“Why Sit Ye Here and Die?”

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Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) was one of the first American women
to leave copies of her speeches. The address below is her second
public lecture. It was given on September 21, 1832 in Franklin
Hall in Boston, the meeting site of the new England Anti-Slavery
Society. Although as an abolitionist, she usually attacked
slavery, in this address she condemns the attitude that denied
black women education and prohibited their occupational
advancement. In fact she argues that Northern African American
women, in term of treatment, were only slightly better off than
slaves.

Why sit ye here and die? If we say we will go to a foreign land,
the famine and the pestilence are there, and there we shall die.
If we sit here, we shall die. Come let us plead our cause before
the whites: if they save us alive, we shall live—and if they
kill us, we shall but die.

Methinks I heard a spiritual interrogation—'Who shall go
forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people
of color? Shall it be a woman? And my heart made this reply —'If
it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus!'

I have heard much respecting the horrors of slavery; but may
Heaven forbid that the generality of my color throughout these
United States should experience any more of its horrors than to
be a servant of servants, or hewers of wood and drawers of
water! Tell us no more of southern slavery; for with few
exceptions, although I may be very erroneous in my opinion, yet
I consider our condition but little better than that. Yet, after
all, methinks there are no chains so galling as the chains of
ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and
exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge.
O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now,
have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy spirit.

I have asked several individuals of my sex, who transact
business for themselves, if providing our girls were to give
them the most satisfactory references, they would not be willing
to grant them an equal opportunity with others? Their reply has
been—for their own part, they had no objection; but as it was
not the custom, were they to take them into their employ, they
would be in danger of losing the public patronage.

And such is the powerful force of prejudice. Let our girls
possess what amiable qualities of soul they may; let their
characters be fair and spotless as innocence itself; let their
natural taste and ingenuity be what they may; it is impossible
for scarce an individual of them to rise above the condition of
servants. Ah! why is this cruel and unfeeling distinction? Is it
merely because God has made our complexion to vary? If it be, O
shame to soft, relenting humanity! "Tell it not in Gath! publish
it not in the streets of Askelon!" Yet, after all, methinks were
the American free people of color to turn their attention more
assiduously to moral worth and intellectual improvement, this
would be the result: prejudice would gradually diminish, and the
whites would be compelled to say, unloose those fetters!

Though black their skins as shades of night, Their hearts are
pure, their souls are white.

Few white persons of either sex, who are calculated for any
thing else, are willing to spend their lives and bury their
talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the
horrible idea that I entertain respecting a life of servitude,
that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising
above the condition of a servant, I would gladly hail death as a
welcome messenger. O, horrible idea, indeed! to possess noble
souls aspiring after high and honorable acquirements, yet
confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty to lives of
continual drudgery and toil. Neither do I know of any who have
enriched themselves by spending their lives as house-domestics,
washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots, or tending
upon gentlemen's tables. I can but die for expressing my
sentiments; and I am as willing to die by the sword as the
pestilence; for I and a true born American; your blood flows in
my veins, and your spirit fires my breast.

I observed a piece in the Liberator a few months since, stating
that the colonizationists had published a work respecting us,
asserting that we were lazy and idle. I confute them on that
point. Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor
idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate
us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious
and ambitious ones to be found; although I acknowledge, with
extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never
will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class
among yourselves?

Again. It was asserted that we were "a ragged set, crying for
liberty." I reply to it, the whites have so long and so loudly
proclaimed the theme of equal rights and privileges, that our
souls have caught the flame also, ragged as we are. As far as
our merit deserves, we feel a common desire to rise above the
condition of servants and drudges. I have learnt, by bitter
experience, that continual hard labor deadens the energies of
the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas
become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands
of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil,
brings forth thorns and thistles.

Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our
dispositions; the whole system becomes worn out with toil and
failure; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care
but little whether we live or die. It is true, that the free
people of color throughout these United States are neither
bought nor sold, nor under the lash of the cruel driver; many
obtain a comfortable support; but few, if any, have an
opportunity of becoming rich and independent; and the
employments we most pursue are as unprofitable to us as the
spider's web or the floating bubbles that vanish into air. As
servants, we are respected; but let us presume to aspire any
higher, our employer regards us no longer. And where it not that
the King eternal has declared that Ethiopia shall stretch forth
her hands unto God, I should indeed despair.

