MY BONDAGE and MY FREEDOM
By Frederick Douglass
By a principle essential to Christianity, a PERSON is eternally
differenced from a THING; so that the idea of a HUMAN BEING,
necessarily excludes the idea of PROPERTY IN THAT BEING. —COLERIDGE
Entered according to Act of Congress in 1855 by Frederick Douglass in
the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Northern District of
New York
TO
HONORABLE GERRIT SMITH,
AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF
ESTEEM FOR HIS CHARACTER,
ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS AND BENEVOLENCE,
AFFECTION FOR HIS PERSON, AND
GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,
AND AS
A Small but most Sincere Acknowledgement of
HIS PRE-EMINENT SERVICES IN BEHALF OF THE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
OF AN
AFFLICTED, DESPISED AND DEEPLY OUTRAGED PEOPLE,
BY RANKING SLAVERY WITH PIRACY AND MURDER,
AND BY
DENYING IT EITHER A LEGAL OR CONSTITUTIONAL EXISTENCE,
This Volume is Respectfully Dedicated,
BY HIS FAITHFUL AND FIRMLY ATTACHED FRIEND,
FREDERICK DOUGLAS.
ROCHESTER, N.Y.
CONTENTS
MY BONDAGE and MY FREEDOM
EDITOR’S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. _Childhood_
CHAPTER II. _Removed from My First Home_
CHAPTER III. _Parentage_
CHAPTER IV. _A General Survey of the Slave Plantation_
CHAPTER V. _Gradual Initiation to the Mysteries of Slavery_
CHAPTER VI. _Treatment of Slaves on Lloyd’s Plantation_
CHAPTER VII. _Life in the Great House_
CHAPTER VIII. _A Chapter of Horrors_
CHAPTER IX. _Personal Treatment_
CHAPTER X. _Life in Baltimore_
CHAPTER XI. _“A Change Came O’er the Spirit of My Dream”_
CHAPTER XII. _Religious Nature Awakened_
CHAPTER XIII. _The Vicissitudes of Slave Life_
CHAPTER XIV. _Experience in St. Michael’s_
CHAPTER XV. _Covey, the Negro Breaker_
CHAPTER XVI. _Another Pressure of the Tyrant’s Vice_
CHAPTER XVII. _The Last Flogging_
CHAPTER XVIII. _New Relations and Duties_
CHAPTER XIX. _The Run-Away Plot_
CHAPTER XX. _Apprenticeship Life_
CHAPTER XXI. _My Escape from Slavery_
LIFE as a FREEMAN
CHAPTER XXII. _Liberty Attained_
CHAPTER XXIII. _Introduced to the Abolitionists_
CHAPTER XXIV. _Twenty-One Months in Great Britain_
CHAPTER XXV. _Various Incidents_
RECEPTION SPEECH [10]. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12,
Dr. Campbell’s Reply
LETTER TO HIS OLD MASTER. [11]. To My Old Master, Thomas Auld
THE NATURE OF SLAVERY. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,
INHUMANITY OF SLAVERY. Extract from A Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,
WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY?. Extract from an Oration, at
THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE. Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July
THE SLAVERY PARTY. Extract from a Speech Delivered before the A. A. S.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. Extracts from a Lecture before Various
FOOTNOTES
MY BONDAGE and MY FREEDOM
EDITOR’S PREFACE
If the volume now presented to the public were a mere work of ART, the
history of its misfortune might be written in two very simple words—TOO
LATE. The nature and character of slavery have been subjects of an
almost endless variety of artistic representation; and after the
brilliant achievements in that field, and while those achievements are
yet fresh in the memory of the million, he who would add another to the
legion, must possess the charm of transcendent excellence, or apologize
for something worse than rashness. The reader is, therefore, assured,
with all due promptitude, that his attention is not invited to a work
of ART, but to a work of FACTS—Facts, terrible and almost incredible,
it may be yet FACTS, nevertheless.
I am authorized to say that there is not a fictitious name nor place in
the whole volume; but that names and places are literally given, and
that every transaction therein described actually transpired.
Perhaps the best Preface to this volume is furnished in the following
letter of Mr. Douglass, written in answer to my urgent solicitation for
such a work:
ROCHESTER, N. Y. _July_ 2, 1855.
DEAR FRIEND: I have long entertained, as you very well know, a somewhat
positive repugnance to writing or speaking anything for the public,
which could, with any degree of plausibilty, make me liable to the
imputation of seeking personal notoriety, for its own sake.
Entertaining that feeling very sincerely, and permitting its control,
perhaps, quite unreasonably, I have often refused to narrate my
personal experience in public anti-slavery meetings, and in
sympathizing circles, when urged to do so by friends, with whose views
and wishes, ordinarily, it were a pleasure to comply. In my letters and
speeches, I have generally aimed to discuss the question of Slavery in
the light of fundamental principles, and upon facts, notorious and open
to all; making, I trust, no more of the fact of my own former
enslavement, than circumstances seemed absolutely to require. I have
never placed my opposition to slavery on a basis so narrow as my own
enslavement, but rather upon the indestructible and unchangeable laws
of human nature, every one of which is perpetually and flagrantly
violated by the slave system. I have also felt that it was best for
those having histories worth the writing—or supposed to be so—to commit
such work to hands other than their own. To write of one’s self, in
such a manner as not to incur the imputation of weakness, vanity, and
egotism, is a work within the ability of but few; and I have little
reason to believe that I belong to that fortunate few.
These considerations caused me to hesitate, when first you kindly urged
me to prepare for publication a full account of my life as a slave, and
my life as a freeman.
