BOSTON, in the State of Massachusetts, is, in a literary sense, the Athens of the United States of America, and a city of historical importance; for there commenced that series of events which produced the revolution of 1768, and gave birth to one of the greatest and most powerful nations in the world.

Having assisted in the Sabbath services on the preceding day, I was invited by one of the ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the city to accompany him, on Monday forenoon, to the “Preachers' Meeting.” This I found to be a weekly gathering of the ministers of the denomination resident in the city and its vicinity, originally convened for conversation on Church matters; but in course of time it had swept into a broader range, and took up the discussion of all subjects of thought in theology and ethics.

It was a beautiful morning in the July of 1858. Having accepted the courteous invitation, I accompanied my friend, at the appointed hour, to the Methodist book-store in Cornhill. Passing through the well-stocked store, after being presented to the gentleman in charge of the “Concern,” we ascended a narrow, winding, iron staircase, which conducted us to a room of not very large dimensions, where I found assembled not less than forty or fifty gentlemen of various ages, just rising from their knees after the preliminary devotional exercises. A venerable-looking gentleman in clerical black and white cravat occupied the presidential chair, to whom, addressing him as “Father Merrill,” my friend presented me as a missionary from the West Indies, in connexion with the British Conference. Extending to me a courteous welcome, Father Merrill invited me to take a seat near himself, observing that when the proper time arrived he would have the pleasure of introducing me to the meeting.

HOW fearfully blinded by prejudice and interest must those ministers of the Gospel have been, who once stood boldly forth to advocate the Divine right of the slaveholder! A more fearful wrong could not be done to human beings than that which was inflicted upon the millions who were born to an inheritance of slavery in the Southern States of the American Union. Brought into the world by a slave mother, the poor slave child, before he could possibly be guilty of any offence to incur such a penalty,—before he could inhale the vital air,—was plundered of all the rights of humanity and doomed to be a chattel,—doomed body and soul to be the property of another; deprived of the right to dispose of his own time, to enjoy the fruit of his own labour, to have his own wife, and to dispose of and control his own children! Such was the patrimony of the subject of this sketch.

He was born in June, 1789, in Charles County, State of Maryland, on a farm belonging to a Mr. Francis Newman, situated about a mile from Port Tobacco. His mother was hired out to work on this farm, being the slave of a Dr. Josiah M'Pherson, and here it was that she met with and was married to the father of Josiah. The slave in America, as elsewhere, followed the fortunes of the mother, and Josiah's mother being the property of M'Pherson, her child likewise became his slave. M'Pherson was one of a class by no means uncommon amongst slaveholders. A man of good generous impulses, liberal, jovial, and hearty, he was far more kind to his slaves than the planters generally were, never suffering them to be punished or struck by any one. No degree of arbitrary power could ever lead him to forget, like others, the claims of humanity, and exercise cruelty towards his dependents. As the first Negro child ever born to him, Josiah became his pet. He gave him his own Christian name, and added to it the name of Henson, after an uncle of his, whose memory he revered, and who was an officer in the Revolutionary war.

Josiah knew very little concerning his father; and that little was of a tragical character, forming an episode in his own history that remained, all through life, a dark spot upon his memory. This, he observed, was the only incident concerning his mother's husband which, in after years, he could call to mind. One day his father appeared among his fellow slaves with his head all bloody, his back fearfully lacerated, and almost beside himself with mingled rage and suffering. Child as he was, no explanation was given to Josiah concerning the cruel punishment to which his father had been subjected; but, shrewd and intelligent beyond his years, he picked up from the conversation of others an outline of the facts, which made an indelible impression upon his memory, and as he grew older he clearly understood it all.

While he was at work in the field, Josiah's father heard screams arising from a retired spot near at hand, which he recognised as coming from his own wife. He threw down his hoe, and hastened to the place whence the screams proceeded. Maddened by a brutal outrage which had been inflicted upon his wife by the overseer, an outrage common enough in the slave land, he flew like a tiger upon the aggressor.

He was a man of great muscular power, and in the full vigour of his manhood. The cowardly, trembling overseer had no chance with his assailant. In a moment he was down, and there and then his wicked life would have been brought to a sudden end by the furious husband, had not the wife interposed to prevent such a catastrophe. The humbled caitiff was allowed to rise and depart, promising, in the most abject manner, that nothing more should ever be said concerning the punishment he had justly received. The promise was kept—like most promises of the cowardly and debased—only as long as the danger lasted.

The laws of the slave states provided ample means and opportunities for ruffianly revenge to such aggressors as this overseer. “A nigger had struck a white man!” That was enough to set a whole county on fire. No question was asked about the provocation: that was a matter of indifference. The fact, that the hand of a Negro had been raised against the sacred person of a white man, was a crime so terrible in the eyes of slaveholders that nothing could possibly excuse it, no provocation whatsoever could justify it. The authorities were speedily in pursuit of the daring offender, and he must be brought to condign punishment. For awhile he kept out of the way, hiding in the woods, venturing only at night into some cabin in search of food. But this could not continue long. A watch so strict was set that all supplies were cut off, and, starved out, he was compelled at length to surrender, and give himself up to the tender mercies of his foes.

IT is a blessing unspeakably great in any condition of life, to have a pious mother! How largely does the destiny of the child in most cases depend on the mother! And how many owe all their success in life, and all their hope of heaven, to the loving counsels, care, and prayers of godly mothers! Who does not remember how all that was good and great in Doddridge, and Curran, and the Wesleys, was attributable, under God, to the influence shed upon them in early life by their mothers? In his lowly and almost hopeless condition, Josiah was favoured with this inestimable advantage—a pious, praying mother, watching over and tending his infant and childish days. How or where she acquired her knowledge of God, and her acquaintance with the Lord's Prayer, Josiah never knew: but, he said, “She was a good mother to us, anxious above all things to touch her children's hearts with a sense of religion, and bring them up in the ways of the Lord. She frequently taught us to repeat the beautiful words of the Lord's Prayer, and I remember seeing her often on her knees in our little cabin trying to express her thoughts and petitions in prayers appropriate to her situation and wants. They amounted to little more than constant fervent ejaculations, and the repetition of short familiar phrases; but they were the utterances of a devout and humble mind, offered up in all faith and sincerity; and doubtless had power to prevail with God. They made a deep impression on my infant mind, and have remained in my memory to this hour.”

The death of Dr. M'Pherson was a most painful event to his friends, but it was a far greater calamity to his unfortunate slaves. For two or three years after her husband was sold and sent South, Josiah's mother and her six children had resided in comfort on her master's plantation; and they had been happy together. Now, alas! their term of happy union as one family must come to an end. The death of the owner of slaves was often the occasion of wide-spread grief and woe amongst his dependents, causing as it did their sale and scattering; the dearest ties being recklessly rent asunder, and families often broken up and parted, never to see, or even hear of, each other again. So it was to be with the family of which Josiah was one of the child members. M'Pherson's estate and slaves had to be sold, and the proceeds divided among the heirs; and they were regarded only in the light of property, not as a tender mother and the children which God had given her.

Common as slave auctions were in the Southern States, and naturally as a slave might look forward to the time when he would be put up on the block, the full misery of the event, the anguish and suffering which precede and follow the slave auction, could only be understood when the actual experience came. The first sad announcement that the sale was to be; the knowledge that all ties of the past were to be sundered; the frantic terror at the idea of being sent “down South;” the almost certainty that one member of the family would be torn from another; the anxious scanning of purchasers' faces; the agony of parting for ever with husband, wife, child—these must be seen and felt to be fully understood. “Young as I was then,” said Josiah, “the iron entered into my soul. The remembrance of the breaking up of M'Pherson's estate is stamped in its minutest features upon my mind. The crowd collected around the stand; the huddling group of terrified Negroes; the examination of muscle, teeth, and limbs, and the exhibition of agility; the look of the auctioneer; the agony of my mother! I can never forget them! I shut my eyes, and I see them all.”

