THE 
 
 LIGHT AND THE TKUTH 
 
 OF 
 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 Reader, here is a picture of the poor, way-faring, degraded Aaron. 
 
 SPRINGFIELD: 
 
 1845. 
 
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 \ % V \ 'o f\ 
 U Ce "5- 
 
AARON'S HISTORY. 
 
 There is clear evidence in the life and history of Aaron, that he has been 
 a slave. Aaron cannot read. There are very few full blooded blacks at 
 the South that can read a word, Aaron says. 
 
 Now reader, Aaron wants you to buy this book. I don’t want you to buy 
 it merely to read it through, I want you to buy it and I want you to read it, 
 not to lay it up in your head, but to lay it up in your heart, and then you will 
 remember the poor way-faring Bondman. Two thirds of this book was 
 made up by the poor way-faring degraded Aaron. The Bible says, faith with¬ 
 out works is a dead article. 
 
 Aaron has a great knowledge of the Bible, but cannot read a word. 
 
 One mouth and one back to two hands is the law 
 That the hands of his Maker has stamped upon man, 
 
 But slavery lays on God’s image her paw, 
 
 And fixes him out on a different plan: 
 
 Two mouths and two backs to two hands she creates, 
 
 And the consequence is as she might have expected, 
 
 Let the hands do the best upon all her estates, 
 
 The mouths go half fed and the backs half protected. 
 
 “ Whose eyes stand out with fatness having more than heart could wish,” 
 who will turn a deaf ear to their own flesh when it passes along, and do walk 
 like Priests and Levites clear, and no relief provide. God in his anger down 
 on you looks. A dreadful damning sin. The men that go to Congress, are 
 men of good talents and principles, yet all the hon ors and butcheries of 
 slavery they sanction. Aaron thinks they are as destitute of moral principles 
 as a horse. 
 
 Now God Almighty has spared us to see almost another new year through 
 a great deal of sorrow and tribulation; but yet he has spared our unworthy 
 bodies so far, and has not sunk us as Mr. Miller has prophesied, but we 
 ought not to make our boast about it, for it may not be too late yet, because 
 we do not know when the Lord will break out in judgment against us, when 
 we are living in so much sin and iniquity, when dangers stand thick through 
 all the land to push us to the tomb, and we would go to the bottom if it were 
 
4 
 
 not for a merciful God. He is slow to anger and abundant in mercy. He 
 commands us to touch not and handle not unclean things, but come out from 
 among the wicked and dwell among the righteous. Do we do this 2 but 
 Aaron thinks not. In our free and independent country, where God’s holy 
 word is scattered throughout the United States, there is almost three million 
 slaves, and about one million of them the white brethren’s sons and daughters. 
 Well you will all unite and uphold the mother of abomination. Now, men, you 
 call yourselves Christians, be wise and consistent, and do not go to the polls 
 and vote for a mart that will turn you right out of doors. Now when you 
 white friends was running Mr. Harrison for President, (hey made such a fuss 
 ihat Aaron thought Mr. Harrison was going to make milk & honey flow through 
 the face of the earth, which when he took his seat he did not live but a short 
 time. God Almighty thundered from the eternal heavens and sent for him, and 
 Aaron trusts he has gone right home to heaven, and Aaron prays God that 
 ho may keep him low in the valley of humility, that at the end of the warfare 
 I may have grace to leap right home to heaven, and I trust to hail Mr. Har¬ 
 rison there. 
 
 When Tyler came upon the throne, what did he do but turn men right out 
 of office, who had half a dozen little children crying for bread. Now what 
 more can you expect from a slave-holding man, for you can expect nothing 
 more, and if you men would be consistent with your prayers, and pray from 
 the centre of your heart, then God would hear and answer and bless your 
 prayers, and let the oppressed go free ; but you see you don’t pray in faith, be¬ 
 lieving, that is the reason you cannot see to vote for good honorable men. 
 Their heads is full of knowledge of the Almighty and their hearts is shut up 
 with sin and iniquity. Aaron’s views on slavery connected with politics. 
 
 AARON’S TRAVELS. 
 
 When Aaron struck into New Jersey, it began to grow' dark, about two 
 miles before I come to Elizabethtown, it was very cold ; I traveled through a 
 swamp about one quarter of a mile. 
 
 When I got into Elizabethtown, I was covered with mud up to my knees 
 and almost froze. I fell into several houses and asked them if they would 
 be good enough to let me w'arm me, but none of them would be good enough. 
 I almost sunk in despair and I thought I would freeze. 1 fell into a house 
 where there was an old gentleman, and I asked him if he would be good 
 enough to let me come and warm myself, he told me yes, he would ; nty heart 
 leaped for joy, because I was almost chilled through. Aaron says h§ had 
 two daughters and they were very fine women, and one of them had lived in 
 Missouri for four years, her husband died and she became a widow. It was 
 a very cold and windy night, and I asked him if he would be good enough to 
 let me lay down in the kitchen all night by the fire. No you shunt lay in the 
 house, he said, but you may go and lay in the barn. And his daughter that 
 had become a widow in Missouri, she kept house for her father, she gave Aaron 
 a first rate of a supper, and a pair of dry trowsers to put on, and a good pair 
 of dry socks to put on, and two blankets and a quilt, and she slipped 
 them to me out of the kitchen window; she told me in the morning when 
 I got up to fetch them down out of the hay loft and put them in the carriage. 
 
5 
 
 I did so, I came to the kitchen and she refreshed me with a first rate of 
 r breakfast, and I had a long talk with her ; she told me after her husband 
 died she went about twelve miles out of the city of St. Louis, and kept 
 school for a planter that owned one hundred and six slaves. She told ine 
 he cut up with his female slaves more than he did with his wife; she said 
 sometimes his poor wife was almost crazy, and he tried to cut up the same- 
 capers with me, but he missed of it, and he pretended to be a member of the 
 church too. She told me that when the sinful capers was found out by every 
 one of the free States, she thought then slavery would be abolished and not 
 before. She told me she came home to her father’s house as quick as she 
 could get away. "What a blessed thing it is for any one when they meet with 
 sorrow and afflictions, to have a father’s home to go to. Now the poor slave' 
 when he is tied up to the whipping post and whipped almost to death, he has no 
 father to protect him, and no mother to protect him, and no one to fly to but 
 his Heavenlv Father. They have to bear patiently with their hard task masters, 
 and live humble and faithful to God, and then at the end of the warfare God 
 will richly crown them in heaven. 
 
 When I was travelling in Foxboro’, I fell in among Universalists, and 
 they entertained the way-faring and degraded Aaron very hospitably, and 
 treated him like a brother, minister and ail. They wrote considerable for 
 Aaron towards printing in my book, and throwed in and helped me to some 
 money towards getting it printed. I staid seven days with them. And I bid 
 ’em good bye, and wished the blessing of God upon ’em. Aaron says he 
 wonders there arn’t a thousand Universalist to where there is one. He won¬ 
 ders there arn’t a thousand infidels in the world to where there is one, because 
 the white brethren believe in the true light and gospel, and sentiments of the 
 Holy Ghost, and yet set a bad example for their white brethreh to stumble 
 over. That is what makes me say it is a wonder there is not a thousand 
 infidels and Universalists to where there is one. Men, again, who live up to 
 the moral law, wont enslave their brethren. Aaron says that no true hearted 
 Christian will hold his brother in bonds. The bible says, he that stealeth 
 a man and selleth him, shall surely be put to death. If he is found in his 
 hands, that thief shall die. If a man hateth his brother whom he has already 
 seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen. God says, in the eyes of 
 man, there is respect to 'persons, but in his eyes, there is no respect to persons. 
 Whenever a man is cleansed from his sin and iniquity, he is. a new formed 
 creature in Christ Jesus. Christ is in that white friend the hope of glory, 
 and he is in Christ, and so therefore there is no respect to persons. He will 
 treat an African brother as well as a while brother. He will not oppress him. 
 If he is a wolf clothed in sheep’s clothing, he will stand up and say it is right 
 to enslave the African brother. But if he is a sincere, godly man, he will 
 not stand up and say it is right. 
 
 When Aaron was in the middle of the town in Wrentham, I fell among 
 several anti-slavery families, and they treated me very coldly, much as ever I 
 could do to get a place to sleep, but the Lord opened the heart of a white 
 brother who had not been living in the place more than six months, who gave 
 me a first rate bed to sleep in, and first rate food to eat. The next morning 
 was a very pleasant one, and I told him if I never saw him no more, that I 
 might have grace to meet him in heaven, and bid him and his family good by. 
 ' I fell in with a young minister. * * * * His 
 
6 
 
 wife entertained Aaron very hospitably, she asked me if I would not have 
 something to eat, and I thanked her and told her no, but I told her I would 
 take a bite along with me, and, say she, very well; and so she gave me two or 
 three crusts of bread and a couple of slices of mouldy meet which smelt. And 
 the minister is a very holy man, and he chastised Aaron a couple of times about 
 speaking the Lord’s name in vain, but Aaron is afraid he is a wolf clothed in 
 sheep’s clothing. With all his holiness, the crust of bread and a couple slices 
 of mouldy meet was good enough for me. I trust that he may get to heaven; 
 and I may be shut out, but he has got to .shake off some of the sin connected 
 with his holiness before he will see his father’s face in heaven. 
 
 Beggars ought not to be choosers, but Aaron did not go in there beg¬ 
 ging for victuals to eat. I went in there begging them to write a little for me, 
 being as I could not write a word myself, and it is there they did write a 
 little for me. Being as his wife asked me to eat some, I thought she might 
 give me food good to eat, not give me food no better than for a hog to eat, 
 and as poor and in poverty as I am, I never would ask them to eat 
 unless I gave them as good food as I eat. We all ought to learn to be con¬ 
 sistent with our holy grace, for Aaron firmly believes that God is a Being 
 that will not be mocked ; ho is long suffering and abundant in mercy, and he 
 that endures unto the end, be richly will crown in heaven, but the hypocrite he 
 will turn a deaf ear to, and shut them out of his holy presence. Aaron thinks 
 if he ever gets to heaven, he will hail a great many Universalists there—them 
 that believe in the true light and gospel of God’s holy word. I am afraid a 
 great many of them will have to take a leap in the dark. 
 
 Twelve miles before Aaron struck into Uxbridge, I fell in with a Univer- 
 salist. Aaron did not learn his name, he treated me as a brother, but I never, 
 shall forget his form, he did’nt and sorrowful did he promise to pity and shift 
 Aaron for money front friend to friend. He helped him to lodging and to 
 victuals and in money. He told of a quaker man who was a-great abolitionist, 
 he lived in Uxbridge. Aaron went to him and he took my letter and read it, 
 and then told me to go about my business. Aaron says it did not astonish 
 me; the Quaker brethren is like one half of the Methodist brethren, they are 
 complete wolves clothed in sheep’s clothing. 
 
 When Aaron was in Mendon, the friendly people throwed in and helped me 
 considerable towards getting my book printed. When Aaron was in Black- 
 
 stone, there was a white gentleman asked me if I had saw- 
 
 brother-in-law, who had lately removed from Connecticut State, and I told 
 him that I had saw his wife, but I had not seen her husband, yet he told me 
 that he pretended to be a great anti-slavery man, and he told me that 
 when I saw him, that he guessed he would give me twenty-five cents.— 
 I went to his house Sunday morning about eleven o’clock, and I told him I 
 had got victuals enough to board myself, I asked him if be would be clever 
 enough to keep Aaron there all night till Blonday morning, he told me no, and 
 he would’nt do it, and found as much fault with Aaron as if I had been boarding 
 with him six months. Aaron thinks that instead of being an anti-slavery 
 man that he is a great rebel as ever trod the soil of New England country. 
 Aaron thinks if he had him in the South and he thought he could make one 
 dollar on me, that he would sell me as quick as lightning. 
 
 Aaron was born in the South. Aaron’s parents have been dead this some- 
 thing like 23 years. Aaron says it was nothing but hard work and hard usage 
 that killed them. That gentleman in Millville, told me there was plenty of work 
 
7 
 
 to be done there. There were several told me there were two or three gen¬ 
 tlemen in business there that were now broken up, and there was as many as 
 eight or nine men there told me business was very hard. 
 
 When a man’s heart is shut up with sin and iniquity he generally always 
 speaks what comes uppermost, let it be a lie or the truth, but the lie generally 
 always comes first. 
 
 SLAVERY A SIN. 
 
 We believe slavery to be a sin—always, every where, and only sin. Sin 
 in itself, apart from the occasional rigors incidental to its administration, and 
 from all those perils, liabilities, and positive inflictions to which its victims are 
 exposed. Sin is the nature of the act which created it, and in the elements 
 which constituted it. Sin, because it converts persons into things; men into 
 property; God’s image into merchandize. Because it forbids men from 
 using themselves for the advancement of their own wellbeing, and turns them ' 
 into mere instruments to be used by others solely for the benefit of the users. 
 Because it constitutes one man the owner of the body, soul, and spirit of 
 other men ; gives him power and permission to make his own pecuniary profit, 
 the great end of their being, thus strikes them out of existence as beings, 
 possessing rights and susceptibilities of happiness, and forcing them to exist 
 merely as appendages to his own existence, in other words, because slavery 
 holds and uses men as mere means for which to accomplish ends, of which 
 end, their own interests are not a part. Thus annihilating the sacred distinc¬ 
 tion between a person and a thing ; a distinction proclaimed an axiom of all 
 human consciousness; a distinction created by God—crowned with glory 
 and honor in the attributes, intelligence, morality, accountability and immortali¬ 
 ty, existence, and commended to the homage of universal mind, by the con¬ 
 current testimony of nature, providence, conscience and revelation, by the 
 blood of the atonement, and the sanction of eternity, authenticated by the 
 seal of Deity, and in its own nature, effaceless and immutable. This distinc¬ 
 tion slavery contemns, disannuls, and tramples under foot. This is its funda¬ 
 mental element—its vital constitutent principle, that which makes it a sin in 
 itself under whatever modification existing, all the incidental effects of the 
 system flow spontaneously from its fountain head. The constant exposure of 
 the slaves to outrage and the actual inflictions which they experience in 
 innumerable forms, all resulting legitimately from this principle, assumed in 
 the theory and embodied in the practice of slave-holding. 
 
 Ah me, what wish can prosper, or what prayer, 
 
 For merchants rich in cargoes of despair 1 
 Who drive a loathsome traffic, guage and span, 
 
 And buy the muscles and the bones of man. 
 
 Like Mary have you come early to the sepulchere seeking Jesus in the 
 Tomb. Aaron thinks that hundreds and thousands of poor creatures, black 
 and white, die in that manner every year: we never think to call upon our 
 heavenly Father, only when afflictions fall at our heels, then we’ll call on our 
 
heavenly Eather. God commands us to shoulder our cross, to follow him 
 through evil report as well as good. There is a great many lives humble and 
 faithful to God, till sorrows and afflictions come against them, then they will 
 flee like deadly poisoned, something like Judas and Peter, they will deny that 
 they ever knew God. Let us all learn to be consistent, not to deceive our 
 brethren, when we have the true love of God stamped in our unworthy hearts, 
 then we’ll shoulder our cross and follow Christ through evil report as well as 
 good. Aaron has seen a good many men and women in his travels, the out¬ 
 ward appearance appeared to Aaron to be Angels, when Aaron stopped with 
 them a while, and come to have dealings with them, their hearts were as desti¬ 
 tute of the love of God as a pitcher,—complete wolves clothed in sheep’s 
 clothing 
 
 Now reader,I want you to remember the Bible says he that is thought much of 
 in the eyes of men is despised in my eyes, blessed is he who is despitefullv used 
 for my sake ; the Bible says that he who calls his brother a fool is in danger 
 of hell-fire. Aaron says that a true witness of Christ is persecuted on the 
 right hand and on the left; are brought as sheep before the slaughter. 
 
