Islands in 1832, and lived there, a faithful For two years hundreds have been kept from worker in the vineyard of our Lord till his starving. I worship the characteristic of bedeath, which occurred suddenly in conse- nevolence when I see the vast amount of quence of an accident about four years since. suffering it has allayed. The slave owners My mother, with four of her children-for we did their best to terrify their victims into the are eight-still lives to continue her work belief that the "Yankees" only wanted to sell amongst the natives of our little "kingdom them off to Cuba for gain, but African creby the sea." Eight years ago I left there dulity could not be deluded. It is quite hoping to be bettered in health by a cooler amusing to hear them refer to their masters, climate, and also because all missionaries' not in a spirit of revenge, however. The children are obliged to return to their absence of such feelings is quite a marvel to "fatherland" to complete their education. me. As an instance-"My ole massa," said I lived four years in California-long enough a coloured man, "he went off all so grand to become charmed with its delightful climate, to Richmond, on de rail-road, when de war and then went to New York for a short stay. | came. I went off too, on de underground But, alas for human plans! My father died, rail-road (meaning to Canada) De odder day and-family prospects being uncertain-II come back a free man and my ole massa he remained with my brother. This war broke out at that time, and with all the zeal of a young lover of liberty he snatched his sword and went into it. Although without home or relatives of any service, I cannot find it in my heart to leave him exposed to the hazards of war and return to my quiet home. We both stand pledged to the Negro race as long as the "stars and bars" of the Confederacy threaten his future, and are happy to find so good a work. Our God is our Father, and we feel that we shall not want while his care is over us. Excuse my egotism. come sneaking back glad to keep company wid de niggers." Negro dialect is no doubt familiar to you by sight. It is a hard part of our school teaching to correct their peculiarities of language, which of course must be done if they are to be teachers themselves. On the whole we think them apt scholars and feel much encouraged after five months labour. My class of forty were as untamed as colts at first, and as ragged as the poorest Irish. I have been able to clothe them decently and persuade them into very respectable behaviour. Our evening school of adults is flourishing. Old men and women with heads as white as almond blossoms come regularly to learn how to read the "bressed Bible." We are often called upon to write their letters, teach them to sew, visit the sick-besides our Sunday School work. You will see that the field is broad; I wish your eyes could behold how flourishing it is. May none grow weary in this work, for truly it is one the Master loves. My duties must be my excuse for sending so poor a letter. I shall be most pleased to hear from you and will give you my direction. P.O. Box 147, Norfolk, Va., U.S.A. I take it for granted you will like to hear a little of the coloured people; indeed there is nothing of interest else about this southern town, unimproved as it is in consequence of the war. After reading all you have about the cruelties of slavery-all of which is true -and knowing the blindness of ignorance which for so many years shrouded this people -it would do your heart good to see the happy faces of these sable children as they go to school free, to learn all they wish. It would please you to hear their songs of thankfulness and their expressions of love for those who have helped and sympathized with them. Most of them are escaped slaves who left their masters with scarcely clothing enough to A NEGRO JUROR.-A coloured man has been cover their nakedness. Imagine their desti-drawn as a juror in Providence, and will take tution with neither friends nor money. As his seat among the others. Hitherto it has helpless as children they could only cry to Heaven for relief and pray to a prayerhearing God; kind hearts supplied their needs. M. JENNIE A......... been customary when a coloured man's name has been drawn to pass it over, but now a new course is to be pursued. NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. anxiety was mingled with the religious faith of even those who believed W. STOKES, Manchester, will see that his that God would protect the emancipated suggestion has been attended to. negro not only from revengeful passions, Dr. STORRS' Speech will appear in our next but from the overflowing exuberance of number. All orders and enquiries concerning Advertisements, or other business connected with this Magazine, are to be addressed for the present to ARLISS ANDREWS, 7, Duke Street, Bloomsbury, W.C. The Freed-Man. AUGUST, 1865. THE FIRST OF AUGUST. BY F. W. CHESSON, his own joy. Apprehensions extended far beyond the limits of the West Indies or of Great Britain. "The Carolina planter" says Miss Martineau "looked well to his negro quarter to see that his hands' went not abroad after dark. Garrison and his band sat waiting for tidings-with more faith in the negro temper than any one else, but still with some anxiety for the cause." The eight hundred thousand human beings who were endowed with the rights of men put every evil prophecy "The Freedman" could not well to shame, and more than realised