The very first mental{332} effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve the mystery--why am I a slave?
and with this question my youthful mind was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than others.

When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the blood out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery.

I had, through some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to serve the whites as slaves.

How he could do this and be _good_, I could not tell.

I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over it long and often.