Nevertheless, I see, with you, many reasons for regarding my
autobiography as exceptional in its character, and as being, in some
sense, naturally beyond the reach of those reproaches which honorable
and sensitive minds dislike to incur. It is not to illustrate any
heroic achievements of a man, but to vindicate a just and beneficent
principle, in its application to the whole human family, by letting in
the light of truth upon a system, esteemed by some as a blessing, and
by others as a curse and a crime. I agree with you, that this system is
now at the bar of public opinion—not only of this country, but of the
whole civilized world—for judgment. Its friends have made for it the
usual plea—“not guilty;” the case must, therefore, proceed. Any facts,
either from slaves, slaveholders, or by-standers, calculated to
enlighten the public mind, by revealing the true nature, character, and
tendency of the slave system, are in order, and can scarcely be
innocently withheld.
I see, too, that there are special reasons why I should write my own
biography, in preference to employing another to do it. Not only is
slavery on trial, but unfortunately, the enslaved people are also on
trial. It is alleged, that they are, naturally, inferior; that they are
_so low_ in the scale of humanity, and so utterly stupid, that they are
unconscious of their wrongs, and do not apprehend their rights.
Looking, then, at your request, from this stand-point, and wishing
everything of which you think me capable to go to the benefit of my
afflicted people, I part with my doubts and hesitation, and proceed to
furnish you the desired manuscript; hoping that you may be able to make
such arrangements for its publication as shall be best adapted to
accomplish that good which you so enthusiastically anticipate.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
There was little necessity for doubt and hesitation on the part of Mr.
Douglass, as to the propriety of his giving to the world a full account
of himself. A man who was born and brought up in slavery, a living
witness of its horrors; who often himself experienced its cruelties;
and who, despite the depressing influences surrounding his birth, youth
and manhood, has risen, from a dark and almost absolute obscurity, to
the distinguished position which he now occupies, might very well
assume the existence of a commendable curiosity, on the part of the
public, to know the facts of his remarkable history.
EDITOR
INTRODUCTION
When a man raises himself from the lowest condition in society to the
highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration; when he
accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by prudence and
wisdom, their admiration is increased; but when his course, onward and
upward, excellent in itself, furthermore proves a possible, what had
hitherto been regarded as an impossible, reform, then he becomes a
burning and a shining light, on which the aged may look with gladness,
the young with hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what
they may themselves become. To such a man, dear reader, it is my
privilege to introduce you.
The life of Frederick Douglass, recorded in the pages which follow, is
not merely an example of self-elevation under the most adverse
circumstances; it is, moreover, a noble vindication of the highest aims
of the American anti-slavery movement. The real object of that movement
is not only to disenthrall, it is, also, to bestow upon the Negro the
exercise of all those rights, from the possession of which he has been
so long debarred.
But this full recognition of the colored man to the right, and the
entire admission of the same to the full privileges, political,
religious and social, of manhood, requires powerful effort on the part
of the enthralled, as well as on the part of those who would
disenthrall them. The people at large must feel the conviction, as well
as admit the abstract logic, of human equality; the Negro, for the
first time in the world’s history, brought in full contact with high
civilization, must prove his title first to all that is demanded for
him; in the teeth of unequal chances, he must prove himself equal to
the mass of those who oppress him—therefore, absolutely superior to his
apparent fate, and to their relative ability. And it is most cheering
to the friends of freedom, today, that evidence of this equality is
rapidly accumulating, not from the ranks of the half-freed colored
people of the free states, but from the very depths of slavery itself;
the indestructible equality of man to man is demonstrated by the ease
with which black men, scarce one remove from barbarism—if slavery can
be honored with such a distinction—vault into the high places of the
most advanced and painfully acquired civilization. Ward and Garnett,
Wells Brown and Pennington, Loguen and Douglass, are banners on the
outer wall, under which abolition is fighting its most successful
battles, because they are living exemplars of the practicability of the
most radical abolitionism; for, they were all of them born to the doom
of slavery, some of them remained slaves until adult age, yet they all
have not only won equality to their white fellow citizens, in civil,
religious, political and social rank, but they have also illustrated
and adorned our common country by their genius, learning and eloquence.
The characteristics whereby Mr. Douglass has won first rank among these
remarkable men, and is still rising toward highest rank among living
Americans, are abundantly laid bare in the book before us. Like the
autobiography of Hugh Miller, it carries us so far back into early
childhood, as to throw light upon the question, “when positive and
persistent memory begins in the human being.” And, like Hugh Miller, he
must have been a shy old-fashioned child, occasionally oppressed by
what he could not well account for, peering and poking about among the
layers of right and wrong, of tyrant and thrall, and the wonderfulness
of that hopeless tide of things which brought power to one race, and
unrequited toil to another, until, finally, he stumbled upon his
“first-found Ammonite,” hidden away down in the depths of his own
nature, and which revealed to him the fact that liberty and right, for
all men, were anterior to slavery and wrong. When his knowledge of the
world was bounded by the visible horizon on Col. Lloyd’s plantation,
and while every thing around him bore a fixed, iron stamp, as if it had
always been so, this was, for one so young, a notable discovery.
To his uncommon memory, then, we must add a keen and accurate insight
into men and things; an original breadth of common sense which enabled
him to see, and weigh, and compare whatever passed before him, and
which kindled a desire to search out and define their relations to
other things not so patent, but which never succumbed to the marvelous
nor the supernatural; a sacred thirst for liberty and for learning,
first as a means of attaining liberty, then as an end in itself most
desirable; a will; an unfaltering energy and determination to obtain
what his soul pronounced desirable; a majestic self-hood; determined
courage; a deep and agonizing sympathy with his embruted, crushed and
bleeding fellow slaves, and an extraordinary depth of passion, together
with that rare alliance between passion and intellect, which enables
the former, when deeply roused, to excite, develop and sustain the
latter.
With these original gifts in view, let us look at his schooling; the
fearful discipline through which it pleased God to prepare him for the
high calling on which he has since entered—the advocacy of emancipation
by the people who are not slaves. And for this special mission, his
plantation education was better than any he could have acquired in any
lettered school. What he needed, was facts and experiences, welded to
acutely wrought up sympathies, and these he could not elsewhere have
obtained, in a manner so peculiarly adapted to his nature. His physical
being was well trained, also, running wild until advanced into boyhood;
hard work and light diet, thereafter, and a skill in handicraft in
youth.
