Historical voices

Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection.

There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination.

Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.

I had now a new conception of my degraded condition.

Here again my feelings rose up in detestation of slavery.

During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk.

White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to their masters.

From this time I understood the words abolition and abolitionist, and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves.

I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.

Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.

It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me.

I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own.

In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity.

It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.

It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy.

As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.

As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish.

I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.

I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery.

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.

The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I…

What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.

The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder.