Your son and brother,

JAS. P.

_Alias_ J.W.C. PENNINGTON.

TO COLONEL F---- T----, OF H----, WASHINGTON COUNTY, MD. 1844.


DEAR SIR,

It is now, as you are aware, about seventeen years since I left your
house and service, at the age of twenty. Up to that time, I was,
according to your rule and claim, your slave. Till the age of seven
years, I was, of course, of little or no service to you. At that age,
however, you hired me out, and for three years I earned my support; at
the age of ten years, you took me to your place again, and in a short
time after you put me to work at the blacksmith's trade, at which,
together with the carpentering trade, &c, I served you peaceably until
the day I left you, with exception of the short time you had sold me to
S---- H----, Esq., for seven hundred dollars. It is important for me to
say to you, that I have no consciousness of having done you any wrong. I
called you master when I was with you from the mere force of
circumstances; but I never regarded you as my master. The nature which
God gave me did not allow me to believe that you had any more right to
me than I had to you, and that was just none at all. And from an early
age, I had intentions to free myself from your claim. I never consulted
any one about it; I had no advisers or instigators; I kept my own
counsel entirely concealed in my own bosom. I never meditated any evil