Always It Gave Me A Pang That

Death Is Better Than Slavery.

The Beautiful Spring Came; And When Nature Resumes Her Loveliness, The Human Soul Is Apt To Revive Also.

Always It Gave Me A Pang That My Children Had No Lawful Claim To A Name.

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.

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.