L.M.C.

The author of this book is my highly-esteemed friend.  If its readers knew her as I know her, they could not fail to be deeply interested in her story.  She was a beloved inmate of our family nearly the whole of the year 1849.  She was introduced to us by her affectionate and conscientious brother, who had previously related to us some of the almost incredible events in his sister’s life.  I immediately became much interested in Linda; for her appearance was prepossessing, and her deportment indicated remarkable delicacy of feeling and purity of thought.

As we became acquainted, she related to me, from time to time some of the incidents in her bitter experiences as a slave-woman.  Though impelled by a natural craving for human sympathy, she passed through a baptism of suffering, even in recounting her trials to me, in private confidential conversations.  The burden of these memories lay heavily upon her spirit—­naturally virtuous and refined.  I repeatedly urged her to consent to the publication of her narrative; for I felt that it would arouse people to a more earnest work for the disinthralment of millions still remaining in that soul-crushing condition, which was so unendurable to her.  But her sensitive spirit shrank from publicity.  She said, “You know a woman can whisper her cruel wrongs in the ear of a dear friend much easier than she can record them for the world to read.”  Even in talking with me, she wept so much, and seemed to suffer such mental agony, that I felt her story was too sacred to be drawn from her by inquisitive questions, and I left her free to tell as much, or as little, as she chose.  Still, I urged upon her the duty of publishing her experience, for the sake of the good it might do; and, at last, she undertook the task.

Having been a slave so large a portion of her life, she is unlearned; she is obliged to earn her living by her own labor, and she has worked untiringly to procure education for her children; several times she has been obliged to leave her employments, in order to fly from the man-hunters and woman-hunters of our land; but she pressed through all these obstacles and overcame them.  After the labors of the day were over, she traced secretly and wearily, by the midnight lamp, a truthful record of her eventful life.

This Empire State is a shabby place of refuge for the oppressed; but here, through anxiety, turmoil, and despair, the freedom of Linda and her children was finally secured, by the exertions of a generous friend.  She was grateful for the boon; but the idea of having been bought was always galling to a spirit that could never acknowledge itself to be a chattel.  She wrote to us thus, soon after the event:  “I thank you for your kind expressions in regard to my freedom; but the freedom I had before the money was paid was dearer to me.  God gave me that freedom; but man put God’s image in the scales