NEW RELATIONS AND DUTIES.
Change of masters--Benefits derived by change--Fame of the fight
with Covey--Reckless unconcern--Author’s abhorrence of slavery--
Ability to read a cause of prejudice--The holidays--How spent--
Sharp hit at slavery--Effects of holidays--Difference between Covey
and Freeland--An irreligious master preferred to a religious one--
Hard life at Covey’s useful to the author--Improved condition does
not bring contentment--Congenial society at Freeland’s--Author’s
Sabbath-school--Secresy necessary--Affectionate relations of tutor
and pupils--Confidence and friendship among slaves--Slavery the
inviter of vengeance.
My term of service with Edward Covey expired on Christmas day, 1834.
I gladly enough left him, although he was by this time as gentle as a
lamb. My home for the year 1835 was already secured, my next master
selected. There was always more or less excitement about the changing
of hands, but I had become somewhat reckless and cared little into
whose hands I fell, determined to fight my way. The report got abroad
that I was hard to whip, that I was guilty of kicking back, that
though generally a good-natured negro, I sometimes “got the devil in
me.” These sayings were rife in Talbot County, and they distinguished
me among my servile brethren. Slaves would sometimes fight with each
other, and even die at each other’s hands, but there were very few
who were not held in awe by a white man. Trained from the cradle up
to think and feel that their masters were superior, and invested with
a sort of sacredness, there were few who could rise above the control
which that sentiment exercised. I had freed myself from it, and the
thing was known. One bad sheep will spoil a whole flock. I was a bad
sheep. I hated slavery, slaveholders, and all pertaining to them; and
I did not fail to inspire others with the same feeling wherever and
whenever opportunity was presented. This made me a marked lad among
the slaves, and a suspected one among slaveholders. A knowledge of my
ability to read and write got pretty widely spread, which was very much
against me.
The days between Christmas day and New Year’s were allowed the slaves
as holidays. During these days all regular work was suspended, and
there was nothing to do but to keep fires and look after the stock.
We regarded this time as our own by the grace of our masters, and we
therefore used it or abused it as we pleased. Those who had families at
a distance were expected to visit them and spend with them the entire
week. The younger slaves or the unmarried ones were expected to see to
the cattle, and to attend to incidental duties at home. The holidays
were variously spent. The sober, thinking, industrious ones would
employ themselves in manufacturing corn brooms, mats, horse collars,
and baskets, and some of these were very well made. Another class spent
their time in hunting opossums, coons, rabbits, and other game. But
the majority spent the holidays in sports, ball-playing, wrestling,
boxing, running foot-races, dancing, and drinking whiskey; and this
latter mode was generally most agreeable to their masters. A slave who
would work during the holidays was thought by his master undeserving of
holidays. There was in this simple act of continued work an accusation
against slaves, and a slave could not help thinking that if he made
three dollars during the holidays he might make three hundred during
the year. Not to be drunk during the holidays was disgraceful.
The fiddling, dancing, and “jubilee beating” was carried on in all
directions. This latter performance was strictly southern. It supplied
the place of violin, or of other musical instruments, and was played
so easily that almost every farm had its “Juba” beater. The performer
improvised as he beat the instrument, marking the words as he sang so
as to have them fall pat with the movement of his hands. Among a mass
of nonsense and wild frolic, once in a while a sharp hit was given to
the meanness of slaveholders. Take the following for example:
We raise de wheat,
Dey gib us de corn;
We bake de bread,
Dey gib us de crust;
We sif de meal,
Dey gib us de huss;
We peel de meat,
Dey gib us de skin;
And dat’s de way
Dey take us in;
We skim de pot,
Dey give us de liquor,
And say dat’s good enough for nigger.
Walk over! walk over!
Your butter and de fat;
Poor nigger you cant get over dat.
Walk over--
This is not a bad summary of the palpable injustice and fraud of
slavery, giving, as it does, to the lazy and idle the comforts which
God designed should be given solely to the honest laborer. But to the
holidays. Judging from my own observation and experience, I believe
those holidays were among the most effective means in the hands of
slaveholders of keeping down the spirit of insurrection among the
slaves.
