the feel of the
baby in them yet; and I can not express to you the horror--the
almost rage--with which I hear every story of such outrages on
the maternal heart. It was this feature of mother-robbery in the
system of slavery that always enraged me most against it. It was
just at that point that the system dipped deepest into hell.
Though slavery is gone, however, there are many evils yet
remaining in the laws which should be remedied, and not the least
of them is that which gives the father the entire control of the
children instead of the mother. Some fathers, however, are quite
willing to relinquish that control. I remember a colored woman in
Washington, in whose kitchen I once happened to be for a moment,
and, seeing several dark olive branches around, I said to her,
"Are these your children?" She said, "Yes." "How many have you?"
She said, "Seven, and all to support." I said to her, "Have you
no husband?" "Oh, yes," she said, "I have a husband; I was
married by a Methodist minister down South." "Well," said I, "why
don't he support the children?" "Oh," she said, "he's done gone
away." "Why has he left you?" "Oh, he was a very bright man," she
said (meaning that he was light in color), "and he thought that I
was too black." "But," I said, "didn't he know how black you were
before he married you?" "That is just what old Missus said--she
said, 'Why, you know'd she was black when you married her,' and
he said, 'Yes, but den she didn't have so many relations about
her.'" "What relations?" "Children!" Her children, of course, and
his, too. "He doesn't want so many of my relations about, so he's
done gone off." When a man doesn't want to go, the children are
his "property"; when he wants to desert his wife, they are her
"relations." I would be willing to have the strictest morality
enjoined as a qualification for the ballot. But, as it is a poor
rule that would not work both ways, if that test were applied to
the male voters, what a frightful disfranchisement would take
place. The Democratic party would be well-nigh annihilated, and
the Republican party would be in a fit state to condole with it.
I think, however, that all these things will adjust themselves
when they come. All bugbears seem much more terrible at a
distance than when they are clo