MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.
EARLY EMPLOYMENT.--SLAVE-LIFE.--FOOD, LODGING,
CLOTHING.--AMUSEMENTS.--GLEAMS OF SUNSHINE.--MY
KNIGHT-ERRANTRY.--BECOME AN OVERSEER AND GENERAL
SUPERINTENDENT.
My earliest employments were, to carry buckets of water to the men at
work, and to hold a horse-plough, used for weeding between the rows
of corn. As I grew older and taller, I was entrusted with the care
of master's saddle-horse. Then a hoe was put into my hands, and I
was soon required to do the day's work of a man; and it was not long
before I could do it, at least as well as my associates in misery.
The every-day life of a slave on one of our southern plantations,
however frequently it may have been described, is generally little
understood at the north; and must be mentioned as a necessary
illustration of the character and habits of the slave and the
slaveholder, created and perpetuated by their relative position. The
principal food of those upon my master's plantation consisted of
corn-meal, and salt herrings; to which was added in summer a little
buttermilk, and the few vegetables which each might raise for himself
and his family, on the little piece of ground which was assigned to
him for the purpose, called a truck patch.
In ordinary times we had two regular meals in a day:--breakfast at
twelve o'clock, after laboring from daylight, and supper when the work
of the remainder of the day was over. In harvest season we had three.
Our dress was of tow-cloth; for the children nothing but a shirt; for
the older ones a pair of pantaloons or a gown in addition, according
to the sex. Besides these, in the winter a round jacket or overcoat,
a wool hat once in two or three years, for the males, and a pair of
coarse shoes once a year.
We lodged in log huts, and on the bare ground. Wooden floors were an
unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or
a dozen persons, men, women and children. All ideas of refinement
and decency were, of course, out of the question. There were neither
bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections
of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and boxed in with
boards; a single blanket the only covering. Our favorite way of
sleeping, however, was on a plank, our heads raised on an old jacket
and our feet toasting before the smouldering fire. The wind whistled
and the rain and snow blew in through the cracks, and the damp earth
soaked in the moisture till the floor was miry as a pig-sty. Such were
our houses. In these wretched hovels were we penned at night, and fed
by day; here were the children born and the sick--neglected.
Notwithstanding this system of management I grew to be a robust and
vigorous lad. At fifteen years of age there were few who could
compete with me in work or sport. I was as lively as a young buck, and
running over with animal spirits. I could run faster, wrestle better,
and jump higher than anybody about me, and at an evening shakedown in
our own or a neighbor's kitchen, my feet became absolutely invisible
from the rate at which they moved. All this caused my master and my
fellow slaves to look upon me as a wonderfully smart fellow, and
prophecy the great things I should do when I became a man. My vanity
became vastly inflamed, and I fully coincided in their opinion.
Julius Cæsar never aspired and plotted for the imperial crown more
ambitiously than did I to out-hoe, out-reap, out-husk, out-dance,
out-everything every competitor; and from all I can learn he never
enjoyed his triumph half as much. One word of commendation from the
petty despot who ruled over us would set me up for a month.
I have no desire to represent the life of slavery as an experience
of nothing but misery. God be praised, that however hedged in by
circumstances, the joyful exuberance of youth will bound at times over
them all. Ours is a light-hearted race. The sternest and most covetous
master cannot frighten or whip the fun out of us; certainly old Riley
never did out of me. In those days I had many a merry time, and would
have had, had I lived with nothing but moccasins and rattle-snakes
in Okafenoke swamp. Slavery did its best to make me wretched; I feel
no particular obligation to it; but nature, or the blessed God of
youth and joy, was mightier than slavery. Along with memories of miry
cabins, frosted feet, weary toil under the blazing sun, curses and
blows, there flock in others, of jolly Christmas times, dances before
old massa's door for the first drink of egg-nog, extra meat at holiday
times, midnight visits to apple orchards, broiling stray chickens, and
first-rate tricks to dodge work. The God who makes the pup gambol, and
the kitten play, and the bird sing, and the fish leap, was the author
in me of many a light-hearted hour. True it was, indeed, that the fun
and freedom of Christmas, at which time my master relaxed his front,
was generally followed up by a portentous back-action, under which he
drove and cursed worse than ever; still the fun and freedom were fixed
facts; we had had them and he could not help it.
Besides these pleasant memories I have others of a deeper and richer
kind. I early learned to employ my spirit of adventure for the benefit
of my fellow-sufferers. The condition of the male slave is bad enough;
but that of the female, compelled to perform unfit labor, sick,
suffering, and bearing the peculiar burdens of her own sex unpitied
and unaided, as well as the toils which belong to the other, is one
that must arouse the spirit of sympathy in every heart not dead to
all feeling. The miseries which I saw many of the women suffer often
oppressed me with a load of sorrow. No _white_ knight, rescuing
white fair ones from cruel oppression, ever felt the throbbing of a
chivalrous heart more intensely than I, a _black_ knight, did, in
running down a chicken in an out-of-the way place to hide till dark,
and then carry to some poor overworked black fair one, to whom it was
at once food, luxury, and medicine. No Scotch borderer, levying black
mail or sweeping off a drove of cattle, ever felt more assured of the
justice of his act than I of mine, in driving a mile or two into the
woods a pig or a sheep, and slaughtering it for the good of those
whom Riley was starving. I felt good, moral, heroic. The beautiful
combination of a high time and a benevolent act--the harmonious
interplay of nature and grace--was absolutely entrancing. I felt then
the excellency of a sentiment I have since found expressed in a hymn:
"Religion never was designed
To make our pleasures less."
Was this wrong? I can only say in reply, that, at this distance of
time, my conscience does not reproach me for it. Then I esteemed it
among the best of my deeds. It was my training in the luxury of doing
good, in the divinity of a sympathetic heart, in the righteousness of
indignation against the cruel and oppressive. There and then was my
soul made conscious of its heavenly original. This, too, was all the
chivalry of which my circumstances and condition in life admitted. I
love the sentiment in its splendid environment of castles, and tilts,
and gallantry; but having fallen on other times, I love it also in the
homely guise of Sambo as Paladin, Dinah as outraged maiden, and old
Riley as grim oppressor.
By means of the influence thus acquired, the increased amount of
work thus done upon the farm, and by the detection of the knavery of
the overseer, who plundered his employer for more selfish ends, and
through my watchfulness was caught in the act and dismissed, I was
promoted to be superintendent of the farm work, and managed to raise
more than double the crops, with more cheerful and willing labor, than
was ever seen on the estate before.
Yes, I was now practically overseer. My pride and ambition had made me
master of every kind of farm work. But like all ambition its reward
was increase of burdens. The crops of wheat, oats, barley, potatoes,
corn, tobacco, all had to be cared for by me. I was often compelled to
start at midnight with the wagon for the distant market, to drive on
through mud and rain till morning, sell the produce, reach home hungry
and tired, and nine times out of ten reap my sole reward in curses for
not getting higher prices. My master was a fearful blasphemer. Clearly
as he saw my profitableness to him, he was too much of a brute, and
too great a fool through his brutality, to reward me with kindness
or even decent treatment. Previous to my attaining this important
station, however, an incident occurred which produced so powerful an
influence on my intellectual development, my prospect of improvement
in character, as well as condition, my chance of religious culture,
and in short, on my whole nature, body and soul, that it deserves
especial notice and commemoration. This, however, requires another
chapter.