To enslave men successfully and safely it is necessary to keep their
minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of
which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must
be kept before them. These holidays served the purpose of keeping
the minds of the slaves occupied with prospective pleasure within
the limits of slavery. The young man could go wooing, the married
man to see his wife, the father and mother to see their children,
the industrious and money-loving could make a few dollars, the great
wrestler could win laurels, the young people meet and enjoy each
other’s society, the drunken man could get plenty of whiskey, and the
religious man could hold prayer-meetings, preach, pray, and exhort.
Before the holidays there were pleasures in prospect; after the
holidays they were pleasures of memory, and they served to keep out
thoughts and wishes of a more dangerous character. These holidays were
also sort of conductors or safety-valves, to carry off the explosive
elements inseparable from the human mind when reduced to the condition
of slavery. But for these the rigors of bondage would have become
too severe for endurance, and the slave would have been forced up to
dangerous desperation.
Thus they became a part and parcel of the gross wrongs and inhumanity
of slavery. Ostensibly they were institutions of benevolence designed
to mitigate the rigors of slave life, but practically they were a fraud
instituted by human selfishness, the better to secure the ends of
injustice and oppression. The slave’s happiness was not the end sought,
but the master’s safety. It was not from a generous unconcern for the
slave’s labor, but from a prudent regard for the slave system. I am
strengthened in this opinion from the fact that most slaveholders liked
to have their slaves spend the holidays in such manner as to be of no
real benefit to them. Everything like rational enjoyment was frowned
upon, and only those wild and low sports peculiar to semi-civilized
people were encouraged. The license allowed appeared to have no other
object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary freedom, and
to make them as glad to return to their work as they were to leave
it. I have known slaveholders resort to cunning tricks, with a view
of getting their slaves deplorably drunk. The usual plan was to make
bets on a slave that he could drink more whisky than any other, and so
induce a rivalry among them for the mastery in this degradation. The
scenes brought about in this way were often scandalous and loathsome
in the extreme. Whole multitudes might be found stretched out in
brutal drunkenness, at once helpless and disgusting. Thus, when the
slave asked for hours of “virtuous liberty,” his cunning master took
advantage of his ignorance and cheered him with a dose of vicious and
revolting dissipation artfully labeled with the name of “_liberty_.”
We were induced to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were
over we all staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a long
breath, and went away to our various fields of work, feeling, upon
the whole, rather glad to go from that which our masters had artfully
deceived us into the belief was freedom, back again to the arms of
slavery. It was not what we had taken it to be, nor what it would have
been, had it not been abused by us. It was about as well to be a slave
to master, as to be a slave to whisky and rum. When the slave was drunk
the slaveholder had no fear that he would plan an insurrection, no fear
that he would escape to the North. It was the sober, thoughtful slave
who was dangerous, and needed the vigilance of his master to keep him a
slave. But to proceed with my narrative.
On the first of January, 1835, I proceeded from St. Michaels to Mr.
William Freeland’s--my new home. Mr. Freeland lived only three miles
from St. Michaels, on an old, worn-out farm, which required much labor
to render it anything like a self-supporting establishment.
I found Mr. Freeland a different man from Covey. Though not rich,
he was what might have been called a well-bred Southern gentleman.
Though a slaveholder and sharing in common with them many of the
vices of his class, he seemed alive to the sentiment of honor, and
had also some sense of justice, and some feelings of humanity. He
was fretful, impulsive, and passionate, but free from the mean and
selfish characteristics which distinguished the creature from which
I had happily escaped. Mr. Freeland was open, frank, imperative, and
practiced no concealments, and disdained to play the spy; in all these
qualities the opposite of Covey.
My poor weather-beaten bark now reached smoother water and gentler
breezes. My stormy life at Covey’s had been of service to me. The
things that would have seemed very hard had I gone direct to Mr.
Freeland’s from the home of Master Thomas were now “trifles light as
air.” I was still a field-hand, and had come to prefer the severe labor
of the field to the enervating duties of a house-servant. I had become
large and strong, and had begun to take pride in the fact that I could
do as much hard work as some of the older men. There was much rivalry
among slaves at times as to which could do the most work, and masters
generally sought to promote such rivalry. But some of us were too wise
to race with each other very long. Such racing, we had the sagacity to
see, was not likely to pay. We had our times for measuring each other’s
strength, but we knew too much to keep up the competition so long as to
produce an extraordinary day’s work. We knew that if by extraordinary
exertion a large quantity of work was done in one day, becoming known
to the master, it might lead him to require the same amount every day.
