Viewing page 336 of 362

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

318 TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE

ment of discontinuance by the request of the prosecutor, and filed it in his office."

There may be those who will affect to believe the statement of the slave trader-- those, in whose minds his allegations will weigh heavier than mine. I am a poor, colored man-- one of a down-trodden and degraded race, whose humble voice may not be heeded by the oppressor-- but knowing the truth, and with a full sense of my accountability, I do solemnly declare before men, and before God, that any charge or assertion, that I conspired directly or indirectly with any other person or persons to sell myself; that any other account of my visit to Washington, my capture and imprisonment in Williams' slave pen, than is contained in these pages, is utterly and absolutely false. I never played on the violin in Washington. I never was in the Steamboat Hotel, and never saw Thorn or Shekels, to my knowledge, in my life, until last January. The story of the trio of slave-traders is a fabrication as absurd as it is base and unfounded. Were it true, I should not have turned aside on my way back to liberty for the purpose of prosecuting Burch. I should have avoided rather than sought him. I should have known that such a step would have resulted in rendering me infamous. Under the circumstances -- longing as I did to behold my family, and elated with the prospect of returning home -- it as an outrage upon probability to suppose I would have run the hazard, not only of exposure, but of a criminal