Now, Joseph and Robert (Mary’s associate passengers from Richmond) must here be noticed.  Joseph was of a dark orange color, medium size, very active and intelligent, and doubtless, well understood the art of behaving himself.  He was well acquainted with the auction block—­having been sold three times, and had had the misfortune to fall into the hands of a cruel master each time.  Under these circumstances he had had but few privileges.  Sundays and week days alike he was kept pretty severely bent down to duty.  He had been beaten and knocked around shamefully.  He had a wife, and spoke of her in most endearing language, although, on leaving, he did not feel at liberty to apprise her of his movements, “fearing that it would not be safe so to do.”  His four little children, to whom he appeared warmly attached, he left as he did his wife—­in Slavery.  He declared that he “stuck to them as long as he could.”  George E. Sadler, the keeper of an oyster house, held the deed for “Joe,” and a most heartless wretch he was in Joe’s estimation.  The truth was, Joe could not stand the burdens and abuses which Sadler was inclined to heap upon him.  So he concluded to join his brother and go off on the U.G.R.R.

Robert, his younger brother, was owned by Robert Slater, Esq., a regular negro trader.  Eight years this slave’s duties had been at the slave prison, and among other daily offices he had to attend to, was to lock up the prison, prepare the slaves for sale, etc.  Robert was a very intelligent young man, and from long and daily experience with the customs and usages of the slave prison, he was as familiar with the business as a Pennsylvania farmer with his barn-yard stock.  His account of things was too harrowing for detail here, except in the briefest manner, and that only with reference to a few particulars.  In order to prepare slaves for the market, it was usual to have them greased and rubbed to make them look bright and shining.  And he went on further to state, that “females as well as males were not uncommonly stripped naked, lashed flat to a bench, and then held by two men, sometimes four, while the brutal trader would strap them with a broad leather strap.”  The strap being preferred to the cow-hide, as it would not break the skin, and damage the sale.  “One hundred lashes would only be a common flogging.”  The separation of families was thought nothing of.  “Often I have been flogged for refusing to flog others.”  While not yet twenty-three years of age, Robert expressed himself as having become so daily sick of the brutality and suffering he could not help witnessing, that he felt he could not possibly stand it any longer, let the cost be what it might.  In this state of mind he met with Captain B. Only one obstacle stood in his way—­material aid.  It occurred to Robert that he had frequent access to the money drawer, and often it contained the proceeds of fresh sales of flesh and blood; and he reasoned that if some of that would help him and his brother to freedom, there could be no harm in helping himself the first opportunity.