calculated to awaken all our fears that had been slumbering, and bring all
the perilous changes to which we might be subjected most vividly to mind.

We were about to leave the land of our birth, the home of our childhood,
and we felt that untried scenes were before us. We were slaves, it is
true, but we had heart-felt emotions to suppress, when we thought
of leaving all that was so familiar to us, and chose rather to "bear the
ills we had, than to fly to those we knew not of." And oh, the terrible
uncertainty of the future, that ever rests on the slave, even the most
favored, was now felt with a crushing weight. To-day, they are in the old
familiar cabin surrounded by their family, relatives and friends;
to-morrow, they may be scattered, parted forever. The master's
circumstances, not their own, may have assigned one to the dreadful
slave-pen, and another to the distant rice-swamp; and it is this continual
dread of some perilous future that holds in check every joyous emotion,
every lofty aspiration, of the most favored slave at the South. They know
that their owners indulge in high living, and they are well aware also
that their continual indulgences engender disease, which make them very
liable to sudden death; or their master may be killed in a duel, or at a
horse-race, or in a drunken brawl; then his creditors are active in
looking after the estate; and next, the blow of the auctioneer's hammer
separates them perhaps for life.

Now, after the lapse of so many years, when my thoughts wander back, as
they often do, to my native State, I confess that painful recollections
drive from my mind those joyful emotions that should ever arise in the
heart of man, when contemplating the familiar scenes of his youth, and
especially when recurring to the venerable shades and the sheltering roof
under which he was born. True, around the well-remembered spot where our
childhood's years were spent, recollection still loves to linger; yet