Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom | Page 5

he then thought, and still
thought, that the girl was white!
The case was elaborately argued on both sides, but was at length

decided in favour of the girl, by the Supreme Court declaring that "she
was free and white, and therefore unlawfully held in bondage."
The Rev. George Bourne, of Virginia, in his Picture of Slavery,
published in 1834, relates the case of a white boy who, at the age of
seven, was stolen from his home in Ohio, tanned and stained in such a
way that he could not be distinguished from a person of colour, and
then sold as a slave in Virginia. At the age of twenty, he made his
escape, by running away, and happily succeeded in rejoining his
parents.
I have known worthless white people to sell their own free children into
slavery; and, as there are good-for-nothing white as well as coloured
persons everywhere, no one, perhaps, will wonder at such inhuman
transactions: particularly in the Southern States of America, where I
believe there is a greater want of humanity and high principle amongst
the whites, than among any other civilized people in the world.
I know that those who are not familiar with the working of "the
peculiar institution," can scarcely imagine any one so totally devoid of
all natural affection as to sell his own offspring into returnless bondage.
But Shakespeare, that great observer of human nature, says:--
"With caution judge of probabilities. Things deemed unlikely, e'en
impossible, Experience often shews us to be true."
My wife's new mistress was decidedly more humane than the majority
of her class. My wife has always given her credit for not exposing her
to many of the worst features of slavery. For instance, it is a common
practice in the slave States for ladies, when angry with their maids, to
send them to the calybuce sugar-house, or to some other place
established for the purpose of punishing slaves, and have them severely
flogged; and I am sorry it is a fact, that the villains to whom those de-
fenceless creatures are sent, not only flog them as they are ordered, but
frequently compel them to submit to the greatest indignity. Oh! if there
is any one thing under the wide canopy of heaven, horrible enough to
stir a man's soul, and to make his very blood boil, it is the thought of
his dear wife, his unprotected sister, or his young and virtuous

daughters, struggling to save themselves from falling a prey to such
demons!
It always appears strange to me that any one who was not born a
slaveholder, and steeped to the very core in the demoralizing
atmosphere of the Southern States, can in any way palliate slavery. It is
still more surprising to see virtuous ladies looking with patience upon,
and remaining indif- ferent to, the existence of a system that exposes
nearly two millions of their own sex in the manner I have mentioned,
and that too in a professedly free and Christian country. There is,
however, great consolation in knowing that God is just, and will not let
the oppressor of the weak, and the spoiler of the virtuous, escape
unpunished here and hereafter.
I believe a similar retribution to that which destroyed Sodom is hanging
over the slaveholders. My sincere prayer is that they may not provoke
God, by persisting in a reckless course of wicked- ness, to pour out his
consuming wrath upon them.
I must now return to our history.
My old master had the reputation of being a very humane and Christian
man, but he thought nothing of selling my poor old father, and dear
aged mother, at separate times, to different persons, to be dragged off
never to behold each other again, till summoned to appear before the
great tribunal of heaven. But, oh! what a happy meeting it will be on
that day for those faithful souls. I say a happy meeting, because I never
saw persons more devoted to the service of God than they. But how
will the case stand with those reckless traffickers in human flesh and
blood, who plunged the poisonous dagger of separation into those
loving hearts which God had for so many years closely joined
together--nay, sealed as it were with his own hands for the eternal
courts of heaven? It is not for me to say what will become of those
heartless tyrants. I must leave them in the hands of an all-wise and just
God, who will, in his own good time, and in his own way, avenge the
wrongs of his oppressed people.
My old master also sold a dear brother and a sister, in the same manner

as he did my father and mother. The reason he assigned for disposing
of my parents, as well as