[Footnote 11:  Daily True Delta (New Orleans), Dec. 19, 1857.]

[Footnote 12:  Poydras vs.  Mourrain, in Louisiana Reports, IX, 492.  The will is quoted in the decision.]

[Footnote 13:  Niles’ Register, LXVIII, 361.  The original MS. is filed in will book no. 6 in the New Orleans court house.]

[Footnote 14:  J.T.  Edwards ed., Some Interesting Papers of John McDonogh (McDonoghville, Md., 1898), pp. 49-58.]

Among more romantic liberations was that of Pierre Chastang of Mobile who, in recognition of public services in the war of 1812 and the yellow fever epidemic of 1819 was bought and freed by popular subscription;[15] that of Sam which was provided by a special act of the Georgia legislature in 1834 at a cost of $1,800 in reward for his having saved the state capitol from destruction by fire;[16] and that of Prince which was attained through the good offices of the United States government.  Prince, after many years as a Mississippi slave, wrote a letter in Arabic to the American consul at Tangier in which he recounted his early life as a man of rank among the Timboo people and his capture in battle and sale overseas.  This led Henry Clay on behalf of the Adams administration to inquire at what cost he might be bought for liberation and return.  His master thereupon freed him gratuitously, and the citizens of Natchez raised a fund for the purchase of his wife, with a surplus for a flowing Moorish costume in which Prince was promptly arrayed.  The pair then departed, in 1828, for Washington en route for Morocco, Prince avowing that he would soon send back money for the liberation of their nine children.[17]

[Footnote 15:  D.W.  Mitchell, Ten Years in the United States (London, 1862), p. 235.]

[Footnote 16:  Georgia Senate Journal for 1834, p. 25.  At a later period the Georgia legislature had occasion to reward another slave, Ransom by name, who while hired from his master by the state had heroically saved the Western and Atlantic Railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee River from destruction by fire.  Since official sentiment was now hostile to manumission, it was resolved in 1849 that he be bought by the state and ensured a permanent home; and in 1853 a further resolution directed the chief engineer of the state-owned railroad to pay him just wages during good behavior.  Georgia Acts, 1849-1850, pp. 416, 417; 1853-1854, pp. 538, 539.  Old citizens relate that a house was built for Ransom on the Western and Atlantic right of way in Atlanta which he continued to occupy until his death many years after the Civil War.  For these data I am indebted to Mr. J. Groves Cohen, Secretary of the Western and Atlantic Railroad Commission, Atlanta, Ga.]

[Footnote 17:  “Letter from a Gentleman of Natchez to a Lady of Cincinnati,” in the Georgia Courier (Augusta), May 22, 1828.  For a similar instance in colonial Maryland see the present work, p. 31.]