memory, ever ready with its garnered store, paints in glowing colors,
Virginia's crouching slaves in the foreground. Her loathsome slave-pens
and slave markets--chains, whips and instruments of torture; and back of
all this is as truthfully recorded the certain doom, the retributive
justice, that will sooner or later overtake her; and with a despairing
sigh I turn away from the imaginary view of my native State.

What though she may have been justly styled, "The Mother of Presidents?"
What avails the honor of being the birth-place of the brave and excellent
Washington, while the prayers and groans of the down-trodden African
daily ascend to heaven for redress? What though her soil be fertile,
yielding a yearly product of wealth to its possessors? And what matter is
it, that their lordly mansions are embowered in the shade of trees of a
century's growth, if, through their lofty and tangled branches, we espy
the rough cabin of the mangled bondman, and know that the soil on which he
labors has drunk his heart's blood?

Ah! to me, life's sweetest memories are all embittered. Slavery had cast
its dark and fearful shadow over my childhood, youth, and early manhood,
and I went out from the land of my birth, a fettered slave. A land which
I can regard only as "the house of bondage and the grave of freedom." But
God forgive me for having envied my master his fair prospects at this
time.

After the sale of the plantation, Capt. Helm was in possession of quite a
large sum of money, and having never paid much attention to his pecuniary
interests, he acted as if there could be no end of it. He realized about
forty thousand dollars from the sale of his estate in Virginia, which
would have been a pretty sum in the hands of a man who had been accustomed
to look after his own interests; but under the management of one who had