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<body>
<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 23 ***</div>

<h1>Narrative<br />
of the<br />
Life<br />
of<br />
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
</h1>

<h2 class="no-break">AN<br />
AMERICAN SLAVE.<br />
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.</h2>

<h4>BOSTON<br />
<br />
 PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,<br />
 NO. 25 CORNHILL<br />
 1845<br />
<br />
</h4>

<h5>ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,<br />
 IN THE YEAR 1845<br />
 BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS,<br />
 IN THE CLERK&rsquo;S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT<br />
OF MASSACHUSETTS.<br />
</h5>

<hr />

<p class="letter">
Note from the original file: This electronic book is being released at this
time to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. [Born January 15, 1929]
[Officially celebrated January 20, 1992]
</p>

<hr />

<h2>Contents</h2>

<table summary="" style="">

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2H_PREF">PREFACE</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002">LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003">FREDERICK DOUGLASS.</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0001">CHAPTER I</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0002">CHAPTER II</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0003">CHAPTER III</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0005">CHAPTER V</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0006">CHAPTER VI</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0007">CHAPTER VII</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0008">CHAPTER VIII</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0009">CHAPTER IX</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0010">CHAPTER X</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2HCH0011">CHAPTER XI</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2H_APPE">APPENDIX</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0016">A PARODY</a></td>
</tr>

</table>

<hr />

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2H_PREF"></a>PREFACE</h2>

<p>
In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in
Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with <i>Frederick
Douglass</i>, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a stranger to
nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made his escape from the
southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity excited to
ascertain the principles and measures of the abolitionists,—of whom he had
heard a somewhat vague description while he was a slave,—he was induced to give
his attendance, on the occasion alluded to, though at that time a resident in
New Bedford.
</p>

<p>
Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!—fortunate for the millions of his
manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful
thraldom!—fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of universal
liberty!—fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has already done so much
to save and bless!—fortunate for a large circle of friends and acquaintances,
whose sympathy and affection he has strongly secured by the many sufferings he
has endured, by his virtuous traits of character, by his ever-abiding
remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being bound with them!—fortunate for
the multitudes, in various parts of our republic, whose minds he has
enlightened on the subject of slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his
pathos, or roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the
enslavers of men!—fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into the
field of public usefulness, “gave the world assurance of a <small>MAN</small>,”
quickened the slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to the great
work of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!
</p>

<p>
I shall never forget his first speech at the convention—the extraordinary
emotion it excited in my own mind—the powerful impression it created upon a
crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise—the applause which followed from
the beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks. I think I never hated
slavery so intensely as at that moment; certainly, my perception of the
enormous outrage which is inflicted by it, on the godlike nature of its
victims, was rendered far more clear than ever. There stood one, in physical
proportion and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in
natural eloquence a prodigy—in soul manifestly “created but a little lower than
the angels”—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety, hardly
daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be
found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity!
Capable of high attainments as an intellectual and moral being—needing nothing
but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to
society and a blessing to his race—by the law of the land, by the voice of the
people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a
beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!
</p>

<p>
A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr. D<small>OUGLASS</small>  to
address the convention. He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and
embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a novel
position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the audience that
slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to
narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave, and in the course of
his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflections. As
soon as he had taken his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and
declared that P<small>ATRICK</small> H<small>ENRY</small>, of revolutionary
fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one
we had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive. So I believed at
that time—such is my belief now. I reminded the audience of the peril which
surrounded this self-emancipated young man at the North,—even in Massachusetts,
on the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary
sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to be carried
back into slavery,—law or no law, constitution or no constitution. The response
was unanimous and in thunder-tones—“NO!” “Will you succor and protect him as a
brother-man—a resident of the old Bay State?” “YES!” shouted the whole mass,
with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants south of Mason and
Dixon’s line might almost have heard the mighty burst of feeling, and
recognized it as the pledge of an invincible determination, on the part of
those who gave it, never to betray him that wanders, but to hide the outcast,
and firmly to abide the consequences.
</p>

<p>
It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr.
D<small>OUGLASS</small> could be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents
to the promotion of the anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be
given to it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern
prejudice against a colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to instil hope
and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a vocation
so anomalous and responsible for a person in his situation; and I was seconded
in this effort by warm-hearted friends, especially by the late General Agent of
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. J<small>OHN</small> A.
C<small>OLLINS</small>, whose judgment in this instance entirely coincided with
my own. At first, he could give no encouragement; with unfeigned diffidence, he
expressed his conviction that he was not adequate to the performance of so
great a task; the path marked out was wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely
apprehensive that he should do more harm than good. After much deliberation,
however, he consented to make a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted
as a lecturing agent, under the auspices either of the American or the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has been most abundant; and
his success in combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes, in agitating the
public mind, has far surpassed the most sanguine expectations that were raised
at the commencement of his brilliant career. He has borne himself with
gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of character. As a public
speaker, he excels in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of
reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that union of head and
heart, which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of
the hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May he
continue to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God,” that he may be
increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at home or
abroad!
</p>

<p>
It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient
advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive slave,
in the person of <i>Frederick Douglass</i>; and that the free colored
population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their own
number, in the person of <i>Charles Lenox Remond</i>, whose eloquent appeals
have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic.
Let the calumniators of the colored race despise themselves for their baseness
and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of the natural
inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to
the highest point of human excellence.
</p>

<p>
It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the
population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and
horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of
humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to
cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature,
obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully
they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage, under which
they have been groaning for centuries! To illustrate the effect of slavery on
the white man,—to show that he has no powers of endurance, in such a condition,
superior to those of his black brother,—<i>Daniel O’Connell</i>, the
distinguished advocate of universal emancipation, and the mightiest champion of
prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the following anecdote in a speech
delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the Loyal National
Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. “No matter,” said <i>Mr. O’Connell</i>,
“under what specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still hideous.
<i>It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble faculty of
man.</i> An American sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he
was kept in slavery for three years, was, at the expiration of that period,
found to be imbruted and stultified—he had lost all reasoning power; and having
forgotten his native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between
Arabic and English, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself
found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence of <i>The
Domestic Institution</i>!” Admitting this to have been an extraordinary case of
mental deterioration, it proves at least that the white slave can sink as low
in the scale of humanity as the black one.
</p>

<p>
<i>Mr. Douglass</i> has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in his
own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to employ some
one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production; and, considering how
long and dark was the career he had to run as a slave,—how few have been his
opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his iron fetters,—it is, in my
judgment, highly creditable to his head and heart. He who can peruse it without
a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,—without being filled with
an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a
determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable system,—without
trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is
ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened that it
cannot save,—must have a flinty heart, and be qualified to act the part of a
trafficker “in slaves and the souls of men.” I am confident that it is
essentially true in all its statements; that nothing has been set down in
malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination; that it comes
short of the reality, rather than overstates a single fact in regard to
<i>slavery as it is</i>. The experience of <i>Frederick Douglass</i>, as a
slave, was not a peculiar one; his lot was not especially a hard one; his case
may be regarded as a very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in Maryland,
in which State it is conceded that they are better fed and less cruelly treated
than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana. Many have suffered incomparably more,
while very few on the plantations have suffered less, than himself. Yet how
deplorable was his situation! what terrible chastisements were inflicted upon
his person! what still more shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind!
with all his noble powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he
treated, even by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in
Christ Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how
destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest extremities! how
heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded in blackness the last ray of hope,
and filled the future with terror and gloom! what longings after freedom took
possession of his breast, and how his misery augmented, in proportion as he
grew reflective and intelligent,—thus demonstrating that a happy slave is an
extinct man! how he thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver, with
the chains upon his limbs! what perils he encountered in his endeavors to
escape from his horrible doom! and how signal have been his deliverance and
preservation in the midst of a nation of pitiless enemies!
</p>

<p>
This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great
eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them all is the
description <i>Douglass</i> gives of his feelings, as he stood soliloquizing
respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being a freeman, on the
banks of the Chesapeake Bay—viewing the receding vessels as they flew with
their white wings before the breeze, and apostrophizing them as animated by the
living spirit of freedom. Who can read that passage, and be insensible to its
pathos and sublimity? Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of
thought, feeling, and sentiment—all that can, all that need be urged, in the
form of expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,—making
man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system, which
entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image, reduces those who by
creation were crowned with glory and honor to a level with four-footed beasts,
and exalts the dealer in human flesh above all that is called God! Why should
its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that
continually? What does its presence imply but the absence of all fear of God,
all regard for man, on the part of the people of the United States? Heaven
speed its eternal overthrow!
</p>

<p>
So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that they are
stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any recital of the
cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They do not deny that the
slaves are held as property; but that terrible fact seems to convey to their
minds no idea of injustice, exposure to outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them
of cruel scourgings, of mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and
blood, of the banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be
greatly indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements,
such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if all
these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery! As if it were
less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of a thing, than to give
him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of necessary food and clothing! As
if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles, blood-hounds, overseers, drivers,
patrols, were not all indispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give
protection to their ruthless oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution
is abolished, concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound;
when all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to protect
the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is assumed over
life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destructive sway! Skeptics of
this character abound in society. In some few instances, their incredulity
arises from a want of reflection; but, generally, it indicates a hatred of the
light, a desire to shield slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of
the colored race, whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit the shocking
tales of slaveholding cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative;
but they will labor in vain. <i>Mr. Douglass</i> has frankly disclosed the
place of his birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and
soul, and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has alleged
against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be disproved, if they are
untrue.
</p>

<p>
In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
cruelty,—in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging to a
neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his lordly domain
in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out the brains of a slave
who had fled to a stream of water to escape a bloody scourging. <i>Mr.
Douglass</i> states that in neither of these instances was any thing done by
way of legal arrest or judicial investigation. The Baltimore American, of March
17, 1845, relates a similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar
impunity—as follows:—“<i>Shooting a slave.</i>—We learn, upon the authority of
a letter from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city,
that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and whose
father, it is believed, holds an office at Washington, killed one of the slaves
upon his father’s farm by shooting him. The letter states that young Matthews
had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave an order to the servant,
which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to the house, <i>obtained a gun, and,
returning, shot the servant.</i> He immediately, the letter continues, fled to
his father’s residence, where he still remains unmolested.”—Let it never be
forgotten, that no slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage
perpetrated on the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the
testimony of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they
are adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though
they were indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal
protection in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave population;
and any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with impunity. Is it
possible for the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society?
</p>

<p>
The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters is
vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any thing but
salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest degree
pernicious. The testimony of <i>Mr. Douglass</i>, on this point, is sustained
by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. “A slaveholder’s
profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He is a felon of the
highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in the
other scale.”
</p>

<p>
Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side
of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the foe of God
and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do and dare in their
behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every
yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what may—cost what it may—inscribe on
the banner which you unfurl to the breeze, as your religious and political
motto—“NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!”
</p>

<p class="right">
WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON,
</p>

<p class="letter">
<i>May</i> 1, 1845.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2H_4_0002"></a>LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.</h2>

<p class="right">
B<small>OSTON</small>, <i>April</i> 22, 1845.
</p>

<p>
My Dear Friend:
</p>

<p>
You remember the old fable of “The Man and the Lion,” where the lion complained
that he should not be so misrepresented “when the lions wrote history.”
</p>

<p>
I am glad the time has come when the “lions write history.” We have been left
long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary evidence of
the masters. One might, indeed, rest sufficiently satisfied with what, it is
evident, must be, in general, the results of such a relation, without seeking
farther to find whether they have followed in every instance. Indeed, those who
stare at the half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the lashes on the
slave’s back, are seldom the “stuff” out of which reformers and abolitionists
are to be made. I remember that, in 1838, many were waiting for the results of
the West India experiment, before they could come into our ranks. Those
“results” have come long ago; but, alas! few of that number have come with
them, as converts. A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other
tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery
for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,—before he is
ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.
</p>

<p>
I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of God’s
children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice done them.
Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C, or
knew where the “white sails” of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I see, to
gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and want, not by his
lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over his
soul.
</p>

<p>
In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the more
remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are told slavery
appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is at its best
estate—gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination may task
her powers to add dark lines to the picture, as she travels southward to that
(for the colored man) Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi
sweeps along.
</p>

<p>
Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in your
truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak has felt, and,
I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel, persuaded that you
give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No one-sided portrait,—no
wholesale complaints,—but strict justice done, whenever individual kindliness
has neutralized, for a moment, the deadly system with which it was strangely
allied. You have been with us, too, some years, and can fairly compare the
twilight of rights, which your race enjoy at the North, with that “noon of
night” under which they labor south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Tell us whether,
after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than the
pampered slave of the rice swamps!
</p>

<p>
In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out some rare
specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which even you have
drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no individual ills, but
such as must mingle always and necessarily in the lot of every slave. They are
the essential ingredients, not the occasional results, of the system.
</p>

<p>
After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years ago, when
you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace, you may remember I
stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of all. With the exception of a
vague description, so I continued, till the other day, when you read me your
memoirs. I hardly knew, at the time, whether to thank you or not for the sight
of them, when I reflected that it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for
honest men to tell their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the
Declaration of Independence with the halter about their necks. You, too,
publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you around. In all
the broad lands which the Constitution of the United States overshadows, there
is no single spot,—however narrow or desolate,—where a fugitive slave can plant
himself and say, “I am safe.” The whole armory of Northern Law has no shield
for you. I am free to say that, in your place, I should throw the MS. into the
fire.
</p>

<p>
You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, endeared as you are to so many
warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to the service of
others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and the fearless efforts of
those who, trampling the laws and Constitution of the country under their feet,
are determined that they will “hide the outcast,” and that their hearths shall
be, spite of the law, an asylum for the oppressed, if, some time or other, the
humblest may stand in our streets, and bear witness in safety against the
cruelties of which he has been the victim.
</p>

<p>
Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome your
story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating contrary to
the “statute in such case made and provided.” Go on, my dear friend, till you,
and those who, like you, have been saved, so as by fire, from the dark
prison-house, shall stereotype these free, illegal pulses into statutes; and
New England, cutting loose from a blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the
house of refuge for the oppressed,—till we no longer merely “<i>hide</i> the
outcast,” or make a merit of standing idly by while he is hunted in our midst;
but, consecrating anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the oppressed,
proclaim our <i>welcome</i> to the slave so loudly, that the tones shall reach
every hut in the Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted bondman leap up at the
thought of old Massachusetts.
</p>

<p class="right">
God speed the day!                                <br/>
<i>Till then, and ever,</i>            <br/>
Yours truly, <br/>
W<small>ENDELL</small> P<small>HILLIPS</small>
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2H_4_0003"></a>FREDERICK DOUGLASS.</h2>

<p>
Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of
his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to
Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the
assistance of his master’s wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to
New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had
met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In
1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in
Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him
as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous persons doubted if
he had ever been a slave, so he wrote <i>Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick
Douglass</i>. During the Civil War he assisted in the recruiting of colored men
for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently argued for the
emancipation of slaves. After the war he was active in securing and protecting
the rights of the freemen. In his later years, at different times, he was
secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and recorder of deeds of
the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti. His other
autobiographical works are <i>My Bondage And My Freedom</i> and <i>Life And
Times Of Frederick Douglass</i>, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He
died in 1895.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0001"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>

<p>
I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton,
in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never
having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the
slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the
wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I
do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They
seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time,
spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source
of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their
ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was
not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all
such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of
a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between
twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my
master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
</p>

<p>
My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey
Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than
either my grandmother or grandfather.
</p>

<p>
My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak
of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father;
but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing
was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an
infant—before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of
Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very
early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its
mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance
off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field
labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder
the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and
destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the
inevitable result.
</p>

