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CHAPTER X. An Abolitionist Planter contrives my Escape—My Escape by the “Underground Railway”—Land in Canada—Employed by the Anti-Slavery Society—Marry—Arrive in England—Conclusion. Since my first attempt to escape I was so uniformly treated badly, that my life would have been insupportable if I had not been soothed by the kind words of the good abolitionist planter who had first conveyed to me a true knowledge of religion.59 I had been flogged, and went one day to show him the state in which I was. He asked me what I wanted him to do. I said, “To get me away to Canada.” Oh, what a delightful word to us poor slaves! It was like speaking of some heavenly country. There was music in its sound to our ears. Never did tempest-tossed sailor long so much for a haven as we did for that land of the free. When I mentioned Canada to the gentleman, he sat for full twenty minutes thoughtfully, and at last said, “Now, if I promise to take you away out of all this, you must not mention a word to any one. Don’t breathe a syllable to your mother or sisters, or it will be betrayed.” Oh, how my heart jumped for joy at 59. There was considerable abolitionist sentiment in Kentucky, especially among workingmen and craftsmen, who, at a mass meeting in Louisville in 1849, declared slavery “injurious to both slaves and owners, degraded labour, and interfered with employment for free citizens” (Charles E. Hedrick, “Negro Slavery in Kentucky before 1850” [M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1915]). However, relatively few emancipists were as radical as the Reverend John Fee, who demanded instant abolition. The Anti-Slavery Bugle (February 16, 1849) reported that 523 emancipists in Mason County had signed a call for the emancipation convention that was held in Mason County on February 12, 1849. Resolutions were adopted calling for a “gradual and prospective system of emancipation accompanied by colonization.” Although the issue of emancipation was central to the debate held at the Kentucky Constitutional Convention in May 1850, property rights of slave owners were declared sacrosanct (Asa Earl Martin, The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky, Prior to 1850 [Louisville: Standard Printing Company, 1918], 124–37). (  )   Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky this promise. I felt new life come into me. Visions of happiness flitted before my mind. And then I thought before the next day he might change his mind, and I was miserable again. I solemnly assured him I would say nothing to any one. “Come to me,” he said, “on the Friday night about ten or eleven o’clock; I will wait till you come. Don’t bring any clothes with you except those you have on. But bring any money you can get.” I said I would obey him in every respect. I went home and passed an anxious day. I walked out to my poor old mother’s hut, and saw her and my sisters. How I longed to tell them, and bid them farewell. I hesitated several times when I thought I should never see them more. I turned back again and again to look at my mother. I knew she would be flogged, old as she was, for my escaping. I could foresee how my master would stand over her with the lash to extort from her my hiding-place. I was her only son left. How she would suffer torture on my account, and be distressed that I had left her for ever until we should meet hereafter in heaven, I hoped. At length I walked rapidly away, as if to leave my thoughts behind me, and arrived at my kind benefactor’s house a little after eleven o’clock. He said but little, and seemed restless. He took some rugs and laid them at the bottom of the wagon, and covered me with some more. Soon we were on our way to Maysville, which was about twenty miles from his house. The horses trotted on rapidly, and I lay overjoyed at my chance of escape. When we stopped at Maysville, I remained for some time perfectly quiet, listening to every sound. At last I heard a gentleman’s voice, saying, “Where is he? where is he?” and then he put in his hand and felt me. I started, but my benefactor told me it was all right, it was a friend. “This gentleman,” he added, “will take...

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