 When Aaron was in Milford, two angels entertained him very hospitably, 
 made him welcome to stay over the Sabbath, with them ; merely stopped 
 awhile to ask their wives to write a little, and they insisted on my staying 
 over the Sabbath day, and Aaron staid with them until Monday morning. I 
 was in the house about fifteen hours, they began to find as much fault with 
 me as if i had begged them to keep me a week. How wrong Aaron thinks 
 it is when a man will stand up and tell his brother one thing, and have his 
 heart another way; a hollow heart is tenfold worse than an Arab, an open 
 enemy is less to be feared than a false friend. These two angels that enter¬ 
 tained Aaron on the Sabbath day, were men who professed to be filled with 
 gospel grace, but like Adna and Anthony filled with filthy lucre. 
 
 Southern Arguments to slop the Mouths of JYorlhern Gitesls. 
 
 A Northern man goes to the South, sits at a table loaded from the slaves’ 
 unpaid toil, who eats his corn bread in the sun, marries a slave holder, and 
 then finds out that slavery is a divine institution, and defends it in Southern 
 and Northern pulpits, religious newspapers,—and for example consult memory 
 or observation. 
 
 Rev. Basil Manly, a clerical man-seller, recently preached in our churches 
 in various parts of N. England, and the scores of clerical Baptist slave-holders 
 that beset the North every summer, are invited to occupy your pulpits. If 
 you would enjoy the smiles of him who came to preach deliverance to the cap¬ 
 tives, renounce all fellowship with the unfruitful works of slavery, that you 
 may in word and deed reprove them. 
 
 A poor slave being on his death bed, begged of his master to give him his 
 liberty before he died. “ I want to die free massa.” [His master replied 
 you are going to die soon, what good would your liberty do 1 “0 master, I 
 want to die free.” He said to the slave, 11 you are free.” “But do write it 
 master, I want to see it on paper.” At his earnest request he wrote that he 
 was free, the slave took it in his trembling hand, looked at it with a smile and 
 exclaimed, “ 0 how beautiful, 0 how beautiful,” and soon fell asleep in the 
 arms of death. 
 
9 
 
 toussasnt t’otnrEHT. 
 
 The friends of the enslaved are continually told that Africans arc an inferior 
 race. If this were true it would be no good reason for enslaving them. But 
 it is not. The world may be safely'challenged to produce a nobler character 
 than that of Toussaint, the George Washington of St. Domingo. Calumny 
 has striven to paint him a monster. She has brought the printing presses of 
 both continents to her aid, but in vain. Toussaint was born in slavery, 
 but his soul cannot be bound. When his countrymen who had gained their 
 liberty by the proclamation of Santhonax and Polvorre were in danger of 
 losing it by the intrigues of former tyrants, he was selected as their chief. 
 With reluctance he left the bosom of his family to which he was tenderly 
 attached. He gave union and a wise constitution to his countrymen. By 
 his bravery he repelled every foe. Bonaparte it seems obtained possession of 
 the sons of Toussaint and included them in the splendid bribe which 
 he sent to buy the negro chief, hoping by that detestable policy to 
 make an easy conquest. He was mistaken. Toussaint met his boys with 
 the heart of a father, but immediately sent them back with a letter to Bona¬ 
 parte, the spirit of which will be shown by the following extracts: 
 
 Citizen Consul : 
 
 Your letter of the 27th Brumaire has been transmitted to me by Citizen 
 Le Clerc, your brother-in-law, whom you have appointed Captain General of 
 this Island, a title not recognized by the constitution of St. Domingo. The 
 same message has restored two innocent children to the fond embraces 
 of a doting father. What a noble instance of European humanity ! But dear 
 as those pledges are to me, and painful as our separation is, f will owe no 
 obligations to my enemies, and I therefore return them to the custody of their 
 jailors. You ask me, do I desire consideration, honors and fortune ? Most 
 certainly I do, but not of thy giving : My consideration is placed in the res¬ 
 pect of my countrymen ; my honors in their attachment; my fortune in their 
 disinterested fidelity. Has this mean idea of personal aggrandizement been 
 held out in hope that I would be induced thereby to betray the cause I have 
 undertaken ? You should learn not to estimate the moral principle in other 
 men by your own. If the person who claims a right to that throne on which 
 you are seated were to call on you to descend from it, what would be 
 your answer? The power I possess has been as legitimately acquired as your 
 own, and naught but the decided voice of the people of St. Domingo shall 
 compel me to relinquish it. It is not cemented by blood, nor maintained by 
 the artifices of European policy. The ferocious men whose persecutions I 
 have put stop to, have confessed my clemency, and I have pardoned the 
 wretch whose dagger has been aimed at my life. If I have removed from 
 this Island certain turbulent spirits, who strove to feed the flames of civil war, 
 their guilt has been first established before a competent tribunal and finally 
 confessed by themselves. Is there one of them who can say he has been 
 condemned unheared or untried ? And yet these monsters are to be brought 
 back once more, %nd aided by the bloodhounds of Cuba are to be uncoupled 
 and allowed to hunt us down and devour us ; and this by men who dare to 
 call themselves Christians. 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 Seven years previous to this Toussaint sent his sons, then seven and nine 
 years of age, to Paris for education. They were put under the care of a tutor 
 named Coisnou. Bonaparte used this man as a tool to prepare the boys for 
 his purpose. The tutor and his charge having been sent out with Leclerc, 
 Coisnou wrote from Cape Francois to Toussaint who was then at his country 
 seat at Ennery, saying, “ The first Consul sends by me your two sons and 
 certain importnat despatches. Your sons will be with you to-morrow, pro¬ 
 vided you will give me your word that in case of your not complying with the 
 wishes of the First Consul, they shall be safely returned to the Cape.” 
 Toussaint gave his word, and on the morrow, the boys accompanied by Cois¬ 
 nou, were with their fond parents. Toussaint had now the choice of three 
 things. He might break his word and keep his sons; he might comply with 
 the wishes of Bonaparte and keep them, or he might send them back. He 
 would neither break his word nor sell his country, and therefore he chose to 
 send them back. It was a proverb in St. Domingo that Toussaint never broke 
 his word. 
 
 When Aaron was traveling through Rhode Island State with George Ben¬ 
 son, a brother-in-law of Mr. Garrison, I put up at a tavern in Providence, on 
 Criston Hill, a very respectable looking tavern. The tavern keeper was a 
 man with 'light hair and light skin, and dressed up in first rate cloth. When 
 Aaron fell in with him I gave him my purse to take care of for me till morn¬ 
 ing, with forty eight dollars and seventy-five cents. Out of the $48 75 he 
 gave me the purse in the morning with 25 dollars in it. Besides I paid him 
 twenty-five cents for one naked night’s lodging. And Aaron thinks that his 
 heart is more homlier with sin and iniquity than Aaron’s face is, else he 
 would’nt stole that money away from me wilfully. Aaron has seen in his 
 travels them that would sooner rob from me than to help me to any. And 
 any one that will rob from Aaron will rob from the dead on the highway. If 
 they see a dead man lying in the wilderness with a thousand dollars in his 
 pocket, they will go and rob every cent away from him, and then will go and 
 say that he had not one copper in his pocket, and will apply to the town to 
 take him and bury him, and the town will throw in their little mites and bury 
 him after having so much money. Aaron has been much better off all through 
 Maine. And Aaron has been in four towns where they have established Anti- 
 Slavery Societies. 
 
 Aaron in his travels has been entertained, and very hospitably with sincere 
 Christians. 
 
 Aaron has talked in the Baptist church in the city of Portland to between 
 seven and eight hundred people. Aaron staid among the friendly people five 
 days, and during that time there was about fifty ladies and gentlemen told 
 Aaron they would petition to Congress to pay taxes for the valuable negroes 
 which they vote for every three head, and sold them for fourteen or fifteen 
 hundred dollars apiece, such valuable property, and yet don’t pay one cent 
 of tax. When Aaron was in Dedham I fell in with a great anti-slavery man. 
 He keeps a store in Boston. I did not learn his name'. He told me he 
 wanted me a couple of days to dig potatoes for him. I asked him what he 
 would be willing to pay me for digging potatoes for him, and he told me 50 
 
11 
 
 cents. I told him I would be willing to work for 38 cents if lie would be 
 willing to give me a place to sleep in the house, and he told me he could not 
 let me sleep in the house. I asked him if he could not give me a pallet 
 in the kitchen, and he told me he could not, but says he I will fix you a place 
 in the barn. He lived in a large house. Aaron thinks he had room enough 
 to give me a comfortable bed in the house, but the trouble of it was he had 
 not room enough in his heart to give me a place to sleep in his house. Aaron 
 thinks he is like a great many anti-slavery men. What anti-slavery he has 
 got is lodged in the fore part of the skull, his heart is as empty and destitute 
 of anti-slavery as a pitcher is. With all his great abolition he had not abolition 
 enough to keep me in his house. Aaron says he was good enough to do his 
 work for him. With all his anti-slavery, Aaron says he is not one foot better 
 than the Slaveholder in the South. Aaron’s master was a very profane man, 
 and he has called me a damn’d rebel since I have been away, and all the 
 scoundrels he could think of. Aaron says he shall not call him a damn fool 
 not to my head. 
 
 “ Christians, remember those in bonds as though you were bound with 
 them.” 
 
 Aaron is acquainted with ministers at the South that live in open adultery 
 with colored women. He has known ministers to tie colored men and women 
 in cellars and whip them secretly till their backs were all dripping with blood. 
 Aaron thinks these white friends in the South that pretend to call themselves 
 Christians, their hands and feet are stained with African blood, which 1 am 
 afraid in judgment the blood of the African’s and their own children’s blood 
 that are enslaved, Aaron thinks it will cry so heavy against them in the judg¬ 
 ment that it will sink their poor souls right into hell. When Aaron was 
 traveling in Princeton, Mass., he saw an old gentleman, 70 years of age, and 
 he told him he knew he was from the south if he denied it ever so much, and 
 he asked him how he knew. Why he told me he had been all through the 
 south, and he told him he firmly believed it was the prayers of the poor slaves 
 that saved the south from being sunk. 
 
 Assist runaway slaves as you would wish to be assisted. 
 
 When Aaron was in Norwich, Conn. State, I got to conversing with a yel¬ 
 low man with light hair and blue eyes, and he told me he shipped on board a 
 ship to go to South Carolina at the time of Nathaniel Turner’s insurrection 
 in the State of Virginia. They then passed a law that no free man of color 
 should land on the soil of South Carolina. The constables and other officers 
 came down to search the vessel to see if there were any free men of color 
 to take up and put in the Calaboose. This yellow man that had light hair and 
 blue eyes, he told the constable he was the colored man, and the conitable 
 told him he was a dammned Yankee and a liar, and went down ygo the 
 kitchen and saw a white man that had black hair and black eyes, butKjvas 
 a full blooded white man, but he took him and put him in jail and kflm 
 four days until the vessel was ready to sail, and the white man swore heT KgjfY^ 
 never go to the south any more, and he is now one of the greatest abolitra^P 
 ists in the state of Connecticut. This fact can be proved by several wfiiio 
 men in Norwich. 
 
12 
 
 Happinness of Slaves. 
 
 But we are further told that slaves show by their actions that they are 
 happy. They sing, laugh, dance, and make merry. He is a shallow smat- 
 terer in human nature, who does not understand this, that mirth is often rather 
 the effort of the mind to throw off trouble than the evidence of happiness. 
 It shows that a man wishes to be happy, and is trying for it, and is oftencr the 
 means of use to get it than the proof that it exists ; and as to singing, why do 
 prisoners sing in jails? We have all heard them. Does it prove solitary 
 cells a paradise ? Do jail walls, dingy light, and soilitude make men so happy 
 that they sing for joy ? They sing to make pleasure for themselves, not 
 to give vent to it. Their singing indicates a mind seeking amusement, 
 rather than one contented with what it has—a mind conscious of a want, and 
 striving to satisfy it, rather than one rejoicing in a full supply. In illustration 
 of this we insert a fact from Dr. Chauning of Boston. 
 
 “ I once passed a colored woman at work on a plantation, who was singing 
 apparently with animation, and whose general manners would have led me to set 
 her down as the happiest of the gang. I said to her, your work seems pleas¬ 
 ant to you. She replied, no, massa. Supposing that she referred to some¬ 
 thing particularly disagreeable in her immediate occupations, I said to her, 
 tell me then, what part of your work is not pleasant. She answered with 
 emphasis—‘ No part pleasant. We forced to do it.’ 
 
 Wliai has the Church to do with Slavery ? 
 
 This depends upon the question whether salveholding is a sin. If it is the 
 church of Christ have much to do with it. If it is a sin at all, it is a very great 
 sin. It almost shuts out the blessings of the gospel from a sixth part of our 
 people. It sends a corrupting influence over our whole nat'on. Look at the 
 2,250,000 immortal beings used as property, as machines for making money. 
 The evil is too mighty to be seen at one glance. Take a single slave—follow 
 him through a life of hard labor without wages ; see how the mind, deprived of 
 proper instructions, shrinks and dwindles under the whip and fetter. See how 
 his heart plundered of its holy affections is delivered over to brutality and 
 corruption. Go to the slave auction 1 see human forms, from infancy to grey 
 hairs, sold under the hammer. See human souls bartered away for cash. 
 See %nilies that God hath joined together, separated, never more to meet in 
 this ;|||fld. Count, if you can, the groans, fathom the bitter woes, occasioned 
 byjftitese separations. Sum up the thousands of these scenes that take place 
 g^eygry year in the great domestic slave trade. Go along with the chained drove, 
 ’®*frqm the Potomac to the Mississippi. Then again, glance your eye on the 
 varied shades and features of these unhappy slaves ; and see the sure evi¬ 
 dence that while masters traffic in the souls and bodies of their own children. 
 Follow out the investigation into its details, and you will begin to learn the 
 greatness of the sin. 
 
 But go forward a little further. Follow to the judgment bar of Christ, all 
 
13 
 
 the souls that have been trained up in slavery. Jiefore the same bar will 
 stand the American Church. Will not this immense and woful havoc of 
 souls which God created in his image, and for whom Christ died, be one of 
 the first things to be inquired of by the judge ? Will not every individual 
 Christian be asked, “What hast thou done in this matter?” 
 
 Now look and see what the church is doing. See how, in its largest 
 denominations, it embraces in its bosom slaveholders of all sorts, llow it 
 abstains from reproof. How, in its most solemn assemblies, slaveholders are 
 mingled and sit down together at the table of the same Lord. Christians at the 
 North say they are opposed to slavery. Count the number of ministers whom 
 they have sent to the South, who are now slaveholders. Ask whether these 
 slaveholding preachers are ever kept out of the pulpit when they visit the north. 
 How many ministers preach against slavery either at the south or at the north ? 
 Count the number of churches that bear testimony against the sin by exclud¬ 
 ing slaveholders like other open sinners, from their communion. 
 
 Now, can any Christian man in his senses say, after such an examination, 
 that the church is ready to answer to God for American Slavery? No. The 
 first thing the church has to do with slavery is, to repent, and purifv itself 
 from the practice of it. The second is to repent of the great sin of at- 
 tempting to justify slavery from the scriptures. The third is, to repent and 
 show toward the injured victims of slavery, the spirit of him who came to 
 open the prison door, to unbind the captive, and let the oppressed go free. 
 
 In 1834, a man who had resided three years in New York, and bore a good 
 character, was taken out of bed at midnight, and with his wife and son, car¬ 
 ried back into slavery by his own cousin. 
 
 In the same year, a while man of Newbern, N. C., carried his four slave 
 children to New Orleans, by way of New York, having sold his wife, their 
 mother, to a New Orleans trader three years before. 
 
 In the same year a man by the name of Phillips was taken up in New York 
 by a “ speculator,” to whom he had been sold by his father, and carried to 
 Virginia as a slave. Many honorable names might be mentioned in connec¬ 
 tion with such facts. 
 
