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NARRATIVE
OF
WILLIAM W. BROWN,
A
FUGITIVE SLAVE.
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
--Is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who gains his fortune from the blood of souls?
COWPER.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,
NO. 25 CORNHILL.
1847.
[Illustration: William W. Brown.]
TO WELLS BROWN, OF OHIO.
Thirteen years ago, I came to your door, a weary fugitive from chains
and stripes. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was hungry, and you
fed me. Naked was I, and you clothed me. Even a name by which to be
known among men, slavery had denied me. You bestowed upon me your own.
Base indeed should I be, if I ever forget what I owe to you, or do
anything to disgrace that honored name!
As a slight testimony of my gratitude to my earliest benefactor, I take
the liberty to inscribe to you this little Narrative of the sufferings
from which I was fleeing when you had compassion upon me. In the
multitude that you have succored, it is very possible that you may not
remember me; but until I forget God and myself, I can never forget you.
Your grateful friend,
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN.
LETTER FROM
EDMUND QUINCY, ESQ.
DEDHAM, JULY 1, 1847.
TO WILLIAM W. BROWN.
MY DEAR FRIEND:--I heartily thank you for the privilege of reading the
manuscript of your Narrative. I have read it with deep interest and
strong emotion. I am much mistaken if it be not greatly successful and
eminently useful. It presents a different phase of the infernal
slave-system from that portrayed in the admirable story of Mr. Douglass,
and gives us a glimpse of its hideous cruelties in other portions of its
domain.
Your opportunities of observing the workings of this accursed system
have been singularly great. Your experiences in the Field, in the House,
and especially on the River in the service of the slave-trader, Walker,
have been such as few individuals have had;--no one, certainly, who has
been competent to describe them. What I have admired, and marvelled at,
in your Narrative, is the simplicity and calmness with which you
describe scenes and actions which might well "move the very stones to
rise and mutiny" against the National Institution which makes them
possible.
You will perceive that I have made very sparing use of your flattering
permission to alter what you had written. To correct a few errors, which
appeared to be merely clerical ones, committed in the hurry of
composition, under unfavorable circumstances, and to suggest a few
curtailments, is all that I have ventured to do. I should be a bold man,
as well as a vain one, if I should attempt to improve your descriptions
of what you have seen and suffered. Some of the scenes are not unworthy
of De Foe himself.
I trust and believe that your Narrative will have a wide circulation. I
am sure it deserves it. At least, a man must be differently constituted
from me, who can rise from the perusal of your Narrative without feeling
that he understands slavery better, and hates it worse, than he ever did
before.
I am, very faithfully and respectfully,
Your friend,
EDMUND QUINCY.
PREFACE.
The friends of freedom may well congratulate each other on the
appearance of the following Narrative. It adds another volume to the
rapidly increasing anti-slavery literature of the age. It has been
remarked by a close observer of human nature, "Let me make the songs of
a nation, and I care not who makes its laws;" and it may with equal
truth be said, that, among a reading people like our own, their books
will at least give character to their laws. It is an influence which
goes forth noiselessly upon its mission, but fails not to find its way
to many a warm heart, to kindle on the altar thereof the fires of
freedom, which will one day break forth in a living flame to consume
oppression.
This little book is a voice from the prison-house, unfolding the deeds
of darkness which are there perpetrated. Our cause has received
efficient aid from this source. The names of those who have come from
thence, and battled manfully for the right, need not to be recorded
here. The works of some of them are an enduring monument of praise, and
their perpetual record shall be found in the grateful hearts of the
redeemed bondman.
Few persons have had greater facilities for becoming acquainted with
slavery, in all its horrible aspects, than William W. Brown. He
has been behind the curtain. He has visited its secret chambers. Its
iron has entered his own soul. The dearest ties of nature have been
riven in his own person. A mother has been cruelly scourged before his
own eyes. A father,--alas! slaves have no father. A brother has been
made the subject of its tender mercies. A sister has been given up to
the irresponsible control of the pale-faced oppressor. This nation looks
on approvingly. The American Union sanctions the deed. The Constitution
shields the criminals. American religion sanctifies the crime. But the
tide is turning. Already, a mighty under-current is sweeping onward. The
voice of warning, of remonstrance, of rebuke, of entreaty, has gone
forth. Hand is linked in hand, and heart mingles with heart, in this
great work of the slave's deliverance.
The convulsive throes of the monster, even now, give evidence of deep
wounds.
The writer of this Narrative was hired by his master to a
"_soul-driver_," and has witnessed all the horrors of the traffic, from
the buying up of human cattle in the slave-breeding States, which
produced a constant scene of separating the victims from all those whom
they loved, to their final sale in the southern market, to be worked up
in seven years, or given over to minister to the lust of southern
_Christians_.
Many harrowing scenes are graphically portrayed; and yet with that
simplicity and ingenuousness which carries with it a conviction of the
truthfulness of the picture.
This book will do much to unmask those who have "clothed themselves in
the livery of the court of heaven" to cover up the enormity of their
deeds.
During the past three years, the author has devoted his entire energies
to the anti-slavery cause. Laboring under all the disabilities and
disadvantages growing out of his education in slavery--subjected, as he
had been from his birth, to all the wrongs and deprivations incident to
his condition--he yet went forth, impelled to the work by a love of
liberty--stimulated by the remembrance of his own sufferings--urged on
by the consideration that a mother, brothers, and sister, were still
grinding in the prison-house of bondage, in common with three millions
of our Father's children--sustained by an unfaltering faith in the
omnipotence of truth and the final triumph of justice--to plead the
cause of the slave, and by the eloquence of earnestness carried
conviction to many minds, and enlisted the sympathy and secured the
co-operation of many to the cause.
