The Rev. J.W. Loguen, as a slave and as a freeman : a narrative of real life

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THE

Preface

Every book has its preface. A book without a preface, would be like a city without a directory, or an animal with part only of the oi^gans necessary to its existence.

We have proposed to write the Biography of Eev. Jermain Wesley Loguen, and we have given its features in the following pages accurately. We took the features from him and filled up the picture. We began with his parents, infancy, childhood, and traced him from the Southern prison through the wilderness, and Canada, and back to the United States again, to fight the enemy all through the anti-slavery wa-r to the end of the Jerry Rescue — giving the particulars of that Rescue, with the names of persons engaged in it, on one side and on the other.

The latter half of the life of Mr. Loguen stands out before the world. The other half is buried in the Cimmerian night of slavery, Defectiro as is our taste

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and ability in giving the former, it will be allowed that we have been true to it, because the world has seen it. It is that portion in the folds of slavery only that may be questioned and criticised. It will be more likely to be questioned, because some few facts, circumstances, and discourse, not connected with Mr. Loguen's experience with slavery, have been supplied to connect the real facts of his life, and furnish variety for the reader. Whoever reads such portion, or any portion of this Ijook, will remember, that not a fact relating to his, or his mother's, or brother's, or sister's experience with slavery, is stated, that is not, literally or substantially, true. Those facts were history before they were written ; and they were written because they w.ere history.

We have adopted the popular form or style in our narrative, in respect to popular taste ; and, as aforesaid, occasionally supplied vacancies in his southern life from our own fancy ; but in every case that we have done so, the picture is outside Mr. Loguen's experience with slavery — and the picture, be it fact^ opinion, or argument, may be adopted, and all we have "given as his slave life will remain true. The reader, therefore, will test every such case by the question — " Does it involve Mr. Loguen's experience of slavery, or that of liis mother, or family, or any one else?''

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If it does involve one or the other of them, it is substantially, if not literally, true, as related.

Again. For obvious reasons, we have not always used real names when writing of real persons ; for we would not involve living friends, or their families, for their good deeds. We refer now to Mr. Loguen's life in Tennessee, not to his life in New York, or Canada. In Tennessee, slavery rules the tongue, the press, and the pen. In New York and Canada, these are given to free judgment and discretion. At the north, men are answerable for such judgment and discretion to the law only. At the south, they are amenable to an overgrown monster that devours alike law and humanity. At the south, we give Mr. Loguen's connection with slavery, and therefore conceal names. At the north, we give his connection with liberty, and therefore give names of friends and enemies alike.

Because the circuit of Mr. Loguen's activities has been large, we have necessarily followed him all around the course ; and have been obliged briefly to note the growth of public opinion in favor of freedom, until freedom snapped her cords in Syracuse, and in the country around Syracuse, and in other places. In doing so, we have given particulars, and used the names of friends and foes with absolute truthfulness.

Though we have spoken freely, we doubt not there

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were other persons, equally, if not more deserving of honorable notice, than some we have named. Modest and retiring men are often most eflective when bravery and strength are needed, but, nevertheless, they blush at a record of their own qualities. • They vote, or strike, and retire out of sight. When justice opens a picture gallery to display the faces of those who have done much for African freedom, we shall see many noble faces in it, which are now obscure, in our villages and towns. If an artist would pass through those villages and towns, and engrave those faces in a book over a sketch of their deeds and lives, he would have a book posterity would love to look at. It would be a book of great thoughts, great hearts, and great men — men who were the receptacles in the body politic, to receive the inflowing life of Heaven, and diffuse it over the system, and bring it to life again — the real Saviours of the country.

We have put into the mouths of some of the characters, religious counsels, ideas, opinions, and sentiments, which may not, and of course cannot, coincide with the divided and distracted theories of the age. All we ask of the reader in regard to these, is, that ho will be as charitable to them, as they are to him. Tliose counsels, ideas, opinions, and sentiments, are responsible only to truth, and conscience, and reason ;

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and we kindly ask the reader to submit them to those heavenly vicegerents, and not charge them as a sin upon the Editor, or anybody else.

