1895.] 105 [Potts. 



and at that yontliful age he takes strong ground for the protection of 

 American industry. His first child, wlio died in infancy, was named for 

 Henry Clay. This was the early school of one who was afterward to 

 have a much more enlarged sphere. 



With his hard-earned savings and the money he had obtained by mort- 

 gnging his farm to study law, he at last passed his examination in 1845, 

 and having been admitted, retired to his room at his boarding house in 

 Camden, shut the door, tlirew himself on the bed greatly depressed, won- 

 dering where his bread was to come from without a single client, when 

 there came a knock on the door and a client appeared in the person of 

 Mr. Benjamin Cooper, of Camden county, engaging him for a case of 

 which there were perhaps few men able or willing to undertake, from its 

 difficulty and danger, in which all the instincts of humanity required a 

 speedy action. A free colored family of Burlington county, personally 

 known to Mr. Dudley, had been kidnapped into slavery, a mother and 

 three children, and had been rapidly driven away on the road South. 

 Membeis of the Society of Friends of Burlington county hastily met 

 together and subscribed, it is said, a thousand dollars to buy back the 

 woman and her children. The difficulty then arose, who was to pursue 

 the fleeing kidnappers and their victims and redeem the captives, a most 

 dangerous task in those days for a Northerner to venture across the bor- 

 der on such an errand of mercy and of justice. 



Mr. Cooper informed his coadjutors that he knew such a man, who had 

 just passed the bar, whose sympathies were with the Abolitionists, and, 

 above all, possessed the energy and determinatiim necessary; who knew, 

 besides, the captives, as the woman had often worked on his mother's 

 farm when he was a child. Disguising himself in the character of a slave 

 trader, who were often Morthern men from the borders, Mr. Dudley pro- 

 cured a large broad-brimmed hat, a whip, and taking a pair of pistols he 

 followed the track of the fugitives and was so fortunate as to discover 

 them near the Head of Elk, in Maryland. He gave out that he was from 

 a distant part of the country buying slaves to take South. The sale was 

 not accomplished without its dangers, for presuming he must have a large 

 sum of money with him, he overheard a plot to rob him, and sat up all 

 night in the hotel with his pistols before him on the table. Keeping up 

 the character of a slave trader, he had behaved so roughly to the woman 

 and her child that they did not recognize him and took him for what he 

 pretended to be. He ordered them to be locked up safely until he could 

 take them away in the morning. The poor woman, overcome with fear, 

 reluctantly fallowed. Making a detour south to deceive the kidnappers, 

 it was not until on the boat at Wilmington, Del., that he asked the poor 

 creature if she did not know him, and received for a reply, "All she 

 wanted to." Her fears turned to joy when he said, "Don't you remem- 

 ber Nancy Dudley's little boy, Tom, who used to play pranks on the 

 cows you milked at Evesham and make them kick the pail over? " And 

 when he told her she was going home, her happiness can be imagined. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIV. 147. N. PRINTED MAY 20, 1895. 



