January 12th, 1846.  J. H——­, Esq.

“Sir,—­Your letter is before me.  The ungrateful servant in whose behalf you write, merits no clemency from me.  He was guilty of theft when he departed, for which I hope he has made due amends.  I have heard he was a respectable man, and calculated to do some good to his fellow-beings.  Servants are selling from five hundred and fifty to seven hundred dollars.  I will take five hundred and fifty dollars, and liberate him.  If my proposition is acceded to, and the money lodged in Baltimore, I will execute the necessary instrument, and deliver it in Baltimore, to be given up on payment being made.

  “Yours, &c,

  “——.”

  “Jim was a first-rate mechanic, (blacksmith) and was worth to me one
  thousand dollars.”

Here he not only refuses to account for my parents, by including them in his return and proposition, but he at the same time attempts to intimidate me by mooting the charge of theft.

I confess I was not only surprised, but mortified, at this result.  The hope of being once more united to parents whom I had not seen for sixteen years, and whom I still loved dearly, had so excited my mind, that I disarranged my business relations, disposed of a valuable library of four hundred volumes, and by additional aid obtained among the liberal people of Jamaica, I was prepared to give the extravagant sum of five hundred dollars each for myself, and my father and mother.  This I was willing to do, not because I approve of the principle involved as a general rule.  But supposing that, as my former master was now an old man not far from his grave, (about which I was not mistaken) and as he knew, by his own shewing, that I was able to do some good, he would be inclined, whatever might have been our former relations and misunderstandings, to meet my reasonable desire to see my parents, and to part this world in reconciliation with each other, as well as with God.  I should have rejoiced had his temper permitted him to accede to any offer.  But I thought it too bad, a free man of Jesus Christ, living on “free soil,” to give a man five hundred dollars for the privilege of being let alone, and to be branded as a thief into the bargain, and that too after I had served him twenty prime years, without the benefit of being taught so much as the alphabet.

I wrote him with my own hand, sometime after this, stating that no proposition would be acceded to by me, which did not include my parents; and likewise fix the sum for myself more reasonable, and also retract the offensive charge; to this he maintained a dignified silence.  The means I had acquired by the contributions of kind friends to redeem myself, I laid by, in case the worst should come; and that designed for the purchase of my parents, I used in another kind of operation, as the result of which, my father and two brothers are now in Canada.  My mother was sold a second