recollection no one had attempted to escape from my master; but I had many
cases in my mind's eye, of slaves of other planters who had failed, and
who had been made examples of the most cruel treatment, by flogging and
selling to the far South, where they were never to see their friends more.
I was not without serious apprehension that such would be my fate. The
bare possibility was impressively solemn; but the hour was now come, and
the man must act and be free, or remain a slave for ever. How the
impression came to be upon my mind I cannot tell; but there was a strange
and horrifying belief, that if I did not meet the crisis that day, I
should be self-doomed--that my ear would be nailed to the door-post for
ever. The emotions of that moment I cannot fully depict. Hope, fear,
dread, terror, love, sorrow, and deep melancholy were mingled in my mind
together; my mental state was one of most painful distraction. When I
looked at my numerous family--a beloved father and mother, eleven brothers
and sisters, &c.; but when I looked at slavery as such; when I looked at
it in its mildest form, with all its annoyances; and above all, when I
remembered that one of the chief annoyances of slavery, in the most mild
form, is the liability of being at any moment sold into the worst form; it
seemed that no consideration, not even that of life itself, could tempt me
to give up the thought of flight. And then when I considered the
difficulties of the way--the reward that would be offered--the human
blood-hounds that would be set upon my track--the weariness--the
hunger--the gloomy thought, of not only losing all one's friends in one
day, but of having to seek and to make new friends in a strange world.
But, as I have said, the hour was come, and the man must act, or for ever
be a slave.

It was now two o'clock. I stepped into the quarter; there was a strange
and melancholy silence mingled with the destitution that was apparent in
every part of the house. The only morsel I could see in the shape of food,