ke a copy, he would
have been sorely displeased with my views of the liquor traffic, and
perhaps with the compliment I have here paid him.

But in the foregoing remarks I have said but a tithe of what my heart
feels, when I think of the sufferings occasioned by drunkenness.

Even the cup of the burthened slave, writhing in his chains and toiling
under the lash, is not full of bitterness until the demon rum throws in
its dregs and fills it to overflowing.

How often does it occur that a passionate master, heated with wine,--mad
with himself and all about him, pours out his vengeful ire on the head and
back of some helpless slave, and leaves him weltering in his blood! How
often may be heard the agonized wail of the slave mother, deploring the
departure of some innocent child that has been lost in gambling, while the
master was intoxicated!

How often do the shrieks of the poor but virtuous slave girl, ring through
the midnight air, as she, pleading for death rather than life, rushes
screaming away from a brutal master, infuriated and drunk! If it is a
fact, and certainly it is, that the master is thus affected by his costly
wine; what, think you, will be the temper and condition of the coarse and
heartless overseer who drinks his miserable whisky or bad brandy? It is
horrible, beyond description. I have often myself seen a drunken overseer,
after pouring down dram after dram, mount his horse and ride furiously
among the slaves, beating, bruising, mangling with his heavy cowhide every
one he chanced to meet, until the ground presented the appearance of a
battlefield.

CHAPTER XIX.

PERSECUTION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE.

While the colored population of New York were rejoicing in the measure of
freedom allowed them by the more wholesome laws of that State, our
brethren in Ohio were being oppressed and maltreated by the unjust and
odious "black laws" of that professedly free State, enacted with special
reference to the disposition of the colored race.

In Cincinnati, O., within sight of the slave land of Kentucky, a terrible
persecution had commenced, and an effort was made to drive all colored
persons from the place.

Our people had settled there in large numbers, but now a mob had assembled
in that city with the determination to drive them, not only from their
homes and city, but from the State. A bloody conflict ensued, in which the
white and black man's blood mingled freely. So great had been the loss of
pr