The country I now lived in was new, and abounded with every sort of game
common to a new settlement. Wages were high, and I could sometimes earn
a dollar and a half a day by doing job work on Sunday. The price of a
day's work here was a dollar. My master paid me regularly and fairly for
all the work I did for him on Sunday, and I never went anywhere else to
procure work. All his other hands were treated in the same way. He also
gave me an old gun that had seen much hard service, for the stock was
quite shattered to pieces, and the lock would not strike fire. I took my
gun to a blacksmith in the neighborhood, and he repaired the lock, so
that my musket was as sure fire as any piece need be. I found upon trial
that though the stock and lock had been worn out, the barrel was none
the worse for the service it had undergone.
I now, for the first time in my life, became a hunter, in the proper
sense of the word; and generally managed my affairs in such a way as to
get the half of Saturday to myself. This I did by prevailing on my
master to set my task for the week on Monday morning.
Saturday was appropriated to hunting, if I was not obliged to work all
day, and I soon became pretty expert in the use of my gun. I made salt
licks in the woods, to which the deer came at night, and I shot them
from a seat of clapboards that was placed on the branches of a tree.
Raccoons abounded here, and were of a large size, and fat at all
seasons. In the month of April I saw the ground thickly strewed with
nuts, the growth of the last year. I now began to live well,
notwithstanding the persecution that my mistress still directed against
me, and to feel myself, in some measure, an independent man.
The temper of my mistress grew worse daily, and to add to my troubles,
the health of my master began to decline, and towards the latter part of
autumn he told me that already he felt the symptoms of approaching
death.
This was a source of much anxiety and trouble to me, for I saw clearly,
if I ever fell under the unbridled dominion of my mistress, I should
regret the worst period of my servitude in South Carolina. I was afraid
as winter came on that my master might grow worse and pass away in the
spring--for his disease was the consumption of the lungs.
We passed this winter in clearing land, after we had secured the crops
of cotton and corn, and nothing happened on our plantation to disturb
the usual monotony of the life of a slave, except that in the month of
January, my master informed me that he intended to go to Savannah for
the purpose of purchasing groceries, and such other supplies as might be
required on the plantation, in the following season; and that he
intended to take down a load of cotton with our wagon and team, and that
I must prepare to be the driver. This intelligence was not disagreeable
to me, as the trip to Savannah would, in the first place, release me for
a short time from the tyranny of my mistress, and in the second, would
give me an opportunity of seeing a great deal of strange country. I
derived a third advantage, in after times, from this journey, but which
did not enter into my estimate of this affair, at that time.
My master had not yet erected a cotton-gin on his place--the land not
being his own--and we hauled our cotton, in the seed, nearly three miles
to be ginned, for which we had to give one-fourth to the owner of the
gin.
When the time of my departure came, I loaded my wagon with ten bales of
cotton, and set out with the same team of six mules that I had driven
from South Carolina. Nothing of moment happened to me until the evening
of the fourth day, when we were one hundred miles from home. My master
stopped to-night (for he traveled with me on his horse) at the house of
an old friend of his; and I heard my master, in conversation with this
gentleman, (for such he certainly was) give me a very good character,
and tell him, that I was the most faithful and trusty negro that he had
ever owned. He also said that if he lived to see the expiration of the
seven years for which he had leased me, he intended to buy me. He said
much more of me; and I thought I heard him tell his friend something
about my mistress, but this was spoken in a low tone of voice, and I
could not distinctly understand it. When I was going away in the morning
with my team, this gentleman came out to the wagon and ordered one of
his own slaves to help me to put the harness on my mules. At parting, he
told me to stop at his house on my return and stay all night; and said,
I should always be welcome to the use of his kitchen, if it should ever
be my lot to travel that way again.
