CHARACTERISTICS OF OVERSEERS.
Austin Gore--Sketch of his character--Overseers as a class--Their
peculiar characteristics--The marked individuality of Austin Gore--
His sense of duty--Murder of poor Denby--Sensation--How Gore made
his peace with Col. Lloyd--Other horrible murders--No laws for the
protection of slaves possible of being enforced.
The comparatively moderate rule of Mr. Hopkins as overseer on Col.
Lloyd’s plantation was succeeded by that of another whose name
was Austin Gore. I hardly know how to bring this man fitly before
the reader, for under him there was more suffering from violence
and bloodshed than had, according to the older slaves, ever been
experienced before at this place. He was an overseer, and possessed
the peculiar characteristics of his class, yet to call him merely an
overseer would not give one a fair conception of the man. I speak of
overseers as a class, for they were such. They were as distinct from
the slaveholding gentry of the south as are the fish-women of Paris,
and the coal-heavers of London, distinct from other grades of society.
They constituted a separate fraternity at the south. They were arranged
and classified by that great law of attraction which determines the
sphere and affinities of men; which ordains that men whose malign and
brutal propensities preponderate over their moral and intellectual
endowments shall naturally fall into those employments which
promise the largest gratification to those predominating instincts
or propensities. The office of overseer took this raw material of
vulgarity and brutality, and stamped it as a distinct class in southern
life. But in this class, as in all other classes, there were sometimes
persons of marked individuality, yet with a general resemblance to the
mass. Mr. Gore was one of those to whom a general characterization
would do no manner of justice. He was an overseer, but he was something
more. With the malign and tyrannical qualities of an overseer he
combined something of the lawful master. He had the artfulness and
mean ambition of his class, without its disgusting swagger and noisy
bravado. There was an easy air of independence about him; a calm
self-possession; at the same time a sternness of glance which well
might daunt less timid hearts than those of poor slaves, accustomed
from childhood to cower before a driver’s lash. He was one of those
overseers who could torture the slightest word or look into impudence,
and he had the nerve not only to resent, but to punish promptly and
severely. There could be no answering back. Guilty or not guilty,
to be accused was to be sure of a flogging. His very presence was
fearful, and I shunned him as I would have shunned a rattlesnake. His
piercing black eyes and sharp, shrill voice ever awakened sensations
of dread. Other overseers, how brutal soever they might be, would
sometimes seek to gain favor with the slaves, by indulging in a little
pleasantry; but Gore never said a funny thing, or perpetrated a joke.
He was always cold, distant, and unapproachable--the _overseer_ on
Col. Edward Lloyd’s plantation--and needed no higher pleasure than the
performance of the duties of his office. When he used the lash, it was
from a sense of duty, without fear of consequences. There was a stern
will, an iron-like reality about him, which would easily have made him
chief of a band of pirates, had his environments been favorable to
such a sphere. Among many other deeds of shocking cruelty committed by
him was the murder of a young colored man named Bill Denby. He was a
powerful fellow, full of animal spirits, and one of the most valuable
of Col. Lloyd’s slaves. In some way--I know not what--he offended
this Mr. Austin Gore, and in accordance with the usual custom the
latter undertook to flog him. He had given him but few stripes when
Denby broke away from him, plunged into the creek, and standing
there with the water up to his neck refused to come out; whereupon, for
this refusal, Gore _shot him dead_! It was said that Gore gave Denby
three calls to come out, telling him if he did not obey the last call
he should shoot him. When the last call was given Denby still stood his
ground, and Gore, without further parley, or without making any further
effort to induce obedience, raised his gun deliberately to his face,
took deadly aim at his standing victim, and with one click of the gun
the mangled body sank out of sight, and only his warm red blood marked
the place where he had stood.
[Illustration: GORE SHOOTING DENBY.]
This fiendish murder produced, as it could not help doing, a tremendous
sensation. The slaves were panic-stricken, and howled with alarm. The
atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out in reprobation of it.
Both he and Col. Lloyd arraigned Gore for his cruelty; but he, calm
and collected, as though nothing unusual had happened, declared that
Denby had become unmanageable; that he set a dangerous example to the
other slaves, and that unless some such prompt measure was resorted to
there would be an end to all rule and order on the plantation. That
convenient covert for all manner of villainy and outrage, that cowardly
alarm-cry, that the slaves would “take the place,” was pleaded, just as
it had been in thousands of similar cases. Gore’s defense was evidently
considered satisfactory, for he was continued in his office, without
being subjected to a judicial investigation. The murder was committed
in the presence of slaves only, and they, being slaves, could neither
institute a suit nor testify against the murderer. Mr. Gore lived in
St. Michaels, Talbot Co., Maryland, and I have no reason to doubt, from
what I know to have been the moral sentiment of the place, that he was
as highly esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had
not been stained with innocent blood.
I speak advisedly when I say that killing a slave, or any colored
person, in Talbot Co., Maryland, was not treated as a crime, either by
the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, ship carpenter of St.
Michaels, killed two slaves, one of whom he butchered with a hatchet,
by knocking his brains out. He used to boast of having committed the
awful and bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly, declaring
himself a benefactor of his country, and that “when others would do as
much as he had done, they would be rid of the d----d niggers.”
Another notorious fact which I may state was the murder of a young
girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age, by her mistress, Mrs.
Giles Hicks, who lived but a short distance from Col. Lloyd’s. This
wicked woman, in the paroxysm of her wrath, not content at killing her
victim, literally mangled her face, and broke her breast-bone. Wild
and infuriated as she was, she took the precaution to cause the burial
of the girl; but, the facts of the case getting abroad, the remains
were disinterred, and a coroner’s jury assembled, who, after due
deliberation, decided that “the girl had come to her death from severe
beating.” The offense for which this girl was thus hurried out of the
world was this, she had been set that night, and several preceding
nights, to mind Mrs. Hicks’ baby, and having fallen into a sound
sleep the crying of the baby did not wake her, as it did its mother.
The tardiness of the girl excited Mrs. Hicks, who, after calling her
several times, seized a piece of fire-wood from the fire-place, and
pounded in her skull and breast-bone till death ensued. I will not say
that this murder most foul produced no sensation. It _did_ produce
a sensation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mrs. Hicks, but
incredible to tell, for some reason or other, that warrant was never
served, and she not only escaped condign punishment, but the pain and
mortification as well of being arraigned before a court of justice.
While I am detailing the bloody deeds that took place during my stay
on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another dark
transaction, which occurred about the time of the murder of Denby.
On the side of the river Wye, opposite from Col. Lloyd’s, there lived
a Mr. Beal Bondley, a wealthy slaveholder. In the direction of his
land, and near the shore, there was an excellent oyster fishing-ground,
and to this some of Lloyd’s slaves occasionally resorted in their
little canoes at night, with a view to make up the deficiency of their
scanty allowance of food by the oysters that they could easily get
there. Mr. Bondley took it into his head to regard this as a trespass,
and while an old man slave was engaged in catching a few of the many
millions of oysters that lined the bottom of the creek, to satisfy his
hunger, the rascally Bondley, lying in ambush, without the slightest
warning, discharged the contents of his musket into the back of the
poor old man. As good fortune would have it, the shot did not prove
fatal, and Mr. Bondley came over the next day to see Col. Lloyd about
it. What happened between them I know not, but there was little said
about it and nothing publicly done. One of the commonest sayings to
which my ears early became accustomed, was that it was “worth but a
half a cent to kill a nigger, and half a cent to bury one.” While I
heard of numerous murders committed by slaveholders on the eastern
shore of Maryland, I never knew a solitary instance where a slaveholder
was either hung or imprisoned for having murdered a slave. The usual
pretext for such crimes was that the slave had offered resistance.
Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self-defense,
the white assaulting party was fully justified by southern law, and
southern public opinion in shooting the slave down, and for this there
was no redress.