Antislavery: Poor Pauline!: A Touching Tale Of Truth
Many of our readers havo probably seen aparagraph stating that a youngslavegirl was recently hanged at New Orleans, for the crime of striking andabusing her mistress. The Religious Press of ihe North has not, so far as we are aware, made any commcnts upon this execution. Ãt is too busy in pulling the mote out of the eyc of the Heathen, to notico the beam in our nominal Christianity at home. Yet this case, viewed in all its aspects, isan atrocity, which has, God be thanked, no parallel in healhen lands. i lt is a hideous offshoot of American i publicanism and American Christianity. ] It seems that Pauline - a young and beautiful girl - attracted the admiration I of her master, and being, to use the words of the law, his "chattel, personal : to all intents and purposes whatsocver" i become the victim of his lust. So i wretched is the condition of the slavewoman, that even the brutal and i tious regard of her master is lookcd upon as the highest exaltation of which her lot is susceptible. The slave-girl in this instance, evidently so regarded it ; and as a natural consequence, in her new condition, triumphed over and insulted her mistress - in other words, repaid in some degree ihe scorn and abuse with which her mistress had made her painfully familiar. Tho laws of the Christian State of Louisiana inflict the punishment of Death upon the slave wholifts his or her hand against a white person. Paulino was ff.ccused of beating her mistress, tried and found guilty, and condemned to die. - But it wasdiscovered on tho trial, that she was in a condition to become a mother ; and her execution was delayed until the birth of her child. She was returnedto her prison cell. There for many weary months, uncheered by the voice of kindness, alone, hopeles?, desolate, she waited for the advent of the new and quickening life within her, which was to be the signal of herown miserable death! And the bells there called to mass ano. prayer meeting, and Mcthodists sang, and Baptists immersed, and Presbyterians sprinkled - and young mothers smiled ihrough tears upon their newborn chil-( dren ; and maidens and matrons of that great city sat in their. cool verandahs and lalked of loveand householdjoys.domeslic happiness, while-oll that dreary time the poor slave-girl layNungeon, waiting, with what agony, theTdear and pitying God of the white and the black only knows, for the birth of the child of her adulterous violator! Horrible! - Was ever what George Sand justly terms "the great martyrdom of maternity," - thaj fearful trial which love alone convertà into joy unspeakable - endured undoi such conditions? - What was her substitute for the ktnd voir.es and genile soothngsof affect ion! - the harsh grating of her prison lock - the mockings andtaunts of unfeeling and brutal keepers? - What wilh the poor Pauline took the place of the hopes and joyful anlicipations which support and solace the white mother, and makc her couch öf torture happy with sweet dreams? 'The prospect ofseeing the child of her sorrow, of feeling its lips upon her hosom, of hearing its feeble cry - alone, unvisted of its unnatural father; and thcn in a few days, just wheh thc mother's afTections are strongest, and the first smile of her infant compensates for the pangs of thc past, - the scafFold and the hangman ! Think of that last terible scène - the tearing of the infant from her arras, the dealh rriarch to thc gallows the rope around her delicate neck, and her long and dreadful struggles, lor attenuated and worn by physicnl suffering and mental sorrow, her slight frame had not sufïicient weight left to produce the dislocation of her neck, on the falling of the drop,swinging there alive för nearly half an hour, a spectacle for fiends in the shape of humanity. Mothcrs of N. England! such are the fruits of Slavery Oh, in the name of the blessed God, teach your children to hate it and to pil v . its victims. 3 Petty politicians and empty headec Congress debaters are vastly concernec lest "the honor of the countfy" shoulc be compromised in the matterof the Ore I gon boundary. Fools! - one such horrible atrocity as this murder of poor Pau line, "compromises" us too deeply te warrant' a"ny display of their patriotism. s It would "compromise" Paradise itself 8 An intelligent atid philanthropic Euro pean gentleman, who Vvas in New Or i leans at the time of the oxeculion, in t ) letter to a friend in this vicinity, aftei detailing the circumstances of the revol s ting a flair, exclaims, "God of goodness God of justice! - there must be a FutunState to redress the wrongs of this. I nm nlmnsf tmntfid to sav there must be a