wrote letters in every quarter where
they would be likely to gain any information respecting her. There
were also two men sent from Michigan in the summer of 1845, down
South, to find her if possible, and report--and whether they found out
her condition, and refused to report, I am not able to say--but
suffice it to say that they never have reported. They were respectable
men and true friends of the cause, one of whom was a Methodist
minister, and the other a cabinet maker, and both white men.

The small spark of hope which had still lingered about my heart had
almost become extinct.

CHAPTER XVIII.

_My last effort to recover my family.--Sad tidings of my wife.--Her
degradation.--I am compelled to regard our relation as dissolved
forever._

In view of the failure to hear any thing of my wife, many of my best
friends advised me to get married again, if I could find a suitable
person. They regarded my former wife as dead to me, and all had been
done that could be.

But I was not yet satisfied myself, to give up. I wanted to know
certainly what had become of her. So in the winter of 1845, I resolved
to go back to Kentucky, my native State, to see if I could hear
anything from my family. And against the advice of all my friends, I
went back to Cincinnati, where I took passage on board of a Southern
steamboat to Madison, in the State of Indiana, which was only ten
miles from where Wm. Gatewood lived, who was my former owner. No
sooner had I landed in Madison, than I learned, on inquiry, and from
good authority, that my wife was living in a state of adultery with
her master, and had been for the last three years. This message she
sent back to Kentucky, to her mother and friends. She also spoke of
the time and manner of our separation by Deacon Whitfield, my being
taken off by the Southern black-legs, to where she knew not; and that
she had finally given me up. The child she said was still with her.
Whitfield had sold her to this man for the above purposes at a high
price, and she was better used than ordinary slaves. This was a death
blow to all my hopes and pleasant plans. While I was in Madison I
hired a white man to go over to Bedford, in Kentucky, where my mother
was then living, and bring her over into a free State to see me. I
hailed her approach with unspeakable joy. She informed me too, on
inquiring whether my family had ever been heard from, that the report
which I had just heard in relation to Malin