COVEY, THE NEGRO BREAKER.
Journey to Covey’s--Meditations by the way--Covey’s house--Family--
Awkwardness as a field hand--A cruel beating--Why given--
Description of Covey--First attempt at driving oxen--Hair-breadth
escape--Ox and man alike property--Hard labor more effective
than the whip for breaking down the spirit--Cunning and trickery
of Covey--Family worship--Shocking and indecent contempt for
chastity--Great mental agitation--Anguish beyond description.
The morning of January 1, 1834, with its chilling wind and pinching
frost, quite in harmony with the winter in my own mind, found me, with
my little bundle of clothing on the end of a stick swung across my
shoulder, on the main road bending my way towards Covey’s, whither I
had been imperiously ordered by Master Thomas. He had been as good as
his word, and had committed me without reserve to the mastery of that
hard man. Eight or ten years had now passed since I had been taken
from my grandmother’s cabin in Tuckahoe; and these years, for the most
part, I had spent in Baltimore, where, as the reader has already seen,
I was treated with comparative tenderness. I was now about to sound
profounder depths in slave life. My new master was notorious for his
fierce and savage disposition, and my only consolation in going to live
with him was the certainty of finding him precisely as represented by
common fame. There was neither joy in my heart nor elasticity in my
frame as I started for the tyrant’s home. Starvation made me glad to
leave Thomas Auld’s, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to Covey’s.
Escape, however, was impossible; so, heavy and sad, I paced the seven
miles which lay between his house and St. Michaels, _thinking_ much
by the solitary way of my adverse condition. But _thinking_ was all I
could do. Like a fish in a net, allowed to play for a time, I was now
drawn rapidly to the shore, secured at all points. “I am,” thought I,
“but the sport of a power which makes no account, either of my welfare
or my happiness. By a law which I can comprehend, but cannot evade or
resist, I am ruthlessly snatched from the hearth of a fond grandmother
and hurried away to the home of a mysterious old master; again I am
removed from there to a master in Baltimore; thence am I snatched away
to the eastern shore to be valued with the beasts of the field, and
with them divided and set apart for a possessor; then I am sent back to
Baltimore, and by the time I have formed new attachments and have begun
to hope that no more rude shocks shall touch me, a difference arises
between brothers and I am again broken up and sent to St. Michaels;
and now from the latter place I am footing my way to the home of
another master, where I am given to understand that like a wild young
working animal I am to be broken to the yoke of a bitter and life-long
bondage.” With thoughts and reflections like these, I came in sight of
a small wood-colored building, about a mile from the main road, which,
from the description I had received at starting I easily recognized as
my new home. The Chesapeake bay, upon the jutting banks of which the
little wood-colored house was standing, white with foam raised by the
heavy northwest wind; Poplar Island, covered with a thick black pine
forest, standing out amid this half ocean; and Keat Point, stretching
its sandy, desert-like shores out into the foam-crested bay, were all
in sight, and served to deepen the wild and desolate scene.
The good clothes I had brought with me from Baltimore were now worn
thin, and had not been replaced; for Master Thomas was as little
careful to provide against cold as hunger. Met here by a north wind,
sweeping through an open space of forty miles, I was glad to make any
port, and, therefore, I speedily pressed on to the wood-colored house.
The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Covey; Mrs. Kemp (a broken-backed
woman), sister to Mrs. Covey; William Hughes, cousin to Mr. Covey;
Caroline, the cook; Bill Smith, a hired man, and myself. Bill Smith,
Bill Hughes, and myself were the working force of the farm, which
comprised three or four hundred acres. I was now for the first time in
my life to be a field-hand; and in my new employment I found myself
even more awkward than a green country boy may be supposed to be upon
his first entrance into the bewildering scenes of city life; and my
awkwardness gave me much trouble. Strange and unnatural as it may seem,
I had been in my new home but three days before Mr. Covey (my brother
in the Methodist church) gave me a bitter foretaste of what was in
reserve for me. I presume he thought that since he had but a single
year in which to complete his work, the sooner he begun, the better.