<p>
I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my
life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was
hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her
journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after
the performance of her day’s work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the
penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special
permission from his or her master to the contrary—a permission which they
seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a
kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day.
She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep,
but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place
between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and
with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old,
on one of my master’s farms, near Lee’s Mill. I was not allowed to be present
during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew
any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her
soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her
death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a
stranger.
</p>

<p>
Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation of who
my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be
true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst
the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have
ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all
cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to
administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires
profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the
slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of
master and father.
</p>

<p>
I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably
suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are,
in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed
to find fault with them; they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is
never better pleased than when she sees them under the lash, especially when
she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto children favors which he
withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell
this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife;
and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own
children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to
do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must
stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker
complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he
lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and
only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would
protect and defend.
</p>

<p>
Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was doubtless
in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great statesman of the
south predicted the downfall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population.
Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled or not, it is nevertheless plain that a
very different-looking class of people are springing up at the south, and are
now held in slavery, from those originally brought to this country from Africa;
and if their increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the
argument, that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the
lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain
that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are
ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to
white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters.
</p>

<p>
I have had two masters. My first master’s name was Anthony. I do not remember
his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony—a title which, I
presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was not
considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty
slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer’s
name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and
a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I
have known him to cut and slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even master
would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not
mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required
extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a
cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to
take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn
of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used
to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally
covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim,
seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed,
the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped
longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush;
and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted
cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I
was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I
remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of
which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful
force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery,
through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I
could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
</p>

<p>
This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old master,
and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one night,—where or
for what I do not know,—and happened to be absent when my master desired her
presence. He had ordered her not to go out evenings, and warned her that she
must never let him catch her in company with a young man, who was paying
attention to her belonging to Colonel Lloyd. The young man’s name was Ned
Roberts, generally called Lloyd’s Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be
safely left to conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful
proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal
appearance, among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.
</p>

<p>
Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been found
in company with Lloyd’s Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what he said
while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of pure morals
himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of
my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before
he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped
her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked.
He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d——d b—-h.
After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a
stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get
upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his
infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she
stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d——d b—-h, I’ll
learn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he
commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid
heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the
floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself
in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction
was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me. I had
never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my grandmother on
the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the
younger women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody
scenes that often occurred on the plantation.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0002"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>

<p>
My master’s family consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; one daughter,
Lucretia, and her husband, Captain Thomas Auld. They lived in one house, upon
the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. My master was Colonel Lloyd’s
clerk and superintendent. He was what might be called the overseer of the
overseers. I spent two years of childhood on this plantation in my old master’s
family. It was here that I witnessed the bloody transaction recorded in the
first chapter; and as I received my first impressions of slavery on this
plantation, I will give some description of it, and of slavery as it there
existed. The plantation is about twelve miles north of Easton, in Talbot
county, and is situated on the border of Miles River. The principal products
raised upon it were tobacco, corn, and wheat. These were raised in great
abundance; so that, with the products of this and the other farms belonging to
him, he was able to keep in almost constant employment a large sloop, in
carrying them to market at Baltimore. This sloop was named Sally Lloyd, in
honor of one of the colonel’s daughters. My master’s son-in-law, Captain Auld,
was master of the vessel; she was otherwise manned by the colonel’s own slaves.
Their names were Peter, Isaac, Rich, and Jake. These were esteemed very highly
by the other slaves, and looked upon as the privileged ones of the plantation;
for it was no small affair, in the eyes of the slaves, to be allowed to see
Baltimore.
</p>

<p>
Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home plantation,
and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms belonging to him. The
names of the farms nearest to the home plantation were Wye Town and New Design.
“Wye Town” was under the overseership of a man named Noah Willis. New Design
was under the overseership of a Mr. Townsend. The overseers of these, and all
the rest of the farms, numbering over twenty, received advice and direction
from the managers of the home plantation. This was the great business place. It
was the seat of government for the whole twenty farms. All disputes among the
overseers were settled here. If a slave was convicted of any high misdemeanor,
became unmanageable, or evinced a determination to run away, he was brought
immediately here, severely whipped, put on board the sloop, carried to
Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk, or some other slave-trader, as a
warning to the slaves remaining.
</p>

<p>
Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly allowance
of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves received, as their
monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and
one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen
shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of
trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one
pair of shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars.
The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the old
women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the field had
neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing
consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. When these failed them, they
went naked until the next allowance-day. Children from seven to ten years old,
of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year.
</p>

<p>
There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered
such, and none but the men and women had these. This, however, is not
considered a very great privation. They find less difficulty from the want of
beds, than from the want of time to sleep; for when their day’s work in the
field is done, the most of them having their washing, mending, and cooking to
do, and having few or none of the ordinary facilities for doing either of
these, very many of their sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the
field the coming day; and when this is done, old and young, male and female,
married and single, drop down side by side, on one common bed,—the cold, damp
floor,—each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets; and here
they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver’s horn. At the
sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field. There must be no
halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe betides them who hear
not this morning summons to the field; for if they are not awakened by the
sense of hearing, they are by the sense of feeling: no age nor sex finds any
favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used to stand by the door of the quarter,
armed with a large hickory stick and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who
was so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented from
being ready to start for the field at the sound of the horn.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman,
causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst
of her crying children, pleading for their mother’s release. He seemed to take
pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a
profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an
ordinary man to hear him talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was
commenced or concluded by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness
his cruelty and profanity. His presence made it both the field of blood and of
blasphemy. From the rising till the going down of the sun, he was cursing,
raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field, in the most
frightful manner. His career was short. He died very soon after I went to
Colonel Lloyd’s; and he died as he lived, uttering, with his dying groans,
bitter curses and horrid oaths. His death was regarded by the slaves as the
result of a merciful providence.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Severe’s place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different man. He
was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr. Severe. His course
was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations of cruelty. He whipped,
but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called by the slaves a good
overseer.
</p>

<p>
The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country village.
All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed here. The
shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting, coopering, weaving,
and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves on the home plantation.
The whole place wore a business-like aspect very unlike the neighboring farms.
The number of houses, too, conspired to give it advantage over the neighboring
farms. It was called by the slaves the <i>Great House Farm.</i> Few privileges
were esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being
selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their
minds with greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to
a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms would be
of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They regarded it as
evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it was on
this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field from under
the driver’s lash, that they esteemed it a high privilege, one worth careful
living for. He was called the smartest and most trusty fellow, who had this
honor conferred upon him the most frequently. The competitors for this office
sought as diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers in the
political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The same traits of
character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd’s slaves, as are seen in the slaves of
the political parties.
</p>

<p>
The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance
for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on
their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate
with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest
sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither
time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the
sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing
the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous
sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage
to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this, when
leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“I am going away to the Great House Farm!<br/>
O, yea! O, yea! O!”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning
jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have
sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress
some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole
volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.
</p>

<p>
I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither
saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe
which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud,
long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over
with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a
prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes
always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have
frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to
those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an
expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I
trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.
I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen
my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If
any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let
him go to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in
the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that
shall pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed,
it will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”
</p>

<p>
I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find
persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their
contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake.
Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent
the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart
is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to
drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and
singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The
singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately
considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave;
the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0003"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>

<p>
Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated garden, which afforded almost
constant employment for four men, besides the chief gardener, (Mr. M’Durmond.)
This garden was probably the greatest attraction of the place. During the
summer months, people came from far and near—from Baltimore, Easton, and
Annapolis—to see it. It abounded in fruits of almost every description, from
the hardy apple of the north to the delicate orange of the south. This garden
was not the least source of trouble on the plantation. Its excellent fruit was
quite a temptation to the hungry swarms of boys, as well as the older slaves,
belonging to the colonel, few of whom had the virtue or the vice to resist it.
Scarcely a day passed, during the summer, but that some slave had to take the
lash for stealing fruit. The colonel had to resort to all kinds of stratagems
to keep his slaves out of the garden. The last and most successful one was that
of tarring his fence all around; after which, if a slave was caught with any
tar upon his person, it was deemed sufficient proof that he had either been
into the garden, or had tried to get in. In either case, he was severely
whipped by the chief gardener. This plan worked well; the slaves became as
fearful of tar as of the lash. They seemed to realize the impossibility of
touching <i>tar</i> without being defiled.
</p>

<p>
The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage. His stable and carriage-house
presented the appearance of some of our large city livery establishments. His
horses were of the finest form and noblest blood. His carriage-house contained
three splendid coaches, three or four gigs, besides dearborns and barouches of
the most fashionable style.
</p>

<p>
This establishment was under the care of two slaves—old Barney and young
Barney—father and son. To attend to this establishment was their sole work. But
it was by no means an easy employment; for in nothing was Colonel Lloyd more
particular than in the management of his horses. The slightest inattention to
these was unpardonable, and was visited upon those, under whose care they were
placed, with the severest punishment; no excuse could shield them, if the
colonel only suspected any want of attention to his horses—a supposition which
he frequently indulged, and one which, of course, made the office of old and
young Barney a very trying one. They never knew when they were safe from
punishment. They were frequently whipped when least deserving, and escaped
whipping when most deserving it. Every thing depended upon the looks of the
horses, and the state of Colonel Lloyd’s own mind when his horses were brought
to him for use. If a horse did not move fast enough, or hold his head high
enough, it was owing to some fault of his keepers. It was painful to stand near
the stable-door, and hear the various complaints against the keepers when a
horse was taken out for use. “This horse has not had proper attention. He has
not been sufficiently rubbed and curried, or he has not been properly fed; his
food was too wet or too dry; he got it too soon or too late; he was too hot or
too cold; he had too much hay, and not enough of grain; or he had too much
grain, and not enough of hay; instead of old Barney’s attending to the horse,
he had very improperly left it to his son.” To all these complaints, no matter
how unjust, the slave must answer never a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook
any contradiction from a slave. When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and
tremble; and such was literally the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old
Barney, a man between fifty and sixty years of age, uncover his bald head,
kneel down upon the cold, damp ground, and receive upon his naked and toil-worn
shoulders more than thirty lashes at the time. Colonel Lloyd had three
sons—Edward, Murray, and Daniel,—and three sons-in-law, Mr. Winder, Mr.
Nicholson, and Mr. Lowndes. All of these lived at the Great House Farm, and
enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased, from old Barney
down to William Wilkes, the coach-driver. I have seen Winder make one of the
house-servants stand off from him a suitable distance to be touched with the
end of his whip, and at every stroke raise great ridges upon his back.
</p>

<p>
To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to describing the
riches of Job. He kept from ten to fifteen house-servants. He was said to own a
thousand slaves, and I think this estimate quite within the truth. Colonel
Lloyd owned so many that he did not know them when he saw them; nor did all the
slaves of the out-farms know him. It is reported of him, that, while riding
along the road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual
manner of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the south:
“Well, boy, whom do you belong to?” “To Colonel Lloyd,” replied the slave.
“Well, does the colonel treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the ready reply. “What,
does he work you too hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, don’t he give you enough to
eat?” “Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it is.”
</p>

<p>
The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the man also
went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing with his
master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of the matter, until two or
three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then informed by his overseer that,
for having found fault with his master, he was now to be sold to a Georgia
trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s
warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his family and
friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death. This is the penalty of telling
the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain
questions.
</p>

<p>
It is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired of as to
their condition and the character of their masters, almost universally say they
are contented, and that their masters are kind. The slaveholders have been
known to send in spies among their slaves, to ascertain their views and
feelings in regard to their condition. The frequency of this has had the effect
to establish among the slaves the maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head.
They suppress the truth rather than take the consequences of telling it, and in
so doing prove themselves a part of the human family. If they have any thing to
say of their masters, it is generally in their masters’ favor, especially when
speaking to an untried man. I have been frequently asked, when a slave, if I
had a kind master, and do not remember ever to have given a negative answer;
nor did I, in pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what was
absolutely false; for I always measured the kindness of my master by the
standard of kindness set up among slaveholders around us. Moreover, slaves are
like other people, and imbibe prejudices quite common to others. They think
their own better than that of others. Many, under the influence of this
prejudice, think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves;
and this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is not
uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the
relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness
of his own over that of the others. At the very same time, they mutually
execrate their masters when viewed separately. It was so on our plantation.
When Colonel Lloyd’s slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted
without a quarrel about their masters; Colonel Lloyd’s slaves contending that
he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson’s slaves that he was the smartest, and most
of a man. Colonel Lloyd’s slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob
Jepson. Mr. Jepson’s slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel Lloyd.
These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the parties, and
those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at issue. They seemed
to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It
was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man’s slave
was deemed a disgrace indeed!
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0004"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>

<p>
Mr. Hopkins remained but a short time in the office of overseer. Why his career
was so short, I do not know, but suppose he lacked the necessary severity to
suit Colonel Lloyd. Mr. Hopkins was succeeded by Mr. Austin Gore, a man
possessing, in an eminent degree, all those traits of character indispensable
to what is called a first-rate overseer. Mr. Gore had served Colonel Lloyd, in
the capacity of overseer, upon one of the out-farms, and had shown himself
worthy of the high station of overseer upon the home or Great House Farm.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Gore was proud, ambitious, and persevering. He was artful, cruel, and
obdurate. He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the place for
such a man. It afforded scope for the full exercise of all his powers, and he
seemed to be perfectly at home in it. He was one of those who could torture the
slightest look, word, or gesture, on the part of the slave, into impudence, and
would treat it accordingly. There must be no answering back to him; no
explanation was allowed a slave, showing himself to have been wrongfully
accused. Mr. Gore acted fully up to the maxim laid down by slaveholders,—“It is
better that a dozen slaves should suffer under the lash, than that the overseer
should be convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at fault.”
No matter how innocent a slave might be—it availed him nothing, when accused by
Mr. Gore of any misdemeanor. To be accused was to be convicted, and to be
convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable
certainty. To escape punishment was to escape accusation; and few slaves had
the fortune to do either, under the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just proud
enough to demand the most debasing homage of the slave, and quite servile
enough to crouch, himself, at the feet of the master. He was ambitious enough
to be contented with nothing short of the highest rank of overseers, and
persevering enough to reach the height of his ambition. He was cruel enough to
inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to descend to the lowest
trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice of a reproving
conscience. He was, of all the overseers, the most dreaded by the slaves. His
presence was painful; his eye flashed confusion; and seldom was his sharp,
shrill voice heard, without producing horror and trembling in their ranks.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Gore was a grave man, and, though a young man, he indulged in no jokes,
said no funny words, seldom smiled. His words were in perfect keeping with his
looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping with his words. Overseers will
sometimes indulge in a witty word, even with the slaves; not so with Mr. Gore.
He spoke but to command, and commanded but to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly
with his words, and bountifully with his whip, never using the former where the
latter would answer as well. When he whipped, he seemed to do so from a sense
of duty, and feared no consequences. He did nothing reluctantly, no matter how
disagreeable; always at his post, never inconsistent. He never promised but to
fulfil. He was, in a word, a man of the most inflexible firmness and stone-like
coolness.
</p>

<p>
His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with which he
committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves under his charge.
Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel Lloyd’s slaves, by the name of
Demby. He had given Demby but few stripes, when, to get rid of the scourging,
he ran and plunged himself into a creek, and stood there at the depth of his
shoulders, refusing to come out. Mr. Gore told him that he would give him three
calls, and that, if he did not come out at the third call, he would shoot him.
The first call was given. Demby made no response, but stood his ground. The
second and third calls were given with the same result. Mr. Gore then, without
consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving Demby an additional
call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his standing victim,
and in an instant poor Demby was no more. His mangled body sank out of sight,
and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood.
</p>

