The Underground Railroad
Arrival from Kent County, 1857
SAMUEL BENTON, JOHN ALEXANDER, JAMES HENRY, AND SAMUEL TURNER.
These passengers journeyed together from the land of whips and chains.
Sam Benton was about twenty-six years of age, medium size, pretty dark color, and possessed a fair share of intelligence. He understood very well how sadly Slavery had wronged him by keeping him in ignorance and poverty.
He stated as the cause of his flight that William Campbell had oppressed him and kept him closely at hard labor without paying him, and at the same time “did not give him half enough to eat, and no clothing.”
John Alexander was about forty-four years of age, a man of ordinary size, quite black, and a good specimen of a regular corn-field hand.
“Why did you leave, John?” said a member of the Committee. He coolly replied that “Handy (his master was named George Handy) got hold of me twice, and I promised my Lord that he should never get hold of me another time.”
Of course it was the severity of these two visitations that made John a thinker and an actor at the same time. The evil practices of the master produced the fruits of liberty in John’s breast.
James Henry, the third passenger, was about thirty-two years of age, and quite a spirited-looking “article.” A few months before he fled he had been sold, at which time his age was given as “only twenty.” He had suffered considerably from various abuses; the hope of Canada however tended to make him joyful.
The system of oppression from which these travelers fled had afforded them no privileges in the way of learning to read. All that they had ever known of civilization was what they perchance picked up in the ordinary routine of the field.
Notice of the fourth passenger unfortunately is missing.