Isaac T. Hopper (1853)

AUTHOR: Child, Lydia Maria

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

Lydia Maria Child's biography of Isaac T. Hopper focuses on his Abolitionist activism. Child also dedicates several extended passages to Hopper's interactions with animals during his childhood. These passages emphasize Hopper's general kindness and empathy towards other beings, which he would then display in the Abolitionist cause. Child emphasizes that kindness to animals translates to kindness towards slaves and, implicitly, that cruelty to animals predisposes one towards the cruelty of slavery. For Child, Abolitionism and animal

Child recounts how Hopper's “fearlessness and firmness of character, which he inherited from both father and mother, manifested itself in many ways. He had a lamb, whose horns were crooked, and had a tendency to turn in. His father had given it to him for his own, on condition that he should keep the horns carefully filed, so that they should not hurt the animal. He had a small file on purpose, and took such excellent care of his pet, that it soon became very much attached to him, and trotted about after him like a dog” (9). In another passage, Child relates how, as a ten-year-old boy, he took a stance against the killing of birds, telling “his companions he thought it was very cruel sport to torment and kill poor little innocent birds; especially as they might destroy mothers, and then the little ones would be left to starve” (16). Thus, according to Child, “[f]rom earliest childhood he evinced great fondness for animals, and watched with lively interest all the little creatures of the woods and fields” (18).

Child provides several more examples of Hopper's interactions with animals in this vein before explicitly connecting Hopper's kindness towards animals to his Abolitionism:

When he drove the cows to and from pasture, he often met an old colored man named Mingo. His sympathizing heart was attracted toward him, because he had heard the neighbors say he was stolen from Africa when he was a little boy. One day, he asked Mingo what part of the world he came from; and the poor old man told how he was playing with other children among the bushes, on the coast of Africa, when white men pounced upon them suddenly and dragged them off to a ship. He held fast hold of the thorny bushes, which tore his hands dreadfully in the struggle. The old man wept like a child, when he told how he was frightened and distressed at being thus hurried away from father, mother, brothers and sisters, and sold into slavery, in a distant land, where he could never see or hear from them again. This painful story made a very deep impression upon Isaac's mind; and, though he was then only nine years old, he made a solemn vow to himself that he would be the friend of oppressed Africans during his whole life (23-24).