omised to return the slaves to Africa
but slyly turned the ship to port in Connecticut. There the Spanish
minister at Washington demanded the slaves, as pirates. Appeal was made
to the courts and the United States Court ruled that slavery was not
legal in Spain and declared the slaves free.

"The Nat Turner insurrection in Virginia and the Vesey uprising in
Charleston was discussed often, in my presence, by my parents and
friends. I learned that revolts of slaves in Martinique, Antigua,
Santiago, Caracas and Tortugus, was known all over the South. Slaves
were about as well aware of what was going on, as their masters were.
However the masters made it harder for their slaves for a while.

"I have a clipping, now worn yellow with age, which says the Federal
census of 1860, showed there were 487,970 free Negroes and 3,952,760
slaves in the United States at that time. I am not at all surprised at
the number of free Negroes. Many South Carolina families freed a number
of their slaves. Some slaves had the luck to be able to buy their
freedom and many others escaped to free areas. The problem of slavery as
a rule, was a question of wits, the slave to escape and the master to
keep him from escaping.

"I once talked with Frederick Douglass, perhaps the most eminent Negro
to appear so far in America. He told me he was born a slave in Maryland,
in 1817, and that he served there as a slave for ten years. He escaped
to Massachusetts, where he was aided in education and employment by the
Garrisons and other abolitionists, and became a leader of his race. He
was United States Minister to Haiti at the time I met him and was
eminent as an orator. He died in 1895.

"You ask, what do I think of the Presidents. Well, I have always been
such an admirer of Andrew Jackson, a South Carolinian, that I may be
prejudiced a little. The reason I admire him so much, is because he
stood for the Union, and he didn't mean maybe, when he said it. He
served his time and God took him, just as he took Moses.

"Then Lincoln was raised up for a specific purpose, to end slavery,
which was a menace to both whites and blacks, as I see it. And President
Wilson kept the faith of the fathers, when he decided to put the German
Kaiser where he could no longer throw the world into discord. But there
has only been one President whose heart was touched by the cry of
distress of the poor and needy and his name is Franklin D. Roosevelt. He
is one white man who has t