e color, medium size, very
active and intelligent, and doubtless, well understood the art of
behaving himself. He was well acquainted with the auction block--having
been sold three times, and had had the misfortune to fall into the hands
of a cruel master each time. Under these circumstances he had had but
few privileges. Sundays and week days alike he was kept pretty severely
bent down to duty. He had been beaten and knocked around shamefully. He
had a wife, and spoke of her in most endearing language, although, on
leaving, he did not feel at liberty to apprise her of his movements,
"fearing that it would not be safe so to do." His four little children,
to whom he appeared warmly attached, he left as he did his wife--in
Slavery. He declared that he "stuck to them as long as he could." George
E. Sadler, the keeper of an oyster house, held the deed for "Joe," and a
most heartless wretch he was in Joe's estimation. The truth was, Joe
could not stand the burdens and abuses which Sadler was inclined to heap
upon him. So he concluded to join his brother and go off on the U.G.R.R.

Robert, his younger brother, was owned by Robert Slater, Esq., a regular
negro trader. Eight years this slave's duties had been at the slave
prison, and among other daily offices he had to attend to, was to lock
up the prison, prepare the slaves for sale, etc. Robert was a very
intelligent young man, and from long and daily experience with the
customs and usages of the slave prison, he was as familiar with the
business as a Pennsylvania farmer with his barn-yard stock. His account
of things was too harrowing for detail here, except in the briefest
manner, and that only with reference to a few particulars. In order to
prepare slaves for the market, it was usual to have them greased and
rubbed to make them look bright and shining. And he went on further to
state, that "females as well as males were not uncommonly stripped
naked, lashed flat to a bench, and then held by two men, sometimes four,
while the brutal trader would strap them with a broad leather strap."
The strap being preferred to the cow-hide, as it would not break the
skin, and damage the sale. "One hundred lashes would only be a common
flogging." The separation of families was thought nothing of. "Often I
have been flogged for refusing to flog others." While not yet
twenty-three years of age, Robert expressed himself as having become so
daily sick of the brutality and suffering he could n