Page:Sketchesinhistory00pett.pdf/33

Rh

The “fugitives from labor” who took passage on the U. G. R. R., were generally of the most intelligent class, and but for their use of certain words and phrases common to both master and servant in the slave States, they would often have been rejected as having no claim to accommodations on our line. One of the most remarkable men of this class that came this way was Tom Stowe. Tom’s master was a sporting gentleman, living, when at home, on his plantation, about 18 miles from Vicksburgh, Miss., and was known from New Orleans to Baltimore as an enterprising, reckless and generally successful sporting man, but not as a common gambler. He kept from ten to twenty race horses, a half dozen fighting dogs, and never failed to buy the smartest fighting cocks, at whatever price. Tom said he had paid as high as $1,000 for a single cock. Tom was head man in his sporting establishment, managed the training, grooming, feeding and fitting of all the animals and birds, and had become so necessary and important an item in the concern, that Stowe more than once refused to sell him for $3,000, offered by rival sportsmen. They usually started north in April, by the way of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, sported some at Memphis, Louisville and