I do hope and believe that the cause of freedom to the blacks is becoming stronger and stronger every day. I pray for the time to come when freedom shall be established all over the world. Then will men love as brethren; they will delight to do good to one another; and they will thankfully worship the Father of All.
And now I have only to repeat my hearty thanks to all who have done any thing towards obtaining liberty for my colored brethren, and especially to express my gratitude to those who have helped me to procure for myself, my wife, and so far of my children, the blessing of freedom—a blessing of which none can know the value, but he who has been a slave. Whatever profit may be obtained by the sale of this book, and all donations with which I may be favored, will be faithfully employed in redeeming my remaining children and relatives from the dreadful condition of slavery.
I have paid the following sums to redeem myself and relatives from slavery, viz:
I now wish to raise $100 to buy the freedom of my sister Mary, who is a slave at Elizabeth City, N.C. Her master says he will take that sum for her.
Boston, Jan. 19, 1844.
[1] It will be observed that the narrator married a second wife, without having heard of the decease of the first. To explain this fact, it is necessary to state, that the frequent occurrence of cases where husbands and wives, members of Christian societies, were finally separated by sale, led the ministers, some years ago, to deliberate on the subject: they decided that such separation might be considered as the death of the parties to each other, and they therefore agreed to consider subsequent marriages not immoral. The practice is general. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that a more unequivocal and impressive proof of the heinous nature of the system could hardly exist. It breaks up the fondest connections, it tears up the holiest attachments, and induces the ministers of religion, as much as in them lies, to carve the divine law to a fitting with its own infernal exigencies.