But the enquiry may be made — " What is the call for such a book ; are we to have a book for every man or woman who is good and useful among their fellows ? " Our answer is, it would be well if we had. This is not only a reading age, but it is ^ new age, and it is well to occupy our youth with its philosophy and facts. Men do not think, or labor, or travel, or live, as they did fifty years ago ; and still the change is onward. For a long time invisible mental powers have been turning society on its hinges to let in a new dispensation of learning, religion, and life. There is a spring in all departments of humanity for a " long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together," to move mankind on to a higher and a better level ; and our young readers should know that colored men furnish a quota of the mental and physical muscle that produces the motion. Society is in process of incubation, and we should know whence is the heat and substance that embody and cherish the embryo. "We should keep an eye on the formative elements, to see what portion i^ subsiding and dying, and what portion is combining to form the substance and life of the coming age. The African element contributes largely to the vm PREFACE.

causes that agitate mankind, and must have its place in the product The vital powers are attracted to it by force of the charities that make them vital, and are amalgamating with that element to form a new basis for society — a basis on which it will stand in the order of heaven, humanity, and religion — when men may look at it, and not start back affrighted.

We have come, therefore, to consider and honor a new element in the social state, and for that reason a man like Mr. Loguen becomes a subject of speculative and philosophical enquiry. At such a time, colored men are Divine instrumentalities for Divine ends. Hence, bo many of them have dodged their masters and their chains, — broken through the clouds, and become conspicuous in the intellectual and moral firmament.

In a mere preface, it becomes us not to anticipate history ; but in answer to the question, " Why should the history of Loguen be written ?" we may say, that though God has distinguished other colored men, by genius, learning, eloquence, and high deserts, he has distinguished Loguen more than all others with tliat noble and enlightened courage, which, at the earliest moment, turned upon the tyrant and defied his power. Instantly u}X)n tlie fugitive slave enactment, and before that evcu, he proclaimed, with a voice that was heard

PREFACE. IX

throughout slavedom — "I am a fugitive- slave from "Temiessee. My master is Manasseth Logue — the " letter of the law gives him a title to my person — and " let him come and take it. I'll not run, nor will I "give him a penny for my freedom." He was an example of courage to white and black men alike, to set slave laws at defiance, and trample them under his feet, — at ar time, too, when such an example was needed, to mesmerise the drowsy spirits of both classes, and move them to break the crust which pro-slavery usages formed over them, and let the waters of life flow freely.

It needs little observation to see that the tide of affairs has reached the point, when men of power are needed, with moral courage to face the false and selfish, and in regard to slavery, the devilish policy and usages of the world, and avow in a manner to arrest the attention and legislation thereof, that " Human Rights " are the limits of Divine, and, of course, of all human law, — and that all enactments beyond those limits are void. Precisely at this point in the order of Providence, the men, the God-appointed men to do so, appear. We need not name them. Some of them are among the dead, many of them are among the living. They are the lights of the age, and saviors of the country— the monarchs of progress, in politics, in morals,

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and religion. By tliesc, politics, and morals, and religion, arc being regenerated, and society is evidently in prosperous effort to attain its natural and heavenly basis.

But if men arc selected and gifted to impress the law of freedom, it is needful also that somebody be gifted with the sublime qualities, that shall lead him in defiance of penalties, to tread upon the enactments and constitutions that transgress such law. Pity, amazing pity, there are so few among white men gifted and commissioned to do so. As if to vindicate the deserts and dignity of all races, God has taken from the ranks of the severest bondage, Jermain W. Lo- GUEN, representing equally the blood of the slave-holder and the blood of the slave, the extremes of inverted hmnanity, and qualified and commissioned him, and made him alone conspicuous among black men, and most conspicuous among all men, practically and personally, to nullify all slave laws, and boldly to defy the enemies of human rights to enforce them.

Therefore, his name is entitled to a place upon the record.

J. W. LOGUEN.

Chapter I

We must devote a brief chapter to the parents of Mr. Loguen.

The genealogy of an American Slave may be traced with certainty to the mother, rarely to the father, never beyond them on the male line. It is the condition of the mother de facto that makes the slave. She is mother de lege only to the intent that her offspring may be an outlaw. As to the progenitor on the male side, he is rarely known as the father in fact, never in law. The slave has no father. Slave legislation makes no use of a paternal line, and refuses to acknowledge one. It acknowledges a mother, not in respect to any natural relation, but for accommodation, as the medium of titles, not of affections and obligations. Legally speaking, the slave has neither father or mother.

Slavery, of course, has no records of conjugal relations. Should the Clairvoyant translate and publish the secrets of its history, the domestic relations of the

South would be broken up, and Fociety pink in the abyss of vulgar passions. It owes its existence to the fact that its sexual history is faintly shadowed in the varied colors of the abused race.

