Before talking about the quote on pg.40, I would like to mention about the book so far.
Is Northup stupid? I don’t understand why he decided to go to trip with Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton. If he didn’t do that, he would not have awful time for twelve years.
As I said on title, I feel like North is heaven and South is hell. They are totally different. New York, where he spent his life before he became a slave, was so nice to live because there was not slave-slavor system. He lived with his family with happiness. However, in South, there were anything that North didn’t have such as violence and racism.
“Let not those who have been…”
Basically, Northup describes how he felt at the time. Since the book, Twelve Year Salve is a memoir he has written his feeling very specifically. You can see how much he was afraid of those days from this part: “Until they have been chained and beaten– until they find themselves in the situation I was, borne away from home and family towards a land of bondage.” He was depressed.