[3]. Yes, and there are folks, yes judges and dough faced politicians enough in the state now who would blast all the hopes that led a poor slave on from his chains; and when he was just stepping across the threshold of the temple of freedom, dash him to degradation and slavery, and pollute that threshold with his blood. Until a fugitive from tyranny shall be safe in the asylum of the oppressed and the home of liberty, let us not be told to go to the south. And who are the men who would, who have done this? Certainly not philanthropists; for the philanthropist loves to make his brother man happy, and will always strike for his freedom. Certainly not Christians; for it was one of the most explicit enactments of God, when he established his theocracy upon earth, and incorporated into the code of his government, that “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant that is escaped from his master unto thee.” (Deut. xxii. 15.) And can a man, who respects and regards the laws of heaven, turn traitor to God, and prostrate, at one fell swoop, all the claims of benevolence the fugitive slave imposes, when he lifts his fetter-galled arms to his brother, and cries, “Oh! help me to freedom—to liberty—to heaven?”
“Well, I parted from that man, and I resolved that I would run away, but take his advice, and not run till I could clear the coop for good. Well, we finally got to the end of our journey, and put up at Henry Ludlow’s house, in Milton township, and county of Cayuga, and State of New York.”
A. “Well, Peter, I think we can afford to stop writing now, for I’m fairly tired out. Good bye, Peter.”
P. “Good bye, Domine.”
As I came away from the lowly cottage of Peter Wheeler, and thought of the toils and barbarities of a life of slavery, and returned to the sweet and endearing charities of my own quiet home, tenderness subdued my spirit; and I could not but repeat, with emotions of the deepest gratitude, those sweet lines of my childhood:
‘I was not born a little slave,
To labor in the sun;
And wish I were but in my grave,
And all my labor done.’