Judge Bates arose, and his soulful eloquence and earnest pleading made such an impression on my sore heart, I listened with renewed hope.  I felt the black storm clouds of doubt and despair were fading away, and that I was drifting into the safe harbor of the realms of truth.  I felt as if everybody must believe him, for he clung to the truth, and I wondered how Mr. Hutchinson could so lie about a poor defenseless girl like me.

Judge Bates chained his hearers with the graphic history of my mother’s life, from the time she played on Illinois banks, through her trials in slavery, her separation from her husband, her efforts to become free, her voluntary return to slavery for the sake of her child, Lucy, and her subsequent efforts in securing her own freedom.  All these incidents he lingered over step by step, and concluding, he said: 

“Gentlemen of the jury, I am a slave-holder myself, but, thanks to the Almighty God, I am above the base principle of holding anybody a slave that has as good right to her freedom as this girl has been proven to have; she was free before she was born; her mother was free, but kidnapped in her youth, and sacrificed to the greed of negro traders, and no free woman can give birth to a slave child, as it is in direct violation of the laws of God and man!”

At this juncture he read the affidavit of Mr. A. Posey, with whom my mother lived at the time of her abduction; also affidavits of Mr. and Mrs. Woods, in corroboration of the previous facts duly set forth.  Judge Bates then said: 

“Gentlemen of the jury, here I rest this case, as I would not want any better evidence for one of my own children.  The testimony of Judge Wash is alone sufficient to substantiate the claim of Polly Crockett Berry to the defendant as being her own child.”

The case was then submitted to the jury, about 8 o’clock in the evening, and I was returned to the jail and locked in the cell which I had occupied for seventeen months, filled with the most intense anguish.

CHAPTER V.

    “There’s a joy in every sorrow,
      There’s a relief from every pain;
    Though to-day ’tis dark to-morrow
      he will turn all bright again.”

Before the sheriff bade me good night he told me to be in readiness at nine o’clock on the following morning to accompany him back to court to hear the verdict.  My mother was not at the trial.  She had lingered many days about the jail expecting my case would be called, and finally when called to trial the dear, faithful heart was not present to sustain me during that dreadful speech of Mr. Hutchinson.  All night long I suffered agonies of fright, the suspense was something awful, and could only be comprehended by those who have gone through some similar ordeal.

I had missed the consolation of my mother’s presence, and I felt so hopeless and alone!  Blessed mother! how she clung and fought for me.  No work was too hard for her to undertake.  Others would have flinched before the obstacles which confronted her, but undauntedly she pursued her way, until my freedom was established by every right and without a questioning doubt!