There are thousands of slaves at the South,
whose bosoms glow with the same indomitable
love of liberty, which inspires the energies of
Frederick Douglass. Perhaps two and a half
millions are in such Egyptian darkness that
they have but faint consciousness of their
wrongs — born in slavery's subterranean mines,
and delving there, without a ray of light, all
their days, they know not that there is any
gorgeous sun, or heaven-spread canopy, or
lakes and streams and forests and flowers of
freedom. Still there are thousands who have
caught some faint gleams of this blessed light,
and they hunger and thirst with " irrepressible"
intenseness to see and enjoy more.
INSURRECTION. 167

Many of them, tlirougli untold miseries,
escape every year to Canada. How terrific the
pressure must be wMcli can induce them to
accept the doom of such an exile ? They must
separate themselres forever from their friends,
and can never visit them, or even hear from
them again. There can be no interchange of
loving letters. They leave all the associations
of childhood; fields which their fathers have
tilled; a warm and genial clime which they
love, and go in poverty and friendlessness,
with bloodhounds baying on their track, to a
land of strangers, to icy winds and snow-clad
fields, there to find employment if they can;
perhaps to starve. But even all these suffer-
ings, with liberty, they prefer to the doom of
slavery. It is said that over forty . thousand
of the " citizens" of Thomas Jefferson have
thus been driven from republican America
by the oppression of our laws. The flag of
Queen Victoria enfolds them protectingly in its
embrace. England! with gushing hearts we
thank thee ! And must an American write this ?



168 SOUTH AND NORTH.
