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Divergent Foes of Slavery

By Joye Brown | Staff Writer

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William Cullen Bryant earned laurels as a poet and newspaper editorial writer. Sojourner Truth drew fame as a traveling preacher and women's rights activist.

They worked in the North, spreading word of their opposition to slavery as the Civil War loomed. Hundreds of miles away in Georgia, Ward Lee, Tom Johnson, Katie Noble, Uster Williams and Lucy Lanham worked reluctantly as slaves.

Bryant and Truth never met each other; nor did they ever meet the southern slaves. Still, incredibly, all have ties to Long Island, where abolitionists had a stronghold before the Civil War.

The influential Bryant, Massachusetts-born, well-educated and literary-minded, was a renowned poet long before he reluctantly lowered his sights, at age 32 and desperate for pay, to become a newspaperman. "Contempt is too harsh a word for it, perhaps, but it was far below respect," he would recall.

He became editor of the New York Evening Post and during the war chided President Abraham Lincoln for moving too slowly in freeing southern slaves. Bryant, who lived on a magnificent estate, Cedarmere, in Roslyn, was more an emancipationist than an abolitionist.

He was against exporting slaves to Africa because the United States would lose good workers. He also was a strong believer in states' rights. As such, before the Civil War, he advocated against the spread of slavery into annexed areas rather than abolishing the existing slavery in the South.

Personally, however, he had long abhorred the "accursed institution" of slavery. In a poem, "The African Chief," he described the anguish of a prisoner who could not convince his captors to free him:

His heart was broken -- crazed his brain;

At once his eyes grew wild

He struggled fiercely with his chain,

Whispered, and wept and smiled.

But where Bryant imagined the plight of the enslaved, Sojourner Truth looked no further than her own life. Truth, a slave in upstate Ulster County from age 12 to 30, could not read or write. Her first language was Dutch, not English. Yet, the imposing, spiritual woman, her accented voice as uniquely low as her 6-foot height was unusually high, went on to become one of the most ardent opponents of slavery.

With her fiery style and fearsome execution, Truth gained a reputation for bringing about conversions during her camp meetings. In 1843, she left New York City and walked through Queens, east to Huntington, drawing crowds at each stop along the way. When she published a narrative of her life, renowned abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe recommended it to readers. Later, they became friends.

During the Civil War, Truth glorified black soldiers, and in urging them on, came up with her own version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic":

We are done with hoeing cotton, we are done with hoeing corn;

We are colored Yankee soldiers as sure as you are born

When massa hears us shouting, he will think tis Gabriels horn

As we go marching on.

Bryant and Truth both had occasion to meet Lincoln, Bryant in 1862 and Truth two years later. Bryant and Lincoln enjoyed a good relationship. After Lincoln's assassination, Bryant declined an offer from Lincoln's friends to write a biography of the president. Truth, despite the glowing recollections in her narrative, received a far different reception.

She and a fellow abolitionist, who was white, were kept waiting for more than three hours as Lincoln joked with male visitors. When Truth went before Lincoln, he became tense and sour. He called Truth "Aunty, . . . as he would his washerwoman," the abolitionist, Lucy Coleman, would recall. She rushed Truth from the room.

Long after their meetings, Truth, along with Bryant, continued their work. And after the war, she went on advocating women's rights and black empowerment; he advocated sufferage for free blacks and took the lead in founding the National Freedman's Relief Association.

Their work directly aided freed slaves, including Lee, Johnson, Noble, Williams and Lanham in Georgia. The five were among 400 (of about 600) who survived the voyage of America's last slave ship, the Wanderer, which brought them from the Congo to the United States in 1858 -- more than half a century after importing African slaves had been banned.

The ship was built in Port Jefferson as a pleasure yacht that was to be "bigger, better and faster" than any other ship. It was sold to a cotton broker from Savannah, Ga., who returned the ship to Port Jefferson for alterations. Afterwards, the owner told authorities he was going on a pleasure cruise but stole into the Congo to kidnap slaves instead.

The last enslaved Africans were sold in the South. In the early 1900s, they were photographed and interviewed by anthropologists, who later wrote of their language and memories of Africa in a professional journal.

In several places, the authors referred to their subjects as "the savages." In 1904, about 40 years after the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the slaves, Ward Lee, begged for assistance to get home.

To the Public:

Please help me . . . One year ago, it was revealed to me to go home back to Africa and I have been praying to know if it is God's will . . .

History does not note whether Lee made it.

Eventually, the Wanderer was confiscated for illegally importing slaves. But the owner and crew were never punished. During the Civil War, the ship was seized by Union forces, who converted it to a gunboat.

Once the war was over, the vessel was used in the fruit trade. In 1871, it ran aground in Cuba -- and was declared a total loss.