I mention these trifles to show, that if there are hard and cruel
masters in the South, there are also others of a contrary character. The
slave-holders are neither more nor less than men, some of whom are good
and very many are bad. My master and this gentleman were certainly of
the number of the good, but the contrast between them and some others
that I have seen, was, unhappily for many of the slaves, very great. I
shall, hereafter, refer to this gentleman, at whose house I now was, and
shall never name him without honor, nor think of him without gratitude.
As I traveled through the country with my team, my chief employment,
beyond my duty of a teamster, was to observe the condition of the slaves
on the various plantations by which we passed on our journey, and to
compare things in Georgia, as I now saw them, with similar things in
Carolina, as I had heretofore seen them.
There is as much sameness among the various cotton plantations in
Georgia, as there is among the various farms in New York or New Jersey.
He who has seen one cotton-field has seen all the other cotton-fields,
bating the difference that naturally results from good and bad soils, or
good and bad culture; but the contrast that prevails in the treatment of
the slaves, on different plantations, is very remarkable. We traveled a
road that was not well provided with public houses, and we frequently
stopped for the night at the private dwellings of the planters, and I
observed that my master was received as a visitor, and treated as a
friend in the family, whilst I was always left at the road with my
wagon, my master supplying me with money to buy food for myself and my
mules.
It was my practice, when we remained all night at these gentlemen's
houses, to go to the kitchen in the evening, after I had fed my mules
and eaten my supper, and pass some time in conversation with the black
people I might chance to find there. One evening we halted before
sundown, and I unhitched my mules at the road, about two hundred yards
from the house of a planter, to which my master went to claim
hospitality for himself.
After I had disposed of my team for the night, and taken my supper, I
went as usual to see the people of color in the kitchen, belonging to
this plantation. The sun had just set when I reached the kitchen, and
soon afterwards, a black boy came in and told the woman, who was the
only person in the kitchen when I came to it, that she must go down to
the overseer's house. She immediately started, in obedience to this
order, and not choosing to remain alone in a strange house, I concluded
to follow the woman, and see the other people of this estate. When we
reached the house of the overseer, the colored people were coming in
from the field, and with them came the overseer, and another man, better
dressed than overseers usually are.
I stood at some distance from these gentlemen, not thinking it prudent
to be too forward amongst strangers. The black people were all called
together, and the overseer told them, that some one of them had stolen
a fat hog from the pen, carried it to the woods, and there killed and
dressed it; that he had that day found the place where the hog had been
slaughtered, and that if they did not confess, and tell who the
perpetrators of this theft were, they would all be whipped in the
severest manner. To this threat, no other reply was made than a
universal assertion of the innocence of the accused. They were all then
ordered to lie down upon the ground, and expose their backs, to which
the overseer applied the thong of his long whip, by turns, until he was
weary. It was fortunate for these people, that they were more than
twenty in number, which prevented the overseer from inflicting many
lashes on any one of them.
When the whole number had received, each in turn, a share of the lash,
the overseer returned to the man, to whom he had first applied the whip,
and told him he was certain that he knew who stole the hog; and that if
he did not tell who the thief was, he would whip him all night. He then
again applied the whip to the back of this man, until the blood flowed
copiously; but the sufferer hid his face in his hands, and said not a
word. The other gentleman then asked the overseer if he was confident
this man had stolen the pig; and, receiving an affirmative answer, he
said he would make the fellow confess the truth, if he would follow his
directions. He then asked the overseer if he had ever tried
cat-hauling, upon an obstinate negro; and was told that this punishment
had been heard of, but never practised on this plantation.
A boy was then ordered to get up, run to the house, and bring a cat,
which was soon produced. The cat, which was a large gray tom-cat, was
then taken by the well-dressed gentleman, and placed upon the bare back
of the prostrate black man, near the shoulder, and forcibly dragged by
the tail down the back, and along the bare thighs of the sufferer. The
cat sunk his rails into the flesh, and tore off pieces of the skin with
his teeth. The man roared with the pain of this punishment, and would
have rolled along the ground, had he not been held in his place by the
force of four other slaves, each one of whom confined a hand or a foot.
As soon as the cat was drawn from him, the man said he would tell who
stole the hog, and confessed that he and several others, three of whom
were then holding him, had stolen the hog--killed, dressed, and eaten
it. In return for this confession, the overseer said he should have
another touch of the cat, which was again drawn along his back, not as
before, from the head downwards, but from below the hips to the head.
The man was then permitted to rise, and each of those who had been named
by him as a participator in stealing the hog, was compelled to lie down,
and have the cat twice drawn along his back; first downwards, and then
upwards. After the termination of this punishment, each of the sufferers
was washed with salt water, by a black woman, and they were then all
dismissed. This was the most excruciating punishment that I ever saw
inflicted on black people, and, in my opinion, it is very dangerous; for
the claws of the cat are poisonous, and wounds made by them are very
subject to inflammation.
During all this time, I had remained at the distance of fifty yards from
the place of punishment, fearing either to advance or retreat, lest I
too might excite the indignation of these sanguinary judges. After the
business was over, and my feelings became a little more composed, I
thought the voice of the gentleman in good clothes, was familiar to me;
but I could not recollect who he was, nor where I had heard his voice,
until the gentlemen at length left this place, and went towards the
great house, and as they passed me, I recognized in the companion of the
overseer, my old master, the negro trader, who had bought me in
Maryland, and brought me to Carolina.
I afterwards learned from my master that this man had formerly been
engaged in the African slave-trade, which he had given up some years
before, for the safer and less arduous business of buying negroes in the
North, and bringing them to the South, as articles of merchandise, in
which he had acquired a very respectable fortune--had lately married in
a wealthy family, in this part of the country, and was a great planter.
Two days after this, we reached Savannah, where my master sold his
cotton, and purchased a wagon load of sugar, molasses, coffee, shoes,
dry goods, and such articles as we stood in need of at home; and on the
next day after I entered the city, I again left it, and directed my
course up the country. In Savannah I saw many black men who were slaves,
and who yet acted as freemen so far that they went out to work, where
and with whom they pleased, received their own wages, and provided their
own subsistence; but were obliged to pay a certain sum at the end of
each week to their masters. One of these men told me that he paid six
dollars on every Saturday evening to his master; and yet he was
comfortably dressed, and appeared to live well. Savannah was a very busy
place, and I saw vast quantities of cotton piled up on the wharves, but
the appearance of the town itself was not much in favor of the people
who lived in it.
On my way home I traveled for several days, by a road different from
that which we had pursued in coming down; and at the distance of fifty
or sixty miles from Savannah, I passed by the largest plantation that I
had ever seen. I think I saw at least a thousand acres of cotton in one
field, which was all as level as a bowling-green. There were, as I was
told, three hundred and fifty hands at work in this field, picking the
last of the cotton from the burs; and these were the most miserable
looking slaves that I had seen in all my travels.
It was now the depth of winter, and although the weather was not cold,
yet it was the winter of this climate; and a man who lives on the
Savannah river a few years, will find himself almost as much oppressed
with cold, in winter there, as he would be in the same season of the
year on the banks of the Potomac, if he had always resided there.
These people were, as far as I could see, totally without shoes, and
there was no such garment as a hat of any kind amongst them. Each person
had a coarse blanket, which had holes cut for the arms to pass through,
and the top was drawn up round the neck, so as to form a sort of loose
frock, tied before with strings. The arms, when the people were at work,
were naked, and some of them had very little clothing of any kind
besides this blanket frock. The appearance of these people afforded the
most conclusive evidence that they were not eaters of pork, and that
lent lasted with them throughout the year.
I again staid all night, as I went home, with the gentleman whom I have
before noticed as the friend of my master, who had left me soon after we
quitted Savannah, and I saw him no more until I reached home.
Soon after my return from Savannah, an affair of a very melancholy
character took place in the neighborhood of my master's plantation.
About two miles from our residence lived a gentleman who was a bachelor,
and who had for his housekeeper a mulatto woman. The master was a young
man, not more than twenty-five years old, and the housekeeper must have
been at least forty. She had children grown up, one of whom had been
sold by her master, the father of the bachelor, since I lived here, and
carried away to the West. This woman had acquired a most unaccountable
influence over her young master, who lived with her as his wife, and
gave her the entire command of his house, and of every thing about it.
Before he came to live where he now did, and whilst he still resided
with his father, to whom the woman then belonged, the old gentleman
perceiving the attachment of his son to this female, had sold her to a
trader, who was on his way to the Mississippi river, in the absence of
the young man; but when the latter returned home, and learned what had
been done, he immediately set off in pursuit of the purchaser, overtook
him somewhere in the Indian territory, and bought the woman of him, at
an advanced price. He then brought her back, and put her, as his
housekeeper, on the place where he now lived; left his father, and came
to reside in person with the woman.
On a plantation adjoining that of the gentleman bachelor, lived a
planter, who owned a young mulatto man, named Frank, not more than
twenty-four or five years old, a very smart as well as handsome
fellow.--Frank had become as much enamored of this woman, who was old
enough to have been his mother, as her master, the bachelor was; and she
returned Frank's attachment, to the prejudice of her owner. Frank was in
the practice of visiting his mistress at night, a circumstance of which
her master was suspicious; and he forbade Frank from coming to the
house. This only heightened the flame that was burning in the bosoms of
the lovers; and they resolved, after many and long deliberations, to
destroy the master. She projected the plot, and furnished the means for
the murder, by taking her master's gun from the place where he usually
kept it, and giving it to Frank, who came to the house in the evening,
when the gentleman was taking his supper alone.
Lucy always waited upon her master at his meals, and knowing his usual
place of sitting, had made a hole between two of the logs of the house,
towards which she knew his back would be at supper. At a given signal,
Frank came quietly up the house, levelled the gun through the hole
prepared for him, and discharged a load of buck-shot between the
shoulders of the unsuspecting master, who sprang from his seat and fell
dead beside the table. This murder was not known in the neighborhood
until the next morning, when the woman herself went to a house on an
adjoining plantation and told it.
The murdered gentleman had several other slaves, none of whom were at
home at the time of his death, except one man; and he was so terrified
that he was afraid to run and alarm the neighborhood. I knew this man
well, and believe he was afraid of the woman and her accomplice. I never
had any doubt of his innocence, though he suffered a punishment, upon no
other evidence than mere suspicion, far more terrible than any ordinary
form of death.
As soon as the murder was known to the neighboring gentlemen, they
hastened to visit the dead body, and were no less expeditious in
instituting inquiries after those who had done the bloody deed. My
master was amongst the first who arrived at the house of the deceased;
and in a short time, half the slaves of the neighboring plantations were
arrested, and brought to the late dwelling of the dead man. For my own
part, from the moment I heard of the murder, I had no doubt of its
author.
Silence is a great virtue when it is dangerous to speak; and I had long
since determined never to advance opinions, uncalled for, in
controversies between the white people and the slaves. Many witnesses
were examined by a justice of the peace, before the coroner arrived,
but after the coming of the latter, a jury was called; and more than
half a day was spent in asking questions of various black people,
without the disclosure of any circumstance, which tended to fix the
guilt of the murder upon any one. My master, who was present all this
time, at last desired them to examine me, if it was thought that my
testimony could be of any service in the matter, as he wished me to go
home to attend to my work. I was sworn on the Testament to tell the
whole truth; and stated at the commencement of my testimony, that I
believed Frank and Lucy to be the murderers, and proceeded to assign the
reasons upon which my opinion was founded. Frank had not been present at
this examination, and Lucy, who had been sworn, had said she knew
nothing of the matter; that at the time her master was shot she had gone
into the kitchen for some milk for his supper, and that on hearing the
gun, she had come into the room at the moment he fell to the floor and
expired; but when she opened the door and looked out, she could neither
hear nor see any one.