I do not consider it derogatory, my friends, for persons to live
out to service. There are many whose inclination leads them to
aspire no higher; and I would highly commend the performance of
almost any thing for an honest livelihood; but where
constitutional strength is wanting, labor of this kind, in its
mildest form, is painful. And doubtless many are the prayers
that have ascended to Heaven from Africa's daughters for
strength to perform their work. Oh, many are the tears that have
been shed for the want of that strength! Most of our color have
dragged out a miserable existence of servitude from the cradle
to the grave. And what literary acquirements can be made, or
useful knowledge derived, from either maps, books or charm, by
those who continually drudge from Monday morning until Sunday
noon? O, ye fairer sisters, whose hands are never soiled, whose
nerves and muscles are never strained, go learn by experience!
Had we had the opportunity that you have had, to improve our
moral and mental faculties, what would have hindered our
intellects from being as bright, and our manners from being as
dignified as yours? Had it been our lot to have been nursed in
the lap of affluence and ease, and to have basked beneath the
smiles and sunshine of fortune, should we not have naturally
supposed that we were never made to toil? And why are not our
forms as delicate, and our constitutions as slender, as yours?
Is not the workmanship as curious and complete? Have pity upon
us, have pity upon us, O ye who have hearts to feel for other's
woes; for the hand of God has touched us. Owing to the
disadvantages under which we labor, there are many flowers among
us that are…born to bloom unseen, And waste their fragrance on the desert
air.

My beloved brethren, as Christ has died in vain for those who
will not accept of offered mercy, so will it be vain for the
advocates of freedom to spend their breath in our behalf, unless
with united hearts and souls you make some mighty efforts to
raise your sons, and daughters from the horrible state of
servitude and degradation in which they are placed. It is upon
you that woman depends; she can do but little besides using her
influence; and it is for her sake and yours that I have come
forward and made myself a hissing and a reproach among the
people; for I am also one of the wretched and miserable
daughters of the descendants of fallen Africa. Do you ask, why
are you wretched and miserable? I reply, look at many of the
most worthy and interesting of us doomed to spend our lives in
gentlemen's kitchens. Look at our young men, smart, active and
energetic, with souls filled with ambitious fire; if they look
forward, alas! what are their prospects? They can be nothing but
the humblest laborers, on account of their dark complexions;
hence many of them lose their ambition, and become worthless.
Look at our middle-aged men, clad in their rusty plaids and
coats; in winter, every cent they earn goes to buy their wood
and pay their rents; their poor wives also toil beyond their
strength, to help support their families. Look at our aged
sires, whose heads are whitened with the front of seventy
winters, with their old wood-saws on their backs. Alas, what
keeps us so? Prejudice, ignorance and poverty. But ah! methinks
our oppression is soon to come to an end; yes, before the
Majesty of heaven, our groans and cries have reached the ears of
the Lord of Sabaoth [James 5:4]. As the prayers and tears of
Christians will avail the finally impenitent nothing; neither
will the prayers and tears of the friends of humanity avail us
any thing, unless we possess a spirit of virtuous emulation
within our breasts. Did the pilgrims, when they first landed on
these shores, quietly compose themselves, and say, "the Britons
have all the money and all the power, and we must continue their
servants forever?" Did they sluggishly sigh and say, "our lot is
hard, the Indians own the soil, and we cannot cultivate it?" No;
they first made powerful efforts to raise themselves and then
God raised up those illustrious patriots WASHINGTON and
LAFAYETTE, to assist and defend them. And, my brethren, have you
made a powerful effort? Have you prayed the Legislature for
mercy's sake to grant you all the rights and privileges of free
citizens, that your daughters may raise to that degree of
respectability which true merit deserves, and your sons above
the servile situations which most of them fill?

Sources:

Speech delivered at Franklin Hall, Boston, September 21, 1832.
The full text appears in Marilyn Richardson, Maria W. Stewart:
America’s First Black Woman Political Writer (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987), 45-49.
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