Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life quotes

I delight to recall it. I dwell on it as did the Jews on the marvellous history of their rescue from the bondage of Egypt.

Time has touched with its mellowing fingers its sterner features.

The sufferings of the past are now like a dream, and the enduring lessons left behind make me to praise God that my soul has been tempered by him in so fiery a furnace and under such heavy blows.

A blow at one white man is a blow at all; is the muttering and upheaving of volcanic fires, which underlie and threaten to burst forth and utterly consume the whole social fabric.

Terror is the fiercest nurse of cruelty.

And when, in this our day, you find tender English women and Christian English divines fiercely urging that India should be made one pool of Sepoy blood, pause a moment before you lightly refuse to believe in the existence of such ferocious passions in the …

at an end. Mournful as was the Doctor’s death to his friends it was a far greater calamity to us. The estate and the slaves must be sold and the proceeds divided among the heirs.

We were but property⁠—not a mother, and the children God had given her.

Common as are slave-auctions in the Southern States, and naturally as a slave may look forward to the time when he will be put up on the block, still the full misery of the event—of the scenes which precede and succeed it—is never understood till …

the almost certainty that one member of a family will be torn from another; the anxious scanning of purchasers’ faces; the agony at parting, often forever, with husband, wife, child—these must be seen and felt to be fully understood.

Young as I was then, the iron entered into my soul.

The remembrance of the breaking up of McPherson’s estate is photographed in its minutest features in my mind.

… unprincipled and cruel in his general deportment, and especially addicted to the vice of licentiousness, his slaves had little opportunity for relaxation from wearying labor, were supplied with the scantiest means of sustaining their toil by necessary food, and had no security for personal rights.

The natural tendency of slavery is to convert the master into a tyrant, and the slave into the cringing, treacherous, false, and thieving victim of tyranny.

Riley and his slaves were no exception to the general rule, but might be cited as apt illustrations of the nature of the relation.

and from all I can learn he never enjoyed his triumph half as much. One word of commendation from the petty despot who ruled over us would set me up for a month.

I have no desire to represent the life of slavery as an experience of nothing but misery.

God be praised, that however hedged in by circumstances, the joyful exuberance of youth will bound at times over them all. Ours is a lighthearted race. The sternest and most covetous master cannot frighten or whip the fun out of us;

I have no desire to represent the life of slavery as an experience of nothing but misery. God be praised, that however hedged in by circumstances, the joyful exuberance of youth will bound at times over them all. Ours is a lighthearted race.

The sternest and most covetous master cannot frighten or whip the fun out of us; certainly old Riley never did out of me.

In those days I had many a merry time, and would have had, had I lived with nothing but moccasins and rattlesnakes in Okafenoke swamp. Slavery did its best to make me wretched; I feel no particular obligation to it;

… under the blazing sun, curses and blows, there flock in others, of jolly Christmas times, dances before old massa’s door for the first drink of eggnog, extra meat at holiday times, midnight visits to apple orchards, broiling stray chickens, and first-rate tricks to dodge work.

The God who makes the pup gambol, and the kitten play, and the bird sing, and the fish leap, was the author in me of many a lighthearted hour.

True it was, indeed, that the fun and freedom of Christmas, at which time my master relaxed his front, was generally followed up by a portentous back-action, under which he drove and cursed worse than ever; still the fun and freedom were fixed facts;

I have wrestled in prayer with God for forgiveness. Having experienced myself the sweetness of liberty, and knowing too well the after misery of numbers of many of them, my infatuation has seemed to me the unpardonable sin.

But I console myself with the thought that I acted according to my best light, though the light that was in me was darkness.

Those were my days of ignorance. I knew not the glory of free manhood. I knew not that the title-deed of the slave-owner is robbery and outrage.

But I console myself with the thought that I acted according to my best light, though the light that was in me was darkness. Those were my days of ignorance. I knew not the glory of free manhood.

I knew not that the title-deed of the slave-owner is robbery and outrage.

What advantages I may have personally lost by thus throwing away an opportunity of obtaining freedom, I know not;

There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.” Two years of this would kill me. I dwelt on the thought with melancholy yet sweet satisfaction. Two years! and then I should be free.

Free! ever my cherished hope, though not as I had thought it would come.

As I paced backwards and forwards on the deck, during my watch, it may well be believed I revolved in my mind many a painful and passionate thought.

my hand slid along the axe-handle; I raised it to strike the fatal blow—when suddenly the thought came to me,

“What! commit murder! and you a Christian?”

I had not called it murder before. It was self-defence—it was preventing others from murdering me—it was justifiable, it was even praiseworthy. But now, all at once, the truth burst upon me that it was a crime.

I fell down and clung to his knees in entreaties. Sometimes when too closely pressed, he would curse and strike me. May God forgive him. And yet it was not all his fault. He was made so by the accursed relation of slavemaster and slave.

