Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe.
Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.
I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean.
The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty,
I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way,
with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:
“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free;
I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!
You move merrily before the gentle gale,
and I sadly before the bloody whip!
You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world;
I am confined in bands of iron!
O that I were free!
O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll.
Go on, go on. O that I could also go!
Could I but swim! If I could fly!
O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute!
The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance.
I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery….
Let but the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I am off.
Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under the yoke.
I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret?
I can bear as much as any of them.
Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to some one.
It may be that my misery in slavery
will only increase my happiness
when I get free.
There is a better day coming.
