not one day, who would be the owner of my wife the next. O reader, have
you no heart to sympathize with the injured slave, as he thus lives in a
state of perpetual torment, the dread uncertainty of his wife’s fate,
continually hanging over his head, and poisoning all his joys, as the
naked sword hung by a _hair_, over the head of an ancient king’s guest,
as he was seated at a table loaded with all the luxuries of an epicure’s
devising? This sword, unlike the one alluded to, did often pierce my
breast, and when I had recovered from the wound, it was again hung up,
to torture me. This is slavery, a natural and concomitant part of the
accursed system!
The saddler who owned my wife, whose name I suppress for particular
reasons, was at one time taken sick, but when _his minister_, the Rev.
(so called) Dr. Plummer came to pray with him, he would not allow him to
perform that rite, which strengthened me in the opinion I entertained of
Dr. Plummer, that he was _as wicked a man_ as this saddler, and you will
presently see, how bad a man he was. The saddler sent for _his slaves to
pray_ for him, and afterwards for me, and when I repaired to his
bed-side, he beseeched me to pray for him, saying that he would live a
much better life than he had done, if the Lord would only spare him. I
and the other slaves prayed _three nights_ for him, after our work was
over, and we needed rest in sleep; but the earnest desire of this man,
induced us to forego our necessary rest; and yet one of the first things
he did after his recovery, was to _sell my wife_. When he was reminded
of my praying for his restoration to health, he angrily exclaimed, that
it was “all d----d lies” about the Lord restoring him to health in
consequence of the negroes praying for him,--and that if any of them
mentioned that they had prayed for him, he “would _whip them for it_.”
The last purchaser of my wife, was Mr. Samuel S. Cartrell, also a member
of Dr. Plummer’s church.[7] He induced me to pay him $50,00 in order to
assist him in purchasing my companion, so as to prevent her being sold
away from me. I also paid him $50 a year, for her time, although she
would have been of but little value to him, for she had young children
and could not earn much for him,--and rented a house for which I paid
$72, and she took in washing, which with the remainder of my earnings,
after deducting master’s “lion’s share,” supported our family. Our
bliss, as far as the term bliss applies to a slave’s situation, was now
complete in this respect, for a season; for never had we been so
pleasantly situated before; but, reader, behold its cruel termination. O
the harrowing remembrance of those terrible, terrible scenes! May God
spare you from ever enduring what I then endured.
It was on a pleasant morning, in the month of August, 1848, that I left
my wife and three children safely at our little home, and proceeded to
my allotted labor. The sun shone brightly as he commenced his daily
task, and as I gazed upon his early rays, emitting their golden light
upon the rich fields adjacent to the city, and glancing across the abode
of my wife and family, and as I beheld the numerous companies of slaves,
hieing their way to their daily labors, and reflected upon the
difference between their lot and mine, I felt that, although I was a
slave, there were many alleviations to my cup of sorrow. It was true,
that the greater portion of my earnings was taken from me, by the
unscrupulous hands of my dishonest master,--that I was entirely at his
mercy, and might at any hour be snatched from what sources of joy were
open to me--that he might, if he chose, extend his robber hand, and
demand a still larger portion of my earnings,--and above all, that
intellectual privileges were entirely denied me; but as I imprinted a
parting kiss upon the lips of my faithful wife, and pressed to my bosom
the little darling cherubs, who followed me saying, in their childish
accents, “Father, come back soon,” I felt that life was not all a blank
to me; that there were some pure joys yet my portion. O, how my heart
would have been riven with unutterable anguish, if I had then realized
the awful calamity which was about to burst upon my unprotected head!
Reader, are you a husband, and can you listen to my sad story, without
being moved to cease all your connection with that stern power, which
stretched out its piratical arm, and basely robbed me of all dear to me
on earth!
