Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998

Languages Used:

• English

LC Subject Headings:

• Loguen, Jermain Wesley.
• African Americans -- United States -- Biography.
• Fugitive slaves -- United States -- Biography.
• Abolitionists -- United States -- Biography.
• Slaves -- Tennessee -- Biography.
• Slavery -- Tennessee -- History -- 19th century.
• Plantation life -- Tennessee -- History -- 19th century.
• African Methodist Episcopal Church -- Clergy -- Biography.
• Clergy -- New York -- Syracuse -- Biography.
• Antislavery movements -- New York -- Syracuse -- Biography.
• Syracuse (N.Y.) -- History -- 19th century.
• Underground railroad.
• Slaves' writings, American.

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THE
REV. J. W. LOGUEN, AS
A SLAVE
AND AS
A FREEMAN.
A NARRATIVE OF REAL LIFE.

SYRACUSE, N. Y.:
J. G. K. TRUAIR & CO., STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS,
OFFICE OF THE DAILY JOURNAL.
1859.

TO THE FRIENDS
OF THE
UNDER GROUND RAIL ROAD
IN
AMERICA AND EUROPE

        The subject of this book has had the charge of the Under Ground Rail Road at Syracuse for many years-- therefore we dedicate it to the friends of that Road on both sides of the water, hoping they will be charitable to its blemishes and defects, and countenance its circulation to the extent of its merits.

THE EDITOR.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
REV. J. W. LOGUEN,
in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States
for the Northern District of New York.

PREFACE.

        Every book has its preface. A book without a preface, would be like a city without a directory, or an animal with part only of the organs necessary to its existence.

        We have proposed to write the Biography of Rev. JERMAIN WESLEY LOGUEN, and we have given its features in the following pages accurately. We took the features from him and filled up the picture. We began with his parents, infancy, childhood, and traced him from the Southern prison through the wilderness, and Canada, and back to the United States again, to fight the enemy all through the anti-slavery war to the end of the Jerry Rescue--giving the particulars of that Rescue, with the names of persons engaged in it, on one side and on the other.

        The latter half of the life of Mr. Loguen stands out before the world. The other half is buried in the cimmerian night of slavery. Defective as is our taste

and ability in giving the former, it will be allowed that we have been true to it, because the world has seen it. It is that portion in the folds of slavery only that may be questioned and criticised. It will be more likely to be questioned, because some few facts, circumstances, and discourse, not connected with Mr. LOGUEN'S experience with slavery, have been supplied to connect the real facts of his life, and furnish variety for the reader. Whoever reads such portion, or any portion of this book will remember, that not a fact relating to his, or his mother's, or brother's, or sister's experience with slavery, is stated, that is not, literally or substantially, true. Those facts were history before they were written; and they were written because they were history.

        We have adopted the popular form or style in our narrative, in respect to popular taste; and, as aforesaid, occasionally supplied vacancies in his southern life from our own fancy; but in every case that we have done so, the picture is outside Mr. LOGUEN'S experience with slavery--and the picture, be it fact, opinion, or argument, may be adopted, and all we have given as his slave life will remain true. The reader, therefore, will test every such case by the question-- "Does it involve Mr. LOGUEN'S experience of slavery, or that of his mother, or family, or any one else?"

If it does involve one or the other of them, it is substantially, if not literally, true, as related.

        Again. For obvious reasons, we have not always used real names when writing of real persons; for we would not involve living friends, or their families, for their good deeds. We refer now to Mr. LOGUEN'S life in Tennessee, not to his life in New York, or Canada. In Tennessee, slavery rules the tongue, the press, and the pen. In New York and Canada, these are given to free judgment and discretion. At the north, men are answerable for such judgment and discretion to the law only. At the south, they are amenable to an overgrown monster that devours alike law and humanity. At the south, we give Mr. LOGUEN'S connection with slavery, and therefore conceal names. At the north, we give his connection with liberty, and therefore give names of friends and enemies alike.

        Because the circuit of Mr. LOGUEN'S activities has been large, we have necessarily followed him all around the course; and have been obliged briefly to note the growth of public opinion in favor of freedom, until freedom snapped her cords in Syracuse, and in the country around Syracuse, and in other places. In doing so, we have given particulars, and used the names of friends and foes with absolute truthfulness.

        Though we have spoken freely, we doubt not there

were other persons, equally, if not more deserving of honorable notice, than some we have named. Modest and retiring men are often most effective when bravery and strength are needed, but, nevertheless, they blush at a record of their own qualities. They vote, or strike, and retire out of sight. When justice opens a picture gallery to display the faces of those who have done much for African freedom, we shall see many noble faces in it, which are now obscure, in our villages and towns. If an artist would pass through those villages and towns, and engrave those faces in a book over a sketch of their deeds and lives, he would have a book posterity would love to look at. It would be a book of great thoughts, great hearts, and great men--men who were the receptacles in the body politic, to receive the inflowing life of Heaven, and diffuse it over the system, and bring it to life again--the real Saviours of the country.

        We have put into the mouths of some of the characters, religious counsels, ideas, opinions, and sentiments, which may not, and of course cannot, coincide with the divided and distracted theories of the age. All we ask of the reader in regard to these, is, that he will be as charitable to them, as they are to him. Those counsels, ideas, opinions, and sentiments, are responsible only to truth, and conscience, and reason;

and we kindly ask the reader to submit them to those heavenly vicegerents, and not charge them as a sin upon the Editor, or anybody else.

        But the enquiry may be made--"What is the call for such a book; are we to have a book for every man or woman who is good and useful among their fellows?" Our answer is, it would be well if we had. This is not only a reading age, but it is a new age, and it is well to occupy our youth with its philosophy and facts. Men do not think, or labor, or travel, or live, as they did fifty years ago ; and still the change is onward. For a long time invisible mental powers have been turning society on its hinges to let in a new dispensation of learning, religion, and life. There is a spring in all departments of humanity for a "long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together," to move mankind on to a higher and a better level; and our young readers should know that colored men furnish a quota of the mental and physical muscle that produces the motion. Society is in process of incubation, and we should know whence is the heat and substance that embody and cherish the embryo. We should keep an eye on the formative elements, to see what portion is subsiding and dying, and what portion is combining to form the substance and life of the coming age. The African element contributes largely to the

causes that agitate mankind, and must have its place in the product. The vital powers are attracted to it by force of the charities that make them vital, and are amalgamating with that element to form a new basis for society--a basis on which it will stand in the order of heaven, humanity, and religion--when men may look at it, and not start back affrighted.

        We have come, therefore, to consider and honor a new element in the social state, and for that reason a man like Mr. LOGUEN becomes a subject of speculative and philosophical enquiry. At such a time, colored men are divine instrumentalities for Divine ends. Hence, so many, of them have dodged their masters and their chains,--broken through the clouds, and become conspicuous in the intellectual and moral firmament.

        In a mere preface, it becomes us not to anticipate history ; but in answer to the question, "Why should the history of LOGUEN be written?" we may say, that though God has distinguished other colored men, by genius, learning, eloquence, and high deserts, he has distinguished LOGUEN more than all others with that noble and enlightened courage, which, at the earliest moment, turned upon the tyrant and defied his power. Instantly upon the fugitive slave enactment, and before that even, he proclaimed, with a voice that was heard

throughout slavedom--"I am a fugitive slave from "Tennessee. My master is Manasseth Logue--the "letter of the law gives him a title to my person--and "let him come and take it. I'll not run, nor will I "give him a penny for my freedom." He was an example of courage to white and black men alike, to set slave laws at defiance, and trample them under his feet,--at a time, too, when such an example was needed, to mesmerise the drowsy spirits of both classes, and move them to break the crust which pro-slavery usages formed over them, and let the waters of life flow freely.

        It needs little observation to see that the tide of affairs has reached the point, when men of power are needed, with moral courage to face the false and selfish, and in regard to slavery, the devilish policy and usages of the world, and avow in a manner to arrest the attention and legislation thereof, that "Human Rights" are the limits of Divine, and, of course, of all human law,--and that all enactments beyond those limits are void. Precisely at this point in the order of Providence, the men, the God-appointed men to do so, appear. We need not name them. Some of them are among the dead, many of them are among the living. They are the lights of the age, and saviors of the country --the monarchs of progress, in politics, in morals,

and religion. By these, politics, and morals, and religion, are being regenerated, and society is evidently in prosperous effort to attain its natural and heavenly basis.

        But if men are selected and gifted to impress the law of freedom, it is needful also that somebody be gifted with the sublime qualities, that shall lead him in defiance of penalties, to tread upon the enactments and constitutions that transgress such law. Pity, amazing pity, there are so few among white men gifted and commissioned to do so. As if to vindicate the deserts and dignity of all races, God has taken from the ranks of the severest bondage, JERMAIN W. LOGUEN, representing equally the blood of the slave-holder and the blood of the slave, the extremes of inverted humanity, and qualified and commissioned him, and made him alone conspicuous among black men, and most conspicuous among all men, practically and personally, to nullify all slave laws, and boldly to defy the enemies of human rights to enforce them.

        Therefore, his name is entitled to a place upon the record.

J. W. LOGUEN.

CHAPTER I.

        We must devote a brief chapter to the parents of Mr. Loguen.

        The genealogy of an American Slave may be traced with certainty to the mother, rarely to the father, never beyond them on the male line. It is the condition of the mother de facto that makes the slave. She is mother de lege only to the intent that her offspring may be an outlaw. As to the progenitor on the male side, he is rarely known as the father in fact, never in law. The slave has no father. Slave legislation has no use of a paternal line, and refuses to acknowledge one. It acknowledges a mother; not in respect to any natural relation, but for accommodation, as the medium of titles, not of affections and obligations. Legally speaking, the slave has neither father or mother.

        Slavery, of course, has no records of conjugal relations. Should the clairvoyant translate and publish the secrets of its history, the domestic relations of the

South would be broken up, and society sink in the abyss of vulgar passions. It owes its existence to the fact that its sexual history is faintly shadowed in the varied colors of the abused race.

        It is hardly proper to pass by those familiar truths, while placing upon the record the life and character of Jermain W. Loguen. It is to be presumed that his physical, intellectual and moral qualities, partake of the character of his ancestors, and that they were modified by the influences that surrounded his childhood.

        The mother of Mr. Loguen is a pure African. Her skin is jet black, and her hair short and curled to the head. She is now, if living, near as can be determined, about seventy years of age. In her youth and maturity her face was fair, and her features marked and regular--her bodily proportions large, symmetrical, round, and muscular--presenting a model of health and strength, and a specimen of the best of her race.

