Twelve Years a Slave

geography, their attention had been attracted to the picture of slaves working in the cotton-field, and an overseer following them with his whip. It reminded them of the sufferings father might be, and, as it happened, actually was, enduring in the South. Numerous incidents, such as these, were related — incidents showing they still held me in constant remembrance, but not, perhaps, of sufficient interest to the reader, to be recounted.
    My narrative is at an end. I have no comments to make upon the subject of Slavery. Those who read this book may form their own opinions of the “peculiar institution.” What it may be in other States, I do not profess to know; what it is in the region of Red River, is truly and faithfully delineated in these pages. This is no fiction, no exaggeration. If I have failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader too prominently the bright side of the picture. I doubt not hundreds have been as unfortunate as myself; that hundreds of free citizens have been kidnapped and sold into slavery, and are at this moment wearing out their lives on plantations in Texas and Louisiana. But I forbear. Chastened and subdued in spirit by the sufferings I have borne, and thankful to that good Being through whose mercy I have been restored to happiness and liberty, I hope henceforward to lead an upright though lowly life, and rest at last in the church yard where my father sleeps.

    Roaring River.
    A Refrain of the Red River Plantation.

    “Harper’s creek and roarin’ ribber,
    Thar, my dear, we’ll live forebber;
    Den we’ll go to de Ingin nation,
    All I want in dis creation,
    Is pretty little wife and big plantation.

    CHORUS.

    Up dat oak and down dat ribber,
    Two overseers and one little nigger.”