UTC
The Daily Dispatch
Unsigned Reprint
Richmond: 9 December 1852

  FACTS FOR THE NEXT EDITION OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.—There died lately, in a lower county of Virginia, a mulatto man, who was manumitted by his master, and was under our law permitted to remain in Virginia. His master had, with his liberty, left him a respectable property, and this man, by his industry, accumulated an estate of $25,000. He had puchased his wife, who was a slave; and his children were therefore his own property, as well as his wife.

  Falling into bad health, he went to Philadephia sometime during the last summer for medical advice, but learning from the best physicians that his health was worse than he thought, and that he could not live, he wrote to a relative of his old master to come on for him, which this gentleman did, and stayed with him, and brought him back to Virginia at his request. He died shortly after his return, not long since; and by his last will left all his estate to this gentleman, as well as his wife and children, who are thus the slaves of his friend—trusting, of course, that he would care for them and provide for them.

  Here was an intelligent, wealthy man, who know the condition of colored people in the Northern States, that preferred to leave his wife and children, and all his property, to a white man, to sending them out of the State, to live as free persons with a fine estate.

  These are notorious and recorded facts, and can be proved if denied; and there are many such occurrences among our colored people which might be made public, to put to shame the exaggerated fictions of Mrs. Stowe and her adherents, if there was any possibility for substituting, in the Northern mind, fact for fiction—reason for imagination—and charity in the place of sectional prejudice.—Martinsburg (Va.) Gazette.