GROWING IN KNOWLEDGE.
My mistress--Her slaveholding duties--Their effects on her originally
noble nature--The conflict in her mind--She opposes my learning
to read--Too late--She had given me the “inch,” I was resolved to
take the “ell”--How I pursued my study to read--My tutors--What
progress I made--Slavery--What I heard said about it--Thirteen
years old--Columbian orator--Dialogue--Speeches--Sheridan--
Pitt--Lords Chatham and Fox--Knowledge increasing--Liberty--
Singing--Sadness--Unhappiness of Mrs. Sophia--My hatred of
slavery--One Upas tree overshadows us all.
I lived in the family of Mr. Auld, at Baltimore, seven years, during
which time, as the almanac makers say of the weather, my condition
was variable. The most interesting feature of my history here, was my
learning to read and write under somewhat marked disadvantages. In
attaining this knowledge I was compelled to resort to indirections by
no means congenial to my nature, and which were really humiliating
to my sense of candor and uprightness. My mistress, checked in her
benevolent designs toward me, not only ceased instructing me herself,
but set her face as a flint against my learning to read by any means.
It is due to her to say, however, that she did not adopt this course
in all its stringency at first. She either thought it unnecessary, or
she lacked the depravity needed to make herself forget at once my human
nature. She was, as I have said, naturally a kind and tender-hearted
woman, and in the humanity of her heart and the simplicity of her mind,
she set out, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she
supposed one human being ought to treat another.
Nature never intended that men and women should be either slaves
or slaveholders, and nothing but rigid training long persisted in,
can perfect the character of the one or the other. Mrs. Auld was
singularly deficient in the qualities of a slaveholder. It was no easy
matter for her to think or to feel that the curly-headed boy, who stood
by her side, and even leaned on her lap, who was loved by little Tommy,
and who loved little Tommy in turn, sustained to her only the relation
of a chattel. I was more than that; she felt me to be more than that.
I could talk and sing; I could laugh and weep; I could reason and
remember; I could love and hate. I was human, and she, dear lady, knew
and felt me to be so. How could she then treat me as a brute without a
mighty struggle with all the noblest powers of her soul. That struggle
came, and the will and power of the husband was victorious. Her noble
soul was overcome, and he who wrought the wrong was injured in the
fall no less than the rest of the household. When I went into that
household, it was the abode of happiness and contentment. The wife and
mistress there was a model of affection and tenderness. Her fervent
piety and watchful uprightness made it impossible to see her without
thinking and feeling “that woman is a Christian.” There was no sorrow
nor suffering for which she had not a tear, and there was no innocent
joy for which she had not a smile. She had bread for the hungry,
clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner who came within
her reach. But slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these
excellent qualities, and her home of its early happiness. Conscience
cannot stand much violence. Once thoroughly injured, who is he who can
repair the damage? If it be broken toward the slave on Sunday, it will
be toward the master on Monday. It cannot long endure such shocks. It
must stand unharmed, or it does not stand at all. As my condition in
the family waxed bad, that of the family waxed no better. The first
step in the wrong direction was the violence done to nature and to
conscience, in arresting the benevolence that would have enlightened
my young mind. In ceasing to instruct me, my mistress had to seek to
justify herself _to_ herself, and once consenting to take sides in such
a debate, she was compelled to hold her position. One needs little
knowledge of moral philosophy to see where she inevitably landed.
She finally became even more violent in her opposition to my learning
to read than was Mr. Auld himself. Nothing now appeared to make her
more angry than seeing me, seated in some nook or corner, quietly
reading a book or newspaper. She would rush at me with the utmost
fury, and snatch the book or paper from my hand, with something of the
wrath and consternation which a traitor might be supposed to feel on
being discovered in a plot by some dangerous spy. The conviction once
thoroughly established in her mind, that education and slavery were
incompatible with each other, I was most narrowly watched in all my
movements. If I remained in a separate room from the family for any
considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a
book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. But this
was too late: the first and never-to-be-retraced step had been taken.
Teaching me the alphabet had been the “inch” given, I was now waiting
only for the opportunity to “take the ell.”
