sition, would
have been sold into perpetual bondage. The names and the places of
imprisonment of those persons, as stated by Mr. S. were as follows:

"James Hight, imprisoned at Mobile; William Adams, at Norfolk; William
Holmes, also at Norfolk; James Oxford, at Wilmington; James Smith, at
Baton Rouge; John Tidd, at New Orleans.

"In 1836, Mary Smith, a native of this state, returning from New
Orleans, whither she had been in the capacity of a servant, was cast
upon the shores of North Carolina. She was there seized and sold as a
slave. Information of the fact reached her friends at Boston. Those
friends made an effort to obtain her liberation. They invoked the
assistance of the Governor of this Commonwealth. A correspondence
ensued between His Excellency and the Governor of North Carolina:
copies of which were offered for the inspection of your committee.
Soon afterwards, by permission of the authorities of North Carolina,
'Mary Smith' returned to Boston. But it turned out, that this was not
_the_ Mary Smith, whom our worthy Governor, and other excellent
individuals of Boston, had taken so unwearied pains to redeem from
slavery. It was another woman, of the same name, who was also a native
of Massachusetts, and had been seized in North Carolina as a runaway
slave. The Mary Smith has not yet been heard of. If alive, she is now,
in all probability, wearing the chains of slavery.

"About a year and a half since, several citizens of different free
states were rescued from slavery, at New Orleans, by the direct
personal efforts of an acquaintance of the undersigned. The benevolent
individual alluded to is Jacob Barker, Esq. a name not unknown to the
commercial world. Mr. Barker is a resident of New Orleans. A statement
of the cases in reference is contained in a letter addressed by him to
the Hon. Samuel H. Jenks, of Nantucket."

The letter of Mr. Barker, referred to in this report to the
Legislature of Massachusetts, bears date August 19, 1837. The
following are extracts from it.

"A free man, belonging to Baltimore, by the name of Ephraim Larkin,
who came here cook of the William Tell, was arrested and thrown into
prison a few weeks since, and sent in chains to work on the road. I
heard of it, and with difficulty found him; and after the most
diligent and active exertions, got him released--in effecting which, I
traveled in the heat of the day, thermometer ranging in the shade from
94 to 100, more than twenty times