For his special mission, then, this was, considered in connection with
his natural gifts, a good schooling; and, for his special mission, he
doubtless “left school” just at the proper moment. Had he remained
longer in slavery—had he fretted under bonds until the ripening of
manhood and its passions, until the drear agony of slave-wife and
slave-children had been piled upon his already bitter experiences—then,
not only would his own history have had another termination, but the
drama of American slavery would have been essentially varied; for I
cannot resist the belief, that the boy who learned to read and write as
he did, who taught his fellow slaves these precious acquirements as he
did, who plotted for their mutual escape as he did, would, when a man
at bay, strike a blow which would make slavery reel and stagger.
Furthermore, blows and insults he bore, at the moment, without
resentment; deep but suppressed emotion rendered him insensible to
their sting; but it was afterward, when the memory of them went
seething through his brain, breeding a fiery indignation at his injured
self-hood, that the resolve came to resist, and the time fixed when to
resist, and the plot laid, how to resist; and he always kept his
self-pledged word. In what he undertook, in this line, he looked fate
in the face, and had a cool, keen look at the relation of means to
ends. Henry Bibb, to avoid chastisement, strewed his master’s bed with
charmed leaves and _was whipped_. Frederick Douglass quietly pocketed a
like _fetiche_, compared his muscles with those of Covey—and _whipped
him_.
In the history of his life in bondage, we find, well developed, that
inherent and continuous energy of character which will ever render him
distinguished. What his hand found to do, he did with his might; even
while conscious that he was wronged out of his daily earnings, he
worked, and worked hard. At his daily labor he went with a will; with
keen, well set eye, brawny chest, lithe figure, and fair sweep of arm,
he would have been king among calkers, had that been his mission.
It must not be overlooked, in this glance at his education, that Mr.
Douglass lacked one aid to which so many men of mark have been deeply
indebted—he had neither a mother’s care, nor a mother’s culture, save
that which slavery grudgingly meted out to him. Bitter nurse! may not
even her features relax with human feeling, when she gazes at such
offspring! How susceptible he was to the kindly influences of
mother-culture, may be gathered from his own words, on page 57: “It has
been a life-long standing grief to me, that I know so little of my
mother, and that I was so early separated from her. The counsels of her
love must have been beneficial to me. The side view of her face is
imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in life, without feeling her
presence; but the image is mute, and I have no striking words of hers
treasured up.”
From the depths of chattel slavery in Maryland, our author escaped into
the caste-slavery of the north, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here he
found oppression assuming another, and hardly less bitter, form; of
that very handicraft which the greed of slavery had taught him, his
half-freedom denied him the exercise for an honest living; he found
himself one of a class—free colored men—whose position he has described
in the following words:
“Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental principles of the
republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here or
elsewhere, may appeal with confidence, in the hope of awakening a
favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to us. The glorious
doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and the more glorious
teachings of the Son of God, are construed and applied against us. We
are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities,
human and divine. * * * * American humanity hates us, scorns us,
disowns and denies, in a thousand ways, our very personality. The
outspread wing of American christianity, apparently broad enough to
give shelter to a perishing world, refuses to cover us. To us, its
bones are brass, and its features iron. In running thither for shelter
and succor, we have only fled from the hungry blood-hound to the
devouring wolf—from a corrupt and selfish world, to a hollow and
hypocritical church.”—_Speech before American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society, May_, 1854.
Four years or more, from 1837 to 1841, he struggled on, in New Bedford,
sawing wood, rolling casks, or doing what labor he might, to support
himself and young family; four years he brooded over the scars which
slavery and semi-slavery had inflicted upon his body and soul; and
then, with his wounds yet unhealed, he fell among the Garrisonians—a
glorious waif to those most ardent reformers. It happened one day, at
Nantucket, that he, diffidently and reluctantly, was led to address an
anti-slavery meeting. He was about the age when the younger Pitt
entered the House of Commons; like Pitt, too, he stood up a born
orator.
William Lloyd Garrison, who was happily present, writes thus of Mr.
Douglass’ maiden effort; “I shall never forget his first speech at the
convention—the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind—the
powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely
taken by surprise. * * * I think I never hated slavery so intensely as
at that moment; certainly, my perception of the enormous outrage which
is inflicted by it on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered
far more clear than ever. There stood one in physical proportions and
stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural
eloquence a prodigy.” 1
It is of interest to compare Mr. Douglass’s account of this meeting
with Mr. Garrison’s. Of the two, I think the latter the most correct.
It must have been a grand burst of eloquence! The pent up agony,
indignation and pathos of an abused and harrowed boyhood and youth,
bursting out in all their freshness and overwhelming earnestness!
This unique introduction to its great leader, led immediately to the
employment of Mr. Douglass as an agent by the American Anti-Slavery
Society. So far as his self-relying and independent character would
permit, he became, after the strictest sect, a Garrisonian. It is not
too much to say, that he formed a complement which they needed, and
they were a complement equally necessary to his “make-up.” With his
deep and keen sensitiveness to wrong, and his wonderful memory, he came
from the land of bondage full of its woes and its evils, and painting
them in characters of living light; and, on his part, he found, told
out in sound Saxon phrase, all those principles of justice and right
and liberty, which had dimly brooded over the dreams of his youth,
seeking definite forms and verbal expression. It must have been an
electric flashing of thought, and a knitting of soul, granted to but
few in this life, and will be a life-long memory to those who
participated in it. In the society, moreover, of Wendell Phillips,
Edmund Quincy, William Lloyd Garrison, and other men of earnest faith
and refined culture, Mr. Douglass enjoyed the high advantage of their
assistance and counsel in the labor of self-culture, to which he now
addressed himself with wonted energy. Yet, these gentlemen, although
proud of Frederick Douglass, failed to fathom, and bring out to the
light of day, the highest qualities of his mind; the force of their own
education stood in their own way: they did not delve into the mind of a
colored man for capacities which the pride of race led them to believe
to be restricted to their own Saxon blood. Bitter and vindictive
sarcasm, irresistible mimicry, and a pathetic narrative of his own
experiences of slavery, were the intellectual manifestations which they
encouraged him to exhibit on the platform or in the lecture desk.
