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.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.

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.

For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood

If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.

My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each.

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