        Of her parents and kindred of any kind, she is perfectly ignorant. The extent of her recollection is, that she was free in her infancy, in the guardianship of a man in Ohio, by the name of McCoy, with whom she lived until about seven years of age. She remembers that she was out of sight and hearing of Mr. McCoy's house, alone, when she was such little girl, and that a bad man got out of a covered wagon and took her into it with one hand about her body and the other upon her mouth to prevent her screams--that when she got into the wagon, he held her in his lap, and told the teamster to drive on--that there were several other little colored children in the wagon with her--and

that they were taken over the river together in a boat; probably into Kentucky.

        This story she often repeated to her son, and kindled in his boyhood the intensest indignation against the institution which so outraged the mother he loved. All other memories were drowned in the sorrows and terrors, which at that time overwhelmed her spirit, and the brutal associations and treatment she received afterwards.

        Thus all recollection of parents, kindred and friends of every hind, were merged in the clouds which the kidnappers drew about her; and she has not heard the name of any one of them pronounced from that day to this. She is as if she never had any parents, or kindred, or, as if they were all buried and forgotten. That she was once free, she has the most distinct remembrance, and a flickering recollection of happy days in early childhood, still faintly illumines the dark horizon of her memory.

        She does not remember the precise number of wretched little children, boys and girls, who were in the wagon with her, but thinks they were about her age, and all involved in the intensest grief, She remembers that their cries and sobs, like her own, were silenced by the terrors of the lawless villains who had them in charge.

        We may be allowed to remark that these colored orphans illustrate the helplessness of the whole colored race, in a country where slavery is guarded as lawful and sacred. In proportion as slavery has the protection of law, do the persons of all colored men, women

and children, lose the protection of law. As the condition of the former is hopeful and secure, is the latter desperate and exposed to outrage. Not only does the colored man suffer from the contempt and insolence of the favored class, but his or her person is outlawed to the limited and unlimited abuses of the conscienceless men who make them their prey. Developments of such enormities, incidentally and occasionally appear, as specks of light through "the blanket of the dark" upon the black volume which is out of sight.

        These unhappy little ones were at the age, when. childhood carols its joys with the birds, and bounds like lambs in the pastures at the touch of angels. For long and weary days and nights, not a motion or sound of delight, not a joyous look or laugh varied their depression and wretchedness. The oblivion of sleep was the only solace of the little sufferers; and even this was often tortured by the pressure of misery, and the silence of night broken by their sighs and sobs. Whether, like the mother of Mr. Loguen, they were stolen from their parents, or purchased from those who should have protected them, is unknown. Their story is untold or it is forgotten, and their history is a secret only to him who gathered little children in his arms to represent the kingdom of God.

        After they passed the river, the kidnappers sold them, one after another, as they could light of purchasers on the road. The mother of Mr. Loguen was left or sold to three brothers, David, Carnes, and Manasseth Logue, who lived in a small log house on

Manscoe's Creek, (so called) in Davison county, about sixteen miles from Nashville, Tennessee. They were large, rough, and demi-civilized young men, the unmarried owners of a miserably cultivated plantation, and (what was at that time in that part of the country of better repute than a school or meeting house,) a whiskey distillery.

        Whether these brothers were a link of a chain of kidnappers, extending through a part or the whole of the free and slave states, and claimed the poor girl as a Pirate's portion; or whether they purchased her for money or other thing, she does not know. Of one thing she is certain, so soon as the ruffians left her, she had an interview with her purchasers which made a lasting impression upon her person and memory.

        There was nothing in the aspect or conduct of the Logues that showed aught but sympathy for her manifest wretchedness. Such was the tenderness and concern with which, at first, they seemed to be touched, and the obvious natural humanity which in their countenances, concealed and gilded the quiet ferocity of their natures, that she ventured to tell them how she was stolen, in the hope that they would return her back to her friends in Ohio. She had but begun the story when every expression of sympathy vanished, and their faces were covered with frowns. Their kind words changed into threats and curses. Nor was this all, or the worst. One of them took a slave whip that hung on the wall of the cabin and whipped her. Of course she could but beg and suffer, and at the conclusion

promise she would never again repeat the offensive fact of her freedom.

        Thus was this innocent child, according to the customary mode in such cases, metamorphosed from a human being into a chattel. To cover the transaction and make the change more complete, the name by which she had always been called, "Jane," was taken from her, and that of "Cherry," the name by which she has ever since been called and known, was given her.

        Of course it is not the intent to give more of the history of this woman than shall serve to illustrate the maternal influences which nourished the spirit of her son. Though the enchanter's wand touched and changed her into a slave de facto, the terrible lesson did but adjust her habits to a prudential exterior. While it checked the growth of the sympathies and virtues of artless childhood, it awakened and strengthened animal energies, which under better influences had ever slept. The Logues intended her for a useful slave. The whipping and threats and extorted promise were designed for that end--and whether they were aware she had been stolen or not, her treatment would have been the same. They had no unkindness farther than they intended that neither her tongue or name should lead to evidence, by accident or intent, by which they might be deprived of their property; all memory of which they hoped would be overgrown by the habits of servile life.

        Free colored persons have no right or privilege beyond a permitted residence in slave states, and such

residence gives them nothing that deserves, the name of protection from the wrongs of white men. The kidnapping and enslaving this little girl therefore, could not be looked upon as very bad, by men like the Logues, and the body of slaveholders, whose morals and humanity are so inverted, is to suppose, that by making her a slave, they raised her from the lowest to a higher condition, and furnished her with protection and privileges riot to be enjoyed in a state of freedom. This fact will be illustrated in the course of our history, and we have mentioned it, incidentally, to relieve the Logues from the inference that their principles and habits were barbarous beyond public sentiment and the laws of the land.

        Not slaveholders only, but slaves in the slave breeding States, as a general truth, regard theirs as a favored position, compared with the condition of free colored men and women at the South. Mr. Loguen, whose biography we write, is not the only one who says from experience, "If I must live in a slave State, let me be a slave."

        Thus was Jane, who we shall hereafter call "Cherry, at the age of seven, robbed of all her rights, even of a knowledge or the names of her parents, and every one of her kindred, and placed under the tutelage of the rude habits and passions, and unscrupulous avarice of David, Carnes, and Manasseth Logue. These three brothers, lived with their widowed mother in a small log house, and Cherry was put in a pretty cabin, with other slaves, a little distance from them.

        As her physical strength developed, she became their

main dependence, in the house, the distillery, and in the field. Without losing her feminine proportions, she grew to a masculine hardihood. Among her other accomplishments, she became export in the art of manufacturing whiskey, and was often employed day and night with other slaves in the distillery. On the plantation there was no hard service, whether it was driving the oxen, loading, lifting, plowing, hoeing or any other thing, to which she did not do a man's days' work. There was no man on the plantation, upon whom her masters more depended in all the departments of labor, and at all times, and in all weathers.

        Cherry had now arrived at the condition her masters desired her to occupy. She was a faithful, skilful and able slave. She however felt the condition as a necessity, and submitted to it with the same contentment that the young Leopard feels under the restraints that cages and tames him. Her natural disposition was gentle, affectionate, kind, and confiding; but these qualities reposed upon a spirit, which, when roused and chafed, was as resolute and indomitable as the tigress in the jungles. She know no fear, and submitted only to passion, interest, and necessity. Nothing but the lamb-like sympathies she always manifested under decent treatment, and her inestimable personal services, saved her from the legal and usual consequences of desperate resistance to those who would outrage her person.

        It is believed that ten thousand slaves have been whipped to death, shot, or otherwise murdered, for transgressions no half so offensive as hers. But

ignorant and brutal as were her masters, they respected alike the natural loveliness of her affections, and her indomitable impulses under wrongs, which no chastisement could subdue. But what most contributed to her safety, was the fact, that she was a first class laborer and slave breeder, and finally the mistress of David Logue, the youngest of the three.

        This spirit of resistance, caused her many and some bloody battles and scourgings--the marks of which she will carry on her person while she lives. She would never allow a woman or any number of women to whip her. Nor could she be subdued by any ordinary man. When women sometimes inconsiderately engaged with her, they were obliged to call in a posse of stout men to bind her.

        Jermain W. Loguen, whose heart even now, is as tender as a child to the touch of pity, when a little boy, and afterwards, has seen her knocked down with clubs, stripped and bound, and flogged with sticks, ox whips and rawhide, until the blood streamed down the gashes upon her body. When released from the place of torture, she never retired with a subdued spirit, but passed from a scourging to her labors like a sullen tigress. Her habits and character in this regard will be more unfolded in connection with the life of her son.

        Compelled, as she was, to endure violence from her masters, and comparatively cautious in resisting them, she never endured it from others. White or black, male or female, if they attempted liberties with her person, against her consent, she not only resisted, but

fought with a spirit and force proportioned to her own estimate of her rights and wrongs.

        In describing the person of Cherry in the ripeness of robust youthful development, it may be inferred she was not destitute of attractions for the casual lust of the vulgar slaveholders who lived along the banks of Manscoe's Creek. The black distillery was the common resort of that class of lawless men. David, Manasseth, and Carnes Logue, her masters, were of the same class. They were all hard drinkers, and the distillery was a convenient place for coarse enjoyment and low carousals.

        Though Cherry made the fire-water, she never drank it. Her nights and days were often spent at work in the distillery, and of course she was in the sight and hearing of these vulgar men, and often the subject of their brutal remarks. But outside the family of Logues, woe to the hand laid upon her person with lascivious intent. The body of a female Slave is outlawed of course to the white man. All the law she has is her own arm, and how Cherry appreciated that law may be illustrated by the following incident.

        When she was about the age of twenty-four or five, a neighboring planter finding her alone at the distillery, and presuming upon the privileges of his position, made insulting, advances, which she promptly repelled.

        He pursued her with gentle force, and was still repelled. He then resorted to a slaveholder's violence and threats. These stirred all tigers blood in her veins. She broke from his embrace, and stood before him in bold defiance.

        He attempted again to lay hold of her--and careless of caste and slave laws, she grasped the heavy stick used to stir the malt, and dealt him a blow which made him reel and retire. But be retired only to recover and return with the fatal knife, and threats of vengeance and death. Again, she aimed the club with unmeasured force at him, and hit the hand which held the weapon, and dashed it to a distance from him. Again he rushed upon her with the fury of a madman, and she then plied a blow upon his temple, which laid him, as was supposed, dead at her feet.

