“Well, I come to the mill, which was ten miles off, and told the miller my story, and what master said, with tears in my eyes; for my spirit had got so kind’a broken by my hard lot, that I didn’t seem to have anything manly about me. ☞ Oh! how you can degrade a man, if you’ll only make him a slave! ☜
“The miller says, ‘Peter, you shall have your grist as soon as possible.’ And I set down by the furnace of coals, he kept by the water-wheel to keep it from freezin’, and begun to roast kernels of wheat, for I was dreadful hungry. He axed me to go in and eat; but I didn’t want to. And so about twelve o’clock at night I got my grist, and starts for home, and gits there, and takes good care of every thing; and then I begins to think about my own supper. The folks was all abed and asleep; but I finds a basin of buttermilk and samp down in the chimney-corner, and I eats that; and, if any thing, it makes me hungrier than I was afore; and I sets down over the fire, and begins to think![[8]] ☜
[8]. Thought must ultimately prove the destruction of all oppression. Man is a being of intellect; and if his mind is not so benighted by darkness, or be-numbed by oppression, light will find its way into his soul; and his natural love of freedom, and his consciousness of his inalienable rights, will show him the claims of justice, and the deep and awful guilt of slavery; and then he will win his way to liberty, either by flight or blood. Humanity may be so chafed by repeated acts of cruelty and abuse, that any means will seem justifiable, in the sight of the being who is to use some means for his release, if he ever ceases to groan. It is wisdom, then, to make the slave free while we can; for, as sure as God made man for freedom, so sure he will ultimately be free, in one way or another.
“I had had many a time of thinkin’ afore, but I had never before felt master’s cruelty as I felt it now. Here he was, a rich man; and I had slaved myself to death for him, and been a thousand times more faithful in his business than I have ever been in my own; and yit I must starve. I felt the natur’ of injustice most keenly, and I bust into tears, for I felt kind’a broken-hearted and desolate. But I thought tears wouldn’t ever do the work! ☜ I axed myself if I warn’t a man—a human bein’—one of God’s crutters: and I riz up, detarmined to have justice! ☜ ‘And now,’ says I, ‘I may as well die for an old sheep as a lamb; and if there is any thing in this house that can satisfy my starvation, I’ll have it, if it costs me my life.’
“So I starts for the cupboard, and finds it locked, and I up with one of my feet and staves one of the panels through in the door, and there was every thing good to eat; and so I eat till I got my fill of beef, and pork, and cabbage, and turnips and ‘taters; and then I laid into the nicknacks, sich as pies, cakes, cheese and sich like. Well, arter I’d done and come out, and set down by the fire, master opens his bedroom door and sings out, ‘away with you to bed, you black infernal nigger you, and I’ll settle with you in the mornin’, and he ripped out some oaths that fairly made my wool rise on end, and then shets the door. Well, thinks I, if I am to die, and I expected he’d kill me in the mornin’, I’ll go the length of my rope, and die on a full stomach. So I goes to an old-fashioned tray of nut-cakes, and stuffs my bosom full on ’em, and carries ’em up stairs, and puts ’em in my old straw bed, and I knew nobody ever touched that but Pete Wheeler, and I crawled in and I had a plenty of time to think. ☜
“In the mornin’ the old man gits up and makes up a fire, a thing he hadn’t done afore in all winter, and then comes to the head of the stairs, and calls for ‘his nigger;’ and I hears a crackin’ in the fire,—and he’d cut a parcel of withes—walnut, of course, and run ’em into the ashes, and wythed the eends on ’em under his feet, and takes ’em along,—and a large rope,—and hits me a cut and says, ‘out to the barn with me, nigger;’ and so I follows him along.
“Well, come to the barn, the first thing he swings the big doors open, and the north wind swept through like a harricane. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘nigger, pull off your coat;’ I did.
“‘Now pull off your jacket, nigger;’ I did.
“‘Now off with your shirt, nigger;’ I did.
“‘Now off with your pantaloons, nigger;’ I did.