A visit to England, in 1845, threw Mr. Douglass among men and women of
earnest souls and high culture, and who, moreover, had never drank of
the bitter waters of American caste. For the first time in his life, he
breathed an atmosphere congenial to the longings of his spirit, and
felt his manhood free and unrestricted. The cordial and manly greetings
of the British and Irish audiences in public, and the refinement and
elegance of the social circles in which he mingled, not only as an
equal, but as a recognized man of genius, were, doubtless, genial and
pleasant resting places in his hitherto thorny and troubled journey
through life. There are joys on the earth, and, to the wayfaring
fugitive from American slavery or American caste, this is one of them.
But his sojourn in England was more than a joy to Mr. Douglass. Like
the platform at Nantucket, it awakened him to the consciousness of new
powers that lay in him. From the pupilage of Garrisonism he rose to the
dignity of a teacher and a thinker; his opinions on the broader aspects
of the great American question were earnestly and incessantly sought,
from various points of view, and he must, perforce, bestir himself to
give suitable answer. With that prompt and truthful perception which
has led their sisters in all ages of the world to gather at the feet
and support the hands of reformers, the gentlewomen of England 2 were
foremost to encourage and strengthen him to carve out for himself a
path fitted to his powers and energies, in the life-battle against
slavery and caste to which he was pledged. And one stirring thought,
inseparable from the British idea of the evangel of freedom, must have
smote his ear from every side—
Hereditary bondmen! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves mast strike the blow?
The result of this visit was, that on his return to the United States,
he established a newspaper. This proceeding was sorely against the
wishes and the advice of the leaders of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, but our author had fully grown up to the conviction of a truth
which they had once promulged, but now forgotten, to wit: that in their
own elevation—self-elevation—colored men have a blow to strike “on
their own hook,” against slavery and caste. Differing from his Boston
friends in this matter, diffident in his own abilities, reluctant at
their dissuadings, how beautiful is the loyalty with which he still
clung to their principles in all things else, and even in this.
Now came the trial hour. Without cordial support from any large body of
men or party on this side the Atlantic, and too far distant in space
and immediate interest to expect much more, after the much already
done, on the other side, he stood up, almost alone, to the arduous
labor and heavy expenditure of editor and lecturer. The Garrison party,
to which he still adhered, did not want a _colored_ newspaper—there was
an odor of _caste_ about it; the Liberty party could hardly be expected
to give warm support to a man who smote their principles as with a
hammer; and the wide gulf which separated the free colored people from
the Garrisonians, also separated them from their brother, Frederick
Douglass.
The arduous nature of his labors, from the date of the establishment of
his paper, may be estimated by the fact, that anti-slavery papers in
the United States, even while organs of, and when supported by,
anti-slavery parties, have, with a single exception, failed to pay
expenses. Mr. Douglass has maintained, and does maintain, his paper
without the support of any party, and even in the teeth of the
opposition of those from whom he had reason to expect counsel and
encouragement. He has been compelled, at one and the same time, and
almost constantly, during the past seven years, to contribute matter to
its columns as editor, and to raise funds for its support as lecturer.
It is within bounds to say, that he has expended twelve thousand
dollars of his own hard earned money, in publishing this paper, a
larger sum than has been contributed by any one individual for the
general advancement of the colored people. There had been many other
papers published and edited by colored men, beginning as far back as
1827, when the Rev. Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russworm (a graduate
of Bowdoin college, and afterward Governor of Cape Palmas) published
the _Freedom’s Journal_, in New York City; probably not less than one
hundred newspaper enterprises have been started in the United States,
by free colored men, born free, and some of them of liberal education
and fair talents for this work; but, one after another, they have
fallen through, although, in several instances, anti-slavery friends
contributed to their support. 3 It had almost been given up, as an
impracticable thing, to maintain a colored newspaper, when Mr.
Douglass, with fewest early advantages of all his competitors, essayed,
and has proved the thing perfectly practicable, and, moreover, of great
public benefit. This paper, in addition to its power in holding up the
hands of those to whom it is especially devoted, also affords
irrefutable evidence of the justice, safety and practicability of
Immediate Emancipation; it further proves the immense loss which
slavery inflicts on the land while it dooms such energies as his to the
hereditary degradation of slavery.
It has been said in this Introduction, that Mr. Douglass had raised
himself by his own efforts to the highest position in society. As a
successful editor, in our land, he occupies this position. Our editors
rule the land, and he is one of them. As an orator and thinker, his
position is equally high, in the opinion of his countrymen. If a
stranger in the United States would seek its most distinguished men—the
movers of public opinion—he will find their names mentioned, and their
movements chronicled, under the head of “BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH,” in the
daily papers. The keen caterers for the public attention, set down, in
this column, such men only as have won high mark in the public esteem.
During the past winter—1854-5—very frequent mention of Frederick
Douglass was made under this head in the daily papers; his name glided
as often—this week from Chicago, next week from Boston—over the
lightning wires, as the name of any other man, of whatever note. To no
man did the people more widely nor more earnestly say, _“Tell me thy
thought!”_ And, somehow or other, revolution seemed to follow in his
wake. His were not the mere words of eloquence which Kossuth speaks of,
that delight the ear and then pass away. No! They were _work_-able,
_do_-able words, that brought forth fruits in the revolution in
Illinois, and in the passage of the franchise resolutions by the
Assembly of New York.
