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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.”

It was said at the conclusion of the last chapter, that the sale and abandonment of the colored Logues by David Logue concluded an important epoch in their lives. The two families parted to encounter temptations and conflicts in different directions. But the temptations and conflicts of the colored Logues were an accumulation of wrongs, which did not break them down, but instructed and strengthened them rather, for others to come. Not so with poor Dave. He had unwittingly cast away the only anchor which, hitherto, kept his barque right side up amid life's waves. Had he not yielded his natural kindness of heart to false pride, and a perverted public opinion, instead of the victim of poverty and low indulgence which he afterwards became, he might have risen as his son J. W. Loguen rose, a conqueror on the waves of life, and defied its storms. The anxiety to save his slaves, especially Cherry and her children, had, for years, held him, in a measure, obedient to the duties of life. In separating from them, he cut with his own hand, the cable that preserved him, and without an anchor was driven by the winds, and shortly sank into the gulph he labored to avoid —and there remains, without the hope, and probably without the wish to escape.

The fate of this generous, chivalric, and noble natured man, the only saving clause in the history of the white Logues, has a counterpart in thousands who die to all good, like the mercies of heaven in the soil blighted with the crimes and cruelties of slavery.

Poor Dave had not willingly parted with Cherry and her children, and therefore the memory of the act remained to dog his footsteps, and torture his brain like “a rooted sorrow.” Though he partnered with his brothers Carnes and Manasseth in the crime that kidnapped her when a little child, he remembered with keen remorse, that, with one exception, he was the father of the hale and lovely children by her side, and that he was in fact responsible for the wrongs and miseries each and all of them had sufferered hitherto, as well as those they might thereafter suffer. The excepted link in this circle of wronged ones was the child of Henry. His memory, too, which would awaken delight in an angel, had clinging to it a barbed curse. The cherub face and innocent smiles of the boy, often crept into David's mind's eye in connection with the compact he made with Henry at his nuptials, as if they were the living seal of his perjury and dishonor.

As before said, after his bargain for the sale of his slaves was perfected, David left Manscoe's Creek for Southern Tennessee. He started in haste, and in the night, that his eyes might not witness the misery he had produced, and hastened to Manasseth to arrange with him a plan for the redemption of Cherry and her children. Manasseth and his wife had become brutes, and like other brutes, their minds and hearts were unadapted to the mercies and business of life. David Logue knew full well that, without the aid of his genius and industry, his kind intents to prevent Cherry and her children being driven to Alabama, could not be executed. And not until the morning of of their arrival at the Tombigbee had the plan been completed. To avoid again the sight of Cherry, Jarm, and the rest, on their arrival, and to hasten to the relief of his affairs at home, which actually and