Chapter II. Boyhood Days
Chapter III. The Struggle For An Education
Chapter IV. Helping Others
Chapter V. The Reconstruction Period
Chapter VI. Black Race And Red Race
Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee
Chapter VIII. Teaching School In A Stable And A Hen-House
Chapter IX. Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights
Chapter X. A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw
Chapter XI. Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them
Chapter XII. Raising Money
Chapter XIII. Two Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech
Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address
Chapter XV. The Secret Of Success In Public Speaking
Chapter XVI. Europe
Chapter XVII. Last Words
UP FROM SLAVERY:
Preface
This volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles, dealing with
incidents in my life, which were published consecutively in the
Outlook. While they were appearing in that magazine I was constantly
surprised at the number of requests which came to me from all parts of
the country, asking that the articles be permanently preserved in book
form. I am most grateful to the Outlook for permission to gratify these
requests.
I have tried to tell a simple, straightforward story, with no attempt
at embellishment. My regret is that what I have attempted to do has
been done so imperfectly. The greater part of my time and strength is
required for the executive work connected with the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, and in securing the money necessary for the
support of the institution. Much of what I have said has been written
on board trains, or at hotels or railroad stations while I have been
waiting for trains, or during the moments that I could spare from my
work while at Tuskegee. Without the painstaking and generous assistance
of Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher I could not have succeeded in any
satisfactory degree.
Introduction
The details of Mr. Washington’s early life, as frankly set down in “Up
from Slavery,” do not give quite a whole view of his education. He had
the training that a coloured youth receives at Hampton, which, indeed,
the autobiography does explain. But the reader does not get his
intellectual pedigree, for Mr. Washington himself, perhaps, does not as
clearly understand it as another man might. The truth is he had a
training during the most impressionable period of his life that was
very extraordinary, such a training as few men of his generation have
had. To see its full meaning one must start in the Hawaiian Islands
half a century or more ago.* There Samuel Armstrong, a youth of
missionary parents, earned enough money to pay his expenses at an
American college. Equipped with this small sum and the earnestness that
the undertaking implied, he came to Williams College when Dr. Mark
Hopkins was president. Williams College had many good things for youth
in that day, as it has in this, but the greatest was the strong
personality of its famous president. Every student does not profit by a
great teacher; but perhaps no young man ever came under the influence
of Dr. Hopkins, whose whole nature was so ripe for profit by such an
experience as young Armstrong. He lived in the family of President
Hopkins, and thus had a training that was wholly out of the common; and
this training had much to do with the development of his own strong
character, whose originality and force we are only beginning to
appreciate.
* For this interesting view of Mr. Washington’s education, I am
indebted to Robert C. Ogden, Esq., Chairman of the Board of Trustees
of Hampton Institute and the intimate friend of General Armstrong
during the whole period of his educational work.
In turn, Samuel Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, took up
his work as a trainer of youth. He had very raw material, and doubtless
most of his pupils failed to get the greatest lessons from him; but, as
he had been a peculiarly receptive pupil of Dr. Hopkins, so Booker
Washington became a peculiarly receptive pupil of his. To the formation
of Mr. Washington’s character, then, went the missionary zeal of New
England, influenced by one of the strongest personalities in modern
education, and the wide-reaching moral earnestness of General Armstrong
himself. These influences are easily recognizable in Mr. Washington
to-day by men who knew Dr. Hopkins and General Armstrong.
I got the cue to Mr. Washington’s character from a very simple incident
many years ago. I had never seen him, and I knew little about him,
except that he was the head of a school at Tuskegee, Alabama. I had
occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as “The Rev. Booker T.
Washington.” In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him as
a clergyman. But when I had occasion to write to him again, and
persisted in making him a preacher, his second letter brought a
postscript: “I have no claim to ‘Rev.’” I knew most of the coloured men
who at that time had become prominent as leaders of their race, but I
had not then known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher; and
I had not heard of the head of an important coloured school who was not
a preacher. “A new kind of man in the coloured world,” I said to
myself—“a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an
economic one instead of a theological one.” I wrote him an apology for
mistaking him for a preacher.
