ly denied that the separation of families,
except for punishment, was perpetrated by Southern masters; but my
experience of slavery was, that separation by sale was a part of the
system. Not only was it resorted to by severe masters, but, as in my own
case, by those generally regarded as mild. No punishment was so much
dreaded by the refractory slave as selling. The atrocities known to be
committed on plantations in the Far South, tidings of which reached the
slave's ears in various ways, his utter helplessness upon the best farms
and under the most humane masters and overseers, in Maryland and other
Northern Slave States, together with the impression that the journey was
of great extent, and comfortless even to a slave, all combined to make a
voyage down the river or down South an era in the life of the poor slave
to which he looked forward with the most intense and bitter apprehension
and anxiety.

This slave sale was the first I had ever seen. The next did not occur
until I was thirteen years old; but every year, during the interval, one
or more poor souls were disposed of privately.

Levi, my comrade, was one of those sold in this interval. Well may the
good John Wesley speak of slavery as the sum of all villanies; for no
resort is too despicable, no subterfuge too vile, for its supporters. Is
a slave intractable, the most wicked punishment is not too severe; is he
timid, obedient, attached to his birthplace and kindred, no lie is so
base that it may not be used to entrap him into a change of place or of
owners. Levi was made the victim of a stratagem so peculiarly Southern,
and so thoroughly the outgrowth of an institution which holds the bodies
and souls of men as of no more account, for all moral purposes, than the
unreasoning brutes, that I cannot refrain from relating it. He was a
likely lad, and, to all appearance, fully in the confidence of his
master. Prompt and obedient, he seemed to some of us to enjoy high favor
at the "great house." One morning he was told to take a letter to Mr.
Henry Hall, an acquaintance of the family; and it being a part of his
usual employment to bring and carry such missives, off he started, in
blind confidence, to learn at the end of his journey that he had parted
with parents, friends, and all, to find in Mr. Hall a new master. Thus,
in a moment, his dearest ties were severed.

I met him about two months afterwards at the Cross-Road Meeting-House,
on West River; and, after mutu