A CHILD’S REASONING.
The author’s early reflections on Slavery--Aunt Jennie and Uncle
Noah--Presentiment of one day becoming a freeman--Conflict between
an overseer and a slave woman--Advantage of resistance--Death of
an overseer--Col. Lloyd’s plantation home--Monthly distribution
of food--Singing of Slaves--An explanation--The slaves’ food and
clothing--Naked children--Life in the quarter--Sleeping places--
not beds--Deprivation of sleep--Care of nursing babies--Ash cake--
Contrast.
The incidents related in the foregoing chapter led me thus early to
inquire into the origin and nature of slavery. Why am I a slave? Why
are some people slaves and others masters? These were perplexing
questions and very troublesome to my childhood. I was told by some one
very early that “_God up in the sky_” had made all things, and had made
black people to be slaves and white people to be masters. I was told
too that God was good and that he knew what was best for everybody.
This was, however, less satisfactory than the first statement. It came
point blank against all my notions of goodness. The case of Aunt Esther
was in my mind. Besides, I could not tell how anybody could know that
God made black people to be slaves. Then I found, too, that there were
puzzling exceptions to this theory of slavery, in the fact that all
black people were not slaves, and all white people were not masters.
An incident occurred about this time that made a deep impression on
my mind. One of the men slaves of Captain Anthony and my Aunt Jennie
ran away. A great noise was made about it. Old master was furious. He
said he would follow them and catch them and bring them back, but he
never did it, and somebody told me that Uncle Noah and Aunt Jennie had
gone to the free states and were free. Besides this occurrence, which
brought much light to my mind on the subject, there were several
slaves on Mr. Lloyd’s place who remembered being brought from Africa.
There were others that told me that their fathers and mothers were
stolen from Africa.
This to me was important knowledge, but not such as to make me feel
very easy in my slave condition. The success of Aunt Jennie and Uncle
Noah in getting away from slavery was, I think, the first fact that
made me seriously think of escape for myself. I could not have been
more than seven or eight years old at the time of this occurrence, but
young as I was I was already a fugitive from slavery in spirit and
purpose.
Up to the time of the brutal treatment of my Aunt Esther, already
narrated, and the shocking plight in which I had seen my cousin from
Tuckahoe, my attention had not been especially directed to the grosser
and more revolting features of slavery. I had, of course, heard of
whippings and savage mutilations of slaves by brutal overseers, but
happily for me I had always been out of the way of such occurrences.
My play time was spent outside of the corn and tobacco fields, where
the overseers and slaves were brought together and in conflict. But
after the case of my Aunt Esther I saw others of the same disgusting
and shocking nature. The one of these which agitated and distressed
me most was the whipping of a woman, not belonging to my old master,
but to Col. Lloyd. The charge against her was very common and very
indefinite, namely, “_impudence_.” This crime could be committed by a
slave in a hundred different ways, and depended much upon the temper
and caprice of the overseer as to whether it was committed at all.
He could create the offense whenever it pleased him. A look, a word,
a gesture, accidental or intentional, never failed to be taken as
impudence when he was in the right mood for such an offense. In this
case there were all the necessary conditions for the commission of
the crime charged. The offender was nearly white, to begin with; she
was the wife of a favorite hand on board of Mr. Lloyd’s sloop and was
besides the mother of five sprightly children. Vigorous and spirited
woman that she was, a wife and a mother, with a predominating share
of the blood of the master running in her veins. Nellie (for that was
her name) had all the qualities essential to impudence to a slave
overseer. My attention was called to the scene of the castigation by
the loud screams and curses that proceeded from the direction of it.
When I came near the parties engaged in the struggle, the overseer
had hold of Nelly, endeavoring with his whole strength to drag her to
a tree against her resistance. Both his and her faces were bleeding,
for the woman was doing her best. Three of her children were present,
and though quite small, (from seven to ten years old I should think,)
they gallantly took the side of their mother against the overseer,
and pelted him well with stones and epithets. Amid the screams of the
children “_Let my mammy go! Let my mammy go!_” the hoarse voice of
the maddened overseer was heard in terrible oaths that he would teach
her how to give a white man “_impudence_.” The blood on his face and
on hers attested her skill in the use of her nails, and his dogged
determination to conquer. His purpose was to tie her up to a tree
and give her, in slaveholding parlance, a “genteel flogging,” and he
evidently had not expected the stern and protracted resistance he was
meeting, or the strength and skill needed to its execution. There
were times when she seemed likely to get the better of the brute, but
he finally overpowered her, and succeeded in getting her arms firmly
tied to the tree towards which he had been dragging her. The victim
was now at the mercy of his merciless lash. What followed I need not
here describe. The cries of the now helpless woman, while undergoing
the terrible infliction, were mingled with the hoarse curses of the
overseer and the wild cries of her distracted children. When the poor
woman was untied, her back was covered with blood. She was whipped,
terribly whipped, but she was not subdued, and continued to denounce
the overseer, and pour upon him every vile epithet she could think of.
