I do not wonder so much that this tremendous colored demonstration passed off without opposition in the North, but what was really surprising was that the processions and other demonstrations of joy in the cities of the South, in honor of the Fifteenth Amendment, should not have brought on opposition, conflicts and riots. In brief, the entire white race, over all the land, submitted to the inevitable; they submitted to the results of the war. Their consciences at least bore witness that neither race nor color, nor previous condition make men nor unmake them; that one man is as much of a man as another in a general sense, and that the colored race had fought for their equal rights, and deserved them, and all seemed now willing to live in peace. As we heard that a very great demonstration was to be made at Louisville, Ky., in honor of the Fifteenth Amendment, and as my beloved mother, Tom and myself had been longing for a long time past for a sight of the dear old place upon the Kentucky shore, where we had all been born and brought up, we determined to take the girls and go along to the celebration, and Mr. Sutherland also consented to accompany us. He had never been in Kentucky, and so anticipated that it would be a great treat to him. It was a fine morning in the spring when we took the road for the railway station, and soon we found ourselves all seated in the train. Mr. Sutherland and the girls were in a great way about going to Kentucky, and the girls had so long desired to see it once more. Ever since they awoke in the morning they had been humming and singing "The Old Kentucky Shore!" Nay, they even played it on the piano, and sang to their own accompaniments. Thus the whole house was ringing that early morning with the sounds of music. But to those of us who were older the children’s hilarity, music and song brought other thoughts, for we were no longer children. Many dear old slave ditties had been sung about Kentucky, which was a slave State, as the dear reader knows very well. Thousands of fugitives had escaped over the river Ohio, which bounds all her northern line. Indeed, runaway slaves from States further south usually made for this river, and made their escapes into the free States of the North. Even my own dear Tom and I had made our escape over this river, and my own dear mother had been carried down and over its waters on her way to the Sunny South. [Illustration: _IN DANGER OF THE OVERSEER’S LASH._]