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• 1 media/shoes ps.jpg 2016-08-18T11:38:06-07:00 African-American Children in the North Think About Slavery in the South 10 Letters Composed by Children in an Abolitionist School in Cincinnati 1834 image_header 2017-07-12T12:25:59-07:00 Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention, Putnam. Proceedings of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention. Held at Putnam, on the Twenty-Second, Twenty-Third, and Twenty-Fourth of April, 1835, 23. [Putnam?] Beaumont and Wallace, printers, 1835. http://archive.org/details/proceedingsofohi00ohio These letters were written in 1834 by African-American children in a Cincinnati school organized by abolitionists. Most of these children were former slaves who were either freed by their masters or ran away. Situated on the border between freedom and slavery and an important hub of steamboat transportation linking North and South, Cincinnati attracted runaways. Former slaves often chose to remain in Cincinnati in order to be close to family and friends who were still enslaved; this was despite the fact that Canada offered security to runaways unavailable anyplace in the United States. The teacher who assigned the letters below asked students to write a letter on “What you think most about.”
  
  1st  Dear school-mates, we are going next summer to buy a farm and to work part of the day and study the other part if we live to see it and come home part of the day to see our mothers and sisters and cousins if we are got any and see our kind folks and to be good boys and when we get a man to get the poor slaves from bondage.  And I am sorrow to hear that the boat Tiskilwa went down with two hundred slaves from up the river. [1] Oh how sorrow I am to hear that it grieves my soul that I could faint in one minute. -------------------, aged seven years.
  
  2nd   Dear Schoolmaster, I now inform you in these few lines that what we are studying for is to try to get the yoke of slavery broke and the chains parted asunder and slave-holding ceased for ever. O that God would change the hearts of our fellow men. -----------------------, aged twelve years.
  
  3rd   In my youthful days dear Lord, let me remember my creator, Lord. Teach me to do his will. Bless the cause of abolition—bless the heralds of the truth that we trust out God has sent to declare the rights of man. We hope that it may be the means of moving mountains of sin off all the families. My mother and step-father, my sister and myself were all born in slavery. The Lord did let the oppressed go free. Roll on the happy period that all nations shall know the Lord. We thank him for his many blessings. ------------------------, aged eleven years.
   
  4th   Dear Sir—this is to inform you that I have two cousins in slavery who are entitled to their freedom. They have done every thing that the will requires and now they wont let them go.[2] They talk of selling them down the river. If this was your case what would you do? Please give me your advice. _____________, aged ten years.
  
  5th  Let us look back and see the state in which the Britons and Saxons and Germans lived. They had no learning and had not a knowledge of letters. But now look, some of them are our first men. Look at King Alfred and see what a great man he was.[3] He at one time did not know his a, b, c, but before his death he commanded armies and nations. He was never discouraged but always looked forward and studied the harder. I think if the colored people study like king Alfred they will soon do away with the evil of slavery. I cant see how the Americans can call this a land of freedom where so much slavery is. -----------, aged sixteen years.
  
  Questions to Think About and Discuss
  1. Why did African-American families migrate to Cincinnati?
  2. How do you think migration changed the lives of African-American children?
  3. What was most important to these students?
  4. What were their hopes and goals?
  5. What ethical values mattered most to them?
  6. Do these letters help you understand immigrants and refugees today? If so, how?
  
  
  [1] Steamboat accidents happened often, and slaves being transported on commercial vessels were frequently killed.
  [2] Some masters freed their slaves in their wills after they died.
  [3] Alfred the Great was king of England from 871 to 899; he repelled a Viking attack.