Sojourner Truth's America

12. The Bloodhound Bill and Intensified Activism

191 O brothers, awake! for the time has come To brighten the blood-hound’s fame; They’ve opened a nobler field for us, To follow our human game. — c. shiras, esq., “the blood-hound’s song” The hounds are braying at my back; Oh, Christians, will you send me back? — author unknown chapter 12 The Bloodhound Bill and Intensified Activism I Prepublicity advertisements for Sojourner’s Narrative began in April 1850, with the following statement in the Liberator: “JUST PUBLISHED. And for sale at the Anti-Slavery office at 21 Cornhill, NARRATIVE OF SOJOURNER TRUTH, a Northern Slave emancipated from bodily servitude by the state of New York in 1828. With a Portrait.” In the week before the May convention in 1850, Garrison added a postscript to the announcement: “This is a most interesting Narrative of a most remarkable and highly meritorious woman, the sale of which is to be for her exclusive benefit. We commend it to all the friends of the colored population—Ed.Lib.” Abolitionists from across the nation anticipated the largest annual gathering ever.1 And Sojourner Truth looked forward to the public announcement of her Narrative in her home state. But it was not to be. The times were “fearful, stirring, and terrible,” as national furor erupted when California’s application for statehood included a ban on slavery. In response , Southerners mounted a confrontation, fueled by the invective of dying fire-eater John C. Calhoun and intensification of Abolitionist “No Union with slaveholders” agitation. Moreover, a new, increasingly powerful Free Soil party, 192 sojourner truth and the antislavery apostles dissatisfied with slavery’s expansion, challenged the Whigs. To calm the sectional fury and neutralize abolition, congressional leaders Henry Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts orchestrated a compromise. Congress would admit California without slavery, but enact an ironclad fugitive slave law, permitting the immediate arrest without a warrant and return of any alleged fugitive. Such persons could not testify or appeal, but hearsay testimony against them was admissible. The legislation also provided for a payment of $10 to federal commissioners who granted certificates to slaveholders permitting them to take back alleged fugitives, while commissioners who denied such certificates to slaveholders would receive only $5. Commissioners could deputize any citizen and use any measures to prevent interference.2 In 1850, radical Abolitionists seemed stronger than ever—more pristine, above self, party, race, and government. Ten years earlier, in 1840, Lewis Tappan and the clerical Abolitionists had predicted that the “no-marriage perfectionist” Garrison, who embraced “every infidel fanaticism which floats,” was losing influence. Instead, Garrison’s base had grown in the British Isles and America, especially among women. And in 1850, he promoted Sojourner Truth as he once showcased Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.3 Sojourner Truth and Garrison were kindred spirits. As seekers of a kingdom of God on earth through moral reform, both initially embraced but then rejected the church. Faith and the spoken word was her strength, while he, indentured to a printer in childhood, used the press to transform words into spiritual and moral weapons. Her circle of urban associates exposed her to reform and Perfectionism , while his young male cohorts included intellectuals such as Alcott and the humanitarian Quaker poet Whittier. Garrison’s impoverished family background, including ancestors who immigrated to America as bond servants, was closer to hers than to those of his elite Boston associates. His mother had been a servant, and his alcoholic father, a mariner, had deserted the family. Like Sojourner’s Mau-mau Bet, Garrison’s devout mother had taught “Lloyd” to value faith, honesty, steadfast duty, and firmness as a Christian soldier. Garrison and Truth—two hymn-singing, Bible-quoting Perfectionists of humble birth—were friends for life.4 Besides his appreciation of Sojourner Truth as a reformer, their friendship also reflected Garrison’s closeness to blacks. He was hated as much for his association with African Americans as for his caustic pen. African Americans provided seed money to start the Liberator after he left Quaker Benjamin Lundy’s colonization-oriented Genius of Universal Emancipation. Blacks sustained the Liberator in its struggling years, and the NEASS was founded in a black church. Although Garrison’s singleness of purpose led even some friends to call him an egomaniac, he was not a “romantic racialist” who idealized blacks or a “night- The Bloodhound Bill and Intensified Activism 193 time Abolitionist” who avoided...