The first time that I went to Tuskegee I was asked to make an address
to the school on Sunday evening. I sat upon the platform of the large
chapel and looked forth on a thousand coloured faces, and the choir of
a hundred or more behind me sang a familiar religious melody, and the
whole company joined in the chorus with unction. I was the only white
man under the roof, and the scene and the songs made an impression on
me that I shall never forget. Mr. Washington arose and asked them to
sing one after another of the old melodies that I had heard all my
life; but I had never before heard them sung by a thousand voices nor
by the voices of educated Negroes. I had associated them with the Negro
of the past, not with the Negro who was struggling upward. They brought
to my mind the plantation, the cabin, the slave, not the freedman in
quest of education. But on the plantation and in the cabin they had
never been sung as these thousand students sang them. I saw again all
the old plantations that I had ever seen; the whole history of the
Negro ran through my mind; and the inexpressible pathos of his life
found expression in these songs as I had never before felt it.
And the future? These were the ambitious youths of the race, at work
with an earnestness that put to shame the conventional student life of
most educational institutions. Another song rolled up along the
rafters. And as soon as silence came, I found myself in front of this
extraordinary mass of faces, thinking not of them, but of that long and
unhappy chapter in our country’s history which followed the one great
structural mistake of the Fathers of the Republic; thinking of the one
continuous great problem that generations of statesmen had wrangled
over, and a million men fought about, and that had so dwarfed the mass
of English men in the Southern States as to hold them back a hundred
years behind their fellows in every other part of the world—in England,
in Australia, and in the Northern and Western States; I was thinking of
this dark shadow that had oppressed every large-minded statesman from
Jefferson to Lincoln. These thousand young men and women about me were
victims of it. I, too, was an innocent victim of it. The whole Republic
was a victim of that fundamental error of importing Africa into
America. I held firmly to the first article of my faith that the
Republic must stand fast by the principle of a fair ballot; but I
recalled the wretched mess that Reconstruction had made of it; I
recalled the low level of public life in all the “black” States. Every
effort of philanthropy seemed to have miscarried, every effort at
correcting abuses seemed of doubtful value, and the race friction
seemed to become severer. Here was the century-old problem in all its
pathos seated singing before me. Who were the more to be pitied—these
innocent victims of an ancient wrong, or I and men like me, who had
inherited the problem? I had long ago thrown aside illusions and
theories, and was willing to meet the facts face to face, and to do
whatever in God’s name a man might do towards saving the next
generation from such a burden. But I felt the weight of twenty
well-nigh hopeless years of thought and reading and observation; for
the old difficulties remained and new ones had sprung up. Then I saw
clearly that the way out of a century of blunders had been made by this
man who stood beside me and was introducing me to this audience. Before
me was the material he had used. All about me was the indisputable
evidence that he had found the natural line of development. He had
shown the way. Time and patience and encouragement and work would do
the rest.
It was then more clearly than ever before that I understood the
patriotic significance of Mr. Washington’s work. It is this conception
of it and of him that I have ever since carried with me. It is on this
that his claim to our gratitude rests.
To teach the Negro to read, whether English, or Greek, or Hebrew,
butters no parsnips. To make the Negro work, that is what his master
did in one way and hunger has done in another; yet both these left
Southern life where they found it. But to teach the Negro to do skilful
work, as men of all the races that have risen have worked,—responsible
work, which IS education and character; and most of all when Negroes so
teach Negroes to do this that they will teach others with a missionary
zeal that puts all ordinary philanthropic efforts to shame,—this is to
change the whole economic basis of life and the whole character of a
people.
The plan itself is not a new one. It was worked out at Hampton
Institute, but it was done at Hampton by white men. The plan had, in
fact, been many times theoretically laid down by thoughtful students of
Southern life. Handicrafts were taught in the days of slavery on most
well-managed plantations. But Tuskegee is, nevertheless, a brand-new
chapter in the history of the Negro, and in the history of the
knottiest problem we have ever faced. It not only makes “a carpenter of
a man; it makes a man of a carpenter.” In one sense, therefore, it is
of greater value than any other institution for the training of men and
women that we have, from Cambridge to Palo Alto. It is almost the only
one of which it may be said that it points the way to a new epoch in a
large area of our national life.
To work out the plan on paper, or at a distance—that is one thing. For
a white man to work it out—that too, is an easy thing. For a coloured
man to work it out in the South, where, in its constructive period, he
was necessarily misunderstood by his own people as well as by the
whites, and where he had to adjust it at every step to the strained
race relations—that is so very different and more difficult a thing
that the man who did it put the country under lasting obligations to
him.
