SLAVES AND SLAVE-PENS
When the Civil War broke out, as we have before said, there were only
about fifteen hundred slaves in St. Louis. Among these the females,
specially demanded for domestic service, far outnumbered the males.
While the system of slavery was essentially barbarous and cruel, most of
these bondmen were kindly treated. Occasionally, however, some brutal
master gave vent to his passion and punished his slaves with
unreasonable and unbridled severity. A man of my acquaintance, who had
among his household servants a small colored girl, not more than fifteen
years old, for trivial offences, used to take her into the bath-room,
remove all her clothing, and then hold her for many minutes at a time
under the streaming cold water of the shower bath. Her cries, while
undergoing this torture, could be heard in the street and in the houses
of his neighbors. And while humane slaveholders denounced the savagery,
such was the law, and such was public sentiment, that nobody ventured to
take the part of the poor slave girl, while her owner and tormentor
gloried in his cruelty, evidently regarding the punishment as original
and a mark of his genius.
But, on the other hand, there were some masters who were conspicuous for
their kindness to their slaves. One of the deacons of my church was a
slaveholder. He was a Virginian by birth. His slaves came to him by
inheritance. He was a tall man with sandy hair and a mild blue eye. In
him, linked with sterling ability, were rare modesty and unusual
benevolence. Giving seemed to be a luxury to him. He contributed to
every good cause to the extent of his ability and often beyond what
could have been reasonably required of him. The suggestion of a smile
was always upon his lips. No one that observed it could ever forget it.
It was a part of the man; the outward expression of the sunshine of his
soul. And yet this noble, tender-hearted man held his fellow men in
bondage.
About two months after I became his pastor, in response to his cordial
invitation, one evening I dined with him. After the cheerful meal was
over, he took me aside into a private room, and to my astonishment and
delight said: “If you ever wish to say anything in the pulpit against
slavery you need not hesitate on my account; there are two things that I
abominate: one is selling liquor, and the other is selling niggers.”
Yes, he said “niggers;” they all did. He then told me that he had
inherited his slaves, and felt under solemn obligation to care for them.
He also declared that they were all manumitted, and that their
manumission papers were in a certain drawer in a bureau, which he
pointed out to me; so, if he should die, they would all be free. But he
said, “I do not wish them to know this. They are all young and I am
trying to train them, so that when they know that they are free and must
shift for themselves, they will be able to earn their own living. They
are well cared for; for the present I am the nigger of this household.”
So he was. Marshal Brotherton served everybody, even his own slaves.
The sexton of my church was a colored man. Everybody called him George.
One day he said to me, “I am the slave of Marse Brotherton. If he should
die, I’se afraid I’ll be sold down souf. Won’t you speak to him about
it, and axe him to make me free?” I told him that I would, and I soon
found my opportunity to do so. My good deacon then told me the story of
George. A few years before George belonged to a man who lived in the
county of St. Louis, outside the city. His master died. When settling up
his estate the executors put George in the county jail for safe-keeping,
intending to sell him to New Orleans slave-traders. Mr. Brotherton was
at that time sheriff of the county. Visiting the jail one day, George
entreated him to buy him and keep him from being carried down to the New
Orleans slave market, which all slaves instinctively dreaded. Mr.
Brotherton did not need a servant, but his heart was so touched with
pity for him that he bought him. He at once opened an account of which
the slave knew nothing, charging George a fair price for keeping, and
crediting him with his earnings. In a little while the slave had paid
for himself. His manumission papers were then made out. All this was
concealed from George. He was a freeman, but did not know it. Mr.
Brotherton had set him up in the wood and coal business, was teaching
him how to buy and sell and keep his account books, so that he could
intelligently care for himself. Having heard this interesting and
touching story of my sexton and Christian brother,—for George was a true
believer in Christ and an exemplary member of the church,—I asked Mr.
Brotherton if in his judgment it would be well for me to tell him that
he was a freeman in order to relieve him of anxiety. For a moment that
bewitching smile played upon his lips, and then he said, “Yes, you may
tell him if you want to.”