And the secret of his power, what is it? He is a Representative
American man—a type of his countrymen. Naturalists tell us that a full
grown man is a resultant or representative of all animated nature on
this globe; beginning with the early embryo state, then representing
the lowest forms of organic life, 4 and passing through every
subordinate grade or type, until he reaches the last and
highest—manhood. In like manner, and to the fullest extent, has
Frederick Douglass passed through every gradation of rank comprised in
our national make-up, and bears upon his person and upon his soul every
thing that is American. And he has not only full sympathy with every
thing American; his proclivity or bent, to active toil and visible
progress, are in the strictly national direction, delighting to
outstrip “all creation.”
Nor have the natural gifts, already named as his, lost anything by his
severe training. When unexcited, his mental processes are probably
slow, but singularly clear in perception, and wide in vision, the
unfailing memory bringing up all the facts in their every aspect;
incongruities he lays hold of incontinently, and holds up on the edge
of his keen and telling wit. But this wit never descends to frivolity;
it is rigidly in the keeping of his truthful common sense, and always
used in illustration or proof of some point which could not so readily
be reached any other way. “Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding,” is a
shaft that strikes home in a matter never so laid bare by satire
before. “The Garrisonian views of disunion, if carried to a successful
issue, would only place the people of the north in the same relation to
American slavery which they now bear to the slavery of Cuba or the
Brazils,” is a statement, in a few words, which contains the result and
the evidence of an argument which might cover pages, but could not
carry stronger conviction, nor be stated in less pregnable form. In
proof of this, I may say, that having been submitted to the attention
of the Garrisonians in print, in March, it was repeated before them at
their business meeting in May—the platform, _par excellence_, on which
they invite free fight, _a l’outrance_, to all comers. It was given out
in the clear, ringing tones, wherewith the hall of shields was wont to
resound of old, yet neither Garrison, nor Phillips, nor May, nor
Remond, nor Foster, nor Burleigh, with his subtle steel of “the ice
brook’s temper,” ventured to break a lance upon it! The doctrine of the
dissolution of the Union, as a means for the abolition of American
slavery, was silenced upon the lips that gave it birth, and in the
presence of an array of defenders who compose the keenest intellects in
the land.
_“The man who is right is a majority”_ is an aphorism struck out by Mr.
Douglass in that great gathering of the friends of freedom, at
Pittsburgh, in 1852, where he towered among the highest, because, with
abilities inferior to none, and moved more deeply than any, there was
neither policy nor party to trammel the outpourings of his soul. Thus
we find, opposed to all disadvantages which a black man in the United
States labors and struggles under, is this one vantage ground—when the
chance comes, and the audience where he may have a say, he stands forth
the freest, most deeply moved and most earnest of all men.
It has been said of Mr. Douglass, that his descriptive and declamatory
powers, admitted to be of the very highest order, take precedence of
his logical force. Whilst the schools might have trained him to the
exhibition of the formulas of deductive logic, nature and circumstances
forced him into the exercise of the higher faculties required by
induction. The first ninety pages of this “Life in Bondage,” afford
specimens of observing, comparing, and careful classifying, of such
superior character, that it is difficult to believe them the results of
a child’s thinking; he questions the earth, and the children and the
slaves around him again and again, and finally looks to _“God in the
sky”_ for the why and the wherefore of the unnatural thing, slavery.
_“Yes, if indeed thou art, wherefore dost thou suffer us to be slain?”_
is the only prayer and worship of the God-forsaken Dodos in the heart
of Africa. Almost the same was his prayer. One of his earliest
observations was that white children should know their ages, while the
colored children were ignorant of theirs; and the songs of the slaves
grated on his inmost soul, because a something told him that harmony in
sound, and music of the spirit, could not consociate with miserable
degradation.
To such a mind, the ordinary processes of logical deduction are like
proving that two and two make four. Mastering the intermediate steps by
an intuitive glance, or recurring to them as Ferguson resorted to
geometry, it goes down to the deeper relation of things, and brings out
what may seem, to some, mere statements, but which are new and
brilliant generalizations, each resting on a broad and stable basis.
Thus, Chief Justice Marshall gave his decisions, and then told Brother
Story to look up the authorities—and they never differed from him.
Thus, also, in his “Lecture on the Anti-Slavery Movement,” delivered
before the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Douglass
presents a mass of thought, which, without any showy display of logic
on his part, requires an exercise of the reasoning faculties of the
reader to keep pace with him. And his “Claims of the Negro
Ethnologically Considered,” is full of new and fresh thoughts on the
dawning science of race-history.
If, as has been stated, his intellection is slow, when unexcited, it is
most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused. Memory, logic,
wit, sarcasm, invective pathos and bold imagery of rare structural
beauty, well up as from a copious fountain, yet each in its proper
place, and contributing to form a whole, grand in itself, yet complete
in the minutest proportions. It is most difficult to hedge him in a
corner, for his positions are taken so deliberately, that it is rare to
find a point in them undefended aforethought. Professor Reason tells me
the following: “On a recent visit of a public nature, to Philadelphia,
and in a meeting composed mostly of his colored brethren, Mr. Douglass
proposed a comparison of views in the matters of the relations and
duties of ‘our people;’ he holding that prejudice was the result of
condition, and could be conquered by the efforts of the degraded
themselves. A gentleman present, distinguished for logical acumen and
subtlety, and who had devoted no small portion of the last twenty-five
years to the study and elucidation of this very question, held the
opposite view, that prejudice is innate and unconquerable. He
terminated a series of well dove-tailed, Socratic questions to Mr.
Douglass, with the following: ‘If the legislature at Harrisburgh should
awaken, to-morrow morning, and find each man’s skin turned black and
his hair woolly, what could they do to remove prejudice?’ ‘Immediately
pass laws entitling black men to all civil, political and social
privileges,’ was the instant reply—and the questioning ceased.”