Such floggings are seldom repeated by overseers on the same persons.
They prefer to whip those who were the most easily whipped. The
doctrine that submission to violence is the best cure for violence did
not hold good as between slaves and overseers. He was whipped oftener
who was whipped easiest. That slave who had the courage to stand up for
himself against the overseer, although he might have many hard stripes
at first, became while legally a slave virtually a freeman. “You can
shoot me,” said a slave to Rigby Hopkins, “but you can’t whip me,” and
the result was he was neither whipped nor shot. I do not know that Mr.
Sevier ever attempted to whip Nelly again. He probably never did, for
not long after he was taken sick and died. It was commonly said that
his death-bed was a wretched one, and that, the ruling passion being
strong in death, he died flourishing the slave whip and with horrid
oaths upon his lips. This death-bed scene may only be the imagining
of the slaves. One thing is certain, that when he was in health his
profanity was enough to chill the blood of an ordinary man. Nature,
or habit, had given to his face an expression of uncommon savageness.
Tobacco and rage had ground his teeth short, and nearly every sentence
that he uttered was commenced or completed with an oath. Hated for his
cruelty, despised for his cowardice, he went to his grave lamented by
nobody on the place outside of his own house, if, indeed, he was even
lamented there.
In Mr. James Hopkins, the succeeding overseer, we had a different and
a better man, as good perhaps as any man could be in the position of a
slave overseer. Though he sometimes wielded the lash, it was evident
that he took no pleasure in it and did it with much reluctance. He
stayed but a short time here, and his removal from the position was
much regretted by the slaves generally. Of the successor of Mr. Hopkins
I shall have something to say at another time and in another place.
For the present we will attend to a further description of the
business-like aspect of Col. Lloyd’s “_Great House_” farm. There was
always much bustle and noise here on the two days at the end of each
month, for then the slaves belonging to the different branches of
this great estate assembled here by their representatives to obtain
their monthly allowances of corn-meal and pork. These were gala days
for the slaves of the outlying farms, and there was much rivalry among
them as to who should be elected to go up to the Great House farm for
the “_Allowances_” and indeed to attend to any other business at this
great place, to them the capitol of a little nation. Its beauty and
grandeur, its immense wealth, its numerous population, and the fact
that uncles Harry, Peter, and Jake, the sailors on board the sloop,
usually kept on sale trinkets which they bought in Baltimore to sell to
their less fortunate fellow-servants, made a visit to the Great House
farm a high privilege, and eagerly sought. It was valued, too, as a
mark of distinction and confidence; but probably the chief motive among
the competitors for the office was the opportunity it afforded to shake
off the monotony of the field and to get beyond the overseer’s eye and
lash. Once on the road with an ox-team, and seated on the tongue of the
cart, with no overseer to look after him, he felt himself comparatively
free.
Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not
liked, either by masters or by overseers. “_Make a noise there! make
a noise there!_” and “bear a hand,” were words usually addressed to
slaves when they were silent. This, and the natural disposition of the
negro to make a noise in the world, may account for the almost constant
singing among them when at their work. There was generally more or less
singing among the teamsters at all times. It was a means of telling the
overseer, in the distance, where they were, and what they were about.
But on the allowance days those commissioned to the Great House farm
were peculiarly vocal. While on the way they would make the grand old
woods for miles around reverberate with their wild and plaintive notes.
They were indeed both merry and sad. Child as I was, these wild songs
greatly depressed my spirits. Nowhere outside of dear old Ireland, in
the days of want and famine, have I heard sounds so mournful.
In all these slave songs there was ever some expression of praise of
the Great House farm--something that would please the pride of the
Lloyds.
I am going away to the Great House farm,
O, yea! O, yea! O, yea!