The next day I met George at the church. It was a great joy to me to
tell a man who thought that he was a slave that instead he was a
freeman. And my poor pen cannot depict either his happiness or mine, as
I told him that simple story of his master’s kindness and benevolence of
which he had been the unconscious recipient. He listened at first
amazed; then joy beamed from those large, tear-filled, black eyes. He
seemed at once to be transformed. In broken utterances he expressed his
gratitude to his master and to me. There was no happier soul on earth
than he just then. He had come to his duties that day supposing that he
was a slave; he did those duties with the new-born sense that he was
free. No two states of mind could be in sharper contrast. To him old
things in a moment passed away, and all things became new.
How can the acts of this Virginia slaveholder be explained? Why did he
deal kindly with his slaves? What led him to make such great pecuniary
sacrifices in manumitting them? The explanation is probably in part to
be found in the benevolent disposition with which God had endowed him;
but in addition to this he was a genuine Christian. He was vitally
united to Christ. Christ was in him and he had the Spirit of Christ. He
was living the life of Christ. He had much of Christ’s love to his
fellow men. He never for a moment doubted the manhood of his slaves, and
he felt impelled by the spirit within him to treat them as his fellow
men. He was a constant reader of the Bible. He had, I think, the
best-thumbed New Testament in my entire congregation, and the truths of
the gospel were antagonistic to slavery. He evidently very profoundly
believed what the great apostle to the Gentiles wrote: “There is neither
bond nor free: for we are all one in Christ Jesus.”
A few months after I made my home in St. Louis, my good deacon wished me
to go with him a few miles out of the city and call upon Captain Harper,
one of his close friends. He did not tell me the real reason why he
wished me to make the captain a visit, but thereby hangs an interesting
tale. On a beautiful autumn day, we drove out to the farmhouse of his
friend. We were welcomed with genuine Southern hospitality. After a few
moments conversation under the shade-trees in front of the house, Mr.
Brotherton said, “I think that you would enjoy a walk over the farm with
Captain Harper.” To this I eagerly assented. The farm appeared to be in
perfect order; the fences were well built, the fields were thoroughly
tilled, and the maturing crops were abundant. It was the best kept farm
that it had been my lot to see up to that time in my adopted State.
There were several hundred acres of it. Here and there in different
directions I saw on the farm neat cottages painted white. I asked the
captain what they were. He told me that they were occupied by German and
Irish families, the families of the men who worked his farm. “A few
years ago,” he said, “I carried on this plantation by slave labor. I had
twenty-one slaves. But one day as I was walking across this field, where
we now are, the thought came to me for the first time in my life that my
slaves had the same right to themselves and to the product of their
labor, that I had to myself and the product of my toil. And this
conviction was strong and persistent; I could not shake it off. But what
could I do with my slaves? The laws of the State were such that if I
should give them their freedom they would be worse off than in their
bondage. I then thought of the Colonization Society and decided to free
my slaves, and, if I could get their consent, to send them to Liberia. I
called them all together one day in my dooryard, and told them that I
had been convinced that I had no just right to them or to their labor;
but I pointed out to them the woful plight of free negroes in Missouri,
told them of the free State of Liberia, of the Colonization Society and
of my wish to send them to live among their own people in Africa. I told
them that they were now at liberty to do as they pleased, but that I
should advise them to learn trades, and if they would do so, at the end
of three years I would send them to Liberia. They all accepted my offer,
except Mammy, whom you saw at the house. She said that she would not go
‘nowhere for nobody;’ and she has never left my home. Some of my slaves
learned the trade of the carpenter and joiner, some that of the
shoemaker, some that of the mason, others that of the cooper, and some
of them remained here on the farm and I did what I could to teach them
to be independent farmers. When the three years of their apprenticeship
had passed, I sent them through the Colonization Society to Africa.” As
I listened to this wonderful story, so modestly and artlessly told, I
felt like taking off my hat to my new acquaintance. This was a kind of
abolitionist that I had never before met. For conscience’ sake he freed,
educated, and deported his slaves to a free state. It cost him fully
sixty thousand dollars. But he cheerfully made the sacrifice that he
might satisfy his sense of justice. I knew now why my deacon had been so
insistent that I should with him visit Captain Harper. The Captain was a
man after his own heart. Both had been born and reared in the midst of
slavery, and both had become emancipators of their own slaves. They were
practical abolitionists, but both would then have indignantly repudiated
a title so opprobrious at that time in their own neighborhood and State.