When Frank was brought in and made to touch the dead body, which he was
compelled to do, because some said that if he was the murderer, the
corpse would bleed at his touch, he trembled so much that I thought he
would fall, but no blood issued from the wound of the dead man. This
compulsory touching of the dead had, however, in this instance, a much
more powerful effect, in the conviction of the criminal, than the
flowing of any quantity of blood could have had; for as soon as Frank
had withdrawn his hand from the touch of the dead, the coroner asked
him, in a peremptory tone, as if conscious of the fact, why he had done
this. Frank was so confounded with fear, and overwhelmed by this
interrogatory, that he lost all self-possession, and cried out in a
voice of despair, that Lucy had made him do it.
Lucy, who had left the room when Frank was brought in, was now recalled,
and confronted with her partner in guilt, but nothing could wring a word
of confession from her. She persisted, that if Frank had murdered her
master, he had done it of his own accord, and without her knowledge or
advice. Some one now, for the first time, thought of making search for
the gun of the dead man, which was not found in the place where he
usually had kept it. Frank said he had committed the crime with this
gun, which had been placed in his hands by Lucy. Frank, Lucy and Billy,
a black man, against whom there was no evidence, nor cause of suspicion,
except that he was in the kitchen at the time of the murder, were
committed to prison in a new log-house on an adjoining plantation,
closely confined in irons, and kept there a little more than two weeks,
when they were all tried before some gentlemen of the neighborhood, who
held a court for that purpose. Lucy and Frank were condemned to be hung,
but Billy was found not guilty; although he was not released, but kept
in confinement until the execution of his companions, which took place
ten days after the trial.
On the morning of the execution, my master told me, and all the rest of
the people, that we must go to the _hanging_, as it was termed by him as
well as others. The place of punishment was only two miles from my
master's residence, and I was there in time to get a good stand, near
the gallows' tree, by which I was enabled to see all the proceedings
connected with this solemn affair. It was estimated by my master, that
there were at least fifteen thousand people present at this scene, more
than half of whom were blacks; all the masters, for a great distance
round the country, having permitted, or compelled their people to come
to this _hanging_.
Billy was brought to the gallows with Lucy and Frank, but was permitted
to walk beside the cart in which they rode. Under the gallows, after the
rope was around her neck, Lucy confessed that the murder had been
designed by her in the first place, and that Frank had only perpetrated
it at her instance. She said she had at first intended to apply to Billy
to assist her in the undertaking, but had afterwards communicated her
designs to Frank, who offered to shoot her master, if she would supply
him with a gun, and let no other person be in the secret.
A long sermon was preached by a white man under the gallows, which was
only the limb of a tree, and afterwards an exhortation was delivered by
a black man. The two convicts were hung together, and after they were
quite dead, a consultation was held among the gentlemen as to the future
disposition of Billy, who, having been in the house when his master was
murdered, and not having given immediate information of the fact, was
held to be guilty of concealing the death, and was accordingly sentenced
to receive five hundred lashes. I was in the branches of a tree close by
the place where the court was held, and distinctly heard its proceedings
and judgment. Some went to the woods to cut hickories, whilst others
stripped Billy and tied him to a tree. More than twenty long switches,
some of them six or seven feet in length, had been procured, and two men
applied the rods at the same time, one standing on each side of the
culprit, one of them using his left hand.
