My fellow
apprentices very soon began to feel it to be degrading to work
with me. They began to put on high looks, and to talk
contemptuously and maliciously of _"the Niggers;"_ saying, that
"they would take the country," that "they ought to be killed."
Encouraged by the cowardly workmen, who, knowing me to be a
slave, made no issue with Mr. Gardiner about my being there,
these young men did their utmost to make it impossible for me to
stay. They seldom called me to do any thing, without coupling
the call with a curse, and Edward North, the biggest in every
thing, rascality included, ventured to strike me, whereupon I
picked him up, and threw <242>him into the dock. Whenever any of
them struck me, I struck back again, regardless of consequences.
I could manage any of them _singly_, and, while I could keep them
from combining, I succeeded very well. In the conflict which
ended my stay at Mr. Gardiner's, I was beset by four of them at
once--Ned North, Ned Hays, Bill Stewart, and Tom Humphreys. Two
of them were as large as myself, and they came near killing me,
in broad day light.
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