Richard Anderson, the colored Baptist pastor to whom we have referred in
a previous chapter, caring for a church, the members of which were fully
half slaves, had many interesting and suggestive experiences. One winter
he conducted for a few days a protracted meeting. At the close of an
earnest and sensible sermon,—for he was an excellent preacher, sometimes
truly eloquent,—he invited those who wished to be Christians and desired
the prayers of the Church to come forward and take the front seat
immediately before the pulpit. It was called the “mourners’ bench.”
Those who occupied it were supposed to be mourning over their sins. Six
persons, four men and two women, in response to his invitation came
forward and occupied that front seat. As he stood before them he saw at
a glance that they were all slaves, and his talk to them was suited to
their condition. He had a quaint humor of which he appeared to be quite
unconscious. Among other things he said, “You are slaves; you belong to
your masters; you have very little in common with other people. But
there is one verse in the Bible that was written especially for you:
‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and ye that have
no money, yea, come.’ Now you have no money, but you can have as much
religion as any one else; you can have as much as the President of the
United States, and a good deal more than I believe he has got.” Mr.
Buchanan, who was still in the White House, was very unpopular among the
colored people, which may account for this surprising and
mirth-provoking remark on so solemn an occasion.
But this colored pastor had many sad, heart-breaking trials. This is one
of them. Two members of his congregation, a widowed mother and her
little daughter, were slaves in the family of a Presbyterian deacon. In
the autumn of 1860 the mother came to him, sobbing and wringing her
hands, because her master had determined to sell her to a New Orleans
slave-trader, and to retain in his own household her little daughter.
She must take her chances in the dreaded slave market, and be sold to
whom she knew not, a fate from which the slaves of the border States
shrank with untold horror, and must be torn from her only child, her
greatest earthly solace. But what could her pastor do? He too belonged
to the servile race, and in his boyhood had been a slave. Too vehement
protestation on his part would damage the case rather than help it. But
he fearlessly sought out her master, and pleaded as well as he could the
case of the distressed mother. Whatever the deacon may have felt as he
listened to the modest, earnest pleading of that great-hearted black
pastor, he inflexibly held to his resolution to sell his dark-skinned
sister in Christ; not that she had been an unfaithful or inefficient
servant, but because the deacon needed money, and as he thought must
have it. So he carried out his purpose. The day came when, with a
hundred or more consigned to the same pitiless fate, she boarded the
steamer at the levee to be carried to her doom. Her little slave
daughter was there to give her the last tearful kiss and embrace. Her
faithful pastor stood by filled with sorrow and deep down in his soul
hot with righteous wrath. The steamer moved out from the levee, the
anguished mother and the pastor waved to each other their red bandanas,
and slowly the vessel with its freight of sorrow disappeared down the
river.
Immediately after, I met this pastor with his burden of grief, and he
told me the sad tale. He said: “Think of it! she came to me for comfort.
And I did the best I could.” I said to him, “I don’t see what you could
have said to comfort her.” He replied, “There was not much that I could
say; but I did tell her that God was down there as well as up here, and
in some way he would take care of her, and that when she got to heaven,
where the wicked cease from troubling, she would not find that
Presbyterian deacon there to torment her.” He uttered this in dead
earnestness, and with a solemn gravity befitting the heart-breaking
story, seemingly without the slightest consciousness of the mingled
humor and sarcasm of his last declaration.
Belonging to my congregation, though not a member of my church, was a
banker and slaveholder. He was a Mississippian by birth and education,
and profoundly believed in the righteousness of slavery. Knowing that I
came from the North, he set out to convince me that African slavery was
not only right, but beneficent and beautiful. But he little suspected
how difficult the job was that he had undertaken. However, to attain his
object, he proceeded in a cautious, artful manner. He invited me and
mine to dinner. It was a very natural move for a man to make in
reference to his pastor. But once warmly welcomed under his roof and to
his table loaded with the best from the market, his unseemly ardor in
setting forth the attractiveness of the “peculiar institution” slightly
revealed his ulterior purpose in making me a recipient of his bountiful
hospitality. But the dinner was good, his wife was a charming hostess
and his young daughters were winsome. Under the circumstances it became
me to be a good listener, to make some commonplace remarks, and to ask
questions with an air of innocence. This seemed to encourage mine host,
and he set forth with much particularity and with the accent of
conviction the manifold benefits of slavery as it existed in the United
States. I made no adverse comment, which incited him to illustrate the
beauties of human bondage by the condition of the slaves in his own
household. He was the proud owner of two. One of them was a mulatto,
over six feet in height, and between twenty-five and thirty years of
age. He was good-looking, and evidently a man of energy and decision. My
host said, “Did you see Wash when you came in?” I assured him that I
did, and that I was very much impressed by him. “Well,” he said, “Wash
has been with me for many years; I think a great deal of him, and he is
warmly attached to me and my family. Nothing could persuade him to leave
me. I have perfect confidence in him. He is also a man of good judgment.