My old master is a good old master,
O, yea! O, yea! O, yea
These words would be sung over and over again, with others, improvised
as they went along--jargon, perhaps, to the reader, but full of
meaning to the singers. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing
of these songs would have done more to impress the good people of the
north with the soul-crushing character of slavery than whole volumes
exposing the physical cruelties of the slave system; for the heart has
no language like song. Many years ago, when recollecting my experience
in this respect, I wrote of these slave songs in the following strain:
“I did not, when a slave, fully understand the deep meaning of those
rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was, myself, within the circle,
so that I could then neither hear nor see as those without might see
and hear. They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing
with the bitterest anguish. They depressed my spirits and filled my
heart with ineffable sadness.”
The remark in the olden time was not unfrequently made, that slaves
were the most contented and happy laborers in the world, and their
dancing and singing were referred to in proof of this alleged fact; but
it was a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sometimes
made those joyful noises. The songs of the slaves represented their
sorrows, rather than their joys. Like tears, they were a relief
to aching hearts. It is not inconsistent with the constitution of
the human mind, that avails itself of one and the same method for
expressing opposite emotions. Sorrow and desolation have their songs,
as well as joy and peace.
It was the boast of slaveholders that their slaves enjoyed more of
the physical comforts of life than the peasantry of any country in the
world. My experience contradicts this. The men and the women slaves
on Col. Lloyd’s farm received as their monthly allowance of food,
eight pounds of pickled pork, or its equivalent in fish. The pork was
often tainted, and the fish were of the poorest quality. With their
pork or fish, they had given them one bushel of Indian meal, unbolted,
of which quite fifteen per cent. was more fit for pigs than for men.
With this one pint of salt was given, and this was the entire monthly
allowance of a full-grown slave, working constantly in the open field
from morning till night every day in the month except Sunday. There
is no kind of work which really requires a better supply of food to
prevent physical exhaustion than the field work of a slave. The yearly
allowance of clothing was not more ample than the supply of food. It
consisted of two tow-linen shirts, one pair of trowsers of the same
coarse material, for summer, and a woolen pair of trowsers and a woolen
jacket for winter, with one pair of yarn stockings and a pair of shoes
of the coarsest description. Children under ten years old had neither
shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trowsers. They had two coarse tow-linen
shirts per year, and when these were worn out they went naked till the
next allowance day--and this was the condition of the little girls as
well as the boys. As to beds, they had none. One coarse blanket was
given them, and this only to the men and women. The children stuck
themselves in holes and corners about the quarters, often in the
corners of huge chimneys, with their feet in the ashes to keep them
warm. The want of beds, however, was not considered a great privation
by the field hands. Time to sleep was of far greater importance. For
when the day’s work was done most of these had their washing, mending,
and cooking to do, and having few or no facilities for doing such
things, very many of their needed sleeping hours were consumed in
necessary preparations for the labors of the coming day. The sleeping
apartments, if they could have been properly called such, had little
regard to comfort or decency. Old and young, male and female, married
and single, dropped down upon the common clay floor, each covering up
with his or her blanket, their only protection from cold or exposure.
The night, however, was shortened at both ends. The slaves worked often
as long as they could see, and were late in cooking and mending for
the coming day, and at the first gray streak of the morning they were
summoned to the field by the overseer’s horn. They were whipped for
over-sleeping more than for any other fault. Neither age nor sex found
any favor. The overseer stood at the quarter door, armed with stick and
whip, ready to deal heavy blows upon any who might be a little behind
time. When the horn was blown there was a rush for the door, for the
hindermost one was sure to get a blow from the overseer. Young mothers
who worked in the field were allowed an hour about ten o’clock in the
morning to go home to nurse their children. This was when they were
not required to take them to the field with them, and leave them upon
“turning row,” or in the corner of the fences.
As a general rule the slaves did not come to their quarters to take
their meals, but took their ash-cake (called thus because baked in the
ashes) and piece of pork, or their salt herrings, where they were at
work.
But let us now leave the rough usage of the field, where vulgar
coarseness and brutal cruelty flourished as rank as weeds in the
tropics, where a vile wretch, in the shape of a man, rides, walks, and
struts about, with whip in hand, dealing heavy blows and leaving deep
gashes on the flesh of men and women, and turn our attention to the
less repulsive slave life as it existed in the home of my childhood.
Some idea of the splendor of that place sixty years ago has already
been given. The contrast between the condition of the slaves and that
of their masters was marvelously sharp and striking. There were pride,
pomp, and luxury on the one hand, servility, dejection, and misery on
the other.