Cloudsplitter (16 page)

John Brown

When I had finished transcribing the letter, I put the tablet away in the folder where we kept his papers, and we none of us read or spoke of the letter again. It was odd, for we had suffered numerous deaths in the family by then, and each of them had drawn us closer together; but the death of little Kitty caused me, and I think the rest of us as well, to withdraw ourselves from Father to a greater degree than any previous event or circumstance. Of course, here and there, now and again, one or the other of us had gone through a period of withdrawal from intimacy with Father, but it was almost always a solitary act, a brief and lonely rebellion. But on the occasion of Kitty’s death, we all as a group rebelled, even including Mary, and shut Father away from our feelings and conversations with one another for many weeks afterwards.

1 believe that I learned then for the first time that it was possible to oppose Father, to swell with anger against him and to walk away from his sputterings and recriminations, without any terrible cost to my own sense of worth as a man and without the crippling loneliness that I usually associated with opposing him. But I could not do it until the rest of the family marched with me. The awful irony is that we could never march against him unless one of us was capable of sacrificing another of us beforehand—as Ruth had sacrificed the baby Amelia, little Kitty. Only then could we stand against him and say to him, “Father, you do not understand.”

Yesterday, while searching through my cache of Father’s papers for the letters concerning the death of poor Kitty, I happened onto another long-forgotten transcription, which I am sure you have not read and which will show you an aspect of Father’s character that may surprise and even amuse you. It may also give you some further insight into the true nature of my relationship with Father, so that later, when I have told everything, you will believe me.

The document of which I speak, when it came to my hand, caused me unexpectedly to think back to the time when Father corked his face, as it were, and actually tried to pass himself off as a Negro. It was an audacious thing, but he was fully aware of that and did it anyhow. His ostensible purpose was to instruct and warn. He had carefully composed an essay entitled “Sambo’s Mistakes,” which he read many times over to any of us who would listen and after much hesitation finally submitted anonymously to the Negro editors of the Ram’s Horn, in Brooklyn, New York. It was not published, probably because it was seen for what it was—a white man in blackface telling Negroes how to behave. The rejection of his little essay infuriated Father, for he believed that he was saying things to Negroes that they ought to hear and rarely did, except when he himself told them in meetings or when invited to speak to the congregations of Negro churches. He explained that he had chosen to speak as Sambo because when he said these things to Negroes in whiteface, he was perceived strictly as a white man and thus was not truly heard. “Racialism infects everybody’s ears,” he said. “Negro ears as much as white.”

This was in the winter of ’48, after we had left Akron and were newly settled in Springfield, and I found the whole thing somewhat embarrassing then, although later on I came to see that in a sense, perhaps subconsciously, Father was advising and correcting himself as much as his Negro brethren. He was speaking his little narrative, in spite of his intentions to disguise himself, with his own genuine voice quite as much as when he wrote letters home and advised and corrected us. This may be of interest to you, for you were born long after Father’s death and can have no idea of how he sounded in actual conversation. Father’s voice, including his grammar and choice of words and his pacing, was more or less the same whether spoken aloud or written down on paper. It was uniquely his own—although I was often told that I myself spoke very much like him.

Earlier today, I carried Father’s original manuscript of “Sambo’s Mistakes,” from which I had made the “official” copy that he submitted to the Rum’s Horn, outside my cabin and read it in the dying light of day. It is perhaps the nearness of our voices, his and mine, that enabled me to recall his voice exactly when I read through this composition, for I could hear him speaking to me quite as if he were seated next to me on the stoop, the ink on the paper barely dry.

“Tell me truthfully, Owen’ he said, “if you think I have left anything of use and importance out. And note any particular infelicities of language, son, if you will.” And then he began to read “Sambo’s Mistakes” aloud, very slowly, savoring all the words as if they were great poetry.

Notwithstanding that I
have committed a few mistakes in the course of a long life like others of my colored brethren, you will perceive at a glance that
I
have always been remarkable for a seasonable discovery of my errors and my quick perception of the true course.
I
propose to give you a few
illustrations
in this and the following paragraphs.

For
instance,
when
I
was a boy
I
learned to read, but instead of
giving
my attention to sacred and profane history, by which
I
might have become acquainted with
the
true character of God and man, learned the
best
course for individuals, societies, and
nations
to
pursue, stored
my mind with an
endless
variety of rational and practical ideas, profited by the experience of millions of others of all ages, fitted myself for the most important stations in life, and fortified my mind with the best and wisest
resolutions
and
noblest
sentiments and motives,
I have instead spent
my whole life devouring silly novels and other miserable trash such as most
newspapers
of the day and other popular
writings
are filled with,
thereby
unfitting myself for
the realities
of life and acquiring a taste for
nonsense
and low wit, so that
I have
no relish for sober truth, useful
knowledge,
or practical wisdom.
By this means I have passed through
life
without
profit to
myself or others, a
mere blank on which
nothing
worth
perusing is
written.