<p>
A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon the plantation, excepting
Mr. Gore. He alone seemed cool and collected. He was asked by Colonel Lloyd and
my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary expedient. His reply was,
(as well as I can remember,) that Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting
a dangerous example to the other slaves,—one which, if suffered to pass without
some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion
of all rule and order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave refused
to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy
the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves, and the
enslavement of the whites. Mr. Gore’s defence was satisfactory. He was
continued in his station as overseer upon the home plantation. His fame as an
overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial
investigation. It was committed in the presence of slaves, and they of course
could neither institute a suit, nor testify against him; and thus the guilty
perpetrator of one of the bloodiest and most foul murders goes unwhipped of
justice, and uncensured by the community in which he lives. Mr. Gore lived in
St. Michael’s, Talbot county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is still
alive, he very probably lives there now; and if so, he is now, as he was then,
as highly esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had not been
stained with his brother’s blood.
</p>

<p>
I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave, or any colored person,
in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or
the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St. Michael’s, killed two slaves, one of
whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains out. He used to boast of
the commission of the awful and bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly,
saying, among other things, that he was the only benefactor of his country in
the company, and that when others would do as much as he had done, we should be
relieved of “the d——d niggers.”
</p>

<p>
The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I used to
live, murdered my wife’s cousin, a young girl between fifteen and sixteen years
of age, mangling her person in the most horrible manner, breaking her nose and
breastbone with a stick, so that the poor girl expired in a few hours
afterward. She was immediately buried, but had not been in her untimely grave
but a few hours before she was taken up and examined by the coroner, who
decided that she had come to her death by severe beating. The offence for which
this girl was thus murdered was this:—She had been set that night to mind Mrs.
Hicks’s baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She,
having lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear the crying. They
were both in the room with Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks, finding the girl slow to
move, jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood by the fireplace, and
with it broke the girl’s nose and breastbone, and thus ended her life. I will
not say that this most horrid murder produced no sensation in the community. It
did produce sensation, but not enough to bring the murderess to punishment.
There was a warrant issued for her arrest, but it was never served. Thus she
escaped not only punishment, but even the pain of being arraigned before a
court for her horrid crime.
</p>

<p>
Whilst I am detailing bloody deeds which took place during my stay on Colonel
Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another, which occurred about the
same time as the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore.
</p>

<p>
Colonel Lloyd’s slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their nights and
Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the deficiency of their
scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel Lloyd, while thus engaged,
happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel Lloyd’s, and on the premises of
Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr. Bondly took offence, and with his musket
came down to the shore, and blew its deadly contents into the poor old man.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Bondly came over to see Colonel Lloyd the next day, whether to pay him for
his property, or to justify himself in what he had done, I know not. At any
rate, this whole fiendish transaction was soon hushed up. There was very little
said about it at all, and nothing done. It was a common saying, even among
little white boys, that it was worth a half-cent to kill a “nigger,” and a
half-cent to bury one.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0005"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>

<p>
As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, it was very
similar to that of the other slave children. I was not old enough to work in
the field, and there being little else than field work to do, I had a great
deal of leisure time. The most I had to do was to drive up the cows at evening,
keep the fowls out of the garden, keep the front yard clean, and run of errands
for my old master’s daughter, Mrs. Lucretia Auld. The most of my leisure time I
spent in helping Master Daniel Lloyd in finding his birds, after he had shot
them. My connection with Master Daniel was of some advantage to me. He became
quite attached to me, and was a sort of protector of me. He would not allow the
older boys to impose upon me, and would divide his cakes with me.
</p>

<p>
I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suffered little from any thing else
than hunger and cold. I suffered much from hunger, but much more from cold. In
hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost naked—no shoes, no
stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow linen shirt,
reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must have perished with cold, but
that, the coldest nights, I used to steal a bag which was used for carrying
corn to the mill. I would crawl into this bag, and there sleep on the cold,
damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out. My feet have been so cracked
with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the
gashes.
</p>

<p>
We were not regularly allowanced. Our food was coarse corn meal boiled. This
was called <i>mush</i>. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set
down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and
like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-shells,
others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He
that ate fastest got most; he that was strongest secured the best place; and
few left the trough satisfied.
</p>

<p>
I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel Lloyd’s
plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the ecstasy with which I
received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony) had determined to let me
go to Baltimore, to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, brother to my old master’s
son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld. I received this information about three days
before my departure. They were three of the happiest days I ever enjoyed. I
spent the most part of all these three days in the creek, washing off the
plantation scurf, and preparing myself for my departure.
</p>

<p>
The pride of appearance which this would indicate was not my own. I spent the
time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because Mrs. Lucretia had
told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and knees before I could go to
Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly, and would laugh at me
if I looked dirty. Besides, she was going to give me a pair of trousers, which
I should not put on unless I got all the dirt off me. The thought of owning a
pair of trousers was great indeed! It was almost a sufficient motive, not only
to make me take off what would be called by pig-drovers the mange, but the skin
itself. I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time with the hope
of reward.
</p>

<p>
The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all suspended in my
case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home was charmless; it was
not home to me; on parting from it, I could not feel that I was leaving any
thing which I could have enjoyed by staying. My mother was dead, my grandmother
lived far off, so that I seldom saw her. I had two sisters and one brother,
that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our
mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories. I
looked for home elsewhere, and was confident of finding none which I should
relish less than the one which I was leaving. If, however, I found in my new
home hardship, hunger, whipping, and nakedness, I had the consolation that I
should not have escaped any one of them by staying. Having already had more
than a taste of them in the house of my old master, and having endured them
there, I very naturally inferred my ability to endure them elsewhere, and
especially at Baltimore; for I had something of the feeling about Baltimore
that is expressed in the proverb, that “being hanged in England is preferable
to dying a natural death in Ireland.” I had the strongest desire to see
Baltimore. Cousin Tom, though not fluent in speech, had inspired me with that
desire by his eloquent description of the place. I could never point out any
thing at the Great House, no matter how beautiful or powerful, but that he had
seen something at Baltimore far exceeding, both in beauty and strength, the
object which I pointed out to him. Even the Great House itself, with all its
pictures, was far inferior to many buildings in Baltimore. So strong was my
desire, that I thought a gratification of it would fully compensate for
whatever loss of comforts I should sustain by the exchange. I left without a
regret, and with the highest hopes of future happiness.
</p>

<p>
We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore on a Saturday morning. I remember
only the day of the week, for at that time I had no knowledge of the days of
the month, nor the months of the year. On setting sail, I walked aft, and gave
to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation what I hoped would be the last look. I then
placed myself in the bows of the sloop, and there spent the remainder of the
day in looking ahead, interesting myself in what was in the distance rather
than in things near by or behind.
</p>

<p>
In the afternoon of that day, we reached Annapolis, the capital of the State.
We stopped but a few moments, so that I had no time to go on shore. It was the
first large town that I had ever seen, and though it would look small compared
with some of our New England factory villages, I thought it a wonderful place
for its size—more imposing even than the Great House Farm!
</p>

<p>
We arrived at Baltimore early on Sunday morning, landing at Smith’s Wharf, not
far from Bowley’s Wharf. We had on board the sloop a large flock of sheep; and
after aiding in driving them to the slaughterhouse of Mr. Curtis on Louden
Slater’s Hill, I was conducted by Rich, one of the hands belonging on board of
the sloop, to my new home in Alliciana Street, near Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard, on
Fells Point.
</p>

<p>
Mr. and Mrs. Auld were both at home, and met me at the door with their little
son Thomas, to take care of whom I had been given. And here I saw what I had
never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the most kindly emotions;
it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld. I wish I could describe the
rapture that flashed through my soul as I beheld it. It was a new and strange
sight to me, brightening up my pathway with the light of happiness. Little
Thomas was told, there was his Freddy,—and I was told to take care of little
Thomas; and thus I entered upon the duties of my new home with the most
cheering prospect ahead.
</p>

<p>
I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd’s plantation as one of the most
interesting events of my life. It is possible, and even quite probable, that
but for the mere circumstance of being removed from that plantation to
Baltimore, I should have to-day, instead of being here seated by my own table,
in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness of home, writing this Narrative,
been confined in the galling chains of slavery. Going to live at Baltimore laid
the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity. I have
ever regarded it as the first plain manifestation of that kind providence which
has ever since attended me, and marked my life with so many favors. I regarded
the selection of myself as being somewhat remarkable. There were a number of
slave children that might have been sent from the plantation to Baltimore.
There were those younger, those older, and those of the same age. I was chosen
from among them all, and was the first, last, and only choice.
</p>

<p>
I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as
a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false
to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to
be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others,
rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest
recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would
not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours
of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed
not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the
gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and
praise.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0006"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>

<p>
My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the
door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a
slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had
been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She was by trade a weaver;
and by constant application to her business, she had been in a good degree
preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly
astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was
entirely unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her
as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early instruction was
all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a
slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor was not gained by
it; she seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not deem it impudent or
unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face. The meanest slave was put fully
at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen
her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.
</p>

<p>
But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal
poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its
infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became
red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh
and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.
</p>

<p>
Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly
commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in
learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my
progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld
to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful,
as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he
said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know
nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would
<i>spoil</i> the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that
nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It
would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable,
and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a
great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” These words
sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and
called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and
special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my
youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood
what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power
to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly.
From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just
what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I
was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was
gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had
gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a
teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of
trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and
strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction,
served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was
uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost
confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read.
What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most
hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a
great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged,
against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and
determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter
opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the
benefit of both.
</p>

<p>
I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked
difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed in the
country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the
plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether
unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is a vestige of decency, a sense
of shame, that does much to curb and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty
so commonly enacted upon the plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who
will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his
lacerated slave. Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation
of being a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known as not
giving a slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious to have it
known of him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due to them to say, that
most of them do give their slaves enough to eat. There are, however, some
painful exceptions to this rule. Directly opposite to us, on Philpot Street,
lived Mr. Thomas Hamilton. He owned two slaves. Their names were Henrietta and
Mary. Henrietta was about twenty-two years of age, Mary was about fourteen; and
of all the mangled and emaciated creatures I ever looked upon, these two were
the most so. His heart must be harder than stone, that could look upon these
unmoved. The head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut to pieces. I
have frequently felt her head, and found it nearly covered with festering
sores, caused by the lash of her cruel mistress. I do not know that her master
ever whipped her, but I have been an eye-witness to the cruelty of Mrs.
Hamilton. I used to be in Mr. Hamilton’s house nearly every day. Mrs. Hamilton
used to sit in a large chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin
always by her side, and scarce an hour passed during the day but was marked by
the blood of one of these slaves. The girls seldom passed her without her
saying, “Move faster, you <i>black gip!</i>” at the same time giving them a
blow with the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing the blood. She
would then say, “Take that, you <i>black gip!</i>” continuing, “If you don’t
move faster, I’ll move you!” Added to the cruel lashings to which these slaves
were subjected, they were kept nearly half-starved. They seldom knew what it
was to eat a full meal. I have seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal
thrown into the street. So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that she was
oftener called “<i>pecked</i>” than by her name.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0007"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>

<p>
I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I
succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled
to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had
kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and
direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face
against my being instructed by any one else. It is due, however, to my mistress
to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She
at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental
darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the
exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me
as though I were a brute.
</p>

<p>
My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the
simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to
treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering
upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained
to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human
being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to
her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and
tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a
tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for
every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to
divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart
became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like
fierceness. The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to
instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband’s precepts. She finally
became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself. She was
not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious
to do better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a
newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at
me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner
that fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little
experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery
were incompatible with each other.
</p>

<p>
From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any
considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and
was at once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too
late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had
given me the <i>inch,</i> and no precaution could prevent me from taking the
<i>ell.</i>
</p>

<p>
The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that
of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As
many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid,
obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in
learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me,
and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before
my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in
the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this
regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I
used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me
that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give the names
of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and
affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;—not that it would injure me, but
it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach
slaves to read in this Christian country. It is enough to say of the dear
little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and
Bailey’s ship-yard. I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I
would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when
they got to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, <i>but I
am a slave for life!</i> Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?”
These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest
sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I
might be free.
</p>

<p>
I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being <i>a slave for
life</i> began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold
of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to
read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a
dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as having
run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation
which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In
this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by
the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to
say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things
which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted
in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.
</p>

<p>
In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and in behalf
of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them over
and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts
of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for
want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of
truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a
bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights. The
reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the
arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one
difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I
was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my
enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful
robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our
homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the
meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the
subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would
follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to
unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning
to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my
wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit,
but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my
fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I
preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter
what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition
that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by
every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of
freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to
disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every
thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition.
I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt
nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm,
breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
</p>

<p>
I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and
but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed
myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this
state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready
listener. Every little while, I could hear something about the abolitionists.
It was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such
connections as to make it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and
succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a
barn, or did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken
of as the fruit of <i>abolition.</i> Hearing the word in this connection very
often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or
no help. I found it was “the act of abolishing;” but then I did not know what
was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask any one about
its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was something they wanted me to know
very little about. After a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers,
containing an account of the number of petitions from the north, praying for
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade
between the States. From this time I understood the words <i>abolition</i> and
<i>abolitionist,</i> and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting
to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves. The light broke in
upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing
two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went, unasked, and helped them. When
we had finished, one of them came to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told
him I was. He asked, “Are ye a slave for life?” I told him that I was. The good
Irishman seemed to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other
that it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for
life. He said it was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to
the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should be free. I
pretended not to be interested in what they said, and treated them as if I did
not understand them; for I feared they might be treacherous. White men have
been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward, catch
them and return them to their masters. I was afraid that these seemingly good
men might use me so; but I nevertheless remembered their advice, and from that
time I resolved to run away. I looked forward to a time at which it would be
safe for me to escape. I was too young to think of doing so immediately;
besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I might have occasion to write my
own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I should one day find a good
chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write.
</p>

<p>
The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in
Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters, after
hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the
name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of timber
was intended for the larboard side, it would be marked thus—“L.” When a piece
was for the starboard side, it would be marked thus—“S.” A piece for the
larboard side forward, would be marked thus—“L. F.” When a piece was for
starboard side forward, it would be marked thus—“S. F.” For larboard aft, it
would be marked thus—“L. A.” For starboard aft, it would be marked thus—“S. A.”
I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when
placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying
them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that,
when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write
as well as he. The next word would be, “I don’t believe you. Let me see you try
it.” I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn,
and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing,
which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During
this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen
and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. I then
commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster’s Spelling Book, until I
could make them all without looking on the book. By this time, my little Master
Thomas had gone to school, and learned how to write, and had written over a
number of copy-books. These had been brought home, and shown to some of our
near neighbors, and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class meeting at
the Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take care
of the house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in writing in the spaces
left in Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had written. I continued to
do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus,
after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to
write.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0008"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>

<p>
In a very short time after I went to live at Baltimore, my old master’s
youngest son Richard died; and in about three years and six months after his
death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leaving only his son, Andrew, and
daughter, Lucretia, to share his estate. He died while on a visit to see his
daughter at Hillsborough. Cut off thus unexpectedly, he left no will as to the
disposal of his property. It was therefore necessary to have a valuation of the
property, that it might be equally divided between Mrs. Lucretia and Master
Andrew. I was immediately sent for, to be valued with the other property. Here
again my feelings rose up in detestation of slavery. I had now a new conception
of my degraded condition. Prior to this, I had become, if not insensible to my
lot, at least partly so. I left Baltimore with a young heart overborne with
sadness, and a soul full of apprehension. I took passage with Captain Rowe, in
the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a sail of about twenty-four hours, I found
myself near the place of my birth. I had now been absent from it almost, if not
quite, five years. I, however, remembered the place very well. I was only about
five years old when I left it, to go and live with my old master on Colonel
Lloyd’s plantation; so that I was now between ten and eleven years old.
</p>