It was not and is not a mere educational task. Anybody could teach boys
trades and give them an elementary education. Such tasks have been done
since the beginning of civilization. But this task had to be done with
the rawest of raw material, done within the civilization of the
dominant race, and so done as not to run across race lines and social
lines that are the strongest forces in the community. It had to be done
for the benefit of the whole community. It had to be done, moreover,
without local help, in the face of the direst poverty, done by begging,
and done in spite of the ignorance of one race and the prejudice of the
other.
No man living had a harder task, and a task that called for more wisdom
to do it right. The true measure of Mr. Washington’s success is, then,
not his teaching the pupils of Tuskegee, nor even gaining the support
of philanthropic persons at a distance, but this—that every Southern
white man of character and of wisdom has been won to a cordial
recognition of the value of the work, even men who held and still hold
to the conviction that a mere book education for the Southern blacks
under present conditions is a positive evil. This is a demonstration of
the efficiency of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea that stands like the
demonstration of the value of democratic institutions themselves—a
demonstration made so clear in spite of the greatest odds that it is no
longer open to argument.
Consider the change that has come in twenty years in the discussion of
the Negro problem. Two or three decades ago social philosophers and
statisticians and well-meaning philanthropists were still talking and
writing about the deportation of the Negroes, or about their settlement
within some restricted area, or about their settling in all parts of
the Union, or about their decline through their neglect of their
children, or about their rapid multiplication till they should expel
the whites from the South—of every sort of nonsense under heaven. All
this has given place to the simple plan of an indefinite extension
among the neglected classes of both races of the Hampton-Tuskegee
system of training. The “problem” in one sense has disappeared. The
future will have for the South swift or slow development of its masses
and of its soil in proportion to the swift or slow development of this
kind of training. This change of view is a true measure of Mr.
Washington’s work.
The literature of the Negro in America is colossal, from political
oratory through abolitionism to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Cotton is
King”—a vast mass of books which many men have read to the waste of
good years (and I among them); but the only books that I have read a
second time or ever care again to read in the whole list (most of them
by tiresome and unbalanced “reformers”) are “Uncle Remus” and “Up from
Slavery”; for these are the great literature of the subject. One has
all the best of the past, the other foreshadows a better future; and
the men who wrote them are the only men who have written of the subject
with that perfect frankness and perfect knowledge and perfect poise
whose other name is genius.
Mr. Washington has won a world-wide fame at an early age. His story of
his own life already has the distinction of translation into more
languages, I think, than any other American book; and I suppose that he
has as large a personal acquaintance among men of influence as any
private citizen now living.
His own teaching at Tuskegee is unique. He lectures to his advanced
students on the art of right living, not out of text-books, but
straight out of life. Then he sends them into the country to visit
Negro families. Such a student will come back with a minute report of
the way in which the family that he has seen lives, what their earnings
are, what they do well and what they do ill; and he will explain how
they might live better. He constructs a definite plan for the
betterment of that particular family out of the resources that they
have. Such a student, if he be bright, will profit more by an
experience like this than he could profit by all the books on sociology
and economics that ever were written. I talked with a boy at Tuskegee
who had made such a study as this, and I could not keep from
contrasting his knowledge and enthusiasm with what I heard in a class
room at a Negro university in one of the Southern cities, which is
conducted on the idea that a college course will save the soul. Here
the class was reciting a lesson from an abstruse text-book on
economics, reciting it by rote, with so obvious a failure to assimilate
it that the waste of labour was pitiful.
I asked Mr. Washington years ago what he regarded as the most important
result of his work, and he replied:
“I do not know which to put first, the effect of Tuskegee’s work on the
Negro, or the effect on the attitude of the white man to the Negro.”
The race divergence under the system of miseducation was fast getting
wider. Under the influence of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea the races are
coming into a closer sympathy and into an honourable and helpful
relation. As the Negro becomes economically independent, he becomes a
responsible part of the Southern life; and the whites so recognize him.