Filled with the determination to learn to read at any cost, I hit upon
many expedients to accomplish that much desired end. The plan which I
mainly adopted, and the one which was the most successful, was that
of using my young white playmates, with whom I met on the streets,
as teachers. I used to carry almost constantly a copy of Webster’s
spelling-book in my pocket, and when sent on errands, or when play-time
was allowed me, I would step aside with my young friends and take a
lesson in spelling. I am greatly indebted to these boys--Gustavus
Dorgan, Joseph Bailey, Charles Farity, and William Cosdry.
Although slavery was a delicate subject, and very cautiously talked
about among grown up people in Maryland, I frequently talked about it,
and that very freely, with the white boys. I would sometimes say to
them, while seated on a curbstone or a cellar door, “I wish I could
be free, as you will be when you get to be men.” “You will be free,
you know, as soon as you are twenty-one, and can go where you like,
but I am a slave for life. Have I not as good a right to be free as
you have?” Words like these, I observed, always troubled them; and I
had no small satisfaction in drawing out from them, as I occasionally
did, that fresh and bitter condemnation of slavery which ever springs
from nature unseared and unperverted. Of all conscience, let me have
those to deal with, which have not been seared and bewildered with
the cares and perplexities of life. I do not remember ever to have
met with a _boy_ while I was in slavery, who defended the system, but
I do remember many times, when I was consoled by them, and by them
encouraged to hope that something would yet occur by which I would be
made free. Over and over again, they have told me that “they believed
I had as good a right to be free as _they_ had,” and that “they did
not believe God ever made any one to be a slave.” It is easily seen
that such little conversations with my play-fellows had no tendency to
weaken my love of liberty, nor to render me contented as a slave.
When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning
to read, every increase of knowledge, especially anything respecting
the free states, was an additional weight to the almost intolerable
burden of my thought--“_I am a slave for life._” To my bondage I could
see no end. It was a terrible reality, and I shall never be able to
tell how sadly that thought chafed my young spirit. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, I had earned a little money in blacking boots for some
gentlemen, with which I purchased of Mr. Knight, on Thames street, what
was then a very popular school book, viz., “The Columbian Orator,”
for which I paid fifty cents. I was led to buy this book by hearing
some little boys say they were going to learn some pieces out of
it for the exhibition. This volume was indeed a rich treasure, and
every opportunity afforded me, for a time, was spent in diligently
perusing it. Among much other interesting matter, that which I read
again and again with unflagging satisfaction was a short dialogue
between a master and his slave. The slave is represented as having
been recaptured in a second attempt to run away; and the master
opens the dialogue with an upbraiding speech, charging the slave
with ingratitude, and demanding to know what he has to say in his
own defense. Thus upbraided and thus called upon to reply, the slave
rejoins that he knows how little anything that he can say will avail,
seeing that he is completely in the hands of his owner; and with noble
resolution, calmly says, “I submit to my fate.” Touched by the slave’s
answer, the master insists upon his further speaking, and recapitulates
the many acts of kindness which he has performed toward the slave,
and tells him he is permitted to speak for himself. Thus invited, the
quondam slave made a spirited defense of himself, and thereafter the
whole argument for and against slavery is brought out. The master
was vanquished at every turn in the argument, and appreciating the
fact he generously and meekly emancipates the slave, with his best
wishes for his prosperity. It is unnecessary to say that a dialogue
with such an origin and such an end, read by me when every nerve of
my being was in revolt at my own condition as a slave, affected me
most powerfully. I could not help feeling that the day might yet come,
when the well-directed answers made by the slave to the master, in
this instance, would find a counterpart in my own experience. This,
however, was not all the fanaticism which I found in the Columbian
Orator. I met there one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches, on the subject
of Catholic Emancipation, Lord Chatham’s speech on the American War,
and speeches by the great William Pitt, and by Fox. These were all
choice documents to me, and I read them over and over again, with an
interest ever increasing, because it was ever gaining in intelligence;
for the more I read them the better I understood them. The reading of
these speeches added much to my limited stock of language, and enabled
me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts which had often flashed
through my mind and died away for want of words in which to give them
utterance. The mighty power and heart-searching directness of truth
penetrating the heart of a slaveholder, compelling him to yield up
his earthly interests to the claims of eternal justice, were finely
illustrated in the dialogue, and from the speeches of Sheridan I got
a bold and powerful denunciation of oppression and a most brilliant
vindication of the rights of man. Here was indeed a noble acquisition.
