slaves? Did they go up in the sky and learn it? or, did He come down and
tell them so? All was dark here. It was some relief to my hard
notions of the goodness of God, that, although he made white men to be
slaveholders, he did not make them to be _bad_ slaveholders, and that,
in due time, he would punish the bad slaveholders; that he would, when
they died, send them to the bad place, where they would be "burnt up."
Nevertheless, I could not reconcile the relation of slavery with my
crude notions of goodness.

Then, too, I found that there were puzzling exceptions to this theory
of slavery on both sides, and in the middle. I knew of blacks who were
_not_ slaves; I knew of whites who were _not_ slaveholders; and I knew
of persons who were _nearly_ white, who were slaves. _Color_, therefore,
was a very unsatisfactory basis for slavery.

Once, however, engaged in the inquiry, I was not very long in finding
out the true solution of the matter. It was not _color_, but _crime_,
not _God_, but _man_, that afforded the true explanation of the
existence of slavery; nor was I long in finding out another important
truth, viz: what man can make, man can unmake. The appalling darkness
faded away, and I was master of the subject. There were slaves here,
direct from Guinea; and there were many who could say that their fathers
and mothers were stolen from Africa--forced from their homes, and
compelled to serve as slaves. This, to me, was knowledge; but it was
a kind of knowledge which filled me with a burning hatred of slavery,
increased my suffering, and left me without the means of breaking away
from my bondage. Yet it was knowledge quite worth possessing. I could
not have been more than seven or eight years old, when I began to make
this subject my study. It was with me in the woods and fields; along the
shore of the river, and wherever my boyish wanderings led me; and though
I was, at that time,{71 EARLY REFLECTIONS ON SLAVERY} quite ignorant
of the existence of the free states, I distinctly remember being, _even
then_, most strongly impressed with the idea of being a freeman some
day. This cheering assurance was an inborn dream of my human nature a
constant menace to slavery--and one which all the powers of slavery were
unable to silence or extinguish.

Up to the time of the brutal flogging of my Aunt Esther--for she was
my own aunt--and the horrid plight in which I had seen my cousin from
Tuckahoe, who had been so badly beate