solve the mystery--why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful
mind was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times
than others. When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the
blood out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the
corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery. I had, through
some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all
mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to
serve the whites as slaves. How he could do this and be _good_, I
could not tell. I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God
responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over
it long and often. At one time, your first wife, Mrs. Lucretia, heard me
sighing and saw me shedding tears, and asked of me the matter, but I
was afraid to tell her. I was puzzled with this question, till one night
while sitting in the kitchen, I heard some of the old slaves talking of
their parents having been stolen from Africa by white men, and were sold
here as slaves. The whole mystery was solved at once. Very soon after
this, my Aunt Jinny and Uncle Noah ran away, and the great noise made
about it by your father-in-law, made me for the first time acquainted
with the fact, that there were free states as well as slave states. From
that time, I resolved that I would some day run away. The morality of
the act I dispose of as follows: I am myself; you are yourself; we are
two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man,
and so am I. God created both, and made us separate beings. I am not by
nature bond to you, or you to me. Nature does not make your existence
depend upon me, or mine to depend upon yours. I cannot walk upon your
legs, or you upon mine. I cannot breathe for you, or you for me; I must
breathe for myself, and you for yourself. We are distinct persons, and
are each equally provided with faculties necessary to our individual
existence. In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and
in no way lessened your means for obtaining an _honest_ living. Your
faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful
owner. I therefore see no wrong in any part of the transaction. It is
true, I went off secretly; but that was more your fault than mine. Had
I let you into the secret, you would have defeated the enterprise
entirely; but for this, I should have been really glad to have mad