trials in slavery, her separation from her husband, her efforts to
become free, her voluntary return to slavery for the sake of her
child, Lucy, and her subsequent efforts in securing her own freedom.
All these incidents he lingered over step by step, and concluding, he
said:

"Gentlemen of the jury, I am a slave-holder myself, but,
thanks to the Almighty God, I am above the base principle of
holding anybody a slave that has as good right to her freedom
as this girl has been proven to have; she was free before she
was born; her mother was free, but kidnapped in her youth,
and sacrificed to the greed of negro traders, and no free
woman can give birth to a slave child, as it is in direct
violation of the laws of God and man!"

At this juncture he read the affidavit of Mr. A. Posey, with whom my
mother lived at the time of her abduction; also affidavits of Mr. and
Mrs. Woods, in corroboration of the previous facts duly set forth.
Judge Bates then said:

"Gentlemen of the jury, here I rest this case, as I would
not want any better evidence for one of my own children. The
testimony of Judge Wash is alone sufficient to substantiate
the claim of Polly Crockett Berry to the defendant as being
her own child."

The case was then submitted to the jury, about 8 o'clock in the
evening, and I was returned to the jail and locked in the cell which I
had occupied for seventeen months, filled with the most intense
anguish.