I never buy a horse or trade horses unless I first get Wash’s opinion.”
And so he went on extolling his slave, who seemed to me to be a manlier
man than his master.
Having exhausted the subject of Wash, he began to dilate on Mammy. “Did
you notice her?” he said. “She waited on the table. She has nursed these
daughters of ours, and loves them as though they were her own children
and they love her. Why, sir, she is so attached to her home and to us
all that nothing could tempt her to leave us.” Well, to hear mine host
talk, if one had never known anything about slavery except what he set
forth, it could not but have been considered in some respects a
beneficent institution.
He at last asked his wife to play the piano, while the young daughters
danced. I noticed Mammy in an adjoining room, looking in upon the happy
scene and in her delight showing her ivory. About ten o’clock, with many
warm wishes each for the prosperity of the other, we parted, I to think
of the beneficence and beauty of slavery, and my host probably to
contemplate his success in commending to my good graces an institution
that I had been educated to abhor.
But what was the sequel of that evening’s conversation? What light did
the immediate future throw back upon it? Was my genial host’s emphatic
and repeated declaration that nothing could entice Wash and Mammy from
their home verified? The war came on apace. Everything appeared to be
out of joint. The most stable relations of life were unexpectedly and
strangely upset. Property in slaves grew precarious. And the first slave
in St. Louis reported in the papers as having run away was Wash.
His master was an officer of a bank. The young men employed there, to
whom he had declared as he did to me that nothing could induce Wash to
leave him, asked him if he intended to catch his runaway slave and bring
him back. He replied, “No, let him go, I never liked to have him around
anyway; I am glad that he has gone.” While this quite flatly
contradicted his previous utterances, under the circumstances it was
wisest not to attempt to apprehend his fleeing chattel. But for many
weeks, almost every day, some one in the bank would exasperatingly ask
him, “How is Wash?” But did Mammy, so full of affection and so delighted
with her home, prove true to her master and mistress? About two weeks
after Wash’s departure, she left without giving notice to the family.
She slept in the second story of the house. In the night she made up a
budget for herself, and threw it out into the yard. She then made a rope
of her bed-clothes, fastened one end of it to her bedstead, and threw
the other out of the window. Her improvised rope reached nearly to the
ground. She climbed down the rope, took up her budget and departed. That
household never saw that devoted mammy again. Such incidents are
representative of hundreds of others at that time. To be sure many of
the slaves were true to their masters and remained with their families
to the close of the war; but those who wished to leave did so, and the
fugitive slave law, having suddenly become a dead letter, could no
longer be invoked to catch them.
And the slaves had a pretty clear idea of the meaning of the war. They
knew that their own bondage was the real bone of contention. They
believed that their chains were to be broken and that they would soon be
free. Very early in the war the slaves saw the drift of events. As they
met each other they gave joyful expression to their expectation of
freedom, believing it to be near at hand. The morning after Camp Jackson
was taken, all the equipage of the camp was carried in army wagons down
the street near my door. Out of curiosity a promiscuous crowd had
gathered at the corner of the street to see the sight. Two female slaves
belonging to a family near by stood there grinning with delight. A young
woman, a pronounced secessionist, from one of the Gulf States, said,
with an air of triumph, stretching out her arm and excitedly shaking her
hand, “We’ll whip you yet.” In response, quick as a flash, the two slave
girls, pointing to the loaded wagons, gleefully cried out, “They’ve got
all your tents.” I knew those slaves, but had not known that they had
any interest in the war. However, it was now clear that they understood
its real meaning and took sides with the Unionists.
