270 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



whole counties were drained of all the white men except 

 a few quakers, who are always abolitionists I believe, so 

 that tens of thousands of slaves, with none to control and 

 awe, and keep them in check, and prevent them from 

 robbing and murdering the women and children, and de- 

 serting to the British and freedom from slavery — yet in 

 this very district, at this very time, did Mrs. Madison 

 take refuge and seek protection while impressed with the 

 fear that the British were anxious to possess themselves 

 of her person. 



It was in this district, too, at this time, while masters 

 and overseers were all away, that the negroes on one 

 plantation became a little unruly and neglectful of their 

 daily labor, lazy, indolent, and insolent to their mistress, 

 who undertook to quell a quarrel among themselves, that 

 a man in the neighborhood, who was too much of a cripple 

 to go to Baltimore to serve his country as a soldier, was 

 nevertheless able to quell this difficulty; for, being sent 

 for, he went over unarmed and flogged more than a dozen 

 of the leaders, all able bodied men, and that too within 

 ten miles of several British ships of war lying in the 

 Potomac. The world does not afford the history of any 

 other race who would have submitted to chastisement 

 under such circumstances; nor can it be accounted for, 

 except by those who believe that God foreordained and 

 decreed the race of Canaan to be submissive servants of 

 servants. 



It cannot be accounted for, under the supposition that 

 the slaves were ignorant of the promises of freedom 

 which the British held out to them. They were not ig- 

 norant of that fact, but being themselves better Chris- 

 tians than their white brethren, they were not disposed 

 to attempt to abrogate the decrees of an overruling 

 Providence. The truth is, that the slaves of the South do 

 not desire to be freed from their servitude. In vain did 

 the British, in the revolutionary war, issue proclamation 

 after proclamation, calling on them to rise in rebellion 

 and go free under the protection of British arms — and in 



