s felt in welcoming this party of young
men, not because they were any better than others, or because they had
suffered more, but simply because they were found to possess certain
knowledge and experience of slave life, as it existed under the
government of the chivalry; such information could not always be
obtained from those whose lot had been cast among ordinary
slave-holders. Consequently the Committee interviewed them closely, and
in point of intellect found them to be above the average run of slaves.
As they were then entered on the record, so in like manner are the notes
made of them transferred to these pages.

Jim was about nineteen years of age, well grown, black, and of
prepossessing appearance. The organ of hope seemed very strong in him.
Jim had been numbered with the live stock of the late Hon. L. McLane,
who had been called to give an account of his stewardship about two
months before Jim and his companions "took out."

As to general usage, he made no particular charge against his
distinguished master; he had, however, not been living under his
immediate patriarchal government, but had been hired out to a farmer by
the name of James Dodson, with whom he experienced life "sometimes hard
and sometimes smooth," to use his own words. The reason of his leaguing
with his fellow-servants to abandon the old prison-house, was traceable
to the rumor, that he and some others were to appear on the stage, or
rather the auction-block, in Baltimore, the coming Spring.

Tom, another member of the McLane institution, was about twenty-five
years of age, of unmixed blood, and a fair specimen of a well-trained
field-hand. He conceived that he had just ground to bring damages
against the Hon. L. McLane for a number of years of hard service, and
for being deprived of education. He had been compelled to toil for the
Honorable gentleman, not only on his own place, but on the farms of
others. At the time that Tom escaped, he was hired for one hundred
dollars per annum (and his clothes found him), which hire McLane had
withheld from him contrary to all justice and fair dealing; but as Tom
was satisfied, that he could get no justice through the Maryland courts,
and knew that an old and intimate friend of his master had already
proclaimed, that "negroes had no rights which white men are bound to
respect;" also, as his experience tended to confirm him in the belief,
that the idea was practically carried out in the courts of