“One day he tells me to git up the team, and go to drawin’ wood to the door. I used to have nothin’ to eat generally, but buttermilk and samp, except, now and then, a good bite from some of the gals or neighbors. The buttermilk used to be kept in an old-fashioned Dutch barrel-churn, till ’twas sour enough to make a pig squeal. Well, I drawed wood all day, and one of the coldest in winter, and eat nothin’ but a basin of buttermilk in the mornin’, and so at night I goes to put out the team, and he says, ‘Nigger, don’t put out that team yit; go and do your chores, and then put up ten bushels of wheat, and go to mill with it, and bring it back to-night _ground_, or _I’ll whip your guts out_.’
“Well, I hadn’t had any dinner or supper, and it was a tremendous cold night; but ‘Lecta puts into the sleigh one of these old-fashioned cloaks, with a hood on it, and says she, ‘Don’t put it on till you git out of sight of the house, and here’s two nut-cakes; and, if I was in your place, I wouldn’t let the horses creep, for it’s awful cold, and I’m ‘fraid you’ll freeze.’
“Well, I come to the mill, which was ten miles off, and told the miller my story, and what master said, with tears in my eyes; for my spirit had got so kind’a broken by my hard lot, that I didn’t seem to have anything manly about me. ☞ Oh! how you can degrade a man, if you’ll only make him a slave! ☜
“The miller says, ‘Peter, you shall have your grist as soon as possible.’ And I set down by the furnace of coals, he kept by the water-wheel to keep it from freezin’, and begun to roast kernels of wheat, for I was dreadful hungry. He axed me to go in and eat; but I didn’t want to. And so about twelve o’clock at night I got my grist, and starts for home, and gits there, and takes good care of every thing; and then I begins to think about my own supper. The folks was all abed and asleep; but I finds a basin of buttermilk and samp down in the chimney-corner, and I eats that; and, if any thing, it makes me hungrier than I was afore; and I sets down over the fire, and begins to _think_![8] ☜
_Thought_ must ultimately prove the destruction of all oppression. Man is a being of intellect; and if his mind is not so benighted by darkness, or be-numbed by oppression, light will find its way into his soul; and his natural love of freedom, and his consciousness of his inalienable rights, will show him the claims of justice, and the deep and awful guilt of slavery; and then he will win his way to liberty, either by _flight_ or _blood_. Humanity may be so _chafed_ by repeated acts of cruelty and abuse, that any means will _seem justifiable_, in the sight of the being who is to use _some_ means for his release, if he ever ceases to groan. It is wisdom, then, to make the slave free while we _can_; for, as sure as God made man for freedom, so sure he will ultimately be free, in one way or another.