defeat was swallowed up in victory.

It is impossible to convey an idea of the hatred which the whole country felt toward the abolitionists. Churches were almost entirely closed against their meetings, preachers preached against them, calling them a band of infidels who would destroy both religion and their country, by plunging it into "fratricidal war", mobs of men who considered themselves respectable, made a merit of breaking up anti-slavery meetings, pelting the speakers sometimes with bad eggs and sometimes with harder though less odorous missiles.

Wm. Lloyd Garrison the pioneer among the abolitionists of this country was dragged, a rope around him, thru the streets of Boston, the first city in America, in intelligence and philanthropy, and finally ordered by the mayor, to be locked in the jail, saying that he could not protect the life of this hated man, elsewhere.

The abolitionists attacked the spirit of slavery wherever they found it, in church or state or institution of learning which refused its privileges to some member of the hapless race. They arraigned the people of the north for the wrong, with as much earnestness as they did those who bought or sold or held human beings as property, or imprisoned or killed persons who, with more humanity than caution, strove to mitigate the hardships of the colored people, either by teaching them or by showing especial interest in them.

Mrs. Margaret Douglas of Norfolk, Virginia and her daughter were imprisoned for teaching free colored people in that city on the Sabbath, and in the state of Mississippi, it was accounted a crime worthy of death to teach a slave to read. This shows the malignity with which the slave holding spirit guarded its power, The abolitionists were as fearless as this feeling was strong, their enthusiasm and eloquence must have been without parallel in any land on the earth, their orators being granted by their enemies to be foremost in eloquence. These men and women went the length and the breadth of the northern states appealing to the sense of justice and the compassion of the people, as well as striving to show them the imminent deadly peril threatening the nation, with destruction which lay in yielding to the demands of the arrogant and wicked slave-power. In spite of the scorn, hatred and ridicule of the many, the abolitionists gained steadily in influence. They were always few in numbers because they would not compromise one iota of their principles to popularity. But though never a large body they became a power which re-cast every organization in the land. Political parties were rent asunder, because those who had listened in spite of mobs, to the appeals of abolitionists for justice and mercy, could no longer join hands with their former colleagues, to tighten the chains of the slave; churches divided because many of their members refused to recognize those who held human beings in bondage as fellow-Christians. Schools being closed against these people, despised because oppressed, philanthropists founded institutions where some were educated. The growth of intelligence among them furnished a forcible argument against their being inferior as to be fit only for a state of servitude.

Of the band of abolitionists many had joyfully given up positions which they valued, clergymen descended from the pulpit and became lecturers or editors of anti-slavery papers, lawyers left their briefs, students turned their backs on the coveted college courses, women the privacy and comfort of home, to enter this Holy war against American Slavery. Many, being persons of the best culture and all of intelligence and high principle, they enlisted types largely in the service of their cause and in the northern states, the fruit of their brains, either in argument, address, poem or appeal, was scattered broadcast in journal, tracts, or books. These were carefully excluded from the states when slavery existed and called there "incendiary publications."

The children were not forgotten, literature to enlist their feelings was also published. "The Slave's Friend" and "The Anti-Slavery Record" were published monthly; these were my reading in childhood, interesting and instructing mind and heart as the journals did my riper years, making me eager for the work which engaged me afterward.

"The Slave's Friend" bore a picture on its cover of two little girls, one white, one colored, playing among flowers, thus teaching those who conned its pages that children of a darker hue were entitled to an equal share in the pleasures of life. I took the lesson to heart, and when the colored woman who came to wash for us, brought her little girl about my own age, I took her by the hand and led the way to my father's store. I well remember the raillery of the clerk, which I bore with the sturdy spirit of a martyr. I have not yet spoken of two of the trio to whom I alluded as determining influences in my life, my grandfather and the venerable English lady was my teacher. My grandfather was a devout man in every regard. He was a Friend, holding himself and others most earnestly and rigidly, not only to all the rules of his sec, but to the strictest uprightness of character in all regards. He would not have held his life precious, but would have cheerfully sacrificed it, if the alternative of saving it at the expense of his principles and been presented to him. He spent much of his time in attending the meetings of the Friends and in the study of the Scriptures. He wrote little books for children containing religious instruction and after getting them printed distributed them in the public schools. Much of my earlier childhood was passed under his roof. I think he must have taught me to read. I do not know when I learned but I remember sitting on his knee reading the New Testament, or reciting to him different portions that he had chosen for me to commit to memory. So early training fostered intensity in a naturally quiet nature, and a little girl who played too little and who thought too much, and suffered from headaches graduated from her grandfather's knee in to a school for little girls of eight, ten and twelve years of age, taught by the Friend alluded to. She might be designated like Margaret Fuller as a "large-brained woman and large-hearted man." She was, at that time past three score, a woman of many accomplishments for that time, educated in England, with fine literary tastes and culture and a veteran teacher; she had been principal and teacher in several schools for young ladies in different parts of the state. In some instances the third generation passed under her intellectual and moral training. Her teaching was thorough, her discipline strict and stern but just; she commended as heartily as she reproved vigorously. She was fond of poetry and of flowers delighting in the wall flowers and daisies of her native land; she was plain in her dress wearing the costume peculiar to her sect., devout in spirit and in form, having religious services twice a day when she read the Bible, and to secure our attention, asked each of us at the end of the reading, to repeat what we remembered of it.

