Mr. Ambrose reunited with his family
A FAMILY REUNION.
HOW AN ESCAPED SLAVE BECAME WEALTHY AND DISCOVERED HIS RELATIVES.
A Chicago paper tells the story of the return to the South of an escaped slave, who had amassed wealth in the North, and recently started on a journey to discover his relatives, whom he found in Louisiana. The story is as follows: "A few years ago, a runaway boy, with his face turned over his shoulder to watch against pursuit, came from the State of Kentucky and slavery to Illinois. He stole away in the night. He stole more than that, for he stole a likely mulatto boy worth a plump thousand dollars. He ignorantly forgot the guards which the Constitution and the laws had set about the sacred institutions of the South. He little reckoned that by his individual act he was swelling the amount of "aggravation," which at its height would induce its possessors to set their end of the national temple on fire. "Ten years from the time when the runaway Kentucky mulatto followed the North star, he began his return journey in broad daylight, in a first class car with his fare paid. The Fugitive Slave law was a forgotten wisp. He journeyed South as leisurely and as much at his ease as the proudest peer of the land, with a full purse and a comfortable bank account to draw upon at home. This slave boy of twelve years ago was now to make a thorough search among the ruins of the fallen prison-house of slavery for the mother and sisters he left behind him in his flight. From that journey he has just returned successful. He visited the lower landings of the Mississippi, patiently followed up every clue he could gain in New Orleans, and at the close of a day's ride a few weeks since, came upon a straggling eastern Louisiana household, and behold, his mother, brothers and sisters stood before him. "The edict of freedom had reached that place, and the freedmen were working by an arrangement with their mistress. The master was dead. He vindictively followed a brother of Mr. Ambrose into the swamps, retook him, but also took cold, lived only to flog him and sell him in Mobile for a haystack of rebel notes, and then turned his face to the wall and died. The whole family were wretchedly poor, and the mistress not too proud to receive a sum of money from her returned runaway. There is but little more to add. Mr. Ambrose, having recovered his family, intends to establish them, at their wish, on a farm near New Madrid, Missouri, according to their preference, although he offered to bring them all to Illinois. It is one of the reunions of families of which there will be many, the fruit of the great manumission."
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