 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
| 106 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. November, next. I wish you would write to me how many of my friends you have seen since October, 1857. Montgomery Green keeps a barber shop in Cayuga, in the State of New York. I have not heard of Oscar Ball but once since I came here, and then he was well and doinjj well. George Carroll is in Hamilton. The times are very dull at present, and have beqarjker since I came here. Please write soon. Nothing more at present, only I still remain%i Hamilton, C. W. ISRAEL WHITNET. JOHN is nineteen years of age, mulatto, spare made, but not lacking in courage, mother wit or perseverance. He was born in Fauquier county, Va., and, after experiencing Slavery for a number of years there—being sold two or three times to the " highest bidder "—he was finally purchased by a cotton planter named Hezekiah Thompson, residing at Huntsville, Alabama. Immediately after the sale Hezekiah bundled'his new "purchase" off to Alabama, where he succeeded in keeping him only about two years, for at the end of that time John determined to strike a blow for liberty. The incentive to this step was the inhuman treatment he was subjected to. Cruel indeed did he find it there. His master was a young man, " fond of drinking and carousing, and always ready for a fight or a knock-down." A short time before John left his master whipped him so severely with the "bull whip" that he could not use his arm for three or four days. Seeing but one way of escape (and that more perilous than the way William and Ellen Graft, or Henry Box Brown traveled), he resolved to try it. It was to get on the top of the car, instead of inside of it, and thus ride of nights, till nearly daylight, when, at a stopping-place on the road, he would slip off the car, and conceal himself in the woods until under cover of the next night lie could manage to get on the top of another car. By this most hazardous mode of travel he reached Virginia. It may be best not to attempt to describe how he suffered at the hands of his owners in Alabama; or how severely he was pinched with hunger in traveling; or how, when he reached his old neighborhood in Virginia, he could not venture to inquire for his mother, brothers or sisters, to receive from them an affectionate word, an encouraging smile, a crust of bread, or a drink of water. Success attended his efforts for more than two weeks; but alas, after having got back north of Richmond, on his way home to Alexandria, he was captured and put in prison ; his master being informed of the fact, came on and took possession of him again. At first he refused to sell him ; said he " had money enough and owned about thirty slaves;" therefore wished to " take him back to make an example of him." However, through the persuasion of an uncle of his, he consented to sell. Accordingly, John was put on the auction-block and bought for $1,300 by Green McMurray, a regular trader in Richmond. McMurray again offered him for sale, but in consequence of hard times and the high price demanded, John did not go off, at least not in the way the trader desired to dispose of him, but did, nevertheless, succeed in going off on the Underground Rail Road. Thus once more |