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.
Now, I cannot doubt, notwithstanding I have been unsuccessful, that you will allow me full credit for my peculiar quick-sightedness. As fast as I say it, I can see where I missed it.’
Father lowered the sheaf of lined pale blue paper, looked to me, and awaited my admiration. “Well? What do you think, son?” he asked.
“Yes… well;’ said I. “Yes, it’s… it’s very good. And you seem to have touched on everything that concerns you. Though it does end rather abruptly, don’t you think? I mean, is it enough simply to keep saying that you see in a twink where you have missed it?”
“No!” he said. “Of course not! That’s my point. Or will be, when I have made it. It’s what my second chapter will propose: what to do when you have seen the error of your ways. You see, American Negroes don’t have a figure like Benjamin Franklin, and that’s what I’m trying to establish here. A friendly, wise scold. Franklin spoke only to white people, wisely and well, to be sure, but what he said is of little use to a people despised and downtrodden because of their race. Franklin’s book never addresses the whole race question. But Negroes — I’m talking about the rank and file here, you understand, not the leaders — they need a book of practical wisdom which is as accessible and amusing to them as Franklin’s is to us white folks, and as down-to-earth. Sambo is my Poor Richard, son.
“When this is published in the Ram’s Horn, I’ll ask my colored friends what they think of it — innocently, you understand, as if I knew nothing of the authorship, testing their responses, getting suggestions as to what’s been left out. And then I’ll write my second chapter. A third and fourth chapter will follow, and so on, until I’ll have written an entire book, a book that can serve as a new primer for Negroes in the fight against slavery.”
“Fine, but why not let a Negro man write such a book?” I asked him, pointing out that there were plenty who were more than capable of it: Mr. Douglass, for instance, or the Reverends Garnet and Loguen. “They could do it without a disguise,” I added.
“Please!” He laughed, as if he thought the idea ridiculous. “Owen, we’re after a black Ben Franklin here, and none of those fine men is especially humorous or down-to-earth. And even if he were, he’d have to disguise himself just as much as I have. For different reasons, of course. Not because of race, but because he’d be so well-known amongst the Negro readership. Mister Douglass would have to call himself Sambo, too, just as I have, or else he’d sound like the famous Frederick Douglass, and who would believe these were his mistakes?”
“Who will believe, Father, that they are yours?” “No one knows who I am,” he said with a wink.
No, indeed. Back in ’48 in Springfield, Massachusetts, black or white, they did not know who John Brown was. Not even I knew. There was a day coming, however, and not far off, when the whole world would know his name — from the literary salons of Paris, France, to the humblest white farmer’s cabin of Kentucky, from the Scottish castles of the English queen to the daub-and-wattle slave-quarters of Alabama. So go ahead, write your story now, Old Man. Be for black folks a friendly, ordinary Negro scold, and do it while you can. Soon enough the man who is Sambo will be Old John Brown, Captain John Brown, Osawatomie Brown, a man who cannot hide who he is, even behind a beard and a dozen false names, and who can never again claim to be other than white, who can no longer even cultivate a fantasy that he is other than white. Though it will be rarely said so baldly, his race — that he is a white man and in the interests of Negroes has coldly killed other white men — will become the most important thing about him.
The image of Father reading beside me has faded. The light that accompanied my memory of him is gone, and although I cannot see him, I can still hear his voice. He says to me, “It’s very dark here. You don’t mind the darkness, Owen? And the cold? It’s grown very cold since the sun set. Why not go inside and light a fire?”
“I do mind the darkness. It’s making me feel too much the pain of being alone. But the cold, no. I don’t feel the cold.”