The Whig Standard

THRILLING INCIDENT.—At a meeting of the friends of colonization in Louisville, on Wednesday evening, we were spectators to one of the most intensely thrilling incidents connected with the departure of a small band of emigrants, just brought to the city by a gentleman of Shelby county, by whom they were manumitted, and placed under the care of Rev. Mr. Phinny, an agent of the Colonization Society. Of the number, eleven were children of one man, who was present, and appeared to be verging to the age of three score years and ten. This patriarch was not of the number manumitted; he belonged to another estate, but had permission to accompany his wife and children to this city, and here bid them a final adieu. When this fact was announced, with an emotion that almost choked the utterance of the speaker, there was the long drawing in of the breath by every listener, which indicates the workings of the powers within. All eyes were directed toward the object of so much sympathy; and when it was further stated that the owner of the old man Reuben (for so he was called) would permit him to depart with his family for the small sum of a thousand pence, the response was with one voice, Reuben shall be free! On the instant the table of the moderator was thronged, and the sum laid upon it, to reunite for the remnant of their days old man Reuben and his wife, and they and their children are now on their way to the shore of Africa.—Louisville Cour.