-the dreams of a credulous race-childhood,

They welcomed freedom with a cry.

 The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.

The white man's victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder

The Negro may not have known what chivalry was, but he knew enough to preserve inviolate the womanhood of the South which was entrusted to his hands during the war. The finer sensibilities of his soul may have been crushed out by years of slavery, but his heart was full of gratitude to the white women of the North, who blessed his home and inspired his soul in all these years of freedom.

he Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed.

divine.

Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

“Jordan roll”

I had not thought of violets late,The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feetIn wistful April days, when lovers mateAnd wander through the fields in raptures sweet.The thought of violets meant florists' shops,And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;And garish lights, and mincing little fopsAnd cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;The perfect loveliness that God has made,—Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.And now—unwittingly, you've made me dreamOf violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

nd my soul's forgotten gleam.

The perfect loveliness that God has made,—

God, must I sit and sew?

My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—

my heart aches with desire—

-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you,

I went to work in earnest to purchase my freedom, but the years passed, and I was still a slave.

one singing of freedom, the other silent and sullen with generations of despair.

was now old enough to begin to think of the future; and again and again I asked myself what they would do with me. I felt sure I should never find another mistress so kind as the one who was gone. She had promised my dying mother that her children should never suffer for any thing; and when I remembered that, and recalled her many proofs of attachment to me, I could not help having some hopes that she had left me free.

  I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn. I do this for the sake of my sisters in bondage, who are suffering wrongs so foul, that our ears are too delicate to listen to them. I do it with the hope of arousing conscientious and reflecting women at the North to a sense of their duty in the exertion of moral influence on the question of Slavery, on all possible occasions. I do it with the hope that every man who reads this narrative will swear solemnly before God that, so far as he has power to prevent it, no fugitive from Slavery shall ever be sent back to suffer in that loathsome den of corruption and cruelty.

Though I have improved my mind somewhat since that time, I still remain of the same opinion; but I trust my motives will excuse what might otherwise seem presumptuou

of the first forty-three of the collection most were sung upon a single plantation, and that it is very certain that the stores of this plantation were by no means exhausted. Of course there was constant intercourse between neighboring plantations; also between different States, by the sale of slaves from one to another. But it is surprising how little this seems to have affected local songs, which are different even upon adjoining plantations.

The first seven spirituals in this collection, which were regularly sung at the church.

 “What about weekly privileges? Do you have Saturday to yourselves?”

with suchfeelings as only an intelligent slave could realize.

The sight was enough to move the heart of anyone, and it so affected Franksthat he wished he had “never owned a Negro.

“Look to de Laud, my chile! Him ony able to bring yeh out mo' nahconkeh!” was the prayerful advice of the woe-stricken old mother. Both,hastening into the kitchen, falling upon their knees, invoked aloud the God ofthe oppressed.

“I can't, I won't let her go! she's a dear good girl!” replied Mrs. Franks. “Thechildren are attached to her, and so am I; let Minny or any other of them go—but do not, for Heaven's sake, tear Maggie from me!

Mrs. Franks was herself a handsome lady of some thirty-five summers,

. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice,

 His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves under his charge.

He was a slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves

I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories.

  I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel Lloyd's plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the ecstasy with which I received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony) had determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, brother to my old master's son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld.

 Mr. Severe's place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr. Severe. His course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations of cruelty. He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called by the slaves a good overseer.

She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about it.

Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor.

When his Almighty ire shall wake, And smite the oppressor in his wrath, And hurl red ruin in his path, And with tilt' terrors of his rod.

Their hearts best blood.

To tear the black man from his soil. And forn• him here to ddw and toil~

This commitment to human rights impelled Truth into the budding feminist movement of the 1850s as well. By the onset of the Civil War, Sojourner Truth had come to represent a brand of female, commu-nitarian, vernacular African American leadership that rivaled the masculine, individualist, self-consciously literary model of black spokesman espo.used-by Douglass himself.

Don't let her speak!' gasped half a dozen in my ear. She moved slowly and solemnly to the front, laid her old bonnet at her feet, and turned her great, speaking eyes to me.

"I cannot read a book, but_ I can read the people,"

if God gives you peace and tranquillity, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and our children, who have never given you the least provocation--would he be to us a God of justice?

God has been pleased to give us two eyes, two hands, two feet, and some sense in our heads as well as they. They have no more right to hold us in slavery than we have to hold them, we have just as much right, in the sight of God, to hold them and their children in slavery and wretchedness, as they have to hold us, and no more.

I pray God that none like us ever may live again until time shall be no more.

near the corpse of Alfred, was-discovered the corpse -of the unhappy Georges .... "

The w II h · a s ave e d · I lk ' moaned the poor mother as she trembl d ars an someone w1l ta , "A few years later this unhappy e ·

he's dead .•.. ' "'Your father?' · . .. ?' '"H ' d d . '

The sun was fast receding to the west, as if ashamed of man's transactions, boasting itself in the dark mantle of twilight, when Gen. Le'

ut though protected by the mantle of night, Madame was hastening on her way to safety and quiet; she frequently would turn her eyes bathed with the dew of sorrow, and heave her farewell sigh towards her ill-fated village; and like [ ] when departing out of Sodom, Paulina prayed for mercy for theenemies of her country, and the destroyers of her peace.

Madame Paulina was left a widow, unhappy -unprotected, and exposed to all the horrors of the revolution

Young Samuel Allen, Oh lack-a-day! Was taken and carried to Canada.

John Sadler fled across the water, And thus escaped the dreadful slaughter.

And though he was so brave and bold, His face no more shalt we behold

Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery

 I did not long remain after my sister. I was again sold, and carried through a number of places, till, after travelling a considerable time, I came to a town called Tinmah, in the most beautiful country I had yet seen in Africa. It was extremely rich, and there were many rivulets which flowed through it, and supplied a large pond in the centre of the town, where the people washed. Here I first saw and tasted cocoa-nuts

I had now some hopes of being delivered; for we had advanced but a little way before I discovered some people at a distance, on which I began to cry out for their assistance: but my cries had no other effect than to make them tie me faster and stop my mouth, and then they put me into a large sack.

He was a man of remarkable stature. I should judge as much as six feet and six or seven inches high, two feet across his shoulders, and every way well proportioned. He was a man of remarkable strength and resolution, affable, kind and gentle, ruling with equity and moderation

At this place my mother took her farewel of me, and set out for her own country.

the other two of her offspring she carried one on her back, and the other being a sucking child, in her arms.

Sohefellopenhisknees,andpulledmedownalso;afterhehadspentsometimeinprayerheroseup,andaskedmenowhowIdid)Ianswered,muchworsejhethensaid,"Come,•*wewillhavetheoldthingoveragain,"andsowekneeleddownasecondtime,andafterhehadprayedearnestlywegotup,andhesaidagain,"Howdoyoudonow;"Irepliedworsearidworse,andalkedhimifheintendedtokillme?*'No,no,saidhe,youareworthathousand"deadmen,letustrytheoldthingoveragain,"

Iwasastrangertowant,beingsuppliedwithasmuchmoneyas1hadanyoccasionfor;whichmysisterobserving,said-tYouhavenownoneedofatrade."Iwasnowinmythirteenthyear,devotedtopleasureanddrinkingininiquitylikewater;aHavetoeveryvicesuitedtomynatureandtomyyears.

Disobedience"eithertoGodorman,beingoneofthefruitsoffin,grewoutfrommeinearlybuds