It is hardly proper to pass by the?e familiar truths, while placing upon the record the life and character of Jermain W. Loguen. It is to be presumed that his physical, intellectual and moral qualities, partake of the character of his ancestors, and that they were modified by the influences that surrounded his childhood.

The mother of Mr. Loguen is a pure African. Her skin is jet black, and her hair short and curled to the head. She is now, if living, near as can be determined, about seventy years of age. In her youth and maturity her face was fair, and her features marked and regular — ^her bodily proportions large, symmetrical, round, and muscular — presenting a model of health and strength, and a specimen of the best of her race.

Of her parents and kindred of any kind, she is perfectly ignorant. The extent of her recollection is, that she was free in her infancy, in the guardianship of a man in Ohio, by the name of McCoy, with whom she lived until about seven years of age. She remembers that she was out of sight and hearing of Mr. McCoy's house, alone, when she was such little girl, and that a bad man got out of a covered wagon and took her into it with one hand about her body and the other upon her mouth to prevent her screams — that when she got into the wagon, he held her in his lap, and told the teamster to drive on — that there were several other little colored children in the wagon with her — and

<^Ex\EALOGY. 13

that they were taken over the river together in a boat ; probably into Kentucky.

This story she often repeated to her son, and kindled in his boyhood the intensest indignation against the institution which BO outraged the mother he loved. All other memories were drowned in the sorrows and terrors which at that time overwhelmed her spirit, and the brutal associations and treatment she received afterwards.

Thus all recollection of parents, kindred and friends of every kind, were merged in the clouds which the kidnappers drew about her ; and she has not heard the name of any one of thepi pronounced from that day to this. She is as if she never had any parents, or kindred, or, as if they were all buried and forgotten. That she was once free, she has the most distinct remembrance, and a flickering recollection of happy days in early childhood, stiU faintly illumines tlie dark horizon of her memory.

She does not remember the precise, number of wretched little children, boyB and girls, who were in the wagon with her, but thinks they were about her age, and all involved in the intensest grief. She remembers that their cries and sobs, like her own, were silenced by the terrors of the lawless villains who had them in charge.

We may be allowed to remark that these colored orphans illustrate the helplessness of the whole colored race, in a country where slavery is guarded as lawful and sacred. In proportion as slavery has the protection of law, do the persons of all colored men, women and children, lose the protection of law. As the conditionr of the former is hopeful and secure, is the latter desperate and exposed to outrage. Not only does the colored man suffer from the contempt and insolence of the favored class, but his or her person is outlawed to the limited and unlimited abuses of the conscienceless men who make them their prey. Developments of such enormities, incidentally and occasionally appear, as specks of light through " the blanket of the dark" upon the black volume which is out of sight.

These unhappy little ones were at the age, when childhood carols its joys with the birds, and bounds like lambs in the pastures at the touch of angels. For long and weary days and nights, not a motion or sound of delight, not a joyous look or laugh, varied their depression and wretchedness. The oblivion of sleep was the only solace of the little sufferers ; and even this was often tortured by the pressure of misery, and the silence of night broken by their sigbs and sobs. Whether, like the mother of Mr. Loguen, they were stolen from their parents, or purchased from those who should have protected them, is unknown. Their story is untold or it is forgotten, and their history is a secret only to him who gathered little children in his arms to represent the kingdom of God.

After they passed the river, the kidnappers sold them, one after another, as they could light of purchasers on the road. The mother of Mr. Loguen was left or sold to three brothers, David, Carnes, and Manasseth Logue, who lived in a small log house on

GENEALOGY. 15

Manscoe's Creek, (so called) in Davison county, about sixteen miles from Nashville, Tennessee. They were large, rough, and demi-civilized young men, the unmarried owners of a miserably cultivated plantation, and (what was at that time in that part of the country of better repute than a school or meeting house,) a whiskey distillery.

Whether these brothers were a link of a chain of Kidnappers, ex.tending through a part or the whole of the free and slave states, and claimed the poor girl as a Pirate's portion ; or whether they purchased her for money or other thing, she does not know. Of one thing she is certain, so soon as the ruffians left her, she had an interview with her purchasers which made a lasting impression upon her person and memory.

