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with the ‘free niggers’ of the North, even if the abolitionists did not sell her, or spirit her away to some unknown region.
On the other hand, the colored people, who had assembled about the court-room, were very eager to rescue her from slavery.
She did not understand their motives, or those of the abolitionists; for they had been diligently misrepresented to her. ‘What do they want to do it for?’
she asked, with a perplexed air. ‘What will they do with me?’
She was afraid there was some selfish motive concealed.
She dared not trust the professions of strangers, whose characters had been so unfavorably represented.
Friend Hopper found her in this confused state of mind.
The Southerner was very willing to speak for her. He gave assurance that she did not want her freedom; that she desired to return to the South; and that she had been in no respect distrained of her liberty in the city of New-York.
‘Thou art a very respectable looking man,’ said Friend Hopper; ‘but I have known slaveholders, of even more genteel appearance than thou art, tell gross falsehoods where a slave was in question.
I tell thee plainly, that I have no confidence in slaveholders, in any such case.
I have had too much acquaintance with them.
I know their game too well.’
The Southerner said something about its being
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
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