But whenever such thoughts would come into my mind, my resolution would soon be shaken by the remembrance that my dear mother was a slave in St. Louis, and I could not bear the idea of leaving her in that condition.  She had often taken me upon her knee, and told me how she had carried me upon her back to the field when I was an infant—­how often she had been whipped for leaving her work to nurse me—­and how happy I would appear when she would take me into her arms.  When these thoughts came over me, I would resolve never to leave the land of slavery without my mother.  I thought that to leave her in slavery, after she had undergone and suffered so much for me, would be proving recreant to the duty which I owed to her.  Besides this, I had three brothers and a sister there,—­two of my brothers having died.

My mother, my brothers Joseph and Millford, and my sister Elizabeth, belonged to Mr. Isaac Mansfield, formerly from one of the Free States, (Massachusetts, I believe.) He was a tinner by trade, and carried on a large manufacturing establishment.  Of all my relatives, mother was first, and sister next.  One evening, while visiting them, I made some allusion to a proposed journey to Canada, and sister took her seat by my side, and taking my hand in hers, said, with tears in her eyes,—­

“Brother, you are not going to leave mother and your dear sister here without a friend, are you?”

I looked into her face, as the tears coursed swiftly down her cheeks, and bursting into tears myself, said—­

“No, I will never desert you and mother.”

She clasped my hand in hers, and said—­

“Brother, you have often declared that you would not end your days in slavery.  I see no possible way in which you can escape with us; and now, brother, you are on a steamboat where there is some chance for you to escape to a land of liberty.  I beseech you not to let us hinder you.  If we cannot get our liberty, we do not wish to be the means of keeping you from a land of freedom.”

I could restrain my feelings no longer, and an outburst of my own feelings, caused her to cease speaking upon that subject.  In opposition to their wishes, I pledged myself not to leave them in the hand of the oppressor.  I took leave of them, and returned to the boat, and laid down in my bunk; but “sleep departed from my eyes, and slumber from my eyelids.”

A few weeks after, on our downward passage, the boat took on board, at Hannibal, a drove of slaves, bound for the New Orleans market.  They numbered from fifty to sixty, consisting of men and women from eighteen to forty years of age.  A drove of slaves on a southern steamboat, bound for the cotton or sugar regions, is an occurrence so common, that no one, not even the passengers, appear to notice it, though they clank their chains at every step.  There was, however, one in this gang that attracted the attention of the passengers and crew.  It was a beautiful girl, apparently about twenty years of age,