s in other portions of its
domain.

Your opportunities of observing the workings of this accursed system
have been singularly great. Your experiences in the Field, in the House,
and especially on the River in the service of the slave-trader, Walker,
have been such as few individuals have had;--no one, certainly, who has
been competent to describe them. What I have admired, and marvelled at,
in your Narrative, is the simplicity and calmness with which you
describe scenes and actions which might well "move the very stones to
rise and mutiny" against the National Institution which makes them
possible.

You will perceive that I have made very sparing use of your flattering
permission to alter what you had written. To correct a few errors, which
appeared to be merely clerical ones, committed in the hurry of
composition, under unfavorable circumstances, and to suggest a few
curtailments, is all that I have ventured to do. I should be a bold man,
as well as a vain one, if I should attempt to improve your descriptions
of what you have seen and suffered. Some of the scenes are not unworthy
of De Foe himself.

I trust and believe that your Narrative will have a wide circulation. I
am sure it deserves it. At least, a man must be differently constituted
from me, who can rise from the perusal of your Narrative without feeling
that he understands slavery better, and hates it worse, than he ever did
before.

I am, very faithfully and respectfully,

Your friend,

EDMUND QUINCY.

PREFACE.

The friends of freedom may well congratulate each other on the
appearance of the following Narrative. It adds another volume to the
rapidly increasing anti-slavery literature of the age. It has been
remarked by a close observer of human nature, "Let me make the songs of
a nation, and I care not who makes its laws;" and it may with equal
truth be said, that, among a reading people like our own, their books
will at least give character to their laws. It is an influence which
goes forth noiselessly upon its mission, but fails not to find its way
to many a warm heart, to kindle on the altar thereof the fires of
freedom, which will one day break forth in a living flame to consume
oppression.

This little book is a voice from the prison-house, unfolding the deeds
of darkness which are there perpetrated. Our cause has received
efficient aid from this source. The names of those who have come from
thence, and battled manfully for the righ