But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.

Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows

When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.

There must be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible.

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.