If I had ever wavered under the consideration that the Almighty, in
some way, had ordained slavery and willed my enslavement for his own
glory, I wavered no longer. I had now penetrated to the secret of all
slavery and all oppression, and had ascertained their true foundation
to be in the pride, the power, and the avarice of man. With a book in
my hand so redolent of the principles of liberty, with a perception of
my own human nature and the facts of my past and present experience, I
was equal to a contest with the religious advocates of slavery, whether
white or black, for blindness in this matter was not confined to the
white people. I have met many good religious colored people at the
south, who were under the delusion that God required them to submit to
slavery and to wear their chains with meekness and humility. I could
entertain no such nonsense as this, and I quite lost my patience when
I found a colored man weak enough to believe such stuff. Nevertheless,
eager as I was to partake of the tree of knowledge, its fruits were
bitter as well as sweet. “Slaveholders,” thought I, “are only a band of
successful robbers, who, leaving their own homes, went into Africa for
the purpose of stealing and reducing my people to slavery.” I loathed
them as the meanest and the most wicked of men. And as I read, behold!
the very discontent so graphically predicted by Master Hugh had already
come upon me. I was no longer the light-hearted, gleesome boy, full of
mirth and play, as when I landed in Baltimore. Light had penetrated the
moral dungeon where I had lain, and I saw the bloody whip for my back,
and the iron chain for my feet, and my _good kind_ master, he was the
author of my situation. The revelation haunted me, stung me, and made
me gloomy and miserable. As I writhed under the sting and torment
of this knowledge I almost envied my fellow slaves their stupid
indifference. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, and revealed the
teeth of the frightful dragon that was ready to pounce upon me; but
alas, it opened no way for my escape. I wished myself a beast, a bird,
anything rather than a slave. I was wretched and gloomy beyond my
ability to describe. This everlasting thinking distressed and tormented
me; and yet there was no getting rid of this subject of my thoughts.
Liberty, as the inestimable birthright of every man, converted every
object into an asserter of this right. I heard it in every sound, and
saw it in every object. It was ever present to torment me with a sense
of my wretchedness. The more beautiful and charming were the smiles of
nature, the more horrible and desolate was my condition. I saw nothing
without seeing it, and I heard nothing without hearing it. I do not
exaggerate when I say it looked at me in every star, it smiled in every
calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm. I have no doubt
that my state of mind had something to do with the change in treatment
which my mistress adopted towards me. I can easily believe that my
leaden, downcast, and disconsolate look was very offensive to her. Poor
lady! She did not understand my trouble, and I could not tell her.
Could I have made her acquainted with the real state of my mind and
given her the reasons therefor, it might have been well for both of us.
As it was, her abuse fell upon me like the blows of the false prophet
upon his ass; she did not know that an angel stood in the way. Nature
made us friends, but slavery had made us enemies. My interests were
in a direction opposite to hers, and we both had our private thoughts
and plans. She aimed to keep me ignorant, and I resolved to _know_,
although knowledge only increased my misery. My feelings were not the
result of any marked cruelty in the treatment I received; they sprung
from the consideration of my being a slave at all. It was _slavery_,
not its mere _incidents_ I hated. I had been cheated. I saw through the
attempt to keep me in ignorance. I saw that slaveholders would have
gladly made me believe that they were merely acting under the authority
of God in making a slave of me and in making slaves of others, and I
felt to them as to robbers and deceivers. The feeding and clothing me
well could not atone for taking my liberty from me. The smiles of my
mistress could not remove the deep sorrow that dwelt in my young bosom.
Indeed, these came in time but to deepen my sorrow. She had changed,
and the reader will see that I had changed too. We were both victims to
the same overshadowing evil, _she_ as mistress, I as slave. I will not
censure her harshly.