I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.

When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died.

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.

The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.

The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.

I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.

Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances.