“The following facts are a few out of a VAST MULTITUDE, to which the attention of the undersigned has been directed.

“On the 27th of February last, the undersigned had an interview with the Rev. Samuel Snowden, a respectable and intelligent clergyman of the city of Boston.  This gentleman stated, and he is now ready to make oath, that during the last six years, he has himself, by the aid of various benevolent individuals, procured the deliverance from jail of six citizens of Massachusetts, who had been, arrested and imprisoned as runaway slaves, and who, but for his timely interposition, would have been sold into perpetual bondage.  The names and the places of imprisonment of those persons, as stated by Mr. S. were as follows: 

“James Hight, imprisoned at Mobile; William Adams, at Norfolk; William Holmes, also at Norfolk; James Oxford, at Wilmington; James Smith, at Baton Rouge; John Tidd, at New Orleans.

“In 1836, Mary Smith, a native of this state, returning from New Orleans, whither she had been in the capacity of a servant, was cast upon the shores of North Carolina.  She was there seized and sold as a slave.  Information of the fact reached her friends at Boston.  Those friends made an effort to obtain her liberation.  They invoked the assistance of the Governor of this Commonwealth.  A correspondence ensued between His Excellency and the Governor of North Carolina:  copies of which were offered for the inspection of your committee.  Soon afterwards, by permission of the authorities of North Carolina, ‘Mary Smith’ returned to Boston.  But it turned out, that this was not the Mary Smith, whom our worthy Governor, and other excellent individuals of Boston, had taken so unwearied pains to redeem from slavery.  It was another woman, of the same name, who was also a native of Massachusetts, and had been seized in North Carolina as a runaway slave.  The Mary Smith has not yet been heard of.  If alive, she is now, in all probability, wearing the chains of slavery.

“About a year and a half since, several citizens of different free states were rescued from slavery, at New Orleans, by the direct personal efforts of an acquaintance of the undersigned.  The benevolent individual alluded to is Jacob Barker, Esq. a name not unknown to the commercial world.  Mr. Barker is a resident of New Orleans.  A statement of the cases in reference is contained in a letter addressed by him to the Hon. Samuel H. Jenks, of Nantucket.”

The letter of Mr. Barker, referred to in this report to the Legislature of Massachusetts, bears date August 19, 1837.  The following are extracts from it.