Josiah was the youngest; and the elder children were bid off first, one by one, while the mother, paralysed with grief, held him by the hand. Her turn came, and she was bought by a man named Isaac Riley, of Montgomery county. Then little Josiah was offered to the assembled purchasers. The loving mother, half distracted with the thought of parting for ever with all her children, pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for Josiah was going on, to the spot where Riley, her new owner, was standing. She fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, entreating him in tones which only a mother could command, and with many tears, to buy her “baby” as well as herself, and spare to her one at least of her little ones. It can scarcely be believed, yet it is true, that this man, thus appealed to, not only turned a deaf ear to the agonized suppliant, but disengaged himself from her with curses and blows and kicks, and sent her creeping out of his reach with the groan of bodily suffering mingling with the sob of a breaking heart. “I must have been then,” said Josiah, “between five and six years old. I seem to see and hear my poor weeping mother now. This was one of my earliest observations of men, but an experience which I only shared with thousands of my race, the bitterness of which to any individual who suffers it cannot be diminished by the frequency of its recurrence; while it is dark enough to overshadow the whole after life with something blacker than a funeral pall.”

Josiah was bought by a stranger named Robb, “and truly,” he said, “a robber he was to me. He took me to his home, about forty miles distant, and put me into his Negro quarters, with about forty or fifty others, of all ages, colours, and conditions, and all strangers to me. Of course nobody cared for me. The slaves were brutalized by their degradation, and could feel no sympathy for the suffering child thus torn from his mother, and thrust in amongst them. I soon fell sick, and lay for some days almost dead upon the ground. Sometimes one of the slaves would give me a piece of corn bread or a bit of herring, but I became so feeble that I could not move. This, however, turned out to be fortunate for me; for in the course of a few weeks Robb met with Riley, who had bought my mother, and offered to sell me to him cheap. Riley said he was afraid the little devil would die, and he did not want to buy a dead nigger! They finally struck a bargain, Riley agreeing to pay a small sum for me in horseshoeing, if I lived, and nothing if I died. Robb was a tavern-keeper, the owner of a line of stages, with the horses belonging to them, and lived near Montgomery court house. Riley carried on a blacksmith business about five miles from that place. After this arrangement was agreed upon, I was soon sent to my mother, and a blessed, grateful change it was to me. I had been lying on a lot of filthy rags thrown upon a dirt floor. All day long I was left alone, crying sometimes for water, sometimes for mother, whose loving care I greatly missed: for the other slaves, who went out to their work at daybreak, gave no attention to me. It mattered nothing to them whether I lived or died. Now I was once more with my best friend on earth, and tenderly cared for with all a mother's love, intensified as it was by the cruel bereavement of all her other children. She was destitute of all means of ministering to my comfort; but, nevertheless, she nursed me into health, and I became vigorous and strong beyond most boys of the same age.”

The new master, Riley, into whose hands Josiah fell when he returned to his mother's care, was coarse and vulgar in his habits, profligate, unprincipled, and cruel. He suffered the unfortunate beings who were his slaves to have little opportunity of relaxation from wearying labour, supplying them scantily with necessary food, so that they had often to endure the sharp pangs of hunger, and acted fully on the principle that his slaves possessed “no rights which he was bound to respect.” The natural tendency of slavery is to make the master a tyrant, which the nobler dispositions of a few enable them to overcome, and to convert the slaves into the cringing, treacherous, false, and thieving victims of oppression, which many of them became, when not brought under the elevating influences of religion. Riley and his slaves were apt illustrations of this tendency of the system to degrade and brutalize both the master and his dependents.

The earliest employments of the child-chattel, Josiah, were to carry water to the slaves at their work, and to hold a horse plough, used for weeding between the rows of corn. As he grew older and taller he was entrusted with the care of his master's saddle horse, in which occupation he continued for several years, enjoying many a stolen ride. But while quite a stripling a hoe was put into his hands, and he was required to do the work of a man. “It was not long,” said Josiah, “before I could do it, at least as well as any of my associates in misery.”

The principal food of the slaves on Riley's plantation consisted of a stinted allowance of corn-meal and salt herrings. To this was added, in summer, a little buttermilk and the few vegetables which each might be able to raise on the little piece of ground assigned to him, called a truck patch. In ordinary times they had two meals a day:—breakfast at twelve o'clock, after labouring from daybreak, and supper at night, when the work of the day was over. In harvest they had three meals, the hours of toil being prolonged to the uttermost point of endurance. Their dress was of tow cloth; for the children only a shirt: for the older ones a pair of pantaloons, or a gown, in addition. A woollen hat was given to each once in two or three years, and once a year a coarse pair of shoes. In the winter a jacket or overcoat was added to their equipment.

On Riley's farm anything like comfortable cabins for his slaves was out of the question. They were lodged in log huts, on the bare ground, wooden floors being an unknown luxury. All ideas of refinement or decency were disregarded. In a single room were huddled like cattle ten or a dozen men, women, and children. There were neither bedsteads nor furniture of any description. The beds were collections of old rags and straw, thrown down in the corners, and boxed in with any old boards they could find and appropriate to such a purpose, a single blanket the only covering. The wind whistled, and the rain and snow blew in through the cracks, and the damp earth soaked in the moisture till the floor was miry as a pig-sty. In these wretched hovels were the slaves penned at night and fed by day; here were the children born, and the sick and dying neglected.

Notwithstanding these discomforts and hardships, Josiah, lovingly fostered by his mother, grew to be a robust and vigorous boy, “lively as a young buck,” as he described himself, “and running over with animal spirits,” so that few could compete with him in work or sport. He could run faster, wrestle better, and jump higher than any about him. All this caused his master and fellow slaves to look upon him as a very smart fellow. His vanity was inflamed, and he fully coincided in their opinion. “Julius Cæsar,” he said, “never aspired and plotted for the imperial crown more ambitiously than did I to out-hoe, out-reap, out-husk, out-dance, out-everything, every competitor! and from all I can learn he never enjoyed his triumphs half so much. One word of commendation from the petty despot who ruled over us would set me up for a month. I have no desire to represent the life of slavery as nothing but an experience of misery. God be praised, that however hedged in by unfavouring circumstances the joyful exuberance of youth will bound at times over them all. Ours is a light-hearted race. The sternest and most covetous master cannot frighten or whip the fun quite out of us; certainly old Riley never did out of me. In those days I had many a merry time; and would have had if I had lived with nothing but mocassins and rattlesnakes in Okafenoke swamp. Slavery did its best to make me wretched; but nature, or the blessed God of youth and joy, was mightier than slavery. Along with the memories of miry cabins, frostbitten feet, weary toil under the blazing sun, curses and blows, there flock in others of jolly Christmas times, dances before old massa's door for the first drink of egg-nog, extra meat at holiday times, midnight visits to apple-orchards, broiling stray chickens, and first-rate tricks to dodge work. The God who makes the lamb to gambol, and the kitten play, and the bird sing, and the fish leap, was the Author in me of many a light-hearted hour. True it was, indeed, that the fun and frolic of Christmas, at which time my master relaxed his front, was generally followed by a reaction, under which he drove and cursed worse than ever. Still the fun and the frolic were fixed facts. We had enjoyed them, and he could not help it.”