 Aaron thinks there are a few white people here at the north that arc worse 
 than the slaveholders at the south. They tie the blacks up at the south and 
 whip them to death for little or nothing. Aaron never knew them tied up and 
 whipped to death for nothing. When Aaron was traveling in Connecticut 
 State, about two days before he got into Litchfield, he felt' like something 
 was pushing him along and was so sensible of it that he laid down his bundlo 
 and looked back, but could not see nothing, but felt troubled in my mind. I 
 knowed that something was going to take place, but did not know what it was. 
 When Aaron struck into Litchfield village, I went to a tavern and there mv 
 sorrow commenced, and there was eight or nine young men came up and felt 
 of my head, and there was a couple of old gentlemen come up and felt of 
 my head, and they told me I was no fool, and that I had a good head. Some 
 of them wanted to know where I was fromsome said I was from South 
 Carolina, but Aaron did not tell them where he was from, but told him he 
 would give him a eleven-penny bit if he would give him a place to sleep. 
 The tavern keeper told me that he would, but like Aaron and Anthony, he 
 lit Aaron up stairs to bed, for the sake of a few pieces of silver. Judas 
 betrayed his Heavenly Father. 
 
14 
 
 Just so that rebel tried to sell my sinful body to the doctors, but the Lord 
 took care of Aaron; same way the Lord delivered me out of the jaws of the 
 Arabs, just so he delivered me out of the jaws of that rebel. Aaron was 
 seventy miles away from home, and Aaron never expected to see the face of 
 his wife any more, but the Lord did spare him to see the face of his wife- 
 once more. 
 
 Slavery! second born of hell, 
 
 Child of sin and twin of death, 
 
 Who thy brood of woes can tell, 
 
 Drawing from the kindred breath ! 
 
 Pride and hate, and lust and crime, 
 
 Dark revenge and cruelty; 
 
 Woes that end not even with time, 
 
 Woes that curse eternity. 
 
 After I lived five years in Ohio, my master heard of me and sent after me r 
 but the Lord opened the hearts of friendly white men and they helped me 
 away to the North. 
 
 When I struck into Vermont State, for one week I could scarcely step a step, 
 cause I had froze my toes and feet; with good shoes aud stockings on too. 
 Little after that time I could pull all my toe nails out like rotten meat; and 
 Aaron has not got a natural toe nail on his feet: my toes were all one winter 
 healing up. And when I come to realize what the Lord had brought me through, 
 I am really astonished ; he has kept my unworthy body from freezing to death, 
 and starving to death'. 
 
 I have been abused very bad, but my master has never sent me to the whip¬ 
 ping post, but he has tied me up at home and has whipped me most dread¬ 
 fully ; and so he has, and he has debarred me of going to meeting ; he has 
 locked me up down cellar and has kept me there for whole days, and has not 
 suffered me to eat or drink a bit of any thing, for nothing else under heaven 
 only for going to meeting and serving my heavenly Father. 
 
 Aaron thinks that men put too much confidence in one another, they do 
 things in the eyes of poor feeble dying men, they .love the praise of their poor 
 feeble dying men, better than they do their Heavenly Father’s. And now 
 when a man is made pure in Christ, he is pure indeed, and he does not do 
 things in the eyes of men to get the praise of men. Aaron thinks there is 
 nothing that man can make compared with the Almighty. What man makes 
 is like his poor feeble dying body, it may last between sixty and seventy years, 
 and then fades away. But what God makes is pure and holy, and it lasts 
 forever. Behold the sand in the rivers, how pure it is ; behold the waters that 
 God creates, for as it flows through the earth, how pure and good it is. What 
 is better when we are almost choked for drink that a pure drink of cold water, 
 it don’t make us giddy or it don’t make us sick, it only refreshes our unworthy 
 bodies. Behold the stone how everlasting it is; it lasts forever, does brick 
 last forever 1 Man makes brick of clay, and to the dust of clay it returns 
 again, the same way God made us, unto dust we return again. Aaron’s views 
 of poor feeble hollow hearted dying men. 
 
 A great many people tell mo about this awful bad amalgation business, and 
 
15 
 
 they think when friendly people took me in and set down to the table to eat 
 with them, and when their acquaintances come in to see them, and see Aaron 
 sitting up to the table eatiug with them, it draws a dead damp on them, it is 
 like Adne and Anthony. Aaron thinks if they would only look in the South 
 where I come from, it will be a complete ballot box for them, they would put 
 their hand right on their mouth and never utter another word about amalgama¬ 
 tion, or any thing else. In the South white man wont suffer black men to 
 look at white women, but they will go and force black women, and there aint 
 eh or Anthony said about it. The very old devil has got his own right foot 
 on the slave holders own neck, and Aaron thinks the poor slave holder can¬ 
 not see sin and folly until he is shut up among the dammed in hell forever. 
 
 When Aaron falls in with sincere Christian people, they treat me like a 
 brother, but not as a slave, and they let the way-faring Aaron cat when they 
 eat, and don’t keep me waiting till they have done eating, and then give me a 
 crust of bread and a piece of old stale meat in the kitchen, the way a great 
 many ministers do in my travels. Aaron says he should as live go to hear 
 the devil preach as to hear some ministers, because they preach one thing 
 and practice another, and don’t begin to live up to their doctrine. We should 
 always practice what we preach to others, for a man of words and not of 
 deeds, is like a garden full of weeds. So Aaron says. 
 
 From Georgia’s Southern mountains, 
 Potomac’s either strand, 
 
 Where Carolina’s fountains 
 Roll down their golden sand ; 
 
 From many a lovely river, 
 
 From many a sunny plain, 
 
 They call us to deliver 
 
 Their land from error’s chain. 
 
 Shall we whose souls are lighted 
 With wisdom from on high, 
 
 Shall we to men benighted, 
 
 The lamp of life deny ? 
 
 Salvation, 0 Salvation, 
 
 The joyful sound proclaim, 
 
 Till all in every station 
 
 Shall learn Messiah’s name. 
 
 What though fair freedom’s breezes, 
 Blow softly o’er our land, 
 
 And each one as he pleases, 
 
 May worship with his hand, 
 
 And though with lavish kindness 
 The gospel’s gifts are strown, 
 
 The negro in his blindness, 
 
 Is left to grope alone. 
 
16 
 
 Ye masters tell his story, 
 
 And you ye heralds preach, 
 And to the slave his glory, 
 
 Let every Christian teach. 
 Till from our ransomed natures 
 The chains of bondage fall, 
 And Jesus, only Blaster, 
 
 Shall freely reign o’er all. 
 
 Selections from the Bible. 
 
 Paul to tiie Galatians. —5 chap. 19. Now the works of the flesh are 
 manifest, which are these :—Adultery, fornication, uncleaness, laciviousness, 
 idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, here¬ 
 sy, &c. &c. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 gentleness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law. Bear 
 ye one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. 
 
 Rev. i. 12—15. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And 
 being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the 
 seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of Blan, clothed with a garment 
 down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and 
 hairs were white like wool, as white as snow ; and his eyes were as a flame 
 of fire. 
 
 Dan. 7:9. I beheld till thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days 
 did sit, whose garments were white as snow, and the hair of his head like the 
 pure wool. 
 
 Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant that has escaped from 
 his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you in that 
 place which he shall chose in one of thy gates. AVhere it liketh him best; 
 thou shalt not oppress him. Deut. 23 :—15, 16. 
 
 He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he (hat despiseth the 
 gain of oppression, that shaketh the hand from holding of bribes, that stop- 
 peth his ear from hearing of blood and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; he 
 shall dwell on high ; his place of defence shall be the munition of rocks, bread 
 shall be given him; his water shall be sure. Isa. 33 : 15, 16. 
 
 Aaron’s views on God’s holy word, strictly forbids us holding our brethren 
 in bonds, and here is several chapters against it. 
 
 Is it such a fast that I have chosen ? A day for man to afflict his soul ? Is 
 it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes 
 under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? 
 
 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wicked¬ 
 ness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that 
 ye break every yoke ? 
 
 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that 
 are cast out of thy house ? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him ; 
 and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? 
 
 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring 
 
17 
 
 forth speedily ; and thy righteousness shall go before thee ; the glory of the 
 Lord shall be thy reward. Isa. 58: 5—8. 
 
 i Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, 
 do you even so to them ; for this is the law and the. prophets. Matt. 7 : 12. 
 
 Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers 
 by wrong; that useth his neighbor’s service without wages, and giveth him not 
 for hi's work; that saith, I will build me a wide house, and large chambers, 
 and cuttethhim out windows; and it is ceiled with cedar and painted with 
 vermilion. Shalt thou reign because thou closest thyself in cedar ? Did not 
 thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it was well 
 with him 1 He judged the cause of the poor and needy ; then it was well 
 with him : was not this to know me ? saith the Lord. But thine eyes and 
 thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, 
 and for oppression, and for violence, to do it. 
 
 Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah 
 king of Judah. They shall not lament for him saying, Ah my brother! or 
 Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord! or Ah his glory! 
 Jeremiah 22d chap. 13 to 15. 
 
 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall como 
 upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 
 Your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness 
 against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire,—ye have heaped treas¬ 
 ures together for the last days. Behold the hire of the laborers who have 
 reapt down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth. And 
 ■the cries of them which have reaped.are entered into the ears of the Lord of 
 Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton, ye have 
 nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and 
 killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be patient therefore, brethren, 
 unto the coming of the Lord. James 5th chapter, 1st to 7th verses. 
 
 When Aaron was in Hallowell in the State of Maine, a gentleman told him 
 that there were 52 strong anti-slavery families lived in H. but he could not get 
 a soul good enough to fake him in. He thinks if it had been winter he should 
 have frozen to death, but providentially it was warm weather. He laid himself 
 down upon a harrow, but the little red and black ants troubled him so he was 
 obliged to seek shelter some where else. He tarried the rest of the night in 
 a privy. TVhen he arose he found a beautiful morning: he walked four 
 miles, then asked a gentleman if he would give him some breakfast; he told 
 him he was drunk and foolish, and ought to go to the Asylum. He proceeded 
 to two houses farther and the Lord opened their hearts. They provided him 
 with a good breakfast, which refreshed him much, and they gave him food 
 enough to last him two meals. The man who refused to give me a morsel they 
 told me was a rich man. Aaron thinks he is rich in this world, but is 
 afraid he will be poor and miserable in the world to come. He left God’s 
 blessing with them, and proceeded on nine or ten miles, when a gentleman 
 opened his house for a meeting. The hearers were very attentive ; they can 
 ;hear, other things as quick as a clap of thunder; their heads are full of the 
 
18 
 
 knowledge of the Almighty, but how does the heart stand t a9 empty and as 
 destitute of the love of God as a pitcher. 
 
 Now you do not hear of their sending many missionaries to Africa. The 
 ministers are afraid they cant get any more servants to steal. God’s 
 holy word says that he that sells a man shall surely be put to death, and if 
 he is in his hands, that thief shall die. Aaron says that missionaries that 
 are sent to Africa never will prosper, and he believes that ministers sent 
 to Africa are sent for mere sham, and has told thousands so in his travels. 
 
 The last time Aaron went into Connecticut State, I went to see Mr. Lud- 
 dow about purchasing my freedom, and when I got into the city of New 
 Haven, there I saw a man that called me by my name, and Aaron was scared 
 ■so that I could hardly speak. A colored brother took me to Mr. Boardman’s 
 house; he advised me not to purchase my freedom, that no free man of color 
 could live there. 
 
 The first time I went to New Jfaven, I was conversant with Mr. Ludlow 
 about purchasing my freedom. He told me he would see about it: the next 
 time I went to New Haven he was gone from there ; he had moved to Pough¬ 
 keepsie, New York State, so Aaron has give up purchasing his freedom, and 
 has tried to content himself here in the North. God is merciful to us all, 
 and he bears with us and forbears with us. A great many of the people are 
 halted and blind so with sin and iniquity, they can’t see God’s goodness, nor 
 his wrath until it sinks them right into hell, and then they will see and cry for 
 mercy, but God does turn everlasting deaf ear to them; they are shut up 
 among the damned forever. Behold his pouring wrath out upon the people in 
 Gaudaloupe, and destroyed from between 15000 ; so Aaron says. It was 
 about as great 4 place in the traffic of human souls as under the whole 
 globe. Behold his wrath pouring out upon the people upon the wide ocean, 
 and sinking thousands in the sea, nothing only for their wickedness, so Aaron 
 says. Behold thousands of men in the world getting mad with one another, 
 going into the field and cutting one another off by the thousands, and leaving 
 hundreds of widows throughout the world desolate with little children 
 around them crying for bread to eat. Wicked bad tyrants were sent to rule 
 the government, which did not know their right hand from their left, so Aaron 
 says, has pressed out these poor men into battle, has had them all cut off. It 
 is nothing only the wrath of God for their sinful wicked bad doings, so Aaron 
 says. 
 
 A short passage selected by Aaron from God’s holy word. 
 
 1. Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 
 
 2. In my father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have 
 told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 
 
 3. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive 
 you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 
 
 4. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 
 
 5. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and 
 how can we know the way ? 
 
 6. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life ; no man 
 cometh unto the father hut by me.—John 14: 1—6. 
 
19 
 
 United States ! Tour banner wears 
 Two emblems—one of fame ; 
 Alas, the other that it bears 
 Reminds us of your shame. 
 
 The white man’s liberty in types, 
 Stands blazoned by your Stars; 
 But what’s the meaning of your stripes 
 They mean your negro's scars. 
 
 Was man ordained the slave of man to toil ? 
 Yoked with the brutes and fettered to the soil ? 
 Weighed in a tyrant’s balance with his gold? 
 
 NO ! Nature stamped us in a heavenly mould, 
 She bade no wretch his thankless labor urge, 
 Nor trembling take the pittance and the scourge. 
 
 Oh, Hail Columbia! happy land 1 
 'The cradle land of liberty I 
 Where none but negroes brand, 
 
 Or feel the lash of slavery. 
 
 Then let the glorious anthem peal! 
 And drown ‘Britannia rules the waves,’ 
 Strike up the song that men can feel; 
 Columbia rules three million slaves !” 
 
 When Aaron was in Athol, I fell into a house where were several in the 
 house, and among them was a sea captain about 70 years old. He had been 
 dealing on the African coast. I had a long talk with him, and he told me the 
 blacks were better off in the United States with their masters than they were 
 in Africa. Says he, when the King’s daughter dies, they will slay two or 
 three hundred to honor the King. Aaron says it is a wilful and malicious lie. 
 The Bible says, “ no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Also, 
 “ cursed is he that puts the cup to his brother’s lip.” Also, “ no murderer 
 shall inherit eternal life.” “ Cursed is he that imbues his hands in his broth¬ 
 er’s blood.” They carry liquor into Africa, and that ain’t bad enough, so 
 they carry guns and powder there, also shot and balls, and the sword, make 
 
20 
 
 them drunk and then compel them to fight. Whichever tribe conquers will 
 bring to the whites those whom they conquer, and they will buy them by giv¬ 
 ing in exchange ribbons, beads, red shirts, and one foolish thing and another. 
 Aaron asked the above named captain, who he is afraid is going down to hell 
 with a bundle of sin on his back, if he didn’t think God would bless the nation 
 ten-fold, if they would carry Bibles and hymn books there, and send missiona¬ 
 ries and teach them that there is a holy God above. Aaron thinks that God 
 would bless Africa ten-fold, and England and America would be blessed ten¬ 
 fold too. Some says, “ Where is the nation that has been treated as bad as 
 the poor Africans ? Who inhabits the south part of Africa? 
 
 Something like two hundred miles of Africa is inhabited by the white men. 
 The natives are cut off and driven back. And what ain’t driven off are 
 stolen away, and brought here to America and the West India Islands. Their 
 children are scattered among the white folks and held in bonds. It’s true the 
 Indians are cut off from their country and driven back, but they ain’t catched 
 and made slaves of, and the women taken away from them and forced by 
 white men, the way the poor Africans is. The way-faring Aaron. 
 
 Aaron’s views on freedom and on slavery. 
 
 Industry, diligence, and proper improvement of time, are important duties 
 of the young. In youth the habits of industry are most easily acquired, and 
 the motives to it are strongest, both from ambition and from duty, and the 
 prospects which the beginning of life affords. Industry is not only the instru¬ 
 ment of improvements, but the foundation of pleasure. Nothing is so oppo¬ 
 site to the enjoyment of life as the state of an indolent mind. Those who 
 are strangers to industry may possess, but they cannot enjoy, for it is labor 
 alone which gives a relish to pleasure. We should fly from idleness as the 
 certain parent both of guilt and ruin. We should never let it cross our path 
 while young. Obtain industry in youth and it will never lose its hold. 
 
