country. It seemed as if it had been but yesterday
that I had seen the British columns, advancing across
the bridge now before me, directing their fire against
me, and my companions in arms.
The thought now struck me, that if I had deserted that day, and gone over to the enemies of the United States, how different would my situation at this moment have been. And this, thought I, is the reward of the part I bore in the dangers and fatigues of that disastrous battle.
On the next morning, we marched through Washington, and as we passed in front of the President’s house, I saw an old gentleman walking in the grounds, near the gate. ‘This man I was told was the President of the United States.
Within four weeks after we left Washington, I was in Milledgeville in Georgia, near which the man who had kidnapped me, resided. He took me home with him, and set me to work on his plantation; but I had now enjoyed liberty too long to submit quietly to the endurance of slavery. I had no sooner come here, than I began to devise ways of escaping again from the hands of my tyrants, and of making my way to the northern states.
The month of August was now approaching, which is a favourable season of the year to travel, on account of the abundance of food that is to be found in the corn fields and orchards; but I remembered the dreadful sufferings that I had endured in my former journey from the south, and determined,