There was nothing in the aspect or conduct of the Logues that showed aught but sympathy for her manifest wretchedness. Such was the tenderness and concern with which, at first, they seemed to bo touched, and the obvious natural humanity which in their countenances, concealed and gilded the quiet ferocity of their natures, that she ventured to tell them how she was stolen, in the hope that they would return her back to her friends in Ohio. She had but begun the story when every expression of sympathy vanished, and their faces were covered with frowns. Their kind words changed into threats and curses. Nor was this all, or the worst. One of them took a slave whip that hung on the wall of tlie cabin and whipped her. Of com'se she could but beg and suffer, and at the conclusion pix)misG she would never again repeat the offensive fact of her freedom.

Thus was this innocent child, according to the customary mode in such cases, metamorpliosed from a human being into a chattel. To cover the transaction and make the change more complete, the name by which she had always been called, " Jane," was taken from her, and that of " Cherry," the name by which she has ever since been called and known, was given her.

Of course it is not the intent to give more of the history of this woman than shall serve to illustrate tlie maternal influences which nourished the spirit of her son. Though the enchanter's wand touched and changed her into a slave de facto, the terrible lesson did but adjust her habits to a prudential exterior. While it checked the growth of the sympathies and virtues of artless childhood, it awakened and strengthened animal energies, which under better influences had ever slept. The Logues intended her for a useful slave. Tlie whipping and threats and extorted promise were designed for that end — and whether they were aware she had been stolen or not, her treatment would have been the same. They had no unkindness farther tlian they intended that neither her tongue or name should lead to evidence, by accident or intent, by which they might be deprived of their property ; all memory of which they hoped would be overgrown by the habits of servile life.

Free colored persona have no right or privilege beyond a permitted residence in slave states, and such

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residence gives them nothing that deserves the name of protection from the wrongs of white men. The kidnapping and enslaving this little girl therefore, could not be looked upon as very bad, by men like the Logues, and the body of slaveholders, whose morals and humanity are so inverted, as to suppose, that by making her a slave, they raised her from the lowest to a higher condition, and furnished her with protection and privileges not to be enjoyed in a state of freedom. This fact will be illustrated in the course of our history, and we have mentioned it, incidentally, to relieve the Logues from the inference that their principles and habits were barbarous beyond public sentiment and the laws of the land.

Not slaveholders only, but slaves in the slave breeding States, as a general truth, regard theirs as a favored position, compared with the condition of free colored men and women at the South. Mr. Loguen, whose biography we write, is not the only one who says from experience, " If I must live in a slave State, let me be a slave."

Thus was Jane, who we shall hereafter call " Cherry, at the age of seven, robbed of all her rights, even of a knowledge of the names of her parents, and every one of her kindred, and placed under the tutelage of the rude habits and passions, and unscrupulous avarice of David, Carnes, and Manasseth Logue. These three brothers, lived with their widowed mother in a small log house, and Cherry was put in a petty cabin, with other slaves, a little distance from them.

As her physical strength developed, she became their main dependence, in the house, the distillery, and in the field. Without losing her feminine proportions, she grew to a masculine hardihood. Among her other accomplishments, she became expert in the art of manufacturing whiskey, and was often employed day and night with other slaves in the distillery. On the plantation there was no hard service, whether it was driving the oxen, loading, lifting, plowing, hoeing, or any other thing, to which she did not do a man's days' work. There was no man on the plantation, upon whom her masters more depended in all the departments of labor, and at all times, and in all weathers.

Cherry had now arrived at the condition her masters desired her to occupy. She was a faithful, skilful and able slave. She however felt the condition as a necessity, and submitted to it with the same contentment that the young Leopard feels under the restraints that cages and tames him. Her natural disposition was gentle, affectionate, kind, and confiding ; but these qualities reposed upon a spirit, which, when roused and ch-afed, was as resolute aad indomitable as the tigress in the jungles. She knew no fear, and submitted only to passion, interest, and necessity. Nothing but the lamb-like sympathies she always manifested under decent treatment, and her inestimable personal services, saved her from the legal and usual consequences of desperate resistance to those who would outrage her person.

It is believed that ten thousand slaves have been whipped to death, shot, hung, or otherwise murdered, for transgressions not half so offensive as hers. But

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ignorant and brutal as were her masters, they respected alike the natural loveliness of her affections, and her indomitable impulses under wrongs, which no chastisement could subdue. But what most contributed to her safety, was the fact, that she was a first class laborer and slave breeder, and finally the mistress of David Logue, the youngest of the three.

