I aim only to give the reader
a truthful impression of my slave life, without unnecessarily
affecting him with harrowing details.
As I have elsewhere intimated that my hardships were much greater
during the first six months of my stay at Covey's, than during
the remainder of the year, and as the change in my condition was
owing to causes which may help the reader to a better
understanding of human nature, when subjected to the terrible
extremities of slavery, I will narrate the circumstances of this
<173 SCENE IN THE TREADING YARD>change, although I may seem
thereby to applaud my own courage. You have, dear reader, seen
me humbled, degraded, broken down, enslaved, and brutalized, and
you understand how it was done; now let us see the converse of
all this, and how it was brought about; and this will take us
through the year 1834.
On one of the hottest days of the month of August, of the year
just mentioned, had the reader been passing through Covey's farm,
he might have seen me at work, in what is there called the
"treading yard"--a yard upon which wheat is trodden out from the
straw, by the horses' feet.
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