The sun had traced his way to mid-heaven, and the hour for the laborers
to turn from their tasks, and to seek refreshment for their toil-worn
frames,--and when I should take my prattling children on my knee,--was
fast approaching; but there burst upon me a sound so dreadful, and so
sudden, that the shock well nigh overwhelmed me. It was as if the
heavens themselves had fallen upon me, and the everlasting hills of
God’s erecting, like an avalanche, had come rolling over my head! And
what was it? “Your wife and smiling babes are gone; in prison they are
locked, and to-morrow’s sun will see them far away from you, on their
way to the distant South!” Pardon the utterance of my feelings here,
reader, for surely a man may feel, when all that he prizes on earth is,
at one fell stroke, swept from his reach! O God, if there is a moment
when vengeance from thy righteous throne should be hurled upon guilty
man, and hot thunderbolts of wrath, should burst upon his wicked head,
it surely is at such a time as this! And this is Slavery; its certain,
necessary and constituent part. Without this terrific pillar to its
demon walls, it falls to the ground, as a bridge sinks, when its
buttresses are swept from under it by the rushing floods. This is
Slavery. No kind master’s indulgent care can guard his chosen slave, his
petted chattel, however fond he may profess to be of such a piece of
property, from so fearful a calamity. My master treated me as kindly as
he could, and retain me in slavery; but did that keep me from
experiencing this terrible deprivation? The sequel will show you even
his care for me. What could I do? I had left my fond wife and prattling
children, as happy as slaves could expect to be; as I was not
anticipating their loss, for the pious man who bought them last, had, as
you recollect, received a sum of money from me, under the promise of not
selling them. My first impulse, of course, was to rush to the jail, and
behold my family once more, before our final separation. I started for
this infernal place, but had not proceeded a great distance, before I
met a gentleman, who stopped me, and beholding my anguish of heart, as
depicted on my countenance, inquired of me what the trouble was with me.
I told him as I best could, when he advised me not to go to the jail,
for the man who had sold my wife, had told my master some falsehoods
about me, and had induced him to give orders to the jailor to seize me,
and confine me in prison, if I should appear there. He said I would
undoubtedly be sold separate from my wife, and he thought I had better
not go there. I then persuaded a young man of my acquaintance to go to
the prison, and sent by him, to my wife, some money and a message in
reference to the cause of my failure to visit her. It seems that it
would have been useless for me to have ventured there, for as soon as
this young man arrived, and inquired for my wife, he was seized and put
in prison,--the jailor mistaking him for me; but when he discovered his
mistake, he was very angry, and vented his rage upon the innocent youth,
by kicking him out of prison. I then repaired to my Christian master,
and there several times, during the ensuing twenty-four hours, did I
beseech and entreat him to purchase my wife; but no tears of mine made
the least impression upon his obdurate heart. I laid my case before him,
and reminded him of the faithfulness with which I had served him, and of
my utmost endeavors to please him, but this _kind_ master--recollect
reader--utterly refused to advance a small portion of the $5,000 I had
paid him, in order to relieve my sufferings; and he was a member, in
good and regular standing, of an Episcopal church in Richmond! His reply
to me was worthy of the morality of Slavery, and shows just how much
religion, the kindest and most pious of Southern slaveholders have.
“_You can get another wife_,” said he; but I told him the Bible said,
“What God has joined together, let not man put asunder,” and that I did
not want any other wife but my own lawful one, whom I loved so much. At
the mention of this passage of Scripture, he drove me from his house,
saying, he did not wish to hear that!
I now endeavored to persuade two gentlemen of my acquaintance, to buy my
wife; but they told me they did not think it was right to hold slaves,
or else they would gladly assist me, for they sincerely pitied me, and
advised me to go to my master again; but I knew this would be useless.
