in all cases, are reduced to the
condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest
license to brutal slaveholders, and their profligate sons, brothers,
relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the additional
attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written on this single
feature of slavery, as I have observed it.

One might imagine, that the children of such connections, would fare
better, in the hands of their masters, than other slaves. The rule
is quite the other way; and a very little reflection will satisfy the
reader that such is the case. A man who will enslave his own blood,
may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who
remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent--and the
mulatto child's face is a standing accusation against him who is master
and father to the child. What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is
a constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence, and when a
slaveholding woman hates, she wants not means to give that hate telling
effect. Women--white women, I mean--are IDOLS at the south, not WIVES,
for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these
_idols_ but nod, or lift a finger, woe to the poor victim: kicks, cuffs
and stripes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to sell
this class of their slaves, out of deference to the feelings of their
white wives; and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man to
sell his own blood to the traffickers in human flesh, it is often an
act of humanity{46} toward the slave-child to be thus removed from his
merciless tormentors.

It is not within the scope of the design of my simple story, to comment
upon every phase of slavery not within my experience as a slave.

But, I may remark, that, if the lineal descendants of Ham are only to be
enslaved, according to the scriptures, slavery in this country will soon
become an unscriptural institution; for thousands are ushered into the
world, annually, who--like myself--owe their existence to white
fathers, and, most frequently, to their masters, and master's sons.
The slave-woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her
master. The thoughtful know the rest.

After what I have now said of the circumstances of my mother, and my
relations to her, the reader will not be surprised, nor be disposed to
censure me, when I tell but the simple truth, viz: that I received the
tidings o