entirely off. She said one of them struck her head several times with a
stick of wood, from the wounds of which she was almost covered with
blood. She shewed me a large scar upon her forehead, occasioned by one
of the blows, which a gentleman, who saw her the day previous to her
seizure, has since informed me was not there before. She said, while she
was struggling against them, and screaming, the man in whose house she
lived _bawled out_, "Choke the d----d b----h! don't let her
halloo--she'll scare my wife!" Having conquered her by superior force,
she said they placed her with the child in a chaise, (her description of
which, with the horse and the driver, who was one of the victors,
corresponds precisely with that given by the mulatto man of the
carriage, &c. by which he also was conveyed,) and refusing to dress
herself, three of them, leaving the two who belonged to the house,
carried her off in the condition that she was dragged from bed, to a
certain tavern in Maryland, and sold them both to the Man-Dealer, who
brought them to the city of Washington. She stated, that one of her
captors drove the carriage, and held the rope which was fixed to her
neck, and that one rode each side, on horseback.--That, while one of
them was negociating a bargain with her purchaser, he asked her who her
master was; and, replying that she had none, her seller beckoned to him
to go into another room, where the business was adjusted without
troubling her with any farther inquiries. She stated, that her purchaser
confessed, while on the way to Annapolis, that he believed she might
have had some claim to freedom, and intimated that he would have taken
her back, if the man[24] of whom he bought her had not ran away; but
requested her, notwithstanding, to say nothing to any body about her
being free, which she refused to comply with. She affirmed, that he
offered her for sale to several persons, _who refused to purchase, on
account of her asserting that she was free_. She stated, that her
purchaser had left her in Washington for a few weeks, and gone to the
_Eastern Shore_, in search of more black people, in order to make up a
drove for Georgia.

64. These facts clearly exemplify the safety with which the free born
inhabitants of the United States may be offered for sale and sold, even
in the metropolis of Liberty,[25] as oxen; even to those who are
notified of the fact, and are perhaps convinced of it, that they are
free![26]

65. The dis