<p>
We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young,
married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were
horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank
in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination.
Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the
same indelicate inspection. At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the
brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.
</p>

<p>
After the valuation, then came the division. I have no language to express the
high excitement and deep anxiety which were felt among us poor slaves during
this time. Our fate for life was now to be decided. We had no more voice in
that decision than the brutes among whom we were ranked. A single word from the
white men was enough—against all our wishes, prayers, and entreaties—to sunder
forever the dearest friends, dearest kindred, and strongest ties known to human
beings. In addition to the pain of separation, there was the horrid dread of
falling into the hands of Master Andrew. He was known to us all as being a most
cruel wretch,—a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and
profligate dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father’s
property. We all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the Georgia
traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would be our
inevitable condition,—a condition held by us all in the utmost horror and
dread.
</p>

<p>
I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-slaves. I had known what it was
to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind. They had seen little
or nothing of the world. They were in very deed men and women of sorrow, and
acquainted with grief. Their backs had been made familiar with the bloody lash,
so that they had become callous; mine was yet tender; for while at Baltimore I
got few whippings, and few slaves could boast of a kinder master and mistress
than myself; and the thought of passing out of their hands into those of Master
Andrew—a man who, but a few days before, to give me a sample of his bloody
disposition, took my little brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and
with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the blood gushed from his
nose and ears—was well calculated to make me anxious as to my fate. After he
had committed this savage outrage upon my brother, he turned to me, and said
that was the way he meant to serve me one of these days,—meaning, I suppose,
when I came into his possession.
</p>

<p>
Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion of Mrs. Lucretia, and was
sent immediately back to Baltimore, to live again in the family of Master Hugh.
Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow at my departure. It was a glad day
to me. I had escaped a worse than lion’s jaws. I was absent from Baltimore, for
the purpose of valuation and division, just about one month, and it seemed to
have been six.
</p>

<p>
Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mistress, Lucretia, died, leaving
her husband and one child, Amanda; and in a very short time after her death,
Master Andrew died. Now all the property of my old master, slaves included, was
in the hands of strangers,—strangers who had had nothing to do with
accumulating it. Not a slave was left free. All remained slaves, from the
youngest to the oldest. If any one thing in my experience, more than another,
served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to
fill me with unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base
ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully
from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had
peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his
service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him
through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat,
and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave—a slave for
life—a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her
children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many
sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to
their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and
fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my
old master and all his children, having seen the beginning and end of all of
them, and her present owners finding she was of but little value, her frame
already racked with the pains of old age, and complete helplessness fast
stealing over her once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a
little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the
privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually
turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to
suffer in utter loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of
children, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They
are, in the language of the slave’s poet, Whittier,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Gone, gone, sold and gone<br/>
To the rice swamp dank and lone,<br/>
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,<br/>
Where the noisome insect stings,<br/>
Where the fever-demon strews<br/>
Poison with the falling dews,<br/>
Where the sickly sunbeams glare<br/>
Through the hot and misty air:—<br/>
Gone, gone, sold and gone<br/>
To the rice swamp dank and lone,<br/>
From Virginia hills and waters—<br/>
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!”
</p>

<p>
The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once sang
and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the darkness of
age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children, she hears by
day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is
gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, when weighed down by the pains and
aches of old age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the beginning and
ending of human existence meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age
combine together—at this time, this most needful time, the time for the
exercise of that tenderness and affection which children only can exercise
towards a declining parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of
twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim
embers. She stands—she sits—she staggers—she falls—she groans—she dies—and
there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to wipe from her
wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her fallen
remains. Will not a righteous God visit for these things?
</p>

<p>
In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas married his
second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton. She was the eldest daughter of Mr.
William Hamilton. Master now lived in St. Michael’s. Not long after his
marriage, a misunderstanding took place between himself and Master Hugh; and as
a means of punishing his brother, he took me from him to live with himself at
St. Michael’s. Here I underwent another most painful separation. It, however,
was not so severe as the one I dreaded at the division of property; for, during
this interval, a great change had taken place in Master Hugh and his once kind
and affectionate wife. The influence of brandy upon him, and of slavery upon
her, had effected a disastrous change in the characters of both; so that, as
far as they were concerned, I thought I had little to lose by the change. But
it was not to them that I was attached. It was to those little Baltimore boys
that I felt the strongest attachment. I had received many good lessons from
them, and was still receiving them, and the thought of leaving them was painful
indeed. I was leaving, too, without the hope of ever being allowed to return.
Master Thomas had said he would never let me return again. The barrier betwixt
himself and brother he considered impassable.
</p>

<p>
I then had to regret that I did not at least make the attempt to carry out my
resolution to run away; for the chances of success are tenfold greater from the
city than from the country.
</p>

<p>
I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael’s in the sloop Amanda, Captain Edward
Dodson. On my passage, I paid particular attention to the direction which the
steamboats took to go to Philadelphia. I found, instead of going down, on
reaching North Point they went up the bay, in a north-easterly direction. I
deemed this knowledge of the utmost importance. My determination to run away
was again revived. I resolved to wait only so long as the offering of a
favorable opportunity. When that came, I was determined to be off.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0009"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>

<p>
I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left Baltimore,
and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael’s, in March, 1832. It
was now more than seven years since I lived with him in the family of my old
master, on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. We of course were now almost entire
strangers to each other. He was to me a new master, and I to him a new slave. I
was ignorant of his temper and disposition; he was equally so of mine. A very
short time, however, brought us into full acquaintance with each other. I was
made acquainted with his wife not less than with himself. They were well
matched, being equally mean and cruel. I was now, for the first time during a
space of more than seven years, made to feel the painful gnawings of hunger—a
something which I had not experienced before since I left Colonel Lloyd’s
plantation. It went hard enough with me then, when I could look back to no
period at which I had enjoyed a sufficiency. It was tenfold harder after living
in Master Hugh’s family, where I had always had enough to eat, and of that
which was good. I have said Master Thomas was a mean man. He was so. Not to
give a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development of
meanness even among slaveholders. The rule is, no matter how coarse the food,
only let there be enough of it. This is the theory; and in the part of Maryland
from which I came, it is the general practice,—though there are many
exceptions. Master Thomas gave us enough of neither coarse nor fine food. There
were four slaves of us in the kitchen—my sister Eliza, my aunt Priscilla,
Henny, and myself; and we were allowed less than a half of a bushel of
corn-meal per week, and very little else, either in the shape of meat or
vegetables. It was not enough for us to subsist upon. We were therefore reduced
to the wretched necessity of living at the expense of our neighbors. This we
did by begging and stealing, whichever came handy in the time of need, the one
being considered as legitimate as the other. A great many times have we poor
creatures been nearly perishing with hunger, when food in abundance lay
mouldering in the safe and smoke-house, and our pious mistress was aware of the
fact; and yet that mistress and her husband would kneel every morning, and pray
that God would bless them in basket and store!
</p>

<p>
Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every element of
character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare sort. I do not
know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The leading trait in his
character was meanness; and if there were any other element in his nature, it
was made subject to this. He was mean; and, like most other mean men, he lacked
the ability to conceal his meanness. Captain Auld was not born a slaveholder.
He had been a poor man, master only of a Bay craft. He came into possession of
all his slaves by marriage; and of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst.
He was cruel, but cowardly. He commanded without firmness. In the enforcement
of his rules, he was at times rigid, and at times lax. At times, he spoke to
his slaves with the firmness of Napoleon and the fury of a demon; at other
times, he might well be mistaken for an inquirer who had lost his way. He did
nothing of himself. He might have passed for a lion, but for his ears. In all
things noble which he attempted, his own meanness shone most conspicuous. His
airs, words, and actions, were the airs, words, and actions of born
slaveholders, and, being assumed, were awkward enough. He was not even a good
imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the power.
Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many,
and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency; and of consequence
he was an object of contempt, and was held as such even by his slaves. The
luxury of having slaves of his own to wait upon him was something new and
unprepared for. He was a slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves. He
found himself incapable of managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud.
We seldom called him “master;” we generally called him “Captain Auld,” and were
hardly disposed to title him at all. I doubt not that our conduct had much to
do with making him appear awkward, and of consequence fretful. Our want of
reverence for him must have perplexed him greatly. He wished to have us call
him master, but lacked the firmness necessary to command us to do so. His wife
used to insist upon our calling him so, but to no purpose. In August, 1832, my
master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county,
and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion
would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it
would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both
these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to
emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel
and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man
after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his
own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his
conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding
cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of
prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself
among his brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity
in revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the
church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers’ home. They used
to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he
stuffed them. We have had three or four preachers there at a time. The names of
those who used to come most frequently while I lived there, were Mr. Storks,
Mr. Ewery, Mr. Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at
our house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We believed him to be a good man. We
thought him instrumental in getting Mr. Samuel Harrison, a very rich
slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by some means got the impression
that he was laboring to effect the emancipation of all the slaves. When he was
at our house, we were sure to be called in to prayers. When the others were
there, we were sometimes called in and sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more
notice of us than either of the other ministers. He could not come among us
without betraying his sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the
sagacity to see it.
</p>

<p>
While I lived with my master in St. Michael’s, there was a white young man, a
Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the instruction of such
slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the New Testament. We met but
three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both class-leaders, with many
others, came upon us with sticks and other missiles, drove us off, and forbade
us to meet again. Thus ended our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St.
Michael’s.
</p>

<p>
I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an example,
I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen him tie
up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked
shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the
bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture—“He that knoweth his
master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”
</p>

<p>
Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid situation
four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up early in the
morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to his store, return at
dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the places already made raw with his
cruel lash. The secret of master’s cruelty toward “Henny” is found in the fact
of her being almost helpless. When quite a child, she fell into the fire, and
burned herself horribly. Her hands were so burnt that she never got the use of
them. She could do very little but bear heavy burdens. She was to master a bill
of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant offence to him. He
seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of existence. He gave her away
once to his sister; but, being a poor gift, she was not disposed to keep her.
Finally, my benevolent master, to use his own words, “set her adrift to take
care of herself.” Here was a recently-converted man, holding on upon the
mother, and at the same time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die!
Master Thomas was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the
very charitable purpose of taking care of them.
</p>

<p>
My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found me unsuitable
to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very pernicious effect upon
me. It had almost ruined me for every good purpose, and fitted me for every
thing which was bad. One of my greatest faults was that of letting his horse
run away, and go down to his father-in-law’s farm, which was about five miles
from St. Michael’s. I would then have to go after it. My reason for this kind
of carelessness, or carefulness, was, that I could always get something to eat
when I went there. Master William Hamilton, my master’s father-in-law, always
gave his slaves enough to eat. I never left there hungry, no matter how great
the need of my speedy return. Master Thomas at length said he would stand it no
longer. I had lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a
number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out,
as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a
man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the
place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey
had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this
reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled
with much less expense to himself than he could have had it done without such a
reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to
have their slaves one year, for the sake of the training to which they were
subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire young help with great
ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of
Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a
class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his
reputation as a “nigger-breaker.” I was aware of all the facts, having been
made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless
made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not
the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0010"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>

<p>
I had left Master Thomas’s house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on the 1st
of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a field hand. In my
new employment, I found myself even more awkward than a country boy appeared to
be in a large city. I had been at my new home but one week before Mr. Covey
gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and
raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger. The details of this
affair are as follows: Mr. Covey sent me, very early in the morning of one of
our coldest days in the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of wood.
He gave me a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox, and
which the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the horns
of the in-hand ox, and gave me the other end of it, and told me, if the oxen
started to run, that I must hold on upon the rope. I had never driven oxen
before, and of course I was very awkward. I, however, succeeded in getting to
the edge of the woods with little difficulty; but I had got a very few rods
into the woods, when the oxen took fright, and started full tilt, carrying the
cart against trees, and over stumps, in the most frightful manner. I expected
every moment that my brains would be dashed out against the trees. After
running thus for a considerable distance, they finally upset the cart, dashing
it with great force against a tree, and threw themselves into a dense thicket.
How I escaped death, I do not know. There I was, entirely alone, in a thick
wood, in a place new to me. My cart was upset and shattered, my oxen were
entangled among the young trees, and there was none to help me. After a long
spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart righted, my oxen disentangled,
and again yoked to the cart. I now proceeded with my team to the place where I
had, the day before, been chopping wood, and loaded my cart pretty heavily,
thinking in this way to tame my oxen. I then proceeded on my way home. I had
now consumed one half of the day. I got out of the woods safely, and now felt
out of danger. I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate; and just as I did so,
before I could get hold of my ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed through
the gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of the cart, tearing it to
pieces, and coming within a few inches of crushing me against the gate-post.
Thus twice, in one short day, I escaped death by the merest chance. On my
return, I told Mr. Covey what had happened, and how it happened. He ordered me
to return to the woods again immediately. I did so, and he followed on after
me. Just as I got into the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart, and
that he would teach me how to trifle away my time, and break gates. He then
went to a large gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches, and, after
trimming them up neatly with his pocketknife, he ordered me to take off my
clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his
order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip myself. Upon this he
rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my clothes, and lashed me
till he had worn out his switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks
visible for a long time after. This whipping was the first of a number just
like it, and for similar offences.
</p>

<p>
I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months, of that year,
scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free from a sore
back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for whipping me. We were
worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long before day we were up, our
horses fed, and by the first approach of day we were off to the field with our
hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to
eat it. We were often less than five minutes taking our meals. We were often in
the field from the first approach of day till its last lingering ray had left
us; and at saving-fodder time, midnight often caught us in the field binding
blades.
</p>

<p>
Covey would be out with us. The way he used to stand it, was this. He would
spend the most of his afternoons in bed. He would then come out fresh in the
evening, ready to urge us on with his words, example, and frequently with the
whip. Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who could and did work with his
hands. He was a hard-working man. He knew by himself just what a man or a boy
could do. There was no deceiving him. His work went on in his absence almost as
well as in his presence; and he had the faculty of making us feel that he was
ever present with us. This he did by surprising us. He seldom approached the
spot where we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed
at taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him, among
ourselves, “the snake.” When we were at work in the cornfield, he would
sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and all at once he
would rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, “Ha, ha! Come, come! Dash on,
dash on!” This being his mode of attack, it was never safe to stop a single
minute. His comings were like a thief in the night. He appeared to us as being
ever at hand. He was under every tree, behind every stump, in every bush, and
at every window, on the plantation. He would sometimes mount his horse, as if
bound to St. Michael’s, a distance of seven miles, and in half an hour
afterwards you would see him coiled up in the corner of the wood-fence,
watching every motion of the slaves. He would, for this purpose, leave his
horse tied up in the woods. Again, he would sometimes walk up to us, and give
us orders as though he was upon the point of starting on a long journey, turn
his back upon us, and make as though he was going to the house to get ready;
and, before he would get half way thither, he would turn short and crawl into a
fence-corner, or behind some tree, and there watch us till the going down of
the sun.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Covey’s <i>forte</i> consisted in his power to deceive. His life was
devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions. Every thing he
possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made conform to his
disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the
Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning, and a long prayer at
night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would at times appear more
devotional than he. The exercises of his family devotions were always commenced
with singing; and, as he was a very poor singer himself, the duty of raising
the hymn generally came upon me. He would read his hymn, and nod at me to
commence. I would at times do so; at others, I would not. My non-compliance
would almost always produce much confusion. To show himself independent of me,
he would start and stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner.
In this state of mind, he prayed with more than ordinary spirit. Poor man! such
was his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily believe that he
sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that he was a sincere
worshipper of the most high God; and this, too, at a time when he may be said
to have been guilty of compelling his woman slave to commit the sin of
adultery. The facts in the case are these: Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was
just commencing in life; he was only able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is
the fact, he bought her, as he said, for <i>a breeder</i>. This woman was named
Caroline. Mr. Covey bought her from Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St.
Michael’s. She was a large, able-bodied woman, about twenty years old. She had
already given birth to one child, which proved her to be just what he wanted.
After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr. Samuel Harrison, to live with
him one year; and him he used to fasten up with her every night! The result
was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable woman gave birth to twins. At
this result Mr. Covey seemed to be highly pleased, both with the man and the
wretched woman. Such was his joy, and that of his wife, that nothing they could
do for Caroline during her confinement was too good, or too hard, to be done.
The children were regarded as being quite an addition to his wealth.
</p>

