The Run-Away PlotNEW YEAR'S THOUGHTS AND MEDITATIONS--AGAIN BOUGHT BY FREELAND--NOAMBITION TO BE A SLAVE--KINDNESS NO COMPENSATION FOR SLAVERY--INCIPIENT STEPS TOWARD ESCAPE--CONSIDERATIONS LEADING THERETO--IRRECONCILABLE HOSTILITY TO SLAVERY--SOLEMN VOW TAKEN--PLANDIVULGED TO THE SLAVES--_Columbian Orator--_SCHEME GAINS FAVOR, DESPITE PRO-SLAVERY PREACHING--DANGER OF DISCOVERY--SKILL OFSLAVEHOLDERS IN READING THE MINDS OF THEIR SLAVES--SUSPICION ANDCOERCION--HYMNS WITH DOUBLE MEANING--VALUE, IN DOLLARS, OF OURCOMPANY--PRELIMINARY CONSULTATION--PASS-WORD--CONFLICTS OF HOPEAND FEAR--DIFFICULTIES TO BE OVERCOME--IGNORANCE OF GEOGRAPHY--SURVEY OF IMAGINARY DIFFICULTIES--EFFECT ON OUR MINDS--PATRICKHENRY--SANDY BECOMES A DREAMER--ROUTE TO THE NORTH LAID OUT--OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED--FRAUDS PRACTICED ON FREEMEN--PASSESWRITTEN--ANXIETIES AS THE TIME DREW NEAR--DREAD OF FAILURE--APPEALS TO COMRADES--STRANGE PRESENTIMENT--COINCIDENCE--THEBETRAYAL DISCOVERED--THE MANNER OF ARRESTING US--RESISTANCE MADEBY HENRY HARRIS--ITS EFFECT--THE UNIQUE SPEECH OF MRS. FREELAND--OUR SAD PROCESSION TO PRISON--BRUTAL JEERS BY THE MULTITUDE ALONGTHE ROAD--PASSES EATEN--THE DENIAL--SANDY TOO WELL LOVED TO BESUSPECTED--DRAGGED BEHIND HORSES--THE JAIL A RELIEF--A NEW SET OFTORMENTORS--SLAVE-TRADERS--JOHN, CHARLES AND HENRY RELEASED--ALONE IN PRISON--I AM TAKEN OUT, AND SENT TO BALTIMORE.
I am now at the beginning of the year 1836, a time favorable for serious thoughts. The mind naturally occupies itself with the mysteries of life in all its phases--the ideal, the real and the actual. Sober people look both ways at the beginning of the year, surveying the errors of the past, and providing against possible errors of the future. I, too, was thus exercised. Ihad little pleasure <210>in retrospect, and the prospect was not very brilliant. "Notwithstanding," thought I, "the many resolutions and prayers I have made, in behalf of *******, I am, this first day of the year 1836, still a slave, still wandering in the depths of spirit-devouring thralldom. My faculties and powers of body and soul are not my own, but are the property of a fellow mortal, in no sense superior to me, except that he has the physical power to compel me to be owned and controlled by him.
By the combined physical force of the community, I am his slave--a slave for life." With thoughts like these, I was perplexed and chafed; they rendered me gloomy and disconsolate. The anguish of my mind may not be written.
At the close of the year 1835, Mr. Freeland, my temporary master, had bought me of Capt. Thomas Auld, for the year 1836. His promptness in securing my services, would have been flattering to my vanity, had I been ambitious to win the reputation of being a valuable slave. Even as it was, I felt a slight degree of complacency at the circumstance. It showed he was as well pleased with me as a slave, as I was with him as a master. Ihave already intimated my regard for Mr. Freeland, and I may say here, in addressing northern readers--where is no selfish motive for speaking in praise of a slaveholder--that Mr. Freeland was a man of many excellent qualities, and to me quite preferable to any master I ever had.
But the kindness of the slavemaster only gilds the chain of slavery, and detracts nothing from its weight or power. The thought that men are made for other and better uses than slavery, thrives best under the gentle treatment of a kind master. But the grim visage of slavery can assume no smiles which can fascinate the partially enlightened slave, into a forgetfulness of his bondage, nor of the desirableness of liberty.
I was not through the first month of this, my second year with the kind and gentlemanly Mr. Freeland, before I was earnestly considering and advising plans for gaining that *******, which, <211 INCIPIENT STEPS TOWARDS ESCAPE>when I was but a mere child, I had ascertained to be the natural and inborn right of every member of the human family. The desire for this ******* had been benumbed, while I was under the brutalizing dominion of Covey;and it had been postponed, and rendered inoperative, by my truly pleasant Sunday school engagements with my friends, during the year 1835, at Mr. Freeland's. It had, however, never entirely subsided. I hated slavery, always, and the desire for ******* only needed a favorable breeze, to fan it into a blaze, at any moment. The thought of only being a creature of the _present_and the _past_, troubled me, and I longed to have a _future_--a future with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul--whose life and happiness is unceasing progress--what the prison is to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors. The dawning of this, another year, awakened me from my temporary slumber, and roused into life my latent, but long cherished aspirations for *******. I was now not only ashamed to be contented in slavery, but ashamed to _seem_ to be contented, and in my present favorable condition, under the mild rule of Mr. F., I am not sure that some kind reader will not condemn me for being over ambitious, and greatly wanting in proper humility, when I say the truth, that I now drove from me all thoughts of ****** the best of my lot, and welcomed only such thoughts as led me away from the house of bondage. The intense desires, now felt, _to be free_, quickened by my present favorable circumstances, brought me to the determination to act, as well as to think and speak.