But the exuberance of animal spirits, which characterized the slave boy, was not all expended in useless, selfish frolic. Under the prayerful training of that good slave mother, the thoughtless lad had been taught to cherish a kindly sympathy towards others who had less to make them happy, and more to make them wretched, than he had; and he was often led to exercise the spirit of adventure in which he delighted to soothe and lighten the sorrows of those around him. The miseries which he saw many of the women suffer often filled him with sorrow. Compelled to perform unfit labour, sick, suffering, and bearing the peculiar burdens of their own sex unpitied and unaided, as well as the toils which belong to the other, his enderest sympathies were often aroused in their behalf. “No white knight, rescuing white fair ones from cruel oppression, ever felt the throbbing of a chivalrous heart more intensely than I, a black slave boy, did, in running down a chicken in an out-of-the-way place to hide till dark, and then carry it to some poor, overworked, black fair one, to whom it was at once food, luxury, and medicine. No Scotch borderer, levying black mail, or sweeping off a drove of cattle, ever felt more assured of the justice of his act than I of mine, in driving a mile or two into the woods a pig or a sheep, and slaughtering it for the good of those whom Riley was starving. I love and admire the sentiment of chivalry, with the splendid environment of castles, and tilts, and gallantry, in which poets and romancers have set it forth. And this was all the exercise of chivalry that my circumstances and condition of life permitted, myself the dark-skinned paladin, Dinah or Patsy the outraged maiden, and old Riley as the grim oppressor. However mistaken my views of rectitude may then have been, these deeds of boyish adventure to relieve the sufferers around me were my training in the luxury of doing good, and sprang from a righteous indignation against the cruel and the oppressive.”

THE mind and heart of Josiah, unconsciously to himself, were influenced largely by the beautiful example, and the prayers and counsels, of his pious mother; and doubtless they thus received from her a tendency in the right direction. By his mother he was led to think much of God. From her he learnt that there was in him an undying soul, and that to save him and all sinners God, the loving Father, sent His own Son into the world to sufter and to die. In that mother, ignorant and enslaved as she was, he saw daily exemplified the beauty and power of religion; and he was, amid all the frivolity which was natural to him in a high degree, often led by her conversation to think deeply concerning God and the things pertaining to the soul and its destiny. He was thus prepared for an event that was to change and mould the whole of his future existence, and bring the grateful answer to his mother's unceasing prayers on his behalf.

At Georgetown, a few miles from Riley's farm, lived a white man whose name was John M'Kenny. His business was that of a baker; his character that of an upright benevolent Christian, who lived the religion that he professed. He was noted for his detestation of slavery; and he resolutely avoided the employment of slave labour in his business. He would not even hire a slave the price of whose labour must be paid to the master, but carried on his business with his own hands and such free labour as he could procure; content with small profits uncontaminated by wrong doing, rather than the increase of wealth he might have commanded had he been less scrupulous and conscientious. This singular abstinence from what no one about him thought wrong, and the probity and excellence of his character, procured for him great respect, and prepared the way for great usefulness to his fellow man. M'Kenny often took upon him the work of preaching the Gospel; for at that period ministers of Christ were rare in the neighbourhood, and the inhabitants had few opportunities of hearing the truth. Thus he was a great light in a dark place, and many through his preaching were led to the sinner's Friend. Not a few crushed and heart-broken slaves received through him those heavenly consolations which were so well suited to their sorrowful condition, and welcome as the water-spring in the desert land.

One Sabbath this good man was to preach at a few miles' distance from Riley's plantation, and Josiah's mother, anxious above all things for the soul of her child, urged him to ask his master's permission to go and hear him. He had often been beaten for making such a request, and assigned this as a reason for refusing to comply with his mother's wishes. She told him, “You will never be a true Christian if you are to be afraid of a beating,” and persisted in urging him to make the request, adding, “Like the good Massa, you must take up the cross and bear it.” To gratify her, and dry up the tears which his refusal of her wishes called forth, Josiah resolved to try the experiment, and accordingly went and asked Riley's permission to go to the meeting. Somewhat to his surprise, the favour was accorded with less scolding and cursing than he expected, but with a pretty distinct intimation of the evil that would befall him if he did not return immediately after the close of the service.

“I hurried off,” said Josiah, “pleased with the opportunity of hearing a preaching, but without any definite expectations of benefit or of the amusement in which I most delighted; for up to this time, and I was then near eighteen years old, I had never heard a sermon, nor any discourse or conversation whatever upon religious topics, except what I had heard from my mother, who carefully taught me the responsibility of all to a Supreme Being. When I arrived at the place of meeting, the services were so far advanced that the speaker was just beginning his discourse from the text, Hebrews ii. 9: “That He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man.” This was the first text of the Bible I had ever listened to, knowing it to be such. I have never forgotten it, and scarcely a day has passed since in which I have not recalled it, and the sermon that was preached from it.

“Who can describe my feelings, and the strange influence that came upon and overwhelmed me, as I listened to those wondrous words? I was at once attracted by the manner and earnestness of the preacher, the loving expression of his countenance, and the light that seemed to gleam from his eyes. And then I became entranced, my whole soul absorbed in the theme upon which he dwelt. He spoke of the Divine character of Jesus Christ, His tender love for mankind, His forgiving spirit, His compassion for the outcast and despised and the guilty, His crucifixion and His glorious resurrection and ascension; and some of these he dwelt upon with great power:—great especially to me, who then heard of these things for the first time in my life. Again and again did the preacher reiterate the words, ‘for every man:’—these glad tidings, this great salvation, were not for the benefit of a select few only. They were for the slave as well as the master, the poor as well as the rich, the distressed, the heavy laden, the captive. They were for me—I felt they were for me—among the rest, a poor, despised, abused creature, deemed of others fit for nothing but unrequited toil, and mental and bodily degradation. O, the blessedness and sweetness of the feeling that then came over me! I was LOVED! I could have died that moment with joy for the compassionate Saviour about whom I was hearing. ‘He loves me. He looks down from heaven in compassion and forgiveness on me, a great sinner. He died to save my soul. He'll welcome me to the skies,’ I kept repeating to myself. I was transported with a delicious joy I had never felt before. I seemed to see a glorious Being in a cloud of splendour smiling down from on high. In sharp contrast with the experience of the contempt and brutality of my earthly master, I seemed to bask in the sunshine of the benignity of this glorious Being! He'll be my dear refuge—He'll wipe away the tears from my eyes! Now I can bear all things. Nothing will seem hard after this! I felt sorry that my master, Riley, did not know this loving Saviour; sorry that he should live such a coarse, wicked, cruel life. Swallowed up in the beauty of the Divine love, I could love my enemies, and prayed for them that did despitefully use and entreat me.

“Revolving the things which I had heard in my mind, and excited as I had never been in my life before, I turned aside from the road on my way home into the woods, and spent some time there in prayer. I prayed as I had never prayed in all my life, pouring out my whole soul to God. I cried unto Him for light and aid with an earnestness which, however unenlightened, was sincere and heartfelt; and I have no doubt it was acceptable to Him who heareth prayer. From this day, so memorable, so important to me—the day of my conversion—I date my awakening to a new life, a consciousness of power and of a destiny superior to anything I had before conceived of. I began now to use every means and opportunity of inquiry into religious matters. Religion became to me, indeed, the great business and concern of my life. So deep was my conviction of its superior importance to everything else; so clear my perception of my own faults, and of the darkness and sin that

JOSIAH was endowed with more than an ordinary degree of energy. Quick-witted, active, clever, and fruitful in resources, and always ambitious to excel in whatever he put his hand to, he became very valuable to his master. He watched over that master's interests with great fidelity, and exposed the knavery of the overseers, who plundered their employer whenever they found the opportunity. While scarcely out of his boyhood, he had acquired great influence over his fellow-slaves; and being appointed superintendent of the farm, he not only kept the people in better and more cheerful order than they had ever been before, but he obtained from them more willing labour, by exercising only the law of kindness, and doubled the crops, to the great profit of his owner. The pride and ambition that were natural to him had made him strive to be proficient in every department of farm work.

