ot so bonded, was liable to a fine of one
hundred dollars. They could not vote, of course. They could not
testify in a case in which a white man was interested. They could not
send their children to schools which they helped to support. The only
thing they could do "like a white man" was to pay taxes.

The prejudice against the poor creatures in Ohio was much stronger
than that they encountered on the other side of the Ohio River in the
slave State of Kentucky. Here--in Kentucky--they were property, and
they generally received the care and consideration that ownership
ordinarily establishes. The interest of the master was a factor in
their behalf. In many instances there was genuine affection between
owner and slave. "How much better off they would be if they only had
good masters," was a remark I very often heard in Ohio, as the negroes
would go slouching by with hanging heads and averted countenances.
There is no doubt that at this time the physical condition of the
blacks was generally much better in slavery than it was in freedom.
What stronger testimony to the innate desire for liberty--what Byron
has described as "The eternal spirit of the chainless mind"--than the
fact that slaves who were the most indulgently treated, were
constantly escaping from the easy and careless life they led to the
hostilities and barbarities of the free States, and they never went
back except under compulsion.

"O carry me back to old Virginy,
To old Virginy's shore,"

was the refrain of a song that was very popular in those days, and
which was much affected by what were called "negro minstrels." It was
assumed to express the feelings of colored fugitives from bondage when
they had time to realize what freedom meant in their cases, but I
never heard the words from the lips of a man who had lived in a state
of servitude.

I have elsewhere referred to the fact that women were often the most
bitter in their denunciations of the Abolitionists. In the
neighborhood in which I passed my early days was a lady who was born
and raised in the North, and who probably had no decided sentiment,
one way or the other, on the slavery question; but who about this time
spent several months in a visit to one of the slave States. She came
back thoroughly imbued with admiration for "the institution." She
could not find words to describe the good times that were enjoyed by
the wives and daughters of the slave-owners. They had nothing to do
excep