His labors have been chiefly confined to Western New York, where he has
secured many warm friends, by his untiring zeal, persevering energy,
continued fidelity, and universal kindness.
Reader, are you an Abolitionist? What have you done for the slave? What
are you doing in his behalf? What do you purpose to do? There is a great
work before us! Who will be an idler now? This is the great humanitary
movement of the age, swallowing up, for the time being, all other
questions, comparatively speaking. The course of human events, in
obedience to the unchangeable laws of our being, is fast hastening the
final crisis, and
"Have ye chosen, O my people, on whose party ye shall stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandal shakes the dust against our land?"
Are you a Christian? This is the carrying out of practical Christianity;
and there is no other. Christianity is _practical_ in its very nature
and essence. It is a life, springing out of a soul imbued with its
spirit. Are you a friend of the missionary cause? This is the greatest
missionary enterprize of the day. Three millions of _Christian_,
law-manufactured heathen are longing for the glad tidings of the Gospel
of freedom. Are you a friend of the Bible? Come, then, and help us to
restore to these millions, whose eyes have been bored out by slavery,
their sight, that they may see to read the Bible. Do you love God whom
you have not seen? Then manifest that love, by restoring to your brother
whom you have seen, his rightful inheritance, of which he has been so
long and so cruelly deprived.
It is not for a single generation alone, numbering three
millions--sublime as would be that effort--that we are working. It is
for humanity, the wide world over, not only now, but for all
coming time, and all future generations:--
"For he who settles Freedom's principles,
Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny."
It is a vast work--a glorious enterprize--worthy the unswerving devotion
of the entire life-time of the great and the good.
Slaveholding and slaveholders must be rendered disreputable and odious.
They must be stripped of their respectability and Christian reputation.
They must be treated as "men-stealers--guilty of the highest
kind of theft, and sinners of the first rank." Their more guilty
accomplices in the persons of _northern apologists_, both in Church and
State, must be placed in the same category. Honest men must be made to
look upon their crimes with the same abhorrence and loathing, with
which they regard the less guilty robber and assassin, until
"The common damned shun their society,
And look upon themselves as fiends less foul."
When a just estimate is placed upon the crime of slave-holding, the work
will have been accomplished, and the glorious day ushered in--
"When man nor woman in all our wide domain,
Shall buy, or sell, or hold, or be a slave."
J.C. Hathaway.
--Farmington, N.Y., 1847.
NARRATIVE.
CHAPTER I.
I was born in Lexington, Ky. The man who stole me as soon as I was born,
recorded the births of all the infants which he claimed to be born his
property, in a book which he kept for that purpose. My mother's name was
Elizabeth. She had seven children, viz: Solomon, Leander, Benjamin,
Joseph, Millford, Elizabeth, and myself. No two of us were children of
the same father. My father's name, as I learned from my mother, was
George Higgins. He was a white man, a relative of my master, and
connected with some of the first families in Kentucky.
My master owned about forty slaves, twenty-five of whom were field
hands. He removed from Kentucky to Missouri, when I was quite young, and
settled thirty or forty miles above St. Charles, on the Missouri, where,
in addition to his practice as a physician, he carried on milling,
merchandizing and farming. He had a large farm, the principal
productions of which were tobacco and hemp. The slave cabins were
situated on the back part of the farm, with the house of the overseer,
whose name was Grove Cook, in their midst. He had the entire charge of
the farm, and having no family, was allowed a woman to keep house for
him, whose business it was to deal out the provisions for the hands.
A woman was also kept at the quarters to do the cooking for the field
hands, who were summoned to their unrequited toil every morning at four
o'clock, by the ringing of a bell, hung on a post near the house of the
overseer. They were allowed half an hour to eat their breakfast, and get
to the field. At half past four, a horn was blown by the overseer, which
was the signal to commence work; and every one that was not on the spot
at the time, had to receive ten lashes from the negro-whip, with which
the overseer always went armed. The handle was about three feet long,
with the butt-end filled with lead, and the lash six or seven feet in
length, made of cowhide, with platted wire on the end of it. This whip
was put in requisition very frequently and freely, and a small offence
on the part of a slave furnished an occasion for its use. During the
time that Mr. Cook was overseer, I was a house servant--a situation
preferable to that of a field hand, as I was better fed, better clothed,
and not obliged to rise at the ringing of the bell, but about half an
hour after. I have often laid and heard the crack of the whip, and the
screams of the slave. My mother was a field hand, and one morning was
ten or fifteen minutes behind the others in getting into the field. As
soon as she reached the spot where they were at work, the overseer
commenced whipping her. She cried, "Oh! pray--Oh! pray--Oh! pray"--these
are generally the words of slaves, when imploring mercy at the hands of
their oppressors. I heard her voice, and knew it, and jumped out of my
bunk, and went to the door. Though the field was some distance from the
house, I could hear every crack of the whip, and every groan and cry of
my poor mother. I remained at the door, not daring to venture any
farther. The cold chills ran over me, and I wept aloud. After giving her
ten lashes, the sound of the whip ceased, and I returned to my bed, and
found no consolation but in my tears. It was not yet daylight.