"Oh yes, madam, and you are implicated in that affair, but as you are a lady I will not disturb you; but you are liable to great difficulty in that case, and I will tell you we are going to have Anderson by hook or by crook; we will have him by fair means or foul; the South is determined to have that man, and you'll find your House of Refuge will not protect him either."
"This is the way I perceive you Southern legal gentlemen will help us. But you will never get Anderson from Canada. Your determination will fail."
"We shall not fail, but I will tell you after I return from our filibustering tour, as we am going out next month. We are confident of success in that, too, for our fleet is in good condition. We shall then take Anderson, if not before, and let you see how much your House of Refuge will do to hold that man from the South."
I never heard from D. L. Ward from that day. I had written previous to this interview to the governor-general, Lord Elgin, of the first effort to retake him as a murderer. He replied that, "in case of a demand for William Anderson, he should require the case to be tried in their British court; and if twelve freeholders should testify that he had been a man of integrity since his arrival in their dominion, it should clear him." This information, however, I did not reveal to our Southern lawyer.
Three years later, in which time I had succeeded in finishing my Raisin Institute building, and reopened the institution in charge of a principal from Oberlin College, the sad tidings reached me that William Anderson was lodged in jail in the city of Toronto, under charge of murder committed in the State of Missouri. He was awaiting his trial, and Gerrit Smith was one of his legal advisers. I wrote immediately informing him of the previous efforts to search out his whereabouts, and that his pursuers at that date (1853) alleged that he was a free man, and had never been a slave. In reply, Gerrit Smith wrote:
"I am glad you have given me so much of his history. Poor Anderson! I visited him in jail. I will send you my speech in his behalf. I hope the friends will purchase his family. I have volunteered to do all I can for the poor man. Lord Elgin is removed; the present governor-general is a stranger to this case. God bless you.
"I am truly your friend, GERRIT SMITH."
A few days later, I received the thrilling speech of Gerrit Smith, like the man, full of pure and soul-inspiring thought; but I trembled with fear when two of the three judges were in favor of returning William Anderson to the State of Missouri, and that Riggs the claimant was liable to succeed; but through the efforts of his friends, and the opposing judge, the case was appealed to a higher court, and William Anderson was sent to England, where he remained in safety until the war opened, in which time the case was adjusted in his favor. The Missouri agent, Riggs, failed, and the friends of liberty rejoiced.
Three young men fled from Daniel Payne, Kentucky, and succeeded in reaching Canada, where they had proven themselves worthy of their hard-earned freedom. A few months elapsed, and their master came for them, and tried to hire them to go back with him, promising to make over to them manumission papers as soon as they returned. But he failed to inspire Alfred and his two brothers with confidence in his promise of freedom and fair wages for their work. He then secured the aid of a colored man to invite them to a dancing party in Detroit a few days after, but the boys mistrusted that their old master had the handling of this invitation, and did not accept it.
As they had been annoyed two weeks by the various plans of "Master Dan Payne," they concluded the next time he gave them a call to appear more social, and gave their plan to forty or fifty of their friends, who were to lie in ambush near the old barracks, where one of the brothers was to have a chill, and appear too sick to go over the river. But two days passed before the opportunity arrived that enabled them to carry out their plan. When Alfred informed the ex-master of the illness of his brother, of course he must hasten to the sick boy with a nice brandy-sling for the chills, and he purchased a good quantity for them all. While he was handing a glass of sweetened brandy to the sick man, a company of men rushed in and held him, while Alfred and two brothers stripped him of his coat, vest, boots, socks, and pants, and tied him with a rope in the same way the master had tied their mother, when he compelled her to be stripped, and tied her with his own hands, and whipped her until the blood ran to the ground. Alfred and his brothers applied dexterously the slave-whip, which they had provided for the occasion by borrowing a plantation slave-whip kept by Henry Bibb as a reminder of his slave life. Daniel Payne begged heartily for mercy. Alfred replied: "Yes, this is just the way my mother begged for mercy; but you had no mercy for her, and this is to show what she received at your cruel hands." They applied the lash until the forty stripes their mother had received at his hands had been given. Then they unbound him and gave him fifteen minutes to dress and leave Canada, and gave him a quarter to go with, keeping his watch and purse, which contained about forty dollars. He crossed the river within the given time, and sent an agent to call on the authorities, to whom he entered a complaint of being robbed of a gold watch and one hundred dollars, but made no complaint of the whipping. He affected to be too lame "with rheumatism" to return to his Kentucky home for a number of days, in which time the boys returned his watch, but kept the money. Alfred and his brothers said Mr. Payne was as untruthful about the amount of money as he was in calling his old silver watch gold. Suffice it to say, the young men were never after troubled or annoyed by Daniel Payne, of Kentucky. Although it was a course I would never have inaugurated, yet it was largely in human nature to requite the cruelties heaped upon their mother when it was beyond their power to protect her.