This spirit of resistance, caused her many and some bloody battles and scourgings — the marks of which she will carry on her person while she lives. She would never allow a woman or any number of women to whip her. Nor could she be subdued by any ordinary man. When women sometimes inconsiderately engaged with her, they were obliged to call in a posse of stout men to bind her.

Jermain W. Loguen, whose heart even now, is as tender as a child to the touch of pity, when a little boy, and afterwards, has seen her knocked down with clubs, stripped and bound, and flogged with sticks, ox whips and rawhides, until the blood streamed down the gashes upon her body. When released from the place of torture, she never retired with a subdued spirit, but passed from a scourging to her labors like a sullen tigress. Her habits and character in this regard will be more unfolded in connection with the life of her son.

Compelled, as she was, to endure violence from her masters, and comparatively cautious in resisting them, she never endured it from others. White or black, male or female, if they attempted liberties with her person, against her consent, she not only resisted, but fought with a spirit and force proportioned to her own estimate of her rights and wroogs.

In describing the person of Cherry in the ripeness of robust youthful development, it may be inferred she was not destitute of attractions for the casual lust of the vulgar slaveholders who lived along the banks of Manscoe's Creek. The black distillery was the common resort of that class of lawless men. David, Manasseth, and Carnes Logue, her masters, were of the same class. They were all hard drinkers, and the distillery was a convenient place for coarse enjoyment and low carousals.

Though Cherry made the fire-water, she never drank it. Her nights and days were often spent at work in the distillery, and of course she was in the sight and hearing of these vulgar men, and often the subject of their brutal remarks. But outside the family of Logues, woe to the hand laid upon her person with lascivious intent. The body of a female slave is outlawed of course to the white man. All the law she has is her own arm, and how Cherry appreciated that law may be illustrated by the following in?iident.

When she was about the age of twenty-four or five, a neighboring planter finding her alone at the distillery, and presumiD.g upon the privileges of his position, made insulting advances, which she promptly repelled.

He pursued her with gentle force, and was still repelled. He then resorted to a slaveholder's violence and threats. These stirred all the tigers blood in her veins. She broke from his embrace, and stood before him in bold defiance.

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He attempted again to lay hold of her — and eareless of caste and slave laws, she grasped the heavy stick used to stir the malt, and dealt him a blow which made him reel and retire. But he retired only to recover and retmrn with the fatal knife, and threats of vengeance and death. Again she aimed the club with unmeasured force at him, and hit the hand which held the weapon, and dashed it to a distance from him. Again he rushed upon her with the fury of a madman, and she then plied a blow upon his temple, which laid him, as was supposed, dead at her feet.

This incident, though no portion of the biography of her son, is introduced to show the qualities of the woman who bore him, and which those acquainted with him will infer she imparted to him. This, and like scenes, formed the cradle in which the infant spirit of Jermain W. Loguen was rocked.

Cherry, unterrified by the deed we have related, did not flee to escape the application of to severe laws she had violated by striking a white man. She left the now passionless and apparently lifeless villain, bleeding not only from the wound inflicted, but from his nose and ears also, to inform her masters of the encounter, and meet the consequences. She told them she bad killed the wretch, and the whole family of LfOgues hastened to the distillery to look, as they sup posed, upon the face of their dead neighbor. They found him laying in his gore. But upon raising him and washing his wounds, he showed signs of life, though it seemed likely he would die

To curtail a atory which may seem an interpolation,

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ai'ter the most unremitting care and skilful attention of the best surgeons and physicians they could procure — and after the lapse of many weeKs, during which time he was stretched on a sick bed, and racked by pains and fevers — after drinking to the dregs as severe a cup as ever touched a slaveholder's lips, he recovered.

In the meantime Cherry was shielded from harm, partly by the shame of her violator — -partly by her masters' sense of justice— more because they had a beastly affection .for her as a family chattel — more still because they prized her as property — but most of all because she was the admitted mistress. of David La gue, the father of Jermain, then about six years of age.

He (Jermain) well remembers the case and the excitement produced by it in the family and neighborhood. His memory was refreshed with the rehearsal of it for years by the family and the negroes.

When Cherry arrived at about the age of twentyeight, she was the mother of three children. To this period, she had never passed through the ceremionial Bham of a negro marriage, but for years, as stated above, had been the admitted mistress of David Logue, the father of her children.

Here we may be permitted to record a fact well known at the south, and allowed by most white men, and by all slaves, to wit : that a young negress is often her master's mistress, until childbearing and years render it tasteful or convenient to sell the offspring from his sight and exchange her for another victim. Such