I was taking an early walk on the morning after my arrival at the city
of C----, in the spring of 186-, in order to sharpen my appetite for
breakfast, when I observed a tall and stoutly-built man on the opposite
sidewalk proceeding in the same direction with myself. There was
something in his gait and his manner of swinging his right arm (he had a
common market-basket on his left) that seemed not unfamiliar to me; and
I hastened my pace to keep up with him while I observed him further. It
was no easy matter; for he had a stride that, if hurried to its beat,
would have put me to a run to save being distanced; but I succeeded in
heading him off after a rapid walk of several squares, which brought us
to the market-place, and I soon had the satisfaction of hearing his
voice as he inquired the price of some of the marketing exposed for
sale. This decided me, and I immediately threw myself in his way. He
recognized me at once, and as he held out his huge hand, which I took in
mine, we exclaimed simultaneously: 'How are you, Owen?' 'How are you,
Tom?'
The greeting was something more than cordial. We had once been quite
intimate, and it was seventeen years since we had met. I had lost sight
of him that number of years before, and getting no satisfactory response
to any inquiries I had from time to time made after him of mutual
acquaintances, I had gradually dropped the subject, and never expected
to meet him again.
Tom Winters was a Marylander by birth, and I had known him in Ohio
during the Presidential canvass of 1844, when he had supported the
gallant son of Kentucky, Henry Clay, with all the ardor of his generous,
rash, and passionate nature; while I had supported James K. Polk,
because--because he was nominated by the Democratic party.
I can appreciate at its true worth now that political infatuation which
led me to reject the 'Mill Boy of the Slashes,' and to 'decline upon'
Polk. There was no comparison between the two men.
----'That was, to this,'
Hyperion to a satyr.'
But that is passed. Polk was elected, and the gallant 'Harry of the
West' died of a broken heart. Thence came Texas, the repeal of the
Compromise, the Rebellion,
'Sin, and death, and all our woes.'
After a few hasty questions and answers on each side, we parted to meet
at dinner at Tom's residence, and to sit down then for a general
_palabre_.
I was punctual to my appointment, and after being introduced to Mrs.
Winters, (Tom was now married and held an important position under the
State government,) and after having been presented to Master Henry Clay
Winters, a lad of three years, and being informed--in an aside--that the
next was to be named John Fremont Winters, we sat down to the table and
accomplished our dinner and our explanations 'by piece-meal
simultaneously,'
Having satisfied my quondam friend upon the subject of my various
wanderings, successes, and reverses since we parted--which were
decidedly too dull and commonplace to interest the reader, although Tom,
from a sense of duty, probably, listened to their rehearsal with a great
deal of attention--I, in turn, questioned him of the events of his life.
He ran them hastily over, and seemed inclined to treat them with so much
brevity that I had frequently to call him back upon his narrative by a
question on some point where I required more detailed information. But
our dinner was over, and Mrs. Winters had retired, with Master Henry
Clay Winters, ere he had half satisfied my curiosity.
Winters had left N----, the little county-town in Middle Ohio, where I
had known him, in the spring of 1845, and had begun to travel as agent
for a marble dealer of Pittsburgh, Pa. In this capacity he had roamed
over all the Western States during several years, had made extensive
acquaintances, and been rubbed against the world until he had acquired
great knowledge of mankind and habits of self-reliance, without much of
that polish of manner which worldly attrition usually gives a man. He
was at that time between twenty-five and thirty years of age, in perfect
health, and of herculean strength. He was considerably over six feet in
height, compactly built, and that consciousness of power which such
favored individuals possess, rendered him, in a great measure,
indifferent to the opinions of others. Without any of the refinement
which careful culture and early training confer, it is not to be
wondered at that Tom was not 'over-particular' as to the society in
which he ventured, or what profession he followed.
