myself. Yet, I must confess, I find it a hard and heavy task to do so.

I am often much vexed, and I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in
this country say, that the slaves do not need better usage, and do not
want to be free.[16] They believe the foreign people,[17] who deceive them,
and say slaves are happy. I say, Not so. How can slaves be happy when they
have the halter round their neck and the whip upon their back? and are
disgraced and thought no more of than beasts?--and are separated from
their mothers, and husbands, and children, and sisters, just as cattle are
sold and separated? Is it happiness for a driver in the field to take down
his wife or sister or child, and strip them, and whip them in such a
disgraceful manner?--women that have had children exposed in the open
field to shame! There is no modesty or decency shown by the owner to his
slaves; men, women, and children are exposed alike. Since I have been here
I have often wondered how English people can go out into the West Indies
and act in such a beastly manner. But when they go to the West Indies,
they forget God and all feeling of shame, I think, since they can see and
do such things. They tie up slaves like hogs--moor[18] them up like cattle,
and they lick them, so as hogs, or cattle, or horses never were
flogged;--and yet they come home and say, and make some good people
believe, that slaves don't want to get out of slavery. But they put a
cloak about the truth. It is not so. All slaves want to be free--to be
free is very sweet. I will say the truth to English people who may read
this history that my good friend, Miss S----, is now writing down for me.
I have been a slave myself--I know what slaves feel--I can tell by myself
what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says
slaves be quite happy in slavery--that they don't want to be free--that
man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so. I
never heard a Buckra man say so, till I heard tell of it in England. Such
people ought to be ashamed of themselves. They can't do without slaves,