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