        This incident, though no portion of the biography of her son, is introduced to show the qualities of the woman who bore him, and which those acquainted with him will infer she imparted to him. This, and like scenes, formed the cradle in which the infant spirit of Jermain W. Loguen was rocked.

        Cherry, unterrified by the deed we have related, did not flee to escape the application of the severe laws she had violated by striking a white man. She left the now passionless and apparently lifeless villain, bleeding not only from the wound inflicted, but from his nose and ears also, to inform her masters of the encounter, and meet the consequences. She told them she had killed the wretch, and the whole family of Logues hastened to the distillery to look, as they supposed, upon the face of their dead neighbor. They found him laying in his gore. But upon raising him and washing his wounds, he showed signs of life, though it seemed likely he would [die.]

        To curtail a story which may seem an interpolation,

after the most unremitting care and skilful attention of the best surgeons and physicians they could procure-- and after the lapse of many weeks, during which time be was stretched on a sick bed, and racked by pains and fevers--after drinking to the dregs as severe a cup as ever touched a slaveholder's lips, he recovered.

        In the meantime Cherry was shielded from harm, partly by the shame of her violator--partly by her masters' sense of justice--more because they had a beastly affection for her as a family chattel--more still because they prized her as property--but most of all because she was the admitted mistress of David Logue, the father of Jermain, then about six years of age.

        He (Jermain) well remembers the case and the excitement produced by it in the family and neighborhood. His memory was refreshed with the rehearsal of it for years by the family and the negroes.

        When Cherry arrived at about the age of twenty- eight, she was the mother of three children. To this period, she had never passed through the ceremonial sham of a negro marriage, but for years, as stated above, had been the admitted mistress of David Logue, the father of her children.

        Here we may be permitted to record a fact well known at the south, and allowed by most white men, and by all slaves, to wit: that a young negress is often her master's mistress, until childbearing and years render it tasteful or convenient to sell the offspring from his sight, and exchange her for another victim. Such

was the relation Cherry sustained to David Logue, and such too her fate.

        At this point we drop the mother to consider briefly the character of the father.

        It is rarely possible for a slave to identify his father with so much certainty as in this case. In a society where promiscuous intercourse is allowable, as at Manscoe's Creek, the chastity of white men of course does not transcend the chastity of black women; and the conspicuity of virtue, is apparent, only, in the fidelity of the slave girl to her condition of mistress. On this point the conduct of Cherry was a bright example and her fidelity to that relation was confessed and allowed, not by the parties only, but by the family and neighborhood.

        Jarm, as Mr. Loguen was called when a slave, remembers when a very little child he was the pet of Dave, as his father wits also nicknamed, that he slept in his bed sometimes, and was caressed by him--he also received from him many little favors and kindnesses which won his young heart. As his body and features grew to fixedness and maturity, all who knew them both, instantly recognized a personal, and even a spiritual resemblance.

        On his recent visit to the fugitive slaves in Canada, Mr. Loguen met a fugitive from the neighborhood of his old master in Tennessee. She informed him that she was struck with his resemblance to his father-- that his size and form--his walk and motions, every thing but his hair and complexion, was a striking expression of him--that from his walk, alone, she should

take him for the same man at a distance, if his face was concealed.

        Thus was Mr. Loguen taught by his mother, by the treatment of his infancy, by the admitted fact in the family and neighborhood, by family resemblance, not of person only, but as we shall see by the impulses of his spirit, that David Logue was his veritable father.

        With his other brothers, David lived at the paternal mansion of their widowed mother, when Cherry came into their possession. They were all three, young men. David, the youngest, probably not over eighteen years of age. Jermain never saw or heard of a schoolhouse or school, or meeting house, at Manscoe's Creek, nor does he believe there were either. Many of the planters were ignorant of letters. Their Sundays were spent in sport and dissipation. Their agriculture resembled the Indian culture on the Onondaga Reservation in the State of New York. Mr. Loguen never passes through that Reservation in the Summer, without being sensibly reminded of the scenes of his childhood. The houses were all log houses, and the people even more destitute than the Indians of the means of intellectual, moral, and religious culture.

        Nevertheless, the father of Mr. Loguen was not devoid of noble and generous impulses. He was full six feet high, sprightly in the use of abundant muscle; an impulsive, drinking, and chivalrous rowdy--unscrupulous in his pleasures--but ever ready to help a friend or smite a foe. Had be been cast amid the privileges of northern culture, instead of the creature of passion and indulgence that he was, his excellent physical and

intellectual qualities might have blossomed into the highest use--the public might have honored him as a benefactor, and Jermain loved and revered him as a father. Even now, bowed down, as it is said he is, by poverty and dissipation, it would be a real pleasure to Mr. Loguen to contribute to his father's necessities--and help the infirmities of his sin smitten and rapidly declining age.

        We need not dwell longer upon the father and mother of Mr. Loguen. We have given enough for the purposes of our story, and their character and condition, will, of course, be further illustrated by facts to appear in the history.

CHAPTER II.

        In the ordinary and acknowledged relations of life, the mere naked facts attending the infancy of any man or woman, are the farthest removed from romance or interest. They must be the result of an individual or social departure from the order of nature, to claim a slight attention. Nevertheless, we must devote a little, attention to the infancy of Loguen.

        The fact that shocks us in the infancy of a southern slave, is, that its story cannot be told. No facilities are provided to mark its steps or preserve its memories. A slave baby is the offspring of brute passion

and the subject of brute neglect and suffering. It claims no greater sympathy and care than any other animal of the sty or the field. The angels, who delight to touch the delicate fibres of the brain, and communicate the joys of heaven, and paint them on an infant's face, are driven away by oppression, that the most perfect medium of Gods, converse *** conjunction, with man may be tortured and distorted by devils. Black and damning will be the record of the crimes and cruelties by which thousands of these little innocents are let into heaven.

        The above remarks are made, not because they apply to the infancy of Mr. Loguen, for they do not--but because they do apply, as a general truth, to the great body of children who are born as Mr. Loguen was. We should do injustice to history, did we present his infancy or childhood other than as an exception to the general rule. He has every reason to believe that his infancy was cared for by the strongest maternal affection consistent with his mother's servitude, guarded as he believes it was by the instincts of a lawless, but naturally susceptible father. Multitudes of kindnesses partialities, and unquestionable loves, are indelibly written upon his memory, which he thinks contributed to the formation of his character. They are lessons which even now temper and molify his passions, as he sees them through the sorrows and trials and outrages and storms that are piled upon his pathway.

        "Jump on my back, Jarm," half whispered Dave, as, rifle in hand, he stepped lightly down the bank of the creek where little Jarm was playing with the pebbles,

suiting his bulky frame to the body of a child three or four years old.

        Well did the child understand the accustomed ceremony, and he clasped his little arms upon his father's shoulders.

        "Be still now--say not a word and you shall see me shoot a deer."

        "Where is a deer?" said the child, while Dave neared a bunch of bushes, and pointed to an animal the former took for a pet calf which had grown up under his eye, and for which he cherished a child's regard.

        "Don't say a word now--you will scare the deer away if you do," repeated Dave.

        Jarm was obedient, while Dave with his load, which which was scarce more than a fly on a giant's shoulder, crept slyly into the jungle, and crouching by a log, rested his rifle on it, and drove a bullet through the body of file beautiful animal. The deer with dying energy, leaped and poured his mortal bleat upon the air, then staggered and fell.

        Poor little Jarm was in an exstacy of grief, and made the plantation echo with his screams, and brought the whole swarm of whites and blacks to his relief. His cry was "He has killed the calf," "he has killed the calf." Even old "Granny," as Jarm called the mother of the Logues, hearing the screams, came to see what mattered the little favorite chattel.

        Ere they assembled, Dave had the game, bleeding from the deep gash his knife had made in the throat,

at the feet of the child, and was soothing him with the tenderness of a father's love.

        The boy soon saw his mistake, and was laughed and petted into a tremulous composure; but the shock of seeming cruelty made an indelible impression on his spirit and memory. To others, it was an amusing and vanishing incident--to Jarm, it was a lesson of life.

        Life, truly and philosophically speaking, is the form and embodiment of thoughts and affections. In its uninterrupted current from the uncreated fountain, it creates and vivifies material receptacles in the form of angels, and also of all that is healthful, beautiful, lovely, innocent and correspondent of heaven, in animal and vegetable nature. But when that current is intercepted, and passes through the medium of infernal loves, it creates and vivifies other receptacles of monstrous forms. Hence all the noxious plants, and loathsome insects, and poisonous reptiles, and ferocious animals, and hateful men, correspondent, all, to the varied passions of Hell. Hence the slaveholder and the slave.

        The life of little Jarm blossomed in the shape of an angel, but receptive of the disordered affections and monster passions around him. The problem must be solved, whether he should resist those surrounding affections and passions, and preserve his virgin life, or be deformed into a monster. The incident just related was the first shock upon his spirit which he remembers. It is introduced to show the condition of his childhood, but may be noted as the commencement of incidents which were to form his manhood. The forms of feeling and consequent combinations of thought, which are

the life of a child, manufacture the spiritual cable which holds him amidst the storms and tempests of the world, or leaves him a wreck upon its waves. To change the figure, they are the causes which ultimate the hero, the despot and the slave.

        The first ten years of Jarm's life was to him a period of much freedom. He was as well fed and housed as any other little savage. A single loose, coarse cotton garment covered his burly body, and he was left in summer to hunt mice and chipmunks, catch little fishes, or play with the ducks and geese in the creek, and tumble down and sleep in the sun or shade if he was weary; and in the winter, covered only by the same garment, to sit in the corner and parch corn, scatter it among the fowls and pigs, (his peers in the sphere of plantation rights) and occasionally ride on Dave's back or trot by his side, to the great house, (about the size of a moderate log cabin on the Onondaga Reserve) and have a frolic with him and "Granny," and perhaps stay over night.

        It was the only schooling he ever enjoyed--for he was left to his own thoughts and invisible instructors. And though doubtless he came to as valuable intellectual results as any boy, it must be confessed the school was better adapted to physical than mental development. His tender muscles swelled and hardened with the severity of his voluntary exercise, and no boy on the plantation or in the neighborhood, black or white, could measure strength with him. Personally, he suffered no treatment from his masters which hinted to him that he was a slave.