She, like my father was an active abolitionist. She collected many anti-slavery books, these with the Journals, "The Liberator" and the "Friend of Man". She constituted a loan library for the use of the Community, and she promoted lectures and the circulation of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia where the Capital of the United States is situated.

Some of the women of the community held a fair for the benefit of he Anti-Slavery Society, for this she worked, the first fancy work I ever did, must have been the filling in with worsted of a small square of canvass, the center of which bore the legend, "Anti-slaveholder" which she embroidered. A double pun was intended, since the price of the article was to be used against the slave-holder and its use was to protect the hands in moving heated utensils-a holder.

Lectures, singly or in groups, kept interest in the cause alive, by coming once or twice a year, and holding conventions in the Friend's Meeting houses, or a series of evening lectures in the country district school houses. .The speakers were educated persons generally from Boston, not only eloquent and zealous advocates of their cause but interesting socially. They were entertained at the houses of abolitionists, so that we young people had the benefit of their intelligent conversation.

These meetings brought out strong opposition and were sometimes even in rural villages broken up by a lawless rabble instigated or backed by the more respectable. One of my father's neighbor, who hated his principles but liked him, quoted the Bible to prove slavery right and always bade the anti-slavery lecturers to go South where slavery existed, if they wanted to do anything for the slaves, well knowing that they would not only, not be permitted to speak for the slave, but they would not be suffered to live, although we were under one government. Their reply was that as long as there were such advocates of slavery as he, abounded in the north, their first duty lay in their own latitude. Thus flowed the tide of battle, and the right went on, ever winning its way.

At rare intervals an arrival from slavery occurred. Person pitying the fugitive would secrete or carry him in disguise from one friendly shelter to another, until he go so far away from bondage as to feel safe, or made freedom a certainty by crossing the border into the Queen's dominions -Canada. This passage from slavery to freedom, because done in the greatest secrecy, was styled the "Underground Railroad."

Once man and his wife and four children, the youngest being an infant, carried in a bag slung on its father's back, who escaped from Maryland, settled under my father's protection for some time. But one hapless day a lady came to visit in the neighborhood who recognized them at once, having visited at their master's house. She promised not to betray them to the slave holder, but they could not thus risk the liberty for which they had dared and suffered, to an uncertainty, and fled in terror to the Queen's dominions where they suffered so much from the more rigorous climate and from other causes that they retuned, and the parents ended their days where they began their life of freedom. They were both worthy and industrious, and earned a comfortable home, as well as the respect of those who knew them.

As the states of the South had no public school system there was a demand for teachers to go from the north, to act as governesses in planters' families or teach in Select Schools. So young ladies were constantly going there to fill these situations, because larger salaries were paid than they received at home.

In obedience to such a call, a young woman name Myrtilla Miner, went from one of the counties of my own state to Mississippi and taught until she because so sick at heart with what she war of slavery and expressed her feeling so strongly, that she was compelled to leave and return north. Her roused feeling shaped itself into determination to teach colored youth thenceforth. She decided that she would make her trial in Washington. Her friends thought it a reckless and visionary scheme, but finding her not to be dissuaded, one of them told her, that she must defer the attempt until some money could be collected for the enterprise. She naively replied that "she should not wait until she could go with the wealth of Croesus in her pocket." So a little purse of $100 was made up and with that, she went along, unaided by powerful friends, to found a school for free colored girls in a slave holding- city. She knew that the attempt would have a better chance for success there, because being in the Capital, northern people were there, and many of the members of Congress, sent form the north, hated slavery, so public sentiment on the subject was not a unit.

She found, as she expected a class of well-to-do colored people who were lad to send their daughters to her school, and to pay her a moderate tuition, so she quickly gathered a band of bright young girls and began the work of training them. She also found even more hatred of her work and more persecution than might have been expected. It was extremely difficult to secure a room for her school, and being repeatedly required to move on account of prejudice against, she finally decided to attempt the purchase of a place and establish it permanently. Her school had attracted friendly s well as hostile notice, and had become one of the places to be visited by members of Congress and visitors at the Capital, who felt kindly toward the colored people. So her appeals were successful, and a small house surrounded by 3 ½ acres of ground in a suburb of the city was bought and paid for, and thee the school ceased from its wanderings and was settled in spite of the threats of the press and the hatred of a large part of the white inhabitants.