This thought was enough to bring us to a dead halt when ever so much
excited for the race.
At Mr. Freeland’s my condition was every way improved. I was no longer
the scapegoat that I was when at Covey’s, where every wrong thing
done was saddled upon me, and where other slaves were whipped over my
shoulders. Bill Smith was protected by a positive prohibition, made by
his rich master (and the command of the _rich_ slaveholder was _law_ to
the poor one). Hughes was favored by his relationship to Covey, and the
hands hired temporarily escaped flogging. I was the general pack-horse;
but Mr. Freeland held every man individually responsible for his own
conduct. Mr. Freeland, like Mr. Covey, gave his hands enough to eat,
but, unlike Mr. Covey, he gave them time to take their meals. He worked
us hard during the day, but gave us the night for rest. We were seldom
in the field after dark in the evening, or before sunrise in the
morning. Our implements of husbandry were of the most improved pattern,
and much superior to those used at Covey’s.
Notwithstanding all the improvement in my relations, notwithstanding
the many advantages I had gained by my new home and my new master, I
was still restless and discontented. I was about as hard to please by
a master as a master is by a slave. The freedom from bodily torture
and unceasing labor had given my mind an increased sensibility, and
imparted to it greater activity. I was not yet exactly in right
relations. “Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” When entombed
at Covey’s, shrouded in darkness and physical wretchedness, temporal
well-being was the grand desideratum; but, temporal wants supplied,
the spirit puts in its claims. Beat and cuff your slave, keep him
hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like
a dog; but feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround
him with physical comfort, and dreams of freedom intrude. Give him a
_bad_ master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master
and he wishes to become his own master. Such is human nature. You may
hurl a man so low beneath the level of his kind, that he loses all just
ideas of his natural position, but elevate him a little, and the clear
conception of rights rises to life and power, and leads him onward.
Thus elevated a little at Freeland’s, the dreams called into being by
that good man, Father Lawson, when in Baltimore, began to visit me
again; shoots from the tree of liberty began to put forth buds, and dim
hopes of the future began to dawn.
I found myself in congenial society. There were Henry Harris,
John Harris, Handy Caldwell, and Sandy Jenkins (this last, of the
root-preventive memory.)
Henry and John Harris were brothers, and belonged to Mr. Freeland. They
were both remarkably bright and intelligent, though neither of them
could read. Now for mischief! I had not been long here before I was
up to my old tricks. I began to address my companions on the subject
of education, and the advantages of intelligence over ignorance, and,
as far as I dared, I tried to show the agency of ignorance in keeping
men in slavery. Webster’s spelling-book and the Columbian Orator
were looked into again. As summer came on, and the long Sabbath days
stretched themselves over our idleness, I became uneasy, and wanted
a Sabbath-school, where to exercise my gifts, and to impart the
little knowledge I possessed to my brother-slaves. A house was hardly
necessary in the summer time; I could hold my school under the shade
of an old oak tree as well as anywhere else. The thing was to get the
scholars, and to have them thoroughly imbued with the desire to learn.
Two such boys were quickly found in Henry and John, and from them
the contagion spread. I was not long in bringing around me twenty or
thirty young men, who enrolled themselves gladly in my Sabbath-school,
and were willing to meet me regularly under the trees or elsewhere,
for the purpose of learning to read. It was surprising with what ease
they provided themselves with spelling-books. These were mostly the
cast-off books of their young masters or mistresses. I taught at first
on our own farm. All were impressed with the necessity of keeping
the matter as private as possible, for the fate of the St. Michaels
attempt was still fresh in the minds of all. Our pious masters at
St. Michaels must not know that a few of their dusky brothers were
learning to read the Word of God, lest they should come down upon us
with the lash and chain. We might have met to drink whisky, to wrestle,
fight, and to do other unseemly things, with no fear of interruption
from the saints or the sinners of St. Michaels. But to meet for the
purpose of improving the mind and heart, by learning to read the sacred
scriptures, was a nuisance to be instantly stopped. The slaveholders
there, like slaveholders elsewhere, preferred to see the slaves engaged
in degrading sports, rather than acting like moral and accountable
beings. Had any one asked a religious white man in St. Michaels at
that time the names of three men in that town whose lives were most
after the pattern of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, the reply would
have been: Garrison West, class-leader, Wright Fairbanks, and Thomas
Auld, both also class-leaders; and yet these men ferociously rushed in
upon my Sabbath-school, armed with mob-like missiles, and forbade our
meeting again on pain of having our backs subjected to the bloody lash.
