Memoirs of Dolly Morton

This is supposed to be a true tale of pre-Civil war slavery in the USA. It is probably more realistic of the slave's life, than the fraudulent tale in Harriet Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.



**************

Excerpt:

The most heroic episodes in the history of the American people are bound up with the efforts to destroy the system of slavery which was the worst of many bad legacies bequeathed the Republic of the United States by the British Government. Happily, by Ordinance of Congress in 1787-the same year in which the Constitution was adopted-slavery was abolished or forbidden in the vast northwestern territory out of which so many great states since have been carved. Then, by the Compromise of 1820, a certain line was fixed beyond which current slave empires would not be permitted to extend. However, the odious institution of slaveholding still persisted in the South, and, while most politicians were trying to put off the "irrepressible conflict," as Seward called it, private help was being given by benevolent people all over the northern states to those slaves who were both brave and daring enough to attempt escape. Indeed, some persons, who were so interested in the abolitionist movement that they willingly risked their own freedom to help their unfortunate, dark-skinned fellow-humans gain theirs, organized what since has gone down in history as the "underground railroad."

The "underground railroad" was a network of farms and houses in which escaping slaves were given refuge as they moved northward. At each "station," the fugitive slave would be fed and sheltered, attended to medically when possible, and advised of the route to the next "station." Then he would be sent on his way, the precarious path having been made somewhat less thorny because of the benevolent care of the sympathizer who tended the "station." Professor Wilbur H. Siebert, in a work of great patience, has collected the names of about 3,200 Americans who were engaged in the good work of helping these poor creatures escape, and, in the roll of the world's worthies, there can be few more honored names.

To help a Negro escape from his master was, it must be remembered, a most perilous undertaking. Many states affixed severe penalties to aiding or abetting a runaway. Men who were caught in the enterprise were beaten, imprisoned and sometimes even killed. Women, meanwhile, were ruthlessly stripped and whipped; their persons were exposed to the lustful eyes of lascivious men, and, on many of them, other violences of a far more intimate nature were perpetrated. These ardent southern gentlemen who captured them were, after all, men in a sexual sense also, and few men can witness the chastisement and skin-warming of lovely women without feeling promptings of a passionate nature. In The Memoirs of Dolly Morton, the true adventures of the brave women of the "underground railway" are related with a candor and a graphic beauty rarely encountered in any literature.

We see beautiful women stripped bare under a Southern sun; we hear their cries and pleadings for mercy as, one by one, their robes and petticoats are torn off or tucked up, their drawers unfastened and rolled down; our eyes are shocked at the sight of the white, well-developed hemispheres laid bare and blushing to our gaze, only to receive the cruel lash- the hemispheres which had never been bared since mother whipped them across her knees, never been rudely handled save in the legitimate caresses of the conjugal bed. Sorry are we, but little can we do: let he that goeth down to war count well the cost thereof. The hairbreadth escapes and the singular adventures are of themselves strange reading, but, when we remember that these adventures were undergone for the highest human ends, interest is merged in admiration for the heroism which could sacrifice so much in the cause of humanity.

Printed in a large 12 point font for ease of reading