My Escape from SlaveryCLOSING INCIDENTS OF "MY LIFE AS A SLAVE"--REASONS WHY FULLPARTICULARS OF THE MANNER OF MY ESCAPE WILL NOT BE GIVEN--CRAFTINESS AND MALICE OF SLAVEHOLDERS--SUSPICION OF AIDING ASLAVE'S ESCAPE ABOUT AS DANGEROUS AS POSITIVE EVIDENCE--WANT OFWISDOM SHOWN IN PUBLISHING DETAILS OF THE ESCAPE OF THEFUGITIVES--PUBLISHED ACCOUNTS REACH THE MASTERS, NOT THE SLAVES--SLAVEHOLDERS STIMULATED TO GREATER WATCHFULNESS--MY CONDITION--DISCONTENT--SUSPICIONS IMPLIED BY MASTER HUGH'S MANNER, WHENRECEIVING MY WAGES--HIS OCCASIONAL GENEROSITY!--DIFFICULTIES INTHE WAY OF ESCAPE--EVERY AVENUE GUARDED--PLAN TO OBTAIN MONEY--IAM ALLOWED TO HIRE MY TIME--A GLEAM OF HOPE--ATTENDS CAMP-MEETING, WITHOUT PERMISSION--ANGER OF MASTER HUGH THEREAT--THERESULT--MY PLANS OF ESCAPE ACCELERATED THERBY--THE DAY FOR MYDEPARTURE FIXED--HARASSED BY DOUBTS AND FEARS--PAINFUL THOUGHTSOF SEPARATION FROM FRIENDS--THE ATTEMPT MADE--ITS SUCCESS.
I will now make the kind reader acquainted with the closing incidents of my "Life as a Slave," having already trenched upon the limit allotted to my "Life as a Freeman." Before, however, proceeding with this narration, it is, perhaps, proper that Ishould frankly state, in advance, my intention to withhold a part of the{sic} connected with my escape from slavery. There are reasons for this suppression, which I trust the reader will deem altogether valid. It may be easily conceived, that a full and complete statement of all facts pertaining to the flight of a bondman, might implicate and embarrass some who may have, wittingly or unwittingly, assisted him; and no one can wish me to involve any man or <249 MANNER OF MY ESCAPE NOT GIVEN>woman who has befriended me, even in the liability of embarrassment or trouble.
Keen is the scent of the slaveholder; like the fangs of the rattlesnake, his malice retains its poison long; and, although it is now nearly seventeen years since I made my escape, it is well to be careful, in dealing with the circumstances relating to it.
Were I to give but a shadowy outline of the process adopted, with characteristic aptitude, the crafty and malicious among the slaveholders might, possibly, hit upon the track I pursued, and involve some one in suspicion which, in a slave state, is about as bad as positive evidence. The colored man, there, must not only shun evil, but shun the very _appearance_ of evil, or be condemned as a criminal. A slaveholding community has a peculiar taste for ferreting out offenses against the slave system, justice there being more sensitive in its regard for the peculiar rights of this system, than for any other interest or institution. By stringing together a train of events and circumstances, even if I were not very explicit, the means of escape might be ascertained, and, possibly, those means be rendered, thereafter, no longer available to the liberty-seeking children of bondage I have left behind me. No antislavery man can wish me to do anything favoring such results, and no slaveholding reader has any right to expect the impartment of such information.
While, therefore, it would afford me pleasure, and perhaps would materially add to the interest of my story, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity which I know to exist in the minds of many, as to the manner of my escape, I must deprive myself of this pleasure, and the curious of the gratification, which such a statement of facts would afford. I would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations that evil minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself by explanation, and thereby run the hazards of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother in suffering might clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
The practice of publishing every new invention by which a <250>slave is known to have escaped from slavery, has neither wisdom nor necessity to sustain it. Had not Henry Box Brown and his friends attracted slaveholding attention to the manner of his escape, we might have had a thousand _Box Browns_ per annum. The singularly original plan adopted by William and Ellen Crafts, perished with the first using, because every slaveholder in the land was apprised of it. The _salt water slave_ who hung in the guards of a steamer, being washed three days and three nights--like another Jonah--by the waves of the sea, has, by the publicity given to the circumstance, set a spy on the guards of every steamer departing from southern ports.
