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NARRATIVE
OF
WILLIAM W. BROWN,
A
FUGITIVE SLAVE.
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
------------Is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who gains his fortune from the blood of souls?
COWPER.
SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE, No. 21 Cornhill.
1848
[Illustration: Wm. W. Brown.
Eng.d at 66 State St. from a Dag.tp of Chase
R. Andrews Print.]
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847,
BY WILLIAM W. BROWN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
Stereotyped by
GEORGE A. CURTIS;
NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDERY.
TO WELLS BROWN, OF OHIO.
Thirteen years ago, I came to your door, a weary fugitive from chains
and stripes. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was hungry, and
you fed me. Naked was I, and you clothed me. Even a name by which to be
known among men, slavery had denied me. You bestowed upon me your own.
Base, indeed, should I be, if I ever forget what I owe to you, or do
anything to disgrace that honored name!
As a slight testimony of my gratitude to my earliest benefactor, I take
the liberty to inscribe to you this little narrative of the sufferings
from which I was fleeing when you had compassion upon me. In the
multitude that you have succored, it is very possible that you may not
remember me; but until I forget God and myself, I can never forget you.
Your grateful friend,
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The first edition, of three thousand copies, of this little work
was sold in less than six months from the time of its publication.
Encouraged by the rapid sale of the first, and by a demand for a
second, edition, the author has been led to enlarge the work by the
addition of matter which, he thinks, will add materially to its value.
And if it shall be instrumental in helping to undo the heavy burdens,
and letting the oppressed go free, he will have accomplished the great
desire of his heart in publishing this work.
LETTER
FROM
EDMUND QUINCY, ESQ.
DEDHAM, JULY 1, 1847.
TO WILLIAM W. BROWN.
MY DEAR FRIEND:--I heartily thank you for the privilege of
reading the manuscript of your Narrative. I have read it with deep
interest and strong emotion. I am much mistaken if it be not greatly
successful and eminently useful. It presents a different phase of the
infernal slave-system from that portrayed in the admirable story of
Mr. Douglass, and gives us a glimpse of its hideous cruelties in other
portions of its domain.
Your opportunities of observing the workings of this accursed system
have been singularly great. Your experiences in the Field, in the
House, and especially on the River in the service of the slave-trader,
Walker, have been such as few individuals have had;--no one, certainly,
who has been competent to describe them. What I have admired, and
marvelled at, in your Narrative, is the simplicity and calmness with
which you describe scenes and actions which might well "move the very
stones to rise and mutiny" against the National Institution which makes
them possible.
You will perceive that I have made very sparing use of your flattering
permission to alter what you had written. To correct a few errors,
which appeared to be merely clerical ones, committed in the hurry
of composition under unfavorable circumstances, and to suggest a
few curtailments, is all that I have ventured to do. I should be a
bold man, as well as a vain one, if I should attempt to improve your
descriptions of what you have seen and suffered. Some of the scenes are
not unworthy of De Foe himself.
I trust and believe that your Narrative will have a wide circulation. I
am sure it deserves it. At least, a man must be differently constituted
from me, who can rise from the perusal of your Narrative without
feeling that he understands slavery better, and hates it worse, than he
ever did before.
I am, very faithfully and respectfully,
Your friend,
EDMUND QUINCY.
PREFACE.
The friends of freedom may well congratulate each other on the
appearance of the following Narrative. It adds another volume to the
rapidly increasing anti-slavery literature of the age. It has been
remarked by a close observer of human nature, "Let me make the songs
of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws;" and it may with equal
truth be said, that, among a reading people like our own, their books
will at least give character to their laws. It is an influence which
goes forth noiselessly upon its mission, but fails not to find its
way to many a warm heart, to kindle on the altar thereof the fires of
freedom, which will one day break forth in a living flame to consume
oppression.
This little book is a voice from the prison-house, unfolding the
deeds of darkness which are there perpetrated. Our cause has received
efficient aid from this source. The names of those who have come from
thence, and battled manfully for the right, need not to be recorded
here. The works of some of them are an enduring monument of praise, and
their perpetual record shall be found in the grateful hearts of the
redeemed bondman.
Few persons have had greater facilities for becoming acquainted with
slavery, in all its horrible aspects, than WILLIAM W. BROWN. He has
been behind the curtain. He has visited its secret chambers. Its iron
has entered his own soul. The dearest ties of nature have been riven
in his own person. A mother has been cruelly scourged before his own
eyes. A father--alas! slaves have no father. A brother has been made
the subject of its tender mercies. A sister has been given up to the
irresponsible control of the pale-faced oppressor. This nation looks on
approvingly. The American Union sanctions the deed. The constitution
shields the criminals. American religion sanctifies the crime. But the
tide is turning. Already, a mighty under-current is sweeping onward.
The voice of warning, of remonstrance, of rebuke, of entreaty, has gone
forth. Hand is linked in hand, and heart mingles with heart, in this
great work of the slave's deliverance.
The convulsive throes of the monster, even now, give evidence of deep
wounds.
