Stowe's
brother made such an eloquent and touching appeal on behalf of the
slave girls as to rouse his audience to profound indignation and pity.
The entire sum of $2,250 was raised then and there, and the old man,
hardly able to realize his great joy, was sent back to his despairing
children with their freedom money in his hand.
All this had happened in the latter part of 1848, and Mrs. Stowe had
first known of the liberated girls in 1851, when she had been appealed
to for aid in educating them. From that time forward she became
personally responsible for all their expenses while they remained in
school, and until the death of one of them in 1853.
Now during her visit to New York in the spring of 1852 she met their
old mother, Milly Edmondson, who had come North in the hope of saving
her two remaining slave children, a girl and a young man, from falling
into the trader's clutches. Twelve hundred dollars was the sum to be
raised, and by hard work the father had laid by one hundred of it when
a severe illness put an end to his efforts. After many prayers and
much consideration of the matter, his feeble old wife said to him one
day, "Paul, I'm a gwine up to New York myself to see if I can't get
that money."
Her husband objected that she was too feeble, that she would be unable
to find her way, and that Northern people had got tired of buying
slaves to set them free, but the resolute old woman clung to her
purpose and finally set forth.
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