And this must be so from the nature of things. There is nothing
artificial about it. It is development in a perfectly natural way. And
the Southern whites not only so recognize it, but they are imitating it
in the teaching of the neglected masses of their own race. It has thus
come about that the school is taking a more direct and helpful hold on
life in the South than anywhere else in the country. Education is not a
thing apart from life—not a “system,” nor a philosophy; it is direct
teaching how to live and how to work.
To say that Mr. Washington has won the gratitude of all thoughtful
Southern white men, is to say that he has worked with the highest
practical wisdom at a large constructive task; for no plan for the
up-building of the freedman could succeed that ran counter to Southern
opinion. To win the support of Southern opinion and to shape it was a
necessary part of the task; and in this he has so well succeeded that
the South has a sincere and high regard for him. He once said to me
that he recalled the day, and remembered it thankfully, when he grew
large enough to regard a Southern white man as he regarded a Northern
one. It is well for our common country that the day is come when he and
his work are regarded as highly in the South as in any other part of
the Union. I think that no man of our generation has a more noteworthy
achievement to his credit than this; and it is an achievement of moral
earnestness of the strong character of a man who has done a great
national service.
Walter H. Page.
UP FROM SLAVERY
Chapter I.
A Slave Among Slaves
I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am
not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any
rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As
nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a cross-roads
post-office called Hale’s Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not
know the month or the day. The earliest impressions I can now recall
are of the plantation and the slave quarters—the latter being the part
of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.
My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my
owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
others. I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.
Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even
later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the
tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
mother’s side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while
being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful in
securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the
history of my family beyond my mother. She, I remember, had a
half-brother and a half-sister. In the days of slavery not very much
attention was given to family history and family records—that is, black
family records. My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of a
purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers. Her addition to the
slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new
horse or cow. Of my father I know even less than of my mother. I do not
even know his name. I have heard reports to the effect that he was a
white man who lived on one of the near-by plantations. Whoever he was,
I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in
any way for my rearing. But I do not find especial fault with him. He
was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the
Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.
The cabin was not only our living-place, but was also used as the
kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The
cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side which
let in the light, and also the cold, chilly air of winter. There was a
door to the cabin—that is, something that was called a door—but the
uncertain hinges by which it was hung, and the large cracks in it, to
say nothing of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very
uncomfortable one. In addition to these openings there was, in the
lower right-hand corner of the room, the “cat-hole,”—a contrivance
which almost every mansion or cabin in Virginia possessed during the
ante-bellum period. The “cat-hole” was a square opening, about seven by
eight inches, provided for the purpose of letting the cat pass in and
out of the house at will during the night. In the case of our
particular cabin I could never understand the necessity for this
convenience, since there were at least a half-dozen other places in the
cabin that would have accommodated the cats. There was no wooden floor
in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. In the centre of
the earthen floor there was a large, deep opening covered with boards,
which was used as a place in which to store sweet potatoes during the
winter. An impression of this potato-hole is very distinctly engraved
upon my memory, because I recall that during the process of putting the
potatoes in or taking them out I would often come into possession of
one or two, which I roasted and thoroughly enjoyed. There was no
cooking-stove on our plantation, and all the cooking for the whites and
slaves my mother had to do over an open fireplace, mostly in pots and
“skillets.” While the poorly built cabin caused us to suffer with cold
in the winter, the heat from the open fireplace in summer was equally
trying.
The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin, were
not very different from those of thousands of other slaves. My mother,
of course, had little time in which to give attention to the training
of her children during the day. She snatched a few moments for our care
in the early morning before her work began, and at night after the
day’s work was done. One of my earliest recollections is that of my
mother cooking a chicken late at night, and awakening her children for
the purpose of feeding them. How or where she got it I do not know. I
presume, however, it was procured from our owner’s farm. Some people
may call this theft. If such a thing were to happen now, I should
condemn it as theft myself. But taking place at the time it did, and
for the reason that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my
mother was guilty of thieving. She was simply a victim of the system of
slavery. I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family
was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Three
children—John, my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself—had a
pallet on the dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a
bundle of filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor.