He had also been captain of a canal-packet, a drover, a deputy-sheriff,
a general collector, and had first married in Kentucky, and settled at
Lexington, where he had spent four years. There his wife died, without
leaving children, and Tom was afloat upon the world again. Then he had
spent two years in Mississippi; returned to Lexington, went to
Cincinnati; 'and since then,' he continued, 'I have lived in every
county on this side in succession, and have been here four years since I
married my present wife; so that you see the seventeen years is now
filled up, and you know my whole history.'
'But what were you doing in Mississippi?' I inquired.
For the first time Tom hesitated; and he answered, with an uneasy
expression and a furtive glancing about of his keen hazel eye, that he
had been an overseer on a plantation.
'The devil!' I exclaimed, rather abruptly.
'It is a fact,' said the plain-spoken Tom, looking seriously into his
empty glass, then adding apologetically:
'What should I care about it? I had lived a long time in Kentucky, and
been accustomed to slavery as it existed there. Besides, I am a
Marylander by birth. I said slavery was right, and I believed it. My
wife was dead; I had little means left, and cared for nothing.
'I had become acquainted with Luke Meminger, the principal negro-dealer
at Lexington, who boarded at McGowan's Hotel, where I was then stopping,
and he introduced me to a Mississippi planter' who was there buying a
few hands for his plantation back of Grand Gulf. Talbot (that was the
planter's name) seemed to take a fancy to me, and finally proposed to me
to go with him to Mississippi and serve as assistant overseer. He
offered me a salary of eight hundred dollars a year; said I should have
a horse to ride over the plantation, a servant to wait on me, and an
easy time of it generally. I accepted the offer, and accompanied him
down the river. We took down fifteen niggars whom he had purchased in
Kentucky, mostly at Lexington. I was there two years, and left heartily
sick of it.'
'Well, that is an episode in your history, Tom,' I said, 'that I could
never have imagined. But now you must tell me something about plantation
life. I have heard and read a great deal about it, but never had it from
the mouth of an old friend on whose word I could rely, and who possessed
the advantage of having been an overseer himself.'
'Oh! there is very little to tell,' said Tom. 'I had to set the niggars
at work and see that they performed their tasks; that was all.'
'Well, what crops did you cultivate?'
'Cotton.'
'How many hands did you work?'
'About seventy-five. There were some hundred and fifty on the
plantation, altogether, big and little.
'What did the women do?'
'Women?' said Tom, with a slight note of interrogation. 'We didn't know
any thing about women: they were all _hands_. When I was driving stock
to New-York, I treated oxen and cows all alike; and on our plantation
all the able-bodied hands worked together in the field, and no
difference was made between them. There were old, decrepit wenches,
unable to work, who took care of the children during the day. When the
mothers came from the field at night they suckled their picaninies--for
nearly all the women have babies. They breed like rabbits,' added Tom,
'in postscript.'
'But what did _you_ know about raising cotton?' I asked.
'Nothing, of course,' he replied, 'you must remember that I was second
overseer. The head overseer took the chief management of affairs. But
when I had been there about three months, Blake died--that was my
chief's name--then the whole charge of the plantation then devolved on
me. Talbot was North, spending the summer. I wrote to him at Saratoga,
informing of the death of Blake, and requesting him to get another
head-overseer. But I got no reply, and I supposed he never received the
letter. When he came back in the fall, I found that he had, though; but
he said he supposed things would go on well enough. And so they did. The
supplies were all on hand, and there was nothing to do but to work the
place, raise the crop, and gather it.'
'But, after the death of Blake, and in the absence of Talbot, your want
of knowledge of the business must have worked you great inconvenience,'
I remarked.
'Not at all,' he replied; 'I knew next to nothing about it, it is true;
but the niggars did. [Tom _would_ call them _niggars_.] They understood
the business well enough, the most of them. Talbot knew nothing about it
himself, and he seemed to care less. These planters put every thing on
the overseers. They make them responsible for the crop; and the
overseers--they make the hands responsible.'
'Well, tell me something, now, of the operations of each day on the
plantation. How early did you get the hands at work in the morning?'
