William L. Humbert

I am from the city of Charleston, S. C., and have been in various parts of South Carolina and Georgia. I used to run in a steamboat from Savannah to Charleston.

I left Charleston in September, 1853. I lived in the free States some months, but finally left on account of the Fugitive Slave Bill. This was a law of tyranny, and I had to come to Canada to avoid the ten dollar commissioner. I would rather die than go back,–that’s a settled point with me–not on account of ill-treatment of the person; but I could not stand the idea of being held by another man as a chattel. Slavery itself is cruel enough, without regard to the hardships which slaves in general have to undergo.

I do not believe that any slaveholder under the canopy of heaven can see God’s face; that is, if I read the Bible right. Slaveholding is against all reason. All men are from the same mother dust, and one can have no right to hold another as a chattel. I know three or four preachers of the gospel who hold slaves. As the minister goes, the congregation goes. The ministers preach to please the people, and not in the fear of God. I never knew but one exception there. I have seen a minister hand the sacrament to the deacons to give the slaves, and, before the slaves had time to get home, living a great distance from church, have seen one of the same deacons, acting as patrol, flog one of the brother members within two hours of his administering the sacrament to him, because he met the slave in the road without a passport, beyond the time allowed him to go home. My opinion of slavery is not a bit different now from what it was then: I always hated it from childhood. I looked on the conduct of the deacon with a feeling of revenge. I thought that a man who would administer the sacrament to a brother church-member, and flog him before he got home, ought not to live.