]
[Footnote 17: "Letter from a Gentleman of Natchez to a Lady of Cincinnati,"
in the _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), May 22, 1828. For a similar instance in
colonial Maryland see the present work, p. 31.]
Most of the negroes who procured freedom remained in the United States,
though all of those who gained it by flight and many of those manumitted
had to shift their location at the time of changing their status. At least
one of the fugitives, however, made known his preference for his native
district in a manner which cost him his liberty. After two years in Ohio
and Canada he returned to the old plantation in Georgia, where he was
welcomed with a command to take up the hoe. Rejecting this implement, he
proposed to buy himself if a thousand dollars would suffice. When his
master, declining to negotiate, ordered him into custody he stabbed one of
the negroes who seized him. At the end of the episode the returned wanderer
lay in jail; but where his money was, or whether in truth he had any, is
not recorded.[18] Among some of those manumitted and sent out of their
original states as by law required, disappointment and homesickness were
distressingly keen. A group of them who had been carried to New York in
1852 under the will of a Mr.
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