declares, that he shall submit or die.

The circumstances in which I was then placed, gave me a longing desire
to be free. It kindled a fire of liberty within my breast which has
never yet been quenched. This seemed to be a part of my nature; it was
first revealed to me by the inevitable laws of nature's God. I could
see that the All-wise Creator, had made man a free, moral, intelligent
and accountable being; capable of knowing good and evil. And I
believed then, as I believe now, that every man has a right to wages
for his labor; a right to his own wife and children; a right to
liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and a right to worship God
according to the dictates of his own conscience. But here, in the
light of these truths, I was a slave, a prisoner for life; I could
possess nothing, nor acquire anything but what must belong to my
keeper. No one can imagine my feelings in my reflecting moments, but
he who has himself been a slave. Oh! I have often wept over my
condition, while sauntering through the forest, to escape cruel
punishment.

"No arm to protect me from tyrants aggression;
No parents to cheer me when laden with grief.
Man may picture the bounds of the rocks and the rivers,
The hills and the valleys, the lakes and the ocean,
But the horrors of slavery, he never can trace."

The term slave to this day sounds with terror to my soul,--a word too
obnoxious to speak--a system too intolerable to be endured. I know
this from long and sad experience. I now feel as if I had just been
aroused from sleep, and looking back with quickened perception at the
state of torment from whence I fled. I was there held and claimed as a