The early years of my life
were spent partly in the small village of Urbanna, on the banks of the
Rappahannock, partly in the city of Norfolk, near the mouth of the
James' River, and partly in the fortress of Monroe, on the shores of the
Chesapeake. I was eighteen years in Virginia. My father was a white man,
my mother a mulattress, so that I am what is generally termed a
quadroon. Both parents died when I was quite young, and I was then
adopted by another family, whose name I bear. My parents by adoption
were both coloured, and possessed a flourishing business in the fortress
of Monroe.
I went to school a year and a half in Norfolk. The school was composed
entirely of coloured children, and was kept by a man of color, a Baptist
minister, who was highly esteemed, not only as a teacher, but as a
preacher of rare eloquence and power. His color did not debar him from
taking an equal part with his white brethren in matters pertaining to
their church.
But the school was destined to be of short duration. In 1831, Nathaniel
Turner, a slave, having incited a number of his brethren to avenge their
wrongs in a summary manner, marched by night with his comrades upon the
town of Southampton, Virginia, and in a few hours put to death about one
hundred of the white inhabitants. This act of Turner and his associates
struck such terror into the hearts of the whites throughout the State,
that they immediately, as an act of retaliation or vengeance, abolished
every colored school within their borders; and having dispersed the
pupils, ordered the teachers to leave the State forthwith, and never
more to return.
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