FootNote
The new kid on the block, FootNote is known for digitizing historical
documents... many of which are genealogical gems. With naturalizations,
city directories, war records, newspapers, town records, etc... this new
kid is quickly being recognized as an alternative to Ancestry.
While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The history of the African
race is God's illuminated clock, set in the
dark steeple of time. The Negro has been
made the hewer of wood and the drawer of
water for nearly all other nations. The
people of the United States, however, will
have an account to settle with God, owing to
their treatment of the Negro, which will far
surpass the rest of mankind.
Jerome, on reaching Canada, felt for the
first time that personal freedom which God
intended that all who bore his image should
enjoy. That same forgetfulness of self which
had always characterized him now caused him
to think of others. The thoughts of dear
ones in slavery were continually in his
mind, and above all others, Clotelle
occupied his thoughts. Now that he was free,
he could better appreciate her condition as
a slave. Although Jerome met, on his arrival
in Canada, numbers who had escaped from the
Southern States, he nevertheless shrank from
all society, particularly that of females.
The soft, silver gray tints on the leaves of
the trees, with their snow spotted trunks,
and a biting air, warned the new born
freeman that he was in another climate.
Jerome sought work, and soon found it; and
arranged with his employer that the latter
should go to Natchez in search of Clotelle.
The good Scotchman, for whom the fugitive
was laboring, freely offered to go down and
purchase the girl, if she could be bought,
and let Jerome pay him in work. With such a
prospect of future happiness in view, this
injured descendent of outraged and bleeding
Africa went daily to his toil with an energy
hitherto unknown to him. But oh, how vain
are the hopes of man!
Three months had elapsed, from the time the
fugitive commenced work for Mr. Streeter,
when that gentleman returned from his
Southern research, and informed Jerome that
Parson Wilson had sold Clotelle, and that
she had been sent to the New Orleans slave
market.
This intelligence fell with crushing weight
upon the heart of Jerome, and he now felt
that the last chain which bound him to his
native land was severed. He therefore
determined to leave America forever. His
nearest and dearest friends had often been
flogged in his very presence, and he had
seen his mother sold to the Negro trader. An
only sister had been torn from him by the
soul driver; he had himself been sold and
resold, and been compelled to submit to the
most degrading and humiliating insults; and
now that the woman upon whom his heart
doted, and without whom life was a burden,
had been taken away forever, he felt it a
duty to hate all mankind.
If there is one thing more than another
calculated to make one hate and detest
American slavery, it is to witness the
meetings between fugitives and their friends
in Canada. Jerome had beheld some of these
scenes. The wife who, after years of
separation, had escaped from her prison
house and followed her husband had told her
story to him. He had seen the newly arrived
wife rush into the arms of the husband,
whose dark face she had not looked upon for
long, weary years. Some told of how a sister
had been ill used by the overseer; others of
a husband's being whipped to death for
having attempted to protect his wife. He had
sat in the little log hut, by the fireside,
and heard tales that caused his heart to
bleed; and his bosom swelled with just
indignation when he though that there was no
remedy for such atrocious acts. It was with
such feelings that he informed his employer
that he should leave him at the expiration
of a month.
In vain did Mr. Streeter try to persuade
Jerome to remain with him; and late in the
month of February, the latter found himself
on board a small vessel loaded with pine
lumber, descending the St. Lawrence, bound
for Liverpool. The bark, though an old one,
was, nevertheless, considered seaworthy, and
the fugitive was working his way out. As the
vessel left the river and gained the open
sea, the black man appeared to rejoice at
the prospect of leaving a country in which
his right to manhood had been denied him,
and his happiness destroyed.
The wind was proudly swelling the white
sails, and the little craft plunging into
the foaming waves, with the land fast
receding in the distance, when Jerome
mounted a pile of lumber to take a last
farewell of his native land. With tears
glistening in his eyes, and with quivering
lips, he turned his gaze toward the shores
that were fast fading in the dim distance,
and said,
"Though forced from my native land by the
tyrants of the South, I hope I shall some
day be able to return. With all her faults,
I love my country still."
Clotelle or The Colored Heroine, A tale
of the Southern States