the appear on a more auspicious day than hopes of their best and least doubting this the anniversary of the greatest act friends. Their last night of slavery of justice which the British nation has was spent, not in roystering pleasure, ever performed. The publication of a but in devotional exercise. The chapels first number on the first of August is a throughout the islands were thronged mere coincidence: let us, however, hope with black worshippers who came to that it is a fact of happy augury. The thank the Great Father of mankind, associations of the day-the recollec- who had made them free and equal, for tions of the great work which our fathers having restored them to their birthaccomplished exactly thirty one years right; and when the clock struck ago the traditions of the manner in twelve and the hour of deliverance had which the emancipated negroes conduc- at length arrived, myriads of prayerful ted themselves on what the historian and rejoicing voices were borne by the has happily designated their "passover midnight air up to the very gates of night" are eminently calculated to Heaven. "Let justice be done though stimulate the zeal, and strengthen the the heavens fall" said the old heathen confidence of those who are called a saying which, although hackneyed upon to labour at a somewhat similar by repetition, deserves to be repeated although an infinitely more momentous. until the last yoke is broken and the conjuncture. Some of our readers will last shackle removed. But the heavens remember, all will have read, the inci- did not fall-they also rejoiced; and dents of that memorable day. We every circumstance connected with this know how gloomy were the vaticina-great event conspired to furnish another tions of the hostile; and how much of splendid example of the truth that the extirpation of a wrong never leads to of these untoward circumstances have evil results, and that true safety lies in already been magnified, and put in the the strict and unhesitating performance worst possible light, by the pro-slavery of justice. If our American brethren journalists of America and Great Brihad grasped in its length and breadth tain. But experience has abundantly this great law of Christian morality, shown, that the free-labour system, they would have been spared the accu- wherever it has been fairly tried, has mulated miseries of the most colossal achieved a material no less than a war of modern times. moral success which puts the vicious Up to a certain point we may economics of the slave system to the establish a parallel between 1834 and blush. While we write, the telegraph 1865. In both instances emancipation makes the announcement, on the authonot only harmonized with national rity of the most anti-negro of American security, but was essential to it. After newspapers, that "the new crop of the abolition of West India slavery, cotton in the state of Alabama is very there were no more insurrections, no fine, and that the free-labour system is more martyrdoms of missionaries, no working well." Alabama is the state more social disorganization. Slavery in which John Mitchell desired to have was the direct instigator of every spe- a plantation stocked with fat negroes: cies of violence; Freedom made every it was, as may be supposed from the man, black or white, a conservator of brutal aspiration of this double-dyed order. So, in the Southern States, traitor, one of the worst of the slave "the peculiar institution" was in the states, socially, morally, and politinature of a conspiracy not only against cally. Yet Alabama, in the very inthe liberty, the virtue, and the happi- fancy of her regeneration, has reason to ness of individual men, but against the rejoice in the stupendous change which peace and security of the state. With is taking place within her borders. its downfall the social fabric will again Can any one suppose that there is anyrest on natural bases. The only enemy thing in the case of Alabama to make the nation has ever had occasion to her experience exceptional? The nedread is destroyed; and the mighty groes, like any other class of men, will chasm which has hitherto separated work for wages, if their payment is the North from the South will, in due combined with just treatment. The time, be filled up. It was not to be most active and thriving traders on the anticipated that a great war-the act, West coast of Africa are natives not be it remembered, of slaveholding mar- only of mixed but of pure blood. But plots would make the transition from to argue in favour of so self-evident a darkness to light as free from disturb- proposition is to call in question the ance as it was in our own West India common-sense of mankind we are islands. In the very nature of things therefore content to leave it to time to many evils will occur which the friends demonstrate in the Southern States the of freedom would gladly avert, but truth of this natural law. which they can only mitigate. Some The Americans have exhibited their TO THE EDITOR OF THE "FREEDMAN." London, July 22, 1865. regard to the State on condition of the Southern States. He is a warm advocate of Negro sufferage, Joseph Simpson of Manchester was also with us, he was much interested in Dear Sir, hearing Judge Chase talk. On the fourth day With gratitude to our Heavenly Father, and I visited the "home" on Walnut Hills for the with thanks to a generous public, I have to helpless refugee women and children of the acknowledge the general and