I was employed during that summer, as I have mentioned already in trading up and down the Chesapeake, in a hired boat, a small black boy being my only assistant.  Among other trips, I went to Washington with a cargo of oysters.  While I was lying there, at the same wharf, as it happened, from which the Pearl afterwards took her departure, a colored man came on board, and, observing that I seemed to be from the north, he said he supposed we were pretty much all abolitionists there.  I don’t know where he got this piece of information, but I think it likely from some southern member of Congress.  As I did not check him, but rather encouraged him to go on, he finally told me that he wanted to get passage to the north for a woman and five children.  The husband of the woman, and father of the children, was a free colored man; and the woman, under an agreement with her master, had already more than paid for her liberty; but, when she had asked him for a settlement, he had only answered by threatening to sell her.  He begged me to see the woman, which I did; and finally I made an arrangement to take them away.  Their bedding, and other things, were sent down on board the vessel in open day, and at night the woman came on board with her five children and a niece.  We were ten days in reaching Frenchtown, where the husband was in waiting for them.  He took them under his charge, and I saw them no more; but, since my release from imprisonment in Washington, I have heard that the whole family are comfortably established in a free country, and doing well.

Having accomplished this exploit,—­and was it not something of an exploit to bestow the invaluable gift of liberty upon seven of one’s fellow-creatures—­the season being now far advanced, I gave up the boat to the owner, and returned to my family at Philadelphia.  In the course of the following month of February, I received a note from a person whom I had never known or heard of before, desiring me to call at a certain place named in it.  I did so, when it appeared that I had been heard of through the colored family which I had brought off from Washington.  A letter from that city was read to me, relating the case of a family or two who expected daily and hourly to be sold, and desiring assistance to get them away.  It was proposed to me to undertake this enterprise; but I declined it at this time, as I had no vessel, and because the season was too early for navigation through the canal.  I saw the same person again about a fortnight later, and finally arranged to go on to Washington, to see what could be done.  There I agreed to return again so soon as I could find a vessel fit for the enterprise.  I spoke with several persons of my acquaintance, who had vessels under their control; but they declined, on account of the danger.  They did not appear to have any other objection, and seemed to wish me success.  Passing along the street, I met Captain Sayres, and knowing that he was sailing a small bay-craft, called