But slave-pens were a necessary adjunct of slavery. Even though, by
barbarous laws, men, women and children were made chattels, they still
continued to feel, think and will. And since many of them abhorred their
condition, it was necessary to pen them up so that they might be
securely kept and safely handled. Without thick stone walls, windows
barred with iron, strong doors locked and bolted, such property while
being bought and sold might vanish.
When in my pulpit, facing my congregation, I also faced, only half a
square away, a hideous slave-pen. It was kept by Mr. Lynch, an ominous
name. I sometimes saw men and women, handcuffed and chained together, in
a long two-by-two column, driven in there under the crack of the
driver’s whip, as though they were so many colts or calves. Had they
committed any crime? Oh, no, they had been bought, in different parts of
the State, by speculators, as one would buy up beef-cattle, and were
kept in the pen to be sold to the good people of St. Louis and of the
surrounding towns and country districts; and those not thus disposed of
were bought by slave-dealers for the New Orleans market.
In 1859, some preachers from the eastern States, who had been at New
Orleans, attending the annual meeting of the Young Men’s Christian
Association of the United States, on their return to their homes,
stopped for three or four days in our city. They painted in glowing
terms the lavish and delicate hospitality that they had received in the
commercial capital of Louisiana. Appreciating the truth of all they
said, I nevertheless asked them if they visited the famous slave market
of that city. They said that they did not. I affirmed that they had
missed a great opportunity of seeing the other side of the picture; that
when they had seen and experienced the Christian hospitality of that old
Spanish and French city, they ought also to have viewed in contrast a
slave auction there—as heartless and cruel a scene as the wide earth
afforded. Regretting that they had so superficially done New Orleans,
they said, “Have you any slave markets here?” I replied, “We have some
slave-pens, but they are as paradise to perdition to the slave market
down there. Nevertheless, to-morrow I will show you the sights,
slave-pens included.”
In the morning, three or four of the residents of the city joined us, so
that we had a party of nine. We first visited the Mercantile Library
with its treasures of art. “Now,” I said, “since we are always impressed
by contrasts, let us go from tasteful rooms, books and art to Lynch’s
slave-pen.” All were agreed, and we were soon on our way. I had some
slight acquaintance with Mr. Lynch, having often spoken to him as he sat
out on the sidewalk in warm weather before his pen. He was sitting there
when we arrived. “Good morning, Mr. Lynch,” I said, “these gentlemen
wish to go into your slave-pen.” “Certainly,” he said, “gentlemen, I am
glad to see you.” He evidently thought that we had come to trade with
him. As we entered the room immediately in front of the pen, one of the
party, a tall ungainly-looking lawyer, full of humor and fun, said, “Mr.
Lynch, look out for these fellows, they are a pack of abolitionists.”
Lynch received the declaration simply as a chaffing joke and laughed
heartily. It was, however, sober truth. He put his great iron key into
the lock, turned back the bolt, swung open the door, and turning his
face towards us, said, “Gentlemen, I have not much stock on hand
to-day.” Every man in our company was shocked beyond expression by that
brutal announcement. We filed solemnly in. He shut the door and left us
alone and undisturbed to examine his “stock.” The room was in shape a
parallelogram. It was plastered and had one small window high up near
the ceiling. There was no floor but the bare earth. Three backless,
wooden benches stood next to the walls. There were seven slaves there,
both men and women, herded together, without any arrangement for
privacy. Some of the slaves were trying to while away their time by
playing at marbles. One fairly good-looking woman about forty years old,
tearfully entreated us to buy her, promising over and over again to be
faithful and good. In that sad entreaty one could detect the harrowing
fear of being sold down South. Her plaint was more than a good pastor
from Troy, N. Y., could endure. Coming up close to my side he said, “For
God’s sake, Anderson, let us get out of here!” I rapped on the door; Mr.
Lynch opened it; we thanked him for his kindness, bade him good day, and
marched silently down the street. There was now no joking, no merriment.