'In summer I called the hands at about four o'clock. They had half an
hour to get their feed and reach the field. I divided them into gangs of
from fifteen to thirty each, and appointed some one of the most
intelligent to oversee each gang. I then set them their tasks for the
day; and calling out Dick, or Jeff, or whatever his name might be that I
had appointed, I told him, in presence and hearing of his gang, that I
made him responsible for the work being done, and being well done; that
if the hands did not obey him, he should lick them, and make them do
their work. In this way I never had any difficulty in getting the work
done which I had set for them.
'When I had got them all at work, I rode from one part of the field to
another to see how they were getting along; and when the sun began to
get too hot, toward nine o'clock, I would go back to my quarters at the
house, get my breakfast, and then lounge about awhile, and finally lie
down and sleep through the heat of the day. After four or five o'clock
in the afternoon, I had my horse brought up by my servant--I had my own
servant, I told you; I had my boots blacked twice a day; had to keep up
the dignity of the institution, you know--I had my horse brought up, and
rode round to the different gangs.'
'But, Tom,' I inquired; 'I suppose you sometimes had to flog the
slaves?'
'Never touched a one of them, never! 'T wan't no use. Made 'em do just
as I wanted without striking a blow.'
'Why, how did you do it?'
'I've told you how I did it. I set some of them to oversee the rest.
_They_ thrashed them; I didn't. If they failed in their tasks, I talked
to them in this way,' (and he turned his wicked eye on me with a merry
twinkle,) 'I called out the overseer, and spoke to him so that the rest
could hear me; I said to him: 'Dick,' or 'Jeff,' or whatever his name
was, 'how is this? I set you a task this morning that you could do easy
enough. Why isn't it done? Some of your hands have been lazy. Now, mind,
this won't do. I don't want to punish you, but I see I'll have to do
it.' Then turning to the hands: 'Boys, what have you been so lazy for?
You don't want Jeff licked, do you? Why don't you work like men, and
finish the tasks I set you? You black devils, you! if you keep on in
this way you will always be niggars; but if you work, and do as you
ought to, you will get as white as I am, after a while!'
'This course generally had the desired effect; but I clinched the
argument by threatening to withhold their whisky rations if they failed
in their work.'
'Then you gave them whisky rations, did you?'
'Yes. Every Saturday night, if they had behaved well during the week, I
gave them a keg of whisky to keep Sunday with. We locked up the tools,
and the supplies, and in fact the houses. My room was bolted and barred
like a state's prison, and I had a complete arsenal of guns, swords, and
ammunition. And then they had a regular 'drunk' on Sunday. The keg held
just enough, and not a drop over. They divided it out among themselves,
by measurement, and it was all gone in time for them to get over the
effects of it before Monday morning.'
'Don't you think,' I inquired, 'that the expected whisky rations was
quite as great a stimulus to their exertions as your philosophical
exhortations?'
'Perhaps it was. But you must recollect that the whisky rations formed a
part of my lecture, and were always introduced as a clincher. I was the
most popular overseer ever on the plantation, and when I left the
darkies cried like babies. Talbot raised my wages to twelve hundred
dollars, dating from the time I went there, and I performed the whole
duties of overseer without any assistance.'
'And how did you come to leave so agreeable and profitable an
employment?'
'Well, I'll tell you how it was. Talbot used to get tight; and although
he was ordinarily a perfect gentleman in his behavior, when drunk he was
the very devil! Then, he would abuse me like a pickpocket, and find all
manner of fault with whatever I did. He would curse me for a d--d
Yankee, and I would give him as good as he sent. I was no more a Yankee
than he was, having been born, as you know, in Maryland.
'Often he drew his bowie-knife, and rushed at me as if he would cut me
into mince-meat; but I met him boldly with my 'cheese-cutter,' and
backed him down. I could have handled him as I would a child, and he
knew it. And if he had ever drawn blood on me, I would have killed him
in an instant; and he knew it.
