for
help, when my father and mother both came running to my rescue. My
father stripped and tied him, and took him into the orchard, where
switches were plenty, and directed me to whip him; when one switch
wore out he supplied me with others. After I had whipped him a while,
he fell on his knees to implore forgiveness, and I kicked him in the
face; my father said, "don't kick him, but whip him;" this I did until
his back was literally covered with _welts_. I know I have repented,
and trust I have obtained pardon for these things.

My father owned a woman, (we used to call aunt Grace,) she was
purchased in Old Virginia. She has told me that her old master, in his
_will_, gave her her freedom, but at his death, his sons had sold her
to my father: when he bought her she manifested some unwillingness to
go with him, when she was put in irons and taken by force. This was
before I was born; but I remember to have seen the irons, and was told
that was what they had been used for. Aunt Grace is still living, and
must be between seventy and eighty years of age; she has, for the last
forty years, been an exemplary Christian. When I was a youth I took
some pains to learn her to read; this is now a great consolation to
her. Since age and infirmity have rendered her of little value to her
"owners," she is permitted to read as much as she pleases; this she
can do, with the aid of glasses, in the old family Bible, which is
almost the only book she has ever looked into. This with some little
mending for the black children, is all she does; she is still held as
a slave. I well remember what a _heart-rending scene_ there was in the
family when _my father sold her husband_; this was, I suppose,
thirty-five years ago. And yet my father was considered one of the
best of masters. I know of few who were better, but of _many_ who were
worse.

The last time I saw my father, which was in the fall of 1832, he
promised me that he would free all his slaves at his death. He died
however without doing it; and I have understood since, that he omitted
it, through the influence of Rev. Dr. Speece, a Presbyterian minister,
who lived in the family, and was a _warm friend of the Colonization
Society_.

About the year 1809 or 10, I became a student of Rev. George Bourne;
he was the first abolitionist I had ever seen, and the first I had
ever heard pray or plead for the oppressed, which gave me the first
misgivings about the _innocence_ of slaveholding.