Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857

BY WARREN CHASE,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED BY
HOBART AND ROBBINS,
BOSTON.

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA

PREFACE.

THIS little volume-a true and literal history of the struggles of an ardent and ambitious mind to rise from a dishonorable birth, and the lowest condition of poverty and New England slavery—is published more for a guide and advice to those who live in the humble walks of life, and for a rebuke on the tyrannical and malignant spirit of arrogant and selfish individuals and societies, who ever attempt to trample upon and despise such reformers as attempt to rise, by individual effort, to distinction or fame, than for the book market, or for the pecuniary reward it may bring the author. The name is only left in obscurity to those who are unacquainted with the subject of the narrative; and to such it is of no value. The subject of the narrative has passed to a plane of reconciliation and harmony, in which he feels only a spirit of forgiveness for those whose consciences have already punished them for their physical abuse, or moral and religious misrepresentations, slanders, and falsehoods, or their political curses. In every relation and condition of life he is now beyond their shafts, and hence is in a condition to forgive. As the persecuted Jesus, when the malignity of his enemies had done its worst, and he was about to triumph in the personal demonstration of his own theory, could afford to forgive Peter and Judas, and say of those who took his life, "Father, forgive them: for they know not

what they do;" so the Lone One has often exclaimed of those who attempted to crucify his reputation, and destroy his efforts to make others happy, "They are forgiven: for they know not what they do."