My agony was now complete. She with whom I had travelled the journey of
life, for the space of twelve years, with three little pledges of
domestic affection, must now be forever separated from me--I must remain
alone and desolate. O God, shall my wife and children never more greet
my sight, with their cheerful looks and happy smiles? Far, far away, in
Carolina’s swamps are they now, toiling beneath the scorching rays of
the hot sun, with no husband’s voice to soothe the hardships of my
wife’s lot, and no father’s kind look to gladden the heart of my
disconsolate little ones.[8]
I call upon you, Sons of the North, if your blood has not lost its
bright color of liberty, and is not turned to the blackened gore which
surrounds the slaveholder’s polluted hearts, to arise in your might, and
demand the liberation of the slaves. If you do not, at the day of final
account, I shall bear witness against you, as well as against the
slaveholders themselves, as the cause of my and my brethren’s
bereavement. Think you, at that dread hour, you can escape the
scrutinizing look of the Judge of all the earth, as he “maketh
inquisition for the blood of the innocents?” Oh, no; but equally with
the Southern slaveholders, will your character be condemned by the Ruler
of the universe.
The next day, I stationed myself by the side of the road, along which
the slaves, amounting to three hundred and fifty, were to pass. The
purchaser of my wife was a _Methodist_ minister, who was about starting
for North Carolina. Pretty soon five waggonloads of little children
passed, and looking at the foremost one, what should I see but a little
child, pointing its tiny hand towards me, exclaiming, “There’s my
father; I knew he would come and bid me good-bye.” It was my eldest
child! Soon the gang approached in which my wife was chained. I looked,
and beheld her familiar face; but O, reader, that glance of agony! may
God spare me ever again enduring the excruciating horror of that moment!
She passed, and came near to where I stood. I seized hold of her hand,
_intending_ to bid her farewell; but words failed me; the gift of
utterance had fled, and I remained speechless. I followed her for some
distance, with her hand grasped in mine, as if to save her from her
fate, but I could not speak, and I was obliged to turn away in silence.
This is not an imaginary scene, reader; it is not a fiction, but an
every-day reality at the South; and all I can say more to you, in
reference to it is, that if you will not, after being made acquainted
with these facts, consecrate your all to the slaves’ release from
bondage, you are utterly unworthy the name of a man, and should go and
hide yourself, in some impenetrable cave, where no eye can behold your
demon form.
One more scene occurs in the tragical history of my life, before the
curtain drops, and I retire from the stage of observation, as far as
past events are concerned; not, however, to shrink from public gaze, as
if ashamed of my perilous adventures, or to retire into private life,
lest the bloodhounds of the South should scent my steps, and start in
pursuit of their missing property. No, reader, for as long as three
millions of my countrymen pine in cruel bondage, on Virginia’s exhausted
soil, and in Carolina’s pestilential rice swamps; in the cane-breaks of
Georgia, and on the cotton fields of Louisiana and Mississippi, and in
the insalubrious climate of Texas; as well as suffer under the
slave-driver’s cruel lash, all over the almost God-forsaken South; I
shall never refuse to advocate their claims to your sympathy, whenever a
fitting occasion occurs to speak in their behalf.
But you are eager to learn the particulars of my journey from freedom to
liberty. The first thing that occurred to me, after the cruel separation
of my wife and children from me, and I had recovered my senses, so as to
know how to act, was, thoughts of freeing myself from slavery’s iron
yoke. I had suffered enough under its heavy weight, and I determined I
would endure it no longer; and those reasons which often deter the slave
from attempting to escape, no longer existed in reference to me, for my
family were gone, and slavery now had no mitigating circumstances, to
lessen the bitterness of its cup of woe. It is true, as my master had
told me, that I could “get another wife;” but no man, excepting a brute
below the human species, would have proposed such a step to a person in
my circumstances; and as I was not such a degraded being, I did not
dream of so conducting. Marriage was not a thing of personal convenience
with me, to be cast aside as a worthless garment, whenever the
slaveholder’s will required it; but it was a sacred institution binding
upon me, as long as the God who had “joined us together,” refrained from
untying the nuptial knot. What! leave the wife of my bosom for another!