But
I
can see in a twink where
I missed it.

Another error
into which
I
fell early in life was the notion that
chewing
and smoking tobacco would make
a
man of me but little inferior to some of the whites.
The
money
I spent
in this way, with the interest of it, would have enabled me to have
relieved a great many
sufferers, supplied me with a
well-selected
interesting library, and paid for a good farm for the support and comfort of my old age;
whereas I
now have neither books,
clothing, the
satisfaction of
having benefited
others, nor a place to lay my hoary head.

However, I
can see in a moment where
I missed it.

One of the further errors of my life is that I have
imitated frivolous
whites by joining the Free Masons, Odd Fellows, Sons
of Temperance, and a score of other secret
societies
and chapters
established
by and for men of color,
instead
of
seeking the
company of intelligent, wise, and good men of both races, from whom
I might have
learned much that would be interesting, instructive, and useful, and
I have
in that way squandered a great amount of most precious time and money,
enough sometimes in a single
year
which, if I had
put the same out on interest and kept it so, would have kept me always above board, given me character and influence amongst men, or have enabled me to pursue some respectable
calling, so
that
I
might employ others to their benefit and improvement; but as it
is, I
have always been poor, in debt, and am now
obliged to
travel about in search of employment as a
hostler, shoeblack,
and fiddler.

But I
retain all my
quickness
of perception and see readily where
I
missed it.

An
error of my riper years has been that, when any meeting of colored people has been called in order to consider an important matter of
general interest, I have been
so eager to display my spouting talents and so tenacious of some trifling theory or other which
I have
adopted, that
I
have
generally lost all sight
of the business at hand, consumed the time disputing about things of no moment, and
thereby
defeated entirely many important
measures
calculated to promote the
general
welfare.

But
I
am happy to say that
I
know in a flash where
I
missed it.
Another small
error of my life (for
I have
never committed great
blunders) has been
that, for the sake of union in the furtherance of the most vital
interests
of our race,
I would
never yield any minor point of difference. In this way
I have always had
to act with but
a
few men and frequently alone, and could
accomplish nothing worth living
for.

But I have one comfort,
I
can see with a
passing glance where I missed
it.

A little but
nonetheless telling fault which
I have
committed is that, if in anything
another
man has failed of coming up to my standard,
notwithstanding he
might
possess
many of the most
valuable
traits and be most admirably suited to fill some one important post,
I
would reject him
entirely,
injure his influence, oppose
his
measures, and even glory in his defeat,
though his
intentions all the while were good and his plans well laid.

But
I have
the great satisfaction of
being able
to say without fear of contradiction that
I
can see very quick where
I
missed it.

Another small
mistake which
I have
made is that
I
could never bring myself to practice any present self-denial,
although
my
theories have been excellent. For
instance,
I have bought expensive gay clothing, nice canes, watches, gold safety-chains, finger-rings,
breast pins, and other things of a like nature,
thinking I might by that means distinguish myself from the vulgar, as some
of the
better class of whites
do.
I have always been of the foremost in getting
up expensive parties and running after fashionable amusements and have indulged my appetites freely
whenever I had the
means (and even with borrowed money) and have
patronized the
dealers in nuts, candy, cakes, etc., have sometimes
bought good suppers,
and was always a regular customer at livery
stables. By these
and many other means
I have been
unable to benefit my suffering
brethren
and am now but poorly able to keep my own soul and body together.

But
do not think me
thoughtless or dull
of apprehension, for I can see at once where
I missed it.

A not-so-trifling
error of my life has been that
I
am
always expected
to secure the favor of the
whites by
tamely
submitting to
every species of
indignity,
contempt, and wrong, instead of
nobly resisting
their brutal
aggressions
from principle and taking my place as a man and assuming the
responsibilities
of a man, a citizen, a husband, a father, a
brother, a
neighbor, a friend, as God requires of every one (and if his
neighbor will
not allow him to do it, he must stand up and protest continually and also appeal to God for aid!.). But
I find that,
for all my
submission, I get
about
the same
reward that the Southern Slavocrats render to
the
dough-faced statesmen of the
North
for being bribed and browbeat and fooled and cheated, as the
Whigs
and Democrats love to be,
thinking themselves highly
honored if they be
allowed
to lick up the spittle of a Southerner.
I say I get the same
reward’.

But
I
am uncommonly
quick-sighted,
and
I
can see in a
twinkling where I missed it.

Another little
blunder which
I have
made
is that, while I have always been a most zealous abolitionist, I
have been constantly at war with my friends about certain
religious tenets. I
was first a
Presbyterian, but I
could never think of acting with my Quaker friends, for they were the rankest
heretics,
and the Baptists would be in the water, and the
Methodists
denied the doctrine of Election, etc., and in later years, since
becoming enlightened by
Garrison, Abby Kelley, and other really
benevolent persons, I
have been
spending all
my force against friends who love the
Sabbath
and feel that all is at stake on that point.