uable than they ever were
before. Men talked here of going whaling on a four _years'_ voyage with
more coolness than sailors where I came from talked of going a four
_months'_ voyage.

I now find that I could have landed in no part of the United States,
where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast to the
condition of the free people of color in Baltimore, than I found here in
New Bedford. No colored man is really free in a slaveholding state.
He wears the badge of bondage while{270} nominally free, and is often
subjected to hardships to which the slave is a stranger; but here in New
Bedford, it was my good fortune to see a pretty near approach to freedom
on the part of the colored people. I was taken all aback when Mr.
Johnson--who lost no time in making me acquainted with the fact--told me
that there was nothing in the constitution of Massachusetts to prevent a
colored man from holding any office in the state. There, in New Bedford,
the black man's children--although anti-slavery was then far from
popular--went to school side by side with the white children, and
apparently without objection from any quarter. To make me at home,
Mr. Johnson assured me that no slaveholder could take a slave from
New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their
lives, before such an outrage could be perpetrated. The colored people
themselves were of the best metal, and would fight for liberty to the
death.

Soon after my arrival in New Bedford, I was told the following story,
which was said to illustrate the spirit of the colored people in that
goodly town: A colored man and a fugitive slave happened to have a
little quarrel, and the former was heard to threaten the latter with
informing his master of his whereabouts. As soon as this threat became
known, a notice was read from the desk of what was then the only colored
church in the place, stating that business of importance was to be then
and there transacted. Special measures had been taken to secure
the attendance of the would-be Judas, and had proved successful.
Accordingly, at the hour appointed, the people came, and the betrayer
also. All the usual formalities of public meetings were scrupulously
gone through, even to the offering prayer for Divine direction in the
duties of the occasion. The president himself performed this part of
the ceremony, and I was told that he was unusually fervent. Yet, at
the close of his prayer, the old man (one of t