d whether there was any God for the Negro.

My father was one of the members of the Underground Railroad. I well
remember some of the members of that club which used to meet at our
house. They were Robert Fisher, Lige Sarkey, Isaac Waters, Henry W.
Grant, Isaac Fields, Thomas Clarke and others who used to meet and
make their arrangements to convey the fugitives across the Susquehanna
River. The night was never too dark or the storm never too severe for
those brave, noble-hearted, courageous men to do their work. They did
not fear death. Although they were uneducated men ignorant of the
letter, they were directed by a Higher Power. The hand of God led
them, and so they succeeded in carrying off hundreds, nay I might
truthfully say thousands from the counties of Cecil, Harford and
Baltimore. All lived to be old men.

After the Mexican War the Southern slaveholders and copperheads of the
North got it into their heads to extend slavery throughout the borders
of the United States. Robt. Toombs, one of the noted fire-eaters of
the South, said he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of
Bunker Hill Monument. In 1848 came the crisis of the Presidential
election. The Mexican War was over and the country had a vast amount
of territory added to her southern borders. The cotton gin had been
invented, and cotton had come into great demand. It was as good as
gold. The Negro, therefore, was in great demand.

Presidential nominations were made. The Whigs nominated Gen. Taylor,
and the Democrats nominated Lewis Cass. The Whig candidate was
successful. While Gen. Taylor was a Southern man, he was somewhat
opposed to the extension of slavery, and, therefore, not a favorite of
the nullifiers of the South. He did not live long. Then they got their
dupe, the Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, a northern man, but a
red-hot copperhead who stood in with the South. I can well remember
those times when all the fire-eating leaders of the South and the poor
dirty trash of the North got their desire when that poor dupe of a
President allowed the mischievous fugitive slave act to become a law
of the land. This law was a curse to the nation, an outrage upon the
poor Negro and suffering humanity. This bill gave the poor Negro no
protection in the land of his birth, a country boasting of being the
land of the brave and the home of the free. These terms, however, were
nothing but bombast; they would just come and take a freeman and carry
him in