Publisher's Synopsis
I WAS born in Southampton County, Virginia. I do not know my age, for I was born a slave, and all of my ancestors were slaves. But as near as I can judge, I was born in the year 1819 or 1820. I do not know either the month or the year of my birth, and it would not be an exaggeration for me to say that there is not one human being in a thousand who was born a slave who knows his exact age; and it would have been much better for me if I had never been born. The true meaning of the words "born a slave" will never be known only to those who were born and nurtured beneath its dismal shadow. Fifty or sixty years ago, slavery in America was in its zenith, and it was the most unrighteous burden ever imposed on a race of people, black or white, civilized or uncivilized. Until I was nineteen or twenty years of age I belonged to Dr. Seaman, who also owned my father and mother. In the month of August, 1841, I was taken from home and confined in the slave pen at Petersburg, Virginia, where six hundred other slaves were awaiting transportation to different Southern cotton farms. The slave pen where we were kept was a one-story shed or building about one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, and was used as a store house for slaves.
