Author Description

WITHIN the last four years, many hundreds, probably thousands, of persons in our nominally free States, have seen Peter Still, a neat, staid black man, going from city to city, town to town, house to house, asking assistance to enable him to purchase the freedom of his wife and children. He has always been grateful for the smallest favors, and never morose when utterly denied. He has not obtruded himself or his story; but those who have shown curiosity enough to make any inquiries, have been soon led to suspect that he was no common man; that the events of his life had been thrillingly interesting--some of them even more wonderful than we often meet with in works of fiction. Kidnapped, in his early childhood, from the door-step of his home in New Jersey; more than forty years a slave in Kentucky and Alabama; his unsuccessful appeal to the great Henry Clay; his liberation through the generosity of a Jew; his restoration to his mother by the guidance of the slightest threads of memory; the yearning of his heart for his loved ones; the heroic but disastrous attempt of Concklin to bring his wife and children to him--wherever these incidents of his life were detailed, they seldom failed to draw from the hand of the listener some contribution towards the exorbitant sum demanded for the liberation of his family.