g enough that
we should be released, he did not like to have it done at the expense of
his party, and his own hopes of obtaining some good office. The Whigs
were defeated, sure enough; but whether because we were pardoned--though
the idea is sufficiently nattering to my vanity--is more than I shall
venture to decide. The black prisoners in the jail, having nothing to
hope or fear from the rise or fall of parties, yielded freely to their
friendly feelings, and greeted our departure with three cheers. We left
the jail as privately as possible, and proceeded in a carriage to the
house of a gentleman of the District, where we were entertained at
supper. Our imprisonment had lasted four years and four months, lacking
seven days. We did not feel safe, however, with that Virginia
requisition hanging over our heads, so long as we remained in the
District, or anywhere on slave-holding ground; and, by the liberality of
our friends, a hack was procured for us, to carry us, that same night,
to Baltimore, there, the next morning, to take the cars for
Philadelphia. The night proved one of the darkest and stormiest which it
had ever been my fate to encounter,--and I have seen some bad weather in
my time. The rain fell in torrents, and the road was only now and then
visible by the flashes of the lightning. But our trusty driver
persevered, and, in spite of all obstacles, brought us to Baltimore by
the early dawn. Sayres proceeded by the direct route to Philadelphia.
Having still some apprehensions of pursuit and a requisition, I took the
route by Harrisburg. Great was the satisfaction which I felt as the cars
crossed the line from Maryland into Pennsylvania. It was like escaping
out of Algiers into a free and Christian country.

I shall leave it to the reader to imagine the meeting between myself and
my family. They had received notice of my coming, and were all waiting
to receive me. If a man wishes to realize the agony which our American
slave-trade inflicts in the separation of families, let him personally
feel that separation, as I did; let him pass four years in the
Washington jail.

When committed to the prison, I was by no means well. I had been a good
deal out of health, as appeared from the evidence on the trial, for two
or three years before. Close confinement, or, indeed, confinement of any
sort, does not agree with persons of my temperament; and I came out of
the prison a good deal older, and much more of an invalid, than