'One day when he was drunk, he got mad at a niggar woman he kept about
the house, and ordered me to whip her. I told him to whip her himself.
This enraged him terribly. He was just drunk enough to be crazy. Out
came the everlasting bowie-knife, and out came mine, as usual. Then he
turned from me--whom he feared to attack, drunk and insensate as he
was--he turned from me upon the poor black girl. She was standing near,
with her eyes cast down, and did not immediately perceive his intention.
'She was a pretty girl--a dark mulatto--and had long been his favorite.
But he was then perfectly blind with fury, and dashed at her with his
glittering knife raised above his head. She saw him in time to utter a
piercing shriek, and while in the act of turning to fly, the weapon fell
upon her neck, severed the jugular vein, and prostrated her to the
floor.
'The poor girl never spoke again. The blood rushed like water from the
wound, her face paled, her limbs stiffened, and, with a few convulsive
shudders, she was dead. She was taken to one of the huts, and buried by
the blacks on the following night. There was no inquest--no inquiry--it
was nobody's business.
'As for Talbot, as soon as he saw her fall he appeared to be sobered all
at once. He looked at her a moment, glanced at the bloody knife, and
then cast it from him, as if he were purging himself of the offense, or
punishing the offender by the act. He said not a word, but went to his
room. I saw him no more that day.
'On the next, I went to him and told him he must get another overseer,
for I was about to leave. He seemed incredulous at first, then stormed,
then finding me inflexible, he offered to increase my wages if I would
remain. I had but one answer for all. I said to him: 'Mr. Talbot, I
don't want your money. If I would stay with you at all, I would stay for
my present salary. But I will not stay: I never eat my words. If you are
ready to settle with me now, say so; if not, say when you will be
ready.'
'He said he was ready then, and we settled. I had a few hundred dollars
due to me, which he paid, and I was on my way to Grand Gulf within two
hours after. The subject of the murder of the mulatto girl was not
alluded to between us.'
* * * * *
'Well,' I said to Tom, 'what is your opinion of slavery now? You are
able to judge for yourself of the 'institution,' having formed one of
its ornaments, and contributed to keep up its 'dignity.' I suppose you
have read _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and are prepared to give a flat denial to
the pretended facts of the author. Of course it is all false about the
parting of families--husband and wife, parent and child, etc., and all
the instances of that sort of cruelty cited in her appendix are trash
and a libel upon the beneficent and patriarchal institution?'
I spoke ironically, and he so understood me. The passions of Tom's great
heart had been gradually wrought up by a review of the bloody scene he
had himself witnessed, and which had made a strong impression on him,
and he now sprung to his feet.
'_Uncle Tom's Cabin_ be d--d!' he cried. 'Owen Glendower, what I've seen
with my own eyes I know, don't I? I could tell you things that would
make your hair stand straight out, if I was a mind to; but it's no use.
'As to slavery, as it exists in the Sugar and Cotton States, to-day, I
have but one fit illustration for it.
'The religious writers of the Jews, and those who follow their ideas,
have pictured to us the future condition of the sinner and finally
impenitent as the most desperate and deplorable possible to be
conceived--as they thought. They had never witnessed American slavery as
practiced in the nineteenth century. If they, had, the material fire,
the tormenting fiends, and the 'worm that never dies,' would have given
place to the natural features of a Mississippi plantation, where the
unrestrained passions of avarice, brutality, and lust make a Hell to
which the _Gehenna_ of the Hebrews is but a mild sort of purgatory by
comparison.
'About parting husband and wife, and parent and child, I will tell you
one thing I myself saw in Kentucky; and in Kentucky you know, slavery
exists in its mildest form, and the system approaches nearer to that
patriarchal character which is most falsely claimed for it by its
supporters, than in any of the more Southern States.'
