Another fellow asked, “Is the speaker in favor of amalgamation?”
“’Gamation? what’s that?”
“It means blacks and whites marrying together.”
“Oh, that’s it! as for such things, they depend mostly upon people’s taste. For my part, I have a colored woman for my wife,—that’s my choice—and if my friend here wants a black wife, and if she is pleased with him, I am sure I shan’t get mad about it.”
Soon after he commenced collecting funds to redeem his family from bondage, he was invited to go to a school-house in Villenova. He went alone, on foot; when near the place, he saw two boys chopping, and heard one of them say, “There’s the nigger.” Jo stopped and said, “I ain’t a nigger! I allus pays my honest debts; my master was a nigger! See here!” said Jo, “when you chop, you be a chopper, isn’t that so?” “Yes.” “Well, when a man nigs, I call him a nigger. Now, my old master, he nigged me out of all I ever earned in my life. Of course, he is a nigger!” and Jo sang the chorus of one of Geo. W. Clark’s Liberty songs:
“They worked me all de day,
Wident one cent of pay;
So I took my flight
In de middle oh de night,
When de moon am gone away.”
“Now, boys, come over to the school-house this evening, and I’ll sing the rest of it.” That evening Jo had a full house and a good donation.
Jo removed to Syracuse, bought a lot, built a good house, was doing a thriving business and accumulating property when the “fugitive slave law” was passed, and the business of catching and returning fugitives from bondage became very active, under the auspices of our