<p>
If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the
bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my
stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or
too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in
the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the
night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too
long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few
months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was
broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my
intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that
lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and
behold a man transformed into a brute!
</p>

<p>
Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like stupor,
between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I would rise up, a
flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint
beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished. I sank down
again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my
life, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear.
My sufferings on this plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern
reality.
</p>

<p>
Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was
ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those
beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen,
were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of
my wretched condition. I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s
Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced,
with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off
to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My
thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty,
I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the
moving multitude of ships:—
</p>

<p>
“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and
am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the
bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I
am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on one of your
gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the
turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If
I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is
gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending
slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why
am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or get clear,
I’ll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever. I have only one life to
lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it; one
hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God helping me, I
will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water.
This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom. The steamboats steered in a
north-east course from North Point. I will do the same; and when I get to the
head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and walk straight through
Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not be required to have a
pass; I can travel without being disturbed. Let but the first opportunity
offer, and, come what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under
the yoke. I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I can bear
as much as any of them. Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to some
one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my happiness when I
get free. There is a better day coming.”
</p>

<p>
Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak to myself; goaded almost to
madness at one moment, and at the next reconciling myself to my wretched lot.
</p>

<p>
I have already intimated that my condition was much worse, during the first six
months of my stay at Mr. Covey’s, than in the last six. The circumstances
leading to the change in Mr. Covey’s course toward me form an epoch in my
humble history. You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a
slave was made a man. On one of the hottest days of the month of August, 1833,
Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli, and myself, were engaged in
fanning wheat. Hughes was clearing the fanned wheat from before the fan. Eli
was turning, Smith was feeding, and I was carrying wheat to the fan. The work
was simple, requiring strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely
unused to such work, it came very hard. About three o’clock of that day, I
broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the
head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb. Finding what
was coming, I nerved myself up, feeling it would never do to stop work. I stood
as long as I could stagger to the hopper with grain. When I could stand no
longer, I fell, and felt as if held down by an immense weight. The fan of
course stopped; every one had his own work to do; and no one could do the work
of the other, and have his own go on at the same time.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred yards from the treading-yard
where we were fanning. On hearing the fan stop, he left immediately, and came
to the spot where we were. He hastily inquired what the matter was. Bill
answered that I was sick, and there was no one to bring wheat to the fan. I had
by this time crawled away under the side of the post and rail-fence by which
the yard was enclosed, hoping to find relief by getting out of the sun. He then
asked where I was. He was told by one of the hands. He came to the spot, and,
after looking at me awhile, asked me what was the matter. I told him as well as
I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in
the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the
attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and
succeeded in gaining my feet; but, stooping to get the tub with which I was
feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell. While down in this situation, Mr.
Covey took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking off the
half-bushel measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a
large wound, and the blood ran freely; and with this again told me to get up. I
made no effort to comply, having now made up my mind to let him do his worst.
In a short time after receiving this blow, my head grew better. Mr. Covey had
now left me to my fate. At this moment I resolved, for the first time, to go to
my master, enter a complaint, and ask his protection. In order to do this, I
must that afternoon walk seven miles; and this, under the circumstances, was
truly a severe undertaking. I was exceedingly feeble; made so as much by the
kicks and blows which I received, as by the severe fit of sickness to which I
had been subjected. I, however, watched my chance, while Covey was looking in
an opposite direction, and started for St. Michael’s. I succeeded in getting a
considerable distance on my way to the woods, when Covey discovered me, and
called after me to come back, threatening what he would do if I did not come. I
disregarded both his calls and his threats, and made my way to the woods as
fast as my feeble state would allow; and thinking I might be overhauled by him
if I kept the road, I walked through the woods, keeping far enough from the
road to avoid detection, and near enough to prevent losing my way. I had not
gone far before my little strength again failed me. I could go no farther. I
fell down, and lay for a considerable time. The blood was yet oozing from the
wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death; and think now
that I should have done so, but that the blood so matted my hair as to stop the
wound. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, I nerved myself up
again, and started on my way, through bogs and briers, barefooted and
bareheaded, tearing my feet sometimes at nearly every step; and after a journey
of about seven miles, occupying some five hours to perform it, I arrived at
master’s store. I then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart
of iron. From the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered with blood. My
hair was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff with blood. I
suppose I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild beasts, and barely
escaped them. In this state I appeared before my master, humbly entreating him
to interpose his authority for my protection. I told him all the circumstances
as well as I could, and it seemed, as I spoke, at times to affect him. He would
then walk the floor, and seek to justify Covey by saying he expected I deserved
it. He asked me what I wanted. I told him, to let me get a new home; that as
sure as I lived with Mr. Covey again, I should live with but to die with him;
that Covey would surely kill me; he was in a fair way for it. Master Thomas
ridiculed the idea that there was any danger of Mr. Covey’s killing me, and
said that he knew Mr. Covey; that he was a good man, and that he could not
think of taking me from him; that, should he do so, he would lose the whole
year’s wages; that I belonged to Mr. Covey for one year, and that I must go
back to him, come what might; and that I must not trouble him with any more
stories, or that he would himself <i>get hold of me</i>. After threatening me
thus, he gave me a very large dose of salts, telling me that I might remain in
St. Michael’s that night, (it being quite late,) but that I must be off back to
Mr. Covey’s early in the morning; and that if I did not, he would <i>get hold
of me,</i> which meant that he would whip me. I remained all night, and,
according to his orders, I started off to Covey’s in the morning, (Saturday
morning,) wearied in body and broken in spirit. I got no supper that night, or
breakfast that morning. I reached Covey’s about nine o’clock; and just as I was
getting over the fence that divided Mrs. Kemp’s fields from ours, out ran Covey
with his cowskin, to give me another whipping. Before he could reach me, I
succeeded in getting to the cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it
afforded me the means of hiding. He seemed very angry, and searched for me a
long time. My behavior was altogether unaccountable. He finally gave up the
chase, thinking, I suppose, that I must come home for something to eat; he
would give himself no further trouble in looking for me. I spent that day
mostly in the woods, having the alternative before me,—to go home and be
whipped to death, or stay in the woods and be starved to death. That night, I
fell in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave with whom I was somewhat acquainted. Sandy
had a free wife who lived about four miles from Mr. Covey’s; and it being
Saturday, he was on his way to see her. I told him my circumstances, and he
very kindly invited me to go home with him. I went home with him, and talked
this whole matter over, and got his advice as to what course it was best for me
to pursue. I found Sandy an old adviser. He told me, with great solemnity, I
must go back to Covey; but that before I went, I must go with him into another
part of the woods, where there was a certain <i>root,</i> which, if I would
take some of it with me, carrying it <i>always on my right side,</i> would
render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to whip me. He said
he had carried it for years; and since he had done so, he had never received a
blow, and never expected to while he carried it. I at first rejected the idea,
that the simple carrying of a root in my pocket would have any such effect as
he had said, and was not disposed to take it; but Sandy impressed the necessity
with much earnestness, telling me it could do no harm, if it did no good. To
please him, I at length took the root, and, according to his direction, carried
it upon my right side. This was Sunday morning. I immediately started for home;
and upon entering the yard gate, out came Mr. Covey on his way to meeting. He
spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs from a lot near by, and passed
on towards the church. Now, this singular conduct of Mr. Covey really made me
begin to think that there was something in the <i>root</i> which Sandy had
given me; and had it been on any other day than Sunday, I could have attributed
the conduct to no other cause than the influence of that root; and as it was, I
was half inclined to think the <i>root</i> to be something more than I at first
had taken it to be. All went well till Monday morning. On this morning, the
virtue of the <i>root</i> was fully tested. Long before daylight, I was called
to go and rub, curry, and feed, the horses. I obeyed, and was glad to obey. But
whilst thus engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some blades from the
loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope; and just as I was half out
of the loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying me. As soon as I
found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring, and as I did so, he holding to
my legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor. Mr. Covey seemed now to
think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment—from whence
came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the
resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held
on to me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey
seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf. This gave me assurance, and I
held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of
my fingers. Mr. Covey soon called out to Hughes for help. Hughes came, and,
while Covey held me, attempted to tie my right hand. While he was in the act of
doing so, I watched my chance, and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs.
This kick fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left me in the hands of Mr. Covey.
This kick had the effect of not only weakening Hughes, but Covey also. When he
saw Hughes bending over with pain, his courage quailed. He asked me if I meant
to persist in my resistance. I told him I did, come what might; that he had
used me like a brute for six months, and that I was determined to be used so no
longer. With that, he strove to drag me to a stick that was lying just out of
the stable door. He meant to knock me down. But just as he was leaning over to
get the stick, I seized him with both hands by his collar, and brought him by a
sudden snatch to the ground. By this time, Bill came. Covey called upon him for
assistance. Bill wanted to know what he could do. Covey said, “Take hold of
him, take hold of him!” Bill said his master hired him out to work, and not to
help to whip me; so he left Covey and myself to fight our own battle out. We
were at it for nearly two hours. Covey at length let me go, puffing and blowing
at a great rate, saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped
me half so much. The truth was, that he had not whipped me at all. I considered
him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood
from me, but I had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with
Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He would
occasionally say, he didn’t want to get hold of me again. “No,” thought I, “you
need not; for you will come off worse than you did before.”
</p>

<p>
This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It
rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of
my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again
with a determination to be free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was
a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only
can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself
repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It
was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of
freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took
its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in
form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not
hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed
in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.
</p>

<p>
From this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped, though I
remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights, but was never
whipped.
</p>

<p>
It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me why Mr. Covey did not
immediately have me taken by the constable to the whipping-post, and there
regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a white man in
defence of myself. And the only explanation I can now think of does not
entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give it. Mr. Covey enjoyed the
most unbounded reputation for being a first-rate overseer and negro-breaker. It
was of considerable importance to him. That reputation was at stake; and had he
sent me—a boy about sixteen years old—to the public whipping-post, his
reputation would have been lost; so, to save his reputation, he suffered me to
go unpunished.
</p>

<p>
My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day, 1833. The
days between Christmas and New Year’s day are allowed as holidays; and,
accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor, more than to feed and
take care of the stock. This time we regarded as our own, by the grace of our
masters; and we therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased. Those of us
who had families at a distance, were generally allowed to spend the whole six
days in their society. This time, however, was spent in various ways. The
staid, sober, thinking and industrious ones of our number would employ
themselves in making corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another
class of us would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But by
far the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball,
wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky; and this
latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable to the feelings
of our masters. A slave who would work during the holidays was considered by
our masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the
favor of his master. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas;
and he was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the
necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through
Christmas.
</p>

<p>
From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I believe them
to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping
down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders at once to abandon this
practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate
insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or
safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for
these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide
the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those
conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their
midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake.
</p>

<p>
The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of
slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the
slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one
of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave. They do not give
the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its
continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it.
This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves
spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending
as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with
freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance,
the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but
will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their
slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this
way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the
slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his
ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled
with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result
was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was
little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too,
that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays
ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and
marched to the field,—feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our
master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.
</p>

<p>
I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system of fraud
and inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to disgust the slave
with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse of it, is carried out in
other things. For instance, a slave loves molasses; he steals some. His master,
in many cases, goes off to town, and buys a large quantity; he returns, takes
his whip, and commands the slave to eat the molasses, until the poor fellow is
made sick at the very mention of it. The same mode is sometimes adopted to make
the slaves refrain from asking for more food than their regular allowance. A
slave runs through his allowance, and applies for more. His master is enraged
at him; but, not willing to send him off without food, gives him more than is
necessary, and compels him to eat it within a given time. Then, if he complains
that he cannot eat it, he is said to be satisfied neither full nor fasting, and
is whipped for being hard to please! I have an abundance of such illustrations
of the same principle, drawn from my own observation, but think the cases I
have cited sufficient. The practice is a very common one.
</p>

<p>
On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. Covey, and went to live with Mr.
William Freeland, who lived about three miles from St. Michael’s. I soon found
Mr. Freeland a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not rich, he was what
would be called an educated southern gentleman. Mr. Covey, as I have shown, was
a well-trained negro-breaker and slave-driver. The former (slaveholder though
he was) seemed to possess some regard for honor, some reverence for justice,
and some respect for humanity. The latter seemed totally insensible to all such
sentiments. Mr. Freeland had many of the faults peculiar to slaveholders, such
as being very passionate and fretful; but I must do him the justice to say,
that he was exceedingly free from those degrading vices to which Mr. Covey was
constantly addicted. The one was open and frank, and we always knew where to
find him. The other was a most artful deceiver, and could be understood only by
such as were skilful enough to detect his cunningly-devised frauds. Another
advantage I gained in my new master was, he made no pretensions to, or
profession of, religion; and this, in my opinion, was truly a great advantage.
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering
for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a
sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the
darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the
strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next
to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the
greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I
have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the
meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my
unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a
community of such religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel
Weeden, and in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were
members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among
others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman’s back, for
weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this merciless,
<i>religious</i> wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim was, Behave well or
behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind
him of his master’s authority. Such was his theory, and such his practice.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his ability to
manage slaves. The peculiar feature of his government was that of whipping
slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed to have one or more of his
slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did this to alarm their fears, and
strike terror into those who escaped. His plan was to whip for the smallest
offences, to prevent the commission of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always
find some excuse for whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a
slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find
things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or
motion,—a mistake, accident, or want of power,—are all matters for which a
slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said,
he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when
spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken
down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of
a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for it.
Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when censured for it? Then he is
guilty of impudence,—one of the greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty.
Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from that
pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting above
himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does he, while
ploughing, break a plough,—or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his
carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped. Mr. Hopkins could
always find something of this sort to justify the use of the lash, and he
seldom failed to embrace such opportunities. There was not a man in the whole
county, with whom the slaves who had the getting their own home, would not
prefer to live, rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there was not a
man any where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was more
active in revivals,—more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and
preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family,—that prayed earlier,
later, louder, and longer,—than this same reverend slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins.
</p>

<p>
But to return to Mr. Freeland, and to my experience while in his employment.
He, like Mr. Covey, gave us enough to eat; but, unlike Mr. Covey, he also gave
us sufficient time to take our meals. He worked us hard, but always between
sunrise and sunset. He required a good deal of work to be done, but gave us
good tools with which to work. His farm was large, but he employed hands enough
to work it, and with ease, compared with many of his neighbors. My treatment,
while in his employment, was heavenly, compared with what I experienced at the
hands of Mr. Edward Covey.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Freeland was himself the owner of but two slaves. Their names were Henry
Harris and John Harris. The rest of his hands he hired. These consisted of
myself, Sandy Jenkins,<a href="#fn-1" name="fnref-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> and
Handy Caldwell.
</p>