 Aaron says our southern brethren were reared up in complete idleness. 
 They have blacks to wait upon them, to feed them,, and carry them to bed 
 when they are between 8 and 9 years old. Reared up in complete idle¬ 
 ness, then when they are reared up, they go to gambling and cockfighting. 
 Aaron’s old master and mistress owned eight slaves, and among them was 
 three females. They had to take night about and sit up all night to fan their 
 master and mistress, to keep them cool, after working and toiling all day. 
 Aaron says that if your females remember your brother in bonds as though 
 you were bound with them, and will try to do all that is in your power to 
 deliver them from that sinful indolent life, I long to see the day when the 
 white people live at the. South as they do at the North ; not debar the poor 
 African who has to toil out under the hot boiling sun, and depriving them of 
 every thing that is just and right in the sight of a holy God. 
 
 Aaron thinks according to the reading of the Bible, that God foreknew 
 everything, God Almighty saw that Pharaoh was determined to keep the 
 
21 
 
 children of Israel in bondage. God taught such a time that they should keep 
 them in bondage and that time was four hundred years and no longer. If it 
 was right for the Egyptians to hold the Israelites in bonds, the Lord would not 
 have brought them out. Did not the Lord say that he would bring out the 
 Israelites, and bring the Egyptians to judgment. God sent Moses and 
 Aaron to deliver them, and they were something like twenty or thirty years 
 about it, and it seemed that Pharaoh was determined to hold the Israelites in 
 bonds, the devil made a complete fool of Pharaoh, so that he was swallowed 
 up in water and woke in hell. Pharaoh, he bound the chains tighter and 
 and tighter around the Israelites. The poor wicked slaveholder that is now 
 living upon the face of the earth, does not know his right hand from his left in 
 bringing the chains tighter and tighter upon the poor slave at the south, and 
 Aaron is afraid that they will not hearken to justice until the Lord sinks them 
 in sin and folly in the same way he did the wicked Pharaoh. God had a 
 foreview of the white man holding the African in bonds, according to the 
 reading of the Bible, because he says, you may go and buy of the heathen, and 
 they shall serve you forever; and they shall bo inherited to your children 
 forever: that is, if your hearts are wicked and bad enough to do so,—but 
 remember after death God will bring you into judgment. We must take the 
 bible as it reads, and it is a bitter guide against slavery, if it was not 
 a bitter guide against slavery why does it say in so many different places, 
 “ thou shalt not hold thy fellow mortal in bondage.” The slaveholders can’t 
 see to read the bible, because their hearts are shut up with sin and inquity, 
 and is stained with the African’s blood. When every man is dipped in 
 the blood of Christ, he is a new creature in Christ Jesus, then he 
 can see to read God’s holy word, and he will not read it and say it 
 is right to hold his fellow mortal in servitude, and traffic in his own 
 flesh aud blood. Any man blessed with moral principles will not stand 
 up and justify slavery and say that is right. Now we just as well might say 
 that it was right for God Almighty to send down his holy Son from above for 
 the wicked Jews to put to death. God Almighty sent his holy Son down 
 from above to preach to the people to tell them the way to fly from iniquity 
 and be saved in his holy kingdom, but the Jews were very wicked and 
 bad like the people now-a-days, they took the holy Lamb and slayed 
 him. God Almighty blessed the Jews with the power, and he blessed them 
 with the strength, but he did not bless them in the heart with that wicked bad 
 deed. Who was it blessed them with that wicked bad deed 1 Aaron thinks 
 it was the devil that blessed them with that wicked bad deed, else they would 
 not have taken that holy lamb from above and put him to death. Aaron thinks 
 all the Jews that condemned Christ is now numbered among the damned in 
 hell and always will be there till the end of time. All the horrors and iniquity 
 of slavery Aaron has seen in the State of Maryland and the State of Ken¬ 
 tucky, and in the State of old Virginia. Aaron says they do not raise rice 
 there, they do not raise cotton there, this all grows in South Carolina and 
 ■Georgia. Aaron says that in the last of December they fetch up sugar and 
 molasses, they fetch up rice and cotton, and trade it off in old Virginia for 
 little black boys and girls, between 6 and 7 years old, and take them down 
 into South Carolina and Georgia, and sell them and get the money for them, 
 and put the money in their pockets. Poor mothers are robbed of their dear 
 little children, and there is not ethram nor authema said about it Aaron’s 
 
views upon half-hearted Christian people standing up in the eyes of their 
 brethren and sisters, and not only in their eyes but in the eyes of a holy God 
 too, and justifying slavery and saying it is right. 
 
 Aaron, how did you feel and fare, for about the first week after you left your 
 master. 
 
 0 good man, after I and tother slave that come with me took start away 
 from our master, for more than one week, I suffered dreadfully, so I did, 
 cause I all the time did think master’s overseers were close my heels behind 
 to catch me, and I like most starved to death, so I did,—for after I got into 
 Ohio State with nothing with me to eat, and you know I was afraid to stop 
 at ihe houses where folks was, to beg ; so afraid some enemy would catch 
 me, you know, and run me back to master ; which I dreaded that most like 
 death itself, so I did. 
 
 And dear man, how I lived I don’t know, for as true as you live, I had to 
 creep when itwas dark to get where folks did keep their stuff for the hogs to 
 eat, and drd eat the very swill, so I did, not as we read the Prodigal Son did 
 in the Bible, because he left his father’s nice home ; but because I was going 
 to get that freedom which God blessed me to get; that freedom which you 
 white folks have, and don’t think much about it. Tour white folks tell a 
 good deal about this nation’s liberty the fourth of July. 
 
 And folks tell me, when the voters meet to choose the people’s rulers to 
 serve their master God in his fear and for the constitution liberties of every 
 body in this big nation ; but I guess your white voters don’t mean or else don’t 
 care much about the poor slave ; because if they did, I guess they would not 
 vote to make the President of the nation out of slaveholders or some men 
 just as bad as slaveholders, if they don’t hold slaves ; for so the folks tell me, 
 and I guess it’s true. 
 
 When Aaron was traveling in Connecticut State, I stopped] at a tavern in 
 Windsor, along the Connecticut River, it was pretty cool weather. I asked 
 the tavern keeper if he would’nt be good enough to give me a comfortable 
 straw bed to sleep in for twenty-five cents. He told Aaron his customers did 
 not like it when he took in a colored man. I then asked him if he would’nt 
 be good enough to give me a pallet in the bar-room, he would not do it, and I 
 had to come away. I went about a quarter of a mile farther, and stopped to a 
 young lady’s house. She told me she would willingly take me in, but her 
 husband did not like colored people, and he would only scold me if I took 
 you in. She told Aaron to go to the minister, he was a good benevolent 
 man, and he would give me a good comfortable bed to sleep in. I wen.t as she 
 told me to, and asked him if he would be good enough to give me a place to 
 lie down in his kitchen, and he would not do it. Then I asked him if he 
 would not give me an old blanket, and let me sleep in his barn,—he told me 
 he could not very well. Aaron bid him good night, and told him the Lord 
 would provide somewhere for me to sleep to-night. I went about a quarter 
 of a mile further, and the Lord opened the heart of a while widow lady, and 
 she took Aaron in. I told her if she would give me a place to lie in the 
 kitchen, I would put my hand on my mouth and thank God. I was very tired 
 and weary—she told me I should not sleep in the kitchen. But she gave me 
 
23 
 
 a candle and told me what chamber to sleep in, and I went up stairs to bed,_ 
 
 and Prince Edward never slept in a better bed,—and she and her son made 
 me welcome to stay over the Sabbath. With all his Christianity the minister 
 had not grace enough to beep Aaron one night in his barn. Aaron says it 
 did not astonish him, for Aaron thinks that two thirds of the ministers’ heads 
 are filled with knowledge of the Almighty, but their hearts are empty and des¬ 
 titute of the love of God, as an empty pitcher. They preach more for money, 
 and popularity, than they do for the people’s poor souls. That is the reason 
 why sin and iniquity so much abound in the land. If these ministers were 
 men after God’s own heart, slavery would not abound in the world as it does, 
 but when sorrow and affliction comes against them they will flee like light¬ 
 ning, but they cannot preach unless you give them fifteen or sixteen hundred 
 dollars a year, then they will preach,—for preaching free salvation to all man¬ 
 kind. If they were men after God’s own heart, they would preach for two 
 or three hundred, and they will not rob the widow, and the halt and the blind. 
 
 PIOUS SLAVEHOLDERS, -dy elizur wright. 
 
 “ I have no more disposition than I ever had, to demonstrate how much 
 men may dabble with dishonesty, or defile themselves with oppression, and 
 yet be saved—how much men may vocally or silently consent with thieves, 
 -and yet be honest—how much they may involve themselves with laws and 
 customs worthy of devils, and yet deserve sympathy and consolation at our 
 hands as Christians. There may be Christian pickpockets, Christian horso 
 thieves, Christian swindlers, for aught I know. I am not profound on this ar¬ 
 gument. But I think such Christians do no honor to a church; much less to 
 a pulpit. ” 
 
 January 15, 1842, Aaron was traveling through Assonet. I stayed all 
 night at the house of Mr. Nichols, and he entertained me very hospitably. 
 -I left his house next day between three and four o’clock, you all know the 
 days are very short and cold here at the north. When I left his house the 
 wind blew very cold and night come upon me, and I thought I should freeze. 
 I asked eight or nine fatnilies to entertain me, but I could not get any of them 
 to keep me, and 1 traveled on, and God opened the heart of a good Samaritan, 
 and she entertained Aaron, and she entertained me like a brother, and her hus¬ 
 band was almost three thousand miles away from home, and not a soul was in 
 that house but her and four small children, and yet she was not afraid to enter¬ 
 tain the wayfaring Aaron. It was a dreadful keen, cold night, but the Lord 
 watchec^over all that dwelt under that roof, and brought us all to behold the 
 light of another beautiful morning, and she refreshed my unworthy body with a 
 first rate breakfast,—fried beef steak, and good light biscuit, and she gave me 
 a first rate cup of tea that struck through every nerve, and that was not all she 
 done for Aaron, but she told her oldest son to go out and hitch up the horse, 
 and we got in and she toated me all the way to Fall River, that is five miles she 
 carried me,—and she gave Aaron 25 cents in money. She was one white 
 lady out of a thousand. She took Aaron in and kept me from freezing to 
 death, and she gave me first rate victuals to refresh my unworthy body. Her 
 flame I have forgotten, but her face will always be in my presence forever. 
 
24 
 
 She'is the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Anderson, of Assonet,—he has been Pas¬ 
 tor of the Church in Assonet for 40 years. He was a revolutioner. 
 
 ' Aaron has been a slave at the south, and has seen pretty hard times, and 
 also in the west and in the north. Aaron has been through all the New En¬ 
 gland States, and has told his sorrow and affliction in thirty-two churches, 
 besides in halls, and school-houses, and dwelling-houses. These sorrows 
 and afflictions can be proved by seventy thousand men, which the poor slave 
 has to undergo in getting away from the hard task-masters. Aaron says, if 
 the white men were all like Ward Richards in West Bridgewater, Jesse Tor- 
 rey in North Abington, Mr. Foster in New Hampshire State, who was drag¬ 
 ged out of the church in Nashua, Orson Murray in Vermont State, who prints 
 the Vermont Telegraph, Mr. Gay in Hubbardston, Mr. Bradford, who preach¬ 
 es in the Congregationalist Church in Hubbardston, William L. Garrison, 
 Who was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck, 
 Mr. Hanning in Cadus in Ohio State, Mr. Stansbury in Lancaster, Ohio, and 
 Dr. Caleb Swan of Easton, there would not be a slave in the United States ; 
 but they are not like these men. Aaron thinks God has got a crown richly 
 laid up in heaven for these men who have suffered heavy persecution on the 
 right hand and on the left, because they have stood up for the rights and liber¬ 
 ties of the poor African man, who is good enough to stand up and fight for 
 the country in time of trouble, and who have been slain down by hundreds, 
 but are not good enough to enjoy their freedom under these free and inde¬ 
 pendent colors. These free and independent colors float at the Capitol.— 
 ‘Aaron says in this free and independent country there are almost three mil¬ 
 lions of slaves kept. 
 
 A lash on the back is valued at 40 cents in Virginia and Illinois. The law 
 which is common to both States, runs thus :—In all cases where free persons 
 are punished by fine, servants shall be punished by whipping, after the rate 
 of twenty lashes for every eight dollars, so that no servant shall receive more 
 than forty lashes at any one time—only 16 dollars worth of whipping at one 
 time! 
 
 1 The Slave Joseph. —Come, said Judah, and let us sell him to the Ishmael- 
 ites. And the rest agreed to it. Then there passed by Midianite merchant- 
 ment, (slave traders,) and they lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Jo¬ 
 seph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, poor boy. His father had 
 sent him on a kind errand to his brothers, and was waiting for him to return. 
 
 A Southern gentleman, in a debate at Lane Seminary, thus describes the 
 punishment of the paddle: g 
 
 “A bricklayer, a neighbor of ours, owned a very smart young negro man, 
 who ran away, but was caught. When his master got him home he stripped 
 him naked, tied him up by his hands in plain sight and hearing of the acade¬ 
 my and of the public green, so high that his feet could not touch the ground ; 
 then tied them together, and put a long board between his legs to keep him 
 steady. After preparing him in this way, he took a paddle, bored it full of 
 holes,' and commenced beating him with it. He continued it leisurely all day. 
 At night his flesh was literally pounded to a jelly. It was two weeks before he 
 
25 
 
 was able to walk. No one took any notice of it. No one thought any wrong 
 was done.” 
 
 The following instance occurred near Natches : (See N. Y. Evangelist 
 for Jan. 31, 1835.) 
 
 “ A planter purchased a notorious runaway. He gave him to understand 
 that he could elope if he chose, probably in a tone which warned him of the 
 consequences. The negro took him at his word, but be was soon taken and 
 flogged very severely. His master then opened the gate and told him to 
 go again ; he did so, but was in a few days retaken. His master flogged him 
 if I recollect, till he fainted, and yoked him in the fence between rails, during 
 the day. The wretched negro escaped a third time, but was able to elude pur¬ 
 suit only for a few days. This time his master beat him till his back was al¬ 
 most raw, knocked out his eye teeth, yoked him in the fence, and poured 
 spirits of turpentine over his bleeding wounds. The poor negro fainted on 
 account of the intensity of his sufferings. My informant received his account 
 from the planter.” 
 
 The two following cases are communicated by Mr. Birney, of Kentucky : 
 
 “ Not very long ago, in Lincoln county, Kentucky, a female slave was sold 
 to a southern slaver, under most afflicting circumstances. She bad at her 
 breast an infant boy three months old. The slaver did not want the child on 
 any terms. The master sold the mother and retained the child. She was 
 hurried away immediately to the depot at Louisville, to be sent down the river 
 to the southern market. The last news my informant had of her was, that 
 she was lying sick, in the most miserable condition, her breasts having risen 
 inflamed and bursted.” 
 
 “ During the winter, at Nashville, a slaver was driving his train of fellow- 
 beings down to the landing to put them on board a steam boat, bound for New 
 Orleans. A mother among them having an infant about ten months old to 
 carry in her arms could not keep pace with the rest. The slaver wailed till she 
 came up to where he was standing ; he snatched it from her arms, and hand¬ 
 ing it over to a person who stood by, made him a present of it. The mother 
 bereft in a single moment of her last comfort, was driven on without delay to 
 the boat. On the side of the oppressor was power, but she had no comforter.” 
 
 A man, I did not learn his name, in Scott county, Tennessee, kept a room 
 apart which no one entered but himself and slaves. One poor man he kept 
 in it two or three days, going in often and whipping him. No one of the fam¬ 
 ily dared, if they wished, to go to his rescue. His cries and groans were so 
 dreadful, that the third night, a young lady living there, got the key secretly, 
 and went to the room. A most appalling sight presented itself to her view : 
 the floor covered with blood and pieces of flesh! She released ihe almost mur¬ 
 dered man ; he fled, and had not been heard from. The shrieks extorted by 
 this cruel fhan were often heard on neighboring plantations, at midnight, day 
 dawn and other times. 
 