Perhaps he thought by coming to blows at once we should mutually
understand better our relations to each other. But to whatever motive,
direct or indirect, the cause may be referred, I had not been in his
possession three whole days before he subjected me to a most brutal
chastisement. Under his heavy blows blood flowed freely, and wales
were left on my back as large as my little finger. The sores from this
flogging continued for weeks, for they were kept open by the rough
and coarse cloth which I wore for shirting. The occasion and details
of this first chapter of my experience as a field-hand, must be told,
that the reader may see how unreasonable, as well as how cruel, my new
Master Covey was. The whole thing I found to be characteristic of the
man, and I was probably treated no worse by him than scores of lads
who had previously been committed to him, for reasons similar to those
which induced my master to place me with him. But here are the facts
connected with the affair, precisely as they occurred.
On one of the coldest mornings of the whole month of January, 1834, I
was ordered at daybreak to get a load of wood, from a forest about two
miles from the house. In order to perform this work, Mr. Covey gave me
a pair of unbroken oxen, for it seemed that his breaking abilities had
not been turned in that direction. In due form, and with all proper
ceremony, I was introduced to this huge yoke of unbroken oxen, and was
carefully made to understand which was “Buck,” and which was “Darby,”--
which was the “in hand,” and which was the “off hand” ox. The master of
this important ceremony was no less a person than Mr. Covey himself;
and the introduction was the first of the kind I had ever had.
My life, hitherto, had been quite away from horned cattle, and I had
no knowledge of the art of managing them. What was meant by the “in
ox,” as against the “off ox,” when both were equally fastened to one
cart, and under one yoke, I could not very easily divine; and the
difference implied by the names, and the peculiar duties of each, were
alike _Greek_ to me. Why was not the “off ox” called the “in ox?”
Where and what is the reason for this distinction in names, when there
is none in the things themselves? After initiating me into the use
of the “whoa,” “back,” “gee,” “hither,”--the entire language spoken
between oxen and driver,--Mr. Covey took a rope about ten feet long
and one inch thick, and placed one end of it around the horns of the
“in hand ox,” and gave the other end to me, telling me that if the oxen
started to run away (as the scamp knew they would), I must hold on to
the rope and stop them. I need not tell any one who is acquainted with
either the strength or the disposition of an untamed ox, that this
order was about as unreasonable as a command to shoulder a mad bull.
I had never driven oxen before, and I was as awkward, as a driver,
as it is possible to conceive. I could not plead my ignorance to Mr.
Covey; there was that in his manner which forbade any reply. Cold,
distant, morose, with a face wearing all the marks of captious pride
and malicious sternness, he repelled all advances. He was not a large
man--not more than five feet ten inches in height, I should think;
short-necked, round-shouldered, of quick and wiry motion, of thin and
wolfish visage, with a pair of small, greenish-gray eyes, set well
back under a forehead without dignity, and which were constantly in
motion, expressing his passions rather than his thoughts, in sight but
denying them utterance in words. The creature presented an appearance
altogether ferocious and sinister, disagreeable and forbidding, in
the extreme. When he spoke, it was from the corner of his mouth, and
in a sort of light growl, like a dog, when an attempt is made to take
a bone from him. I already believed him a worse fellow than he had
been represented to be. With his directions, and without stopping to
question, I started for the woods, quite anxious to perform my first
exploit in driving in a creditable manner. The distance from the house
to the wood’s gate--a full mile, I should think--was passed over
with little difficulty: for, although the animals ran, I was fleet
enough in the open field to keep pace with them, especially as they
pulled me along at the end of the rope; but on reaching the woods, I
was speedily thrown into a distressing plight. The animals took fright,
and started off ferociously into the woods, carrying the cart full tilt
against trees, over stumps, and dashing from side to side in a manner
altogether frightful. As I held the rope I expected every moment to
be crushed between the cart and the huge trees, among which they were
so furiously dashing. After running thus for several minutes, my oxen
were finally brought to a stand by a tree, against which they dashed
themselves with great violence, upsetting the cart, and entangling
themselves among sundry young saplings. By the shock the body of the
cart was flung in one direction and the wheels and tongue in another,
and all in the greatest confusion. There I was, all alone in a thick
wood to which I was a stranger; my cart upset and shattered, my oxen
entangled, wild, and enraged, and I, poor soul, but a green hand to set
all this disorder right. I knew no more of oxen than the ox-driver is
supposed to know of wisdom.