<p class="footnote">
<a name="fn-1"></a> <a href="#fnref-1">[1]</a>
This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my being whipped by Mr.
Covey. He was “a clever soul.” We used frequently to talk about the fight with
Covey, and as often as we did so, he would claim my success as the result of
the roots which he gave me. This superstition is very common among the more
ignorant slaves. A slave seldom dies but that his death is attributed to
trickery.
</p>

<p>
Henry and John were quite intelligent, and in a very little while after I went
there, I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn how to read.
This desire soon sprang up in the others also. They very soon mustered up some
old spelling-books, and nothing would do but that I must keep a Sabbath school.
I agreed to do so, and accordingly devoted my Sundays to teaching these my
loved fellow-slaves how to read. Neither of them knew his letters when I went
there. Some of the slaves of the neighboring farms found what was going on, and
also availed themselves of this little opportunity to learn to read. It was
understood, among all who came, that there must be as little display about it
as possible. It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael’s
unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling,
boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of
God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to
see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings. My blood
boils as I think of the bloody manner in which Messrs. Wright Fairbanks and
Garrison West, both class-leaders, in connection with many others, rushed in
upon us with sticks and stones, and broke up our virtuous little Sabbath
school, at St. Michael’s—all calling themselves Christians! humble followers of
the Lord Jesus Christ! But I am again digressing.
</p>

<p>
I held my Sabbath school at the house of a free colored man, whose name I deem
it imprudent to mention; for should it be known, it might embarrass him
greatly, though the crime of holding the school was committed ten years ago. I
had at one time over forty scholars, and those of the right sort, ardently
desiring to learn. They were of all ages, though mostly men and women. I look
back to those Sundays with an amount of pleasure not to be expressed. They were
great days to my soul. The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the
sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to
leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When I think
that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my
feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, “Does a righteous God
govern the universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand,
if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the
spoiler?” These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to
do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every
moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given
thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had
been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness.
I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that
looked like bettering the condition of my race. I kept up my school nearly the
whole year I lived with Mr. Freeland; and, beside my Sabbath school, I devoted
three evenings in the week, during the winter, to teaching the slaves at home.
And I have the happiness to know, that several of those who came to Sabbath
school learned how to read; and that one, at least, is now free through my
agency.
</p>

<p>
The year passed off smoothly. It seemed only about half as long as the year
which preceded it. I went through it without receiving a single blow. I will
give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, <i>till I
became my own master.</i> For the ease with which I passed the year, I was,
however, somewhat indebted to the society of my fellow-slaves. They were noble
souls; they not only possessed loving hearts, but brave ones. We were linked
and interlinked with each other. I loved them with a love stronger than any
thing I have experienced since. It is sometimes said that we slaves do not love
and confide in each other. In answer to this assertion, I can say, I never
loved any or confided in any people more than my fellow-slaves, and especially
those with whom I lived at Mr. Freeland’s. I believe we would have died for
each other. We never undertook to do any thing, of any importance, without a
mutual consultation. We never moved separately. We were one; and as much so by
our tempers and dispositions, as by the mutual hardships to which we were
necessarily subjected by our condition as slaves.
</p>

<p>
At the close of the year 1834, Mr. Freeland again hired me of my master, for
the year 1835. But, by this time, I began to want to live <i>upon free land</i>
as well as <i>with Freeland;</i> and I was no longer content, therefore, to
live with him or any other slaveholder. I began, with the commencement of the
year, to prepare myself for a final struggle, which should decide my fate one
way or the other. My tendency was upward. I was fast approaching manhood, and
year after year had passed, and I was still a slave. These thoughts roused me—I
must do something. I therefore resolved that 1835 should not pass without
witnessing an attempt, on my part, to secure my liberty. But I was not willing
to cherish this determination alone. My fellow-slaves were dear to me. I was
anxious to have them participate with me in this, my life-giving determination.
I therefore, though with great prudence, commenced early to ascertain their
views and feelings in regard to their condition, and to imbue their minds with
thoughts of freedom. I bent myself to devising ways and means for our escape,
and meanwhile strove, on all fitting occasions, to impress them with the gross
fraud and inhumanity of slavery. I went first to Henry, next to John, then to
the others. I found, in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits. They were
ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible plan should be proposed. This
was what I wanted. I talked to them of our want of manhood, if we submitted to
our enslavement without at least one noble effort to be free. We met often, and
consulted frequently, and told our hopes and fears, recounted the difficulties,
real and imagined, which we should be called on to meet. At times we were
almost disposed to give up, and try to content ourselves with our wretched lot;
at others, we were firm and unbending in our determination to go. Whenever we
suggested any plan, there was shrinking—the odds were fearful. Our path was
beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end of
it, our right to be free was yet questionable—we were yet liable to be returned
to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of the ocean, where we could be
free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our knowledge of the north did not extend
farther than New York; and to go there, and be forever harassed with the
frightful liability of being returned to slavery—with the certainty of being
treated tenfold worse than before—the thought was truly a horrible one, and one
which it was not easy to overcome. The case sometimes stood thus: At every gate
through which we were to pass, we saw a watchman—at every ferry a guard—on
every bridge a sentinel—and in every wood a patrol. We were hemmed in upon
every side. Here were the difficulties, real or imagined—the good to be sought,
and the evil to be shunned. On the one hand, there stood slavery, a stern
reality, glaring frightfully upon us,—its robes already crimsoned with the
blood of millions, and even now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh. On
the other hand, away back in the dim distance, under the flickering light of
the north star, behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a
doubtful freedom—half frozen—beckoning us to come and share its hospitality.
This in itself was sometimes enough to stagger us; but when we permitted
ourselves to survey the road, we were frequently appalled. Upon either side we
saw grim death, assuming the most horrid shapes. Now it was starvation, causing
us to eat our own flesh;—now we were contending with the waves, and were
drowned;—now we were overtaken, and torn to pieces by the fangs of the terrible
bloodhound. We were stung by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten by
snakes, and finally, after having nearly reached the desired spot,—after
swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts, sleeping in the woods, suffering
hunger and nakedness,—we were overtaken by our pursuers, and, in our
resistance, we were shot dead upon the spot! I say, this picture sometimes
appalled us, and made us
</p>

<p class="poem">
“rather bear those ills we had,<br/>
Than fly to others, that we knew not of.”
</p>

<p>
In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry,
when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at
most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death
to hopeless bondage.
</p>

<p>
Sandy, one of our number, gave up the notion, but still encouraged us. Our
company then consisted of Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey, Charles
Roberts, and myself. Henry Bailey was my uncle, and belonged to my master.
Charles married my aunt: he belonged to my master’s father-in-law, Mr. William
Hamilton.
</p>

<p>
The plan we finally concluded upon was, to get a large canoe belonging to Mr.
Hamilton, and upon the Saturday night previous to Easter holidays, paddle
directly up the Chesapeake Bay. On our arrival at the head of the bay, a
distance of seventy or eighty miles from where we lived, it was our purpose to
turn our canoe adrift, and follow the guidance of the north star till we got
beyond the limits of Maryland. Our reason for taking the water route was, that
we were less liable to be suspected as runaways; we hoped to be regarded as
fishermen; whereas, if we should take the land route, we should be subjected to
interruptions of almost every kind. Any one having a white face, and being so
disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination.
</p>

<p>
The week before our intended start, I wrote several protections, one for each
of us. As well as I can remember, they were in the following words, to wit:—
</p>

<p class="letter">
“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my servant,
full liberty to go to Baltimore, and spend the Easter holidays. Written with
mine own hand, &amp;c., 1835.
</p>

<p class="right">
“W<small>ILLIAM</small> H<small>AMILTON</small>,<br/>
“Near St. Michael’s, in Talbot county, Maryland.”
</p>

<p>
We were not going to Baltimore; but, in going up the bay, we went toward
Baltimore, and these protections were only intended to protect us while on the
bay.
</p>

<p>
As the time drew near for our departure, our anxiety became more and more
intense. It was truly a matter of life and death with us. The strength of our
determination was about to be fully tested. At this time, I was very active in
explaining every difficulty, removing every doubt, dispelling every fear, and
inspiring all with the firmness indispensable to success in our undertaking;
assuring them that half was gained the instant we made the move; we had talked
long enough; we were now ready to move; if not now, we never should be; and if
we did not intend to move now, we had as well fold our arms, sit down, and
acknowledge ourselves fit only to be slaves. This, none of us were prepared to
acknowledge. Every man stood firm; and at our last meeting, we pledged
ourselves afresh, in the most solemn manner, that, at the time appointed, we
would certainly start in pursuit of freedom. This was in the middle of the
week, at the end of which we were to be off. We went, as usual, to our several
fields of labor, but with bosoms highly agitated with thoughts of our truly
hazardous undertaking. We tried to conceal our feelings as much as possible;
and I think we succeeded very well.
</p>

<p>
After a painful waiting, the Saturday morning, whose night was to witness our
departure, came. I hailed it with joy, bring what of sadness it might. Friday
night was a sleepless one for me. I probably felt more anxious than the rest,
because I was, by common consent, at the head of the whole affair. The
responsibility of success or failure lay heavily upon me. The glory of the one,
and the confusion of the other, were alike mine. The first two hours of that
morning were such as I never experienced before, and hope never to again. Early
in the morning, we went, as usual, to the field. We were spreading manure; and
all at once, while thus engaged, I was overwhelmed with an indescribable
feeling, in the fulness of which I turned to Sandy, who was near by, and said,
“We are betrayed!” “Well,” said he, “that thought has this moment struck me.”
We said no more. I was never more certain of any thing.
</p>

<p>
The horn was blown as usual, and we went up from the field to the house for
breakfast. I went for the form, more than for want of any thing to eat that
morning. Just as I got to the house, in looking out at the lane gate, I saw
four white men, with two colored men. The white men were on horseback, and the
colored ones were walking behind, as if tied. I watched them a few moments till
they got up to our lane gate. Here they halted, and tied the colored men to the
gate-post. I was not yet certain as to what the matter was. In a few moments,
in rode Mr. Hamilton, with a speed betokening great excitement. He came to the
door, and inquired if Master William was in. He was told he was at the barn.
Mr. Hamilton, without dismounting, rode up to the barn with extraordinary
speed. In a few moments, he and Mr. Freeland returned to the house. By this
time, the three constables rode up, and in great haste dismounted, tied their
horses, and met Master William and Mr. Hamilton returning from the barn; and
after talking awhile, they all walked up to the kitchen door. There was no one
in the kitchen but myself and John. Henry and Sandy were up at the barn. Mr.
Freeland put his head in at the door, and called me by name, saying, there were
some gentlemen at the door who wished to see me. I stepped to the door, and
inquired what they wanted. They at once seized me, and, without giving me any
satisfaction, tied me—lashing my hands closely together. I insisted upon
knowing what the matter was. They at length said, that they had learned I had
been in a “scrape,” and that I was to be examined before my master; and if
their information proved false, I should not be hurt.
</p>

<p>
In a few moments, they succeeded in tying John. They then turned to Henry, who
had by this time returned, and commanded him to cross his hands. “I won’t!”
said Henry, in a firm tone, indicating his readiness to meet the consequences
of his refusal. “Won’t you?” said Tom Graham, the constable. “No, I won’t!”
said Henry, in a still stronger tone. With this, two of the constables pulled
out their shining pistols, and swore, by their Creator, that they would make
him cross his hands or kill him. Each cocked his pistol, and, with fingers on
the trigger, walked up to Henry, saying, at the same time, if he did not cross
his hands, they would blow his damned heart out. “Shoot me, shoot me!” said
Henry; “you can’t kill me but once. Shoot, shoot,—and be damned! <i>I won’t be
tied!</i>” This he said in a tone of loud defiance; and at the same time, with
a motion as quick as lightning, he with one single stroke dashed the pistols
from the hand of each constable. As he did this, all hands fell upon him, and,
after beating him some time, they finally overpowered him, and got him tied.
</p>

<p>
During the scuffle, I managed, I know not how, to get my pass out, and, without
being discovered, put it into the fire. We were all now tied; and just as we
were to leave for Easton jail, Betsy Freeland, mother of William Freeland, came
to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and divided them between Henry and
John. She then delivered herself of a speech, to the following
effect:—addressing herself to me, she said, “<i>You devil! You yellow
devil!</i> it was you that put it into the heads of Henry and John to run away.
But for you, you long-legged mulatto devil! Henry nor John would never have
thought of such a thing.” I made no reply, and was immediately hurried off
towards St. Michael’s. Just a moment previous to the scuffle with Henry, Mr.
Hamilton suggested the propriety of making a search for the protections which
he had understood Frederick had written for himself and the rest. But, just at
the moment he was about carrying his proposal into effect, his aid was needed
in helping to tie Henry; and the excitement attending the scuffle caused them
either to forget, or to deem it unsafe, under the circumstances, to search. So
we were not yet convicted of the intention to run away.
</p>

<p>
When we got about half way to St. Michael’s, while the constables having us in
charge were looking ahead, Henry inquired of me what he should do with his
pass. I told him to eat it with his biscuit, and own nothing; and we passed the
word around, “<i>Own nothing;</i>” and “<i>Own nothing!</i>” said we all. Our
confidence in each other was unshaken. We were resolved to succeed or fail
together, after the calamity had befallen us as much as before. We were now
prepared for any thing. We were to be dragged that morning fifteen miles behind
horses, and then to be placed in the Easton jail. When we reached St.
Michael’s, we underwent a sort of examination. We all denied that we ever
intended to run away. We did this more to bring out the evidence against us,
than from any hope of getting clear of being sold; for, as I have said, we were
ready for that. The fact was, we cared but little where we went, so we went
together. Our greatest concern was about separation. We dreaded that more than
any thing this side of death. We found the evidence against us to be the
testimony of one person; our master would not tell who it was; but we came to a
unanimous decision among ourselves as to who their informant was. We were sent
off to the jail at Easton. When we got there, we were delivered up to the
sheriff, Mr. Joseph Graham, and by him placed in jail. Henry, John, and myself,
were placed in one room together—Charles, and Henry Bailey, in another. Their
object in separating us was to hinder concert.
</p>

<p>
We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave traders, and
agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us, and to ascertain if
we were for sale. Such a set of beings I never saw before! I felt myself
surrounded by so many fiends from perdition. A band of pirates never looked
more like their father, the devil. They laughed and grinned over us, saying,
“Ah, my boys! we have got you, haven’t we?” And after taunting us in various
ways, they one by one went into an examination of us, with intent to ascertain
our value. They would impudently ask us if we would not like to have them for
our masters. We would make them no answer, and leave them to find out as best
they could. Then they would curse and swear at us, telling us that they could
take the devil out of us in a very little while, if we were only in their
hands.
</p>

<p>
While in jail, we found ourselves in much more comfortable quarters than we
expected when we went there. We did not get much to eat, nor that which was
very good; but we had a good clean room, from the windows of which we could see
what was going on in the street, which was very much better than though we had
been placed in one of the dark, damp cells. Upon the whole, we got along very
well, so far as the jail and its keeper were concerned. Immediately after the
holidays were over, contrary to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr.
Freeland came up to Easton, and took Charles, the two Henrys, and John, out of
jail, and carried them home, leaving me alone. I regarded this separation as a
final one. It caused me more pain than any thing else in the whole transaction.
I was ready for any thing rather than separation. I supposed that they had
consulted together, and had decided that, as I was the whole cause of the
intention of the others to run away, it was hard to make the innocent suffer
with the guilty; and that they had, therefore, concluded to take the others
home, and sell me, as a warning to the others that remained. It is due to the
noble Henry to say, he seemed almost as reluctant at leaving the prison as at
leaving home to come to the prison. But we knew we should, in all probability,
be separated, if we were sold; and since he was in their hands, he concluded to
go peaceably home.
</p>