        But he was at school, and was not to eat and drink, and sleep and grow only--but to think also. The story of the deer was the first item in life's reality, gently pictured on the Canvas, which, ere long, was to be covered with black, ugly, and unendurable forms. As the days and months increased, the items multiplied. He saw little boys and girls brutally handled for deeds, and even no deeds, which he knew would not attract censure had he been the subject. In his day dreams, it puzzled him to know why he was secure and petted, while they were insecure and abused.

        Forbearance and forgiveness, or any of the virtues of charity, find little root in the soil of slavery; but passion, revenge and violence come up as in a hot bed, and are familiar to every eye. The oft repeated sights, instead of darkening, sharpened the eye of Jarm, and stimulated his enquiry. They made him think the more. When, as near as he can guess, he arrived at the age of seven or eight years, loitering on the bank of the creek at the close of a summer's day, he saw his mother coming with unusual steps. It was obvious to Jarm that she was in distress, for her head, usually erect, was downcast, and her sighs and sobs were borne almost noiselessly on the light wind to the heart of her son.

        "What is the matter?" with animated voice exclaimed Jarm.

        The poor woman, absorbed by grief, had not noticed her darling; and was even thinking not to shock his young heart by appearing before him, until the depression which bent her down, and the crimson signals

upon her person, had disappeared in the waters of Manscoe's Creek. The idea came too late. All trembling with indignant sorrow, surprise and love, at the sight of her boy, she rushed towards him, raised him from the ground, and pressing him to her bosom exclaimed in a voice of hysteric earnestness:

        "Oh my poor boy, what will become of you?"

        Jarm felt there was sadness and significance in her emphasis, altogether unusual, which, with the tremulous pressure of her embrace communicated a nervous sympathy to his heart, and was already changing his spirit by the influx of a new idea.

        "What is the matter, mother, and what makes you bloody?" instantly asked the little boy.

        "You will understand such things too soon. Don't ask me about it," replied the mother, as she sat him on his feet again, and let fall a drop of blood from her brow on the face of the child.

        He wiped the stain away on his coarse shirt, and plied the enquiry with a concern which could not be resisted.

        Fearing he would pursue the subject at the house, with the slaves, with Dave, and even with Carnes, and thereby involve himself and perhaps forfeit his future security by an alarming independence which was increasing with his years, and which was less likely to be indulged as her attractions and intimacy with Dave were failing, she determined to improve the occasion for his benefit. She trembled lest his unrestrained spirit should be an inconvenience to her oppressors, and that Dave would consent to the breaking it, by the

same brutal treatment that other little colored children of the plantation suffered--or what was worse, that they would sell him at a distance to rid themselves of an annoyance--therefore she determined to satisfy his enquiries, and if possible, determine him to a prudent silence.

        "Where is Jane?" a little girl two years younger than Jarm.

        "I have just sent her to the house with the babe," replied Jarm--"but what is the matter, mother? do tell me."

        "Well, I will tell you" said she, "and I tell you that you may not speak of it to anybody, and especially that you do not let Mannasseth, Carnes, or even Dave, know that you know it. If you should speak to them about it, they will not treat you so well as they have done; and I fear they may whip you as they whip me; and what is very dreadful, I fear they will sell you to the slave drivers and I shall never see you again."

        Cherry had not yet known the deep grief of parting with any of her children, and the fear of that heart- rending experience often tortured her spirit. She knew there was no dependence upon Manasseth and Carnes, and that her peril increased with the increasing dissipation and consequent embarrassment of all the white Logues.

        Jarm had never seen his mother stricken, and his blood boiled when she gave the cause of her wounds and misery, and he asked fiercely "who whipped you?"

        Cherry had effectually roused the indignation of her boy, and saw before her precisely the presence she

feared he would one day exhibit to her masters, in view of the outrages inflicted on her or on himself. A change of relations which was being more apparent every day, made it not unlikely he would manifest the same spirit to them, and bring on himself one of those awful flagellations employed to crush the budding manhood of a slave. No premonition warns the undisciplined wretch of his fate. A display of just feeling and manly spirit, precisely what Cherry now saw in the swelling muscles of her son, was sufficient to subject him to cruel torture. To be a slave, he must cease to feel that he is a man.

        The evidence of deep feeling which her words and appearance produced in the child, induced her to make him acquainted with his true condition, so far as he could comprehend it, and if possible set him on guard against invisible dangers.

        In answer to his enquiry, "who whipped you?" she said Carnes struck her on the head, and made the wound from which the blood dropped. She said that Mannasseth and Carnes often whipped her, and even Dave had lately treated her roughly. She explained to him, his and her helpless condition--how she was stolen when a little child like himself, and left with "Granny," and the white Logues--how she was cruelly whipped for innocently stating her case to excite their justice and pity--and again charged him, with great earnestness, not to let it be known at the house that she had told him this, or that he knew anything about it--assuring him, that if the white Logues knew she had told him these things, they would whip him also,

and may be sell him to the slave drivers, as they did little "Charley and Fanny," a few weeks previous. She told him that though Dave and old Granny now loved him, they would certainly hate him, if he pestered them with complaints regarding her wrongs--and that his doing so would bring upon her greater wrongs, and in the end upon himself the most terrible chastisement, and perhaps they would sell him away from her forever.

        Jarm was now fully possessed of one other shocking idea, which though it determined his prudence as it excited his pity and fear, did not repress the swelling and burning current in his veins, which swept before it every lamb-like feeling. The case of the deer, shocked his pity deeply, but did not forbid utterance--but now, at the sight of his mother brutally mutilated, suffering, and bleeding, he was taught to stifle his sympathies and passions, clamoring, swelling, and almost bursting his heart for utterance. The incident was burned into his memory by the fire it kindled, and the incident and the fire will remain there forever.

        Cherry went with him to the creek and washed the stains away as well as she could, then assuming an erect and cheerful position as possible, took her course, towards the cabin, requesting him to wait a while, and then follow on. Her interview with Jarm was a relief to her sad heart--she partook of her coarse meal, bugged her babe to her breast, and then care-worn and weary, cast herself on her bed of straw, and lapsed into oblivious and healing sleep.

        Not so Jarm. This second chapter in the slave's

life, weighed upon his spirits and disturbed him. He was not old enough to comprehend its full import, but his understanding was sufficiently mature to receive and plant it deep in his memory, and shape his manners to its terrible demands. It had full possession of him, and it was sometime ere sleep closed his memory, and laid the surges of sorrow and anger that swelled within him.

        The morning found Cherry composed, and Jarm too was soothed and refreshed by disturbed slumber. She went to her usual labors in the field, and he, after a breakfast of corn bread and bacon, sauntered away alone, to reconsider the lesson which was taught him, and study its philosophy and bearings. His daydreams and buoyancy were laid aside, and that day was spent in studying the alarming reality which stared him in the face.

        Thus early was he forced to revolve matters of grave importance. His treatment by the white Logues was most difficult to reconcile with the perils which his mother thought was present with him. To his inexperience, the enigma was inscrutable--but the conclusion was irresistible, that he and his mother were linked to a common destiny, and he felt his heart grappled to hers with a force greatly increased by sympathy for her sorrows, and a strong conviction of common dangers. The causes which attached him to her, weakened his attachment to her oppressors, which no evidence of kindness or affection on their part could prevent.

        From this time forward, though left to dispose of his time and body as he willed, the clouds increased and

thickened around him. Dave's favors and caresses were less frequent as the months and years came on, and in perfect recklessness of his presence, the most shocking and brutal outrages were inflicted on his mother. His masters were late at their carousals, and became more and more embruited as their affairs became embarrassed.

        It was about this time that the family and neighborhood were agitated by Cherry's brave resistance and almost death of the licentious villain at the distillery, which were circumstantially related in the last chapter. This also served to confirm the story of his unhappy mother regarding the condition and danger of both, in the mind of her precocious and considerate child. The conversation among the slaves as well as among the whites, assured him, that not only his mother, but himself also, was at the mercy of every white man, and in case he or she resisted them, be their intents never so murderous, the whole power of Tennessee was pledged to their destruction. It was much talked of and well understood at Manscoe's Creek, that poor Cherry, had forfeited her life to the law, and that she held it at the mercy of the ignorant, and passionate, and unscrupulous people about her.

        The distance between Jarm and Dave widened as the intimacy between Cherry and Dave ceased. He soon brought to his home a white woman, who resided with him as a wife or a mistress, and by whom he afterwards had children. Nor did Jarm regret the separation from his mother. The events of every day convinced him that their intimacy and connection was

forced and unnatural. His boyhood was social and buoyant, but it revolted from family relations which seemed pregnant with evil, and obviously destitute of mutual trust, affection and support. The current of causes was forcing the affections of the mother and son to a common center, and fusing them into one. He felt that she and their little ones were all the world to him.

        He sympathised deeply with those who were in like condition with himself, but to his mother, brother and sisters he was attached by ties which none can appreciate, but those, who, in like condition, have felt them.

        The spiritual changes which were now gradually forming the great gulph between him and the white Logues, allowed him more leisure for thought and physical development. His time was nearly all his own; and with maturer judgment, and greater strength, he pursued his game on the land and in the water. The harmony of woods and fields, of birds and flowers and bounding animals, gave birth to ideas that chimed with the angelic counsels of his mother but which, in the family of his oppressors were never felt or imagined.

CHAPTER III.

        Marriage (or what is called marriage) between slaves, is sometimes accommodated to the affections of the parties--always to the interest of the slaveholder. As its end or intent is his interest, the feelings of the parties are indulged or compelled as the interest varies. Legally, and strictly, there is no such relation as husband and wife among slaves, because the law adjudges them to be things, and not men and women. They are chattels in law, and their sexual relations in contemplation of law are the same as any other animals. The whole affair is in the hand of the master as a means of the increase and improvement of stock. Other important motives sometimes blend with it and subject it to ulterior views. But the end or purpose is the same. The slave being "property to all intents," is subject, of course to the laws relating to "things," not to "persons."

        The strongest affections grow up between male and female slaves, for they are men and women, the law to the contrary notwithstanding. Masters too become tenderly attached to their female chattels, and have children by them without once thinking they are guilty of the crime against nature. That they are not thus guilty follows from the fact, that nature acknowledges the connection and the offspring as her own, which she ever refuses to do when the parties are not adapted to the highest human uses.

