Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail by Daniel Drayton
page 53 of 110 (48%)
page 53 of 110 (48%)
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charitable persons at the north, were subsequently redeemed, among whom
were the Edmundson girls, of whom an account is given in the "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin." From one of the women, who was not sold, but retained at Washington, I received a mark of kindness and remembrance for which I felt very grateful. She obtained admission to the jail, the Sunday after our committal, to see some of her late fellow-passengers still confined there; and, as she passed the passage in which I was confined, she called to me and handed a Bible through the gratings. I am happy to be able to add that she has since, upon a second trial, succeeded in effecting her escape, and that she is now a free woman. The great excitement which our attempt at emancipation had produced at Washington, and the rage and fury exhibited against us, had the effect to draw attention to our case, and to secure us sympathy and assistance on the part of persons wholly unknown to us. A public meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, in Boston, on the 25th of April, at which a committee was appointed, consisting of Samuel May, Samuel G. Howe, Samuel E. Sewell, Richard Hildreth, Robert Morris, Jr., Francis Jackson, Elizur Wright, Joseph Southwick, Walter Channing, J.W. Browne, Henry I. Bowditch, William F. Channing, Joshua P. Blanchard and Charles List, authorized to employ counsel and to collect money for the purpose of securing to us a fair trial, of which, without some interference from abroad, the existing state of public feeling in the District of Columbia seemed to afford little prospect. A correspondence was opened by this committee with the Hon. Horace Mann, then a representative in Congress from the State of Massachusetts, with ex-Governor Seward, of New York, with Salmon P. Chase, Esq., of Ohio, and with Gen. Fessenden, of Maine, all of whom volunteered their gratuitous services, should they be |
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