The author of the following autobiography is personally known to me, and
her conversation and manners inspire me with confidence. During the last
seventeen years, she has lived the greater part of the time with a
distinguished family in New York, and has so deported herself as to be
highly esteemed by them. This fact is sufficient, without further
credentials of her character. I believe those who know her will not be
disposed to doubt her veracity, though some incidents in her story are more
romantic than fiction.
At her request, I have revised her manuscript; but such changes as I have
made have been mainly for purposes of condensation and orderly arrangement.
I have not added any thing to the incidents, or changed the import of her
very pertinent remarks. With trifling exceptions, both the ideas and the
language are her own. I pruned excrescences a little, but otherwise I had
no reason for changing her lively and dramatic way of telling her own
story. The names of both persons and places are known to me; but for good
reasons I suppress them.
It will naturally excite surprise that a woman reared in Slavery should be
able to write so well. But circumstances will explain this. In the first
place, nature endowed her with quick perceptions. Secondly, the mistress,
with whom she lived till she was twelve years old, was a kind, considerate
friend, who taught her to read and spell. Thirdly, she was placed in
favorable circumstances after she came to the North; having frequent
intercourse with intelligent persons, who felt a friendly interest in her
welfare, and were disposed to give her opportunities for self-improvement.
I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these
pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and
much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and
others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept
veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous
features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with
the veil withdrawn. I do this for the sake of my sisters in bondage, who
are suffering wrongs so foul, that our ears are too delicate to listen to
them. I do it with the hope of arousing conscientious and reflecting women
at the North to a sense of their duty in the exertion of moral influence on
the question of Slavery, on all possible occasions. I do it with the hope
that every man who reads this narrative will swear solemnly before God
that, so far as he has power to prevent it, no fugitive from Slavery shall
ever be sent back to suffer in that loathsome den of corruption and
cruelty.