Chapter 19 - Page 2

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. I
have 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 freedom, which,
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 freedom 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 freedom
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
freedom. 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 making 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