use, and succeeded, through the aid of my father,
to reach a free State. Here life had to be begun anew. The old familiar
slave names had to be changed, and others, for prudential reasons, had
to be found. This was not hard work. However, hardly months had passed
ere the keen scent of the slave-hunters had trailed them to where they
had fancied themselves secure. In those days all power was in the hands
of the oppressor, and the capture of a slave mother and her children was
attended with no great difficulty other than the crushing of freedom in
the breast of the victims. Without judge or jury, all were hurried back
to wear the yoke again. But back this mother was resolved never to stay.
She only wanted another opportunity to again strike for freedom. In a
few months after being carried back, with only two of her little ones,
she took her heart in her hand and her babes in her arms, and this trial
was a success. Freedom was gained, although not without the sad loss of
her two older children, whom she had to leave behind. Mother and father
were again reunited in freedom, while two of their little boys were in
slavery. What to do for them other than weep and pray, were questions
unanswerable. For over forty years the mother's heart never knew what it
was to be free from anxiety about her lost boys. But no tidings came in
answer to her many prayers, until one of them, to the great astonishment
of his relatives, turned up in Philadelphia, nearly fifty years of age,
seeking his long-lost parents. Being directed to the Anti-Slavery Office
for instructions as to the best plan to adopt to find out the
whereabouts of his parents, fortunately he fell into the hands of his
own brother, the writer, whom he had never heard of before, much less
seen or known. And here began revelations connected with this marvellous
coincidence, which influenced me, for years previous to Emancipation, to
preserve the matter found in the pages of this humble volume.

And in looking back now over these strange and eventful Providences, in
the light of the wonderful changes wrought by Emancipation, I am more
and more constrained to believe that the reasons, which years ago led me
to aid the bondman and preserve the records of his sufferings, are
to-day quite as potent in convincing me that the necessity of the times
requires this testimony.

And since the first advent of my book, wherever reviewed or read by
leading friends of freedom, the press, or the