The most remarkable mental phenomenon in Mr. Douglass, is his style in
writing and speaking. In March, 1855, he delivered an address in the
assembly chamber before the members of the legislature of the state of
New York. An eye witness 5 describes the crowded and most intelligent
audience, and their rapt attention to the speaker, as the grandest
scene he ever witnessed in the capitol. Among those whose eyes were
riveted on the speaker full two hours and a half, were Thurlow Weed and
Lieutenant Governor Raymond; the latter, at the conclusion of the
address, exclaimed to a friend, “I would give twenty thousand dollars,
if I could deliver that address in that manner.” Mr. Raymond is a first
class graduate of Dartmouth, a rising politician, ranking foremost in
the legislature; of course, his ideal of oratory must be of the most
polished and finished description.
The style of Mr. Douglass in writing, is to me an intellectual puzzle.
The strength, affluence and terseness may easily be accounted for,
because the style of a man is the man; but how are we to account for
that rare polish in his style of writing, which, most critically
examined, seems the result of careful early culture among the best
classics of our language; it equals if it does not surpass the style of
Hugh Miller, which was the wonder of the British literary public, until
he unraveled the mystery in the most interesting of autobiographies.
But Frederick Douglass was still calking the seams of Baltimore
clippers, and had only written a “pass,” at the age when Miller’s style
was already formed.
I asked William Whipper, of Pennsylvania, the gentleman alluded to
above, whether he thought Mr. Douglass’s power inherited from the
Negroid, or from what is called the Caucasian side of his make up?
After some reflection, he frankly answered, “I must admit, although
sorry to do so, that the Caucasian predominates.” At that time, I
almost agreed with him; but, facts narrated in the first part of this
work, throw a different light on this interesting question.
We are left in the dark as to who was the paternal ancestor of our
author; a fact which generally holds good of the Romuluses and Remuses
who are to inaugurate the new birth of our republic. In the absence of
testimony from the Caucasian side, we must see what evidence is given
on the other side of the house.
“My grandmother, though advanced in years, * * * was yet a woman of
power and spirit. She was marvelously straight in figure, elastic and
muscular.” (p. 46.)
After describing her skill in constructing nets, her perseverance in
using them, and her wide-spread fame in the agricultural way he adds,
“It happened to her—as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person
residing in an ignorant and improvident neighborhood—to enjoy the
reputation of being born to good luck.” And his grandmother was a black
woman.
“My mother was tall, and finely proportioned; of deep black, glossy
complexion; had regular features; and among other slaves was remarkably
sedate in her manners.” “Being a field hand, she was obliged to walk
twelve miles and return, between nightfall and daybreak, to see her
children” (p. 54.) “I shall never forget the indescribable expression
of her countenance when I told her that I had had no food since
morning. * * * There was pity in her glance at me, and a fiery
indignation at Aunt Katy at the same time; * * * * she read Aunt Katy a
lecture which she never forgot.” (p. 56.) “I learned after my mother’s
death, that she could read, and that she was the _only_ one of all the
slaves and colored people in Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How
she acquired this knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place
in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning.”
(p. 57.) “There is, in _Prichard’s Natural History of Man_, the head of
a figure—on page 157—the features of which so resemble those of my
mother, that I often recur to it with something of the feeling which I
suppose others experience when looking upon the pictures of dear
departed ones.” (p. 52.)
The head alluded to is copied from the statue of Ramses the Great, an
Egyptian king of the nineteenth dynasty. The authors of the _Types of
Mankind_ give a side view of the same on page 148, remarking that the
profile, “like Napoleon’s, is superbly European!” The nearness of its
resemblance to Mr. Douglass’ mother rests upon the evidence of his
memory, and judging from his almost marvelous feats of recollection of
forms and outlines recorded in this book, this testimony may be
admitted.
These facts show that for his energy, perseverance, eloquence,
invective, sagacity, and wide sympathy, he is indebted to his Negro
blood. The very marvel of his style would seem to be a development of
that other marvel—how his mother learned to read. The versatility of
talent which he wields, in common with Dumas, Ira Aldridge, and Miss
Greenfield, would seem to be the result of the grafting of the
Anglo-Saxon on good, original, Negro stock. If the friends of
“Caucasus” choose to claim, for that region, what remains after this
analysis—to wit: combination—they are welcome to it. They will forgive
me for reminding them that the term “Caucasian” is dropped by recent
writers on Ethnology; for the people about Mount Caucasus, are, and
have ever been, Mongols. The great “white race” now seek paternity,
according to Dr. Pickering, in Arabia—“Arida Nutrix” of the best breed
of horses &c. Keep on, gentlemen; you will find yourselves in Africa,
by-and-by. The Egyptians, like the Americans, were a _mixed race_, with
some Negro blood circling around the throne, as well as in the mud
hovels.
This is the proper place to remark of our author, that the same strong
self-hood, which led him to measure strength with Mr. Covey, and to
wrench himself from the embrace of the Garrisonians, and which has
borne him through many resistances to the personal indignities offered
him as a colored man, sometimes becomes a hyper-sensitiveness to such
assaults as men of his mark will meet with, on paper. Keen and
unscrupulous opponents have sought, and not unsuccessfully, to pierce
him in this direction; for well they know, that if assailed, he will
smite back.
