Mexico, and lasted two
years.

When it was over the United States had the victory. Then the
slaveholders of the South, with the copperheads of the North, tried to
force their slaves or their slave influence into every State and
territory of the United States. So great became the agitation and
excitement that the poor slaves became restless and uneasy over their
condition, and they commenced to run away by the thousands from the
Southern States. They made for the free States and Canada. This gave
rise to what was known as the Underground Railroad.

This brings me to consider what I call my boyhood days. Having passed
my childhood, I now began to think, feel and consider that I was a
human being as well as the white boys who surrounded me, living on
farms just as I lived. Therefore I began to believe that I had the
same God-given rights that they had, and was not born to be kicked
around like a dog any more than they were.

About this time I began to attend the so-called public school. I well
remember those school days, for they made a lasting impression upon my
mind. If God had not had mercy on the poor little Negro who attended
the public school of Pennsylvania in those days, I know not what would
have become of me; for the poor white trash from the teacher down had
no mercy upon him. They were upon him like vultures upon their prey,
ready to devour him at any time for any cause.

I will mention only a few things which the little Negro had to endure,
simply because he was a Negro. He was not permitted to drink from the
same bucket or cup as the white children. He was compelled to sit back
in the corner from the fire no matter how cold the weather might be.
There he must wait until the white children had recited. If the cold
became _too_ intense to endure, he must ask permission of the teacher,
stand by the fire a few minutes to warm and then return to the same
cold corner. I have sat in an old log school house with no chinking
between the logs until my heels were frost-bitten and cracked open.
Sometimes we had a poor white trashy skunk that would sit in the
school room and call us "niggers" or "darkeys." If the little Negro
got his lesson at all, he got it; if not, it was all the same.

For seven long years, 1844 to 1851, my father lived about five miles
from the Maryland line and about one mile from the Susquehanna River.
That is where I saw some of the evils of the institution called
slavery. Sometimes I wondere