I should probably never have touched this chapter of history with a public pen, if I had not heard a woman say, a few months since, that she thought Mary Bradford’s conduct indelicate. Had the woman not said it to me directly, I should not have believed, even at my cynical age, that such a thing could be said. I greatly regret, myself, that the facts were ever told: they should have been buried in Africa with Saxe. But the Prices returned to America not long after it all happened, and apparently could not refrain from talking. Even so, I should have let Mary Bradford’s legend alone, forever, had I not learned that she could be misjudged. Consider dispassionately the elements of her situation; and tell me who has ever been so tortured. Physically unable to escape by flight, morally incapable, as you might say, of escaping by death--for there can be no doubt that, difficult as suicide would have been to a guarded captive, she could have found some poisonous root, courted the bite of some serpent, snatched for one instant some pointed weapon; and that she was deterred, as Saxe said, by the simple belief that to take one’s life was the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, the Comforter--she could but take what came. As a high-priced chattel, she was probably not, for the most part, ill-treated--save for the tattooing, which was not cruelly intended. The few scars that Saxe noted doubtless bore witness to her protest against the utmost bitterness of slavery, some sudden saint-like frenzy with which she opposed profanation. She may have wondered why God chose so to degrade her: her conduct with Saxe shows beyond a doubt how she rated her degradation. She made not one attempt to dignify or to defend her afflicted body. Her soul despised it: trampled it under foot.