It is not without a feeling of pride, dear reader, that I present you
with this book. The son of a self-emancipated bond-woman, I feel joy in
introducing to you my brother, who has rent his own bonds, and who, in
his every relation—as a public man, as a husband and as a father—is
such as does honor to the land which gave him birth. I shall place this
book in the hands of the only child spared me, bidding him to strive
and emulate its noble example. You may do likewise. It is an American
book, for Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea. It shows that
the worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down
energy, truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right. It proves the
justice and practicability of Immediate Emancipation. It shows that any
man in our land, “no matter in what battle his liberty may have been
cloven down, * * * * no matter what complexion an Indian or an African
sun may have burned upon him,” not only may “stand forth redeemed and
disenthralled,” but may also stand up a candidate for the highest
suffrage of a great people—the tribute of their honest, hearty
admiration. Reader, _Vale! New York_
JAMES M’CUNE SMITH
CHAPTER I. _Childhood_
PLACE OF BIRTH—CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT—TUCKAHOE—ORIGIN OF THE
NAME—CHOPTANK RIVER—TIME OF BIRTH—GENEALOGICAL TREES—MODE OF COUNTING
TIME—NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS—THEIR POSITION—GRANDMOTHER ESPECIALLY
ESTEEMED—“BORN TO GOOD LUCK”—SWEET POTATOES—SUPERSTITION—THE LOG
CABIN—ITS CHARMS—SEPARATING CHILDREN—MY AUNTS—THEIR NAMES—FIRST
KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A SLAVE—OLD MASTER—GRIEFS AND JOYS OF
CHILDHOOD—COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF THE SLAVE-BOY AND THE SON OF A
SLAVEHOLDER.
In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town
of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated,
and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out,
sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation of
its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its
inhabitants, and the prevalence of ague and fever.
The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken
district is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black and
white. It was given to this section of country probably, at the first,
merely in derision; or it may possibly have been applied to it, as I
have heard, because some one of its earlier inhabitants had been guilty
of the petty meanness of stealing a hoe—or taking a hoe that did not
belong to him. Eastern Shore men usually pronounce the word _took_, as
_tuck; Took-a-hoe_, therefore, is, in Maryland parlance, _Tuckahoe_.
But, whatever may have been its origin—and about this I will not be
positive—that name has stuck to the district in question; and it is
seldom mentioned but with contempt and derision, on account of the
barrenness of its soil, and the ignorance, indolence, and poverty of
its people. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin
population of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for the
Choptank river, which runs through it, from which they take abundance
of shad and herring, and plenty of ague and fever.
It was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or neighborhood,
surrounded by a white population of the lowest order, indolent and
drunken to a proverb, and among slaves, who seemed to ask, _“Oh! what’s
the use?”_ every time they lifted a hoe, that I—without any fault of
mine was born, and spent the first years of my childhood.
The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth, on the
score that it is always a fact of some importance to know where a man
is born, if, indeed, it be important to know anything about him. In
regard to the _time_ of my birth, I cannot be as definite as I have
been respecting the _place_. Nor, indeed, can I impart much knowledge
concerning my parents. Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves.
A person of some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated
_father_, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice. It is
only once in a while that an exception is found to this statement. I
never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was. Few
slave-mothers know anything of the months of the year, nor of the days
of the month. They keep no family records, with marriages, births, and
deaths. They measure the ages of their children by spring time, winter
time, harvest time, planting time, and the like; but these soon become
undistinguishable and forgotten. Like other slaves, I cannot tell how
old I am. This destitution was among my earliest troubles. I learned
when I grew up, that my master—and this is the case with masters
generally—allowed no questions to be put to him, by which a slave might
learn his age. Such questions deemed evidence of impatience, and even
of impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of which
I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born about the year
1817.
The first experience of life with me that I now remember—and I remember
it but hazily—began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather.
Betsey and Isaac Baily. They were quite advanced in life, and had long
lived on the spot where they then resided. They were considered old
settlers in the neighborhood, and, from certain circumstances, I infer
that my grandmother, especially, was held in high esteem, far higher
than is the lot of most colored persons in the slave states. She was a
good nurse, and a capital hand at making nets for catching shad and
herring; and these nets were in great demand, not only in Tuckahoe, but
at Denton and Hillsboro, neighboring villages. She was not only good at
making the nets, but was also somewhat famous for her good fortune in
taking the fishes referred to. I have known her to be in the water half
the day. Grandmother was likewise more provident than most of her
neighbors in the preservation of seedling sweet potatoes, and it
happened to her—as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person
residing in an ignorant and improvident community—to enjoy the
reputation of having been born to “good luck.” Her “good luck” was
owing to the exceeding care which she took in preventing the succulent
root from getting bruised in the digging, and in placing it beyond the
reach of frost, by actually burying it under the hearth of her cabin
during the winter months. In the time of planting sweet potatoes,
“Grandmother Betty,” as she was familiarly called, was sent for in all
directions, simply to place the seedling potatoes in the hills; for
superstition had it, that if “Grandmamma Betty but touches them at
planting, they will be sure to grow and flourish.” This high reputation
was full of advantage to her, and to the children around her. Though
Tuckahoe had but few of the good things of life, yet of such as it did
possess grandmother got a full share, in the way of presents. If good
potato crops came after her planting, she was not forgotten by those
for whom she planted; and as she was remembered by others, so she
remembered the hungry little ones around her.
The dwelling of my grandmother and grandfather had few pretensions. It
was a log hut, or cabin, built of clay, wood, and straw. At a distance
it resembled—though it was smaller, less commodious and less
substantial—the cabins erected in the western states by the first
settlers. To my child’s eye, however, it was a noble structure,
admirably adapted to promote the comforts and conveniences of its
inmates. A few rough, Virginia fence-rails, flung loosely over the
rafters above, answered the triple purpose of floors, ceilings, and
bedsteads. To be sure, this upper apartment was reached only by a
ladder—but what in the world for climbing could be better than a
ladder? To me, this ladder was really a high invention, and possessed a
sort of charm as I played with delight upon the rounds of it. In this
little hut there was a large family of children: I dare not say how
many. My grandmother—whether because too old for field service, or
because she had so faithfully discharged the duties of her station in
early life, I know not—enjoyed the high privilege of living in a cabin,
separate from the quarter, with no other burden than her own support,
and the necessary care of the little children, imposed. She evidently
esteemed it a great fortune to live so. The children were not her own,
but her grandchildren—the children of her daughters. She took delight
in having them around her, and in attending to their few wants. The
practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the
latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting, except at
long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the
slave system. But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery,
which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man to a level with the
brute. It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and
heart of the slave, all just ideas of the sacredness of _the family_,
as an institution.