<p>
I was now left to my fate. I was all alone, and within the walls of a stone
prison. But a few days before, and I was full of hope. I expected to have been
safe in a land of freedom; but now I was covered with gloom, sunk down to the
utmost despair. I thought the possibility of freedom was gone. I was kept in
this way about one week, at the end of which, Captain Auld, my master, to my
surprise and utter astonishment, came up, and took me out, with the intention
of sending me, with a gentleman of his acquaintance, into Alabama. But, from
some cause or other, he did not send me to Alabama, but concluded to send me
back to Baltimore, to live again with his brother Hugh, and to learn a trade.
</p>

<p>
Thus, after an absence of three years and one month, I was once more permitted
to return to my old home at Baltimore. My master sent me away, because there
existed against me a very great prejudice in the community, and he feared I
might be killed.
</p>

<p>
In a few weeks after I went to Baltimore, Master Hugh hired me to Mr. William
Gardner, an extensive ship-builder, on Fell’s Point. I was put there to learn
how to calk. It, however, proved a very unfavorable place for the
accomplishment of this object. Mr. Gardner was engaged that spring in building
two large man-of-war brigs, professedly for the Mexican government. The vessels
were to be launched in the July of that year, and in failure thereof, Mr.
Gardner was to lose a considerable sum; so that when I entered, all was hurry.
There was no time to learn any thing. Every man had to do that which he knew
how to do. In entering the shipyard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do
whatever the carpenters commanded me to do. This was placing me at the beck and
call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as masters. Their
word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one. At times I needed a
dozen pair of hands. I was called a dozen ways in the space of a single minute.
Three or four voices would strike my ear at the same moment. It was—“Fred.,
come help me to cant this timber here.”—“Fred., come carry this timber
yonder.”—“Fred., bring that roller here.”—“Fred., go get a fresh can of
water.”—“Fred., come help saw off the end of this timber.”—“Fred., go quick,
and get the crowbar.”—“Fred., hold on the end of this fall.”—“Fred., go to the
blacksmith’s shop, and get a new punch.”—“Hurra, Fred! run and bring me a cold
chisel.”—“I say, Fred., bear a hand, and get up a fire as quick as lightning
under that steam-box.”—“Halloo, nigger! come, turn this grindstone.”—“Come,
come! move, move! and <i>bowse</i> this timber forward.”—“I say, darky, blast
your eyes, why don’t you heat up some pitch?”—“Halloo! halloo! halloo!” (Three
voices at the same time.) “Come here!—Go there!—Hold on where you are! Damn
you, if you move, I’ll knock your brains out!”
</p>

<p>
This was my school for eight months; and I might have remained there longer,
but for a most horrid fight I had with four of the white apprentices, in which
my left eye was nearly knocked out, and I was horribly mangled in other
respects. The facts in the case were these: Until a very little while after I
went there, white and black ship-carpenters worked side by side, and no one
seemed to see any impropriety in it. All hands seemed to be very well
satisfied. Many of the black carpenters were freemen. Things seemed to be going
on very well. All at once, the white carpenters knocked off, and said they
would not work with free colored workmen. Their reason for this, as alleged,
was, that if free colored carpenters were encouraged, they would soon take the
trade into their own hands, and poor white men would be thrown out of
employment. They therefore felt called upon at once to put a stop to it. And,
taking advantage of Mr. Gardner’s necessities, they broke off, swearing they
would work no longer, unless he would discharge his black carpenters. Now,
though this did not extend to me in form, it did reach me in fact. My
fellow-apprentices very soon began to feel it degrading to them to work with
me. They began to put on airs, and talk about the “niggers” taking the country,
saying we all ought to be killed; and, being encouraged by the journeymen, they
commenced making my condition as hard as they could, by hectoring me around,
and sometimes striking me. I, of course, kept the vow I made after the fight
with Mr. Covey, and struck back again, regardless of consequences; and while I
kept them from combining, I succeeded very well; for I could whip the whole of
them, taking them separately. They, however, at length combined, and came upon
me, armed with sticks, stones, and heavy handspikes. One came in front with a
half brick. There was one at each side of me, and one behind me. While I was
attending to those in front, and on either side, the one behind ran up with the
handspike, and struck me a heavy blow upon the head. It stunned me. I fell, and
with this they all ran upon me, and fell to beating me with their fists. I let
them lay on for a while, gathering strength. In an instant, I gave a sudden
surge, and rose to my hands and knees. Just as I did that, one of their number
gave me, with his heavy boot, a powerful kick in the left eye. My eyeball
seemed to have burst. When they saw my eye closed, and badly swollen, they left
me. With this I seized the handspike, and for a time pursued them. But here the
carpenters interfered, and I thought I might as well give it up. It was
impossible to stand my hand against so many. All this took place in sight of
not less than fifty white ship-carpenters, and not one interposed a friendly
word; but some cried, “Kill the damned nigger! Kill him! kill him! He struck a
white person.” I found my only chance for life was in flight. I succeeded in
getting away without an additional blow, and barely so; for to strike a white
man is death by Lynch law,—and that was the law in Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard; nor
is there much of any other out of Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard.
</p>

<p>
I went directly home, and told the story of my wrongs to Master Hugh; and I am
happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was heavenly, compared
with that of his brother Thomas under similar circumstances. He listened
attentively to my narration of the circumstances leading to the savage outrage,
and gave many proofs of his strong indignation at it. The heart of my once
overkind mistress was again melted into pity. My puffed-out eye and
blood-covered face moved her to tears. She took a chair by me, washed the blood
from my face, and, with a mother’s tenderness, bound up my head, covering the
wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh beef. It was almost compensation for my
suffering to witness, once more, a manifestation of kindness from this, my once
affectionate old mistress. Master Hugh was very much enraged. He gave
expression to his feelings by pouring out curses upon the heads of those who
did the deed. As soon as I got a little the better of my bruises, he took me
with him to Esquire Watson’s, on Bond Street, to see what could be done about
the matter. Mr. Watson inquired who saw the assault committed. Master Hugh told
him it was done in Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard at midday, where there were a large
company of men at work. “As to that,” he said, “the deed was done, and there
was no question as to who did it.” His answer was, he could do nothing in the
case, unless some white man would come forward and testify. He could issue no
warrant on my word. If I had been killed in the presence of a thousand colored
people, their testimony combined would have been insufficient to have arrested
one of the murderers. Master Hugh, for once, was compelled to say this state of
things was too bad. Of course, it was impossible to get any white man to
volunteer his testimony in my behalf, and against the white young men. Even
those who may have sympathized with me were not prepared to do this. It
required a degree of courage unknown to them to do so; for just at that time,
the slightest manifestation of humanity toward a colored person was denounced
as abolitionism, and that name subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities.
The watchwords of the bloody-minded in that region, and in those days, were,
“Damn the abolitionists!” and “Damn the niggers!” There was nothing done, and
probably nothing would have been done if I had been killed. Such was, and such
remains, the state of things in the Christian city of Baltimore.
</p>

<p>
Master Hugh, finding he could get no redress, refused to let me go back again
to Mr. Gardner. He kept me himself, and his wife dressed my wound till I was
again restored to health. He then took me into the ship-yard of which he was
foreman, in the employment of Mr. Walter Price. There I was immediately set to
calking, and very soon learned the art of using my mallet and irons. In the
course of one year from the time I left Mr. Gardner’s, I was able to command
the highest wages given to the most experienced calkers. I was now of some
importance to my master. I was bringing him from six to seven dollars per week.
I sometimes brought him nine dollars per week: my wages were a dollar and a
half a day. After learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own
contracts, and collected the money which I earned. My pathway became much more
smooth than before; my condition was now much more comfortable. When I could
get no calking to do, I did nothing. During these leisure times, those old
notions about freedom would steal over me again. When in Mr. Gardner’s
employment, I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of excitement, I could think
of nothing, scarcely, but my life; and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot
my liberty. I have observed this in my experience of slavery,—that whenever my
condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only
increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my
freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make
a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and,
as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to
detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is
right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.
</p>

<p>
I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I
contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own;
yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent
of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,—not because he
had any hand in earning it,—not because I owed it to him,—nor because he
possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the
power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the
high seas is exactly the same.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2HCH0011"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>

<p>
I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally
succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any of the
peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my intention not to
state all the facts connected with the transaction. My reasons for pursuing
this course may be understood from the following: First, were I to give a
minute statement of all the facts, it is not only possible, but quite probable,
that others would thereby be involved in the most embarrassing difficulties.
Secondly, such a statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on
the part of slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would,
of course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother bondman
might escape his galling chains. I deeply regret the necessity that impels me
to suppress any thing of importance connected with my experience in slavery. It
would afford me great pleasure indeed, as well as materially add to the
interest of my narrative, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I
know exists in the minds of many, by an accurate statement of all the facts
pertaining to my most fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this
pleasure, and the curious of the gratification which such a statement would
afford. I would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations which
evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself, and thereby run
the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother slave might clear
himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
</p>

<p>
I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western
friends have conducted what they call the <i>underground railroad,</i> but
which I think, by their open declarations, has been made most emphatically the
<i>upperground railroad.</i> I honor those good men and women for their noble
daring, and applaud them for willingly subjecting themselves to bloody
persecution, by openly avowing their participation in the escape of slaves. I,
however, can see very little good resulting from such a course, either to
themselves or the slaves escaping; while, upon the other hand, I see and feel
assured that those open declarations are a positive evil to the slaves
remaining, who are seeking to escape. They do nothing towards enlightening the
slave, whilst they do much towards enlightening the master. They stimulate him
to greater watchfulness, and enhance his power to capture his slave. We owe
something to the slave south of the line as well as to those north of it; and
in aiding the latter on their way to freedom, we should be careful to do
nothing which would be likely to hinder the former from escaping from slavery.
I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of
flight adopted by the slave. I would leave him to imagine himself surrounded by
myriads of invisible tormentors, ever ready to snatch from his infernal grasp
his trembling prey. Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness
commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at every step
he takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running the frightful risk of
having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible agency. Let us render the
tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints
of our flying brother. But enough of this. I will now proceed to the statement
of those facts, connected with my escape, for which I am alone responsible, and
for which no one can be made to suffer but myself.
</p>

<p>
In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite restless. I could see no
reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my toil into
the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly wages, he would, after
counting the money, look me in the face with a robber-like fierceness, and ask,
“Is this all?” He was satisfied with nothing less than the last cent. He would,
however, when I made him six dollars, sometimes give me six cents, to encourage
me. It had the opposite effect. I regarded it as a sort of admission of my
right to the whole. The fact that he gave me any part of my wages was proof, to
my mind, that he believed me entitled to the whole of them. I always felt worse
for having received any thing; for I feared that the giving me a few cents
would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself to be a pretty honorable
sort of robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was ever on the look-out for
means of escape; and, finding no direct means, I determined to try to hire my
time, with a view of getting money with which to make my escape. In the spring
of 1838, when Master Thomas came to Baltimore to purchase his spring goods, I
got an opportunity, and applied to him to allow me to hire my time. He
unhesitatingly refused my request, and told me this was another stratagem by
which to escape. He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and
that, in the event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts
to catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He told me, if
I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He said, if I behaved
myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete
thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to depend solely upon him for
happiness. He seemed to see fully the pressing necessity of setting aside my
intellectual nature, in order to contentment in slavery. But in spite of him,
and even in spite of myself, I continued to think, and to think about the
injustice of my enslavement, and the means of escape.
</p>

<p>
About two months after this, I applied to Master Hugh for the privilege of
hiring my time. He was not acquainted with the fact that I had applied to
Master Thomas, and had been refused. He too, at first, seemed disposed to
refuse; but, after some reflection, he granted me the privilege, and proposed
the following terms: I was to be allowed all my time, make all contracts with
those for whom I worked, and find my own employment; and, in return for this
liberty, I was to pay him three dollars at the end of each week; find myself in
calking tools, and in board and clothing. My board was two dollars and a half
per week. This, with the wear and tear of clothing and calking tools, made my
regular expenses about six dollars per week. This amount I was compelled to
make up, or relinquish the privilege of hiring my time. Rain or shine, work or
no work, at the end of each week the money must be forthcoming, or I must give
up my privilege. This arrangement, it will be perceived, was decidedly in my
master’s favor. It relieved him of all need of looking after me. His money was
sure. He received all the benefits of slaveholding without its evils; while I
endured all the evils of a slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety of a
freeman. I found it a hard bargain. But, hard as it was, I thought it better
than the old mode of getting along. It was a step towards freedom to be allowed
to bear the responsibilities of a freeman, and I was determined to hold on upon
it. I bent myself to the work of making money. I was ready to work at night as
well as day, and by the most untiring perseverance and industry, I made enough
to meet my expenses, and lay up a little money every week. I went on thus from
May till August. Master Hugh then refused to allow me to hire my time longer.
The ground for his refusal was a failure on my part, one Saturday night, to pay
him for my week’s time. This failure was occasioned by my attending a camp
meeting about ten miles from Baltimore. During the week, I had entered into an
engagement with a number of young friends to start from Baltimore to the camp
ground early Saturday evening; and being detained by my employer, I was unable
to get down to Master Hugh’s without disappointing the company. I knew that
Master Hugh was in no special need of the money that night. I therefore decided
to go to camp meeting, and upon my return pay him the three dollars. I staid at
the camp meeting one day longer than I intended when I left. But as soon as I
returned, I called upon him to pay him what he considered his due. I found him
very angry; he could scarce restrain his wrath. He said he had a great mind to
give me a severe whipping. He wished to know how I dared go out of the city
without asking his permission. I told him I hired my time and while I paid him
the price which he asked for it, I did not know that I was bound to ask him
when and where I should go. This reply troubled him; and, after reflecting a
few moments, he turned to me, and said I should hire my time no longer; that
the next thing he should know of, I would be running away. Upon the same plea,
he told me to bring my tools and clothing home forthwith. I did so; but instead
of seeking work, as I had been accustomed to do previously to hiring my time, I
spent the whole week without the performance of a single stroke of work. I did
this in retaliation. Saturday night, he called upon me as usual for my week’s
wages. I told him I had no wages; I had done no work that week. Here we were
upon the point of coming to blows. He raved, and swore his determination to get
hold of me. I did not allow myself a single word; but was resolved, if he laid
the weight of his hand upon me, it should be blow for blow. He did not strike
me, but told me that he would find me in constant employment in future. I
thought the matter over during the next day, Sunday, and finally resolved upon
the third day of September, as the day upon which I would make a second attempt
to secure my freedom. I now had three weeks during which to prepare for my
journey. Early on Monday morning, before Master Hugh had time to make any
engagement for me, I went out and got employment of Mr. Butler, at his
ship-yard near the drawbridge, upon what is called the City Block, thus making
it unnecessary for him to seek employment for me. At the end of the week, I
brought him between eight and nine dollars. He seemed very well pleased, and
asked why I did not do the same the week before. He little knew what my plans
were. My object in working steadily was to remove any suspicion he might
entertain of my intent to run away; and in this I succeeded admirably. I
suppose he thought I was never better satisfied with my condition than at the
very time during which I was planning my escape. The second week passed, and
again I carried him my full wages; and so well pleased was he, that he gave me
twenty-five cents, (quite a large sum for a slaveholder to give a slave,) and
bade me to make a good use of it. I told him I would.
</p>

