About the twenty-ninth of January, 1855, Sheridan arrived from the Old
Dominion and a life of bondage, and was welcomed cordially by the
Vigilance Committee. Miss Elizabeth Brown of Portsmouth, Va. claimed
Sheridan as her property. He spoke rather kindly of her, and felt that
he "had not been used very hard" as a general thing, although, he wisely
added, "the best usage was bad enough." Sheridan had nearly reached his
twenty-eighth year, was tall and well made, and possessed of a
considerable share of intelligence.
Not a great while before making up his mind to escape, for some trifling
offence he had been "stretched up with a rope by his hands," and
"whipped unmercifully." In addition to this he had "got wind of the
fact," that he was to be auctioneered off; soon these things brought
serious reflections to Sheridan's mind, and among other questions, he
began to ponder how he could get a ticket on the U.G.R.R., and get out
of this "place of torment," to where he might have the benefit of his
own labor. In this state of mind, about the fourteenth day of November,
he took his first and daring step. He went not, however, to learned
lawyers or able ministers of the Gospel in his distress and trouble, but
wended his way "directly to the woods," where he felt that he would be
safer with the wild animals and reptiles, in solitude, than with the
barbarous civilization that existed in Portsmouth.
The first day in the woods he passed in prayer incessantly, all alone.
In this particular place of seclusion he remained "four days and
nights," "two days suffered severely from hunger, cold and thirst."
However, one who was a "friend" to him, and knew of his whereabouts,
managed to get some food to him and consoling words; but at the end of
the four days this friend got into some difficulty and thus Sheridan was
left to "wade through deep waters and head winds" in an almost hopeless
state. There he could not consent to stay and starve to death.
Accordingly he left and found another place of seclusion--with a friend
in the town--for a pecuniary consideration. A secret passage was
procured for him on one of the steamers running between Philadelphia and
Richmond, Va. When he left his poor wife, Julia, she was then "lying in
prison to be sold," on the simple charge of having been suspected of
conniving at her husband's escape. As a woman she had known something of
the "barbarism of slavery", from every-day experience, which the large
scars about her head indicated--according to Sheridan's testimony. She
was the mother of two children, but had never been allowed to have the
care of either of them. The husband, utterly powerless to offer her the
least sympathy in word or deed, left this dark habitation of cruelty, as
above referred to, with no hope of ever seeing wife or child again in
this world.
The Committee afforded him the usual aid and comfort, and passed him on
to the next station, with his face set towards Boston. He had heard the
slaveholders "curse" Boston so much, that he concluded it must be a
pretty safe place for the fugitive.
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