On board our steamer was a fine black young man, who acted as barber, waiter, and man-of-all-work.  Curious to know whether he was a slave or not, I requested my friend from Maine to sound him.  “To whom do you belong?” said the Baptist.  “I belong to myself, sir,” was the prompt and dignified reply.  “That’s right,” I involuntarily exclaimed; “he is free!” In answer to further questions, he told us that he was from New Orleans, and had bought himself about two years before for 600 dollars.  He could therefore truly say, “I belong to myself, sir!” Oh! that every slave in America could say the same!  But how monstrous, that a man should have to pay to one of his fellow-men upwards of 120_l._ sterling in order to “own himself!” Land of liberty, forsooth!

In the evening we reached Vicksburg.  This place, like nearly all other places in this region, is deeply stained with deeds of violence and blood.  A few years ago, a set of thieves and gamblers were here put to death by Lynch law.  “Gentlemen of property and standing laughed the law (the constitutional law) to scorn, rushed to the gamblers’ house, put ropes round their necks, dragged them through the streets, hanged them in the public square, and thus saved the sum they had not yet paid.  Thousands witnessed this wholesale murder; yet of the scores of legal officers present, not a soul raised a finger to prevent it:  the whole city consented to it, and thus aided and abetted it.  How many hundreds of them helped to commit the murders with their own hands does not appear; but not one of them has been indicted for it, and no one made the least effort to bring them to trial.  Thus, up to the present hour, the blood of those murdered men rests on that whole city; and it will continue to be a CITY OF MURDERERS so long as its citizens agree together to shield those felons from punishment.”

Darkness had covered the city of blood when we arrived, and therefore we could not see it.  One of the passengers, in stepping on a plank to go ashore, fell into the water.  It was a frightful sight to see the dark figure of a fellow-man splattering and holloing in so perilous a position.  Seldom can a person be saved who falls into the Mississippi, so rapid is the current; and, moreover, the banks are so steep that, though he be a good swimmer, he cannot get up.  The knowledge of these facts generally destroys in the person who falls in all hope and self-command.  Fortunately, however, in the present instance a rope was instantly thrown out, and the individual was saved.  He assured us, afterwards, that some one had designedly pushed him from the plank into the water.