the word—­were always ready to contribute to educational and missionary funds, while denying, under the severest penalties, all education to those most needing it, and all true missionary effort—­the spiritual enlightenment for which they were famishing.  Then our masters lacked that fervent charity, the love of Christ in the heart, which if they had possessed they could not have treated us as they did.  They would have remembered the golden rule:  “Do unto others as ye would that men should do to you.”  Possessing absolute power over the bodies and souls of their slaves, and grown rich from their unrequited toil, they became possessed by the demon of avarice and pride, and lost sight of the most vital of the Christly qualities.

CHAPTER V.

Freedom after slavery.

* * * * *

Coming north.

As before stated, we arrived in Memphis on the Fourth of July, 1865.  My first effort as a freeman was to get something to do to sustain myself and wife and a babe of a few months, that was born at the salt works.  I succeeded in getting a room for us, and went to work the second day driving a public carriage.  I made enough to keep us and pay our room rent.  By our economy we managed to get on very well.  I worked on, hoping to go further north, feeling somehow that it would be better for us there; when, one day I ran across a man who knew my wife’s mother.  He said to me:  “Why, your wife’s mother went back up the river to Cincinnati.  I knew her well and the people to whom she belonged.”  This information made us eager to take steps to find her.  My wife was naturally anxious to follow the clue thus obtained, in hopes of finding her mother, whom she had not seen since the separation at Memphis years before.  We, therefore, concluded to go as far as Cincinnati, at any rate, and endeavor to get some further information of mother.  My wife seemed to gather new strength in learning this news of her mother, meager though it was.  After a stay in Memphis of six weeks we went on to Cincinnati, hopeful of meeting some, at least, of the family that, though free, in defiance of justice, had been consigned to cruel and hopeless bondage—­bondage in violation of civil as well as moral law.  We felt it was almost impossible that we should see any one that we ever knew; but the man had spoken so earnestly and positively regarding my mother-in-law that we were not without hope.  On arriving at Cincinnati, our first inquiry was about her, my wife giving her name and description; and, fortunately, we came upon a colored man who said he knew of a woman answering to the name and description which my wife gave of her mother, and he directed us to the house where she was stopping.  When we reached the place to which we had been directed, my wife not only found her mother but one of her sisters.  The meeting was a joyful one to us all.  No mortal who has not experienced it can imagine the feeling of those who meet again after long years of enforced separation and hardship and utter ignorance of one another’s condition and place of habitation.  I questioned them as to when and where they had met, and how it happened that they were now together.  My mother-in-law then began the following narrative: