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298 I have plead with all the force I had that the day might come that the colored people might own their own soul and body. Well the day has come, although it came through blood. It makes no difference how it came—it did come. — sojourner truth And proclaim liberty throughout all the land. . . . It shall be a jubilee unto you. — lev. 25:10 chapter 17 Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land I Sojourner Truth had spent twenty years speaking against slavery, and the last seven lecturing throughout seven western states. Her health, which had been amazingly good, declined along with her spirits. For all of their successes in Indiana, emancipation seemed in doubt in 1862. Moreover, she refused to return to Harmonia and lived in a Battle Creek basement. The stress of the Indiana campaign also took a heavy physical toll on this sixty-five-year-old messenger of God. Eventually her health failed completely; Joseph and Phebe Merritt cared for her with help from her daughter Diana. Sojourner’s friend Samuel Rogers remembered that she was “often extremely excited and anxious about how the war would end.” Lincoln was making plans to colonize her people if he could not use them to get the South back into the Union. Even when Lincoln appeared ready to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, the old radical was not assuaged. Dangerously ill late in 1862, expecting to die before seeing complete liberation, she asked Rogers to preach her funeral. He agreed but added, “I don’t think you had better die just yet. Don’t you want to see all your people free?” He advised, “The best thing you can do is to get well so that you can live to see this war Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land 299 ended and the slaves free.” They discussed the matter at length, he recalled. As January 1, 1863, drew near, the faithful and steadfast Sojourner sent word that she longed to be with friends and coworkers, “and speak to the people a few more times in this glorious day of emancipation.”1 Her friends everywhere celebrated “the beginning of the end.” The Michigan Central Railroad carried passengers for half fare as black citizens from Detroit, Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, Albion, and Marshall gathered in Battle Creek on December 31. The Baptist and Methodist churches held “watch meetings” (watching the clock bring emancipation in with the new year) others preferred to “trip the light fantastic toe” to a noted black band, with supper included, for $1. In Boston, white Abolitionists joined the literati for a jubilee concert, and blacks gathered at Tremont Temple. William C. Nell presided; Frederick Douglass and Dr. John Rock headed the speakers’ list. When the wires brought word of the Proclamation’s signing, Tremont shook with thunderous shouts, applause, foot stomping, jumping, and singing: “Sound the loud timbre! O’er Egypt’s dark sea Jehovah hath triumphed, His people are free. In New York City, Sojourner’s antislavery associates celebrated at Cooper Institute and Shiloh Presbyterian, where Horace Greeley joined pastor Henry Garnet as the audience sang John Brown’s favorite hymn, “Blow ye the trumpet, blow.” At Brooklyn’s Colored Methodist Church, Independent editor Theodore Tilton joined William Wells Brown and minister Jeremiah Gloucester in the pulpit. In nearby Williamsburgh, Elizabeth Greenfield and her pupils welcomed everyone to a grand matinee and celebratory concert. In Washington, D.C., Bethel AME Church members listened to Union chaplain Henry M. Turner’s sermon. But the scene closest to Sojourner’s heart was in the District’s contraband camps, where superintendent Dr. Danforth Nichols read off the names of counties included in the Proclamation. The news was joyous to some and disappointing for others; but they all knelt and sang “Go down Moses.”2 In the midst of these emotional outpourings, the Merritts’ daughter, Phebe Stickney, wrote to Longwood Friend Joseph Dugdale about Sojourner’s condition. “I write to thee and thine to solicit a little assistance.” Their much-esteemed friend Sojourner Truth remained bedridden and “quite feeble.” Indeed, Stickney lamented, she was doing so poorly, she “probably won’t live long.” She had no income to “supply herself with the many little comforts that an aged and feeble person needs.” Assistance might help her “live a little longer to praise God.”3 Friends had not forgotten the Sojourner’s mighty antislavery works. When Longwood Quakers publicized her plight, letters, donations, and gifts from [3.138.101.95] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 14...

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