Miss Miner's health finally gave way and the school was conducted by teachers who volunteered their services while she traveled and solicited aid for the enterprise in the north.

On one of these occasions I was staying with a friend in Philadelphia at whose house she called, and when she was gone, my friend told me that Myrtilla Miner had called and was in quest of a teacher for her school. The idea of offering myself struck me and I exclaimed, "I should like to go." I was leading the aimless life that was required of young women 30 years ago, unless obliged to work for their own support, the more imperative necessity of being employed to ensure health of body and mind was neither recognized nor understood.

My interest in the Anti-Slavery cause and my sympathy with the oppressed overbore all other feeling within me. This mental condition was fostered not only by my reading but by the narrowness of my life. No gayeties in social life or in dress, which might have modified the intensity of my feeling, were tolerated by the sober sect in which I was reared. Thought must have its natural expression in deed or morbid unhappiness follows, ending sadly for the poor victim of social injustice. An embittered spirit, and shattered health often resulting from the lack of a purpose for which to live and labor.

The idea of teaching some of the oppressed class remained with me and I decided that I could not longer trifle with life, that I must do something worth living for.

Miss Miner accepted my proposal to take her school, and a year after my visit to Philadelphia, without the approval of any of my friends, I left my home for the untried work. My words give no idea of what this step cost me, even at this distance from it, I realize the difficulties so profoundly, that I cannot understand how I had strength to do it. It was as though I was impelled, and could not do otherwise. My spiritual vision being clear in regard to my own need, and in regard to the work to which I was sent, I was able to lay aside all hindrances from without and within, and go forward.

It was with some misgiving that saw the little school-room well filled with those who were to be my future charges. I had had no experience in teaching, and my ability to discipline a school was a serious question.

I saw before me not poor bondmen, but wide-awake young girls, who knew little of slavery in their own lives, many of them with a skin as fair as their teacher, knowing far more of the ways of the world than she did. According to the prejudices of the people, the African taint in the blood cold never be washed out by the Anglo-Saxon, so these white children were compelled to go to a colored school.

I frankly told them why I offered myself as their teacher, and of my ignorance of what I had undertaken to do, and asked them to cooperate with me in the work in which they ought to be more interested than I; then we should be sure to be mutually useful, and get the benefit which was our purpose in coming together. Pupils generally test the power of a teacher before yielding obedience. Probably this frankness on my part saved me from the usual trial. Years afterward one of these girls told be that they discussed the matter and decided to spare me the testing process, and be a law to themselves.

So teacher and pupils worked together with hearty interest in the best spirit, and the little house was filled with eager students. The teacher felt an illumination, a joy she never knew before, that of helping others to grow, a joy that was large compensation for all it had cost.

The prejudice against the oppressed race added an element of danger which at least did not lessen the zeal of the little band.

At that time a law existed in Washington as well as in all the south which excluded the testimony of colored people in courts of justice, this made the slave-holder's power more perfect. Because of this law Miss Miner had always thought it best to keep a white associate with her, that if there were any uprising against the school, there would be one legal witness beside herself.

I disregarded the danger and chose for my assistant one who had been a pupil in the school. At that date pubic schools for any class had been established but a few years, and as work was considered degrading to the white race, it followed that there was a group of basal fellows, roving about dialing over the common, with dogs and guns ready for any dangerous mischief. They often harassed the girls on their way to school or to their homes, jostling them off the sidewalk into the mud, the streets were unpaved and often very muddy, or snatching their books.

On one occasion just before the hour for closing school, they appeared in force, twenty perhaps, and lay in a line on the ground outside the yard in front of the house. I delayed dismissing my pupils until I saw that these miscreants would bide their time. Then I admonished the girls to go quietly and deliberately out of the gate and pat them without showing a sign of fear, while I would hold the attention of the young mob by talking to them. The plan was a success. The girls marched out and I, facing the boys talked to them with an eye meantime on the retreating girls until I saw that they were well over the common and would not be overtaken by their tormentors. Then I turned and retraced my steps to the cottage; while the boys, no longer listeners, with tongues let loose, sent volleys of impertinence after me, until suddenly realizing that their victims had escaped, they, with wild shouts, rushed away in pursuit. They never repeated the visit.

Note: This copy was produced from the original penned by Emily Howland. It was provided to the county historian by the late Phebe King.

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