Under a different system this would have brought to him additional emolument and increased worldly comfort. But was not Josiah a slave; body and soul, with all his energies, the absolute property of his master? To him, as he was circumstanced, it brought only an increase of burdens and responsibilities. His master was too much embruted by his association with slavery, and the exercise of irresponsible power over the unfortunate ones under his control, to reward a faithful servant with kindness or decent treatment. Josiah had to care for all the crops of wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, corn, tobacco, &c., which the master left entirely to him; and he was often compelled at midnight to start with the waggon for a distant market, and drive on through mud and rain till morning, sell the produce, and return home hungry and weary, to receive as his reward only oaths and curses and threatenings for not obtaining higher prices. Riley was like most slaveholders of his class, a fearful blasphemer, and seldom opened his lips without giving utterance to profane and violent language.

He was also a drunken profligate, indulging in vile habits which were common enough among the dissipated planters of the neighbourhood. Saturday and Sunday were their usual holidays; and it was their practice to assemble on these days at some low tavern, and devote themselves to gambling, running horses, fighting game-cocks, and discussing politics; indulging in large libations of whiskey and brandy. Well aware that they would be in such a condition as not to be able to find their way home at night, each one would order his groom, or body-servant, to come after him, to take care of him, and see him safe home. Josiah was chosen by his master to perform this office; and many a time he has walked by Riley's horse, holding him in the saddle, which he was too drunk to keep without help, plodding, at or after the midnight hour, through deep darkness and mud some miles from the tavern to the farm. These drunken carousals not unfrequently terminated in brawls and quarrels of the most violent description: glasses and chairs would be thrown, dirks and knives drawn, and pistols fired; some of the ruffianly brawlers sometimes carrying home with them serious wounds; and occasionally a life would be sacrificed before the uproar ceased. On such occasions, when the state of things became dangerous, the slave servants of the rioters were accustomed to rush in and extricate their masters from the fight, and take them home. This was often a perilous service to perform; not only as the slaves were liable to be injured by the weapons called into use, but they occasionally turned against themselves the violence of the drunken masters, whom, for their own safety, they sought to lead or control, or that of the exasperated ruffians to whom they might be opposed. “To tell the truth,” says Josiah, “this was a part of my business, for which I felt no reluctance. I was young, remarkably athletic and self-relying; and in such affrays, whenever I had to mingle with them, I carried it with a high hand. I would elbow my way among the whites, whom it would have been almost death for me to strike, seize my master, and drag him out, mount him on his horse, or crowd him into his buggy, with as much ease as I would handle a bag of corn.”

In one of these brutal outbursts, Josiah's master became involved in a violent quarrel with a man named Bryce Lytton, who was overseer to his brother, another Riley, who owned a farm in the same neighbourhood. This Lytton was a man of ruffianly character and ferocious habits. How the quarrel originated, or who was right or wrong, Josiah knew not; but all the rest of the drunken set sided with Lytton, and there was a general row. “I was sitting on the steps,” said Josiah, “in front of the tavern, when I heard the scuffle, and rushed into to look after my charge. My master was a noted bruiser, and in such a fight could generally hold his own, and clear a handsome space around him; but now he was cornered, and a dozen were striking at him with fists, crockery, chairs, and anything that came handy. The moment he saw me he hallooed, ‘That's it, Sie, pitch in! show me fair play!’ It was a rough business, and I went in roughly, shoving and tripping, and doing my best to get to the rescue of Riley. With much trouble, and after getting many a bruise on my head and shoulders, I at length got him out of the room, and took him safe home. He was crazy with drink and rage, and struggled hard with me to get back and renew the fight. But I managed to lift him into his waggon, jump in, and drive off.

“By ill luck, during the scuffle, Bryce Lytton got a severe fall. Whether it was the whiskey or a chance shove from me that caused his fall, I cannot say. He, however, attributed it to me, and treasured up his vengeance for the first favourable opportunity. When sought, such an opportunity is readily found.

“About a week afterwards, I was sent by my master to a place a few miles distant, on horseback, with some letters. I took a short cut through a lane, separated by gates from the high road, and enclosed by a fence on either side. This lane passed through part of the farm belonging to my master's brother, and Lytton was in an adjacent field with three Negroes when I was passing by. On my return, half-an-hour afterwards, the overseer was sitting on the fence: but I could see nothing of the Negroes. I rode on quite unsuspicious of any trouble: but as I rode up he jumped off the fence, and at the same moment two of the Negroes sprang from under the bushes, where they had been concealed, and stood with him in front of me, while the other sprang over the fence just behind me. I was thus enclosed between what I could no longer doubt were hostile forces. Lytton seized the bridle, and ordered me to alight, in no gentle terms, oaths and curses flowing from his lips, as was usual with him, with great volubility. I asked what I was to alight for. ‘To take such a flogging as you never had in your life, you black scoundrel,’ using a variety of expletives which I care not to repeat. ‘But what am I to be flogged for, Mr. Lytton?’ I asked. ‘Not a word,’ said he, ‘but light at once, and take off your jacket.’ I saw there was nothing else to be done, and slipped off the horse on the opposite side from him. ‘Now take off your shirt,’ cried he; and as I demurred at this, he lifted a stick he had in his hand to strike me, but so suddenly and violently that he frightened the horse, which broke away from him, and galloped off in the direction of his stable. I was thus left without means of escape to sustain the attack of four men as well as I might. In avoiding Mr. Lytton's blow, I had accidentally got into a corner of the snake fence, where I could not be approached except in front. The overseer called upon the Negroes to seize me; but they, knowing something of my muscular power, were slow to obey. At length they did their best, and as they brought themselves within my reach, I knocked them all down in succession, and there they lay sprawling on the ground, in no hurry to get up and renew the attack. One of them trying to trip up my feet when he was down, I gave him a kick with my heavy shoe, which knocked out several of his teeth, and sent him howling away.

“Meanwhile the overseer was playing away upon my head with a stick; not heavy enough, indeed, to knock me down, but drawing blood freely; shouting all the while, ‘Won't you give up? Won't you give up, you black — —?’ Exasperated at my defence, he suddenly seized upon one of the heavy fence rails, and rushed at me, to bring the contest to a sudden close. The ponderous blow fell. I lifted my arm to ward it off: the bone cracked like a pipe-stem, and I fell headlong to the ground. Repeated blows then rained upon me till both my shoulder blades were broken, and the blood gushed copiously from my mouth. In vain the Negroes endeavoured to interpose. ‘Didn't you see the — nigger strike me?’ This was false; for the lying coward had avoided close quarters, and kept carefully beyond my reach, fighting with his stick alone. His vengeance satisfied, at length he desisted, telling me to learn what it was to strike a white man.”

“Meanwhile an alarm had been given at the house by the return of the horse without a rider, and my master started off with a small party in search of me. When he first saw me he was swearing with rage. ‘You've been fighting, you — nigger.’ I told him Bryce Lytton had been beating me, because I shoved him the other night at the tavern when there was a row. Seeing how much I was injured, he became more fearfully enraged; and after having me carried home, for I was unable to move, he mounted his horse, and rode over to Montgomery Court House, to enter a complaint. But little came of it. Lytton swore that I was insolent, jumped off my horse, made at him, and would have killed him but for the help of his Negroes. Of course no Negro's testimony could be admitted against a white man, and he was acquitted. My master was obliged to pay all the costs of court; and although he had the satisfaction of denouncing Lytton as a liar and a scoundrel, and giving him a tremendous bruising that sent him to his bed for several days, yet even this was rendered the less gratifying by what followed, which was a suit for damages, and a heavy fine for the assault.”

