tolerated, we were powerless
to appeal to law for the protection of life or property when assailed.
British Columbia offered and gave protection to both, and equality of
political privileges. I cannot describe with what joy we hailed the
opportunity to enjoy that liberty under the "British lion" denied us
beneath the pinions of the American Eagle. Three or four hundred colored
men from California and other States, with their families, settled in
Victoria, drawn thither by the two-fold inducement--gold discovery and
the assurance of enjoying impartially the benefits of constitutional
liberty. They built or bought homes and other property, and by industry
and character vastly improved their condition and were the recipients of
respect and esteem from the community.

An important step in a man's life is his marriage. It being the merging
of dual lives, it is only by mutual self-abnegation that it can be made
a source of contentment and happiness. In 1859, in consummation of
promise and purpose, I returned to the United States and was married to
Miss Maria A. Alexander, of Kentucky, educated at Oberlin College, Ohio.
After visits to friends in Buffalo and my friend Frederick Douglass at
Rochester, N. Y., thence to Philadelphia and New York City, where we
took steamship for our long journey of 4,000 miles to our intended home
at Victoria, Vancouver Island. I have had a model wife in all that the
term implies, and she has had a husband migratory and uncertain. We have
been blessed with five children, four of whom are living--Donald F.,
Horace E., Ida A., and Hattie A. Gibbs; Donald a machinist, Horace a
printer by trade. Ida graduated as an A. B. from Oberlin College and is
now teacher of English in the High School at Washington, D. C.; Hattie a
graduate from the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin, Ohio, and was
professor of music at the Eckstein-Norton University at Cave Springs,
Ky., and now musical director of public schools of Washington, D. C.

In passing through the States in 1859 an unrest was everywhere
observable. The pulse-beat of the great national heart quickened at
impending danger. The Supreme Court had made public the Dred Scott
decision; John Brown had organized an insurrection; Stephen A. Douglass
and Abraham Lincoln at the time were in exciting debate; William H.
Seward was proclaiming the "irrepressible conflict." With other signs
portentous, culminating in secession and events re-enacting history--for
that