spontaneous African race under our care, with Joseph welcome that has been accorded me as Simpson; and then on the fifth day, at five in Representative of the National Freed-men's the morning, we started for Camp Nelson, in Relief Association since I have been in Great Kentucky, 126 miles from Cincinnati. We Britain. Everywhere I have met with found 2,500 women and children and 3,000 expressions of good will, and a warm "God coloured troops at that camp. Many of the bless the cause and the Freed-men for whom women and children are very destitute, and you labour." Invitations to visit different coming in every day; many are sick. The parts of the country are more numerous than average deaths are about 10 or from 10 to 12 I can attend. The people, with a spon- per day, mostly children. We are sending taneous feeling of good fellowship, are send- supplies of clothing, and are about to send ing money to our Bankers, Messrs. Baring Brothers & Co., London, and clothing to our Depot; and with them such good wishes, that make the gifts still more precious. The cordial introductions which I had the honour of receiving from your Society, and from the Birmingham and Midland Aid Association, have been of the greatest service. ten more teachers and two matrons to that camp. 600 children should be in school now at that place, one school only in session of 60 little girls regularly; the adults are being taught more or less. We have bought 25 additional cooking stoves for the camp. We were much interested with our visit. We had a crowded meeting in the evening among them; I talked to them awhile, and then Joseph Simpson addressed them for some time in a very lively and interesting manner, and seemed to interest and please them very much; then several coloured men addressed the audience. We visited them in the various wards of the camp, and in their tents and huts, and sick wards and hospitals, and examined their scarred and lacerated backs. One woman, whose back is not yet well, had been terribly beaten because her husband had enlisted in the army; and the wives and chilRepresentative of the National Freed.dren of all coloured soldiers are free by Act of Were it not for the aid I have received from the Rev. Crammond Kennedy I could not have performed the work I have been enabled to. Mr. Kennedy's experience in the United States army as a chaplain, and his acquaintance with the Freed-men, enable him to speak from experience. I regret that he is obliged to return to America, but I trust a kind Providence will soon send him back to my aid. Yours truly, CHARLES C. LEIGH, men's Relief Association. NEWS FROM LEVI COFFIN. ON the second day our office was often well filled with my friends calling to see me, so that I could do but little business, on the third day our Board met. S. P. Chase, Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was on his return from the South, met with us, and gave us much valuable information in Congress even in Kentucky, which is still a slave state. Many come in who are not the wives and children of soldiers, and are protected. We have a great work upon us; our field is large. J. M. Walden is now visiting the camps in Mississippi, Arkansas, aud West Tennessee. Printed by ARLISS ANDREWS, of No. 7, Duke THE FREED-MAN. HELP THE FREED-MAN! BY THE REV. CHARLES GILBERT. NOTWITHSTANDING the diversified and conflicting sentiments which have existed in England on the subject of the American war, it may be hoped that as it has terminated, it will now be a subject of general joy that it has led to the overthrow and extinction of slavery-so foul a blot on the national history of America and so great a dishonour to the entire civilized world. Such joy may be expected especially to pervade the English people, for love of liberty is their national characteristic. Within the present generation they have expended twenty millions of money to secure the freedom of eight hundred thousand slaves in the West Indies. England therefore cannot be indifferent to the great fact, that the civil war of America, with all its enormous evils, has been an instrument employed by Providence to confer the blessings of liberty upon four millions of our fellow-men. Let us not forget however that these poor people especially require the help of those who have always been free, to enable them properly to improve their new position for their own benefit, the welfare of their country, and the honour of God. It is therefore confidently hoped that the plea for help now so extensively presented to the British public will receive a ready response from all ranks of the people. Help the FREED-MAN! It is a becoming response to American sympathy manifested in seasons of our national distress. When gaunt famine spread pestilence and death through the Sister Isle, and when the cotton famine prevailed in the north of England, American citizens freighted their noble vessels with generous aid to meet the wants of our perishing fellow-subjects. In the former instance they contributed in this way £200,000 and in the latter case £70,000. Is it therefore too much to ask that England should aid America to meet the pressing exigencies of their delivered captives? especially as they are cast upon their care at a time when the whole American nation is suffering from the depressing influence of a war which has done so much to enfeeble their national resources. While a corrupt press has endeavoured to inflame the passions of the two nations against each other, |