After standing a few minutes, surveying the damage, and not without a
presentiment that this trouble would draw after it others, even more
distressing, I took one end of the cart body and, by an extra outlay
of strength, I lifted it toward the axle-tree, from which it had been
violently flung; and after much pulling and straining, I succeeded in
getting the body of the cart in its place. This was an important step
out of the difficulty, and its performance increased my courage for
the work which remained to be done. The cart was provided with an ax,
a tool with which I had become pretty well acquainted in the ship-yard
at Baltimore. With this I cut down the saplings by which my oxen were
entangled, and again pursued my journey, with my heart in my mouth,
lest the oxen should again take it into their senseless heads to cut
up a caper. But their spree was over for the present, and the rascals
now moved off as soberly as though their behavior had been natural and
exemplary. On reaching the part of the forest where I had been the
day before chopping wood, I filled the cart with a heavy load, as a
security against another runaway. But the neck of an ox is equal in
strength to iron. It defies ordinary burdens. Tame and docile to a
proverb, when _well_ trained, the ox is the most sullen and intractable
of animals when but half broken to the yoke. I saw in my own situation
several points of similarity with that of the oxen. They were property;
so was I. Covey was to break me--I was to break them. Break and be
broken was the order.
Half of the day was already gone and I had not yet turned my face
homeward. It required only two days’ experience and observation
to teach me that no such apparent waste of time would be lightly
overlooked by Covey. I therefore hurried toward home; but in reaching
the lane gate I met the crowning disaster of the day. This gate was
a fair specimen of southern handicraft. There were two huge posts
eighteen inches in diameter, rough hewed and square, and the heavy gate
was so hung on one of these that it opened only about half the proper
distance. On arriving here it was necessary for me to let go the end of
the rope on the horns of the “in hand ox;” and now as soon as the gate
was open and I let go of it to get the rope again, off went my oxen,
making nothing of their load, full tilt; and in so doing they caught
the huge gate between the wheel and the cart body, literally crushing
it to splinters, and coming only within a few inches of subjecting me
to a similar crushing, for I was just in advance of the wheel when
it struck the left gate post. With these two hair-breadth escapes I
thought I could successfully explain to Mr. Covey the delay and avert
punishment--I was not without a faint hope of being commended for the
stern resolution which I had displayed in accomplishing the difficult
task--a task which I afterwards learned even Covey himself would not
have undertaken without first driving the oxen for some time in the
open field, preparatory to their going to the woods. But in this hope
I was disappointed. On coming to him his countenance assumed an aspect
of rigid displeasure, and as I gave him a history of the casualties of
my trip, his wolfish face, with his greenish eyes, became intensely
ferocious. “Go back to the woods again,” he said, muttering something
else about wasting time. I hastily obeyed, but I had not gone far on
my way when I saw him coming after me. My oxen now behaved themselves
with singular propriety, contrasting their present conduct to my
representation of their former antics. I almost wished, now that Covey
was coming, they _would_ do something in keeping with the character
I had given them; but no, they had already had their spree, and they
could afford now to be extra good, readily obeying orders, and seeming
to understand them quite as well as I did myself. On reaching the woods
my tormentor, who seemed all the time to be remarking to himself upon
the good behavior of the oxen, came up to me and ordered me to stop the
cart, accompanying the same with the threat that he would now teach
me how to break gates and idle away my time when he sent me to the
woods. Suiting the action to the words, Covey paced off, in his own
wiry fashion, to a large black gum tree, the young shoots of which are
generally used for _ox goads_, they being exceedingly tough. Three of
these _goads_, from four to six feet long, he cut off and trimmed up
with his large jack-knife. This done, he ordered me to take off my
clothes. To this unreasonable order I made no reply, but in my apparent
unconsciousness and inattention to this command I indicated very
plainly a stern determination to do no such thing. “If you will beat
me,” thought I, “you shall do so over my clothes.” After many threats,
which made no impression upon me, he rushed at me with something of the
savage fierceness of a wolf, tore off the few and thinly worn clothes I
had on, and proceeded to wear out on my back the heavy goads which he
had cut from the gum tree. This flogging was the first of a series of
floggings, and though very severe, it was less so than many which came
after it, and these for offences far lighter than the gate-breaking.
