I was the youngest, but one, of the
party. I had, however, the advantage of them all, in experience,
and in a knowledge of letters. This gave me great influence over
them. Perhaps not one of them, left to himself, would have
dreamed of escape as a possible thing. Not one of them was self-
moved in the matter. They all wanted to be free; but the serious
thought of running away, had not entered into <216>their minds,
until I won them to the undertaking. They all were tolerably
well off--for slaves--and had dim hopes of being set free, some
day, by their masters. If any one is to blame for disturbing the
quiet of the slaves and slave-masters of the neighborhood of St.
Michael's, _I am the man_. I claim to be the instigator of the
high crime (as the slaveholders regard it) and I kept life in it,
until life could be kept in it no longer.
Pending the time of our contemplated departure out of our Egypt,
we met often by night, and on every Sunday. At these meetings we
talked the matter over; told our hopes and fears, and the
difficulties discovered or imagined; and, like men of sense, we
counted the cost of the enterprise to which we were committing
ourselves.
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