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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 399 Print image (118K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 399 Print image (118K) |
| Untitled 11/7/99 9:52 PM Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, ny thoughts could not be much withdrawn frcm ny strange situation. For the moment, the dreams of ny youth and the hopes of rry manhood were corpletely fulfilled The bends that had held ire to "old raster" were broken. No man now had a right to call ire Ms slave or assert mastery over me. I was in the rough and turrble of an outdoor world, to take ny chance with the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked how I felt when first I found nyself on free soil. There is scarcely arching in ny e^erience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new wDrld had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the "quick round of blood,M I lived more in that one day than in a year of rry slave life. It was a time of joyous excitonent which wDrds can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching Na^ York, I said: "I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions." Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were, dragging a heavy chain which no strength of mine could break; I was not only a slave, but a slave for life. I might become a hustand, a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt nyself dooned. All efforts I had previously made to secure rry freedom had not only failed, but had seoned only to rivet rry fetters the more firmly, and to render rry escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked nyself the question, May not ny condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission ny duty? A contest had in fact been going on in ny mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible makeshifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject slave—a prisoner for life, punished for sore transgression in which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure ny freedon. This contest vas now ended; rry chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy. But ny gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and pcwer of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York v\as not quite so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the stree a few hours after ny landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well in slavery. The infonration received frcm him alarmed me. The fugitive in question was kncwn in Baltimore as "Al lender' s Jake," but in New York he wore the more respectable name of "William Dixon." Jake, in law, was the property of Doctor Allender, and Tolly Allender, the son of the doctor, had once made an effort to recapture MR. DIXCN, but had failed for vant of evidence to support his claim. Jake told me the circumstances of this attorpt, and how narrowly http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/Afro-Amer/dugI210.txt Page 5 of 17 |