Historical voices

I had drawn blood from him, and should even without this satisfaction have been victorious, because my aim had not been to injure him, but to prevent his injuring me.

The fighting madness had come upon me, and I found my strong fingers firmly attached to the throat of the tyrant, as heedless of consequences, at the moment, as if we stood as equals before the law.

I now forgot all about my roots, and remembered my pledge to stand up in my own defense.

Life in Baltimore, when most oppressive, was a paradise to this.

All my outward relations were against me; I must stay here and starve, or go home to Covey’s and have my flesh torn to pieces and my spirit humbled under the cruel lash of Covey.

I would fain pray; but doubts arising, partly from my neglect of the means of grace, and partly from the sham religion which everywhere prevailed, cast in my mind a doubt upon all religion, and led me to the conviction that prayers were…

May the reader never know what it is to spend such a night as was that to me, which heralded my return to the den of horrors from which I had made a temporary escape.

Sleep does not always come to the relief of the weary in body, and broken in spirit; especially is it so when past troubles only foreshadow coming disasters.

It was quite natural for Master Thomas to presume I was feigning sickness to escape work, for he probably thought that were he in the place of a slave, with no wages for his work, no praise for well-doing, no motive for toil but the lash…

Do you dare to contradict me, you rascal?” was a final silencer of counter-statements from the lips of a slave.

The word of the slave against this presumption was generally treated as impudence, worthy of punishment.

The guilt of a slave was always and everywhere presumed, and the innocence of the slaveholder, or employer, was always asserted.

I must not assert my innocence of the allegations he had piled up against me, for that would be impudence.

After thus fairly annihilating me, and arousing himself by his eloquence, he fiercely demanded what I wished him to do in the case!

He began moderately by finding excuses for Covey, and ended with a full justification of him, and a passionate condemnation of me.

At first Master Thomas seemed somewhat affected by the story of my wrongs, but he soon repressed whatever feeling he may have had, and became as cold and hard as iron.

In this plight I appeared before my professedly Christian master, humbly to invoke the interposition of his power and authority, to protect me from further abuse and violence.

Had I escaped from a den of tigers, I could not have looked worse.

Nevertheless, I resolved to go straight to him, thinking that, if not animated by motives of humanity, he might be induced to interfere on my behalf from selfish considerations.

The monster had obtained complete control over me, and if he had commanded me to do any possible thing I should, in my then state of mind, have endeavored to comply.

You have, dear reader, seen me humbled, degraded, broken down, enslaved, and brutalized; and you understand how it was done; now let us see the converse of all this, and how it was brought about; and this will take us through the year 1834.

The over-work, and the brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought--“I am a slave--a slave for life--a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom”--rendered me a living…

All the kindness I had received at Baltimore, all my former hopes and aspirations for usefulness in the world, and even the happy moments spent in the exercises of religion, contrasted with my then present lot, served but to increase my…

Only think of it: one hundred miles north, and I am free!