I had often seen black men whipped, and had always, when the lash was
applied with great severity, heard the sufferer cry out and beg for
mercy, but in this case, the pain inflicted by the double blows of the
hickory was so intense, that Billy never uttered so much as a groan; and
I do not believe he breathed for the space of two minutes after he
received the first strokes. He shrank his body close to the trunk of the
tree, around which his arms and legs were lashed, drew his shoulders up
to his head like a dying man, and trembled, or rather shivered, in all
his members. The blood flowed from the commencement, and in a few
minutes lay in small puddles at the root of the tree. I saw flakes of
flesh as long as my finger fall out of the gashes in his back; and I
believe he was insensible during all the time that he was receiving the
last two hundred lashes. When the whole five hundred lashes had been
counted by the person appointed to perform this duty, the half dead body
was unbound and laid in the shade of the tree upon which I sat. The
gentlemen who had done the whipping, eight or ten in number, being
joined by their friends, then came under the tree and drank punch until
their dinner was made ready, under a booth of green boughs at a short
distance.
After dinner, Billy, who had been groaning on the ground where he was
laid, was taken up, placed in the cart in which Lucy and Frank had been
brought to the gallows, and conveyed to the dwelling of his late master,
where he was confined to the house and his bed more than three months,
and was never worth much afterwards while I remained in Georgia.
Lucy and Frank, after they had been half an hour upon the gallows, were
cut down, and suffered to drop into a deep hole that had been dug under
them whilst they were suspended. As they fell, so the earth was thrown
upon them, and the grave closed over them for ever.
They were hung on Thursday, and the vast assemblage of people that had
convened to witness their death did not leave the place altogether until
the next Monday morning. Wagons, carts, and carriages had been brought
upon the ground; booths and tents erected for the convenience and
accommodation of the multitude; and the terrible spectacles that I have
just described were succeeded by music, dancing, trading in horses,
gambling, drinking, fighting, and every other species of amusement and
excess to which the southern people are addicted.
I had to work in the day-time, but went every night to witness this
funeral carnival,--the numbers that joined in which appeared to
increase, rather than diminish, during the Friday and Saturday that
followed the execution. It was not until Sunday afternoon that the crowd
began sensibly to diminish; and on Monday morning, after breakfast time,
the last wagons left the ground, now trampled into dust as dry and as
light as ashes, and the grave of the murderers was left to the solitude
of the woods.
Certainly those who were hanged well deserved their punishment; but it
was a very arbitrary exercise of power to whip a man until he was
insensible, because he did not prevent a murder which was committed
without his knowledge; and I could not understand the right of punishing
him, because he was so weak or timorous as to refrain from the
disclosure of the crime the moment it came to his knowledge.
It is necessary for the southern people to be vigilant in guarding the
moral condition of their slaves, and even to punish the intention to
commit crimes, when that intention can be clearly proved; for such is
the natural relation of master and slave, in by far the greater number
of cases, that no cordiality of feeling can ever exist between them; and
the sentiments that bind together the different members of society in a
state of freedom and social equality, being absent, the master must
resort to principles of physical restraint, and rules of mental
coercion, unknown in another and a different condition of the social
compact.
It is a mistake to suppose that the southern planters could ever retain
their property, or live amongst their slaves, if those slaves were not
kept in terror of the punishment that would follow acts of violence and
disorder. There is no difference between the feelings of the different
races of men, so far as their personal rights are concerned. The black
man is as anxious to possess and to enjoy liberty as the white one
would be, were he deprived of this inestimable blessing. It is not for
me to say that the one is as well qualified for the enjoyment of liberty
as the other. Low ignorance, moral degradation of character, and mental
depravity, are inseparable companions; and in the breast of an ignorant
man, the passions of envy and revenge hold unbridled dominion.
It was in the month of April that I witnessed the painful spectacle of
two fellow-creatures being launched into the abyss of eternity, and a
third, being tortured beyond the sufferings of mere death, not for his
crimes, but as a terror to others; and this, not to deter others from
the commission of crimes, but to stimulate them to a more active and
devoted performance of their duties to their owners. My spirits had not
recovered from the depression produced by that scene, in which my
feelings had been awakened in the cause of others, when I was called to
a nearer and more immediate apprehension of sufferings, which, I now too
clearly saw, were in preparation for myself.