and while my heart was leaping from its abode, to pour its strong
affections upon the kindred soul of my devoted partner, could I receive
a stranger, another person to my embrace, as if the ties of love existed
only in the presence of the object loved! Then, indeed, should I have
been a traitor to that God, who had linked our hearts together in fond
affection, and cemented our union, by so many additional cords, twining
around our hearts; as a tree and an arbor are held together by the
clinging of the tendrils of the adhering vine, which winds itself about
them so closely. Slavery, and slavery abettors, seize hold of these
tender scions, and cut and prune them away from both tree and arbor, as
remorselessly as a gardener cuts down the briars and thorns which
disturb the growth of his fair plants; but all humane, and every
virtuous man, must instinctively recoil from such transactions, as they
would from soul murder, or from the commission of some enormous deed of
villany.
Reader, in the light of these scenes you may behold, as in a glass, your
true character. Refined and delicate you may pretend to be, and may pass
yourself off as a pure and virtuous person; but if you refuse to exert
yourself for the overthrow of a system, which thus tramples human
affection under its bloody feet, and demands of its crushed victims, the
sacrifice of all that is noble, virtuous and pure, upon its smoking
altars; you may rest assured, that if the balances of _purity_ were
extended before you, He who “searcheth the hearts, and trieth the
reins,” would say to you, as your character underwent his searching
scrutiny, “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
I went to Mr. Allen, and requested of him permission to refrain from
labor for a short time, in consequence of a disabled finger; but he
refused to grant me this permission, on the ground that my hand was not
lame enough to justify him in so doing. Nothing daunted by this rebuff,
I took some oil of vitriol, intending to pour a few drops upon my
finger, to make it sufficiently sore, to disable me from work, which I
succeeded in, beyond my wishes; for in my hurry, a larger quantity than
it was my purpose to apply to my finger, found its way there, and my
finger was soon eaten through to the bone. The overseer then was obliged
to allow me to absent myself from business, for it was impossible for me
to work in that situation. But I did not waste my precious furlough in
idle mourning over my fate. I armed myself with determined energy, for
action, and in the words of one of old, in the name of God, “I leaped
over a wall, and run through a troop” of difficulties. After searching
for assistance for some time, I at length was so fortunate as to find a
friend, who promised to assist me, for one half the money I had about
me, which was one hundred and sixty-six dollars. I gave him eighty-six,
and he was to do his best in forwarding my scheme. Long did we remain
together, attempting to devise ways and means to carry me away from the
land of separation of families, of whips and thumbscrews, and auction
blocks; but as often as a plan was suggested by my friend, there would
appear some difficulty in the way of its accomplishment. Perhaps it may
not be best to mention what these plans were, as some unfortunate slaves
may thereby be prevented from availing themselves of these methods of
escape.
At length, after praying earnestly to Him, who seeth afar off, for
assistance, in my difficulty, suddenly, as if from above, there darted
into my mind these words, “Go and get a box, and put yourself in it.” I
pondered the words over in my mind. “Get a box?” thought I; “what can
this mean?” But I was “not disobedient unto the heavenly vision,” and I
determined to put into practice this direction, as I considered it, from
my heavenly Father.[9] I went to the depot, and there noticed the size
of the largest boxes, which commonly were sent by the cars, and returned
with their dimensions. I then repaired to a carpenter, and induced him
to make me a box of such a description as I wished, informing him of the
use I intended to make of it. He assured me I could not live in it; but
as it was dear liberty I was in pursuit of, I thought it best to make
the trial.
When the box was finished, I carried it, and placed it before my friend,
who had promised to assist me, who asked me if that was to “put my
clothes in?” I replied that it was not, but to “_put Henry Brown in!_”
He was astonished at my temerity; but I insisted upon his placing me in
it, and nailing me up, and he finally consented.
After corresponding with a friend in Philadelphia, arrangements were
made for my departure, and I took my place in this narrow prison, with a
mind full of uncertainty as to the result. It was a critical period of
my life, I can assure you, reader; but if you have never been deprived
of your liberty, as I was, you cannot realize the power of that hope of
freedom, which was to me indeed, “an anchor to the soul, both sure and
steadfast.”
