Historical voices

All efforts, before, to separate myself from the hateful encumbrance, had only seemed to rivet me the more firmly to it.

I had felt myself doomed to drag this chain and this block through life.

For ten or fifteen years I had been dragging a heavy chain, with a huge block attached to it, cumbering my every motion.

Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be described, but joy and gladness, like the rainbow of promise, defy alike the pen and pencil.

I said I felt as one might be supposed to feel, on escaping from a den of hungry lions.

A free state around me, and a free earth under my feet!

The dreams of my childhood and the purposes of my manhood were now fulfilled.

It is my opinion, that thousands would escape from slavery who now remain there, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their families, relatives and friends.

He probably thought I was never better satisfied with my condition, than at the very time I was planning my escape.

It is a blessed thing that the tyrant may not always know the thoughts and purposes of his victim.

Since,” thought I, “you will make a slave of me, I will await your orders in all things;” and, instead of going to look for work on Monday morning, as I had formerly done, I remained at home during the entire week, without the performance…

The little taste of liberty which I had had—although as the reader will have seen, it was far from being unalloyed—by no means enhanced my contentment with slavery.

Nevertheless,” thought I, “it is a valuable privilege another step in my career toward freedom.” It was something even to be permitted to stagger under the disadvantages of liberty, and I was determined to hold on to the newly gained…

He had armed my love of liberty with a lash and a driver, far more efficient than any I had before known; and, while he derived all the benefits of slaveholding by the arrangement, without its evils, I endured all the evils of being a…

No effort of mine or of his could silence this trouble-giving thought, or change my purpose to run away.

In spite of Master Thomas, and, I may say, in spite of myself, also, I continued to think, and worse still, to think almost exclusively about the injustice and wickedness of slavery.

I always felt uncomfortable, after having received anything in this way, for I feared that the giving me a few cents, might, possibly, ease his conscience, and make him feel himself a pretty honorable robber, after all!

The fact, that he gave me any part of my wages, was proof that he suspected that I had a right to the whole of them.

The practice, from week to week, of openly robbing me of all my earnings, kept the nature and character of slavery constantly before me.

He should be left to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors, ever ready to snatch, from his infernal grasp, his trembling prey.

Such is my detestation of slavery, that I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave.

We owe something to the slaves, south of Mason and Dixon’s line, as well as to those north of it; and, in discharging the duty of aiding the latter, on their way to freedom, we should be careful to do nothing which would be likely to…

In publishing such accounts, the anti-slavery man addresses the slaveholder, not the slave; he stimulates the former to greater watchfulness, and adds to his facilities for capturing his slave.

Nothing is more evident, than that such disclosures are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, and seeking to escape.