This was the last letter I wrote from the plantation, and I never returned
there, nor ever saw again any of the poor people among whom I lived during
this winter, but Jack, once, under sad circumstances. The poor lad’s
health failed so completely, that his owners humanely brought him to the
north, to try what benefit he might derive from the change; but this was
before the passing of the Fugitive Slave Bill, when touching the soil of
the northern states, a slave became free; and such was the apprehension
felt lest Jack should be enlightened as to this fact by some philanthropic
abolitionist, that he was kept shut up in a high upper room of a large
empty house, where even I was not allowed to visit him. I heard at length
of his being in Philadelphia; and upon my distinct statement that I
considered freeing their slaves the business of the Messrs. ——
themselves, and not mine, I was at length permitted to see him. Poor
fellow! coming to the north did not prove to him the delight his eager
desire had so often anticipated from it; nor under such circumstances is
it perhaps much to be wondered at that he benefited but little by the
change,—he died not long after.
I once heard a conversation between Mr. O—— and Mr. K——, the two
overseers of the plantation on which I was living, upon the question of
taking slaves, servants, necessary attendants, into the northern states;
Mr. O—— urged the danger of their being ‘got hold of,’ i.e., set
free by the abolitionists, to which Mr. K—— very pertinently replied, ‘Oh, stuff and
nonsense, I take care when my wife goes north with the children, to send Lucy with her;
her children
are down here, and I defy all the abolitionists in creation to get her to stay north.’ Mr. K——
was an extremely wise man.
