A coloured girl, eighteen years of age, a few years ago escaped from
slavery in the South. Through scenes of adventure and peril, almost
more strange than fiction can create, she found her way to Boston. She
obtained employment, secured friends, and became a consistent member
of the Methodist church. She became interested in a very worthy young
man of her own complexion, who was a member of the same church. They
were soon married. Their home, though humble, was the abode of piety
and contentment. Industrious, temperate, and frugal, all their wants
were supplied. Seven years passed away. They had two little boys, one
six, and the other four years of age. These children, the sons of a
free father, but of a mother who had been a slave, by the laws of the
Southern States were doomed to their mother's fate. These Boston boys,
born beneath the shadow of Faneuil Hall, the sons of a free citizen of
Boston, and educated in the Boston Free Schools, were, by the
compromises of the constitution, admitted to be slaves, the property
of a South Carolinian planter. The Boston father had no right to his
own sons. The law, however, had long been considered a dead-letter.
This was not to continue. The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. It
revived the hopes of the slave-owners. A young, healthy, energetic
mother, with two fine boys, was a rich prize. She would make an
excellent mother. Good men began to say: 'We must enforce this law; it
is one of the compromises of the constitution.' Christian ministers
began to preach: 'The voice of law is the voice of God. There is no
higher rule of duty.' As may be supposed, the poor woman was
panic-stricken. Her friends gathered around her, and trembled for her.
Her husband was absent from home, a seaman on board one of the
Liverpool packets. She was afraid to go out of doors, lest some one
from the South should see her, and recognise her. One day, as she was
going to the grocery for some provisions, her quick anxious eye caught
a glimpse of a man prowling around, whom she immediately recognised as
from the vicinity of her old home of slavery. Almost fainting with
terror, she hastened home, and taking her two children by the hand,
fled to the house of a friend. She and her trembling children were hid
in the garret. In less than an hour after her escape, the officer,
with a writ, came for her arrest. It was a dark and stormy day. The
rain, freezing as it fell, swept in floods through the streets of
Boston. Night came, cold, black, and tempestuous. At midnight, her
friends took her in a hack, and conveyed her, with her children, to
the house of her pastor. Hence, after an hour of weeping, for the
voice of prayer had passed away into the sublimity of unutterable
anguish, they conveyed this mother and her children to one of the
Cunard steamers, which fortunately was to sail for Halifax the next
day. They took them in the gloom of midnight, through the
tempest-swept streets, lest the slave-hunter should meet them. Her
brethren and sisters of the church raised a little money from their
scanty means to pay her passage, and to save her, for a few days, from
starving, after her first arrival in the cold land of strangers. Her
husband soon returned to Boston, to find his home desolate, his wife
and children exiles in a foreign land. These facts need no
word-painting.--_Burritt's Bond of Brotherhood_.