My master's health became worse continually, and I expected he would not
survive this summer. In this, however, I was disappointed; but he was so
ill that he was seldom able to come to the field, and paid but little
attention to his plantation, or the culture of his crops. He left the
care of the cotton field to me after the month of June, and was not
again out on the plantation before the following October; when he one
day came out on a little Indian pony that he had used as his hackney,
before he was so far reduced as to decline the practice of riding. I
suffered very much this summer for want of good and substantial
provisions, my master being no longer able to supply me, with his usual
liberality, from his own meat house. I was obliged to lay out nearly all
my other earnings, in the course of the summer, for bacon, to enable me
to bear the hardship and toil to which I was exposed. My master often
sent for me to come to the house, and talked to me in a very kind
manner; and I believe that no hired overseer could have carried on the
business more industriously than I did, until the crop was secured the
next winter.
Soon after my master was in the field, in October, he sent for me to
come to him one day, and gave me, on parting, a pretty good great coat
of strong drab cloth, almost new, which he said would be of service to
me in the coming winter. He also gave me at the same time a pair of
boots which he had worn half out, but the legs of which were quite good.
This great coat and these boots were afterwards of great service to me.
As the winter came on my master grew worse, and though he still
continued to walk about the house in good weather, it was manifest that
he was approaching the close of his earthly existence. I worked very
hard this winter. The crop of cotton was heavy, and we did not get it
all out of the field until some time after Christmas, which compelled me
to work hard myself, and cause my fellow-slaves to work hard too, in
clearing the land that my master was bound to clear every year on this
place. He desired me to get as much of the land cleared in time for
cotton as I could, and to plant the rest with corn when cleared off.
As I was now entrusted with the entire superintendence of the plantation
by my master, who never left his house, it became necessary for me to
assume the authority of an overseer of my fellow-slaves, and I not
unfrequently found it proper to punish them with stripes to compel them
to perform their work. At first I felt much repugnance against the use
of the hickory, the only instrument with which I punished offenders, but
the longer I was accustomed to this practice, the more familiar and less
offensive it became to me; and I believe that a few years of
perseverance and experience would have made me as inveterate a
negro-driver as any in Georgia, though I feel conscious that I never
should have become so hardened as to strip a person for the purpose of
whipping, nor should I ever have consented to compel people to work
without a sufficiency of good food, if I had it in my power to supply
them with enough of this first of comforts.
In the month of February, my master became so weak, and his cough was so
distressing, that he took to his bed, from which he never again
departed, save only once, before the time when he was removed to be
wrapped in his winding-sheet. In the month of March, two of the brothers
of my mistress came to see her, and remained with her until after the
death of my master.
When they had been with their sister about three weeks, they came to the
kitchen one day when I had come in for my dinner, and told me that they
were going to whip me. I asked them what they were going to whip me for?
to which they replied, that they thought a good whipping would be good
for me, and that at any rate, I must prepare to take it. My mistress now
joined us, and after swearing at me in the most furious manner, for a
space of several minutes, and bestowing upon me a multitude of the
coarsest epithets, told me that she had long owed me a whipping, and
that I should now get it.
She then ordered me to take off my shirt, (the only garment I had on,
except a pair of old tow linen trowsers,) and the two brothers backed
the command of their sister, the one by presenting a pistol at my
breast, and the other by drawing a large club over his head in the
attitude of striking me. Resistance was vain, and I was forced to yield.
My shirt being off, I was tied by the hands with a stout bed-cord, and
being led to a tree, called the Pride of China, that grew in the yard,
my hands were drawn by the rope, being passed over a limb, until my feet
no longer touched the ground. Being thus suspended in the air by the
rope, and my whole weight hanging on my wrists, I was unable to move any
part of my person, except my feet and legs. I had never been whipped
since I was a boy, and felt the injustice of the present proceeding with
the utmost keenness; but neither justice nor my feelings had any
influence upon the hearts of my mistress and her brothers, two men as
cruel in temper and as savage in manners as herself.
