The very severe punishments to which slaves are subjected, for trifling offences, or none at all, their continued liability to all kinds of ill usage, without a chance of redress, and the agonizing feelings they endure at being separated from the dearest connections, drive many of them to desperation, and they abscond.  They hide themselves in the woods, where they remain for months, and, in some cases, for years.  When caught, they are flogged with extreme severity, their backs are pickled, and the flogging repeated as before described:  after months of this torture, the back is allowed to heal, and the slave is sold away.  Especially is this done when the slave has attempted to reach a free state.

In violent thunder-storms, when the whites have got between feather-beds to be safe from the lightning, I have often seen negroes, the aged as well as others, go out, and, lifting up their hands, thank God that judgment was coming at last.  So cruelly are many of them used, that judgment, they think, would be a happy release from their horrible slavery.

The proprietors, though they live in luxury, generally die in debt:  their negroes are so hardly treated that no profit is made by their labor.  Many of them are great gamblers.  At the death of a proprietor, it commonly happens that his colored people are sold towards paying his debts.  So it must and will be with the masters while slavery continues:  when freedom is established, I believe they will begin to prosper greatly.

Before I close this Narrative, I ought to express my grateful thanks to the many friends in the Northern States, who have encouraged and assisted me:  I shall never forget to speak of their kindness, and to pray for their prosperity.  I am delighted in saying, that not only to myself, but to very many other colored persons, they have lent a benevolent and helping hand.  Last year, gentlemen whom I know bought no less than ten families from slavery; and this year they are pursuing the same good work.  But for these numerous and heavy claims on their means and their kindness, I should have had no need to appeal to the generosity of the British public; they would gladly have helped me to redeem all my children and relations.

When I first went to the Northern States,—­which is about ten years ago,—­although I was free, as to the law, I was made to feel severely the difference between persons of different colors.  No black man was admitted to the same seats in churches with the whites, nor to the inside of public conveyances, nor into street coaches or cabs:  we had to be content with the decks of steamboats in all weathers, night and day, not even our wives or children being allowed to go below, however it might rain, or snow, or freeze; in various other ways, we were treated as though we were of a race of men below the whites.  But the abolitionists boldly stood up for us, and, through them, things are much changed for the better.  Now, we may sit in any part of many places of worship, and are even asked into the pews of respectable white families; many public conveyances now make no distinction between white and black.  We begin to feel that we are really on the same footing as our fellow-citizens.  They see we can and do conduct ourselves with propriety, and they are now admitting us, in many cases, to the same standing with themselves.