 THE BLIND MOTHER. 
 
 I saw a mother ! in her arms 
 Her infant child was sleeping, 
 
 The mother, while her infant slept, 
 
 ' ’ Her guardian watch is keeping. 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 Around its little tender form 
 
 Her snow-white arm was flung : 
 
 And o’er its little infant head 
 Her bending tresses hung. 
 
 Sleep sweetly on my darling babe, 
 
 My own, my only child, 
 
 But as she spoke the infant woke, 
 
 And on its mother smiled. 
 
 But oh! no friendly answering smile 
 The mother’s visage graced, 
 
 For sho was blind and could not see 
 The infant she embraced. 
 
 But now he lisped his mother’s name, 
 And now the mother pressed 
 
 Her darling much loved baby boy 
 Unto her widowed breast. 
 
 But sudden anguish seized her mind, 
 Her voice was sweetly wild, 
 
 My God, she cried, but grant me sight 
 One hour, to see my child. 
 
 To look upon its cherub face, 
 
 And see its father’s there; 
 
 But pardon if the wish be wrong, 
 
 A widow’d mother’s prayer. 
 
 And as she spoke her anguish grew 
 More loud and yet more wild, 
 
 And closer to her aching breast 
 She clasped her orphan child. 
 
 , We shall be over-run with them. 
 
 . If Ghosts were flesh and blood and flew in flocks, the spectres of beggary 
 and crime conjured up by “ we shall be over-run by them,” would darken all 
 our northern air. This objection when waged against our measures, implies 
 the conviction that they will be successful. When argued against emancipa¬ 
 tion, it implies that slaves are kept there against their will. It implies also 
 that those who make it would keep their slaves in their chains, rather than run 
 the risk of having here and there a colored neighbor. If the objector were to 
 see the slaveholder knocking off the chains, throwing away the whip, and giv¬ 
 ing wages to his laborers, he must needs cry out, stop! stop!! if you P'ff 
 your laborers and treat them well, they will quit you and rush to the north. 
 Who makes this outcry 1 An American, who while he boasts that his country 
 
27 
 
 isnnasylum for the oppressed of all nations, would perpetuate the oppression 
 ond robbery of his own countrymen, lest some of them should find an asylum 
 in his own neighborhood. But his objection is a bald prophecy, based on no 
 facts, contradicted by history and human nature. If slavery were abolished 
 the slaves would choose to stay at the south as hired laborers, rather than 
 come to the north. Reason: 1. They are already there, and the trouble, ex¬ 
 pense, distance to be travelled, time necessary for journey, &c. would forever 
 dissuade the main body from migration to the north. 
 
 2. There is far more room for them in the slave-holding portions of the 
 U. S. than in the non-slaveholding. In the former there is one-third more 
 territory and ofie-third less population than in the latter. 
 
 3. The climate of the South is congenial to them, that of the North uncon- 
 
 4. There is far less prejudice against the colored man there than in the 
 North. 
 
 5. They are remarkable for their local attachments. This is one of their 
 peculiarities every where ; wherever they are to be found, their aversion to a 
 change of residence, especially to a distant removal, is proverbial. All trav¬ 
 elers in Africa unite in this testimony ; Edward’s History of the West Indies, 
 Walsh’s Sketches of Brazil, Matherson’s notices of Sumatra, Dr. Dickinson’s 
 Mitigation of Slavery, Sturge and Harvey’s West Indies in 1S37, Thome and 
 Kimball’s Six Months in Antigua, Barbadoes and Jamaica, abound with tes¬ 
 timony to this trait. 
 
 We insert from the latter work, a few testimonies of ex-slaveholders in 
 Antigua :—The negroes are not disposed to leave the estates on which they 
 have lived, unless they are forced away by bad treatment.—II. Armstrong, 
 Esq. 
 
 Nothing but bad treatment on the part of the planters, has ever caused the 
 negroes to leave the estates on which they were accustomed to live.—S. 
 Bourne, Esq. 
 
 The negroes are remarkably attached to their homes.—James Howell, 
 Esq. 
 
 The negroes are peculiar for their attachment to their homes.—S. Barnard, 
 Esq. 
 
 Love of home is very remarkable in the negroes. It is a passion with 
 them.—Dr. Daniels, Member of Council. 
 
 An aged planter said, “ they have very strong local attachments. They 
 love their little hut, and will endure almost any hardship before they will de¬ 
 sert that spotand Aaron says, he has formerly been a slave at the south, 
 and is eye-witness to it. Messrs. Thome and Kimball sav : “ Such are the 
 sentiments of West India planters, expressed in the majority of cases spon¬ 
 taneously, and mostly in illustration of other statements. We did not hear a 
 word that implied an opposite sentiment. One gentleman observed that it 
 was a very common saying with the negroes, 1 Me nebber leave my bornin 
 ground i. e. birth-place.” 
 
 The slaves rarely run away from mild masters now. When they become 
 their own masters and are protected by just laws, why should they leave their 
 native region to roam among strangers in an uncongenial clime ? 
 
 Slaves when emancipated in the South, stay there unless driven out. Far¬ 
 ther he says, “ the forces were daily increasing, and they felt themselves so 
 
28 
 
 strong and secure that they had commenced several plantations on the fertile 
 banks of the Apalachicola, which would have yielded them every article of 
 sustenance,'(can slaves take care of themselves?) and which would conse¬ 
 quently in a short time have rendered their establishment quite formidable, 
 and highly injurious to the neighboring States.” 
 
 Composed, by MrsJMellen of Foxhorough, the Universalist minister's wife. 
 
 Heard ye the wail that was borne on the breeze ? 
 
 From the land of the south it was wafted; • 
 
 Where cruel oppression reposeth at ease 
 And liberty’s scions are blasted. 
 
 ’Twas the wail of the black man, he longs to be free 
 From the scourge of oppression that binds him. 
 
 And he weeps when he thinks of his home o’er the sea, 
 
 And the friends that he left behind him. 
 
 For once he was free in the land of his birth, 
 
 Till the white man o’er the ocean came sailing; 
 
 And tore him away from his home and his hearth, 
 
 While they turned a deaf ear to his wailing. 
 
 They bound him in chains, and dragged him away, 
 
 And in a dark dungeon confined him ; 
 
 Like a felon deprived of the light of the day, 
 
 With strong iron chains they did bind him. 
 
 They then hoisted their flag —'Twas the flag of the free! 
 And set sail for their home o’er the billows ; 
 
 And talked with delight' of the friends they should see 
 At home ’neath their own native willows. 
 
 But alas ! for the black man no kind friends await, 
 
 Him to greet in the land of the stranger; 
 
 Oppression and slavery must now be his fate, 
 
 And no kind hand will shield him from danger. 
 
 And this in a land where the rich and the poor, 
 
 Proudly boast of their free institutions, 
 
 The scourge of the tyrant he must meekly endure, 
 
 Nor claim for his wrongs restitution. 
 
 America, boast not thy freedom again, 
 
 Till thou hast crushed the foul head of the demon : 
 
 Till slavery no more shall exist but in name, 
 
 And thy banners wave o’er none but freemen. 
 
29 
 
 Aaron was acquainted with a yellow man that lived in Virginia, in the neigh¬ 
 borhood where he lived, and the first wife that this man took belonged to his 
 master, and he lived with her about six years, her master then sold her and 
 two children to a man who was going to Georgia, he then swore that he never 
 would take another woman that belonged to his master; he then took a woman 
 about eleven miles from where he lived, and they had three children. His mas¬ 
 ter whipped him three times for going to see his wife and children, and the 
 last time he whipped him it was the cause of his death,—he lived about a week 
 afterwards, and when his poor wife got the news she became crazy and died 
 with grief in about a month, and left three little children in the hands of the 
 Arabs to be bought and sold, and perhaps whipped to death as their parents 
 were. Aaron has known several instances beside where slaves have been tied 
 up and whipped to death by their masters. Aaron does not know his agq cor¬ 
 rectly, but supposes he was about 29 or 30 years of age when he left Virginia, 
 and in all his life-time in the State of Virginia, he has never known of but one 
 Instance of a slave killing his master. The slave was a man three-fourths white, 
 and his master whipped him severely for gambling, and he took a knife and run 
 his master through the heart, and after he had killed his master, his father-in- 
 law shot the slave down without judge or jury. This circumstance, Aaron 
 says, run through the State of Virginia like lightning; if it had been a white man 
 that killed a black man there would not have been ethron or Anthony said about 
 it; this circumstance took place in Virginia 16 or 17 years ago. When Aaron 
 was in Providence there was a white gentleman took me to a colored woman’s 
 house to stay over night, and I had a long talk to her before I went to bed; 
 and she told me she was acquainted with a rich white gentleman who lived in 
 Providence, and she used to go and wash every Tuesday for that family, and 
 he did not enjoy good health, and in the winter season he used to go to the 
 south for his health. The third winter he went he took a colored boy with 
 him to wait upon him. When he came home he did not bring the boy with 
 him, and when asked concerning the boy, he said the boy died at the south. 
 God spared him to see another winter and he went to the south again, and took 
 another colored boy with him, and when he returned in the spring no boy came 
 with him, and when asked what had become of the boy, he said he had died, 
 and, that the southern climate did not agree with the northen negroes. A few 
 months afterwards he was taken sick, and the day before he died he called to 
 his attendants to “ take away those colored boys, take aicay those colored boys,’’ 
 and the doctor and his 1'riends thought it was the devil he imagined he saw. 
 About a week after he died, the last colored boy he took to the south with him 
 came home. His parents were astonished and rejoiced to see him, and asked 
 why he did not return with the gentleman he went out with. lie said the gen¬ 
 tleman sold him. His parents were astonished and indignant that a gentleman 
 in whom they reposed so much confidence, should have been guilty of such an 
 inhuman act, and had he been living, he would have been punished to the full 
 extent of the law. Aaron thinks when the man died he went right to hell, for 
 the Bible says, “ He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, shall surely be put to 
 death, if he is found in his hands, that thief shall die.” 
 
 When Aaron was in Braintree, he talked there in the Baptist meeting house; 
 while in the house, a gentleman came and shook hands with him and said he 
 was notan abolitipnist, but says he, “ I pity the poor slave, but one half of the 
 abolitionists are so false I cannot take sides with them ;” said he, “lam ac- 
 
30 
 
 qiiaifited with a minister in Braintree who professes to be a warm advocate of 
 antislavery and lectured in many of the neighbouring towns on the subject. 
 He'Went to the south and married a woman who owns 160 human beings. 
 He comes back, and apologises for it, and says slavery is not so bad as he for¬ 
 merly thought it was. He has found out it is a money making business.” 
 Aaron thinks he is like Lot and Abraham ; when they were traveling together, 
 they fell out about their herds of cattle, and Abraham said I pray thee let there 
 be no strife between my herd and thy herd. Lot lifted up his eyes and dis¬ 
 covered all the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it was well watered and 
 well grassed, but the people were wicked before the eyes of man and before 
 the eyes of the Almighty, but Lot cared more for the good things of this world 
 than for the company of gospel people. Abraham was a man shod with gos¬ 
 pel grace, he was immovable in the work of the Almighty and he did not go 
 down there and dwell with those wicked people, but directed his way among 
 the righteous. Our land of the south, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is blessed 
 by nature with all that can add to the comfort of man. But the institution of 
 slavery pollutes the moral and religous character, and those who live in the 
 north who go down to dwell with them, are often corrupted and made partakers 
 in the gain of their unworthy traffic, and all their correct ideas of the right of 
 our fellow beings disappear before the love of the root of all evil. 
 
 When Aaron was in Bellingham, I fell in with a white gentleman who ap¬ 
 peared to be interested and wanted to have me talk. And said he, come let 
 us go to the house of the Baptist minister. I went with him to the house of 
 the minister and had a talk with him : And Aaron was very degraded in the 
 minister’s eyes, with all his Christianity. And the gentleman who accompa¬ 
 nied me insisted on my lecturing. He thought I had not sense enough to 
 tell what I had seen all the days of my life concerning slavery. He gave out 
 notice, however, for ine to lecture, but took good care to prevent my lecturing 
 in the meeting house ; but consented that I should hold forth in the school 
 house. For I should be laughed at and made game of by a parcel of loafers 
 who would gather around. Aaron has lectured in several meeting-houses; 
 among which may be named one in Newburyport and one in New Bedford, 
 and in several other places, to large audiences. Aaron thought if he was not 
 good enough to lecture in the meeting house he would not lecture at all. This 
 clergyman, like a great many others, pretends to remember his brother in bonds 
 as bound with them, when he does not remember his brother in bonds as bound 
 with them. In Aaron’s travels he falls among ministers who will entertain 
 him, and entertain him very hospitably, that is if I will stop and attend meeting 
 and hear them preach. And then if I am laughed at and made game of what 
 do they care. But when Aaron asks them to get up a meeting for him, that 
 draws a damper on their feelings. I do not know what they are afraid of, ex¬ 
 cept that degraded as I am, I may throw some light before the people, so that 
 their congregations may be broken up, so that they will not have fifteen or six¬ 
 teen hundred dollars to put into their pockets yearly on which to live in fine 
 style, while their poor brethren at the south are in the worst of bondage.— 
 Aaron thinks they preach more for money than for the people’s poor souls. 
 
 Haste makes waste, and waste makes want. Let us be certain that we 
 have got the mote out of both our own eyes, and then we can see to pick it 
 out of our brother’s eye. Whenever a man is born of God, then he is a new 
 creature in Christ Jesus. Christ has in that white framed a hope of glory, and 
 
 
31 
 
 he. is in Christ, and therefore they are as one, God will not bless and convert 
 our souls from sin and iniquity unknown to us. When God blesses and con¬ 
 verts our unworthy souls we have the witness abiding within. Now brethren 
 and sisters let us be wise and consistent, let us remember the sin and iniquity 
 that abounds in our land. When our brethren come to us to get assistance 
 for the foreign mission, we will have our eyes open, then we can tell them with 
 a clear conscience of the horrors, and evil, and iniquity that abound in our land. 
 
 Behold the horrors, and sin, and iniquity, of slavery. 
 
 Whenever all of our hearts are cleansed from sin and iniquity, then we can 
 see the horrors and evils of slavery, and every wicked, bad sin, that abounds 
 in our gospel and christianized county. Aaron’s views on the state of things. 
 
 Reader, here is a short sentence from poor Nat Turner, who suffered al¬ 
 most everything in the swamps for one year at Northampton ; finally he was 
 taken and hung ; this took place about fifteen years ago. 
 
 Human flesh bought and sold, and chained together rank and file ; the mas¬ 
 tiff is kept to hunt human souls, and this is all done over God’s holy word. 
 We have a great many meetings in the southern countries; what good does it 
 do ? We are commanded to watch and pray and keep old Lucifer under our 
 feet; whenever any one is pure in the blood of Christ, they do this. The 
 Christians in the south, instead of keeping Lucifer right under their feet, they 
 let Lucifer have his foot right on their necks, and by and by they’ll fall, and 
 great will be their fall, for they will fall to rise no more. This is what the 
 wayfaring Aaron requested me to write for him. When I was in Ohio, about 
 20 miles from Chillieothe, Aaron and Ben pitched a tent along the Sciota riv¬ 
 er, and there we remained for four days. Aaron goes and gets a pot that they 
 keep in the barn to grease the wagons, and takes it to my little tent and cleans 
 it, and then goes and gets raw potato parings out of the swill and cooks them. 
 One .day Aaron went and got an old shank hone and cooked it. It was a 
 great place for hunting. Aaron went out to gather some chips early in the 
 morning, a hunter came very near shooting Aaron through the head ; we were 
 obliged to leave that spot, as it was dangerous for us to tarry there. We 
 did’nt put up quarters any where till we reached Lancaster, the way we went 
 was one hundred miles. After I was in Lancaster 4 years, I got to conversing 
 with Air. Stansbery; he told Aaron that he had traveled all along the Sciota 
 river, and I told him about my little tent, l had built along the Sciota river, and 
 he told me that he saw the same tent, and Aaron thinks it is there to this day. 
 
