The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

by Sojourner Truth

‘Mau-mau, what makes you cry?’ she would answer, ‘Oh, my child, I am thinking of your brothers and sisters that have been sold away from me.’

‘Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.’

‘Who shall be burdened with Bomefree, when we have sent away his faithful Mau-mau Bett?’

John Ardinburgh, a grandson of the old Colonel; and he declared that ‘Bomefree, who had ever been a kind and faithful slave, should now have a good funeral.’ And

What a compensation for a life of toil, of patient submission to repeated robberies of the most aggravated kind, and, also, far more than murderous neglect!!

Mr. Dumont had been nursed in the very lap of slavery, and being naturally a man of kind feelings, treated his slaves with all the consideration he did his other animals, and more, perhaps.

From this source arose a long series of trials in the life of our heroine, which we must pass over in silence; some from motives of delicacy, and others, because the relation of them might inflict undeserved pain on some now living, whom Isabel remembers only with esteem and love;

as she thinks, how God shields the innocent, and causes them to triumph over their enemies,

and if any one talked to her of the injustice of her being a slave, she answered them with contempt, and immediately told her master. She then firmly believed that slavery was right and honorable. Yet she now sees very clearly the false position they were all in, both masters and slaves; and she looks back, with utter astonishment, at the absurdity of the claims so arrogantly set up by the masters, over beings designed by God to be as free as kings; and at the perfect stupidity of the slave, in admitting for one moment the validity of these claims.

own! Oh consistency, art thou not a jewel? Yet Isabella glories in the fact that she was faithful and true to her master; she says, ‘It made me true to my God’—meaning, that it helped to form in her a character that loved truth, and hated a lie, and had saved her from the bitter pains and fears that are sure to follow in the wake of insincerity and hypocrisy.

them. Isabella had witnessed this scene from her window, and was greatly shocked at the murderous treatment of poor Robert, whom she truly loved, and whose only crime, in the eye of his persecutors, was his affection for her.

Slaveholders appear to me to take the same notice of the vices of the slave, as one does of the vicious disposition of his horse. They are often an inconvenience; further than that, they care not to trouble themselves about the matter.

SLAVEHOLDER’S PROMISES

Her very faithfulness probably operated against her now, and he found it less easy than he thought to give up the profits of his faithful Bell, who had so long done him efficient service.

‘Ah!’ she says, with emphasis that cannot be written, ‘the slaveholders are TERRIBLE for promising to give you this or that, or such and such a privilege, if you will do thus and so; and when the time of fulfilment comes,

His master asked him if he intended going, and on his replying ‘yes,’ took up a sled-stick that lay near him, and gave him such a blow on the head as broke his skull, killing him dead on the spot. The poor colored people all felt struck down by the blow.’

that slavery is fast undermining all true regard for human life.

Frederick Douglass, who has devoted his great heart and noble talents entirely to the furtherance of the cause of his down-trodden race, has said—‘From

From what I know of the effect of their holidays upon the slave, I believe them to be among the most effective means, in the hands of the slaveholder, in keeping down the spirit of insurrection.

Were the slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immedia...

These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spi...

The sense of her nothingness in the eyes of those with whom she contended for her rights, sometimes fell on her like a heavy weight,

The curiosity of this man was awakened by the culprit’s bearing his own name.

‘Oh Lord,’ inquired Isabella, ‘what is this slavery, that it can do such dreadful things? what evil can it not do?’

repeat a thrilling story of a little slave-child, which, because it annoyed the family with its cries, was caught up by a white man, who dashed its brains out against the wall.

Persons who have traveled in the South know the manner in which the colored people, and especially slaves, are treated; they are scarcely regarded as being present.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another.’

‘Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you,’ ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ and so forth, were maxims that had been but little thought of by herself, or practised by those about her.

Her mission was not merely to travel east, but to ‘lecture,’ as she designated it;

‘SISTER,—I send you this living messenger, as I believe her to be one that God loves. Ethiopia is stretching forth her hands unto God. You can see by this sister, that God does by his Spirit alone teach his own children things to come. Please receive her, and she will tell you some new things. Let her tell her story without interrupting her, and give close attention, and you will see she has got the lever of truth, that God helps her to pry where but few can. She cannot read or write, but the law is in her heart.

‘No, God does not stop to rest, for he is a spirit, and cannot tire; he cannot want for light, for he hath all light in himself. And if “God is all in all,” and “worketh all in all,” as I have heard them read, then it is impossible he should rest at all; for if he did, every other thing would stop and rest too; the waters would not flow, and the fishes could not swim; and all motion must cease.

In consequence of this, she ceased to ask adult persons to read the Bible to her, and substituted children in their stead. Children, as soon as they could read distinctly, would re-read the same sentence to her, as often as she wished, and without comment; and in that way she was enabled to see what her own mind could make out of the record,

She wished to compare the teachings of the Bible with the witness within her; and she came to the conclusion, that the spirit of truth spoke in those records, but that the recorders of those truths had intermingled with them ideas and suppositions of their own.

Sometimes, to their eager inquiry, ‘Oh, don’t you believe the Lord is coming?’ she answered, ‘I believe the Lord is as near as he can be, and not be it.’ With these evasive and non-exciting answers, she kept their minds calm as it respected her unbelief, till she could have an opportunity to hear their views fairly stated, in order to judge more understandingly of this matter, and see if, in her estimation, there was any good ground for expecting an event which was,

For why should we allow in ourselves, the very fault we most dislike, when committed against us? Shall we not at least aim at consistency?

Yes, reader, if any one feels that the tocsin of alarm, or the anti-slavery trump, must sound a louder note before they can hear it, one would think they must be very hard of hearing,—yea, that they belong to that class, of whom it may be truly said, ‘they have stopped their ears that they may not hear.’