Thither went my mother, quiet, brown-haired, gentle, as good a soul as ever lived, and with her my father, tall, strong as a tree, keeping his promise until at length by sheer force of this kept promise, he himself became half Quaker and all gentle, since he saw what it meant to her.
As I have paused in my horsemanship to speak thus of my father, I ought also to speak of my mother.

It was she who in those troublous times just before the Civil War was the first to raise the voice in the Quaker Meeting which said that the Friends ought to free their slaves, law or no law; and so started what was called later the Unionist sentiment in that part of old Virginia.

It was my mother did that.

Then she asked my father to manumit all his slaves; and he thought for an hour, and then raised his head and said it should be done; after which the servants lived on as before, and gave less in return, at which my father made wry faces, but said nothing in regret.

After us others also set free their people, and presently this part of Virginia was a sort of Mecca for escaped blacks.