No
wonder. Quick as any faculty he had was that of hearing a
slave's heart beat. Had it not been for that keen instinct there
would have been no tale to tell of John Brown.
The daughter says her earliest memory is of her father's great
arms about her as he sang to her his favourite hymn:
Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound:
Let all the nations know
To earth's remotest bound.
The year of Jubilee is come,
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
Then, ceasing, he would tell her with heart brimming with
tenderness of poor little black children who were slaves. What
were slaves? she wanted to know. And he was ready enough to
tell her of those who were riven from father and mother and sold
for base coin, whom in some States it was illegal to teach their
A B C, but quite lawful to flog; and then the daughter would be
asked, by way of application to his moving discourse, if she
would like some of them to come some time and share her home and
food.
Thus continually to that rising family there was unfolded the
horror of the slavery system. That horror had faded in the minds
of many in the Northern States whose ancestry had held freedom
dear; while in the Southern States, for the most part, the
possession of your fellow creatures as if they were so much farm
stock had become too familiar a feature of common life to evoke
any conscientious misgiving, much less shame.
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