Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

God gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, / Dominion absolute; that right we hold / By his donation. But man over man / He made not lord; such title to himself / Reserving, human left from human free. / - Milton

My wife and myself were born in different towns in the State of Georgia, which is one of the principal slave States. It is true, our condition as slaves was not by any means the worst; but the mere idea that we were held as chattels, and deprived of all legal rights -- the thought that we had to give up our hard earnings to a tyrant, to enable him to live in idleness and luxury -- the thought that we could not call the bones and sinews that God gave us our own: but above all, the fact that another man had the power to tear from our cradle the newborn babe and sell it in the shambles like a brute, and then scourge us if we dared to lift a finger to save it from such a fate, haunted us for years.