 Some days after l left my master, I thought I heard some one following 
 me. It was in a woody, swampy piece of land. I turned my shoes hind side 
 before, to make them think I was going the other way, and went about two 
 miles in the swamp, and Aaron thinks the Lord looked down upon me and 
 put wisdom in my unworthy head. 
 
 On the 9th of May, 1844, Aaron was traveling through Spencer, in Mass. 
 he fell into the house of-, was hungry, tired and weary, and as¬ 
 ked Mr.-for leave to lie down upon his kitchen floor, and understood him 
 
 yes. He went in and saw his little daughter, whom he asked to lend him a 
 teapbt to make himself some tea. Her mother came and looked cross and 
 savage at him, and asked what he wanted. He replied I want to make a little 
 tea. She refused him, and liberty to lie upon the floor, and bid him be off, a 
 black rascal. He went on, but God opened the heart of a good Samaritan, 
 who would not allow him to make use of his own, but gave him of her tea, 
 
32 
 
 and ! gave bitn a bed to rest bis unworthy body, which the other and his wife 
 had not’grace enough in their heart to do. 
 
 D'eut. 15: 1—14. “ Al the end of every seven years thou shalt make a 
 
 release. And this is the manner of the release : every creditor that lendeth 
 aught unto his neighbor shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, 
 or of his brother, because it is called the Lord’s release ; Of a foreigner thou 
 ihayest exact it again, but that which is thine with thy brother, thine hand 
 shall release, save when there shall be no poor among you, for the Lord shall 
 greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an in¬ 
 heritance to possess it: Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the 
 Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I commanded 
 thee this day. For the Lord thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee, and 
 thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt 
 reign over many nations, but they shall not reign, over thee. If there be 
 among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy 
 land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart 
 nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother; But thou shalt open thine hand 
 wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which 
 he wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, 
 the seventh year, the year of release is at hand; and thine eye be evil against 
 thy pbor brother, and thou givest him naught; and he cry unto the Lord 
 against thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine 
 heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him ; because that for this 
 thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou 
 puttest thine hand unto, for the poor shall never cease out of the land : There¬ 
 fore I command thee saying, thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, 
 to thy poor and to thy needy in thy land. And if thy brother, an Hebrew 
 man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years, then 
 in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou 
 sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty ; thou 
 shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy 
 winepress ; of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt 
 give unto him.” 
 
 Shall the United States, which cannot bear the bonds of a king, cradle the 
 bondage which a king is abolishing 1 Shall a republic be less free than a mon¬ 
 archy 1 Shall we in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic 
 in righteousness than a kingdom in its age ?—C. Stewart. 
 
 Shall every flap of England's flag 
 Proclaim that all around are free, 
 From farthest Ind to each blue crag 
 That beetles o’er the Western Sea, 
 
 ■ And shall we scoff at Europe’s kings 
 When freedom’s fire is dim with us, 
 
 , And round our country’s altar clings 
 The damning shade of slavery's curse; 
 
 Go let u 
 
 
 _ . _. istantine, 
 is grasp on Poland’s throat, 
 And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line 
 To spare the struggling Suliote, 
 
 From turban’d Turk anf fiery Russ, 
 
 Go loose your fettered slaves at home, 
 Then turn and ask the like of us. 
 
 We northern men have to pay taxes for so many head of cattle, and so 
 many head of horses,—and if they own houses, they have to pay taxes for 
 them ; and if they own land they have to pay taxes for that. Now our white 
 brethren at the south have to pay taxes for these, houses and lands, and their 
 horses and cattle, so Aaron says. Aaron says for their human cattle they do 
 
33 
 
 not pay one cent of tax, and for these human cattle they will sell for eight to 
 fifteen hundred dollars,—so much profit to them,—and yet do not pay taxes 
 for them. Aaron says that there was a gentleman in the town of Lynn told 
 him the town of Lynn had lost one million dollars by the south. Aaron says 
 there was a gentleman in the town of R. told him that the town of R. had lost 
 fifty or sixty thousand.do|lars, and several other towns that had lost money by 
 the white brethren inlhe south, (so Aaron says.) At Norfolk there is between 
 ; two and three hundred soldiers kept there. What are they kept there for ? Why 
 f; to keep the blacks in slavery. Our free and independent colors float there at 
 the capitol; so they do, and Aaron saysjthere is almost three million slaves 
 
 l held in bondage under these floating colors. Now where does the support 
 
 come from that keeps these soldiers there ? Why pretty much the whole heft 
 ■ comes out of the north. 
 
 [ You white friends will all unite together, instead of rising and shaking the 
 i dust off your feet and having nothing to do with them bad tarlims in the south ; 
 \ but Aaron is afraid that your white friends will unite together, and will leave 
 : you as poor as poverty, as the poor slave is, before you see the horrors and the 
 s evils and the iniquity of slavery. 
 
 Aaron has traveled through twelve different States, and one hundred miles 
 l in Canada, and never was entertained so hospitable in my life as I was by 
 ( Mr. Ward Richards in West Bridgewater. And if I never see him no more, I 
 \ pray God I may have grace to meet in heaven. And I was traveling in South 
 
 i Bridgewater, and fell in with a white lady, but I did not learn her name; and I 
 
 | asked her if she would not be good enough to sell me a slice of wheat bread ; 
 j and because I called her honey , she got very angry with me. I did not mean any 
 harm by calling her honey, but she had a great deal of southern temper in her, but 
 she is unconscious of everything that’s reasonable. She called Aaron a damned 
 I black scoundrel, and all the names she could think of, and hailed to her husband 
 i to come way from the lower part of the field ; and he came running with a hoe, 
 and leaped over a fence about four foot high, and he hollered, ho ye darn’d 
 ' rebel you, what have you been a doing to my wife, you darn’d black scoundrel 
 : you 1 My answer was as quick as possible to him—I have been doing nothing ; 
 
 but that did not seem to be of any satisfaction to him, and then I had to spring 
 ■i for a rock as quick as possible, or he would split me through with the hoe. 
 
 Aaron was traveling the other side of the Juniata river, I fell in to a white 
 ‘.lady’s house, and was almost starved to death. She was a tall slim lady, 
 '-and fair complected, and I asked her for a piece of bread and meat, and she 
 c-filled my hat full. Aaron thinks she had a fair heart too, for because she 
 ;■ done as God commanded her to do. And how was that? To divide with 
 t your brethren ; and Aaron set down alongside of the Juniata river in the State 
 of Pennsylvania, and begin to eat out of my hat, and Aaron saw a white man 
 come along ’ “ ha,” says he, “ ye darn’d scoundrel you, get up and come to 
 me.” I got up as soon as I could, but I had no idea of coining to him. I stood 
 and considered, and he told me to lay down my hat and come quick—but I 
 laid for the water as quick as possible, and Aaron came across the water; 
 and some places the water took me up to my neck, and the wind blew very 
 hard, and took off my hat, and my bread, and good nice meat with my hat 
 (sailed down the river. I consider all that nothing ; but the Lord took care of 
 (my unworthy life and saved me from drowning, and not only that, but kept my 
 [body out of the hands of that Arab, and in the evening Aaron crawled into a 
 muni, and the Lord took care of my unworthy body in that barn, as well as the 
 SKing in his palace with his army of soldiers around him. What a blessed thing 
 
34 
 
 . it is for any poor soul to put their trust in the Lord. The Lord has took care 
 of Aaron through sorrow and affliction ; the Lord has delivered me out of the 
 hands of a hard task-master, he has blessed my unworthy body on free soil, 
 and my face Zionward towards his holy kingdom. Since Aaron has come away 
 trom my hard task-master, I have fell among sincere Christian people. Some- 
 times I think I never will have grace to meet these dear friendly white people 
 in heaven. Know that the day’s coming that the slaveholder and the slave 
 has got to stand before the tribunal bar, and there render account before a holy 
 God ; the same as the murderer stretched on the gallows before judges and 
 jurors. When we are brought before a holy God, whose judgment is quick 
 and powerful, sharper than a two edged sword ; his judgment is not like man's, 
 from 30 to 50 years, his judgments are forever. Whilst thousands of years roll 
 around. If we die in the full triumph of a holy faith, we’ll take a leap right into 
 his holy kingdom, and there will live forever. And if we die with our hearts 
 shut with sin and iniquity, we’ll go down to hell and there will burn forever. 
 
 When Aaron was in the town of Kennebunk, in the State of Maine I fell in 
 there with a white friend, he treated Aaron hospitably and got up a meeting for 
 me before I left the place. There was a white gentleman asked me if I knew 
 a man by the name of Ward Richards, a darn’d scoundrel in West Bridge- 
 water. I told him I knew no such person, but I knew a Christian gentleman 
 by the name of Ward Richards. Do you know what the Bible says, if you 
 don’t like your brother you must not persecute him. 
 
 Aaron thinks you are as destitute of the Bible, and every other good moral 
 principle, or else you would not stand up and persecute your white brother 
 who has done you no harm, because he stands up for equal rights for the poor 
 degraded down trodden African man. 
 
 When Aaron was in Princeton, be fell in a white lady’s house and I got 
 conversing with her about one thing and another, and she told Aaron of a lady 
 about sixty years of age, and she was always very bitter against the anti-slavery 
 cause. They had an anti-slavery meeting m the place, one of the anti-slavery 
 women went and conversed with this old lady and she got very angry with this 
 anti-slavery woman, and she told her if five cents would free all the negroes in 
 the south, she would not give it. She was knitting as usual about four days 
 afterwards when she fell down dead, and some think it was a judgment of the 
 Almighty upon her for her wicked bad doings. 
 
 Since Aaron has left home, I have traveled through about all the free States. 
 I have been mobbed in a great many places, but thank God I have not had any 
 bones broke. His life has been threatened, but my Heavenly Father has 
 looked down from above and saved my unworthy life. I have been highly 
 threatened to be sent back to my hard task-master. Old Beelzebub, the father | 
 of sin and iniquity, if he had his way Aaron would have been sent back to his 
 hard task-master long ago. Thank God that God is above the devil, and he 
 has kept Aaron’s unworthy body out of the hands of his hard task-master. 
 This is what the way-faring Aaron requested me to write. An abolitionist of 
 Leominster. 
 
 THE WORN OUT SLATE. 
 
 A preacher traveling through the Southern States, was rowed across a ferry 
 by a pious old negro who had labored hard through early manhood and middle 
 age to purchase freedom for himself and his wife ; and he mourned that old 
 age and loss of strength would compel him to leave all his children in slavery. 
 
35 
 
 He laid his hand on his breast, and said, “ Master has all my strength, and I 
 have these old bones.” 
 
 His head was white and his eyes were dim, 
 
 And his face was marked by woe ;— 
 
 The vigor of youth had passed from him, 
 
 And labor had bent him low. 
 
 He gave the oars his remnant of strength 
 As the shallop left the shore— 
 
 And he told his tale of grief at length, 
 
 Ere the stream was ferried o’er. 
 
 He looked on one, with his eye’s dim ray, 
 
 That he ne’er shall see again, 
 
 Until the break of endless day 
 Far beyond a tyrant’s reign. 
 
 “ Master,” he said, “ you’re a child of God, 
 
 His seal is upon your face ; 
 
 Poor negro has felt his chast’ning rod, 
 
 And gloried too in his grace. 
 
 “jThe sun that rose upon the master’s morn 
 Rejoiced o’er a free-born babe— 
 
 But the light that broke when I was born, 
 
 Looked down on a fetter’d slave. 
 
 “ I grew apace to my bitter lot, 
 
 Too soon felt my heavy chain— 
 
 And often I cried, Oh ! why will not 
 Earth take back her child again 1 
 
 “ I thought, perhaps, if I bent to toil, 
 
 That heaven might let me see 
 A' day in which I could tread the soil 
 And breathe the air of the free. 
 
 “ I toiled at morn and I toiled at eve, 
 
 And I toiled in the mid-day sun;— 
 
 I rested not when they gave me leave, 
 
 And said that my work was done. 
 
 “ I yielded not to summer’s heat, 
 
 Nor turned from the winter’s frost, 
 
 Nor sheltered myself from storms that beat,— 
 
 Lest a copper should be lost. 
 
 “ I paid for myself, I have paid for my wife, 
 
 But our sands are nearly run; 
 
 And the freedom I’ve bought at the end of life, 
 
 Would have come with my setting sun." 
 
36 
 
 He smote his breast, with his eyes on high, 
 
 In a voice of subdued tones 
 Sajd—“ Master has all my strength, and I 
 Have nothing but these old bones. 
 
 “ Time adds a weight to each month that rolls; 
 
 We soon shall rest in our graves ; 
 
 We trust in Christ to receive our souls— 
 
 But we leave our children slaves.” 
 
 When told that woman should not meddle with slavery, point to the widow 
 of Lovejoy, left alone to rear her fatherless child, and say that in a country 
 where slavery strews with desolation a woman’s hearth-stone it becomes a wo¬ 
 man to seek for the cause, and if possible to apply a remedy. 
 
 , You have the authority of slaveholders for concerning yourselves even with 
 politics. At a political meeting in Mississippi, the following toast was drank: 
 
 “The Ladies—in the dark hour of our revolutionary struggle, they nobly 
 stood by us, they will again do so in a struggle for correct principles.”—See 
 Manchester {Mi.) Whig , Oct. 21, 1837. 
 
 When you are keenly afflicted, by meeting coldness, apathy, and indifference, 
 then offer to lend the Narrative*of Charles Ball, or Janies Williams, or some 
 other publication where the slave speaks for himself. Tell the story of .Mary 
 Brown of Ohio, who was stolen from her free parents, in Washington city. 
 The committee who prepared the Ohio Report, of which A.''Wattles was chair¬ 
 man, say they are assured by those, who knew Mary at the South, that her 
 statement may be implicitly relied on. Her manner, in telling her story, was 
 artless and simple, bespeaking conscious truth. “ She lived with her parents 
 until the death of her mother. One day, when near the Potomac bridge, Mr. 
 Humphrey, the sheriff, overlook her, and told her she must go with him. She 
 inquired what fori He made no'reply, but told her to come along. He 
 took her immediately to a slave auction. Mary said she was free, but Mr. 
 Humphrey contradicted her, and the sale went on. The auctioneer soon struck 
 her off for $350 to a Mississippi trader, and she was taken directly to the jail. 
 After a few hours, she was hand-cuffed, chained to a man slave, and started 
 in a drove of about forty for New Orleans. The handcuffs so swelled her 
 wrists that they were obliged to take them off at night, and put fetters on her 
 ankles. In the morning the handcuffs were again put on. Thus they traveled 
 for two weeks, wading rivers, being whipped up all day, and.beaten at night, if 
 they did not get their distance. Mary says' she frequently waded rivers in her 
 chains, with water up to her waist. It was in October, and the weather cold 
 and frosty. 
 
 “ After traveling thus twelve or fifteen days, her arms and ankles became 
 so swollen that she felt she could go no farther,' Blisters would form on her 
 feet as large as dollars, which at night she would have to open, a while all day 
 the shackles would cut into her lacerated wrist. They had no beds, and 
 usually slept in barns, or out on the naked ground—was in such misery when 
 she lay down that she could only lie and cry all night! ' Still they drove them 
 on for another week. Her spirits became so depressed, and she gieved so 
 much about leaving her friends, that she could not eat, and every time the tra¬ 
 der caught her crying, he would beat her, accompanying it with dreadlul 
 
37 
 
 “ She was at length siezed with a burning fever, and the trader, fearing he 
 should lose her, carried her the remainder of the way in a wagon. 
 
 “ When they arrived at Natchez they’were all offered for sale, and as Mary 
 was still sick, she begged that she might be sold to a kind master. She some¬ 
 times made this request in presence of purchasers—hut was always insulted 
 for it, and after they were gone the trader punished her for such presumption in 
 revealing her sickness, and thus preventing her sale. On one occasion he tied 
 her up bv her hands so that she could only touch the end of her toes to the 
 floor. This was soon after breakfast; he kept her thus suspended, whipping 
 her at intervals through the day—at evening he took her down. She was so 
 much bruised that she could not lie down for more than a week afterwards.” 
 
