The Degradation, The Wrongs, The Vices, That

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

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.

The Slave Child Had No Thought For The Morrow; But There Came That Blight, Which Too Surely Waits On Every Human Being Born To Be A Chattel.

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.

Notwithstanding My Grandmother's Long And Faithful Service To Her Owners, Not One Of Her Children Escaped The Auction Block. These God-breathing Machines Are No More, In The Sight Of Their Masters, Than The Cotton They Plant, Or The Horses They Tend.