The present generation knows but little of actual slavery. Attempts are sometimes made to color the Institution to make it appear as though the old days of American slavery were patriarchal days to be desired, to surround the Institution with a glamour as though it possessed great intrinsic merits of value to both races. But we believe that any system of human slavery is always degrading both to the master and the slave. The hardships of my slave life were nothing in comparison with many, and the following pages of my actual experience as a slave are given, not for the purpose of casting reflections upon those who favored the Institution, but to give to the world a knowledge of the subject that no eloquence may ever make the same thing again possible.