Just then Master Winters returned to the room, and on seeing him Tom's
excitement apparently increased. He gesticulated violently, and
delivered himself in short, emphatic sentences, interlarded, I am sorry
to say, with rather too many of those objectionable expletives that an
ex-slave-overseer may be supposed to be addicted to. Swearing is a
vulgar practice, and one for which there is no sort of justification;
and yet, I must confess, it is calculated to give a certain savage
energy to one's language when he has not a very copious vocabulary of
choicer epithets and synonyms at command. Of course I can not do justice
to Tom's colloquial style in print, but he proceeded:
'I was, as I told you before, well acquainted with the slave-dealer,
Meminger, at Lexington. We boarded together at M'Gowan's; and after my
wife died I went about with him considerable.
'One day, in the winter before I left there to go to Mississippi, he and
I were coming over from Danville. It was the coldest day I ever knew in
Kentucky. Kentucky has a mild climate, and the winters are short and not
very severe. Still the weather is very variable, and there will
occasionally occur a day in January which is as cold as any where else,
and which is felt all the more for being an exception.
'This day, when Meminger and I were coming over from Danville, was one
of those days. It was cold; I tell you, it was almighty cold! We were on
horseback, and were bundled up with any amount of clothes and mufflers,
and had leggins on--as they always wear them in Kentucky when they go on
horseback. We had got--you know where the turnpike forks south of the
Kentucky river. One branch runs this way, to Danville; the other, that
way to Lancaster and Stanford. Right here in the forks--that is the
identical spot where Camp 'Dick Robinson' now is; but there was no camp
there then, by a long shot. Then as you approach the river, you come
down a long hill, a mile long, at least, you know.
'Well, we had got nearly to the bottom of this hill, and were coming
along at a pretty good jog, when we heard some body hallooing after us,
and we held up. Looking around, we saw a man running down from the house
standing upon the side-hill, a little away from the road. May be you
remember the house up there? Well, he was hallooing like a loon, and we
waited till he came up. Soon as he got near enough to talk, he says:
''An't one o' you Mr. Meminger, the negro-trader from Lexington?'
''My name's Meminger,' said my companion, 'and I sometimes buy niggars.
What do you want?'
''I want to sell you a woman,' replied the man.
''Where is she?'
''Up at my house, there.'
''Well, fotch her down, then. You don't suppose I'm going up there for
any d--d niggar woman, such a day as this, do you? And be quick about
it, for I don't intend to stand here in the cold.'
'The man started back for the house on the run, and kept hallooing and
motioning to some one who met him on the way; and he returned to where
we stood on the 'pike with as fine, healthy a looking young black girl
as I have often seen. She was dressed with a single garment, which
hardly covered her; and she carried in her arms a child, apparently
about two or three months old, which she had wrapped up in some rags to
keep it warm.
''This is the woman,' said the man.
''What do you ask for her?' said Meminger.
''I'll take eight hundred dollars for the mother and child,' said the
man.
''D--n the child!' said Meminger; 'do you suppose I want two months
children in my pen? If you do, you are cursedly mistaken. What will you
take for the woman alone?'
''I don't very well like to part them,' said the man hesitatingly, 'and
I promised my wife I wouldn't. But if you won't buy the child--'
''I tell you I won't buy the child, and that's enough,' broke in
Meminger.
''---- I'll take seven hundred dollars for the woman.'
'Meminger threw his bridle-rein to me, and slid down from his horse to
look at the girl. He stepped up to her, caught her upper lip with one
hand and her lower with the other, and opened her mouth, and examined
her teeth in the same manner that you or I, Owen, would a horse. Then he
took her by the arm, twirled her round, struck her roughly on her back,
felt the muscle of her fore-arm, her thigh, and calf; then stood back
and examined her all over a moment, and said:
''I suppose she is all right? I don't want her, but I am going right
home, and I can take her along as well as not, and I'll give you six
hundred dollars for her. If you want it, say so at once, for I an't
going to stand here talking all day!'
'The man seemed reluctant to take the sum offered--said she was worth
more, and he ought to give six hundred and fifty for her.
