Slaveholding Troubles

While passing down the Ohio River four years since, we came in contact with two Kentuckians who stepped on board at Maysville. One of them, a vinegar visaged old man, we ascertained had lost some of his "peculiar property," who took it into their heads one morning to put their locomotive in motion in the direction of the Free States. The other was a tall rawboned, real son of Kentucky, who could blaze away at the Abolitionists one moment and crack jokes with them the next. He had followed two boys who had escaped from the old man referred to, as far as Sandusky, Ohio; had them arrested and put in confinement, but from informality, or want of proof the upshot of the matter was that they were released, and he was placed in durance vile. After remaining a day or two, however, he was permitted to depart, with the payment of the costs.

While on a recent to Ripley, we mentioned the circumstance to a friend residing there, who observed that he was well acquainted with the old man and his associate, that he had lost all his slaves, valued at $2,500, but one old woman, and had spent about $1,000 in fruitless attempts to recover them. On remarking to his old slave that all the others had left, she replied, "Yes, massa, all the niggers gone but you and me." 

He now hires his work done, and he told our friend not long since, that he gets along about as well as when he depended on his slaves to do it. - Mercer (Pa.) Luminary. 

The North Star, July 20, 1849