Slave-owner's wife requests $1000 from an escaped slave who made his way to freedom with their horse.:
While I was reading the letters, I didn’t realize I had stopped breathing until I got to the end and exhaled loudly.
You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, “you know we raised you as we did our own children.” Woman, did you raise your own children for the market?
This may be the first historical record of something literally giving me life. I did a praise dance and everything after this.