Chapter I. A Slave Among Slaves

I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia.
I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth,
but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at
some time. As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born
near a cross-roads post-office called Hale's Ford, and the year
was 1858 or 1859. I do not know the month or the day. The
earliest impressions I can now recall are of the plantation and
the slave quarters--the latter being the part of the plantation
where the slaves had their cabins.

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable,
desolate, and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however,
not because my owners were especially cruel, for they were not,
as compared with many others. I was born in a typical log cabin,
about fourteen by sixteen feet square. In this cabin I lived with
my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War, when
we were all declared free.

Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and
even later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured
people of the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my
ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of
the slave ship while being conveyed from Africa to America. I
have been unsuccessful in securing any information that would
throw any accurate light upon the history of my family beyond my
mother. She, I remember, had a half-brother and a half-sister. In
the days of slavery not very much attention was given to family