By this brutal treatment poor Josiah was maimed and disabled for life. When I was first introduced to him, I observed that he could not lift his hand to his head; and that when he had to put on or take off his hat he brought his head down to his hand. Both his arms appeared to be shorter than they should have been in proportion to his size, and he was stiff and awkward in the use of them. And this was the cause. Besides the broken arm, and the wounds on his head and other parts of his person, both his shoulder blades were broken, and he could hear and feel the shattered bones grating against each other at every breath he drew. His sufferings, as he described them, were intense. No physician or surgeon was called in to dress his wounds or set the broken bones. It was not the practice on Riley's plantation to spend money upon doctors, and none was ever called in on any occasion whatever. “A nigger will get well any way,” was a doctrine recognised and acted upon there. “And facts seemed to justify it,” observed Josiah. “The robust, physical health produced by a life of out-door labour made our wounds heal up with as little inflammation as they do in the case of cattle.” He was attended by his master's sister, Miss Patty, as she was called upon the farm, who was looked upon as the Æsculapius of the plantation. She was a powerful, big-boned woman, of Amazonian proportions and strength, unencumbered by anything like diffidence, and ready, whenever occasion presented, to wrench out a tooth, set and splinter a broken bone, or take a rifle, as she had been known to do, and shoot a furious ox that the Negroes were in vain attempting to butcher. She set herself to repair, as well as she knew how, the injuries that Josiah had received. “But alas!” said the sufferer, “it was but cobbler's work. From that day to this I have been unable to raise my hands as high as my head. It was five months before I could work at all: and the first time I held the plough, a hard knock of the coulter against a stone shattered my shoulder-blades again, and gave me even greater agony than at first. And so I have gone through life maimed and mutilated. Practice enabled me in time to perform the farm labours with considerable efficiency; but the free, vigorous play of muscle and arm was gone for ever.”

Crippled as he was, Josiah was able to save his master the expenditure of a considerable salary to a white overseer. He was made the superintendent of the estate, and gradually came to have the disposal of everything raised on the farm. The wheat, oats, hay, fruit, butter, &c., were confided to him, and he obtained better prices for them than the master could do himself, or any one else was likely to do for him. “I will not deny,” he said, “that I used his property more freely than he would have done in supplying his slaves with proper food; but in this I did him no wrong, for it was unequivocally for his own benefit, as the people did better and more cheerful work, and produced more abundant crops. I accounted, with the strictest honesty, for every dollar I received in the sale of the property entrusted to me.”

WHEN he was about twenty-two years of age, Josiah took to himself a wife. The object of his choice was a girl who had been well brought up in a neighbouring family, who bore the reputation of being pious, and kind to their slaves. He first met her at some of the religious meetings held in the neighbourhood, and a mutual attachment sprang up between them; and with the consent of all parties she became his wife. “She was the mother of my twelve children,” he said to me, “eight of whom still survive, and promise to be the comfort of my declining years.”

Things went on with little change for several years, when his master, at the age of forty-five, married a girl of eighteen, who had some little property. She was remarkable for, and practised, a degree of economy in the household which brought no addition to the comfort of the family. She had a younger brother, named Francis, to whom Riley was appointed guardian. “The youth used to complain,” Josiah remarked, “not without reason, I am confident, of the meanness of the provision made for the household; and he would often come to me, with tears in his eyes, to tell me he could not get enough to eat. I made him my friend by sympathizing with his grief and satisfying his appetite, sharing with him the food I took care to provide for my own family.”

After a while the dissipation of Josiah's master became more than a match for his wife's domestic saving, and he became involved in difficulty and pecuniary embarrassment. This was enhanced by a lawsuit with a brother-in-law, who charged him with dishonesty in the management of property confided to him in trust. The litigation was protracted, and it brought him to ruin.

Harsh and tyrannical as he had often been, Josiah pitied him in his distress. At times he was dreadfully dejected and cast down; at others crazy with drink and rage, swearing and storming at all about him. “Day after day,” said his faithful slave, “he would ride over to Montgomery Court House, to look after this troublesome business, and every day his affairs became more desperate. He would come into my cabin, to tell me how the suit was progressing; but spent the time chiefly in lamenting his misfortunes, and cursing his brother-in-law. I tried to comfort him as well as I could. He had confidence in my fidelity and judgment; and partly through a sort of pride or self-complacency I felt in being thus appealed to, but more through the spirit of love I had learned to admire and imitate in the Lord Jesus Christ, I entered with great interest into all his perplexities. The poor, drinking, furious, moaning creature was utterly incapable of managing his affairs. Shiftlessness, licentiousness, and drink, had complicated them quite as much as actual dishonesty.”

At length the crisis came. “One night, in the month of January, long after I had fallen asleep, overcome with the fatigues of the day, he came into my cabin and roused me up. I thought it strange: but for a time he said nothing, and sat moodily warming himself by the fire. Then he began to groan and wring his hands. ‘Sick, massa?’ said I. He made no reply; but kept on moaning. ‘Can't I help you any way, massa?’ I spoke tenderly; for my heart was full of compassion at his wretched appearance. At last, collecting himself, he cried, ‘O, Sie! I'm ruined, ruined, ruined!’ ‘How so, massa?’ ‘They've got judgment against me; and in less that two weeks every nigger I've got will be put up and sold.’ Then he burst into a storm of curses at his brother-in-law.

“I sat silent, powerless to utter a word. Not only did I pity him, but I was filled with terror at the anticipation of the sad fate which I perceived was now hanging over my own family, and the terrible separation with which we were threatened. So it is. The calamity that falls upon the master often comes with tenfold crushing weight upon his unfortunate slaves.

“ ‘And now, Sie,’ continued Riley, ‘there's only one way I can save anything. You can do it: won't you, won't you?’ In his great distress he rose, and actually threw his arms around me. Misery had levelled all distinctions. ‘If I can do it, Massa, I will. What is it?’ Without replying he went on, ‘Won't you, won't you? I raised you, Sie; I made you overseer; I know I've often abused you, Sie, but I didn't mean it.’ Still he avoided telling me what he wanted. ‘Promise me you'll do it, boy!’ He seemed resolutely bent on having my promise first, well knowing from past experience that what I agreed to do I should spare no pains or labour to accomplish. Solicited in this way, so urgently, and with tears, by the man whom I had so zealously served for many years, and who now seemed absolutely dependent upon his slave—impelled, too, by the fear which he skilfully awakened that the sheriff would seize every one who belonged to him, and that all would be separated, or perhaps sold to go to Georgia or Louisiana,—a fate greatly dreaded by slaves in the border states,—I consented, and promised to do all I could to save him from the fate impending over him.

“At last the proposition came. ‘I want you to run away, Sie, to my brother Amos, in Kentucky, and take all the servants along with you.’ I could not have been more startled had he asked me to go to the moon. ‘Kentucky, Massa, Kentucky? I don't know the way!’ ‘O, it's easy enough for a smart fellow like you to find it. I'll give you a pass, and tell you just what to do.’ Perceiving that I hesitated, he endeavoured to frighten me by again referring to the terrors of being sold to Georgia.

“For two or three hours he continued to urge me to the undertaking, appealing now to my sympathy and compassion, then to my pride, and again to my fears. At last, appalling as it seemed to me, I yielded, and told him I would do my best. There were eighteen Negroes, besides my wife, two children, and myself, to transport nearly a thousand miles, through a country about which I knew nothing, and in mid-winter; for it was the month of February, 1825. My master proposed to follow me in a few months, and establish himself in Kentucky.”

Josiah set himself earnestly about the needful preparations. They were few, and easily made. Fortunately for the success of the questionable undertaking, the Negroes of the plantation fell readily into the scheme. Devotedly attached to him who was to be their leader and guide, because of the many alleviations he had afforded to their miserable condition, the kindly consideration he had always shown to them, and the comforts he had procured them, they readily submitted themselves to his authority. Besides, the dread of being sold away down South, should they remain on the old estate, united them as one man, and kept them patient and alert.