 The rest of her history while a slave is full of horror. Her case differs 
 little from thousands, except that she escaped to reveal her woes, while they 
 suffer and die unheard. 
 
 The despatches to the Secretary of War assert that there were in the fort 
 300 negroes, men, women, and children, and 20 Indians ! 
 
 The fascinations of an “ almost impenetrable swamp.” In 1837, the New 
 Orleans Picayune, reporting the capture of a leader of fugitives, called Squire 
 the “Brigand of the Swamp.’’ While they can support a gang and have a 
 camp, we may expect our negroes to run away. In the same article he says 
 the place whose delight had kept “ Squire so long” from the happiness of sla¬ 
 very, and to which the “ happy ” slaves would of course escape, was a 'marsh, 
 “ almost impenetrable to our citizens.” During our two wars with Great 
 Britain, a multitude of slaves fled from their masters and joined the British 
 forces. To furnish the reader some data forjudging of the number that es¬ 
 caped during the Revolutionary war, we insert the following extract from 
 Ramsay’s History i 'When the British evacuated Charleston, S. C., in 1782, 
 Governor Matthews demanded the restoration of some thousand of negroes 
 who were within their lines. These, however, w>ere but a small part of the 
 whole taken away at the evacuation, but that number is very inconsiderable 
 when compared with the thousands that were lost from the first to the last of 
 the war. It has been computed by good judges that between the years 1775 
 and 1783, the State of South Carolina lost twenty-five thousand negroes. 
 See page 30, Ramsay’s Hist. S. C., vol. 1. p. 473. At least a fifth; part of 
 all the slaves in the State at the beginning of the war. Dr. Ramsay being a 
 native and resident of Charleston, S. C., enjoyed every facility for ascertain¬ 
 ing the facts in the case ; but his testimony does not stand alone. Col. Lee 
 of Va., in his “ Memoirs of the war in the South Department,” vol. 2, p. 456, 
 says, of “ the negroes seduced and taken from the inhabitants of S. C.”—It 
 is asserted upon the authority of the best informed citizens of S. C. that twen¬ 
 ty thousand slaves were lost to the State in consequence of the war. 
 
 Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, after escaping from Williamsburg in 
 1775, in a vessel in James River, offered liberty to those slaves who would 
 join him. It appears from the history that one hundred of them are soon af¬ 
 ter enumerated among his forces. How many joined him does not appear. 
 Burke’s Ta. vol. 3, p. 431. 
 
 Extract of a letter from Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, to Mr. 
 Hammond, minister of Great Britain, dated Philadelphia, Dec. 15, 1791: 
 
 “ On withdrawing the troops from New York, a large embarkation of Negroes, 
 the property of the inhabitants of the U. S., took place. * * * A very- 
 great number was carried off in a private vessels, without admitting the in- 
 
38 
 
 speclion of the American Commissioners. See “ Political correspondence,” 
 papers relative to Great Britain, p. 4. 
 
 The following may enable the reader to form some judgment of the num¬ 
 ber that escaped during the last war. Extract from the Report of the commit- 
 tee of Ways and Means, to the House of Representatives, Jan. 5, 1819; 
 “ At the conclusion of the war in 1815, it being known that many thousands 
 of the slaves of our citizens had been carried off by the British ships of war,” 
 &c.—Am. St. Pap. J. Rel. vol. 4, p. 114. Extract from a letter from Hon, 
 John Quincy Adams to Lord Castlereigh, Feb. 19,1819. “ In his letter of 
 the 5th of Sept., the undersigned had the honor of enclosing a list of 702 
 slaves carried away after the ratification of the Treaty of Peace from Cum¬ 
 berland Island, and the waters adjacent ;***•* in number perhaps 
 still greater was carried away from Tangierlsland in the State of Virginia, and 
 from other states. Am. St. Pap., Id. Sess. 16th Cong., No. 82, p. 82. 
 
 There were at Notches on the plantations, a considerable number of ne¬ 
 groes, nearly all of whom had joined the murderers of their masters in order 
 to gain their freedom, and had followed their new friends among the Chicka- 
 saws. This circumstance and their consequent emancipation were known to 
 their former companions, and suggested the possibility of their own release 
 from bondage. They became restless and indocile. Martin’s history of Lo. 
 v. 1. p. 292, date 1832. This property was heretofore but of little value near 
 the Ohio river, because runaways receive aid and protection from the people in 
 the new Territories and States. This was the speech of Doddridge in V., 
 Con. Oct. 28, 1829—Dec. 17, 1831, “Mr. Wright of Maryland laid before 
 the House an attested copy of a resolution passed Feb. 16,1831, by the Gen¬ 
 eral Assembly of the State, complaining of the protection afforded by the cit¬ 
 izens of Pennsylvania to the slaves, who abscond and go into that State, 
 and calling for an act of Congress to prevent the continuance of the evils com¬ 
 plained of. They say that the present state of things (protection given to the 
 ‘ happy ’ fugitives,) is not only vexatious to the master but extremely pernicious 
 and calculated to destroy the contentment and happiness of slaves. “ Con¬ 
 tented ” slaves bad property. Their vicinity to non-slaveholding States, must 
 forever render this sort of property precarious and insecure. Speech of Judge 
 Upshur in the Va. Conv., Oct. 28. 1829.—See Deb. Va. Conv. p. 76.— 
 “ From the vicinity of the country through which this (the Chesapeake and 
 Ohio Canal) passes to Pennsylvania, slaves cannot be held there.” Speech 
 of Mr. Scott in the Va. Convention. 1829, Deb. p. 126. 
 
 Contentment of Judge Washington’s Slaves. Hon. Bushrod Washington, 
 nephew of Gen. Washington, and Judge of the Supreme Court of the U. S., 
 sold 54 of his slaves, to be taken to Louisiana in August, 1831, while he was 
 President of the American Colonization Society. In a letter puplished in the 
 Baltimore Telegraph, Sept. 18, 1831, he says—“I called the slaves together, 
 and assured them I had no intention to give freedom to any of them. That the 
 disappointment caused by this declaration should lead to the consequence which 
 followed w as to be expected. * * * I had good reason for anticipating the escape 
 of all the laboring men of any value lo the Northern States as soon as I could 
 leave home.” 
 
 Slaves know when to seem contented. Testimony of James Bradley, an 
 emancipated slave :—He bought his freedom in 1832, when nearly 30 years 
 old. In an account of his life in the “ Oasis,” speaking on this point, he says: 
 —“ I do not believe there ever was a slave who did not long for liberty. * * * 
 
 I was never acquainted with a slave however well he was treated, who did not 
 
39 
 
 long to be free. There is one thing about this that people in the free States do 
 not understand. When they ask slaves whether they wish for liberty, they 
 answer “No,” and very likely they would say, they would not leave their mas¬ 
 ter for the world. But at the same lime, they desire liberty more than any 
 thing else. The truth is, if a slave shows any discontent, he is sure to be trea¬ 
 ted worse, and worked the harder for it; and every slave knows this. When 
 they are alone, all their talk is about liberty—liberty! It is the great thought 
 and feeling that fills the mind all the time.” So Aaron says. ° 
 
 Isaiah, ch. 59.—A short chapter that the wayfaring Aaron took out of God’s 
 holy word. 
 
 1. Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither 
 is his ear heavy, that, it cannot hear: 
 
 2. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your 
 sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. 
 
 3. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity ; 
 your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. 
 
 4. None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth : they trust in vanity 
 and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. 
 
 5. They hatch cockatrice’s eggs, and weave the spider’s web : he that eateth 
 of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. 
 
 6. Their webs shall not become garments neither shall they cover them¬ 
 selves with their works ; their works ate works of iniquity, and the act of vio¬ 
 lence is found in their hands. 
 
 7. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood : their 
 thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. 
 
 8. The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their 
 goings: they have made them crooked paths : Whosoever goeth therein shall 
 not know peace. 
 
 9. Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us : We 
 wait for light, but behold obscurity ; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. 
 
 10. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no 
 eyes; we stumble at noon-day as in the night; we are in desolate places as 
 dead men. 
 
 11. We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves : we look for judg¬ 
 ment, but there is none ; for salvation, but it is far off from us. 
 
 12. For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify 
 against us ; and as for our iniquities, we know them. 
 
 13. In transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away from 
 our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the 
 heart words of falsehood. 
 
 14. And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standcth afar off: 
 for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. 
 
 15. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a 
 prey: and the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment. 
 
 16. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no in¬ 
 tercessor ; therefore his arm brought salvation unto him : and his righteous¬ 
 ness, it sustained him. 
 
 17. For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salva¬ 
 tion upon his head ; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and 
 was clad with zeal as a cloak. 
 
40 
 
 18. According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adver¬ 
 saries, recompense to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompense. 
 
 19. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory 
 from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the 
 spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. 
 
 20. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn frpm 
 transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. 
 
 21. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord ; My spirit 
 that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not de- 
 part out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth 
 of thy seed’s seed saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever. 
 
 A section from the Life of Moses Grandy, late a slave : 
 
 When I reached Deep Creek, I went to the house of Captain Edward Min- 
 ner. He was very glad to see me, for in former days I had done much busi¬ 
 ness for him ; he said how sorry he had been to hear that I was at field work. 
 He inquired where I was going. I said, to Norfolk, to get some of the mer¬ 
 chants to let me have money to buy myself. He replied, ‘ What did I always 
 say to you ? Was it not, that I would let you have the money at any time if 
 you would only tell me when you could be soldi’ He called Mrs. Minner 
 into the room, and told her I could be sold for my freedom, she was rejoiced 
 to hear it. He said, ‘Put up your horse at Mr. Western’s tavern, for you 
 need go no farther; I have plenty of old rusty dollars, and no man shall put 
 his hand on your collar again to say you are a slave. Come and stay with 
 me to-night, and in the morning I will get Mr. Garret’s horse, and go with 
 you.’ 
 
 Next morning we set off, and found master at Major Farrence's, at the 
 cross canal, where I knew he was to be that day, to sell his share of the ca¬ 
 nal. When I saw him he told me to go foward home, for he would not sell 
 me. I felt sick and sadly disappointed. Captain Minner stepped up to him, 
 and showed him the paper he had given me, saying, ‘Mr. Sawyer, is not this 
 your hand-writing V He replied, ‘ Mistress said, the last word when I came 
 away, I was not to sell him, hut send him home again.’ Captain Minner said, 
 
 ‘ Mind, gentlemen, I do not want him for a slave ; I want to buy him for free¬ 
 dom. He will repay me the money, and I shall not charge him a cent of in¬ 
 terest for it. I would not have a colored person to drag me down to hell, 
 for all the money in the world. A gentleman who was by said it was a shame 
 I should be so treated ; I had bought myself so often that Mr. Sawyer ought 
 to let me go. The. very worst man as an overseer over the persons employed 
 in digging the canal, Mr. Wiley M’Pherson, was there; he was never known 
 to speak in favor of a colored person ; even he said that Mr. Sawyer ought 
 to let me go, as I had been sold so often. At length Mr. Sawyer consented I 
 should go for $650, and would take no less. I wished Captain Minner to 
 give the extra $50, and not stand about it. I believe it was what M’Pherson 
 said that induced my master to let me go; for he was well known for his 
 great severity to colored people, so that after even he had said so, master 
 could not stand out. The Lord must have opened M’Pherson’s heart to say it. 
 
 I have said that M’Pherson was an overseer where slaves were employed in 
 cutting canals. The labor there is very severe. The ground is often very 
 boggy; the negroes are up to the middle, or much deeper, in mud and water, 
 cutting away roots and baling out mud : if they can keep their heads above 
 water, they work on. They lodge in huts, or, as they are called, camps, 
 made of shingles or boards. They lie down in the mud which has adhered 
 
41 
 
 to them, making a great fire to dry themselves, to keep off the cold. No 
 bedding whatever is allowed them ; it is only by work done over his task that 
 any of them can get a blanket. They are paid nothing, except for this over¬ 
 work. Their masters come once a month to receive the money for their la¬ 
 bor: then, perhaps, some few very good masters will give them $2 each, some 
 others 81, some a pound of tobacco, and some nothing at all. The food is 
 more abundant than that of field slaves : indeed, it is the best allowance in 
 America—it consists of a peck of meal and six pounds of pork per week ; 
 the pork is commonly not good ; it is damaged, and is bought as cheap as 
 possible, at auction. 
 
 M’Pherson gave the same task to each slave; of course the weak ones of¬ 
 ten failed to do it. I have often seen him tie up persons and flog them in 
 the morning, only because they were unable to get the previous day’s task 
 done; after they were flogged, pork or beef brine was put on their bleeding 
 backs to increase the pain ; he sitting by, resting himself, and seeing it done. 
 After being thus flogged and pickled, the sufferers often remained tied up all 
 day, the feet just touching the ground, the legs tied, and pieces of wood put 
 between the legs. All the motion allowed was a slight turn of the neck.— 
 Thus exposed and helpless, the yellow flies and musquitoes in great numbers 
 would settle on the bleeding and smarting back, and put the sufferer to ex¬ 
 treme torture. This continued all day, for they were not taken down till night. 
 
 1. Christ died a martyr, so shall I, 
 
 Of my own death I prop ecy. 
 
 !I shall be kill’d for God and Truth, 
 
 I have it from the Lord’s own mouth. 
 
 2. When many years are passed away, 
 
 My death’s decreed unto a day ; 
 
 But where and when I cannot tell, 
 
 Till God the same to me reveal. 
 
 3. I’m sure he will a token give 
 Before the blow I shall receive, 
 
 That man’s not born shall shed my blood. 
 
 I have it from the mouth of God. 
 
 4. But soon he shall, to grow a man, 
 
 As it’s in God, Jehovah’s plan. 
 
 My blood it must and shall be shed, 
 
 He shall be born to do the deed. 
 
 5. His birth’s at hand, shall be this year,* 
 
 As days to come shall make it clear; 
 
 This gives me no uneasiness, 
 
 Not when nor where my death takes place. 
 
 6. God by it shall be glorified, 
 
 With my own blood my clothes he dy’d, 
 
 And with it seal the precious truth, 
 
 The Holy Ghost brings through my mouth. 
 
 * Composed Tuesday Morning, September the 16th, 1S2S, New York. 
 
42 
 
 When I had composed the hymn, I wrote it in my book now before me. 
 When I had wrote it, I soon forgot it, till on the morning of Dec. 29,1828, 
 before 12 o’clock, as I had been in bed two hours and could not sleep, I heard 
 a voice say, Arise and pray. 1 did not the first nor second time get up, till 
 the third time I could not resist. I got out of bed, put on my cloak, and 
 kneeled by my bedside. The clock struck 12. 1 was one hour in prayer. 
 When the clock struck one, I rose from my knees and got into bed; my head 
 was scarcely on my pillow, when it was spoke to my soul, The child is bom 
 shall'shed thy blood. The power was so great, I got out of bed, struck 
 a light, and sat down and wrote the six versps. So the child was then born 
 to shed my blood; he was 16 years of age December 29, 1844. Peter knew 
 he should be put to death long before it took place. 
 
 The child is born shall shed your blood, 
 Commit thy death to me ; 
 
 Before you die shall see his face, 
 
 I’ll show him unto thee. 
 
 Fear not my son thy glory’s sure, 
 
 In death shall feel no pain ; 
 
 It is my will thy precious blood, 
 
 Shall thy own body stain. 
 
 Thy blood shall witness to the world, 
 The truth brought from thy mouth, 
 
 To spread thy fame when thou art dead, 
 I have decreed thy death. 
 
 Be of good cheer, I am thy God, 
 My love is great to thee; 
 
 And by thy death, and in that way 
 I glorified will be. 
 
 You have the saints before you gone, 
 .Whose blood was freely shed. 
 
 I will be with thee in your: death, 
 Then what have you to dread 1 
 Rejoice my son, nor be afraid, 
 Commit thy death to me ; 
 
 You’ll have no time to feel a pain, 
 So sudden it shall be. 
 
