O. A. Bowe to Frederick Douglass, July 17, 1853
For Frederick Douglass' Paper.
George Ently.
MOHAWK, July 17, 1853.
A large, stout black man of this name—a
graduate of the "peculiar institution" in
Virginia—escaped some years since to Utica,
where, by means of skill, diligence, and econ-
omy in his business as a barber, he acquired
not only the public confidence, but a small
property, enough to entitle him to the right
of suffrage under the oppressive provisions
of our State constitution. He subsequently
removed to Little Falls, in Herkimer Co.;
and following the same occupation there for
some years, with good success and general
esteem, died suddenly of apoplexy, on Tues-
day morning, July 12, 1853. His age was
something over 40 years.
Mr. E. had no family. He was a man of
good, strong sense, and much system and
stability in his business; but deficient in the
rudiments of education, and in that liberality
of feeling and confidence in his fellow-men,
which freedom commonly inspires. But the
enslavement of his youth, and his forced iso-
lation from all he loved, may fairly account
for many deficiences.
His abhorrence of slavery was intense.-
Never have a known it deeper or stronger in
any man. Born and reared in its loathsome
embrace, he well knew its blighting, soul-
crushing power, and he hated it with a per-
fect hatred. During the first year of the
operation of that detestable enactment, the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, whose passage
must forever blacken and disfigure Fillmore's
administration, he was constantly under the
apprehension of an attempt by his former
master to reduce him again to bondage; and
his determination to take signal vengeance
on any one who should approach him for
that purpose, was probably as strong and
well settled as any resolution he ever formed
or executed.
Alluding to this subject, he told the writer
hereof, in all apparent seriousness, that he
expected nothing less than that he (Ently)
should one day be hanged in Herkimer Co.;
"for," said he, "law or no law, I shall do my
best to destroy any man that undertakes to
enslave me again." And I think no one who
knew the sternness of his nature could have
entertained any doubt that he would be as
good as his word. But whether, in that
event, the Democracy of Old Herkimer
would have brought him to the gallows, or
permitted any other power to do so, is not
so certain. Thanks, however, to the patri-
otic examples of Christiana and Syracuse, no
attempt was ever made to reclaim him. And
he has now passed to that land where the
servant is not only "free from his master,"
but from all fears that base and wolfish men
may rob him of his freedom.
In the light of such a case, how contempti-
ble and foolish are all the lying pretences of
the Albany Argus, N. Y. Express, Bennett's
Herald, Syracuse Star, and other oracles of
the sort, that "the slaves are contented with
their lot;" that they are "better off than the
free blacks of the North;" that they "can't
take care of themselves," &c., &c.
I subjoin a few lines suggested by the death
of Ently.
I.
From proud Virginia and her galling chains,
From cruel want, and stripes, and hounds, he
fled—
Feel like a frighted deer across the plains
Where all his race so long had toiled and bled.
[? had?] he where to rest his weary head,
The hated slave-land far behind him lay.
[Then?] to himself the fleeing bondman said,
"Sure Heaven hath sped me on my dangerous way,
Here I will rest my limbs and take mine ease to-
day."
II.
Unhappy Ently! this was not thy rest—
They greatly err to think our State is free;
Let the vile State Act, at the South's behest,
Spreads like a funeral pall from sea to sea!
Old age and youth, and helpless infancy,
[? down?] and seized as if for crime;
And this in States that boast of Liberty,
And fill themselves with churches—proof sublime
How blind and base men are, in this land and time.
III.
The grave hath rest for e'en the hunted slave,
No fears of capture haunt its quiet air;
The strong man seeks the refuge of the grave,
Nor doth his color bar admission there.
What think ye, is the witness he shall bear
Of slavery, at the bar of God most high,
With all its aiders have arraignment fair?
Fools cannot hide from His all-seeing eye,
Nor crime escape at last the justice of the sky.
O. A. BOWE.