ate Emancipation. It shows that any
man in our land, "no matter in what battle his liberty may have been
cloven down, * * * * no matter what complexion an Indian or an African
sun may have burned upon him," not only may "stand forth redeemed
and disenthralled," but may also stand up a candidate for the highest
suffrage of a great people--the tribute of their honest, hearty
admiration. Reader, _Vale! New York_

JAMES McCUNE SMITH

CHAPTER I. _Childhood_

PLACE OF BIRTH--CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT--TUCKAHOE--ORIGIN OF THE
NAME--CHOPTANK RIVER--TIME OF BIRTH--GENEALOGICAL TREES--MODE OF
COUNTING TIME--NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS--THEIR POSITION--GRANDMOTHER
ESPECIALLY ESTEEMED--"BORN TO GOOD LUCK"--SWEET
POTATOES--SUPERSTITION--THE LOG CABIN--ITS CHARMS--SEPARATING
CHILDREN--MY AUNTS--THEIR NAMES--FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A SLAVE--OLD
MASTER--GRIEFS AND JOYS OF CHILDHOOD--COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF THE
SLAVE-BOY AND THE SON OF A SLAVEHOLDER.

In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town
of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated,
and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out,
sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation
of its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its
inhabitants, and the prevalence of ague and fever.

The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken
district is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black and
white. It was given to this section of country probably, at the first,
merely in derision; or it may possibly have been applied to it, as I
have heard, because some one of its earlier inhabitants had been guilty
of the petty meanness of stealing a hoe--or taking a hoe that did not
belong to him. Eastern Shore men usually pronounce the word _took_, as
_tuck; Took-a-hoe_, therefore, is, in Maryland parlance, _Tuckahoe_.
But, whatever may have been its origin--and about this I will not be
{26} positive--that name has stuck to the district in question; and it
is seldom mentioned but with contempt and derision, on account of the
barrenness of its soil, and the ignorance, indolence, and poverty of its
people. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin population
of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for the Choptank
river, which runs through it, from which they take abundance of shad and
herring, and plenty of ague and fever.

It was