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“I grew up like a neglected weed — ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.”

As reported by Benjamin Drew · A North-Side View of Slavery (1856), p. 30, from an interview in St. Catharines, 1855

Context Interviewed by the abolitionist Benjamin Drew, who gathered testimony from formerly enslaved people settled in Canada West, she described growing up in slavery in Maryland.

Portrait of Harriet Tubman
Harriet TubmanUnited States · 1822–1913
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More words from Harriet Tubman

“I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.”
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“There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de oder; for no man should take me alive.”
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“But I was free, and they should be free. I would make a home in the North and bring them there, God helping me.”
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“I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.”
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