Narrative
of the
Life
of
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
AN
AMERICAN SLAVE.
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
BOSTON
PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,
NO. 25 CORNHILL
1845
ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,
IN THE YEAR 1845
BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
IN THE CLERK’S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT
OF MASSACHUSETTS.
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]
Contents
PREFACE
LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
APPENDIX
A PARODY
PREFACE
In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in
Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with
_Frederick Douglass_, 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.
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 MAN,”
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!
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!
A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr. DOUGLASS 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 PATRICK
HENRY, 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.
It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr. DOUGLASS
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. JOHN A. COLLINS, 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!
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 _Frederick Douglass_; and that the free colored
population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their
own number, in the person of _Charles Lenox Remond_, 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.
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,—_Daniel O’Connell_, 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
_Mr. O’Connell_, “under what specious term it may disguise itself,
slavery is still hideous. _It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to
brutalize every noble faculty of man._ 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 _The Domestic Institution_!” 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.
_Mr. Douglass_ 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 _slavery
as it is_. The experience of _Frederick Douglass_, 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!
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 _Douglass_ 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!
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. _Mr. Douglass_ 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.
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. _Mr. Douglass_ 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:—“_Shooting a slave._—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, _obtained a gun, and, returning, shot the servant._ 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?
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 _Mr. Douglass_, 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.”
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!”
WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON,
_May_ 1, 1845.
LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
BOSTON, _April_ 22, 1845.
My Dear Friend:
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 “_hide_ 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 _welcome_ 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.
God speed the day!
_Till then, and ever,_
Yours truly,
WENDELL PHILLIPS
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
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
_Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass_. 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 _My Bondage And My Freedom_ and
_Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass_, published in 1855 and 1881
respectively. He died in 1895.
CHAPTER I
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.