'Meminger cut him short with a savage oath, telling him that if he
wasn't going to accept the six hundred, to say so, for he would not
stand there in the cold any longer for the six hundred dollars, niggar
and all, and he moved toward his horse as if to remount.
''Well, then,' said the man, who seemed determined to sell her at some
price, 'take her at six hundred if that's all you'll give.'
'Meminger drew out a blank bill of sale--that's the way they do it, you
know, have to have it in writing--and said to me:
''Here, Tom, you fill out this for me, for my hands have got so cold I
can't write.'
'He took a pen and ink from his pocket, and I filled out the bill of
sale while he counted down six hundred dollars in bills on the Northern
Bank of Kentucky, and paid them over. By the time the man had signed the
bill the ink was frozen solid.
''Hurry up!' says Meminger.
'The man having received his money, caught the child from its mother's
arms and started for the house without saying another word.
'The woman had all this time been shivering with the cold, and
apparently wholly occupied with the child in endeavoring to keep it
warm. She pressed it to her bosom, examined the ragged covering with
care and tenderness, and strove to draw her own scanty garment over it.
She seemed, in fact, so engrossed with her care of the child that she
had not comprehended that part of the negotiation which threatened to
part her from it. Perhaps she did not, in her blind maternal confidence,
conceive such a thing possible!
'When the child was roughly snatched from her, she paused an instant, as
if collecting her thoughts, and then, awakening to the reality of the
case, she started wildly after it. But Meminger was too quick for her.
He was used to such scenes. He caught her before she had gone three
steps, and rudely threw her down. She uttered scream after scream, and
implored him not to part her from her child. Turning alternately from
the unfeeling and repulsive countenance of the slave-trader to the
retreating form of her late master, who bore away farther and farther
from her all that she knew of love or hope on earth, her impassioned
entreaties touched every key-note of human agony from frenzy to despair.
It was of no use. Meminger regarded her feelings no more than I regarded
the lowings of my stock when I was in the droving business.
'He mounted his horse, brought him up alongside of a low bank, and
ordered the woman to get up behind him. This she did as one accustomed
to obey, groaning and crying piteously. He placed her behind his saddle,
astride of the horse as if she were a man. In this position, what dress
she had on, and it was not much, was necessarily drawn up above her
knees. She had an old pair of scuffs of shoes on, the rest of the limbs
were bare. And in this way we went on through the cold, she shivering,
sobbing, and clinging to the negro-trader, all the way to Lexington.
Only at Nicholasville, I persuaded Meminger to alight and get some
clothes to wrap up the girl's legs to prevent them from being frosted
before he got her home.'
'And do you really think she had a mother's affection for her child, and
felt its loss as acutely as other mothers--white mothers?' I asked him.
'Do I think so?' he asked, almost fiercely. 'Come here, Henry Clay!' and
he reached down and lifted his boy up into his huge arms and kissed him
with fervor.
'Do you see that boy? Do you think his white mother loves him?' he
asked.
'No doubt of it,' I answered.
'And I tell you, Owen Glendower,' he resumed, 'that just as my wife,
Mrs. Winters, loves this boy, did that black mother love her child. More
strongly, more firmly did she love it; more frantically did she bewail
its loss, because her reason did not suggest any hope of its ultimate
recovery, such as might be entertained by an intelligent white woman.
And when it was suddenly snatched from her bosom, on that cold day, by
the Kentucky River, it was as much lost to her as if it had been
snatched by the hand of death instead of that of her inhuman master.'
'This was a single instance, you may say; but if I've seen _one_, I've
seen _fifty_ such. Not all alike, but varying with circumstance,
locality, and occasion; and yet all due alike to the essential elements
of human slavery, and inseparable from the institution.'
* * * * *
My time was up. I bade adieu to my hostess, shook Tom Winters' hand, and
started for the cars with a feeling of satisfaction at having
encountered him again, even if it should be for the last time.