I have said in the following pages, that my condition as a slave was comparatively a happy, indeed a highly favored one; and to this circumstance is it owing that I have been able to come up from bondage and relate the story to the public; and that my wife, my mother, and my seven children, are here with me this day.  If for any thing this side the invisible world, I bless heaven, it is that I was not born a plantation slave, nor even a house servant under what is termed a hard and cruel master.

It has not been any part of my object to describe slavery generally, and in the narration of my own case I have dwelt as little as possible upon the dark side—­have spoken mostly of the bright.  In whatever I have been obliged to say unfavorable to others, I have endeavored not to overstate, but have chosen rather to come short of giving the full picture—­omitting much which it did not seem important to my object to relate.  And yet I would not venture to say that this publication does not contain a single period which might be twisted to convey an idea more than should be expressed.

Those of whom I have had occasion to speak, are regarded, where they are known, as among the most kind men to their slaves.  Mr. Smith, some of whose conduct will doubtless seem strange to the reader, is sometimes taunted with being an abolitionist, in consequence of the interest he manifests towards the colored people.  If to any his character appear like a riddle, they should remember that, men, like other things, have “two sides,” and often a top and a bottom in addition.

While in the South I succeeded by stealth in learning to read and write a little, and since I have been in the North I have learned more.  But I need not say that I have been obliged to employ the services of a friend, in bringing this Narrative into shape for the public eye.  And it should perhaps be said on the part of the writer, that it has been hastily compiled, with little regard to style, only to express the ideas accurately and in a manner to be understood.

Lunsford Lane.

Boston, July 4, 1842.

NARRATIVE.

The small city of Raleigh, North Carolina, it is known, is the capital of the State, situated in the interior, and containing about thirty six hundred inhabitants.[A] Here lived Mr. Sherwood Haywood, a man of considerable respectability, a planter, and the cashier of a bank.  He owned three plantations, at the distances respectively of seventy-five, thirty, and three miles from his residence in Raleigh.  He owned in all about two hundred and fifty slaves, among the rest my mother, who was a house servant to her master, and of course a resident in the city.  My father was a slave to a near neighbor.  The apartment where I was born and where I spent my childhood and youth was called “the kitchen,” situated some fifteen or twenty rods from the “great house.”  Here the house servants lodged and lived, and here the meals were prepared for the people in the mansion.