Most of the children, however, in this instance, being the children of
my grandmother’s daughters, the notions of family, and the reciprocal
duties and benefits of the relation, had a better chance of being
understood than where children are placed—as they often are in the
hands of strangers, who have no care for them, apart from the wishes of
their masters. The daughters of my grandmother were five in number.
Their names were JENNY, ESTHER, MILLY, PRISCILLA, and HARRIET. The
daughter last named was my mother, of whom the reader shall learn more
by-and-by.
Living here, with my dear old grandmother and grandfather, it was a
long time before I knew myself to be _a slave_. I knew many other
things before I knew that. Grandmother and grandfather were the
greatest people in the world to me; and being with them so snugly in
their own little cabin—I supposed it be their own—knowing no higher
authority over me or the other children than the authority of
grandmamma, for a time there was nothing to disturb me; but, as I grew
larger and older, I learned by degrees the sad fact, that the “little
hut,” and the lot on which it stood, belonged not to my dear old
grandparents, but to some person who lived a great distance off, and
who was called, by grandmother, “OLD MASTER.” I further learned the
sadder fact, that not only the house and lot, but that grandmother
herself, (grandfather was free,) and all the little children around
her, belonged to this mysterious personage, called by grandmother, with
every mark of reverence, “Old Master.” Thus early did clouds and
shadows begin to fall upon my path. Once on the track—troubles never
come singly—I was not long in finding out another fact, still more
grievous to my childish heart. I was told that this “old master,” whose
name seemed ever to be mentioned with fear and shuddering, only allowed
the children to live with grandmother for a limited time, and that in
fact as soon as they were big enough, they were promptly taken away, to
live with the said “old master.” These were distressing revelations
indeed; and though I was quite too young to comprehend the full import
of the intelligence, and mostly spent my childhood days in gleesome
sports with the other children, a shade of disquiet rested upon me.
The absolute power of this distant “old master” had touched my young
spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron, and left me
something to brood over after the play and in moments of repose.
Grandmammy was, indeed, at that time, all the world to me; and the
thought of being separated from her, in any considerable time, was more
than an unwelcome intruder. It was intolerable.
Children have their sorrows as well as men and women; and it would be
well to remember this in our dealings with them. SLAVE-children _are_
children, and prove no exceptions to the general rule. The liability to
be separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again,
haunted me. I dreaded the thought of going to live with that mysterious
“old master,” whose name I never heard mentioned with affection, but
always with fear. I look back to this as among the heaviest of my
childhood’s sorrows. My grandmother! my grandmother! and the little
hut, and the joyous circle under her care, but especially _she_, who
made us sorry when she left us but for an hour, and glad on her
return,—how could I leave her and the good old home?
But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after life, are
transient. It is not even within the power of slavery to write
_indelible_ sorrow, at a single dash, over the heart of a child.
The tear down childhood’s cheek that flows,
Is like the dew-drop on the rose—
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And waves the bush—the flower is dry.
There is, after all, but little difference in the measure of
contentment felt by the slave-child neglected and the slaveholder’s
child cared for and petted. The spirit of the All Just mercifully holds
the balance for the young.
The slaveholder, having nothing to fear from impotent childhood, easily
affords to refrain from cruel inflictions; and if cold and hunger do
not pierce the tender frame, the first seven or eight years of the
slave-boy’s life are about as full of sweet content as those of the
most favored and petted _white_ children of the slaveholder. The
slave-boy escapes many troubles which befall and vex his white brother.
He seldom has to listen to lectures on propriety of behavior, or on
anything else. He is never chided for handling his little knife and
fork improperly or awkwardly, for he uses none. He is never reprimanded
for soiling the table-cloth, for he takes his meals on the clay floor.
He never has the misfortune, in his games or sports, of soiling or
tearing his clothes, for he has almost none to soil or tear. He is
never expected to act like a nice little gentleman, for he is only a
rude little slave. Thus, freed from all restraint, the slave-boy can
be, in his life and conduct, a genuine boy, doing whatever his boyish
nature suggests; enacting, by turns, all the strange antics and freaks
of horses, dogs, pigs, and barn-door fowls, without in any manner
compromising his dignity, or incurring reproach of any sort. He
literally runs wild; has no pretty little verses to learn in the
nursery; no nice little speeches to make for aunts, uncles, or cousins,
to show how smart he is; and, if he can only manage to keep out of the
way of the heavy feet and fists of the older slave boys, he may trot
on, in his joyous and roguish tricks, as happy as any little heathen
under the palm trees of Africa. To be sure, he is occasionally
reminded, when he stumbles in the path of his master—and this he early
learns to avoid—that he is eating his _“white bread,”_ and that he will
be made to _“see sights”_ by-and-by. The threat is soon forgotten; the
shadow soon passes, and our sable boy continues to roll in the dust, or
play in the mud, as bests suits him, and in the veriest freedom. If he
feels uncomfortable, from mud or from dust, the coast is clear; he can
plunge into the river or the pond, without the ceremony of undressing,
or the fear of wetting his clothes; his little tow-linen shirt—for that
is all he has on—is easily dried; and it needed ablution as much as did
his skin. His food is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most
part of cornmeal mush, which often finds it way from the wooden tray to
his mouth in an oyster shell. His days, when the weather is warm, are
spent in the pure, open air, and in the bright sunshine. He always
sleeps in airy apartments; he seldom has to take powders, or to be paid
to swallow pretty little sugar-coated pills, to cleanse his blood, or
to quicken his appetite. He eats no candies; gets no lumps of loaf
sugar; always relishes his food; cries but little, for nobody cares for
his crying; learns to esteem his bruises but slight, because others so
esteem them. In a word, he is, for the most part of the first eight
years of his life, a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy, upon
whom troubles fall only like water on a duck’s back. And such a boy, so
far as I can now remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I am now
narrating.