In forty-eight hours, I shall have received perhaps one hundred lashes, and be on my way to the Louisiana cotton fields.

Of what service will it be to them.

They will get a paltry sum of two hundred dollars.

Is not my liberty worth more to me than two hundred dollars are to them?
I resolved therefore, to insist that I was free.

This not being satisfactory without other evidence, they tied my hands and set out, and went to a magistrate who lived about half a mile distant.