Historical voices

It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave.

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

I had as well be killed running as die standing.

I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery.

O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute!

You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron!

You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!

You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!

Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.

I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear.

At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished.

My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!

It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field.

He would make a short prayer in the morning, and a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would at times appear more devotional than he.

He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the Almighty.

Every thing he possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made conform to his disposition to deceive.

His life was devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions.

Covey’s forte consisted in his power to deceive.

Thus twice, in one short day, I escaped death by the merest chance.

I expected every moment that my brains would be dashed out against the trees.

Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger.

I nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.

Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church.

Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him.