Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Then I should know what I was; but, now, I'm neither one thing nor another. I come just near enough to the condition of the white to look into it, to enjoy it, and want everything that I see. Then, the way I've been educated makes it worse. The fact is, that when the fathers of such as we feel any love for us, it isn't like the love they have for their white children. They are half-ashamed of us; they are ashamed to show their love, if they have it; and, then, there's a kind of remorse and pity about it, which they make up to themselves by petting us. They load us with presents and indulgences. They amuse themselves with us while we are children, and play off all our passions as if we were instruments to be played on. If we show talent and smartness, we hear some one say, aside, 'It's rather a pity, isn't it?' or, 'He is too smart for his place.' Then, we have all the family blood and the family pride; and what to do with it? I feel that I am a Gordon. I feel in my very heart that I'm like Colonel Gordon—I know I am, and, sometimes, I know I look like him, and that's one reason why Tom Gordon always hated me; and, then, there's another thing, the hardest of all, to have a sister like Miss Nina, to feel she is my sister, and never dare to say a word of it!