an any which could be adduced by one not
himself a freedman; for it is the argument of facts, and facts are the
most powerful logic. Therefore, if I were to imbed these facts in the
mud of fiction, I should simply oblige the reader to dredge for the
oyster, which in this narrative he has without the trouble of dredging,
fresh and juicy as it came from the hand of Nature,--or rather, from the
hand of one of Nature's noblemen,--and who, until he was thirty years of
age, had never put two letters together.

The narrative is a plain and unpretending account of the life of a man
whose own right arm--to use his own expression--won his rights as a
freeman. It is written with the utmost simplicity, and has about it the
verisimilitude which belongs to truth, and to truth only when told by
one who has been a doer of the deeds and an actor in the scenes which he
describes. It has the further rare merit of being written by one of the
"despised race"; for none but a negro can fully and correctly depict
negro life and character.

General Thomas--a Southern man, and a friend of the Southern negro--was
once in conversation with a gentleman who has attained some reputation
as a delineator of the black man, when a long, lean, "poor white man,"
then a scout in the Union army, approached the latter, and, giving his
shoulder a familiar slap, accosted him with,--

"How are you, ole feller?"

The gentleman turned about, and forgetting, in his joy at meeting an old
friend, the presence of this most dignified of our military men,
responded to the salutation of the scout in an equally familiar and
boisterous manner. General Thomas "smiled wickedly," and quietly
remarked,--

"You seem to know each other."

"Know _him_!" exclaimed the scout. "Why, Gin'ral, I ha'n't seed him fur
fourteen year; but I sh'u'd know him, ef his face war as black as it war
one night when we went ter a nigger shindy tergether!"

The gentleman colored up to the roots of his hair, and stammered out,--

"That was in my boy days, General, when I was sowing my wild oats."

"Don't apologize, Sir," answered the General, "don't apologize; for I
see that to your youthful habit of going to negro shindies we owe your
truthful pictures of negro life."

And the General was right. Every man and woman who has essayed to depict
the slave character has miserably failed, unless inoculated with the
genuine spirit of the negro; and even those who have succeeded best have
done onl