With a book of this kind in my hand, my own human nature, and the facts of my experience, to help me, I was equal to a contest with the religious advocates of slavery, whether among the whites or among the colored people, for blindness, in this matter, is not confined to the former.

I have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility.

I could entertain no such nonsense as this; and I almost lost my patience when I found any colored man weak enough to believe such stuff.

Nevertheless, the increase of knowledge was attended with bitter, as well as sweet results.

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest slavery, and my enslavers.
"Slaveholders," thought I, "are only a band of successful robbers, who left their homes and went into Africa for the purpose of stealing and reducing my people to slavery." I loathed them as the meanest and the most wicked of men.