        Cherry was already the mother of three children by David Logue. They were eminently perfect in their physical proportions a case quite in point, (if one is needed) to show the parties eminently human. Besides, Dave pledged a slaveholder's word to Cherry that Jarm should not be a slave, but that he should be set free. So "Granny," as Jarm always called the mother of the Logues, often told him he was not to be slave, like other colored children, but was to be free --thus showing that the Logues also considered that the law, not Dave and Cherry, was the criminal against nature.

        Since Dave took to his home the white woman, his intercourse with Cherry ceased, while she was yet in the vigor of young womanhood. In respect to her profitableness as property therefore, as well as a protection against disturbing domestic influences, it was thought best she would have a man, who, in the eye of his white family, would represent a husband and father.

        Where, among a large portion of any community, children are propagated as other animals, without the acknowledgment of marriage relations, or the care of law, it follows of course, that the moral feelings and prevailing habits of the law-makers are on a level with the indulgence which their laws and habits protect and sanction. And as the laws which sanction slavery are made by white men alone, it follows that the chastity of a majority of the slave legislators does not rise above the level of the chastity of black women, who they purposely expose to their polutions. Hence,

the secrets which the former labor to keep from their wives and daughters, canker their morals in other respects, and are a ceaseless source of jealousy and discontent.

        Dave had now successively purchased the interests of Manasseth and Carnes in the paternal estate, including the slaves, and became the sole owner thereof. Manasseth had moved to the southern part of the State, and Carnes had gone, it is not known where. Dave and his white family and mother occupied the paternal mansion alone, and the delicacy of his condition as father of the colored Logues forced on him an external regard to proprieties.

        In the neighborhood of Dave's plantation lived a planter of unusually high character among colored people, and among all people, by the name of Barry. He was unusually humane and indulgent to his slaves, and they were strongly attached to him by reason of such indulgence. As a consequence, his slaves were more industrious thriving and happy, and the plantation better improved and more productive than any other in that region. The peace, industry, and thrift of this family were the subject of general remark among all classes of people.

        This Barry owned a man by the name of Henry. He was a stout, well-built fellow, about thirty years of age, perfectly sound, having never experienced a day of sickness to his remembrance. Barry, of course, valued him highly as a most faithful servant and an honest man.

        Henry was a kind, warm-hearted fellow, but he had

seen such sights of misery in the disruption of families, the separating sometimes husbands from wives, and sometimes parents from children, that he had resolved never to expose himself to such misery, by becoming a husband or father. To be free of those endearing relations is the only freedom a male slave can enjoy. In his person, the apostle's rule is inverted, he had better not marry, and very many considerate ones so determine, and abide by the determination. Had Jermain W. Loguen remained a slave, he was sworn never to be a husband or a father. To a sensitive and reflecting spirit, the greatest curse of slavery is, that it is doubled, and more than doubled, with every domestic relation. Alone, the slave suffers personal wrongs only; but as a husband and father, his heart strings are exposed to, and his imagination tortured by suffering which can never be described.

        But the laws of nature are not easily controled or evaded. Henry's coarse and untutored nature was pervaded by powerful susceptibilities, and ere he was aware of it, his spirit adhered to its conjugal counterpart in the spirit of Cherry. The spiritual relation was formed before Henry's prudence was sufficiently on guard to forbid the banns.

        This attachment between Henry and Cherry so favored the purposes of Dave, that he approached Mr. Barry on the subject, and asked his consent that Henry and Cherry be acknowledged as man and wife. Mr. Barry consented to the proposal, on condition that Henry should be consulted and his wishes pursued.

        Henry accordingly was sent for. When the subject

was broached to him, as if awakened by an important crisis, his prudence was aroused. He confessed his willingness that Cherry should be his wife, only on condition that neither he or his wife, or any children they might have, should ever be separated by Dave or Barry at a distance of more than ten miles from each other.

        Both Dave and Mr. Barry readily pledged themselves to the condition, and Cherry was sent for and presented to Henry, and he joyfully embraced her as his wife.

        Mr. Barry was perfectly trustworthy as to his engagement, nor was Dave less so if he continued solvent, for he never intended to part with Cherry or her children. He was by nature and habit a kind and generous hearted man, and such was his relation to Cherry and the children, that be would not think of separating from them after he had provided against suspicions which disturbed his domestic peace.

        This event was to Cherry like a morning sun after a dreary night. A genial atmosphere warmed and healed her bruised heart. It was the gentle breath of spring melting icy fetters to admit the influences of heaven upon her soul. Her daily labors, she was habited to as a portion of her life. She felt them not as a burden, now she enjoyed her hours of refreshment and repose with Henry. The attachment and joy were mutual, and for two happy years Cherry was scarce disturbed by one of those jars, which before, and often, left indelible marks upon her person. They lived in the aura of their own affections, without a single care

beyond the faithful execution of their tasks, and inventions within their means for each others happiness.

        At the end of the year their union was blessed with a darling boy. The rustic bosom of the innocent and noble natured Henry swelled with the heavenly influx of parental love. The very condition of slavery seemed to defend them against the invasion of evey evil, and in an exstacy of delight they were prepared to adopt the delirious dream of the sailor boy-- "O God, thou hast blest me. I ask for no more!"

        Another year rolled away and left them in the same blessedness--another month and a startling light disturbed their dreams--another, and "the gay frost work of bliss" was gone forever.

CHAPTER IV.

        All unseen by Cherry and her little ones, affairs at Manscoe's Creek were now verging to a crisis. The most important and stirring events in a slave's life were pressing to the surface. For a long time there been quiet at home and in the field. Jarm had digested the lessons which had been taught him, and the balsam of peace was healing the wounds upon his spirit. But could he have looked behind material to

spiritual causes, he would have seen it was the quiet that preceded the storm--the repose that enveloped the lightning and the thunder, which were to break upon the heads of his oppressors, demolish the circle of his loves, and drift him to a distant part of Tennessee.

        As a prelude to a disaster, the community on Manscoe's Crook was shaken by one of those astounding acts of barbarism which occurs in no country but where chattel slavery exists, and which is there only occasionally permitted to demonstrate the inherent atrocity of the slave system.

        At a small distance from the Logues, on the opposite side of the Creek, lived a savage man by the name of Betts. He was the proprietor of a large plantation and a number of slaves. He was also an habitual drunkard, and proverbial for his passion and malice and cruelty; and for such excesses, was despised, even by the slaveholders of the neighborhood.

        On a beautiful spring's morning, (and none more beautiful ever infolded the rays of divine goodness, than those which pour their blessings upon the monster growths of nature and man in the valley of Manscoe's Creek)--Jarm, having neared the age of ten years, was leisurely sauntering amid the green grass and blossoming fields, and regaling his senses with the music of birds and insects, and the outspreading beauties and harmonies of nature, which over enter a receptive spirit, and with "a still small voice," announce the presence of an unseen God--then, when all was quiet within, and all beauty and [unclear in original]

there arose from the opposite bank a bowl of agony which thrilled his soul, and forced him, as it were, from heaven to earth again. Screeches, and screams, and cries for compassion, followed the sounds of the unfeeling instrument as it fell from the hand of the murderer Betts, upon his unhappy slave. The charms of nature in a moment vanished, and the voice of God was drowned by the cries of misery.

        Jarm's compassionate soul comprehended the thing at once, and instead of fleeing with terror, as small boys of that age would, covered by the brush which formed a deep fringe on the bank of the Creek, he sped swift and noiselessly as possible, and sheltered by the outer verge of it, had a clear view of the infernal act on the opposite bank, which so rudely and suddenly changed a celestial picture into an image of hell.

        Nothing could excuse the detail of a scene like this, which disgusts and crucifies good taste, and all refined and humane feeling, but the necessity of descending to the depths of this terrible system, to display its frequent and horrible monstrosities. It is to be borne in mind, that such scenes formed the life of Jarm in his boyhood, ere he was thrown into the crushing jaws of slavery.

        The distance from bank to bank across the river at this place was about four rods. The sky was unusually clear, and Jarm had a distinct view of the whole transaction after he arrived. The sufferer was a young man about twenty years of age, by the, name of "Sam" --a good-feeling, kind-hearted fellow, who Jarm well knew, and who, a few weeks before, saved him (Jarm)

from drowning in the creek when it was swelled by the rain.

        This poor fellow was stripped quite naked, hooped, and lashed by cords to a barrel on the steep bank of the stream. His head almost, if not quite, touched the ground on one side, and his feet on the other--the fleshy part of his body being exposed above, covered with gore, while the blood dropped upon the barrel or ran down his back and legs to the ground.

        Whether the barrel was filled in whole or in part with liquor, Jarm of course could not know. The flesh of the poor wretch was quivering in the sun, and painting its pure rays red, while Sam was moaning and pleading for pity with a depth of feeling which would move any heart.

        Beside the barrel stood a man without a heart--a stout, square-built, burly, bushy-headed fellow, of about forty years of age, whose face resembled an intoxicated fury. He had on neither hat, coat, or vest, and his shirt, open at the collar, fallen loosely away, showed a broad, sun and whiskey-burnt chest, which seemed a fortress of strength. His sleeves were rolled up like a butcher, and his right hand clenched an instrument of torture, known nowhere under the sun but in the slave States, called a paddle, which he fiercely flourished over the heads, and faces of some half dozen negroes who stood trembling by.

        Such is a poor description of the murderer Betts, and the wretched objects around him, when Jarm took his position in the bushes. The villain, as he brandished the bloody paddle, filled the air with his curses,

and threatened the slaves with the same and even a worse vengeance than be was inflicting on the fainting Sam.

        The instrument called "a paddle," was the only article of southern manufacture that Jarm knew of-- and its existence might have remained a secret to the rest of the world, had not he, and others like him, escaped to declare and describe it. It is a firm board, shaped like a huge Yankee pudding stick filled with small auger holes, and of a heft to do the most execution upon the flesh it bruises. It is the most savage and bloodletting instrument employed to torture the slave. Every blow, the sharp wood on the circumference of the holes cuts into the flesh, and the pain and the blood follow, in proportion to the number of such holes and the force of the blows.

        The monster having finished his speech to the negroes, turned to glut his vengeance on poor Sam, with a rage and energy that seemed provoked by his cries, and the sight of his own barbarity. As he grasped the paddle and swung it from his shoulder to increase the force of his blow, Sam begged with all the strength of nature. The slaves turned their faces to the ground or covered them with their hands--and Betts, with an oath, brought the weapon down with his might--blow after blow followed, and screams, and howls of agony, and cries for mercy, followed with them.

