I presume there are no class of people in the United States who so highly appreciate the legality of marriage as those persons who have been held and treated as property.  Yes, it is that fugitive who knows from sad experience, what it is to have his wife tyrannically snatched from his bosom by a slaveholding professor of religion, and finally reduced to a state of adultery, that knows how to appreciate the law that repels such high-handed villany.  Such as that to which the writer has been exposed.  But thanks be to God, I am now free from the hand of the cruel oppressor, no more to be plundered of my dearest rights; the wife of my bosom, and my poor unoffending offspring.  Of Malinda I will only add a word in conclusion.  The relation once subsisting between us, to which I clung, hoping against hope, for years, after we were torn assunder, not having been sanctioned by any loyal power, cannot be cancelled by a legal process.  Voluntarily assumed without law mutually, it was by her relinquished years ago without my knowledge, as before named; during which time I was making every effort to secure her restoration.  And it was not until after living alone in the world for more than eight years without a companion known in law or morals, that I changed my condition.

CHAPTER XIX.

Comments on S. Gatewood’s letter about slaves stealing.—­Their conduct vindicated.—­Comments on W. Gatewood’s letter.

But it seems that I am not now beyond the reach of the foul slander of slaveholders.  They are not satisfied with selling and banishing me from my native State.  As soon as they got news of my being in the free North, exposing their peculiar Institution, a libelous letter was written by Silas Gatewood of Kentucky, a son of one of my former owners, to a Northern Committee, for publication, which he thought would destroy my influence and character.  This letter will be found in the introduction.

He has charged me with the awful crime of taking from my keeper and oppressor, some of the fruits of my own labor for the benefit of myself and family.

But while writing this letter he seems to have overlooked the disgraceful fact that he was guilty himself of what would here be regarded highway robbery, in his conduct to me as narrated on page 60 of this narrative.

A word in reply to Silas Gatewood’s letter.  I am willing to admit all that is true, but shall deny that which is so basely false.  In the first place, he puts words in my mouth that I never used.  He says that I represented that “my mother belonged to James Bibb.”  I deny ever having said so in private or public.  He says that I stated that Bibb’s daughter married a Sibley.  I deny it.  He also says that the first time that I left Kentucky for my liberty, I was gone about two years, before I went back to rescue my family.  I deny it.  I was gone from Dec. 25th, 1837, to May, or June, 1838.  He says that I went back the second time for the purpose of taking off my family, and eight or ten more slaves to Canada.  This I will not pretend to deny.  He says I was guilty of disposing of articles from the farm for my own use, and pocketing the money, and that his father caught me stealing a sack full of wheat.  I admit the fact.  I acknowledge the wheat.