March 28, 1860
You sold my brother and sister Abe and Ann, and you say, because I escaped.
Now you have the unutterable meanness to ask me to return and be your miserable chattel, or in lieu thereof, send you $1000 to enable you to redeem the land, but not to redeem my poor brother and sister! If I were to send you money, it would be to get my brother and sister.
But you say I am a thief, because I escaped with your mare, a horse. Have you got to learn that I had a better right to the old mare, as you call her, than your husband had to me? Is it a greater sin for me to steal his horse, than it was for him to rob my mother's cradle, and to steal me! If he and you infer that I forfeit all my rights to you, shall not I infer that you forfeit all your rights to me?
You say you are a cripple, and doubtless you say it to stir my pity, for you knew I was susceptible in that direction.
Have you got to learn that human rights are mutual and reciprocal, and if you take my liberty and life, you forfeit your own liberty and life before God and high heaven? is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?
Did you think to terrify me by presenting the alternative to give my money to you, or give my body to slavery?
Then let me say to you, I will not budge one hair's breadth. I will not breathe a shorter breath, even to save me from your persecutions.
If you or any other speculator on my body and rights, wish to know how I regard my rights, they need but come here, and lay their hands on me to enslave me. I stand among a free people, who, I thank God, sympathize with my rights, and the rights of mankind.
Excerpts From Voices of A People's History, edited by Zinn and Arnove
Freedmen, Slavery Survivors played a vital role in building the Underground Railroad and organizing for abolition. As the free people began to tell their stories, some wrote private, or in some cases public, letters to their former captors, defying their attempt to return them to slavery. Here is one of those letters, from Jermain Wesley Loguen, who was pivotal to the underground railroad in Syracuse.
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