y moderately well, because they have not had the negro nature.
It is reserved to some black Shakspeare or Dickens to lay open the
wonderful humor, pathos, poetry, and power which slumber in the negro's
soul, and which now and then flash out like the fire from a
thunder-cloud.

I do not mean to say that this black prophet has come in this
narrative. He has not. This man is a doer, not a writer; though he gives
us--particularly in the second part--touches of Nature, and little bits
of description, which are perfectly inimitable. The prophet is still to
come; and he _will_ come. God never gives great events without great
historians; and for all the patience and valor and heroic fortitude and
self-sacrifice and long-suffering of the black man in this war, there
will come a singer--and a black singer--who shall set his deeds to a
music that will thrill the nations.

But I am holding the reader at the threshold.

The author of this narrative--of every line in it--is William Parker. He
was an escaped slave, and the principal actor in the Christiana
riot,--an occurrence which cost the Government of the United States
fifty thousand dollars, embittered the relations of two "Sovereign
States," aroused the North to the danger of the Fugitive-Slave Law, and,
more than any other event, except the raid of John Brown, helped to
precipitate the two sections into the mighty conflict which has just
been decided on the battle-field.

Surely the man who aided towards such results must be a man, even if his
complexion be that of the ace of spades; and what he says in relation to
the events in which he was an actor, even if it have no romantic
interest,--which, however, it has to an eminent degree,--must be an
important contribution to the history of the time.

With these few remarks, I submit the evidence which he gives of the
manhood of his race to that impartial grand-jury, the American people.
E. K.

EARLY PLANTATION LIFE.

I was born opposite to Queen Anne, in Anne Arundel County, in the State
of Maryland, on a plantation called Rowdown. My master was Major William
Brogdon, one of the wealthy men of that region. He had two
sons,--William, a doctor, and David, who held some office at Annapolis,
and for some years was a member of the Legislature.

My old master died when I was very young; so I know little about him,
except from statements received from my fellow-slaves, or casual remarks
made in my hearing from time to time by