<p>
Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was trouble. It
is impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of my contemplated
start drew near. I had a number of warmhearted friends in Baltimore,—friends
that I loved almost as I did my life,—and the thought of being separated from
them forever was painful beyond expression. It is my opinion that thousands
would escape from slavery, who now remain, but for the strong cords of
affection that bind them to their friends. The thought of leaving my friends
was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of
them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else.
Besides the pain of separation, the dread and apprehension of a failure
exceeded what I had experienced at my first attempt. The appalling defeat I
then sustained returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if I failed in this
attempt, my case would be a hopeless one—it would seal my fate as a slave
forever. I could not hope to get off with any thing less than the severest
punishment, and being placed beyond the means of escape. It required no very
vivid imagination to depict the most frightful scenes through which I should
have to pass, in case I failed. The wretchedness of slavery, and the
blessedness of freedom, were perpetually before me. It was life and death with
me. But I remained firm, and, according to my resolution, on the third day of
September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York without
the slightest interruption of any kind. How I did so,—what means I
adopted,—what direction I travelled, and by what mode of conveyance,—I must
leave unexplained, for the reasons before mentioned.
</p>

<p>
I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State. I
have never been able to answer the question with any satisfaction to myself. It
was a moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced. I suppose I felt as
one may imagine the unarmed mariner to feel when he is rescued by a friendly
man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate. In writing to a dear friend,
immediately after my arrival at New York, I said I felt like one who had
escaped a den of hungry lions. This state of mind, however, very soon subsided;
and I was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I was
yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. This
in itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm. But the loneliness
overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger;
without home and without friends, in the midst of thousands of my own
brethren—children of a common Father, and yet I dared not to unfold to any one
of them my sad condition. I was afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking
to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving
kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as
the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey. The motto which
I adopted when I started from slavery was this—“Trust no man!” I saw in every
white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man cause for distrust. It was
a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must needs experience it,
or imagine himself in similar circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave in a
strange land—a land given up to be the hunting-ground for slaveholders—whose
inhabitants are legalized kidnappers—where he is every moment subjected to the
terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the hideous
crocodile seizes upon his prey!—I say, let him place himself in my
situation—without home or friends—without money or credit—wanting shelter, and
no one to give it—wanting bread, and no money to buy it,—and at the same time
let him feel that he is pursued by merciless men-hunters, and in total darkness
as to what to do, where to go, or where to stay,—perfectly helpless both as to
the means of defence and means of escape,—in the midst of plenty, yet suffering
the terrible gnawings of hunger,—in the midst of houses, yet having no
home,—among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose
greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is only
equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the helpless
fish upon which they subsist,—I say, let him be placed in this most trying
situation,—the situation in which I was placed,—then, and not till then, will
he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the
toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.
</p>

<p>
Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in this distressed situation. I was
relieved from it by the humane hand of <i>Mr. David Ruggles</i>, whose
vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget. I am glad of an
opportunity to express, as far as words can, the love and gratitude I bear him.
Mr. Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and is himself in need of the same
kind offices which he was once so forward in the performance of toward others.
I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very
kindly took me to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard
Streets. Mr. Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable <i>Darg</i>
case, as well as attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways
and means for their successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed in on
almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies.
</p>

<p>
Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished to know of me where I wanted
to go; as he deemed it unsafe for me to remain in New York. I told him I was a
calker, and should like to go where I could get work. I thought of going to
Canada; but he decided against it, and in favor of my going to New Bedford,
thinking I should be able to get work there at my trade. At this time, Anna,<a
href="#fn-2" name="fnref-2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> my intended wife, came on; for I
wrote to her immediately after my arrival at New York, (notwithstanding my
homeless, houseless, and helpless condition,) informing her of my successful
flight, and wishing her to come on forthwith. In a few days after her arrival,
Mr. Ruggles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, who, in the presence of Mr.
Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and two or three others, performed the marriage
ceremony, and gave us a certificate, of which the following is an exact copy:—
</p>

<p class="letter">
“This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick Johnson<a
href="#fn-3" name="fnref-3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> and Anna Murray, as man and
wife, in the presence of Mr. David Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels.
</p>

<p class="right">
“J<small>AMES</small> W. C. P<small>ENNINGTON</small><br/>
“<i>New York, Sept</i>. 15, 1838”
</p>

<p class="footnote">
<a name="fn-2"></a> <a href="#fnref-2">[2]</a>
She was free.
</p>

<p class="footnote">
<a name="fn-3"></a> <a href="#fnref-3">[3]</a>
I had changed my name from Frederick <i>Bailey</i> to that of <i>Johnson</i>.
</p>

<p>
Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar bill from Mr. Ruggles, I
shouldered one part of our baggage, and Anna took up the other, and we set out
forthwith to take passage on board of the steamboat John W. Richmond for
Newport, on our way to New Bedford. Mr. Ruggles gave me a letter to a Mr. Shaw
in Newport, and told me, in case my money did not serve me to New Bedford, to
stop in Newport and obtain further assistance; but upon our arrival at Newport,
we were so anxious to get to a place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked
the necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take seats in the stage, and
promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do this by two
excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names I afterward
ascertained to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber. They seemed at once to
understand our circumstances, and gave us such assurance of their friendliness
as put us fully at ease in their presence.
</p>

<p>
It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time. Upon reaching New
Bedford, we were directed to the house of Mr. Nathan Johnson, by whom we were
kindly received, and hospitably provided for. Both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson took a
deep and lively interest in our welfare. They proved themselves quite worthy of
the name of abolitionists. When the stage-driver found us unable to pay our
fare, he held on upon our baggage as security for the debt. I had but to
mention the fact to Mr. Johnson, and he forthwith advanced the money.
</p>

<p>
We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for the
duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom. On the morning after our
arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the question arose as to
what name I should be called by. The name given me by my mother was, “Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey.” I, however, had dispensed with the two middle
names long before I left Maryland so that I was generally known by the name of
“Frederick Bailey.” I started from Baltimore bearing the name of “Stanley.”
When I got to New York, I again changed my name to “Frederick Johnson,” and
thought that would be the last change. But when I got to New Bedford, I found
it necessary again to change my name. The reason of this necessity was, that
there were so many Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to
distinguish between them. I gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of choosing me a
name, but told him he must not take from me the name of “Frederick.” I must
hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my identity. Mr. Johnson had just been
reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and at once suggested that my name be
“Douglass.” From that time until now I have been called “Frederick Douglass;”
and as I am more widely known by that name than by either of the others, I
shall continue to use it as my own.
</p>

<p>
I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New Bedford.
The impression which I had received respecting the character and condition of
the people of the north, I found to be singularly erroneous. I had very
strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of the comforts, and scarcely
any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at the north, compared with what were
enjoyed by the slaveholders of the south. I probably came to this conclusion
from the fact that northern people owned no slaves. I supposed that they were
about upon a level with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew
<i>they</i> were exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their
poverty as the necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had
somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no
wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I expected to
meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population, living in the most
Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury, pomp, and
grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such being my conjectures, any one
acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may very readily infer how
palpably I must have seen my mistake.
</p>

<p>
In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the wharves,
to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded with the
strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding in the stream, I
saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order, and of the largest size.
Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite warehouses of the widest
dimensions, stowed to their utmost capacity with the necessaries and comforts
of life. Added to this, almost every body seemed to be at work, but noiselessly
so, compared with what I had been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no
loud songs heard from those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard no
deep oaths or horrid curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of men; but all
seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went
at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the deep interest
which he felt in what he was doing, as well as a sense of his own dignity as a
man. To me this looked exceedingly strange. From the wharves I strolled around
and over the town, gazing with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches,
beautiful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of
wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of
slaveholding Maryland.
</p>

<p>
Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated
houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and barefooted
women, such as I had been accustomed to see in Hillsborough, Easton, St.
Michael’s, and Baltimore. The people looked more able, stronger, healthier, and
happier, than those of Maryland. I was for once made glad by a view of extreme
wealth, without being saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But the most
astonishing as well as the most interesting thing to me was the condition of
the colored people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped thither as a
refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been seven years out
of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the
comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders in Maryland. I will venture
to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I can say with a grateful
heart, “I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink;
I was a stranger, and he took me in”) lived in a neater house; dined at a
better table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the
moral, religious, and political character of the nation,—than nine tenths of
the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man.
His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but those also of Mrs.
Johnson. I found the colored people much more spirited than I had supposed they
would be. I found among them a determination to protect each other from the
blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all hazards. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a
circumstance which illustrated their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave
were on unfriendly terms. The former was heard to threaten the latter with
informing his master of his whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was called among
the colored people, under the stereotyped notice, “Business of importance!” The
betrayer was invited to attend. The people came at the appointed hour, and
organized the meeting by appointing a very religious old gentleman as
president, who, I believe, made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting
as follows: “<i>Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you
young men just take him outside the door, and kill him!</i>” With this, a
number of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid than
themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not been seen in
New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such threats, and should
there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be the consequence.
</p>

<p>
I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a
load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a
glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It was a happy moment,
the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been slaves. It
was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no
Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I
worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced. I was at work
for myself and newly-married wife. It was to me the starting-point of a new
existence. When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of
calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white
calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course I could get no
employment.<a href="#fn-4" name="fnref-4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> Finding my trade
of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared
myself to do any kind of work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have
his wood-horse and saw, and I very soon found myself a plenty of work. There
was no work too hard—none too dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal,
carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,—all of which I did for nearly
three years in New Bedford, before I became known to the anti-slavery world.
</p>

<p class="footnote">
<a name="fn-4"></a> <a href="#fnref-4">[4]</a>
I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New
Bedford—a result of anti-slavery effort.
</p>

<p>
In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to me,
and inquired if I did not wish to take the “Liberator.” I told him I did; but,
just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was unable to pay
for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and
I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me
to attempt to describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set
all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciations
of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery—and its powerful attacks upon
the upholders of the institution—sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as
I had never felt before!
</p>

<p>
I had not long been a reader of the “Liberator,” before I got a pretty correct
idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took
right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what I could, I did with a
joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting. I
seldom had much to say at the meetings, because what I wanted to say was said
so much better by others. But, while attending an anti-slavery convention at
Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was
at the same time much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who
had heard me speak in the colored people’s meeting at New Bedford. It was a
severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a
slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a
few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with
considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading
the cause of my brethren—with what success, and with what devotion, I leave
those acquainted with my labors to decide.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a name="link2H_APPE"></a>APPENDIX</h2>

<p>
I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in several
instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may
possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an
opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I
deem it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I have said
respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the
<i>slaveholding religion</i> of this land, and with no possible reference to
Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the
Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide,
that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the
other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity
to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial
Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding,
women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of
this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling
the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all
misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was
there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve
the devil in.” I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the
religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which
every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for
missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the
blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to
be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings
at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show
me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for
purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who
proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning
to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of
marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the
ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the
family relation is the same that scatters whole families,—sundering husbands
and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers,—leaving the hut vacant,
and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the
adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to
support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the <i>Poor Heathen!
All For The Glory Of God And The Good Of Souls!</i> The slave auctioneer’s bell
and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the
heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master.
Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together.
The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters
and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer
in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and
souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually
help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit,
and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of
Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils
dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Just God! and these are they,v Who minister at thine altar, God of right!<br/>
Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay<br/>
On Israel’s ark of light.<br/>
<br/>
“What! preach, and kidnap men?<br/>
Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?<br/>
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then<br/>
Bolt hard the captive’s door?<br/>
<br/>
“What! servants of thy own<br/>
Merciful Son, who came to seek and save<br/>
The homeless and the outcast, fettering down<br/>
The tasked and plundered slave!<br/>
<br/>
“Pilate and Herod friends!<br/>
Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!<br/>
Just God and holy! is that church which lends<br/>
Strength to the spoiler thine?”
</p>

<p>
The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may be as
truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, “They bind heavy
burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they
themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. All their works they
do for to be seen of men.—They love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the
chief seats in the synagogues, . . . . . . and to be called of men, Rabbi,
Rabbi.—But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the
kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer
ye them that are entering to go in. Ye devour widows’ houses, and for a
pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him
twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.—Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have
omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith; these
ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides!
which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the
platter; but within, they are full of extortion and excess.—Woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres,
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones,
and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men,
but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”
</p>

<p>
Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the
overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat,
and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would
be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a <i>sheep</i>-stealer; and at
the same time they hug to their communion a <i>man</i>-stealer, and brand me
with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with
Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time
neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are
always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are
represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate
their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of
the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his
hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect
the heathen at their own doors.
</p>

<p>
Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any
misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the
religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions,
of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and
yet in union with slaveholders. It is against religion, as presented by these
bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify.
</p>

<p>
I conclude these remarks by copying the following portrait of the religion of
the south, (which is, by communion and fellowship, the religion of the north,)
which I soberly affirm is “true to the life,” and without caricature or the
slightest exaggeration. It is said to have been drawn, several years before the
present anti-slavery agitation began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who,
while residing at the south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals,
manners, and piety, with his own eyes. “Shall I not visit for these things?
saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”
</p>

<p class="center"><a name="link2H_4_0016"></a>
<b>A PARODY</b>
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell<br/>
How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,<br/>
And women buy and children sell,<br/>
And preach all sinners down to hell,<br/>
And sing of heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“They’ll bleat and baa, dona like goats,<br/>
Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,<br/>
Array their backs in fine black coats,<br/>
Then seize their negroes by their throats,<br/>
And choke, for heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“They’ll church you if you sip a dram,<br/>
And damn you if you steal a lamb;<br/>
Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,<br/>
Of human rights, and bread and ham;<br/>
Kidnapper’s heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“They’ll loudly talk of Christ’s reward,<br/>
And bind his image with a cord,<br/>
And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,<br/>
And sell their brother in the Lord<br/>
To handcuffed heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“They’ll read and sing a sacred song,<br/>
And make a prayer both loud and long,<br/>
And teach the right and do the wrong,<br/>
Hailing the brother, sister throng,<br/>
With words of heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“We wonder how such saints can sing,<br/>
Or praise the Lord upon the wing,<br/>
Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,<br/>
And to their slaves and mammon cling,<br/>
In guilty conscience union.<br/>
<br/>
“They’ll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,<br/>
And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie,<br/>
And lay up treasures in the sky,<br/>
By making switch and cowskin fly,<br/>
In hope of heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“They’ll crack old Tony on the skull,<br/>
And preach and roar like Bashan bull,<br/>
Or braying ass, of mischief full,<br/>
Then seize old Jacob by the wool,<br/>
And pull for heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,<br/>
Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,<br/>
Yet never would afford relief<br/>
To needy, sable sons of grief,<br/>
Was big with heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“‘Love not the world,’ the preacher said,<br/>
And winked his eye, and shook his head;<br/>
He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,<br/>
Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,<br/>
Yet still loved heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“Another preacher whining spoke<br/>
Of One whose heart for sinners broke:<br/>
He tied old Nanny to an oak,<br/>
And drew the blood at every stroke,<br/>
And prayed for heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“Two others oped their iron jaws,<br/>
And waved their children-stealing paws;<br/>
There sat their children in gewgaws;<br/>
By stinting negroes’ backs and maws,<br/>
They kept up heavenly union.<br/>
<br/>
“All good from Jack another takes,<br/>
And entertains their flirts and rakes,<br/>
Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes,<br/>
And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;<br/>
And this goes down for union.”
</p>

<p>
Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward
throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of
deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds—faithfully relying upon the
power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my humble efforts—and
solemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred cause,—I subscribe myself,
</p>

<p class="right">
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
</p>

<p class="letter">
L<small>YNN</small>, <i>Mass., April</i> 28, 1845.
</p>

<p class="center">
THE END
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 23 ***</div>

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