I laid me down in my darkened home of three feet by two, and like one
about to be guillotined, resigned myself to my fate. My friend was to
accompany me, but he failed to do so; and contented himself with sending
a telegraph message to his correspondent in Philadelphia, that such a
box was on its way to his care.
I took with me a bladder filled with water to bathe my neck with, in
case of too great heat; and with no access to the fresh air, excepting
three small gimblet holes, I started on my perilous cruise. I was first
carried to the express office, the box being placed on its end, so that
I started with my head downwards, although the box was directed, “this
side up with care.” From the express office, I was carried to the depot,
and from thence tumbled roughly into the baggage car, where I _happened_
to fall “right side up,” but no thanks to my transporters. But after a
while the cars stopped, and I was put aboard a steamboat, _and placed on
my head_. In this dreadful position, I remained the space of an hour and
a half, it seemed to me, when I began to feel of my eyes and head, and
found to my dismay, that my eyes were almost swollen out of their
sockets, and the veins on my temple seemed ready to burst. I made no
noise however, determining to obtain “_victory or death_,” but endured
the terrible pain, as well as I could, sustained under the whole by the
thoughts of sweet liberty. About half an hour afterwards, I attempted
again to lift my hands to my face, but I found I was not able to move
them. A cold sweat now covered me from head to foot. Death seemed my
inevitable fate, and every moment I expected to feel the blood flowing
over me, which had burst from my veins. One half hour longer and my
sufferings would have ended in that fate, which I preferred to slavery;
but I lifted up my heart to God in prayer, believing that he would yet
deliver me, when to my joy, I overheard two men say, “We have been here
_two_ hours and have travelled twenty miles, now let us sit down, and
rest ourselves.” They suited the action to the word, and turned the box
over, containing my soul and body, thus delivering me from the power of
the grim messenger of death, who a few moments previously, had aimed his
fatal shaft at my head, and had placed his icy hands on my throbbing
heart. One of these men inquired of the other, what he supposed that box
contained, to which his comrade replied, that he guessed it was the
mail. “Yes,” thought I, “it is a _male_, indeed, although not the _mail_
of the United States.”
Soon after this fortunate event, we arrived at Washington, where I was
thrown from the wagon, and again as my luck would have it, fell on my
head. I was then rolled down a declivity, until I reached the platform
from which the cars were to start. During this short but rapid journey,
my neck came very near being dislocated, as I felt it crack, as if it
had snapped asunder. Pretty soon, I heard some one say, “there is no
room for this box, it will have to remain behind.” I then again applied
to the Lord, my help in all my difficulties, and in a few minutes I
heard a gentleman direct the hands to place it aboard, as “it came with
the mail and must go on with it.” I was then tumbled into the car, my
head downwards again, as I seemed to be destined to escape on my head; a
sign probably, of the opinion of American people respecting such bold
adventurers as myself; that our heads should be held downwards, whenever
we attempt to benefit ourselves. Not the only instance of this
propensity, on the part of the American people, towards the colored
race. We had not proceeded far, however, before more baggage was placed
in the car, at a stopping place, and I was again turned to my proper
position. No farther difficulty occurred until my arrival at
Philadelphia. I reached this place at three o’clock in the morning, and
remained in the depot until six o’clock, A. M., at which time, a waggon
drove up, and a person inquired for a box directed to such a place,
“right side up.” I was soon placed on this waggon, and carried to the
house of my friend’s correspondent, where quite a number of persons were
waiting to receive me. They appeared to be some afraid to open the box
at first, but at length one of them rapped upon it, and with a trembling
voice, asked, “Is all right within?” to which I replied, “All right.”
The joy of these friends was excessive, and like the ancient Jews, who
repaired to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, each one seized hold of some
tool, and commenced opening my grave. At length the cover was removed,
and I arose, and shook myself from the lethargy into which I had fallen;
but exhausted nature proved too much for my frame, and I swooned away.