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Show APPENDIX. TIIE following statement is fron1 Amy Post, a member of the Society of Friends in the State of N cw York, well known and highly respected by friends of the poor and the oppressed. As has been already stated, in the preceding pages, the author of this volume spent some time under her hospitable roof. L. M. c. "The author of this book is my highly-esteemed friend. If its readers knew her as I know her, they could not fail to be deeply interested in her story. She was a beloved inmate of our family nearly the whole of the year 1849. She was introduced to us by her affectionate and conscientious brother, who had previously related to us some of the almost incredible events in his sister's life. I immediately became much interested in Linda ; for her appearance was prepossessing, and her deportment indicated remarkable delicacy of feeling and purity of thought. " As we became acquainted, she related to me, from time to time some of the incidents in her bitter experiences as a slave-woman. Though impelled by a natural craYing for human sympathy, she passed through a baptism of suffering, even in recounting her trials to me, in private confidential conversations. The burden of the. e memories lay heavily upon her spirit- naturally virtuous and refined. I repeatedly urged her to consent to the publication of her narrative ; for I felt that it would arouse people to a more earnest work for the disinthra1ment of millions still remaining in that soul-crushing condition, which was so unendurable to her. But her sensitive spirit shrank from publicity. She said, 'You (304) i Appendix. know a woman can whisper her cruel wrongs in th f fHcnd much easier than she can record them ~o the earldo a dear E . 1 . . ll r e war to read ' v en In ta kmg Wlth me she wept so much d d . ' ' an seeme to suffer such mental agony, that I felt her story was too sacred to be d. f· h b · · · · . rawn 1om erl i y Inqmsitlve questions, and I left her free to t ll h 1 e as muc , or ~s . tt c, as she ~hose. Still, I urged upon her the duty of pub-lishing her expenence, for the sake of the good it might do. and at last, she undertook the task. ' ' "Ha v.m g b een a slave so larO'e a portion of her· 11·~ h · • • t> 1e, s e IS un-learned; she Is obhged to earn her 1ivin0' by h 1 b d • • b er own a or, an she has ~vorked untlrmgly to procure education for her children. several times she has been obliO'ed to leave her em 1 t · ' t> p oymen s, m order to fly from the man-hunters and woman-hunters of our land. but she pressed through all these obstacles and overcame them: Mter the labors of the day were over, she traced secretly and wearily, by the midnight lamp, a truthful record of her eventful life. "This Empire State is a shabby place of refuge for the oppressed; but here, tlu-ough anxiety, turmoil, and despair, the freedom of Linda and her children was finally secured, by the exertions of a generous friend. She was grateful for the boon ; but the idea of having been bought was always galling to a spirit that could never acknowledge itself to be a chattel. She wrote to us thus, soon after the event: 'I thank you for your kind expressions in regard to my freedom ; but the freedom I had before the money was paid was dearer to me. God gave me that freedom; but man put God's image in the scales with the paltry sum of three hundred dollars. I served for my liberty as faithfully as Jacob serYed for Rachel. At the end, he had large possessions ; but I was robbed of my victory ; I was obliged to resign my crown, to 1id myself of a tyrant.' "I-Ier story, as written by herself, cannot fail to interest the reader. It is a sad illustration of the condition of this country, which boasts of its civilization, while it sanctions laws and customs which make the experiences of the present more strange than any fictions of the past. "RocHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 30th, 1859." 26 ·* AMY PosT. |