A one-horse waggon was prepared, well stocked with meal and bacon for the support of the party, and oats for the use of the horse. The second night after the scheme was broached they were on their way. They started about eleven o'clock, and made no halt until noon on the following day; for all were anxious to put as great a distance between themselves and the evils that threatened them as possible. The men trudged on foot, the women and children rode in the waggon, and walked alternately, as they were able. On they went through Alexandria, Culpepper, Fanquier, Harper's Ferry, and Cumberland, most of them places rendered familiar by the events of the late civil war, until they arrived at Wheeling. At the taverns along the road they found places prepared for the use of the droves of Negroes that were continually passing along, under the system of the internal slave trade. There they lodged, paying for the accommodation; this being their only expense, as they carried their food with them. When questions were put to them, as was not unfrequently the case, Josiah exhibited the “pass” which his master had given him, authorizing him to conduct his Negroes to Kentucky: his vanity being occasionally gratified when the encomium of “smart nigger” was applied to him.

At the places where they stopped to rest for the night they often met with Negro drivers, and their gangs of slaves, almost uniformly chained to prevent their running away. “Whose niggers are these?” was an inquiry often propounded to Josiah. On being informed, the next inquiry would be, “Where are they going?” “To Kentucky.” “Who drives them?” “Well, I have charge of them,” was Josiah's reply. “What a smart nigger!” was the usual exclamation, accompanied with an oath. “Will your master sell you? Come in, and stop with us.” In this way he was often invited to pass the evening with them inside; their Negroes, meanwhile, lying chained in the pen, while Josiah's party were scattered around at liberty.

Arrived at Wheeling, on the Ohio River, according to the instructions given to him, Josiah sold the horse and waggon, and purchased a large boat, called in that region a yawl, in which he embarked the whole party, and floated down the river. This mode of locomotion was much more agreeable than tramping along, foot-sore, day after day, at the rate they had been limited to ever since leaving home. Very little labour at the oars was necessary, for the current floated them steadily along, and they had ample leisure to rest and recruit their strength.

A great trouble now arose, altogether new and unexpected to Josiah. They were passing along the shore of the State of Ohio, one of the northern free states, and were repeatedly told by persons who entered into conversation with them that they were no longer slaves, but free men, if they chose to be so. At Cincinnati, especially, as soon as they arrived there, crowds of coloured people gathered about them, and almost insisted on the party remaining with them; telling them they were fools to think of going on, and surrendering themselves to a new owner; that now they could be their own masters, and easily put themselves out of reach of pursuit. “It was a great temptation,” said Josiah. “I saw the people under me were getting much excited, and signs of insubordination began to manifest themselves. I began, too, to feel my own resolution giving way. Freedom had ever been an object of my ambition, though no other means of obtaining it but purchasing myself had occurred to me. I had never dreamed of running away. I had a sentiment of honour on the subject. The duties of the slave to his master, as appointed over him in the Lord, I had always heard urged by ministers and religious men; it seemed to me like outright stealing to run away. And now I thought the devil was getting the upper hand of me. The idea was very entrancing that the coast was clear for a run for freedom; that I might liberate my companions, carry off my wife and children, and some day possess a house and land, and be no longer despised and abused as a slave. Still my notions of right were against it. I had promised my master to take his property to Kentucky, and commit it to the care of his brother Amos; and how could I break my word? Pride, too, came in to confirm me in my resolution to be faithful to my master's interests. I had undertaken what appeared to me to be a great thing. My vanity had been flattered all along the road by hearing myself praised. I thought it would be a feather in my cap to carry through this expedition successfully; and I had often painted the scene, in my imagination, of the final surrender of my charge to Master Amos, and the immense admiration and respect with which he would regard me.

“Under these impressions, and seeing that the allurements of the crowd were producing a manifest effect on my charge, I sternly assumed the captain, and ordered the boat to be pushed off into the stream. A shower of execrations at my folly followed me from the shore; but the Negroes under me, accustomed to obey, and, alas! too degraded and ignorant of the advantages of liberty to understand what they were forfeiting, offered no resistance to my command.

“Often since that day has my soul been pierced with bitter anguish at the thought of having been thus instrumental in consigning to the infernal bondage of slavery so many of my fellow beings. I have wrestled in prayer with God for forgiveness of this sin. Having experienced myself the sweetness of liberty, and knowing too well the after misery of numbers of them, my infatuation has seemed to me almost unpardonable. But I console myself with the thought that I acted according to my best light, though the light that was in me was darkness. Those were my days of ignorance. I knew not the glory of free manhood. I was ignorant of the fact that the title of the slave-holder is only robbery and outrage.”

Arrived at the end of the journey, Josiah delivered up his charge to the brother of his owner, Amos Riley, who was the possessor of a large plantation on Big Blackford's Creek, about five miles south of the Ohio River. This was wrought by the labour of between eighty and one hundred slaves. The recommendation which he carried with him from his old master for ability and honesty, and the perseverance, fidelity, and tact which he had shown in bringing his fellow-slaves from Maryland, procured for him the general management of the plantation. His situation was here in some respects an improvement upon that he had left. The farm was larger and more fertile, and there was a greater abundance of food; which was one of the principal elements of comfort in the life of a slave, debarred as he was by his lowly condition from almost all the enjoyments of life, and so nearly reduced to the level of the brutes. “Sufficiency of food,” Josiah remarked, “is a pretty important item in any man's account of life; but is tenfold more so in that of the slave, whose appetite is always stimulated by as much labour as he can perform, and whose mind is little occupied by thought on subjects of deeper interest.”

JOSIAH remained three years on Master Amos's plantation, and during this time his post of superintendent gave him some advantages, of which he was not slow to avail himself, particularly with regard to religion; which, since he had first heard of Christ and Christianity, had occupied his mind continually. We have seen how he was brought under Gospel influences, and became a partaker of the spiritual life which produces so wonderful a transformation of the inner man. In Kentucky he found more numerous opportunities of religious instruction than he had before; attending, whenever he was able, on the preaching of the white ministers as well as the blacks. He also embraced every opportunity of visiting the camp-meetings which were held from time to time in the neighbourhood, pondering carefully and prayerfully what he heard, studying his own heart, and carefully observing the developments of character in those around him. Thus, without being able to read the Word of God for himself, being shrewd, observant, and thoughtful, he acquired a considerable acquaintance with religious truth, and became well grounded in his knowledge of the great plan of redemption, and of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus, as held and taught by the Methodists. Nor was his by any means a solitary instance. Cut off as they were from ordinary advantages of instruction by oppressive laws that punished as a crime the teaching of the art of reading to a slave, many of them, by hearing and the use of memory, and the awakening of the power and habit of thought within them, obtained a knowledge of religion and the Bible that was truly surprising.

