I live a new life.

The warm and generous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the prompt and liberal manner with which the press has rendered me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder, everywhere evinced; the cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion, have embraced me, and lent me their aid; the kind of hospitality constantly proffered to me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire absence of everything that looked like prejudice against me, on account of the color of my skin--contrasted so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement on the transition.

In the southern part of the United States, I was a slave, thought of{288} and spoken of as property; in the language of the LAW, "_held, taken, reputed, and adjudged to be a chattel in the hands of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever_." (Brev.

Digest, 224).

In the northern states, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment, like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery--doomed by an inveterate prejudice against color to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the question)--denied the privileges and courtesies common to others in the use of the most humble means of conveyance--shut out from the cabins on steamboats--refused admission to respectable hotels--caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one (no matter how black his heart), so he has a white skin.