        Jarm, overcome with the misery of his friend and the cruelty of his tormentor, hid his face on the ground and covered it with his hands, and refused to look upon the scene.

        Betts continued the blows until he was weary, and then ceased them to repeat his threats and curses to the negroes.

        Thus he alternated his violence upon the one, and threats and curses upon the other, until the voice of Sam growing hollow and faint, convinced the listener that nature was failing. The last sentence which he articulated was, "O Lord! O Lord!" and he continued to utter it until utterance failed, and no noise broke the stillness around but the sound of the infernal weapon upon the insentient and motionless body. When the monster saw Sam ceased to speak or move, he also ceased his blows.

        At this time, when all was silent, Jarm raised his head from the ground and saw Betts place his foot against the bleeding body, and with a savage curse and malignant force, set the barrel and body rolling together down the steep bank into the river. As they reached the water, he (Betts) turned to the negroes and said, fiercely:

        "There, you d--d dogs, go and bring him back again, and unbind him and let him go."

        Quick as lightning the compassionate fellows sprang to the water, unbound him, and laid him on the bank --but it was too late. Life ceased to animate the poor man--his soul was set free, and his mutilated body, already wrapped in its bloody shroud, was prepared for its funeral.

        The poor fellows looked meaningly at the brute Betts as he stood at the Creek washing the sweat from

his brow and arms, and then, with sad countenances stood motionless around the corpse.

        "What are you doing there, you d--d villains," said Betts.

        "Sam be dead, massa," said one of the circle.

        "I'll bring him to life," said Betts, and coming rapidly up the bank, gave him a brutal kick upon his ribs. Not a muscle stirred--sensation was gone forever-- his last breath was spent with his last prayer, and the life and the prayer together were already infolded in the infinite heart, to which, in the last extremity, the wronged and outraged never plead for protection and repose in vain.

        "Take the d--d dog and bury him," were the last words that Betts muttered, as he turned and walked heavily away.

        Thus closed the last scene of the tragedy, and Jarm, faint with contending emotions, bent his way homewards. Any more teachings on the subject of the slave's helplessness, and hard fate, were now superfluous. Boy as he was, he comprehended all from Alpha to Omega. Any other lessons, he saw could only vary the manifestations of the diabolical principle, which nulified every right, and exposed the slave to every outrage. His first lesson was the dying deer-- the last, the dying slave. He shuddered to think that by a change of masters he might be murdered as Sam was. His heart was tortured with the intensest hatred of slavery, and concern for himself, mother, brother and sisters.

        Now, for the first time, he revolved the possibility of

escape, and if an opportunity occurred, determined to improve it at any hazard.

        On his return, his soul was locked up to its own perceptions. He saw only the world within him and had no eyes or ears for the world without. The flowers flung their fragrances on the breeze as before-- the birds sung as sweet--all nature was redolent with divine goodness when he returned, as when be went out; but he heeded them not. This scene, connected with corresponding reminiscences, filled him with new and harrowing thoughts and passions, which were regenerating him. Young as he was, it needed but that to stir a new life in him. From that moment he felt a flame enkindled which made him a new creature --a flame which all the demon fires of slavery could not countervail--a flame which, at the expiration of another ten years, forced him from his mother and kindred, bravely, to stand at the mouth of the infernal crater and throw his shackles in it.

        Of course, Jarm's verdict in the premises was qualified by what should be the conduct of white men in the case. He knew the Logue family well enough to know that they would revolt at this deed of nameless and murderous atrocity. He thought all white men must feel as he did, and it remained to know that they would act also as he would act in the case.

        Jarm instantly informed Cherry of what he saw. Smitten with terror by the story, and by the danger to which she feared he would be exposed if he breathed it aloud, she hushed him to a whisper. She assured him the deed would be known through Bett's slaves,

and charged him to say nothing about it lest he be involved as a spy. She said the absence of Sam in the neighborhood and on the plantation would confirm the report, and there would be abundant opportunity to know the effect of the murder upon the white people. In thus charging him, she was prompted more by an over anxiety for the safety of her boy, than by any real danger which she saw could result from his making the story public.

        This tremulous caution, which was so common on her part, had a nervous effect upon Jarm. While it determined him to secrecy, it increased his sense of insecurity, and deepned his hatred of the web in which he felt himself involved. Cherry, however, informed him he might set his mind at rest at once as to the effect of the disclosure. It would create a tempest of passion soon to pass away, anti the slaves would remain unprotected and Sam unavenged.

        As foretold by Cherry, so it came to pass. Before the sun went down of the same day, the murder and all its particulars were known to every slave and every white person on the plantation.

        The secret was first communicated by one of Bett's men, to a slave girl belonging to the Logues, who was much attached to Sam, and who expected to be his wife. She declared it aloud, and sobbed in all the demonstration of grief.

        The family of Logues were stirred to madness by the hellish deed, and swore Betts should be lynched and driven from the neighborhood. They communicated the facts to the white people about, and a flame

blazed forth which, threatened for a time to wipe the murderer from the earth. They did not expect, nor did they wish, the judicial tribunals to furnish a precident of punishment for the murder of a slave, which was impossible (by the express terms of the law,) if the murder occurred "by moderate chastisement"--nor could it be proved by colored witnesses. They preferred rather that he should be a victim to the lawless vengeance which their chivalric notions allowed to trample on the laws of the land.

        As Cherry predicted, the tempest of passion perished in its own effervescence, and in a little period Betts was as safe, and the negroes as unsafe, as ever.

CHAPTER V.

        The appearance of Dave since his connection with the white woman and purchase of the paternal estate, was a great improvement upon his previous life. He was a drinker, to be sure, but more regular in his hours--more sober in his demeanor--more attentive to business than before.

        To the poor slave who is blind to everything not on the surface of affairs, the inference was quite natural that he was growing in the right direction. He had

carried on the estate some three or four years, alone, with an attention to its interests which showed his mind active above the level of his past life. The labors of the plantation were conducted with more order, peace, and profit. The Logues always denounced the economy of pinching the stomachs of the laborers, and sufficiently provided them with coarse food and clothing. In fact, the slave began to value his breath--the only property he could enjoy--more than he had done.

        Strangers, too, some of them evidently of the better class, began to call on him, sometimes to leave papers, sometimes to chat on politics and business, and taste his hospitality; while Jarm, then in his eleventh year, tended their horses with grass and grain.

        As these calls increased, Jarm thought he perceived they were not always agreeable to his master. He wore a frown sometimes when he saw them coming, and there was an evident dash of servility in his face and manners after they arrived. His demeanor seemed sometimes strained and unnatural in their presence.

        On one occasion he was closeted a long time with one of these gentlemen, who, though a stranger to Jarm, seemed to be an acquaintance of Dave's. When their interview was concluded, they approached Jarm in company as he was holding the horse. The faces of both wore a jocular expression, which seemed to indicate anything but ill-will. But Jarm was somewhat expert at reading countenances. Face expressions were the only letters he had ever set to learn.

He was quite sure their careless pleasantry was a cover to other and graver feelings.

        "This fellow will answer--I guess, I will take him," said the man, as he came up to Jarm and put his hand on his head.

        The joke did not drive the smile from Dave's face, but it changed the color of it, and he quickly replied:

        "This is a bad business, anyhow, Joseph. I trust you will consult my convenience. It will be an extreme case that separates me and that fellow."

        The Sheriff--for such was Joseph--raising a searching eye from Jarm to Dave, broke into a laugh, and said:

        "A dash of the Logues--don't deny it, now. Ah, you have been a sad boy, Dave!"

        Dave was in no condition to relish a joke in that direction--his voice and expression sank together, and adroitly as possible he changed the subject.

        There are no such highways in that neighborhood as are used in the north. The path through the plantation was mainly used by travellers on horseback, and occasionally an ox cart picked its way along. Dave and his friend walked on foot, conversing as they went along--while Jarm led the horse a few paces behind them.

        "I tell you what, Joseph, I don't know but I made a blunder when I bought this property; we were reckless boys, and I don't know but I was most reckless of the three; we suffered the estate to be embarrassed. I have a strong veneration for it--in it are the bones of my father--my old mother has lived on

it from the day she married him--all the negroes were derived from him, except the mother of the boy behind us and her children. I bought it in to save it, and I mean to save it. I have been very attentive to business for some time--the plantation has never yielded half so much as it does now, nor looked as well. I have given up every luxury except an occasional glass with a friend--by heaven I won't give up that. I have done well for the last three years--the negroes have done well--their hearts are grown to the soil and to each other--we are a happy family without these accursed debts, which are killing me. If my creditors will indulge me another crop, I can twist out of this infernal case. It will be mighty hard for me to give up any of these boys--it will break their hearts, I know, and will almost break mine--but some of them must go. Humanity to the rest demands it--'the greatest good to the greatest number,' you know, is our democratic doctrine."

        "If it was expedient that one man should die to save a nation, I suppose you think it is expedient that some of your slaves be sold to save the rest--that is your argument, is it not?"

        "Exactly."

        "All fudge!"

        "No fudge about it. How am I to get along if I don't part with some of my slaves?"

        "And if you could get along by doing so, it does not follow it would be right. Nor does it follow if you sell some of them that you will thereby save the rest--or that you or they will be the better off. That

was the argument of Caiphas, a Jewish old fogy and incorrigible hypocrite. The Jews adopted his counsel and killed Jesus in obedience to your infernal doctrine, 'the greatest good to the greatest number.' But did they thereby secure good in his sense of the words? No. I tell you good can only come from doing good--and we can never receive good unless we do right. Come, I am going to preach. No good can come from wrong. Good to one is good to all-- and evil to one is evil to all. Caiphas lied when he said that. He was blind to everything but--self. He gave up his church and country to be murdered when he gave up Jesus to be murdered. It needed just that to seal their doom. Jerusalem, which symbolizes the Church--and the Temple, which symbolizes the Lord himself, fell by that sin from among them. The foundations of the former were plowed up, and not one stone, that is, not one truth, remained upon another, after they had crucified Jesus. Falsehood was ultimated and triumphed in the decapitation of the Lord of the Church."

        "Always a preaching--but how do you make out that the Jewish Church fell with the Jewish State? There is scarce a large city in the world without one or more synagogues in it--you are out there."