The writer of this Narrative was hired by his master to a
"_soul-driver_," and has witnessed all the horrors of the traffic,
from the buying up of human cattle in the slave-breeding states, which
produced a constant scene of separating the victims from all those whom
they loved, to their final sale in the southern market, to be worked
up in seven years, or given over to minister to the lust of southern
_Christians_.
Many harrowing scenes are graphically portrayed; and yet with that
simplicity and ingenuousness which carries with it a conviction of the
truthfulness of the picture.
This book will do much to unmask those who have "clothed themselves in
the livery of the court of heaven" to cover up the enormity of their
deeds.
During the past three years, the author has devoted his entire energies
to the anti-slavery cause. Laboring under all the disabilities and
disadvantages growing out of his education in slavery--subjected, as he
had been from his birth, to all the wrongs and deprivations incident
to his condition--he yet went forth, impelled to the work by a love of
liberty--stimulated by the remembrance of his own sufferings--urged
on by the consideration that a mother, brothers, and sister, were
still grinding in the prison-house of bondage, in common with three
millions of our Father's children--sustained by an unfaltering faith
in the omnipotence of truth and the final triumph of justice--to plead
the cause of the slave; and by the eloquence of earnestness carried
conviction to many minds, and enlisted the sympathy and secured the
coöperation of many to the cause.
His labors have been chiefly confined to Western New York, where he has
secured many warm friends, by his untiring zeal, persevering energy,
continued fidelity, and universal kindness.
Reader, are you an Abolitionist? What have you done for the slave?
What are you doing in his behalf? What do you purpose to do? There is
a great work before us! Who will be an idler now? This is the great
humanitary movement of the age, swallowing up, for the time being, all
other questions, comparatively speaking. The course of human events, in
obedience to the unchangeable laws of our being, is fast hastening the
final crisis, and
"Have ye chosen, O my people, on whose party ye shall stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandal shakes the dust against our land?"
Are you a Christian? This is the carrying out of practical
Christianity; and there is no other. Christianity is _practical_ in
its very nature and essence. It is a life, springing out of a soul
imbued with its spirit. Are you a friend of the missionary cause? This
is the greatest missionary enterprise of the day. Three millions of
_Christian_, law-manufactured heathen are longing for the glad tidings
of the gospel of freedom. Are you a friend of the Bible? Come, then,
and help us to restore to these millions, whose eyes have been bored
out by slavery, their sight, that they may see to read the Bible.
Do you love God whom you have not seen? Then manifest that love, by
restoring to your brother whom you have seen his rightful inheritance,
of which he has been so long and so cruelly deprived.
It is not for a single generation alone, numbering three
millions--sublime as would be that effort--that we are working. It is
for HUMANITY, the wide world over, not only now, but for all
coming time, and all future generations:--
"For he who settles Freedom's principles,
Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny."
It is a vast work--a glorious enterprise--worthy the unswerving
devotion of the entire life-time of the great and the good.
Slaveholding and slaveholders must be rendered disreputable and odious.
They must be stripped of their respectability and Christian reputation.
They must be treated as "MEN-STEALERS--guilty of the highest kind of
theft, and sinners of the first rank." Their more guilty accomplices in
the persons of _northern apologists_, both in Church and State, must
be placed in the same category. Honest men must be made to look upon
their crimes with the same abhorrence and loathing with which they
regard the less guilty robber and assassin, until
"The common damned shun their society,
And look upon themselves as fiends less foul."
When a just estimate is placed upon the crime of slave-holding, the
work will have been accomplished, and the glorious day ushered in--
"When man nor woman in all our wide domain,
Shall buy, or sell, or hold, or be a slave."
J. C. HATHAWAY.
_Farmington, N. Y., 1847._
[Illustration: The author caught by the bloodhounds. (See p. 21.)]
NARRATIVE.
CHAPTER I.
I was born in Lexington, Ky. The man who stole me as soon as I was
born, recorded the births of all the infants which he claimed to
be born his property, in a book which he kept for that purpose. My
mother's name was Elizabeth. She had seven children, viz.: Solomon,
Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Millford, Elizabeth, and myself. No two of
us were children of the same father. My father's name, as I learned
from my mother, was George Higgins. He was a white man, a relative of
my master, and connected with some of the first families in Kentucky.
My master owned about forty slaves, twenty-five of whom were field
hands. He removed from Kentucky to Missouri when I was quite young,
and settled thirty or forty miles above St. Charles, on the Missouri,
where, in addition to his practice as a physician, he carried on
milling, merchandizing and farming. He had a large farm, the principal
productions of which were tobacco and hemp. The slave cabins were
situated on the back part of the farm, with the house of the overseer,
whose name was Grove Cook, in their midst. He had the entire charge of
the farm, and having no family, was allowed a woman to keep house for
him, whose business it was to deal out the provisions for the hands.