 Composed Monday morning, December. 29th, 1828, New York, by Jona¬ 
 than Cossington, preacher of God’s W r ord, in our house in Malden, Mass,, 
 near Boston. Paul preached in his hired house, I in our own house every 
 Lord’s day. I want no high steeple house to preach in, and not paid for. 
 
 1. Despisest thou a color’d man ? I’m bound to love and honor God, 
 
 Then thou despisest God. And plead on their behalf. 
 
 They are this day, I will confess, A „ d that to my ]ast d of b]ood 
 
 Jehovah s flesh and blood. If God wi „ h ave it so . 
 
 2. As dear to him as God’s dear Son, I’m not afraid, if I am call’d, 
 
 Lov’d and redeem’d by blood, Into a prison go. 
 
 Dare we despise and set at naught 6 . A colored m , h h God the 
 Those people dear to God ? The p rophet , s cause to ° p]ead( [means 
 
 3. My God, remove your prejudice, Up from the dungeon he was drawn, 
 
 And turn your hate to love ; And from his prison free’d. 
 
 And then through God’s great love and 7> That co)or , d [nan was Wegt of God 
 His blessing you shall prove, [grace, He made his ]ife hig carP) 
 
 4. And with them join to bless the Lord And with the saints in Glory, he 
 
 And love them as thyself. Be sure he hath his share. 
 
 Composed Monday Noon, June the 17th, 1844. 
 
 Portland city, Tuesday, June, 18. We went to the great Market Hall 
 to hear the speeches of those who should speak on the Abolition of Slavery. 
 One man spoke near an hour, and when he had done, a gentleman said it is 
 free for any one to speak. I went on the platform and said, I am not ashamed 
 
43 
 
 to entertain a colored man and feed him at our table. Me and my wife have 
 had them sit with us and eat and drink, as many in Boston and Cambridge 
 can bear witness to, and in Philadelphia and New York, where 1 have preach¬ 
 ed to hundreds of colored people in Anthony street, New York, for Benjamin 
 Paul. Let me say to you that despise a colored person, you despise God 
 and his image. I am willing to sutler with them and for them, when 1 am 
 called to; yes, to prison and death, if it was or should he a law so made, to 
 eat and drink with a black man at my table. Poor despised Aaron has cat 
 and drunk with me and my wife at our own table this supper time; we 
 have read with him and prayed with and for him, and now he is in bed ; yes, 
 our best bed, with clean sheets and plenty of covering. This night, March 
 13th, 1845, Malden, he asked me to write him the seven verses ; 1 have, and 
 am now writing while he is in bed and asleep to rest his wearied body. He 
 called here last ‘Friday, the 7th, and we bought one of his books. We love 
 poor Aaron ; let who may despise him, we do not. I said when I had read 
 the seven verses in the Hall in Portland, find me a congregation of poor col¬ 
 ored people and send for me, and I am willing to spend and be spent among 
 them, and my wife is willing to go and teach the children to read, and the girls 
 to sew. [Cheers.] I was 71 the 6th of this month, in good health, as able 
 to preach as ever, 3 sermons on Lord’s days. May the Lord bless poor 
 Aaron and his wife, and all who love Jesus Christ, white or black. I am Jona¬ 
 than Cossington, the old rough, crooked, and tough ram’s horn, whom all hell 
 cant straighten, nor plane, nor break. A ram’s horn is crooked, and men nor 
 devils cant make it straight; it is rough, and men cant plane it; it is tough, 
 and men cant break it, lay what burdens you will upon it. So are God’s be¬ 
 loved, chosen and called, and made faithful ministers. God’s ministers are 
 burden bearers, and the Lord bears with all his people, the true church of 
 God, not the synagogue of Satan. I preached 3 years and 8 months in 
 Christy street school, and all I received did not amount to $400. For these 
 last 13 years I have had only six dollars for 3 sermons. I preached in 1835 
 in Philadelphia, at Sanson street. God gave me sons and daughters in New 
 York, whom I baptized in the great East river, before thousands of people. 
 Me and my wife have 5 dollars weekly to live. This house is our own bought 
 and paid for. God has given me a godly wife. Under God, as the means in 
 his hands, I preached 8 sermons in April, 1831. She came to hear; and in 
 the next year, July the 29th, 1832, we were married in her own house in Pur¬ 
 chase street, by Dr. Jenks, and I preached the same evening to a great room 
 full of people. But we now live in Malden. We have bought this house, and 
 live here, and let our house in Boston, Mass. Saints, white or black, that 
 come this way, call at our house and you shall see plain wholesome food before 
 you set, then blest and sanctified of God, we’ll say, beloved friends sit down 
 and eat. The clock has struck ten some time; I must lay down my pen and 
 go to my bed ;• and dear Aaron, he doth lay up stairs, over our bedroom be¬ 
 low. Lord, make our sleep sweet, and keep us from all evil. Amen and 
 Amen. - 
 
 Aaron’s old master used to buy two and a half pounds of butter, and that 
 amount had to last two weeks ; and if it did not last two weeks, he used to 
 give all the slaves a puke, and whichever throwed up bread and butter used 
 to have to take a hard whipping on the naked back. 
 
 Aaron says a black man can live at the south for one dollar a month, as 
 Well as he can live at the north for five ; and if the blacks were all set free, 
 they would be troubled with but a very few at the north. 
 
The following facts occurred early in 1844 The brig Henry, on her re¬ 
 turn from Africa, laden with 400 Africans, was overtaken and hailed by a 
 man of war. Refusing to surrender, a short conflict ensued, in which the 
 captain fell, shot through the body, and. fell overboard. The crew then sur¬ 
 rendered. The poor Africans were taken on board the man of war, and 
 carried back to their own land, and set at liberty. The author received this 
 account from Mr. Lee of Boston, an eye witness. 
 
 AARON’S HOME. 
 
 Aaron lives in Springfield, a mile and a half from the Connecticut river, 
 in a little red house, one story high, situated upon the ‘ Hill.’ And by the 
 help of God, he wants to try to buy it. Throw in your mite to help on the 
 warfarins Aaron, because he is honest and true. 
 
45 
 
 Aaron says slavery is a load of grief, but freedom is a load of joy. 
 
 The Lord is a son and shield. He will give grace and glory, and no good 
 thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. The wayfaring Aaron, 
 t, When Aaron was in Bolton he says he called at a lady’s house,'and she 
 locked the door against him, and then she went and drew back the curtains, 
 and stuck up her nose at him, and then she went and told the neighbors she 
 was afraid of him, a lying trollope. 
 
 The slaveholder says that the “ negroes” are not worth any thing. Aaron 
 who has been a slave, has informed me, and says, when a slave has been away 
 ten years, if his master can get him, he will take him. Aaron says that the 
 slave holders say every thing but their prayers; those they never say, from 
 the heart, hut they say them from the head, because if they said them front 
 the heart, they would not live in sin in the manner they do. 
 
 When Aaron was in Rhode Island, I put up at a house among some color¬ 
 ed brethren, and there was some very fine colorod women lived there. But 
 there was one who had a child by a white man ; and she told Aaron that she 
 would sooner have a child by a white man than by a ‘ nigger.’ Aaron is as¬ 
 tonished when I see colored women so wicked, especially in a free land ; be¬ 
 cause one half of the white men don’t consider the colored people human. 
 
 A tribute from Aaron lo Rhode Island. 
 
 There is what they call the ‘ Suffrage party,’ and the ‘ Algerine party’ in 
 Rhode Island; the ‘ Suffrage party’ tells Aaron that they are in the very- 
 greatest kind of bondage. 1 have traveled all through Rhode Island state, 
 and I don’t see any whipping posts there; and when Aaron strikes into Prov¬ 
 idence, I don’t see any “ VALUABLE PEOPLE FOR SALE,” the way I 
 do when I get into Richmond, Virginia; they put up “VALUABLE NE¬ 
 GROES FOR SALE TO DAY.” And I don’t see any man and wife 
 parted in Rhode Island state, who has been living together for IS or 19 years, 
 and reared up a family of children. They aint sold one way, and the children 
 sold another; and they aint drove into the mills lo work with a whip, the 
 way the poor blacks are drove into the potatoe and tobacco fields, and every 
 time they don’t do just so, they are hit twenty or thirty lashes on the naked 
 back, and dare not open their heads. It is not so in Rhode Island state with 
 the Suffrage party. When they do their labor, instead of getting their pay- 
 on the back, they get it in the hand. Aaron thinks if they were situated 
 the way of the poor African, in old Virginia, then I would consider them 
 slaves; but they are not situated so. Aaron says that one half of these men 
 who are in such bondage in Rhode Island, care nothing about their poor Af¬ 
 rican brethren, who are in a great deal worse bondage than they are. 
 
 DnEAMS.—Aaron is a firm believer in dreams. If you dream of a wed¬ 
 ding, you need not feed yourself with the idea that you are going to get 
 married. Prepare yourself to die, to meet your God in a coming day. Mr. 
 James Paine. . 
 
 Aaron’s health is very poor, and he is sick two-thirds of the time; and 
 this is the only way he has to make an honest living; and I think it is trav¬ 
 eling about that keeps him alive. 
 
 Angels assist our mighty joys, 
 
 Strike all your harps of gold; 
 
 But when you raise your highest notes 
 His love can ne’er be told. 
 
 Here is a short sentence of Dr. Watts, who suffered heavy persecution on 
 
46 
 
 the right hand and on the left, but by the assistance of a holy God he won 
 the great battle, and is now shining in his Master’s kingdom. 
 
 “ In vain thou strugglest to get free, 
 
 I never will unloose my hold.” 
 
 This is the way the slaveholder is continually grasping the slave. Lord 
 have mercy upon the poor slaveholder. May he hear the rumbling of Jeho¬ 
 vah’s chariot wheels, like seven-fold peals of thunder to the awakening of his 
 ungodly soul. 
 
 Here is a short sentence the wayfaring Aaron requested me to write out 
 of his own head. 
 
 Behold the good judgment of his mind, being reared up in slavery. It’ s 
 enough to astonish a nation. Aaron is sometimes up and sometimes down • 
 but like the old pilgrim, freighted with grace and bound for heaven. 
 
 The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketli me to lie down 
 in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters. 
 
 He restorelh my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his 
 name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death 
 I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort 
 
 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou 
 anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 
 
 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and 
 I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 
 
 That is the way with the Christian who has enlisted under the blood-stained 
 banner of king Immanuel. 
 
 Isaiah 3n Chapter. 
 
 10. Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him : for they shall 
 eat the fruit of their doings. 
 
 11. Woe unto the wicked 1 it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his 
 hands shall be given him. 
 
 12. As for my people, my children are their oppressors, and women rule 
 over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy 
 the way of thy paths. 
 
 13. The Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people. 
 
 14. The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and 
 the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard ; the spoil of the poor 
 is in your houses. 
 
 15. What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of 
 the poor? saiththe Lord God of hosts. 
 
 16. Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, 
 and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing 
 as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: 
 
 17. Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the 
 daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. 
 
 18. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling orna¬ 
 ments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon. 
 
 19. The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, 
 
 20. The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and 
 the tablets, and the earrings, 
 
 21. The rings, and nose jewels, 
 
 22. The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and 
 the crisping pins, 
 
47 
 
 23. The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils. 
 
 24. And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be 
 slink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; 
 and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth ; and burning instead of 
 beauty. 
 
 25. Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. 
 
 26. And her g'ates shall lament and mourn ; and she being desolate shall 
 sit upon the ground. 
 
 Old Beelzebub, the father of sin and iniquity, he tempted me till I like to 
 loose my soul in iniquity, but blessed Michael helped me out of my distress, 
 and armed me with the sword and shield, to march for Canaan’s land. Sweet 
 fields arrayed in living green, and rivers of delight; no chilling winds nor 
 poisonous breath can reach that happy shore ; glittering crowns and glaring 
 sivords will there our armies be. We’ll sing and shout forevermore, around 
 our father’s throne. 
 
 Isaiah, 5th chp. 10, 18,20.—Woe unto them that rise up early in the mor¬ 
 ning, that they may follow strong drink ; that continue until wine inflame them. 
 Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with 
 a cart rope. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put 
 darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet 
 for bitter. This is the way Aaron thinks it is with the christian(l) slavehold¬ 
 ers at the south, who call themselves angels. He that takes one letter out of 
 God’s holy word, his part is taken out of the kingdom ; so Aaron says. And 
 he says that a white minister will not own a colored minister at the south if 
 he can help it, for they say that they preach and spoil all the negroes. 
 
 What pain, what labor, he’s secured 
 My soul to endless rest. 
 
 Aaron is a firm believer in witchcraft. The way to fortify yourselves 
 against it is by faith and humble prayer. We read in God’s holy word, that 
 with his chariot wheels he drags all the powers of hell. That is the reason 
 why Aaron thinks that by carrying three horse-shoe nails in his right pocket he 
 may overcome them. 
 
 When Aaron lived in Lancaster, Ohio, he got acquainted with an old lady 
 who told him she was acquainted with a man who lived there, and used to hire 
 a great many black persons to work for him. He was always very bitter 
 against the blacks’ having their freedom. The man and his wife died. They 
 had three children, and they all came to naught, and lived day after day among 
 the blacks, because the whites would not take them in. 
 
 Aaron is acquainted with a young woman who told him she was well ac¬ 
 quainted with a young man who sold a colored man three times in the south, 
 and agreed to pay the colored man one-half of the money he got for him ; 
 and the last time he sold him, he asked him to ride with him by the side of a 
 river, and he then slipped behind the colored man and blew his brains out, and 
 then cut him open, took out his lights, and sunk him in the deep for the sake 
 of his money. Aaron thinks that a holy God will sink him in a dying hour in 
 the same way. 
 
 Aaron says some shallow professors are always praying that sin and trouble 
 may be removed out of the land, but never do anything to remove it them¬ 
 selves, and think to sail to heaven on flowery beds of ease. 
 
48 
 
 I asked a man of sorrows, and of tears, 
 
 Whose looks told anguish pressed him more than years ; 
 He mused awhile, and then distinctly said— 
 
 “ Life is a burden—would that I were dead.” 
 
 I asked a Christian, who had early strayed 
 From virtue’s paths; this was the answer made— 
 “ Life is a precious boon to mortals given, 
 Which, if well spent, will be renewed in heaven.” 
 
 Here is a short sentence of Aaron’s. 
 
 Give a child an apple in each hand ; set four apples down on the table, and 
 it will cry for the four. Aaron thinks the slaveholders are something like this 
 greedy child. There are a great many slaveholders who say they pity poor 
 slaves. To hear them talk, you would think that butter would not melt in 
 their mouths ; but Aaron says those very same men would knock a slave in the 
 head if he but crooked his finger at them. Aaron thinks that slavery ought 
 to be abolished, if they do plaster it up and call it domestic. It is a dark sin 
 in the sight of a holy God. 
 
 I lodge awhile in tents below, 
 
 I gladly wander to and fro, 
 
 Till I my Canaan gain. 
 
 Here is a short sentence of the wayfaring Aaron. How true it is, breth- 
 
 By prayer let me wrestle, and he will perform; 
 With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm. 
 
 Here is a short sentence of the way-faring Aaron. 
 
 Here I go to be baptized, Silver slippers on my feet, 
 
 By my Lord to be baptized, And a golden girdle round my waist, 
 
 Sing Glory, sing Glory Sing glory, sing glory, 
 
 And honor to the Lamb. And honor to the Lamb. 
 
 Down to the pool to be baptized, 
 
 By my Lord to be baptized, 
 
 Here is water enough to be baptized 
 By my Lord to be baptized. 
 
 Sing glory, sing glory, and honor to the Lamb. 
 
 That’s the way it is with the Christian, when his warfare is ended here be¬ 
 low. Here is a short sentence of the wayfaring Aaron. 
 
 Here is a short sentence of Aaron’s, in conclusion: 
 
 Good News and Glad Tidings and Great Joy. — He that is free in Christ 
 is free indeed. Then this is heaven; I have often heard of heaven. Behold 
 here it is ! — Broad is the road that leads to death, and thousands walk togeth¬ 
 er there; but wisdom shows a narrow path, with here and there a traveler.