Part 4

Our untiring friends, the abolitionists, once obtained a law that no colored person should be seized as a slave within the free states; this law would have been of great service to us, by ridding us of all anxiety about our freedom while we remained there; but I am sorry to say, that it has lately been repealed, and that now, as before, any colored person who is said to be a slave, may be seized in the free states and carried away, no matter how long he may have resided there, as also may his children and their children, although they all may have been born there. I hope this law will soon be altered again. At present many escaped slaves are forwarded by their friends to Canada, where, under British rule, they are quite safe. There is a body of ten thousand of them in Upper Canada; they are known for their good order, and loyalty to the British government; during the late troubles, they could always be relied on for the defence of the British possessions against the lawless Americans who attempted to invade them.

As to the settlement of Liberia, on the coast of Africa, the free colored people of America do not willingly go to it. America is their home: if their forefathers lived in Africa, they themselves know nothing of that country. None but free colored people are taken there: if they would take slaves, they might have plenty of colonists. Slaves will go any where for freedom.

We look very much to England for help to the cause of the slaves. Whenever we hear of the people of England doing good to black men, we are delighted, and run to tell each other the news. Our kind friends, the abolitionists, are very much encouraged when they hear of meetings and speeches in England in our cause. The first of August, the day when the slaves in the West Indies were made free, is always kept as a day of rejoicing by the American colored free people.

I do hope and believe that the cause of freedom to the blacks is becoming stronger and stronger every day. I pray for the time to come when freedom shall be established all over the world. Then will men love as brethren; they will delight to do good to one another; and they will thankfully worship the Father of All.

And now I have only to repeat my hearty thanks to all who have done any thing towards obtaining liberty for my colored brethren, and especially to express my gratitude to those who have helped me to procure for myself, my wife, and so far of my children, the blessing of freedom--a blessing of which none can know the value, but he who has been a slave. Whatever profit may be obtained by the sale of this book, and all donations with which I may be favored, will be faithfully employed in redeeming my remaining children and relatives from the dreadful condition of slavery.

NOTE.

I have paid the following sums to redeem myself and relatives from slavery, viz:

For my own freedom, ... $1,850 For my wife's " ... 300 For my son's " ... 450 Grandchild's " ... 400 To redeem my kidnapped son, 60 ------$3,060

I now wish to raise $100 to buy the freedom of my sister Mary, who is a slave at Elizabeth City, N.C. Her master says he will take that sum for her. M.G.

_Boston, Jan. 19, 1844._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: It will be observed that the narrator married a second wife, without having heard of the decease of the first. To explain this fact, it is necessary to state, that the frequent occurrence of cases where husbands and wives, members of Christian societies, were finally separated by sale, led the ministers, some years ago, to deliberate on the subject: they decided that such separation might be considered as the death of the parties to each other, and they therefore agreed to consider subsequent marriages not immoral. The practice is general. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that a more unequivocal and impressive proof of the heinous nature of the system could hardly exist. It breaks up the fondest connections, it tears up the holiest attachments, and induces the ministers of religion, as much as in them lies, to carve the divine law to a fitting with its own infernal exigencies.]