h it would be difficult beforehand to form an
intelligent appreciation. The political events of the last few months
have fairly opened this new historic page; and though, for the most
part, its recording lines still lie behind the cloud, the first few
words, charged with deep import to us and to all men, are becoming
legible to every eye.

We can no longer view the colored race as a mere mass of ignorance and
degradation lying quiescent beneath the white man's foot, and, except as
a useful species of domestic animal, of little consequence to us or to
the world. We see to-day, its fortunes and those of our own race blended
together in a great struggle based on political, moral, and religious
questions, and leading to a series of events of which not one of us as
yet can foretell the conclusion.

The collective romance of the race is now but just opening to us; but
its individual romance dawned upon us years ago. Long as we can
remember, we have heard of one and another of that depressed people
struggling to escape from an overwhelming bondage. We have known that
such attempts were marked by scenes of thrilling interest, by intense
earnestness of purpose, by the most powerful emotions of hope and fear,
by startling adventures, ending sometimes in hopeless tragedy, sometimes
in a dearly-bought success. Before the fugitive lay on one hand death,
or worse than death; on the other, liberty beneath the cold North-star.

Some years ago, these elements of romance, with the moral principles
lying at their root, were laid hold of by Mrs. Stowe. The wonderful
enthusiasm with which her work was received, the avidity with which it
was read all the world over, showed how wide and deep was the sympathy
which the position of the colored race in America was calculated to
excite.

I suppose there are few people living on the border-line dividing the
North from the South, who can not recall exciting incidents and scenes
of painful interest connected with the fugitive slave, occurring within
their own knowledge, and often beneath their own eyes. During the few
years when I grew from childhood to youth, in the neighborhood of
Cincinnati, I can recall many such incidents. I remember being startled,
from time to time, by sorrowful events of this nature that so frequently
occur in Western cities, owing to their close proximity to the South,
and to the continual arrival of steamboats from the slaveholding States.
Once I remember, it was a fam