Anxious to learn, and eagerly availing himself of all opportunities of listening to expositions of the truth, the nobler faculties of Josiah's nature were aroused and brought into active exercise. He not only thought much, but yearned in pity over the blindness and ignorance in which he saw his fellow slaves around him deeply buried, longing to shed upon their minds the light which had come into and filled his own. It was like fire in his bones. Gradually he became accustomed to take part in the prayer-meetings that he attended, and then to address to those around him the word of exhortation, until he learned by practice how best to arouse and stir up the callous and indifferent to a concern about their souls. God owned his labours, and many poor sinners through his instrumentality were brought to God; and he was abundantly encouraged to improve himself by all means within his reach, and “devote himself,” as he expressed it, “to the cultivation of those harvests which ripen only in eternity.” After being three years thus employed in the improvement and exercise of such gifts as were granted unto him, he was admitted as a preacher by a quarterly conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Josiah's old master, Riley, could not prevail upon his wife to leave her friends in Maryland, and go, as he wished, to settle in Kentucky. Consequently, in the spring of 1828, he sent out an agent to sell all his slaves excepting only Josiah and his family, and to carry back to him the proceeds of the sale. Now it was that Josiah discovered the error of which he had been guilty, in preventing the escape from slavery of so many of his fellow-bondsmen, when they might have so easily stepped into liberty by simply getting out of the boat, and mingling with the crowd who were earnestly persuading them to cast off their bonds. Now he was to behold another of those heart-rending scenes which had been so deeply impressed upon his soul when his mother was made a widow, while still a wife, and bereft of all her children except himself, by the iron selfishness generated under the hateful “institution” that gave man a right of property in his fellow man. Now, again, he was to see husbands and wives, parents and children, severed for ever, and all those affections, which are as strong in the African as in the European, cruelly disregarded and ruthlessly trampled under foot. True, he and his family were to be exempted from a personal share in the calamity, as they were not to be sold. But he was overwhelmed with grief, and self-condemnation, and remorse, when he remembered that, but for his disregard of his own rights and the rights of his fellow slaves, this calamity could not have happened; and, instead of being consigned to the wrongs and cruel oppressions of the South, every one of these husbands and wives, and parents and children, might have been happy and comfortable and prosperous in the land of the free.

“As I surveyed the scene,” he said, “and listened to the groans and outcries of my afflicted companions, the torments of hell seized upon me. My eyes were opened, and the guilty madness of my conduct in preventing them from availing themselves of the opportunity for acquiring freedom, which offered itself at Cincinnati, overwhelmed me. This, then, was the reward and end of all my faithfulness to my master. I had thought only of him and his interests, not of them or their welfare. O! what would I not have given to have had the chance offered once more! And now through me were they doomed to wear out life miserably in the hot and pestilential climate of the far South. Death would have been welcome to me in my agony. From that hour, as I had never done before, I saw through, hated, and cursed, the whole system of slavery. I awoke as from a dream, and one absorbing purpose now occupied my soul—freedom, self-assertion, deliverance from the cruel caprices and fortunes of dissolute tyrants. Once to get away, with my wife and children, to some spot where I could feel that they were indeed mine—where no grasping master could stand between me and them, and arbiter of their destiny—was a heaven yearned after with insatiable longing. For this I prayed with all the fervency of which I was capable: and for this I stood ready to toil and to dissemble, to plot like a fox, or to fight like a tiger. All the nobler instincts of my soul, and all the ferocious passions of my animal nature, were aroused and quickened into vigorous action as they had never been before.”

BEFORE he left the State of Ohio, and set his face towards Montgomery County, in Maryland, where his master resided, Josiah found himself possessed of two hundred and seventy-five dollars, besides the horse and clothes which he had purchased. He was, perhaps, a little unduly elated with his success, and it was with no little satisfaction that about Christmas he rode up to the old house, and found himself again upon the farm where he had been known simply as “Riley's head nigger.”

His master gave him a boisterous reception, and expressed great delight at seeing him, exclaiming in his old, brutal fashion, as he looked upon him, “Why, what the — have you been doing, Sie? You've turned into a regular black gentleman.” Josiah's horse and dress sorely puzzled the master; and Josiah soon saw that it began to irritate him, that he, a slave, should be so much better dressed than his master. “Already,” said Josiah, “the workings of that tyrannical hate with which the coarse and brutal, who have no inherent superiority, ever regard the least sign of equality in their dependents, were visible in his manner. His face seemed to say, ‘I'll take the gentleman out of you pretty soon.’ I gave him such an account of my preaching as, while it was consistent with the truth, and explained my appearance, did not betray to him my principal purpose. He soon asked to see my pass; and, when he found it authorized me to return to Kentucky, handed it to his wife, and desired her to put it in his desk. This manœuvre was cool and startling, for I had not calculated upon it. I seemed to hear the old prison gate clang, and the bolt shoot into the socket once more. But I said nothing, and resolved to manœuvre also.”

After putting his horse in the stable, he returned to the kitchen, where his master told him he was to sleep for the night. “O, how different,” he exclaimed, “from the accommodation which had been afforded to me in the Free States for the last three months, was the crowded room, with its dirt floor, and filth, and stench! I looked around me with a feeling of disgust. The Negroes that I found there were all strangers to me, being slaves that Mrs. Riley had brought to her husband. Fool that I was to come back! The idea of lying down in this nasty sty was insufferable.”

He found that his mother had died and passed to the better land during his absence, and every tie which had ever connected him with the place was broken. Full of gloomy reflections on his loneliness and the poverty-stricken aspect of all around him, he sat down, and while his companions were snoring in unconsciousness, he kept awake, thinking how he should escape from the now wretched spot. He knew but of one friend to whom he could appeal for help—Master Frank, the brother of Riley's wife. Josiah had often done much to relieve his wants, and to lighten his sorrows, when he was an abused and harshly-treated boy in the house; and he had ascertained that the young man, who was now of age, had established himself in business at Washington. To him he resolved to go; and in the morning, as soon as he thought it time to start, he saddled his horse and rode up to the house, thinking it best to put a bold front on the matter, and get back his pass, if practicable. It was early; but the master had already, according to his habit, betaken himself to the tavern. Mrs. Riley came to the door, to look at his horse and equipments. “Where are you going, Siah?” was the natural question. “I am going to Washington, mistress,” he replied. “I want to see Massa Frank, and I must take my pass with me, if you please.” “O, every body knows you here,” she remarked; “you won't need your pass.” “But I can't go to Washington without it, mistress; I may be met by some surly stranger, who will stop me and annoy me, if he cannot do anything worse.” “Well, I'll get it for you,” she answered; and Josiah's heart danced with joy to see her return with it in her hand, and once more to get it in his own possession.

He met with a kind and hearty reception from Master Frank, to whom he at once communicated all his plans and hopes. The young man, who had not outgrown the generous impulses of youth, entered cordially into them, and promised all the assistance in his power. He had not forgotten the friendly services Josiah had rendered to him in former days. He thoroughly detested Riley, whom he charged with having defrauded him of a large portion of the property which he held for him as his guardian. He was not, however, at open war with him; and he readily engaged to negotiate for Josiah's freedom, and bring Riley to the most favourable terms that could be obtained. In a few days he rode over to Riley's house, and had a long conversation with him concerning Josiah's desire to purchase his freedom. “He disclosed to him the facts that I had got some money,” said Josiah, “and that I had regained possession of my pass; and urged upon him that I was a smart fellow who was bent upon getting my freedom. He reminded him that I had served the family faithfully for many years, and had really paid for myself a hundred times over, in the increased amount of produce I had raised by my skill and influence. And he further told him that if he did not take care and accept a fair offer when I made it to him, he would find some day that Sie could do without his help, and he would neither see me nor my money—that with my horse and my pass, and being a smart fellow withal, I was pretty well independent of him already, and he had better make up his mind to do what I desired of him with a good grace.”

By these and similar arguments Mr. Frank not only induced his brother-in-law to think of the thing, but before long brought him to a bargain, by which he agreed to emancipate Josiah, and give him the requisite papers, for four hundred and fifty dollars: of which three hundred and fifty dollars were to be in cash, and the remainder in a promissory note. The cash he had already in hand; and this, with the sale of his horse, enabled Josiah to fulfil the first part of the bargain, and his great hope seemed to be in a fair way of realization.

Some time was spent in this negotiation; but in March he was ready to start on his return to Kentucky, his manumission papers having been made out in due form of law. As he was getting ready for his journey, his master accosted him in the most friendly manner, and entered into conversation with him about his plans for the future. He inquired of Josiah what he was going to do with his certificate of freedom, and whether he would show it if questioned on the road? Josiah replied in the affirmative. “You'll be a fool if you do,” rejoined Riley; “some slave-trader will get hold of it and tear it up, and the first thing you know you'll be thrown into prison, sold for your jail fees, and be in his possession before any friend can help you. Don't show it at all. Your pass is enough. Let me enclose your papers for you, under cover to my brother. Nobody will dare to break a seal, for that is a state-prison matter; and when you arrive in Kentucky you will have it with you all safe and sound.”