The first strokes of the hickory produced a sensation that I can only
liken to streams of scalding water, running along my back; but after a
hundred or hundred and fifty lashes had been showered upon me, the pain
became less acute and piercing, but was succeeded by a dead and painful
aching, which seemed to extend to my very backbone.
As I hung by the rope, the moving of my legs sometimes caused me to turn
round, and soon after they began to beat me I saw the pale and
death-like figure of my master standing at the door, when my face was
turned toward the house, and heard him, in a faint voice, scarcely
louder than a strong breathing, commanding his brothers-in-law to let me
go. These commands were disregarded, until I had received full three
hundred lashes; and doubtlessly more would have been inflicted upon me,
had not my master, with an effort beyond his strength, by the aid of a
stick on which he supported himself, made his way to me, and placing his
skeleton form beside me as I hung, told his brothers-in-law that if they
struck another stroke he would send for a lawyer and have them both
prosecuted at law. This interposition stopped the progress of my
punishment, and after cutting me down, they carried my master again into
the house. I was yet able to walk, and went into the kitchen, whither my
mistress followed, and compelled me to submit to be washed in brine by a
black woman, who acted as her cook. I was then permitted to put my shirt
on, and to go to my bed.
This was Saturday, and on the next day, when I awoke late in the
morning, I found myself unable to turn over or to rise. I felt too
indignant at the barbarity with which I had been treated to call for
help from any one, and lay in my bed made of corn husks until after
twelve o'clock, when my mistress came to me and asked me how I was. A
slave must not manifest feelings of resentment, and I answered with
humility, that I was very sore and unable to get up. She then called a
man and a woman, who came and raised me up; but I now found that my
shirt was as fast to my back as if it had grown there. The blood and
bruised flesh having become incorporated with the substance of the
linen, it formed only the outer coat of the great scab that covered my
back.
After I was down stairs, my mistress had me washed in warm water, and
warm grease was rubbed over my back and sides, until the shirt was
saturated with oil, and becoming soft, was at length separated from my
back. My mistress then had my back washed and greased, and put upon me
one of my master's old linen shirts. She had become alarmed, and was
fearful either that I should die, or would not be able to work again for
a long time. As it was, she lost a month of my labor at this time, and
in the end, she lost myself, in consequence of this whipping.
As soon as I was able to walk, my master sent for me to come to his
bed-side, and told me that he was very sorry for what had happened; that
it was not his fault, and that if he had been well I should never have
been touched. Tears came in his eyes as he talked to me, and said that
as he could not live long, he hoped I would continue faithful to him
whilst he did live. This I promised to do, for I really loved my master;
but I had already determined, that as soon as he was in his grave, I
would attempt to escape from Georgia and the cotton country, if my life
should be the forfeiture of the attempt.
As soon as I had recovered of my wounds, I again went to work, not in my
former situation of superintendent of my master's plantation, for this
place was now occupied by one of the brothers of my mistress, but in the
woods, where my mistress had determined to clear a new field. After this
time, I did nothing but grub and clear land, while I remained in
Georgia, but I was always making preparations for my departure from that
country.
My master was an officer of militia, and had a sword which he wore on
parade days, and at other times he hung it up in the room where he
slept. I conceived an idea that this sword would be of service to me in
the long journey that I intended to undertake. One evening, when I had
gone in to see my master, and had remained standing at his bed-side some
time, he closed his eyes as if going to sleep, and it being twilight, I
slipped the sword from the place where it hung, and dropped it out of
the window. I knew my master could never need this weapon again, but yet
I felt some compunction of conscience at the thought of robbing so good
a man. When I left the room, I took up the sword, and afterwards
secreted it in a hollow tree in the woods, near the place at which I
worked daily.