We turned the corner into another street. We were hidden from Lynch’s
gaze. My friend from Troy stopped; in indignation he stamped his foot;
he was in agony of spirit; he planted his heel on the brick sidewalk
and, turning the toe of his foot hither and thither again and again, he
ground the brick under his heel. It was an instinctive bodily movement,
an irrepressible outward expression of his intense desire to grind
slavery to powder. At last he exclaimed, “Thank God, I never had
anything to do with that.” “Don’t be too sure about that,” I replied,
“how have you voted? Now,” I added, “let us go to a slave-pen at the
corner of Fifth and Myrtle Streets, where they keep little colored boys
and girls for sale.” “No,” he vehemently replied, “I will not go a step,
I have seen enough. You could not hire me to go there with all the gold
in California.”
This pen where slave children were kept was much larger than Lynch’s.
The traffic in children seemed to be specially brisk and profitable. The
inmates of this grim prison-house were from about five to sixteen years
old. Both sexes were there. When the slave-trader bought a mother and
her children, she was sometimes for a season shut up with her brood in
that hated place. Every few weeks there was an auction of these black
children, with all of its repulsive, heart-breaking scenes. On one such
occasion the auctioneer commended to a crowd a beautiful mulatto girl,
about sixteen years old, as having the blood of a United States senator
running in her veins. Some in that gaping throng listened with delight;
but a gentleman from the East, a mild-mannered man, unexpectedly flamed
out with indignation, and denounced the auctioneer and the whole vile
slave-trade. For this drastic, burning denunciation he was threatened
with violence. But this man of gentle spirit and manners, when aroused,
proved to be a veritable “son of thunder,” and he defied his assailants.
“When,” he said, “this shameless injustice is not only periodically
enacted in our city, but our whole State is plunged into ignominy by
offering for sale a daughter of a United States senator, I cannot and
will not hold my peace. Do what you please. I denounce the outrage.”
Those that threatened him were cowed into silence; the disturbance was
only a momentary ripple; the auctioneer went on with his nefarious task;
the girl with senatorial blood was knocked down to the highest bidder.
And then another, and another, and another, boy or girl, was sold under
the hammer till the fall of the curtain of darkness put temporary end to
the shameless work.
A man connected with this pen defended the breaking up of families by
the sale of slaves. He said that black mothers and children did not much
mind being separated; that they had little, if any, real affection for
each other; it was very much like separating a cow and her calf. A
little while after, at that very slave-pen, I saw the disproof of his
words. A man had just bought there, at private sale, a little boy about
ten years old. The lad’s mother was with him. As he was taken away from
the pen, he began in his grief to howl as though his heart was breaking.
After he had been taken about two squares, his purchaser, annoyed by the
wailing, returned with him to the pen, secured the loan of his mother
till he could get his tearful chattel to his home, without attracting a
curious and sympathetic crowd on the street. Once there his little slave
could be quieted by a sugar plum or a whip. When the lad was at last
under the roof of his new master, the bereft and sobbing mother was led
back to the desolate pen to be sold to some other master in the city or
State, or to some trader who would take her down to the rice or cotton
plantations of the South.
But when the war came on, there was no longer any demand for slaves. The
traffic in human beings suddenly ceased. Lynch shut up his pen. The
military authorities seized the pen at the corner of Fifth and Myrtle
Streets and transformed it into a military prison. No little colored boy
or girl was ever again to be sold there. The place hallowed by the sighs
and tears of bondmen and of motherless children was for a time to become
the prison-house of those who had bought and sold their fellow men, and
were now waging unholy war against the very government that had
protected them and their slaves,—the government that had complacently
caught and returned to them their chattels who had attempted by flight
to cast off their bondage and secure freedom for themselves and their
children amid the frosts and snows of Canada.
One morning in 1862, an old negro, who for many years had been a drayman
for a mercantile firm on Second Street, was full of merriment. He was
overheard mumbling something to himself and every now and then breaking
out into a laugh. His employer said, “Joe, what is it? What’s the
matter?” He responded with a chuckle, “Strange tings happen des days!”
“So, what things?” “You kno’s dat slave-pen, corner Fifth an Myrtle?”
“Yes.” “Well, de col’ed folks used to carry in tings dar fo der chillen
to eat. Dis mawnin, boss, I seed white folks carrying in tings for der
folks to eat. Ha! ha! strange tings happen des days.” Sure enough, the
tables were turned. Wrongs were being righted. Justice, poetical
justice, was being meted out. “With what measure ye mete it shall be
measured to you again,” saith the Lord.
“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small,
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.”