For this friendly advice, as Josiah thought it to be, so plausible and reasonable, he felt extremely grateful. He cherished no suspicion. In his own presence Riley enclosed the precious papers in an envelope and several wrappers; and after he had sealed it with three seals, he directed it to his brother, in Davies County, Kentucky, and then handed it to Josiah, who stowed it carefully away in his carpet bag. Then bidding Riley and his wife farewell, he started on foot to Wheeling, where he took the steamboat, and in due time reached his destination. He had various adventures on the way, being several times arrested on suspicion of being a runaway slave. But he always insisted upon being carried before a Magistrate; and showing his pass, which was perfectly regular, he was always at once set at liberty.

Many an instance has occurred of slaves being plundered, over and over again, of the freedom which they had fairly earned and paid for. After devoting themselves for years to toil and saving in order to purchase themselves, and gain the blessing of liberty, they have found themselves betrayed and cheated, and the cup of blessing dashed from their lips just as they supposed themselves about to taste it. Josiah was to experience a bitter trial of this kind. The master who, from his childhood, had reaped all the fruit of his toil, whose substance he had largely increased, and whom he had trusted and paid for his freedom, was a villain—a mean, contemptible swindler—who did not scruple to deceive and defraud the trusting dependent whom he professed to befriend. The boat which took Josiah down the river from Louisville stopped at the landing place just as it was getting dark, and a walk of five miles brought him to the plantation of Amos Riley. He went directly to his own cabin, and found his wife and little ones all well, and expecting his arrival.

He now discovered that letters had arrived at the “great house,” containing information concerning him; and his wife had already learnt that he had been preaching, and had raised money, and made a bargain for his freedom. It was not long before she began to question him on these subjects, being evidently possessed with the idea that he could not have acquired so large a sum of money by honest methods. He soon quieted her fears, by explaining to her how he had met with kind friends, who sympathized with his views, and came forward with their contributions to help him in gaining his freedom.

Satisfied on these points, the anxious wife then proposed the question, “But how are you going to raise enough to pay the remainder of the thousand dollars?” “What thousand dollars?” he inquired. “Why, the thousand dollars you were to give for your freedom.” He was staggered; he trembled, for now he began to suspect some treachery. Again and again he questioned his wife as to what she had heard. She persisted in the same story, saying that it was so stated in his master's letters. Master Amos said that three hundred and fifty dollars had been paid down, and when six hundred and fifty more were paid Josiah was to have his freedom.

“I now began to perceive the trick that had been played upon me,” Josiah said, “and to see the management by which Riley had contrived that the only evidence of my freedom should be kept from every eye but that of his brother Amos, who was instructed to retain it until I had made up the balance I was falsely reported to have agreed to pay. Indignation is a faint word to express my sense of the villany by which I had been victimized. I was alternately beside myself with rage, and paralyzed with despair. My dream of bliss was over. What could I do to set myself right? The only witness to the truth, Master Frank, was a thousand miles away. I could neither write to him nor get any one else to write. Every man about me who could write was a slaveholder. I dared not go before a magistrate with my papers, for fear I should be seized and sold down the river before any thing could be done. I felt that every man's hand would be against me. ‘O! my God! hast Thou forsaken me?’ I was tempted to inquire, in the anguish that overwhelmed my soul.

“One thing was clear; my papers must never be surrendered to Master Amos. I told my wife I had not seen them since I left Louisville; they might be in the bag, or they might be lost. At all events I determined not to see them, and hinted to my wife that the best thing to be done was for her to obtain possession of them, if she could, and keep me in profound ignorance as to the manner in which they were disposed of; so that I might be able to say with truth that the packet had disappeared from my carpet bag, and I could not tell where it was. It was a case in which I thought it no wrong to meet guile with guile.

“The next morning, at the blowing of the horn, I went to find out Master Amos. I found him sitting on a stile, and as I drew near enough for him to recognise me, he shouted out a rough welcome in his own style, ‘Why, halloa, Sie! is that you? Got back, eh! Why, you old. . . . . . . . . I'm glad to see you.’ The blank must be left to the imagination of the reader, as it would scarcely be proper to fill it up. After uttering some coarse expressions, ‘Why,’ he continued, ‘you're a regular black gentleman.’ He surveyed me from head to foot with an appreciative grin, and then proceeded with his remarks, ‘Well, boy, how's your master? Isaac says you want to be free. Want to be free, eh! I think your master treats you pretty hard though; six hundred and fifty dollars don't come so easy in old Kentuck. How does he ever expect you to raise all that? It's too much, boy. It's too much.’ In the conversation that followed I discovered that my wife was right. Riley had no idea of letting me off, and supposed I could contrive to raise six hundred and fifty as easily as one hundred dollars.

“Master Amos soon asked me if I had not a paper for him. I told him I had one when I left Maryland; but the last time I saw it was at Louisville, and now it was not in my bag, and I could not tell him what had become of it. He sent me back to the landing to see if it had been dropped on the way. Of course I had no intention of finding it, and came back and told him it had not been dropped in the path, or if it had some one might have picked it up. He made no stir about it; for he had his own purposes to serve by keeping me at work for himself, and regarded the whole as a trick of his brother's to get money out of me, looking upon it as a sharp and clever act. All he said about the loss of the packet was, ‘Well, boy, bad luck happens to everybody sometimes.’

“But lightly as he treated it, I was in a frenzy of grief at the base trick and the irremediable wrong that had been practised towards me. I had supposed that I should now be free to start out and gain the other hundred dollars, which would discharge my obligations to my owner, and set me free from the curse of slavery. But I found that I was to begin again with my old labours, and the coveted blessing was as far off as ever. Deeply and painfully as I felt the disappointment, it was useless to give expression to my feelings, and I went about my work with as quiet a mind as I could, resolved to trust in God, watch and pray for another opportunity, and never despair.”

FOR about a year things went on in the ordinary way with Josiah, Master Amos frequently joking with him concerning the six hundred and fifty dollars, and saying that his brother kept on writing to know why Josiah did not send him something towards it. But Mr. Amos had no desire to play into the hands of his brother; he was glad enough to get Josiah's profitable services to take care of his stock and people. Neither had he any desire or intention that Josiah should obtain his freedom; and, as events showed, he was meditating the most effectual measures to prevent it.

One day Master Amos suddenly informed Josiah that his son, also named Amos, a young man about twenty-one years of age, was going down the river to New Orleans with a flat-boat laden with produce, and he, Josiah, was to accompany him. This intimation was enough. He knew at once that the intention was to sell him down South, and his heart sank within him at the near prospect of such a fatal blight to all his hopes. With indescribable misery, nearly approaching to despair, he made ready to go on board the flat-boat; but there was one thing that seemed to him important. He requested his wife to sew up his manumission paper, which she had carefully hidden, in a piece of cloth, and to sew that again round his person. Having possession of it might possibly be the means of saving him, and he resolved not to neglect anything that offered the smallest chance of escape from the fearful fate that threatened him.

Josiah never rightly understood the true reason of this movement on the part of Master Amos. He knew that it grew out of a frequent interchange of letters between the two brothers. But whether it was agreed upon by the brothers, as a compromise of their rival claims, to sell Josiah, and divide the proceeds, or whether Master Amos, in fear of his running away, had resolved to dispose of him for his own profit, he never ascertained. The intention to sell him to the South was clear enough, and it was a fearful blow to the intended victim.