I was property⁠—not a man, not a father, not a husband.

And the laws of property and self-interest, not of humanity and love, bore sway.

Before long he felt worse, and it was soon evident that the river fever was upon him. He became rapidly ill, and by eight o’clock in the morning was utterly prostrate.

The tables were now turned. I was no longer property, no longer a brute beast to be bought and sold, but his only friend in the midst of strangers.

Oh, how different was his tone from what it had been the day before! He was now the supplicant. A poor, terrified object, afraid of death, and writhing with pain, there lay the late arbiter of my destiny. How he besought me to forgive him.

Infinite toils and perils lay between me and that haven of promise; enough to daunt the stoutest heart; but the fire behind me was too hot and fierce to let me pause to consider them.

I knew the North Star⁠—blessed be God for setting it in the heavens! Like the Star of Bethlehem, it announced where my salvation lay.

Could I follow it through forest, and stream, and field, it would guide my feet in the way of hope. I thought of it as my God-given guide to the land of promise far away beneath its light.

A fearful dread of detection ever pursued me, and I would start out of my sleep in terror, my heart beating against my ribs, expecting to find the dogs and slave-hunters after me.

Had I been alone I would have borne starvation, even to exhaustion, before I would have ventured in sight of a house in quest of food.

But now something must be done; it was necessary to run the risk of exposure by daylight upon the road.

She then added, “We have children, and who knows but they may some day need the help of a friend.” The man laughed, and told her that she might take care of niggers, he wouldn’t.

She asked me to come in, loaded a plate with venison and bread, and, when I laid it into my handkerchief, and put a quarter of a dollar on the table, she quietly took it up and put it in my handkerchief, with an additional quantity of venison.

I felt the hot tears roll down my cheeks as she said “God bless you;” and I hurried away to bless my starving wife and little ones.

Then I tried to carry some in my hat; but, alas! it leaked. Finally, I took off both shoes, which luckily had no holes in them, rinsed them out, filled them with water, and carried it to my family. They drank it with great delight.

I have since then sat at splendidly furnished tables in Canada, the United States, and England; but never did I see any human beings relish anything more than my poor famishing little ones did that refreshing draught out of their father’s shoes.

That night we made a long run, and two days afterward we reached Cincinnati.

I was praising God in my soul. Three hearty cheers welcomed us as we reached the schooner, and never till my dying day shall I forget the shout of the captain—he was a Scotchman—

“Coom up on deck, and clop your wings and craw like a rooster; you’re a free nigger as sure as the devil.”

Round went the vessel, the wind plunged into her sails as though innoculated with the common feeling—the water seethed and hissed passed her sides.

“He’s some crazy fellow,” said a Colonel Warren, who happened to be there. “O, no, master! don’t you know? I’m free!” He burst into a shout of laughter.

“Well, I never knew freedom make a man roll in the sand in such a fashion.”

Still I could not control myself. I hugged and kissed my wife and children, and, until the first exuberant burst of feeling was over, went on as before.

It was the 28th of October, 1830, in the morning, when my feet first touched the Canada shore.

I threw myself on the ground, rolled in the sand, seized handfuls of it and kissed them, and danced round till, in the eyes of several who were present, I passed for a madman.

“He’s some crazy fellow,” said a Colonel Warren, who happened to be there. “O, no, master! don’t you know? I’m free!” He burst into a shout of laughter. “Well, I never knew freedom make a man roll in the sand in such a fashion.”

A Poor Man in a Strange Land—Begin to Acquire Property—Resume Preaching—Boys Go to School—

What Gave Me a Desire to Learn to Read

—A Day of Prayer in the Woods.

Where did he live? What did he do?” As he went on questioning me, I saw it was in vain to attempt to escape, and so I told him frankly I did not know.

“Why, father,” said he, “can’t you read?”

This was a worse question than the other, and, if I had any pride in me at the moment, it took it all out of me pretty quick. It was a direct question, and must have a direct answer;

but I again urged them to come on. The cow remained until we approached her within a rod or two; she then walked into the river, and went straight across without swimming, which caused me to remark,

“The Lord sent that cow to show us where to cross the river!”

This has always seemed to me to be a very wonderful event.

On going again to England the exhibition was still in progress. There seemed no diminution of the crowd.

Like the waters of the great Mississippi, the channel was still full, though the individuals were changed.

But among all the exhibitors from every nation in Europe, and from Asia, and America, and the Isles of the Sea, there was not a single black man but myself. There were negroes there from Africa, brought to be exhibited, but no exhibitors but myself.

I immediately entered upon a conversation with him, upon the condition of my people, and the plans I had in view. He expressed the strongest interest in me, and after about a half hour’s conversation he inquired, “At what university, Sir, did you graduate?”

“I graduated, your grace,” said I in reply, “at the university of adversity.”

“The university of adversity,” said he, looking up with astonishment; “where is that?” I saw his surprise, and explained.