LIFE
OF
JAMES MARS,
A SLAVE
BORN AND SOLD IN
CONNECTICUT.
SEVENTH EDITION.
These will certify that the bearer, Dea. JamesMars, has been known to me and to the citizens ofthis town for a long period of years, as an honest,upright, truthful man,—a good citizen, an officer inhis church, and a man whose life and characterhave gained the approbation, the esteem, and thegood wishes of all who know him. Born a slave,the good providence of God has long since madehim free, and, I trust, also taught him that “wherethe Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
JNO. TODD.
Pittsfield, Mass., June 23, 1868.
When I made up my mind to write this story, itwas not to publish it, but it was at the request ofmy sister that lived in Africa, and has lived theremore than thirty years. She had heard our parentstell about our being slaves, but she was not bornuntil a number of years after they were free. Whenthe war in which we have been engaged began, thethought came to her mind that her parents andbrothers and sisters were once slaves, and she wroteto me from Africa for the story. I came to Norfolkon a visit at the time the war broke out, and somein Norfolk remember that I was once a slave. Theyasked me about it; I told them something about it;they seemed to take an interest in it, and as I wasin Norfolk now, and having an opportunity to writeit, I thought I would write it all through. In tellingit to those, there were a great many things thatI did not mention that I have written. After I hadwritten it out, I saw that my brother and my othersister would think that I might give them the same;and my children had often asked me to write it.When I had got it written, as it made more writingthan I was willing to undertake to give each of themone, I thought I would have it printed, and perhapsI might sell enough to pay the expenses, as manyof the people now on the stage of life do not knowthat slavery ever lived in Connecticut.
The treatment of slaves was different at the Northfrom the South; at the North they were admitted tobe a species of the human family. I was told whena slave boy, that some of the people said that slaveshad no souls, and that they would never go to heaven,let them do ever so well.
My father was born in the State of New York, Ithink in