tate, and deliverance from all the evils and dangers of slavery.

I had succeeded in winning to my (what slaveholders would call
wicked) scheme, a company of five young men, the very flower of the
neighborhood, each one of whom would have commanded one thousand dollars
in the home market. At New Orleans, they would have brought fifteen
hundred dollars a piece, and, perhaps, more. The names of our party were
as follows: Henry Harris; John Harris, brother to Henry; Sandy Jenkins,
of root memory; Charles Roberts, and Henry Bailey. I was the youngest,
but one, of the party. I had, however, the advantage of them all, in
experience, and in a knowledge of letters. This gave me great influence
over them. Perhaps not one of them, left to himself, would have dreamed
of escape as a possible thing. Not one of them was self-moved in the
matter. They all wanted to be free; but the serious thought of running
away, had not entered into{216} their minds, until I won them to the
undertaking. They all were tolerably well off--for slaves--and had dim
hopes of being set free, some day, by their masters. If any one is to
blame for disturbing the quiet of the slaves and slave-masters of
the neighborhood of St. Michael's, _I am the man_. I claim to be the
instigator of the high crime (as the slaveholders regard it) and I kept
life in it, until life could be kept in it no longer.

Pending the time of our contemplated departure out of our Egypt, we met
often by night, and on every Sunday. At these meetings we talked the
matter over; told our hopes and fears, and the difficulties discovered
or imagined; and, like men of sense, we counted the cost of the
enterprise to which we were committing ourselves.

These meetings must have resembled, on a small scale, the meetings of
revolutionary conspirators, in their primary condition. We were plotting
against our (so called) lawful rulers; with this difference that we
sought our own good, and not the harm of our enemies. We did not seek
to overthrow them, but to escape from them. As for Mr. Freeland, we
all liked him, and would have gladly remained with him, _as freeman_.
LIBERTY was our aim; and we had now come to think that we had a right to
liberty, against every obstacle even against the lives of our enslavers.

We had several words, expressive of things, important to us, which we
understood, but which, even if distinctly heard by an outsider,
would convey no certain meaning. I have reasons for sup