Will you allow me, from feelings of sincere gratitude, to dedicate to you my little Narrative, which, had it not been for you, I never should have been able to have published; and let me assure you that I shall ever entertain the most devoted feelings of gratitude, for your kind and humane interference in my behalf, when I was a helpless slave....

I was born in Virginia, about thirteen miles from Fredericksburg, as near as I can now recollect, in the year 1813. Mother was a slave, and belonged to a man by the name of Bibb, whose Christian name I cannot remember. My mother was called Letty. Slaves seldom have but one name; and I never heard her called by any other. I was at that time called Bill. I never had any brother or sister, that I know of. Like the most of my brothers in bondage, I have no correct account of my age. Slaves keep the

The following are mostly abridged selections from the statutes of the slave States and of the United States. They give but a faint view of the cruel oppression to which the slaves are subject, but a strong one enough, it is thought, to fill every honest heart with a deep abhorrence of the atrocious system. Most of the important provisions here cited, though placed under the name of only one State, prevail in nearly all the States, with slight variations in language, and some diversity in the pen