Horrible! Was ever what
George Sand justly terms 'the great martyrdom of maternity'--that
fearful trial which love alone converts into joy unspeakable--endured
under such conditions? What was her substitute for the kind voices and
gentle soothings of affection? The harsh grating of her prison
lock,--the mockings and taunts of unfeeling and brutal keepers! What,
with the poor Pauline, took the place of the hopes and joyful
anticipations which support and solace the white mother, and make her
couch of torture happy with sweet dreams? The prospect of seeing the
child of her sorrow, of feeling its lips upon her bosom, of hearing its
feeble cry--alone, unvisited of its unnatural father; and then in a few
days--just when the mother's affections are strongest, and the first
smile of her infant compensates for the pangs of the past--the scaffold
and the hangman! Think of the last terrible scene,--the tearing of the
infant from her arms, the death-march to the gallows, the rope around
her delicate neck, and her long and dreadful struggles, (for,
attenuated and worn by physical suffering and mental sorrow, her slight
frame had not sufficient weight left to produce the dislocation of her
neck on the falling of the drop,) swinging there alive for nearly half
an hour--a spectacle for fiends in the shape of humanity! Mothers of
New England! such are the fruits of slavery.
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