        "No church can survive its Lord--its form may remain, as the Christian church does now, like the broken shell when the chick has flown. When it excommunicated the Lord, its life went with him, of course. The old church committed suicide to let in a new one. Fi! I Dave--don't believe these preaching,

praying, and chanting assembles in synagogues and meeting houses, are, of course, genuine churches. They may be forms without life--mere husks and shells--mere human organizations, made by men for men--not by God for God. There is but one church and that is 'the Lamb's wife'--in other words, the Lord's wife--the Lord has not got two wives. He maintains no Harem. He acknowledges no Presbyterian wife, nor Methodist wife, nor Baptist wife, nor the thousand and one things that claim him as husband. They who live to do good to others, be they Christian or heathen, "lean on his bosom" and are his wife, and "he is their Lord."

        "Do you mean to say that the Church instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ can lose its life, and be as a husk or shell, as the Jewish Church is?"

        "Indeed I do. When it becomes as the Jewish Church was, its fate must be the same, by the laws of order. The Apostolic Church was no more the Lord's Church, than was the Adamic, Noatic, and Israelitish churches, before them--and they successively performed their uses and perished. When a church ceases to honor its Lord by a life devoted to his uses--when it is a covering for selfish and worldly aims, it has like the Jewish Church excommunicated its Lord--it has conspired with Judas and sold him--it has, in other words, lost its life. It may preserve truths--but they will be without good--the will be truths in petrified forms after life is gone--their light will be the light of winter shimmering in the face of death. Of what

use is light without heat--truth without good--or what is the same Faith without Charity?"

        "Now, Joseph; I am no Christian, and know little of Divinity--but you surprise me--do you mean to say that Christianity is a failure, and that the Lord has no Church in the world?"

        No, no. No church ever was a failure. All were adapted to the age they were instituted. They performed their uses and perished--they are the ages or dispensations that have come and gone."

        "I am not satisfied--I want one reason why I am to believe that the first Christian Church, as you call it, has perished?"

        "Well--I will try to give one. Christ founded his Church on Peter, on a Rock, on Truth--in other words, on Faith. After Christ arose from the grave, he had a talk with Peter--the Rock, the Truth--Faith--for in the language of the ancients the former words mean Faith. In that talk he described the doom of his Church in the following striking prophesy: "When thou wast young thou girdest thyself and walkest whither thou wouldst--but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not--"

        "But that was said to and of Peter."

        "Don't interrupt me--have I not just said, that in the correspondential language of our Lord, Peter means Faith? It's literal, is Rock or Stone, and in such language, they both mean Truth or Faith. Christ did not establish his Church on Peter as a man. He was a very unreliable man. In ancient times things had

their names from their qualities--Rocks and Stones represented Truths--and Peter is another name for Rock or Stone, the Divine meaning of which is Truth or Faith--and the Bible is to be read in its Divine or spiritual meaning. The things of nature represent God's thoughts, and were clearly seen and read by unfallen men. And because Peter or Stone is a Divine representation of Truth or Faith, therefore it is said to be the head of the corner. Christ used the word in the Divine sense, as it was used before letters were made."

        "When he spoke of Peter then, he spoke of a New Church he come to establish--was that it?"

        "Yes. It was a prophecy. 'When thou wast young,' means when the church is young--'thou girdest thyself,' means, it thought for itself or had a mind of its own--'walking whither thou wouldst,' means that such church was free to obey God according to its own mind and will--'when thou shalt be old,' means when the church is decaying--'thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and another shall gird thee,' means that in its decline it will give its power and honor to another (for hands mean power)--to the Pope, to the Bishop, the Presbyter, the Council, the Synod, &c.--that these shall dictate its doctrines and creeds--'lead thee whither thou wouldst not,' means that the Church will become a servile, fashionable thing, without understanding or will of its own. Now, when Peter, or Truth, or Faith, has given its understanding and will to another--don't you see it can't obey the command

'follow thou me'--that faith is gone, and the church is defunct, when it follows another?"

        "But Christ said that to signify what death Peter should die."

        "So he did. But natural death is spoken of only because it corresponds to spiritual death, just as stones correspond to truth. The former is the external and natural, the other the internal and Divine sense."

        "Is that the way you read the Bible? I have always understood the Bible as it reads, and have never read it much. Then you will have it, God did not mean that Adam should die on the day he eat the apple?"

        "No--indeed,--he did eat the forbidden fruit, but did he die a natural death on the day he eat it? Not he. God set him to tilling the ground,--sufficient evidence that, to satisfy everybody that God intended a different sort of death. He lost the Divine life and image--that was death enough. Natural death is purely normal; our natural bodies are no part of us. The spiritual body is the man, and it takes on this body of flesh, and puts it off like a worn-out garment --and then lives on, and on, on forever in a higher sphere of existence. To suppose that God declared that Adam should die a natural death on the day he ate the fruit, is to suppose, not that the serpent or devil, but that God was the liar. Not so. God was true. Adam lived naturally, but not spiritually."

        "Do you suppose mother Eve was seduced by a serpent?"

        "There it is again. If we take the natural sense of

the letter to be the Divine meaning, our God will be little better than the gods of the heathen. Adam and Eve, the man and the woman, represent the bride and the bridegroom, the lamb and the lamb's wife--the church, in the Divine sense. The serpent is a hieroglyph, representing the sensual principle in man ruling his affections--as woman does the Church itself under the dominion of the higher principles of his nature. So the serpent was understood by the ancients, and so figured on the pyramids and rocks, the books of the ancients. The serpent crawls upon his belly, and cannot raise its head to see or assail the higher principles of man's nature. It aims only at the heel, the lowest natural principle--it can't reach higher. But, be it remembered, the sensual principle is a Divine element in God's nature as well as in man's, for man is an image of God--and being so, it is an essential element in man. In its place, under the dominion of the understanding and will, the higher principles of the human soul, it is absolutely necessary for human uses. Separate from those principles, it becomes an enemy, a serpent. It is beautifully represented by the rod of Moses. In its proper place, in his hands and power, it is a staff to help him in the Divine walk or life--but released from his control, it is a snake, whose bite is death, and that is what it means. The Woman, that is the men and women of the church called Adam, gave themselves to the dominion of the sensual principle, and of course separated from higher and Divine principles, and sought light and wisdom through the senses. They threw the rod of God upon the ground,

and of course came under the dominion of the serpent or sensual principle, and perished."

        "But how will this carry out? If Peter's name had such significance, what is the meaning of JOHN? His name, too, is used in this connection. Has that an internal meaning, too?"

        "O yes--John, as represented by the ancients, means 'the Life of Charity,' or love true to its impulses, and never swerving from its duties. John never forsook the Lord of the Church, though Peter, and all the Apostles, who represent all the other qualities of the Lord and of the Church, forsook him. Charity is ever faithful, leaning on the Lord's breast. What a beautiful emblem of Charity that! John, or Love, followed the Lord into the High Priest's Palace, when every other disciple fled, and Peter, or Faith, stood at the door without and denied the Lord three times. John stood at the Cross and saw his Lord die, and received his last words, 'Woman, (or church) behold thy son'--then to John (or charity) he said, 'Son, behold thy mother.' Charity is born of the Church (or heaven) as its mother--and now mark 'from that hour that disciple (Charity) took her (the Church) to his own bosom and preserved her,' to use the Lord's expression, 'until I come,' that is until he came in the spirit to form a New Church. Christ came only to form a new church. If you want to find the church, look for John, not Peter."

        "Well, you may be right in all this business, Joseph --but what do you mean by it? Do you mean I am

not to sell some of these slaves to save me from bankruptcy?"

        "I am not your judge, Dave. You will judge your own case, as I shall mine That is the order of Heaven. But mind you, 'with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.' If you seek the good of others, then ye will have good for the deed--but if ye seek your own good, disregarding the good of others, then will ye have evil. I shall take your receipt for this slave, but I will never sell him. I am sick of my office and shall resign it. I don't like it, any way. What I cannot do for myself, I will not do for the state."

        They had now come in sight of the slaves at their work. Joseph endorsed one of them on his execution against Dave and took his receipt for his delivery at a future day, and they separated. The slaves were as ignorant of it, as if they had been hogs or horses.

CHAPTER VI.

        The course of events soon satisfied David Lougue that he could not relieve his estate from the pressure of the claims upon it. His creditors had the fullest confidence in his industry, honor and intents, and would gladly indulge him a reasonable length, but some of them feared that others would press their claims for the sake of precedence. They could not

trust each other. Suits were, therefore, commenced to obtain a priority of lien, and thereby all his creditors were about to be let upon him. He was likely to be ground to powder by the merciless principle that the law favors the vigilant and not the slothful creditor. His real estate was considerably encumbered, and such was the pressure of his creditors that he foresaw he must sell his slaves, as well as his plantation, to escape hopeless bankruptcy. He had intended to keep the mother of Jarmain and her children, but now, he saw he could not. He had promised Cherry and Jarm that he would give Jarm his freedom--nor could he do this and be solvent.

        It became now inconvenient to redeem his promises, and they were of no avail opposed to his convenience. Being chattels, Henry and Cherry and Jarm could not be parties to contracts. A deed of freedom supposes all the rights of the slave vested in the master, and he gives those rights as by a new creation.

        When Dave saw the storm gathering, and clothing the thunderbolt over the heads of his slaves in its black folds, he was deeply grieved; but not so much grieved that he was willing to adopt the only expedient that would avert it. His interest overbalanced his sympathies and good intents. He dreaded hopeless bankruptcy more than that thunderbolt and the unutterable woes its fall would produce. It would be unjust to say his feelings were not pained by a struggle between pride and poverty. They were deeply pained; but such was the force of pride and perversity of education, that they overcame his justice and

instincts, and compelled a determination to convert his slaves, and even his own flesh and blood, into money to pay his debts.

        All his plans and purposes and promises of good to Jarm and his deeply-wronged mother, were nullified by the selfishness that nourished his chivalry. He might have taken them out of this dark land into a free State and given them freedom--or have put all his slaves in charge of the British King in Canada, and plead the claims of justice and humanity against his creditors in justification of the act; but in such case he would also be obliged to take up his abode at the north, as he supposed, in naked poverty.

        In such circumstances, Dave determined to sell all his slaves the first opportunity, and to the best advantage.

        In the meantime, the poor negroes were cheerful at their labors, not dreaming of an event that was soon to separate them forever, and scatter them through the southern country. The terrible secret was carefully kept in the bosom of their master. He was cautious that not even a suspicion of their fate should be awakened until he had sold them, and they were fairly in the power of their purchasers.

