Chapter 22

_Liberty Attained_

TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM--A WANDERER IN NEW YORK--
FEELINGS ON REACHING THAT CITY--AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE MET--
UNFAVORABLE IMPRESSIONS--LONELINESS AND INSECURITY--APOLOGY FOR
SLAVES WHO RETURN TO THEIR MASTERS--COMPELLED TO TELL MY
CONDITION--SUCCORED BY A SAILOR--DAVID RUGGLES--THE UNDERGROUND
RAILROAD--MARRIAGE--BAGGAGE TAKEN FROM ME--KINDNESS OF NATHAN
JOHNSON--MY CHANGE OF NAME--DARK NOTIONS OF NORTHERN
CIVILIZATION--THE CONTRAST--COLORED PEOPLE IN NEW BEDFORD--AN
INCIDENT ILLUSTRATING THEIR SPIRIT--A COMMON LABORER--DENIED WORK
AT MY TRADE--THE FIRST WINTER AT THE NORTH--REPULSE AT THE DOORS
OF THE CHURCH--SANCTIFIED HATE--THE _Liberator_ AND ITS EDITOR.

There is no necessity for any extended notice of the incidents of
this part of my life. There is nothing very striking or peculiar
about my career as a freeman, when viewed apart from my life as a
slave. The relation subsisting between my early experience and
that which I am now about to narrate, is, perhaps, my best
apology for adding another chapter to this book.

Disappearing from the kind reader, in a flying cloud or balloon
(pardon the figure), driven by the wind, and knowing not where I
should land--whether in slavery or in freedom--it is proper that
I should remove, at once, all anxiety, by frankly making known
where I alighted. The flight was a bold and perilous one; but
here I am, in the great city of New York, safe and sound, without
loss of blood or bone. In less than a week after leaving
Baltimore, I was walking amid the hurrying throng, and gazing
upon the dazzling wonders of Broadway. The dreams of my
childhood and the purposes of my manhood were now fulfilled. A
free state around me, and a free earth under my feet! What a
moment was this to me! A whole year was pressed into a single
day. A new world burst upon my agitated vision. I have often
been asked, by kind friends to whom I have told my story, how I
felt when first I found myself beyond the limits of slavery; and
I must say here, as I have often said to them, there is scarcely
anything about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer.
It was a moment of joyous excitement, which no words can
describe. In a letter to a friend, written soon after reaching
New York. I said I felt as one might be supposed to feel, on
escaping from a den of hungry lions. But, in a moment like that,
sensations are too intense and too rapid for words. Anguish and
grief, like darkness and rain, may be described, but joy and
gladness, like the rainbow of promise, defy alike the pen and
pencil.

For ten or fifteen years I had been dragging a heavy chain, with
a huge block attached to it, cumbering my every motion. I had
felt myself