J[ermain] W[esley] Loguen to Frederick Douglass., May 8, 1856

For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

REV. J. W. LOUGEN'S VISIT TO CANADA.

MY DEAR FRIEND:—It is due to the colored people of Canada to say, they are the most temperate people in Canada. It required clear heads, as well as stout hearts, and strong hands, to get up out of the house of bondage. They did not break one set of chains to put on another. They have a large Temperance Society at St. Catherines. I had the pleasure of learning some of them talk, and of talking myself at one of the monthly meetings. It was gratifying to find them, like wise-men, like real fathers and mothers, providing against the aggression of a licentious age.

But it was their Anti-Slavery Society that drew most upon my sympathies. That, also, assembled whilst I was among them. Not like the Anti-Slavery meetings of Syracuse and Rochester was this meeting at St. Catherines. It resembled rather a gathering of noble exiles in the promised land, detailing their wrongs, and commemorating their escape through the Red Sea, and the perils of the wilderness. It is worth going from Syracuse to Canada to attend an Anti-Slavery meeting of fugitive slaves.—Personally, I never saw a stronger, braver, or more intelligent looking mass of men and women than that. Of course, they did not meet to instruct the ignorant of the nature of Slavery, but to recount their trials, their hardships, their outrages, their conflicts, and to show the scars the beast made upon them. Their wounds "opened their dumb mouths," and plead loudly for Freedom. Their tongues were eloquent, but their scarred and mutilated bodies were more eloquent I never was so fired up with the spirit of war as at this meeting. Some pointed to scars in battles with bloodhounds—some to broken limbs—some to teeth knocked out—some to the marks of the branding iron—some to the cat-o-nine-tails—some to this and some to that indelible mark of outrage upon

their stalwart frames. I talked with the rest; but our words were nothing compared to the silent orators upon our bodies. We all talked and wept together and when we called to mind that the monster lived, which afflicted us, we swore he should die, if it were possible to kill him. We looked forward "to the change of the wheel of fortune" which Mr. Jefferson spoke of, when "the attributed of God will take side with us," and "his exterminating thunder manifest his attention to the affairs of this world." I am told that the bold spirit that planned and conducted the Florida war, which cost the State forty millions of dollars, was a fugitive negro from the States; that the soldiers who formed the ranks of the Indian armies, were also fugitive negro slaves; and should the States be again in a war, in which colored participation is possible, mark me, the man lives, who, with his brave volunteers, will write such a bloody lesson on the soil of Slavery as has never been written.

On the Western termination of Lake Ontario is the village of Hamilton. It is a large enterprizing place, amid scenery, placid, beautiful and sublime. It is a delightful valley which runs east and west; on the north is the beautiful lake, and at the south a perpendicular mountain towers up some two or three hundred feet, and hands its brow over the village. Here are quite a number of our people, doing well so for as I could learn, able and willing not only to help the fugitive, but to join with able and willing white men around them to furnish him an asylum. How changed in twenty years! My dear friend, indulge me here a moment.—Hamilton is a sacred and memorable spot to me; and I cannot slightly pass it. I could not stand upon its soil without a flood of sad and sweet gushing memories. It seems to me, and ever will seem to me, a paternal home. I shall never visit it without the feelings which a stolen child feels on returning after weary years of sorrow and outrage, to his father's house.

Twenty one years ago, the 25th of a cold December—the very winter I left my chains in

Tennessee—I stood on this spot, penniless, ragged, lonely, homeless, helpless, hungry and forlorn—a pitiable wanderer, without a friend, or shelter, or place to lay my head. I had broken from the sunny South, and fought a passage through storms and tempests, which made the forests crash and the mountains moan—difficulties, new, awful, and unexpected, but not so dreaded as my white enemies who were comfortably sheltered among them. There I stood, a boy, twenty-one years of age, (as near as I know my age,) the tempest howling over my head, and my toes kissing the snow beneath my worn-out shoes—with the assurance that I was at the end of my journey—knowing nobody, and nobody knowing me or noticing me, only as attracted by the then supposed mark of Cain on my sorrow-stricken face. I stood there the personification of helpless courage and finited hope. The feeling rushed upon me, "Was it for this that I left sweet skies and a mother love?" On visiting this place now, I contrasted the present and past. No Underground Railroad took me to Hamilton. White men had not then learned to care for the far off slave, and there were no thriving colored farmers, mechanics and laborers to welcome me. I can never forget the moment. I was in the last extremity. I had freedom, but nature and man were shut against me. I could only look to God, and I prayed "Pity, O my Father—help, or I perish!" and though all was frost and trust, and love; and an earthly father took me to his home and angel wife, who became to me a mother. He thought a body, lusty and stout as mine, could brave cold, and cut cord wood, and split rails—and he was right. I agreed to earn my bread, and did much more than that; and he rewarded my labors to the extent of justice. They paid me better then I asaked, and taught me many lessons of religion and life. I had a home and place for my heart to repose, and had been happy but for the thought that ever torments the fugitive, that

my mother, sisters and brothers were in cruel bondage, and I could never embrace them again.

My dear Douglass, you will not think it strange I speak of my case in contrast with the new state of things in Canada. Hamilton was a cold wilderness for the fugitive when I came there. It is now an Underground Railroad depot, where he is embraced with warm sympathy. Here is where the black man is disencumbered of the support of master and mistress, and their imps, and gets used to self-ownership. Here he learns the first lessons in books, and grows into shape. Fortunately for me, I gained the favor of the best white people. My story attached them to me. They took me into the Sabbath School in Hamilton, and taught me letters the winter of my arrival; and I graduated a Bible reader at Ancaster, close by, the succeeding summer. All the country around is familiar to me, and you will not wonder I love to come here. I love it because it was my first resting place from Slavery, and I love it the more, because it has been, and will continue to be a city of refuge for my poor countrymen.

I must not forget to tell you that the people of Hamilton had much to say of you and are very anxious to see you again.

This finishes my correspondence in regard to Canada. Yours, truly,

J. W. LOGUEN

SYRACUSE, May 8th, 1856.