ay a fellow man like
myself back into bondage, who has escaped. Dear as I love my wife and
little child, and as much as I should like to enjoy freedom and
happiness with them, I am unwilling to bring this about by betraying
and destroying the liberty and happiness of others who have never
offended me!"

I then asked them again if they would do me the kindness to tell me
who it was betrayed me into their hands at Cincinnati? They agreed to
tell me with the understanding that I was to tell where there was
living, a family of slaves at the North, who had run away from Mr.
King of Kentucky. I should not have agreed to this, but I knew the
slaves were in Canada, where it was not possible for them to be
captured. After they had told me the names of the persons who betrayed
me, and how it was done, then I told them their slaves were in Canada,
doing well. The two white men were Constables, who claimed the right
of taking up any strange colored person as a slave; while the two
colored kidnappers, under the pretext of being abolitionists, would
find out all the fugitives they could, and inform these Constables for
which they got a part of the reward, after they had found out where
the slaves were from, the name of his master, &c. By the agency of
these colored men, they were seized by a band of white ruffians,
locked up in jail, and their master sent for. These colored
kidnappers, with the Constables, were getting rich by betraying
fugitive slaves. This was told to me by one of the Constables, while
they were all standing around trying to induce me to engage in the
same business for the sake of regaining my own liberty, and that of my
wife and child. But my answer even there, under the most trying
circumstances, surrounded by the strongest enemies of God and man, was
most emphatically in the negative. "Let my punishment be what it may,
either with the lash or by selling me away from my friends and home;
let my destiny be what you please, I can never engage in this business
for the sake of getting free."

They said I should not be sold nor punished with the lash for what I
had done, but I should be carried back to Bedford, to live with my
wife. Yet when the boat got to where we should have landed, she wafted
by without making any stop. I felt awful in view of never seeing my
family again; they asked what was the matter? what made me look so
cast down? I informed them that I knew I was to be sold in the
Louisville slave market,