I was asked not long ago to tell something about the sports and
pastimes that I engaged in during my youth. Until that question was
asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life
that was devoted to play. From the time that I can remember anything,
almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour;
though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for
sports. During the period that I spent in slavery I was not large
enough to be of much service, still I was occupied most of the time in
cleaning the yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going
to the mill to which I used to take the corn, once a week, to be
ground. The mill was about three miles from the plantation. This work I
always dreaded. The heavy bag of corn would be thrown across the back
of the horse, and the corn divided about evenly on each side; but in
some way, almost without exception, on these trips, the corn would so
shift as to become unbalanced and would fall off the horse, and often I
would fall with it. As I was not strong enough to reload the corn upon
the horse, I would have to wait, sometimes for many hours, till a
chance passer-by came along who would help me out of my trouble. The
hours while waiting for some one were usually spent in crying. The time
consumed in this way made me late in reaching the mill, and by the time
I got my corn ground and reached home it would be far into the night.
The road was a lonely one, and often led through dense forests. I was
always frightened. The woods were said to be full of soldiers who had
deserted from the army, and I had been told that the first thing a
deserter did to a Negro boy when he found him alone was to cut off his
ears. Besides, when I was late in getting home I knew I would always
get a severe scolding or a flogging.
I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on
several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my
young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys
and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon
me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in
this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.
So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact
that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being
discussed, was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my
mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln
and his armies might be successful, and that one day she and her
children might be free. In this connection I have never been able to
understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as
were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able
to keep themselves so accurately and completely informed about the
great National questions that were agitating the country. From the time
that Garrison, Lovejoy, and others began to agitate for freedom, the
slaves throughout the South kept in close touch with the progress of
the movement. Though I was a mere child during the preparation for the
Civil War and during the war itself, I now recall the many
late-at-night whispered discussions that I heard my mother and the
other slaves on the plantation indulge in. These discussions showed
that they understood the situation, and that they kept themselves
informed of events by what was termed the “grape-vine” telegraph.
During the campaign when Lincoln was first a candidate for the
Presidency, the slaves on our far-off plantation, miles from any
railroad or large city or daily newspaper, knew what the issues
involved were. When war was begun between the North and the South,
every slave on our plantation felt and knew that, though other issues
were discussed, the primal one was that of slavery. Even the most
ignorant members of my race on the remote plantations felt in their
hearts, with a certainty that admitted of no doubt, that the freedom of
the slaves would be the one great result of the war, if the Northern
armies conquered. Every success of the Federal armies and every defeat
of the Confederate forces was watched with the keenest and most intense
interest. Often the slaves got knowledge of the results of great
battles before the white people received it. This news was usually
gotten from the coloured man who was sent to the post-office for the
mail. In our case the post-office was about three miles from the
plantation, and the mail came once or twice a week. The man who was
sent to the office would linger about the place long enough to get the
drift of the conversation from the group of white people who naturally
congregated there, after receiving their mail, to discuss the latest
news. The mail-carrier on his way back to our master’s house would as
naturally retail the news that he had secured among the slaves, and in
this way they often heard of important events before the white people
at the “big house,” as the master’s house was called.
I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early
boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and
God’s blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized
manner. On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were
gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a
piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at
one time and some potatoes at another. Sometimes a portion of our
family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would
eat from a tin plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the
hands with which to hold the food. When I had grown to sufficient size,
I was required to go to the “big house” at meal-times to fan the flies
from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by a
pulley. Naturally much of the conversation of the white people turned
upon the subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good deal of
it. I remember that at one time I saw two of my young mistresses and
some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard. At that time those
cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable
things that I had ever seen; and I then and there resolved that, if I
ever got free, the height of my ambition would be reached if I could
get to the point where I could secure and eat ginger-cakes in the way
that I saw those ladies doing.
Of course as the war was prolonged the white people, in many cases,
often found it difficult to secure food for themselves. I think the
slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites, because the usual
diet for slaves was corn bread and pork, and these could be raised on
the plantation; but coffee, tea, sugar, and other articles which the
whites had been accustomed to use could not be raised on the
plantation, and the conditions brought about by the war frequently made
it impossible to secure these things. The whites were often in great
straits. Parched corn was used for coffee, and a kind of black molasses
was used instead of sugar. Many times nothing was used to sweeten the
so-called tea and coffee.
The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones. They
had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch
thick, were of wood. When I walked they made a fearful noise, and
besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding
to the natural pressure of the foot. In wearing them one presented an
exceedingly awkward appearance. The most trying ordeal that I was
forced to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax
shirt. In the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use
flax as part of the clothing for the slaves. That part of the flax from
which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which of course was
the cheapest and roughest part. I can scarcely imagine any torture,
except, perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that caused
by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time. It is almost equal
to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more
chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pin-points, in contact with his
flesh. Even to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I
underwent when putting on one of these garments. The fact that my flesh
was soft and tender added to the pain. But I had no choice. I had to
wear the flax shirt or none; and had it been left to me to choose, I
should have chosen to wear no covering. In connection with the flax
shirt, my brother John, who is several years older than I am, performed
one of the most generous acts that I ever heard of one slave relative
doing for another. On several occasions when I was being forced to wear
a new flax shirt, he generously agreed to put it on in my stead and
wear it for several days, till it was “broken in.” Until I had grown to
be quite a youth this single garment was all that I wore.
One may get the idea, from what I have said, that there was bitter
feeling toward the white people on the part of my race, because of the
fact that most of the white population was away fighting in a war which
would result in keeping the Negro in slavery if the South was
successful. In the case of the slaves on our place this was not true,
and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the
South where the Negro was treated with anything like decency. During
the Civil War one of my young masters was killed, and two were severely
wounded. I recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves
when they heard of the death of “Mars’ Billy.” It was no sham sorrow,
but real. Some of the slaves had nursed “Mars’ Billy”; others had
played with him when he was a child. “Mars’ Billy” had begged for mercy
in the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them.
The sorrow in the slave quarter was only second to that in the “big
house.” When the two young masters were brought home wounded, the
sympathy of the slaves was shown in many ways. They were just as
anxious to assist in the nursing as the family relatives of the
wounded. Some of the slaves would even beg for the privilege of sitting
up at night to nurse their wounded masters. This tenderness and
sympathy on the part of those held in bondage was a result of their
kindly and generous nature. In order to defend and protect the women
and children who were left on the plantations when the white males went
to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives. The slave who was
selected to sleep in the “big house” during the absence of the males
was considered to have the place of honour. Any one attempting to harm
“young Mistress” or “old Mistress” during the night would have had to
cross the dead body of the slave to do so. I do not know how many have
noticed it, but I think that it will be found to be true that there are
few instances, either in slavery or freedom, in which a member of my
race has been known to betray a specific trust.
As a rule, not only did the members of my race entertain no feelings of
bitterness against the whites before and during the war, but there are
many instances of Negroes tenderly caring for their former masters and
mistresses who for some reason have become poor and dependent since the
war. I know of instances where the former masters of slaves have for
years been supplied with money by their former slaves to keep them from
suffering. I have known of still other cases in which the former slaves
have assisted in the education of the descendants of their former
owners. I know of a case on a large plantation in the South in which a
young white man, the son of the former owner of the estate, has become
so reduced in purse and self-control by reason of drink that he is a
pitiable creature; and yet, notwithstanding the poverty of the coloured
people themselves on this plantation, they have for years supplied this
young white man with the necessities of life. One sends him a little
coffee or sugar, another a little meat, and so on. Nothing that the
coloured people possess is too good for the son of “old Mars’ Tom,” who
will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place
who knew directly or indirectly of “old Mars’ Tom.”
I have said that there are few instances of a member of my race
betraying a specific trust. One of the best illustrations of this which
I know of is in the case of an ex-slave from Virginia whom I met not
long ago in a little town in the state of Ohio. I found that this man
had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to the
Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be
permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and
while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted to labour where
and for whom he pleased. Finding that he could secure better wages in
Ohio, he went there. When freedom came, he was still in debt to his
master some three hundred dollars. Notwithstanding that the
Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master,
this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where
his old master lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar, with
interest, in his hands. In talking to me about this, the man told me
that he knew that he did not have to pay the debt, but that he had
given his word to the master, and his word he had never broken. He felt
that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise.
From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the
slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one
who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.
I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is
so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long
since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern
white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section
of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and,
besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General
Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic
and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country
to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of
prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must
acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of
slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who
themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American
slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially,
intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal
number of black people in any other portion of the globe. This is so to
such an extent that Negroes in this country, who themselves or whose
forefathers went through the school of slavery, are constantly
returning to Africa as missionaries to enlighten those who remained in
the fatherland. This I say, not to justify slavery—on the other hand, I
condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was
established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a
missionary motive—but to call attention to a fact, and to show how
Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose.
When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes
seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the
future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness
through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.
Ever since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have
entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted
upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white
man did. The hurtful influences of the institution were not by any
means confined to the Negro. This was fully illustrated by the life
upon our own plantation. The whole machinery of slavery was so
constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge
of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both
races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our
place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and
self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and
girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or
special line of productive industry. The girls were not taught to cook,
sew, or to take care of the house. All of this was left to the slaves.
The slaves, of course, had little personal interest in the life of the
plantation, and their ignorance prevented them from learning how to do
things in the most improved and thorough manner. As a result of the
system, fences were out of repair, gates were hanging half off the
hinges, doors creaked, window-panes were out, plastering had fallen but
was not replaced, weeds grew in the yard. As a rule, there was food for
whites and blacks, but inside the house, and on the dining-room table,
there was wanting that delicacy and refinement of touch and finish
which can make a home the most convenient, comfortable, and attractive
place in the world. Withal there was a waste of food and other
materials which was sad. When freedom came, the slaves were almost as
well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of
book-learning and ownership of property. The slave owner and his sons
had mastered no special industry. They unconsciously had imbibed the
feeling that manual labour was not the proper thing for them. On the
other hand, the slaves, in many cases, had mastered some handicraft,
and none were ashamed, and few unwilling, to labour.
Finally the war closed, and the day of freedom came. It was a momentous
and eventful day to all upon our plantation. We had been expecting it.
Freedom was in the air, and had been for months. Deserting soldiers
returning to their homes were to be seen every day. Others who had been
discharged, or whose regiments had been paroled, were constantly
passing near our place. The “grape-vine telegraph” was kept busy night
and day. The news and mutterings of great events were swiftly carried
from one plantation to another. In the fear of “Yankee” invasions, the
silverware and other valuables were taken from the “big house,” buried
in the woods, and guarded by trusted slaves. Woe be to any one who
would have attempted to disturb the buried treasure. The slaves would
give the Yankee soldiers food, drink, clothing—anything but that which
had been specifically intrusted to their care and honour. As the great
day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than
usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night.
Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to
freedom. True, they had sung those same verses before, but they had
been careful to explain that the “freedom” in these songs referred to
the next world, and had no connection with life in this world. Now they
gradually threw off the mask, and were not afraid to let it be known
that the “freedom” in their songs meant freedom of the body in this
world. The night before the eventful day, word was sent to the slave
quarters to the effect that something unusual was going to take place
at the “big house” the next morning. There was little, if any, sleep
that night. All as excitement and expectancy. Early the next morning
word was sent to all the slaves, old and young, to gather at the house.
In company with my mother, brother, and sister, and a large number of
other slaves, I went to the master’s house. All of our master’s family
were either standing or seated on the veranda of the house, where they
could see what was to take place and hear what was said. There was a
feeling of deep interest, or perhaps sadness, on their faces, but not
bitterness. As I now recall the impression they made upon me, they did
not at the moment seem to be sad because of the loss of property, but
rather because of parting with those whom they had reared and who were
in many ways very close to them. The most distinct thing that I now
recall in connection with the scene was that some man who seemed to be
a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech
and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I
think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could
go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side,
leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her
cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day
for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would
never live to see.
For some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild
scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of bitterness. In fact,
there was pity among the slaves for our former owners. The wild
rejoicing on the part of the emancipated coloured people lasted but for
a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their
cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility
of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and
plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of
them. It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve
years out into the world to provide for himself. In a few hours the
great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for
centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. These were
the questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education,
citizenship, and the establishment and support of churches. Was it any
wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and a feeling
of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters? To some it seemed
that, now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more
serious thing than they had expected to find it. Some of the slaves
were seventy or eighty years old; their best days were gone. They had
no strength with which to earn a living in a strange place and among
strange people, even if they had been sure where to find a new place of
abode. To this class the problem seemed especially hard. Besides, deep
down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to
“old Marster” and “old Missus,” and to their children, which they found
it hard to think of breaking off. With these they had spent in some
cases nearly a half-century, and it was no light thing to think of
parting. Gradually, one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves
began to wander from the slave quarters back to the “big house” to have
a whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future.