This same Garrison West was my class-leader, and I had thought him a
Christian until he took part in breaking up my school. He led me no
more after that.
The plea for this outrage was then, as it is always, the tyrant’s plea
of necessity. If the slaves learned to read they would learn something
more and something worse. The peace of slavery would be disturbed;
slave rule would be endangered. I do not dispute the soundness of the
reasoning. If slavery were right, Sabbath-schools for teaching slaves
to read were wrong, and ought to have been put down. These christian
class-leaders were, to this extent, consistent. They had settled the
question that slavery was right, and by that standard they determined
that Sabbath-schools were wrong. To be sure they were Protestant,
and held to the great protestant right of every man to “search the
Scriptures” for himself; but then, to all general rules there are
exceptions. How convenient! What crimes may not be committed under such
ruling! But my dear class-leading Methodist brethren did not condescend
to give me a reason for breaking up the school at St. Michaels; they
had determined its destruction, and that was enough. However, I am
digressing.
After getting the school nicely started a second time, holding it in
the woods behind the barn, and in the shade of trees, I succeeded in
inducing a free colored man who lived several miles from our house to
permit me to hold my school in a room at his house. He incurred much
peril in doing so, for the assemblage was an unlawful one. I had at one
time more than forty scholars, all of the right sort, and many of them
succeeded in learning to read. I have had various employments during my
life, but I look back to none with more satisfaction. An attachment,
deep and permanent, sprung up between me and my persecuted pupils,
which made my parting from them intensely painful.
Besides my Sunday-school, I devoted three evenings a week to my other
fellow slaves during the winter. Those dear souls who came to my
Sabbath-school came not because it was popular or reputable to do so,
for they came with a liability of having forty stripes laid on their
naked backs. In this Christian country men and women were obliged
to hide in barns and woods and trees from professing Christians, in
order to learn to read the _Holy Bible_. Their minds had been cramped
and starved by their cruel masters; the light of education had been
completely excluded, and their hard earnings had been taken to educate
their master’s children. I felt a delight in circumventing the tyrants,
and in blessing victims of their curses.
The year at Mr. Freeland’s passed off very smoothly, to outward
seeming. Not a blow was given me during the whole year. To the credit
of Mr. Freeland, irreligious though he was, it must be stated that he
was the best master I ever had until I became my own master and assumed
for myself, as I had a right to do, the responsibility of my own
existence and the exercise of my own powers.
For much of the happiness, or absence of misery, with which I passed
this year, I am indebted to the genial temper and ardent friendship of
my brother slaves. They were every one of them manly, generous, and
brave; yes, I say they were brave, and I will add fine looking. It is
seldom the lot of any to have truer and better friends than were the
slaves on this farm. It was not uncommon to charge slaves with great
treachery toward each other, but I must say I never loved, esteemed,
or confided in men more than I did in these. They were as true as
steel, and no band of brothers could be more loving. There were no
mean advantages taken of each other, no tattling, no giving each other
bad names to Mr. Freeland, and no elevating one at the expense of the
other. We never undertook anything of any importance which was likely
to affect each other, without mutual consultation. We were generally
a unit, and moved together. Thoughts and sentiments were exchanged
between us which might well have been considered incendiary had they
been known by our masters. The slaveholder, were he kind or cruel,
was a slaveholder still, the every-hour-violator of the just and
inalienable rights of man, and he was therefore every hour silently but
surely whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat. He never
lisped a syllable in commendation of the fathers of this republic
without inviting the sword, and asserting the right of rebellion for
his own slaves.