their freedom, they entered suit for my wife’s mother, their sister, and her seven children.  But as soon as the brothers entered this suit, Robert Logan, who claimed my wife’s mother and her children as his slaves, put them into a trader’s yard in Lexington; and, when he saw that there was a possibility of their being successful in securing their freedom, he put them in jail, to be “sold down the river.”  This was a deliberate attempt to keep them from their rights, for he knew that they were to have been set free, many years before; and this fact was known to all the neighborhood.  My wife’s mother was born free, her mother, having passed the allotted time under a law, had been free for many years.  Yet they kept her children as slaves, in plain violation of law as well as justice.  The children of free persons under southern laws were free—­this was always admitted.  The course of Logan in putting the family in jail, for safe keeping until they could be sent to the southern market, was a tacit admission that he had no legal hold upon them.  Woods and Collins, a couple of “nigger traders,” were collecting a “drove” of slaves for Memphis, about this time, and, when they were ready to start, all the family were sent off with the gang; and, when they arrived in Memphis, they were put in the traders’ yard of Nathan Bedford Forrest.  This Forrest afterward became a general in the rebel army, and commanded at the capture of Fort Pillow; and, in harmony with the debasing influences of his early business, he was responsible for the fiendish massacre of negroes after the capture of the fort—­an act which will make his name forever infamous.  None of this family were sold to the same person except my wife and one sister.  All the rest were sold to different persons.  The elder daughter was sold seven times in one day.  The reason of this was that the parties that bought her, finding that she was not legally a slave, and that they could get no written guarantee that she was, got rid of her as soon as possible.  It seems that those who bought the other members of the family were not so particular, and were willing to run the risk.  They knew that such things—­such outrages upon law and justice—­were common.  Among these was my Boss, who bought two of the girls, Matilda and her sister Mary Ellen.  Matilda was bought for a cook; her sister was a present to Mrs. Farrington, his wife’s sister, to act as her maid and seamstress.  Aunt Delia, who had been cook, was given another branch of work to do, and Matilda was installed as cook.  I remember well the day she came.  The madam greeted her, and said:  “Well, what can you do, girl?  Have you ever done any cooking?  Where are you from?” Matilda was, as I remember her, a sad picture to look at.  She had been a slave, it is true, but had seen good days to what the slaves down the river saw.  Any one could see she was almost heart-broken—­she never seemed happy.  Days grew into weeks and weeks into months, but the same routine of work went on.