Yardley Taylor

The envelope Yardley addressed to Jessop, containing Yardley’s letter, also bears different handwriting:

“This Taken by me from Negro slave named Harry the 28th day 1828 January, belonging or as he says to Pa [Pennsylvania] … Jonas Dixon.”

TO YARDLEY TAYLOR, ESQ.

SIR: There are but few persons in the county, I presume, who have not heard of you as the Chief of the abolition clan in Loudoun. I am free to award to you this position, for the bold –which you have uniformly exhibited in promulgating the odious doctrines of your sect, fully entitle you, in my opinion, to the distinction.

Although your name has gone abroad and you are pretty generally known, through the county at least, yet there are some persons, I have no doubt, who have never had the pleasure of seeing you. For their benefit, as well as for your own, (for you certainly have never seen yourself as others see you,) I propose to describe as well as I can, your personal appearance. My method of executing this task may appear to many as somewhat novel, but as it was the first plan that suggested itself to my mind, I have adopted it.

To see you to advantage, the spectator should station himself in the middle of the turnpike at Heaton’s Cross-roads, on the bright summer afternoon on an eastern mail day, at about “two or three o’clock.” If he will now look straight down the road leading to Goose Creek, ten to one he will soon see emerging from the wood at the end of the lane, a square built, heavy set, hugely footed, not very courtly figure of an old man, mounted on the vertebre of a somewhat lusty animal, with one hand tightly grasping the rein, and the other holding on, – like the witch to the tail of Tam O’Shanter’s grey mare, Meg, – to a little black bag (Pandora’s box was nothing, I imagine, but a little black bag after all) containing the Goose Creek mail.

Such is the remarkable personage as he appears to the spectator from the stand-point above indicated, riding along in a brisk trot, with a demure visage and meditative air; tormenting his brain, it may be, to discover a more successful method than has hitherto been pursued of relieving his neighbors of the encumbrance of their slaves, or else (and this is the more charitable supposition) taxing his genius to devise some plan for resisting the depredations of the Krout weed.

I am well aware that the picture I have drawn is far from perfect. To do full justice to your figure would require the pencil of a Hogarth. Imperfect as the portrait may be, I have no doubt it will enable you to recognize the original.

Having endeavored to describe your person, I now propose to portray your character. This I shall do by an examination of your principles and conduct.

Let me begin by an inquiry into your motives for seeking an interview with me at this late day. More than a year has elapsed since your abolition demonstration at Goose Creek, and the excitement which it produced has long since subsided. Did you mistake the calm which followed for a verdict of acquittal, and suppose that sympathy had taken the place of resentment? – This must have been your reasoning, or surely you never would have hazarded the expression of such revolting sentiments, or made such a confession of guilt in public as you did in the conversation which took place at the interview referred to. It may be you had the folly to imagine that you might obtain from me a recantation of something I had previously said. If this were one of your motives, you were never more mistaken. I have nothing to recant, as I then distinctly told you. And you are laboring under an equally gross delusion, in my opinion, in supposing that the time has come when you can preach your incendiary doctrines with impunity. Or did you seek this talk with the view of ascertaining how far you dare go in your assaults upon Southern institutions? But I shall prosecute the inquiry no further.

You commenced the conversation by declaring your entire innocence of the charge upon which you were arrested and brought to trial of aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave; but when subjected to the test of a searching examination you admitted that a runaway slave came to your house; [it seems rather singular that all the runaways should stumble upon your residence, but of course it is all accidental,] that you knew him to be a runaway slave; that you took him by the hand and led him gently in, and fed him, and after furnishing him with a letter to a friend in Pennsylvania, sent him on his way rejoicing. And what was your apology for this atrocious offence? – that you were acting in conformity with the principles of your religion. Monstrous! Monstrous! This was the excuse offered by Mahomet to palliate the guilt of his wholesale destruction of human life. It was the plea of the infamous Charles of France and his Catholic minions for putting to death in one single night seven thousand of his Protestant subjects. And in later days the abominations of Mormonism, and the A—are justified upon the same ground. Oh Yardley! Yardley! Who would have dreamed that your own confession could make your guilt so clear.

The opinions you avowed on that occasion were equally startling with the confession you made. You very gravely maintained that when the municipal law fails to square with your own peculiar notions of that “higher law,” of which you are the advocate, your obligations to the government extend no farther than a submission to the penalty. – Have you ever reflected upon the consequences of this dangerous doctrine? It justifies resistance to all positive law. The act of Congress providing for the reclamation of fugitive slaves may be resisted, trampled upon even to the forcible taking of the slave from the lawful custody of the officer or owner, and to the taking of life itself, without the fear of violating a single moral obligation, if this doctrine be earnest. Where death is the penalty, how disastrous soever the violation of the law may have been in its consequences, all that the offender has got to do, is to surrender his body to the executioner, and his soul, released from its bonds, goes straightly to Heaven.