I remained with Mr. Covey one year (I cannot say I _lived_ with him),
and during the first six months that I was there I was whipped, either
with sticks or cow-skins, every week. Aching bones and a sore back
were my constant companions. Frequent as the lash was used, Mr. Covey
thought less of it as a means of breaking down my spirit than that
of hard and continued labor. He worked me steadily up to the point
of my powers of endurance. From the dawn of day in the morning till
the darkness was complete in the evening I was kept at hard work in
the field or the woods. At certain seasons of the year we were all
kept in the field till eleven and twelve o’clock at night. At these
times Covey would attend us in the field and urge us on with words or
blows, as it seemed best to him. He had, in his life, been an overseer,
and he well understood the business of slave-driving. There was no
deceiving him. He knew just what a man or boy could do, and he held
both to strict account. When he pleased he would work himself like a
very Turk, making everything fly before him. It was, however, scarcely
necessary for Mr. Covey to be really present in the field to have
his work go on industriously. He had the faculty of making us feel
that he was always present. By a series of adroitly managed surprises
which he practiced, I was prepared to expect him at any moment. His
plan was never to approach the spot where his hands were at work in
an open, manly, and direct manner. No thief was ever more artful in
his devices than this man Covey. He would creep and crawl in ditches
and gullies, hide behind stumps and bushes, and practice so much of
the cunning of the serpent, that Bill Smith and I, between ourselves,
never called him by any other name than “the snake.” We fancied that
in his eyes and his gait we could see a snakish resemblance. One half
of his proficiency in the art of negro-breaking consisted, I should
think, in this species of cunning. We were never secure. He could see
or hear us nearly all the time. He was to us behind every stump, tree,
bush, and fence on the plantation. He carried this kind of trickery so
far that he would sometimes mount his horse and make believe he was
going to St. Michaels, and in thirty minutes afterwards you might find
his horse tied in the woods, and the snake-like Covey lying flat in
the ditch with his head lifted above its edge, or in a fence-corner,
watching every movement of the slaves. I have known him walk up to us
and give us special orders as to our work in advance, as if he were
leaving home with a view to being absent several days, and before he
got half way to the house he would avail himself of our inattention to
his movements to turn short on his heel, conceal himself behind a fence
corner or a tree, and watch us until the going down of the sun. Mean
and contemptible as is all this, it is in keeping with the character
which the life of a slaveholder was calculated to produce. There was
no earthly inducement in the slave’s condition to incite him to labor
faithfully. The fear of punishment was the sole motive of any sort
of industry with him. Knowing this fact as the slaveholder did, and
judging the slave by himself, he naturally concluded that the slave
would be idle whenever the cause for this fear was absent. Hence all
sorts of petty deceptions were practiced to inspire fear.
But with Mr. Covey trickery was natural. Everything in the shape of
learning or religion which he possessed was made to conform to this
semi-lying propensity. He did not seem conscious that the practice
had anything unmanly, base, or contemptible about it. It was a part
of an important system with him, essential to the relation of master
and slave. I thought I saw, in his very religious devotions, this
controlling element of his character. A long prayer at night made
up for a short prayer in the morning, and few men could seem more
devotional than he when he had nothing else to do.
Mr. Covey was not content with the cold style of family worship adopted
in the cold latitudes, which begin and end with a simple prayer. No!
the voice of praise as well as of prayer must be heard in his house
night and morning. At first I was called upon to bear some part in
these exercises; but the repeated floggings given me turned the whole
thing into mockery. He was a poor singer, and mainly relied on me
for raising the hymn for the family, and when I failed to do so he
was thrown into much confusion. I do not think he ever abused me on
account of these vexations. His religion was a thing altogether apart
from his worldly concerns. He knew nothing of it as a holy principle
directing and controlling his daily life, making the latter conform to
the requirements of the gospel. One or two facts will illustrate his
character better than a volume of generalities.