A woman was also kept at the quarters to do the cooking for the field
hands, who were summoned to their unrequited toil every morning at four
o'clock, by the ringing of a bell, hung on a post near the house of the
overseer. They were allowed half an hour to eat their breakfast, and
get to the field. At half past four a horn was blown by the overseer,
which was the signal to commence work; and every one that was not on
the spot at the time, had to receive ten lashes from the negro-whip,
with which the overseer always went armed. The handle was about three
feet long, with the butt-end filled with lead, and the lash, six or
seven feet in length, made of cow-hide, with platted wire on the end
of it. This whip was put in requisition very frequently and freely,
and a small offence on the part of a slave furnished an occasion for
its use. During the time that Mr. Cook was overseer, I was a house
servant--a situation preferable to that of a field hand, as I was
better fed, better clothed, and not obliged to rise at the ringing of
the bell, but about half an hour after. I have often laid and heard the
crack of the whip, and the screams of the slave. My mother was a field
hand, and one morning was ten or fifteen minutes behind the others in
getting into the field. As soon as she reached the spot where they were
at work, the overseer commenced whipping her. She cried, "Oh! pray--Oh!
pray--Oh! pray"--these are generally the words of slaves, when
imploring mercy at the hands of their oppressors. I heard her voice,
and knew it, and jumped out of my bunk, and went to the door. Though
the field was some distance from the house, I could hear every crack of
the whip, and every groan and cry of my poor mother. I remained at the
door, not daring to venture any further. The cold chills ran over me,
and I wept aloud. After giving her ten lashes, the sound of the whip
ceased, and I returned to my bed, and found no consolation but in my
tears. Experience has taught me that nothing can be more heart-rending
than for one to see a dear and beloved mother or sister tortured, and
to hear their cries, and not be able to render them assistance. But
such is the position which an American slave occupies.
My master, being a politician, soon found those who were ready to
put him into office, for the favors he could render them; and a few
years after his arrival in Missouri he was elected to a seat in the
legislature. In his absence from home everything was left in charge of
Mr. Cook, the overseer, and he soon became more tyrannical and cruel.
Among the slaves on the plantation was one by the name of Randall.
He was a man about six feet high, and well-proportioned, and known
as a man of great strength and power. He was considered the most
valuable and able-bodied slave on the plantation; but no matter how
good or useful a slave may be, he seldom escapes the lash. But it was
not so with Randall. He had been on the plantation since my earliest
recollection, and I had never known of his being flogged. No thanks
were due to the master or overseer for this. I have often heard him
declare that no white man should ever whip him--that he would die first.
Cook, from the time that he came upon the plantation, had frequently
declared that he could and would flog any nigger that was put into
the field to work under him. My master had repeatedly told him not to
attempt to whip Randall, but he was determined to try it. As soon as
he was left sole dictator, he thought the time had come to put his
threats into execution. He soon began to find fault with Randall, and
threatened to whip him if he did not do better. One day he gave him
a very hard task--more than he could possibly do; and at night, the
task not being performed, he told Randall that he should remember him
the next morning. On the following morning, after the hands had taken
breakfast, Cook called out to Randall, and told him that he intended to
whip him, and ordered him to cross his hands and be tied. Randall asked
why he wished to whip him. He answered, because he had not finished his
task the day before. Randall said that the task was too great, or he
should have done it. Cook said it made no difference--he should whip
him. Randall stood silent for a moment, and then said, "Mr. Cook, I
have always tried to please you since you have been on the plantation,
and I find you are determined not to be satisfied with my work, let me
do as well as I may. No man has laid hands on me, to whip me, for the
last ten years, and I have long since come to the conclusion not to
be whipped by any man living." Cook, finding by Randall's determined
look and gestures, that he would resist, called three of the hands
from their work, and commanded them to seize Randall, and tie him. The
hands stood still;--they knew Randall--and they also knew him to be a
powerful man, and were afraid to grapple with him. As soon as Cook had
ordered the men to seize him, Randall turned to them, and said--"Boys,
you all know me; you know that I can handle any three of you, and the
man that lays hands on me shall die. This white man can't whip me
himself, and therefore he has called you to help him." The overseer was
unable to prevail upon them to seize and secure Randall, and finally
ordered them all to go to their work together.
Nothing was said to Randall by the overseer for more than a week. One
morning, however, while the hands were at work in the field, he came
into it, accompanied by three friends of his, Thompson, Woodbridge and
Jones. They came up to where Randall was at work, and Cook ordered him
to leave his work, and go with them to the barn. He refused to go;
whereupon he was attacked by the overseer and his companions, when he
turned upon them, and laid them, one after another, prostrate on the
ground. Woodbridge drew out his pistol, and fired at him, and brought
him to the ground by a pistol ball. The others rushed upon him with
their clubs, and beat him over the head and face, until they succeeded
in tying him. He was then taken to the barn, and tied to a beam. Cook
gave him over one hundred lashes with a heavy cow-hide, had him washed
with salt and water, and left him tied during the day. The next day
he was untied, and taken to a blacksmith's shop, and had a ball and
chain attached to his leg. He was compelled to labor in the field, and
perform the same amount of work that the other hands did. When his
master returned home, he was much pleased to find that Randall had been
subdued in his absence.