The principle of moral and positive laws is the same, and the same obligation rests upon us to obey the one as the other. The good man makes no distinction. The object of penalties is to enforce obedience to the laws, by deterring men from their violation. They are not designed as a equivalent for the commission of an offence. A man is, therefore, very far from performing his whole duty to society by simply submitting to the penalty of a violated law. He is under a high moral obligation to do more than this – he must obey that law. The Bible, morality, and patriotism, all alike unite in enjoining it as a solemn duty which every man owes to the government which affords him protection.

Knowing you as well as I did, I was prepared for the announcement of sentiments the most revolting in their character, provided you were candid and bold enough to give them utterance; but really I was perfectly astonished when you suggested the difficulty of adducing any more valid objections against marrying a negro wench, than in wedding an Indian beauty. Comment here is unnecessary.

You told us something about the trouble some of your neighbors and confederates in crime got into, in a neighboring County of the State. I remember hearing an account of this long ago; but the version then given, was very different from the one you gave. There are a few prominent facts connected with the affair, of which I have the most distinct recollection. These gallant Knights of the Black-faces were down South it seems, on some sort of a negro expedition. Pretty soon after arriving on the field of operations, the object of their — leaked out by some means, and thus found it necessary for their comfort and safety to beat a precipitate retreat, in order to avoid the consequences of the indignation they had excited.

I remember, also, hearing many years ago the story of Lovett’s Phil. You were personally concerned in this affair, I believe. I am sorry it did not occur to me to mention this subject to you, on the occasion of our talk the other day; as I have no doubt you would have given the particulars with all the frankness with which you narrated other of your adventures. I think, however, you succeeded in putting Phil through.  The success which has invariably attended your efforts in this line, would seem to argue the possession of no small degree of skill in the business: a fact which is well known, I dare say, and properly appreciated in a certain quarter. This accounts, I presume, for the immensity of your abolition correspondence of which you spoke. You told us, however, that your Northern allies complained of you. Perhaps you are not accomplishing quite as much as they have a right to expect from the superior skill and ability with which you have heretofore managed the affairs of the Under-Ground Railroad Company. You might plead to these complainings by showing that your location, although as favorable, or perhaps, more so, than any other in the South, yet from the very fact of being in a quasi Southern county is not quite so propitious a point for the prosecution of your philanthropic labors, as if the entirety of its surrounds were anti-slavery. I am well aware, however, that to all this it could be replied, that the immediate vicinity of your residence is entirely favorable to the furtherance of your designs; while beyond the limits of this neighborhood, and through the County generally, your principles have made such inroads, and are acquiring such an influence, that the difficulties which have hitherto opposed you, are becoming less formidable every day, as well as rapidly diminishing in number. You said much more in that talk; but I will let it pass for the present.

There are some points upon which I desire more information than I possess; will you have the kindness to enlighten me? Is Loudoun indebted to you for the distinguished honor of having one of her citizens – a near neighbor of yours – appointed Trustee of the African Female Seminary in the national metropolis? Who was the wretch that wrote that slanderous, blackguard, scurrilous, dirty, vile, miserable doggerel letter, which was read all over your neighborhood, and then sent me through the mail? Is it a fact this obscure production was publicly read in one of your Goose Creek Schools, for the benefit of the pupils? This letter was only one of the many wrongs, you and your adherents, have done me. Think you I can easily forget such treatment? It was with the view of screening yourselves from the consequences of the grievous wrongs you had committed at the Goose Creek meeting, that you wantonly assailed me with that tissue of falsehoods which appeared in the Alexandria Sentinel. “He is poor –unsustained by family influence, or wealthy connexions, and it will be an easy matter to shift the burden of our sins on to his shoulders; for we are powerful: – it will crush him and save us.” This was your reasoning. But you have neither crushed me, nor have you deterred me from exposing your vile conduct.

A few more words and I have said enough –people of — are not yet sufficiently imbued with your principles to tolerate any flagrant interference with their slave property; yet, judging from my observations of the last few years, I believe the time must soon come – if you will only exercise the proper discretion – when you need fear nothing. Many slave-holders already feel and fear your influence, and hold their tongues – I allude to the influence of your party. It deters the public functionaries of the County from the performance of their duties and entails upon the community evils which our laws are powerless to remedy. But this influence does not stop here, ——- Your obedient servant, J. [James F.] Trayhern July 28, 1857