I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.
I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.
When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.
But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import.
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.
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.
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 secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.
Death is better than slavery.
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.
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.
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.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories