After many years of hard toiling for the support of others, the yoke
pressed so heavily upon Elijah's shoulders, that he could not endure
Slave life any longer. In the hope of getting rid of his bondage, by
dexterous management and a resolute mind, which most determined and
thoughtful men exercise when undertaking to accomplish great objects, he
set about contriving to gain his freedom. In proof of Elijah's
truthfulness, the advertisement of Mr. R.J. Christians is here offered,
as taken from a Richmond paper, about the time that Elijah passed
through Philadelphia on the Underground Rail Road, in 1857.
RAN AWAY--$500 REWARD.--Left the Tobacco Factory of the
subscriber on the 14th inst., on the pretence of being sick, a
mulatto man, named ELIJAH, the property of Maj. Edward Johnson,
of Chesterfield county. He is about 5 feet 8 or 10 inches high,
spare made, bushy hair, and very genteel appearance; he is
supposed to be making his way North. The above reward will be
paid if delivered at my factory.
[Illustration: ]
Ro. J. CHRISTIANS.
jy 21--ts.
From his infancy up to the hour of his escape, not a breath of free air
had he ever been permitted to breathe. He was first owned by Mrs.
Caroline Johnson, "a stingy widow, the owner of about fifty slaves, and
a member of Dr. Plummer's church." Elijah, at her death, was willed to
her son, Major Johnson, who was in the United States service. Elijah
spoke of him as a "favorable man," but added, "I'd rather be free. I
believe I can treat myself better than he can or anybody else." For the
last nineteen years he had been hired out, sometimes as waiter,
sometimes in a tobacco factory, and for five years in the _Coal Mines_.
At the mines he was treated very brutally, but at Cornelius Hall's
Tobacco factory, the suffering he had to endure seems almost incredible.
The poor fellow, with the scars upon his person and the unmistakable
earnestness of his manner, only needed to be seen and heard to satisfy
the most incredulous of the truth of his story. For refusing to be
flogged, one time at Hall's Factory, the overseer, in a rage, "took up a
hickory club" and laid his head "open on each side." Overpowered and
wounded, he was stripped naked and compelled to receive THREE HUNDRED
LASHES, by which he was literally excoriated from head to foot. For six
months afterwards he was "laid up." Last year he was hired out for "one
hundred and eighty dollars," out of which he "received but five
dollars." This year he brought "one hundred and ninety dollars." Up to
the time he escaped, he had received "two dollars," and the promise of
"more at Christmas." Left brothers and sisters, all ignorant of his way
of escape. The following pass brought away by Elijah speaks for itself,
and will doubtless be interesting to some of our readers who are
ignorant of what used to be Republican usages in the "land of the Free."
RICHMOND, July 3d, 1857.
Permit the Bearer _Elijah_ to pass to and from my FACTORY, to
_Frederick Williams, In the Vallie_, for one month, untill 11
o'clock at night.
By _A.B. Wells_,