        But, notwithstanding this determination, he mediated the possibility of so providing for Cherry and her children, that their fate should be as endurable as possible and never relinquished the hope, that, by some means, at some time, he could secure the freedom of Jarm. He had already accepted a proposition for the sale of his plantation, on condition he did not refuse

it in a limited time, which refusal depended upon his disposal of his slaves to his liking in that time. Slave traders often drove through his plantation, but it required time to find a purchaser for so large a stock.

        It was in the fall months, after the crops were harvested, and the slaves were looking forward to the leisure and pleasure of the holidays, and a comparatively easy winter life, that such an opportunity occurred.

        Quite late in the season, his affairs called him to Nashville, where he found a trader willing to return and spend a day with him on the plantation, and make him an offer for all his slaves. He was to be at Dave's in the character of a visitor and acquaintance, and inform himself of the quality of the chattels without creating a suspicion of his intent.

        On the evening of the same day, Dave and his visitor concluded their contract for the sale of the entire stock of slaves, not excepting Jarm. He learned that the purchaser, on his way to Alabama, would pass the residence of Manasseth Logue, in the southern portion of Tennessee; and it was a condition of the bargain that he should sell the Logue family to Manasseth, in case he, Manasseth, would pay the sum at which they were valued in the Bill of Sale.

        At the time the contract was closed, Henry had just arrived, as usual, to indulge a few moments of comfort with Cherry and her boy, and the whole circle of slaves were seated around their cabins, in the same social and happy contentment they enjoyed since Dave was the separate owner of the estate; little suspecting

this was the last time they would be thus assembled, and that the shades of the evening were shutting from their eyes the scene of their comforts and labors forever. To them, a slave trader was an object of supreme dread; and the caravans of misery which such traders drove by their poor homes, were the most shocking of all scenes. Their course was always towards the deadly sugar and cotton fields. The sad and moaning coffles stirred the depths of their souls and discovered the last soundings of human misery. With the planters interest as well as sympathy usually combined to keep families together; but the poor negroes knew, as well as others, that these trading vagabonds were ruled by interest only; and that they separated families with as little feeling as professional cattle traders separate other animals. By a sale to these soulless men, they knew they were literally thrown into the jaws of avarice.

        In the dead of night, when they were locked in sleep, the negro quarters were surrounded by stout men, armed with revolvers and shackles. The strongest and bravest of the negroes were manacled in their slumbers--and because of the prospect of frantic agony, and desperate bravery, and strength of Cherry, they put the irons on her also, as the best means of managing her. The other women and children were easily secured.

        The victims, taken unawares, were in the power of their captors. Cherry waked from her slumbers, her infant sleeping at her side. Her imprisoned limbs revealed her helplessness, and a consciousness of the

cause sent a chilling horror through every avenue of feeling. Her first utterance was a shriek, responsive of the deep agony of her soul. For a moment, her spirit was swathed with black despair, and then she raved with the fury of an imprisoned tigress. She called for Dave and she called for Henry, and no voice responded to her call but the voices of savage wretches who stood over her and the rest, armed with whips and pistols.

        She was told that Dave had, that night, started on a journey--that she no longer belonged to him--that she was the property of the ferocious-looking man who stood in the centre of this group of sorrow, clenching a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other--that Henry would meet her on the road--that she must "shut up at once, and take her babe and come along"--that she would meet Dave at Manasseth Logue's, in southern Tennessee, where he resided. The speaker said Manasseth would take her and the children off their hands.

        This was quite possible, for he (Dave) had already started on his journey to see Manasseth, to prepare him to redeem this wretched family, who were mostly his own flesh and blood, in pursuance of the arrangement with the purchaser. The fact, like the lie in regard to Henry, was repeated to the miserable woman only to pacify her. The cowskin had failed to answer the purpose. Her body, insensible to assaults, was already seamed with bloody stripes, and the lie and the truth, so far as there was truth, was adopted

in lieu of the lash for the sake of convenience, not compassion.

        It is left to the imagination of the reader to finish this night scene, and fill up the picture of horrors which drew their dense folds, blacker than the night, about the minds of these miserable chattels. They were about twelve in number; and suffice it to say, that ere the signs of morning light appeared, the coffle, consisting of the men and women who it was thought best to secure, with the exception of Cherry, were chained together and to the wagon, as usual in such cases, and ready to start on their dreary journey. Cherry was fettered with irons which were fastened with a lock, and placed, with the children, in a covered wagon, which occupied the van of the procession.

        About the time the sun began to change the color of the eastern horizon, the procession started. The purchaser and his adjutants, having refreshed with bacon and whiskey, and distributed coarse eatables to the captives, armed with whips and pistols, mounted, one of them the wagon which was drawn by four horses, and the others, each a horse, in front and flank and rear of the prisoners, and started on. The crack of the driver's whip over the backs of the horses gave the first notice, and a like crack over the heads of the slaves, gave an irregular start to the dark and wretched coffle in the rear.

        It seemed as if some of them were fainting with sorrow, and scarce able to march in order. But the noise of the terrible lash awakened their activities, and brought them into an even step with the dragoons

by their side. The thought that they were leaving the spot, which, in spite of its sorrows and trials, was dear to them, without being able to see it--and that they were parting forever from acquaintances and relations in the neighborhood, under circumstances the most awful to their conceptions--for a country and condition which they knew not of, and to be scattered they knew not where, among cruel strangers who had even less sympathy for the slave than the man who sold them, threw them into paroxysms of grief. Many of them mourned aloud, and their sighs and sobs, mingling with infant's screams, the crack of whips, and the curses of the drivers, made as discordant and infernal sounds as ever shocked the ear of night.

        The sky just began to grow gray when the procession started. The wagon was closely covered with canvas, which shut out every appearance of light, and the blackness within was made more gloomy and sad by the scraping and rustling of the brush against the sides of the wagon, as it picked its way along the narrow path in the forest. Every spot was familiar to Cherry for miles around, and these sounds of familiar and stationary objects in contact with her rolling prison, seemed like the voices of the spirits of Manscoe's Creek speaking an everlasting farewell. The bottom of the wagon was covered with clean straw, just harvested and threshed by the hands of the prisoners, and she could have been comfortable, if it was possible for her body to rest when the miseries of hell were let loose upon her soul. She knew these slave dealers were the most truthless men, and placed no confidence

in them. She never expected to see Henry or Dave again in the world. All thought was drowned in a phrenzy of despair. Agony had taken full possession of her spirit, and she groaned aloud. On the very brink of sanity she was startled by a gentle whisper in her ear, which, as by enchantment, laid the surges of her soul.

        "Where is Ohio, mother?"

        Jarm, not comprehending the circumstances of his condition as did Cherry, but yet sufficiently comprehending it to know it was insufferably bad, felt most keenly her sorrows--he had quieted the babe to sleep in his arms, and laid it with the other children who were asleep by his side. Thus relieved of his charge, and full of a sense of his incomprehensible dangers, he revolved the possibility of escape from them. He called to mind the fact, often told him by his mother, that, when a little child, younger than himself, she was taken by force from a free land called Ohio, and left in slavery with the white Logues. Intensely moved by her present sufferings, he impulsively breathed in her ear the above startling question. The flood immediately passed off from her spirit and she was herself again. She paused a breath or two and asked--

        "Is it you, Jarm?"

        "Yes, mother."

        "Did you ask me where is Ohio?"

        "You told me you were free in Ohio, and that you were stolen from there when a little girl and made a slave. I want to know where Ohio is."

        "Why do you want to know where Ohio is?"

        "Because, I hoped we were moving that way--and may be we can get away from these wicked people and go to Ohio and be free."

        "Hush!" said Cherry, "we can never get away from these people. Besides, I don't know which is the way to Ohio. I am very sure we are not going that way. The slave traders always drive their coffles toward the land of slaves, never to the land of freemen. These bad men intend to sell us at the far south, and I fear they will sell you from me. They will sell us all apart, so that we shall never see each other again, if they can make more money by our separation."

        The conversation continued for some time in this manner, Jarm suggesting the possibility of escape, and his mother resisting it, until sleep overcame the boy and laid him beside the little ones, and Cherry was left to her chains and reflections.

        When Jarm awoke, the golden light of an autumn sun poured through the mouth and crevices of his prison, and showed him a scene that moved him to tears. His mother, in her fetters, was feeding his little half brother, the son of Henry, from her bosom, and the other women and children were either crying or deeply sad; but his mother, the saddest of them all, resembled the image of disappointment and misery. At such a sight, Jarm could not resist the sympathy which burst the fountain within him, and vented itself in sobs and tears. It was broad day, and the sound of merry voices in the streets, and of birds in the

trees, speaking the mercy and goodness of God to all outside the hell in which he was caged, communicated to his inmost soul the certainty that Nature, and the God of Nature, were outraged in the persons of the prisoners.

        It was now the turn of the mother to comfort her son, and pacify her little ones. The sweet office of affection relieved her own suffering spirit. Jarm's fountain of tears was soon closed, and he and his mother lapsed into a state of rational sadness, which seemed to say, "We will make the best of it."

        The captain of this band of robbers took his coffle to a sort of slave pen or tavern, near Nashville, where he refreshed his company and fed his victims; and thence made his way again over the wretched roads and through the uncultivated scenery, which is the everlasting inheritance of the land of slaves. Days and nights the caravan pursued its monotonous course until it reached the borders of Alabama. It would be useless to detail the incidents of the road, nothing having occurred to vary the usual character of the journey. The older slaves were habituated to their imprisonment and severe exercise under the lash of the driver, and had looked their wrongs and prospects so long in the face, that they were drilled into a state of sad contentment; whilst the younger ones, let loose to play among the beasts which held their and their mothers, ignorant of their doom, were pleased with the journey.

        Jarm, now grown to a stout boy, was the pet of savage men; and, though he never forgot his

wrongs, he put on a cheerful face, and was rewarded by favors and privileges beyond his companions. He had just begun to learn to ride and manage a horse, and was clothed only with a single coarse shirt. To relieve and please him, they occasionally put him astride the leader, where, whip in hand, his bushy head exposed to the sun, and his fat legs and unshod feet clinging to the horse's ribs, he whistled his time away. Sometimes, to give him company and contentment, and to gratify Cherry, they placed behind him his brother, a chubby little fellow, who kept his place only by clasping his tender arms as firmly as he could to Jarm's back.

        These human cattle drivers, as well as other cattle drivers, understand full well that it is better to amuse and coax and flatter their chattels, than cross their tempers and passions by unnecessary violence. Thus it is, that what seem to their victims as favors, are often means of econ