I might have been free long before I was.

But you had it in your power to have kept me there much longer than you did.

I think it is very probable that I should have been a toiling slave on your plantation to-day, if you had treated me differently.
To be compelled to stand by and see you whip and slash my wife without mercy, when I could afford her no protection, not even by offering myself to suffer the lash in her place, was more than I felt it to be the duty of a slave husband to endure, while the way was open to Canada.

My infant child was also frequently flogged by Mrs.Gatewood, for crying, until its skin was bruised literally purple.

This kind of treatment was what drove me from home and family, to seek a better home for them.