paternity, according to Dr. Pickering, in Arabia--"Arida Nutrix"
of the best breed of horses &c.  Keep on, gentlemen; you will
find yourselves in Africa, by-and-by.  The Egyptians, like the
Americans, were a _mixed race_, with some Negro blood circling
around the throne, as well as in the mud hovels.

This is the proper place to remark of our author, that the same
strong self-hood, which led him to measure strength with Mr.
Covey, and to wrench himself from the embrace of the
Garrisonians, and which has borne him through many resistances to
the personal indignities offered him as a colored man, sometimes
becomes a hyper-sensitiveness to such assaults as men of his mark
will meet with, on paper.  Keen and unscrupulous opponents have
sought, and not unsuccessfully, to pierce him in this direction;
for well they know, that if assailed, he will smite back.

It is not without a feeling of pride, dear reader, that I present
you with this book.  The son of a self-emancipated bond-woman, I
feel joy in introducing to you my brother, who has rent his own
bonds, and who, in his every relation--as a public man, as a
husband and as a father--is such as does honor to the land which
gave him birth.  I shall place this book in the hands of the only
child spared me, bidding him to strive and emulate its noble
example.  You may do likewise.  It is an American book, for
Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea.  It shows that the
worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down
energy, truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right.  It
proves the justice and practicability of Immediate
Emancipation.  It shows that any man in our land, "no matter in
what battle his liberty may have been cloven down, * * * * no
matter what complexion an Indian or an African sun may have
burned upon him," not only may "stand forth redeemed and
disenthralled," but may also stand up a candidate for the highest
suffrage of a great people--the tribute of their honest, hearty
admiration.  Reader, _Vale!

New York_                               JAMES MCCUNE SMITH

CHAPTER I
_Childhood_

PLACE OF BIRTH--CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT--TUCKAHOE--ORIGIN OF
THE NAME--CHOPTANK RIVER--TIME OF BIRTH--GENEALOGICAL TREES--MODE
OF COUNTING TIME--NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS--THEIR POSITION--
GRANDMOTHER ESPECIALLY ESTEEMED--"BORN TO GOOD LUCK--SWEET
POTATOES--SUPERSTITION--THE LOG CABIN--ITS CHARMS--SEPARATING
CHILDREN--MY AUNTS--THEIR NAMES--FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A
SLAVE--OLD MASTER--GRIEFS AND JOYS OF CHILDHOOD--COMPARATIVE
HAPPINESS OF THE SLAVE-BOY AND THE SON OF A SLAVEHOLDER.

In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the
county town of that county, there is a small district of country,
thinly populated, and remarkable for nothing that I know of more
than for the worn-out, sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil,
the general dilapidation of its farms and fences, the indigent
and spiritless character of its inhabitants, and the prevalence
of ague and fever.

The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken
district is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black
and white.  It was given to this section of country probably, at
the first, merely in derision; or it may possibly have been
applied to it, as I have heard, because some one of its earlier
inhabitants had been guilty of the petty meanness of stealing a
hoe--or taking a hoe that did not belong to him.  Eastern Shore
men usually pronounce the word _took_, as _tuck; Took-a-hoe_,
therefore, is, in Maryland parlance, _Tuckahoe_.  But, whatever
may have been its origin--and about this I will not be
positive--that name has stuck to the district in question;
and it is seldom mentioned but with contempt and derision, on
account of the barrenness of its soil, and the ignorance,
indolence, and poverty of its people.  Decay and ruin are
everywhere visible, and the thin population of the place would
have quitted it long ago, but for the Choptank river, which runs
through it, from which they take abundance of shad and herring,
and plenty of ague and fever.

It was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or
neighborhood, surrounded by a white population of the lowest
order, indolent and drunken to a proverb, and among slaves, who
seemed to ask, _"Oh! what's the use?"_ every time they lifted a
hoe, that I--without any fault of mine was born, and spent the
first years of my childhood.

The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth, on
the score that it is always a fact of some importance to know
where a man is born, if, indeed, it be important to know anything
about him.  In regard to the _time_ of my birth, I cannot be as
definite as I have been respecting the _place_.  Nor, indeed, can
I impart much knowledge concerning my parents.  Genealogical
trees do not flourish among slaves.  A person of some consequence
here in the north, sometimes designated _father_, is literally
abolished in slave law and slave practice.  It is only once in a
while that an exception is found to this statement.  I never met
with a slave who could tell me how old he was.  Few slave-mothers
know anything of the months of the year, nor of the days of the
month.  They keep no family records, with marriages, births, and
deaths.  They measure the ages of their children by spring time,
winter time, harvest time, planting time, and the like; but these
soon become undistinguishable and forgotten.  Like other slaves,