a considerable time the most influential organ of the
Abolitionists. Its circulation was large and its management very
able. Of course, it took no little courage and judgment to conduct
such a publication in the very center of slaveholding influence, and
more than once it barely escaped destruction by mobs.

If there was nothing else to his credit there was one thing
accomplished by the _Era's_ owner that entitles him to lasting
remembrance. He was the introducer, if not the real producer, of
_Uncle Tom's Cabin._ It first appeared in the _Era_ in serial numbers.
It is perfectly safe to say that no other newspaper in the country, of
any standing, would have touched it. Without Dr. Bailey's
encouragement the work would not have been written. This was admitted
by Mrs. Stowe.

Up to this point the people whose names have been mentioned in these
pages have, to a certain extent, been public characters and leaders.
They were generals, and colonels, and captains, and orderly sergeants,
in the army of emancipation. There were, also, privates in the ranks
whose services richly deserve to be commemorated, showing, as they do,
the character of the works they performed. The writer cannot resist
the temptation to refer to two of them in particular, although,
doubtless, there were many others of equal merit. A reason for the
preference he shows in this case, that will not be misunderstood, is
the fact that one of the men was his uncle and the other his father.

James Kedzie and John Hume were plain country farmers residing in
southwestern Ohio, neither very rich nor very poor. They were natives
of Scotland, and stating that fact is almost equivalent to saying
they were Abolitionists. None of the Scotch of the writer's personal
knowledge, at the period referred to, were otherwise than strongly
Anti-Slavery. There are said to be exceptions to all rules, and there
was one in this instance. He was a kinsman of the author, and a "braw"
young Scotchman who came over to this country with the expectation of
picking up a fortune in short order. Finding the North too slow, he
went South. There he met a lady who owned a valuable plantation well
stocked with healthy negroes. He married the woman, and became
something of a local nabob, with the reputation of great severity as a
master. One day, with his own hand, he inflicted a cruel flogging on a
slave who had the name of a "bad nigger." That night, when the master
was playing chess with a nei