Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton | Page 7

to be a slave even to the best of masters, and still less to such sort of masters as the greater part of the slaves seemed to have. The idea of having first one child and then another taken from me, as fast as they grew large enough, and handed over to the slave-traders, to be carried I knew not where, and sold, if they were girls, I knew not for what purposes, would have been horrible enough; and, from instances which came to my notice, I perceived that it was not less horrible and distressing to the parties concerned in the case of black people than of white ones. I had never read any abolition books, nor heard any abolition lectures. I had frequented only Methodist meetings, and nothing was heard there about slavery. But, for the life of me, I could not perceive why the golden rule of doing to others as you would wish them to do to you did not apply to this case. Had I been a slave myself,--and it is not a great while since the Algerines used to make slaves of our sailors, white as well as black,--I should have thought it very right and proper in anybody who would have ventured to assist me in escaping out of bondage; and the more dangerous it might have been to render such assistance, the more meritorious I should have thought the act to be. Why had not these black people, so anxious to escape from their masters, as good a light to their liberty as I had to mine?
I know it is sometimes said, by those who defend slavery or apologize for it, that the slaves at the south are very happy and contented, if left to themselves, and that this idea of running away is only put into their heads by mischievous white people from the north. This will do very well for those who know nothing of the matter personally, and who are anxious to listen to any excuse. But there is not a waterman who ever sailed in Chesapeake Bay who will not tell you that, so far from the slaves needing any prompting to run away, the difficulty is, when they ask you to assist them, to make them take no for an answer. I have known instances where men have lain in the woods for a year or two, waiting for an opportunity to escape on board some vessel. On one of my voyages up the Potomac, an application was made to me on behalf of such a runaway; and I was so much moved by his story, that, had it been practicable for me at that time, I should certainly have helped him off. One or two attempts I did make to assist the flight of some of those who sought my assistance; but none with success, till the summer of 1847, which is the period to which I have brought down my narrative.
I was employed during that summer, as I have mentioned already in trading up and down the Chesapeake, in a hired boat, a small black boy being my only assistant. Among other trips, I went to Washington with a cargo of oysters. While I was lying there, at the same wharf, as it happened, from which the Pearl afterwards took her departure, a colored man came on board, and, observing that I seemed to be from the north, he said he supposed we were pretty much all abolitionists there. I don't know where he got this piece of information, but I think it likely from some southern member of Congress. As I did not check him, but rather encouraged him to go on, he finally told me that he wanted to get passage to the north for a woman and five children. The husband of the woman, and father of the children, was a free colored man; and the woman, under an agreement with her master, had already more than paid for her liberty; but, when she had asked him for a settlement, he had only answered by threatening to sell her. He begged me to see the woman, which I did; and finally I made an arrangement to take them away. Their bedding, and other things, were sent down on board the vessel in open day, and at night the woman came on board with her five children and a niece. We were ten days in reaching Frenchtown, where the husband was in waiting for them. He took them under his charge, and I saw them no more; but, since my release from imprisonment in Washington, I have heard that the whole family are comfortably established in a free country, and doing well.
Having accomplished this exploit,--and was it not something of an exploit to