Glorying in Tribulation: The Life Work of Sojourner Truth

Chapter 5: I Saw The Wheat Holding Up Its Head

Five I Saw the Wheat Holding up Its Head I neversaw so clearly the nature and intent ofthe Constitution before. Oh, was it not strangely inconsistent that men fresh, so fresh, from the baptism ofthe Revolution should make such concessions to the foul spirit ofDespotism! that, when fresh from gaining their own liberty, they could permit the African slave trade-could let their nationalflag hang a sign ofdeath on Guinea's coast and Congo's shore! Twenty-one years the slave-ships ofthe new Republic could gorge the sea monsters with their prey; twenty-one years ofmourning and desolation for the children ofthe tropics, to gratify the avarice and cupidity ofmen styling themselvesfree! And then the dark intent ofthefugitive clause veiled under words so specious that a stranger unacquainted with our nefarious government would not know that such a thing was meant by it. Alasfor these fatal concessions . They remind me ofthe fabulous teeth sown by Cadmus-they rise, armed men, to smite. Frances Watkins Harper, NationalAnti-Slavery Standard, 9 April 1859 Toward the end of her last year at Oberlin, Frederick Douglass invited Sallie Holley to write for the North Star, which he had launched in 1847 against the bitter opposition of the Garrisonians. In mid-1851 the title of his new venture, Frederick Douglass' Paper, would leave no doubt as to who controlled its editorial viewpoint. Holley refused; by the end of the summer of 1851 Abby Kelley Foster had already recruited her for the Garrisonian Ohio campaign to preach disunionism and nonresistance across the state, filtered through a growing Garrisonian-sanctioned feminist awareness. Sallie Holley made joking reference to having found her 130 Glorying in Tribulation real "sphere." In the Western Anti-Slavery Society women held many of the leadership positions. Holley, Truth, Parker Pillsbury, the offbeat Charles C. Burleigh, "allowing his hair to hang in curls about his neck," and the Ohio abolitionists , Josephine Griffing and her husband, and Marius and Emily Robinson, covered the Ohio circuit "in the days of outlawry for anti-slavery." If they found the churches, halls, and schoolhouses closed to them, they spoke in the groves. Once in an Ohio village a shoemaker asked them in, "taking off his apron, shoving back his bench," and they worked the crowd of passersby and onlookers. They put on a good show: Holley, the young white "lady pleading so earnestly for the slave-woman; her beautiful face full of the warm human sympathy of her plea," Pillsbury, the working-class bane of the pro-slavery churches ("Pillsbury is a very bitter devil"), and the dramatic Truth. Following Mr. Pillsbury, would rise, towering, the striking form and features of Sojourner Truth, in her turban, and with wit and pathos she would wring our hearts, and wreathe our faces with smiles, and even convulse us with laughter, at the story of her old slave life in New York, before the act ofemancipation in the Empire State of 1828.1 Truth's performances often took this form of testimony, grounded in revivalist experience. In Ohio the constitutive elements of Truth's social vision-enthusiastic religion, antislavery, and woman's rights agitationwere all in full play. Truth mostly worked alone, Holley wrote: Miss Putnam, Mr. and Mrs. Griffing, Parker Pillsbury, and myself compose our travelling party, in one carriage. Every few days Sojourner Truth joins us and aids in our meetings. She travels in a buggy by herself . An anti-slavery friend loaned her a pony and buggy for the entire summer. She is quite a strong character and shows what a great intellect slavery has crushed. She talks like one who has not only heard of American slavery, but has seen and ftlt it. As she eloquently exclaimed last evening, "All the gold of California, all the wealth of this nation, could not restore to me that which the white people have wrested from me.,,2 Truth told Lucy Colman that during those weeks traveling around Ohio with the pony and buggy "whenever she came to a place where two roads met, she laid the lines down and said, 'God, you drive,' and he always drove her to some good place, where she had a successful meeting." I Saw the Wheat Holding up Its Head 131 Colman thought Truth's success in gathering Ohio crowds was because "Her voice was very fine." She paid her way, and her horse was well taken care of, but...