Austin Steward - Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman

Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman

ByAustin Steward

STATE OF NEW YORK, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,

Albany, May 10, 1856.

MR. A. STEWARD, Canandaigua,

Dear Sir:I notice a paragraph in the Ontario Times of this date, making the announcement that you are preparing a sketch of events occurring under your own observation during an eventful life, to be entitled, Twenty Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman; and that you design soon to make an effort to obtain subscribers for the book.

Being desirous of rendering you what encouragement I may in the work, you are permitted to place my name on your list of subscribers.

Respectfully Yours,

MYRON H. CLARK.

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ROCHESTER, SEPTEMBER, 1856

MR. WM. ALLING,

Dear Sir:The undersigned have heard with pleasure, that you are about issuing a Book made up from incidents in the life of Austin STEWARD. We have been the early acquaintances and associates of Mr. Steward, while a business man in Rochester in an early day, and take pleasure in bearing testimony to his high personal, moral and Christian character. In a world of vicissitude, Mr. Steward has received no ordinary share, and we hope, while his book may do the world good, it may prove a substantial benefit to him in his declining years.

ASHLEY SAMPSON, THOMAS KEMPSHALL, FREDERICK STARR, CHAS. J. HILL, L.A. WARD, EDWIN SCRANTOM, JACOB GOULD.

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RECOMMENDATORY.

ROCHESTER, JULY 1, 1856.

A. STEWARD, ESQ.,

Dear Sir:In reply to your letter upon the propriety of publishing your life, I answer, that there is not only no objection to it, but it will be timely, and is demanded by every consideration of humanity and justice. Every tongue which speaks for Freedom, which has once been held by the awful gag of Slavery, is trumpet-tonguedand he who pleads against this monstrous oppression, if he can say, here are the scars, can do much.

It is a great pleasure to me to run back to my boyhood, and stop at that spot where I first met you. I recollect the story of your wrongs, and your joy in the supposition that all were now ended in your freedom; of your thirst for knowledge, as you gathered up from the rudimental booksnot then very plentya few snatches of the elements of the language; of playing the school-master to you, in setting copies for your writing book; of guiding your mind and pen. I remember your commencement in business, and the outrage and indignity offered you in Rochester, by white competitors on no other ground than that of color.[1] I saw your bitter tears, and recollect assuring youwhat afterwards proved truethat justice would overtake the offenders, and that you would live to see these enemies bite the dust! I remember your unsullied character, and your prosperity, and when your word or endorsement was equal to that of any other citizen. I remember too, when yourself, and others of your kind, sunk all the gatherings of years of toil, in an unsuccessful attempt to establish an asylum for your enslaved and oppressed brethrenand, not to enumerate, which I might do much farther, I remember when your old master, finding you had been successful, while he himself had lost in the changes on fortunes wheelcame here and set up a claim to yourself and your propertya claim which might have held both, had not a higher power suddenly summoned him to a tribunal, where both master and slave shall one day answer each for himself!

But to the book. Let its plain, unvarnished tale be sent out, and the story of Slavery and its abominations, again be told by one who has felt in his own person its scorpion lash, and the weight of its grinding heel. I think it will do good service, and could not have been sent forth at a more auspicious period. The downfall of the hateful system of Slavery is certain. Though long delayed, justice is sure to come at length; and he must be a slow thinker and a poor seer, who cannot discern in the elements already at work, the mighty forces which must eventually crush this oppression. I know that you and I have felt discouraged at the long delay, years ago,when we might have kept up our hopes by the fact that every thing that is slow is sure. Your book may be humble and your descriptions tame, yet truth is always mighty; and you may furnish the sword for some modern Sampson, who shall shout over more slain than his ancient prototype. I close with the wish, that much success may attend your labors, in more ways than one, and that your last days may be your bestand am,

Your old Friend,

And obedt servt,

EDWIN SCRANTOM.

[Footnote 1: The indignity spoken of was this: Mr. Steward had established a grocery and provision store on Buffalo Street, in a part of Abner Wakelees building, opposite the Eagle Hotel. He put up his sign, a very plain and proper one, and at night, some competitors, whom he knew, as well as he could know anything which he could not prove, smeared his sign with black paint, utterly destroying it! But the misguided men who stooped to such an actthe victims of sensuality and excesshave years ago ended their journey, and passed to the bar of a higher adjudication.]

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THE AUTHOR DOES NOT THINK that any apology is necessary for this issue of his Life and History. He believes that American Slavery is now the great question before the American People: that it is not merely a political question, coming up before the country as the grand element in the making of a President, and then to be laid aside for four years; but that its moral bearings are of such a nature that the Patriot, the Philanthropist, and all good men agree that it is an evil of so much magnitude, that longer to permit it, is to wink at sin, and to incur the righteous judgments of God. The late outrages and aggressions of the slave power to possess itself of new soil, and extend the influence of the hateful and God-provoking Institution, is a practical commentary upon its benefits and the moral qualities of those who seek to sustain and extend it. The author is therefore the more willingnay, anxious, to lay alongside of such arguments the history of his own life and experiences as a slave, that those who read may know what are some of the characteristics of that highly favored institution, which is sought to be preserved and perpetuated. Facts are stubborn things,"and this is the reason why all systems, religious, moral, or social, which are founded in injustice, and supported by fraud and robbery, suffer so much by faithful exposition.

The author has endeavored to present a true statement of the practical workings of the system of Slavery, as he has seen and felt it himself. He has intended nothing to extenuate, nor aught set down in malice; indeed, so far from believing that he has misrepresented Slavery as an institution, he does not feel that he has the power to give anything like a true picture of it in all its deformity and wickedness; especially that Slavery which is an institution among an enlightened and Christian people, who profess to believe that all men are born free and equal, and who have certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The author claims that he has endeavored since he had his freedom, as much as in him lay, to benefit his suffering fellows in bondage; and that he has spent most of his free life in efforts to elevate them in manners and morals, though against all the opposing forces of prejudice and pride, which of course, has made much of his labor vain. In his old age he sends out this historypresenting as it were his own body, with the marks and scars of the tender mercies of slave drivers upon it, and asking that these may plead in the name of Justice, Humanity, and Mercy, that those who have the power, may have the magnanimity to strike off the chains from the enslaved, and bid him stand up, a Freeman and a Brother!