The earlier part of his life’s story has been already abstracted, so far as it has any importance to this history. It leaves no room for doubt that he was a heroic and a desperate man; that he was instigated by ideas of personal liberty for himself and others, without regard to law; and that both offensively and defensively he was “enlisted for the war” to the death against all and every attempt to execute the Fugitive Slave Law. Whether he is accurate in his statement of what occurred on the day of “the Riot,” each reader must determine for himself or herself. For myself, individually, I doubt the literal truth of parts of his narration, while I concede that in the main it is true and it certainly throws more illumination on the actual occurrences than the testimony of any other single witness. I detect a note of braggadocio through all Parker’s narrative, which slightly discounts its truthfulness. His defiance of “all United States”; his admitted attempts to deceive Gorsuch as to the presence of his slaves on the premises; and his avowed purpose to shoot Gorsuch influence my judgment. Such considerations might not have weight with those who believe a man may be a good citizen who violates and defies a bad law. The literary style of “The Freedman’s Story” leaves little room for doubt that his manuscript was edited by some one with a purpose other than strictly historical. On the other hand, no other person was in so favorable a position as Parker to tell the actual story of the Riot, if he saw fit to do so, and when this version was published Parker had nothing to gain or lose from telling the truth, but the zeal of his editor to exalt “the freedman” may have tinctured the story. That he could remember its details so exactly as to verbally reproduce the many conversations in the _Atlantic_ fifteen years later, is more than doubtful--it is impossible; and his pretense to do so discounts the attempt. In many respects the narration accords with the testimony of other eye-witnesses and it is not out of harmony in the main with the evidence produced on the trial. While it ascribes language to Mr. Gorsuch that likely he did not use, and may put into his hands weapons that he did not carry, Parker’s story certainly gives the Gorsuches, father and son, due credit for valor; and it makes some of their allies scarcely more timid than the trial disclosed them to have been. Howbeit, the story told by Parker is an essential part of the history of the case and it is here reprinted out of fairness to all parties so far as it relates to the Riot and events immediately preceding it. WILLIAM PARKER’S STORY.