I was beginning to plan for freedom, and was forever on the alert for a chance to escape and join my sister.  I was then twelve years old, and often talked the matter over with mother and canvassed the probabilities of both of us getting away.  No schemes were too wild for us to consider!  Mother was especially restless, because she was a free woman up to the time of her being kidnapped, so the injustice and weight of slavery bore more heavily upon her than upon me.  She did not dare to talk it over with anyone for fear that they would sell her further down the river, so I was her only confidant.  Mother was always planning and getting ready to go, and while the fire was burning brightly, it but needed a little more provocation to add to the flames.

CHAPTER III.

Mrs. Cox was always very severe and exacting with my mother, and one occasion, when something did not suit her, she turned on mother like a fury, and declared, “I am just tired out with the ‘white airs’ you put on, and if you don’t behave differently, I will make Mr. Cox sell you down the river at once.”

Although mother turned grey with fear, she presented a bold front and retorted that “she didn’t care, she was tired of that place, and didn’t like to live there, nohow.”  This so infuriated Mr. Cox that he cried, “How dare a negro say what she liked or what she did not like; and he would show her what he should do.”

So, on the day following, he took my mother to an auction-room on Main Street and sold her to the highest bidder, for five hundred and fifty dollars.  Oh!  God! the pity of it!  “In the home of the brave and the land of the free,” in the sight of the stars and stripes—­that symbol of freedom—­sold away from her child, to satisfy the anger of a peevish mistress!

My mother returned to the house to get her few belongings, and straining me to her breast, begged me to be a good girl, that she was going to run away, and would buy me as soon as she could.  With all the inborn faith of a child, I believed it most fondly, and when I heard that she had actually made her escape, three weeks after, my heart gave an exultant throb and cried, “God is good!”

A large reward was offered, the bloodhounds (curse them and curse their masters) were set loose on her trail.  In the day time she hid in caves and the surrounding woods, and in the night time, guided by the wondrous North Star, that blessed lodestone of a slave people, my mother finally reached Chicago, where she was arrested by the negro-catchers.  At this time the Fugitive Slave Law was in full operation, and it was against the law of the whole country to aid and protect an escaped slave; not even a drink of water, for the love of the Master, might be given, and those who dared to do it (and there were many such brave hearts, thank God!) placed their lives in danger.

The presence of bloodhounds and “nigger-catchers” in their midst, created great excitement and scandalized the community.  Feeling ran high and hundreds of people gathered together and declared that mother should not be returned to slavery; but fearing that Mr. Cox would wreak his vengeance upon me, my mother finally gave herself up to her captors, and returned to St. Louis.  And so the mothers of Israel have been ever slain through their deepest affections!