WM. STILL'S ANSWER.



PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 16th, 1851.

To B. McKIERNON, ESQ.: _Sir_--I have received your letter from
South Florence, Ala., under date of the 6th inst. To say that it
took me by surprise, as well as afforded me pleasure, for which
I feel to be very much indebted to you, is no more than true. In
regard to your informants of myself--Mr. Thornton, of Ala., and
Mr. Samuel Lewis, of Cincinnati--to them both I am a stranger.
However, I am the brother of Peter, referred to, and with the
fact of his having a wife and three children in your service I
am also familiar. This brother, Peter, I have only had the
pleasure of knowing for the brief space of one year and thirteen
days, although he is now past forty and I twenty-nine years of
age. Time will not allow me at present, or I should give you a
detailed account of how Peter became a slave, the forty long
years which intervened between the time he was kidnapped, when a
boy, being only six years of age, and his arrival in this city,
from Alabama, one year and fourteen days ago, when he was
re-united to his mother, five brothers and three sisters.

None but a father's heart can fathom the anguish and sorrows
felt by Peter during the many vicissitudes through which he has
passed. He looked back to his boyhood and saw himself snatched
from the tender embraces of his parents and home to be made a
slave for life.