I have already implied that Mr. Edward Covey was a poor man. He was,
in fact, just commencing to lay the foundation of his fortune, as
fortune was regarded in a slave state. The first condition of wealth
and respectability there being the ownership of human property, every
nerve was strained by the poor man to obtain it, with little regard
sometimes as to the means. In pursuit of this object, pious as Mr.
Covey was, he proved himself as unscrupulous and base as the worst of
his neighbors. In the beginning he was only able--as he said--“to
buy one slave;” and scandalous and shocking as is the fact, he boasted
that he bought her simply “as a breeder.” But the worst of this is not
told in this naked statement. This young woman (Caroline was her name)
was virtually compelled by Covey to abandon herself to the object for
which he had purchased her; and the result was the birth of twins at
the end of the year. At this addition to his human stock Covey and his
wife were ecstatic with joy. No one dreamed of reproaching the woman
or of finding fault with the hired man, Bill Smith, the father of the
children, for Mr. Covey himself had locked the two up together every
night, thus inviting the result.
But I will pursue this revolting subject no farther. No better
illustration of the unchaste, demoralizing, and debasing character
of slavery can be found, than is furnished in the fact that this
professedly Christian slaveholder, amidst all his prayers and hymns,
was shamelessly and boastfully encouraging and actually compelling,
in his own house, undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means
of increasing his stock. It was the _system_ of slavery which made
this allowable, and which condemned the slaveholder for buying a slave
woman and devoting her to this life, no more than for buying a cow and
raising stock from her, and the same rules were observed, with a view
to increasing the number and quality of the one, as of the other.
If at any one time in my life, more than another, I was made to drink
the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six
months of my stay with this man Covey. We were worked all weathers.
It was never too hot, or too cold; it could never rain, blow, snow,
or hail too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was
scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days
were too short for him, and the shortest nights were too long for him.
I was somewhat unmanageable at the first, but a few months of this
discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in _breaking_ me--in body,
soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect
languished; the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that
lingered about my eye died out; the dark night of slavery closed in
upon me, and behold a man transformed to a brute!
Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
stupor, between sleeping and waking, under some large tree. At times I
would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
accompanied with a faint beam of hope that flickered for a moment, and
then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
I was sometimes tempted to take my life and that of Covey, but was
prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings, as I
remember them now, seem like a dream rather than a stern reality.
Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake bay, whose broad
bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in white, and so delightful to
the eyes of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify
and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often,
in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the
banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The
sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel
utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour
out my soul’s complaint in my rude way with an apostrophe to the moving
multitude of ships.
“You are loosed from your moorings, and free. I am fast in my chains,
and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly
before the bloody whip. You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly
around the world; I am confined in bonds of iron. O, that I were free!
O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting
wing! Alas! betwixt me and you the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on; O,
that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I
born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone: she hides
in the dim distance. I am left in the hell of unending slavery. O,
God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free!--Is there any God? Why
am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught or get
clear, I’ll try it. I had as well die with ague as with fever. I have
only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing.
Only think of it: one hundred miles north, and I am free! Try it? Yes!
God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave.
I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom.
The steamboats steer in a northeast course from North Point; I will do
the same; and when I get to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe
adrift, and walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I
get there I shall not be required to have a pass: I will travel there
without being disturbed. Let but the first opportunity offer, and come
what will, I am off. Meanwhile I will try to bear the yoke. I am not
the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I can bear as much as
any of them. Besides I am but a boy yet, and all boys are bound out to
some one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my
happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming.”
I shall never be able to narrate half the mental experience through
which it was my lot to pass, during my stay at Covey’s. I was
completely wrecked, changed, and bewildered; goaded almost to madness
at one time, and at another, reconciling myself to my wretched
condition. All the kindness I had received at Baltimore, all my former
hopes and aspirations for usefulness in the world, and even the happy
moments spent in the exercises of religion, contrasted with my then
present lot, served but to increase my anguish.
I suffered bodily as well as mentally. I had neither sufficient time
in which to eat, or to sleep, except on Sundays. The over-work, and
the brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that
ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought--“_I am a slave--a slave for
life--a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom_”--rendered
me a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness.