MY FATHER SHROUDED IN MYSTERY—MY MOTHER—HER PERSONAL
APPEARANCE—INTERFERENCE OF SLAVERY WITH THE NATURAL AFFECTIONS OF
MOTHER AND CHILDREN—SITUATION OF MY MOTHER—HER NIGHTLY VISITS TO HER
BOY—STRIKING INCIDENT—HER DEATH—HER PLACE OF BURIAL.
If the reader will now be kind enough to allow me time to grow bigger,
and afford me an opportunity for my experience to become greater, I
will tell him something, by-and-by, of slave life, as I saw, felt, and
heard it, on Col. Edward Lloyd’s plantation, and at the house of old
master, where I had now, despite of myself, most suddenly, but not
unexpectedly, been dropped. Meanwhile, I will redeem my promise to say
something more of my dear mother.
I say nothing of _father_, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have never
been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away
with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and
its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of
the plantation. When they _do_ exist, they are not the outgrowths of
slavery, but are antagonistic to that system. The order of civilization
is reversed here. The name of the child is not expected to be that of
its father, and his condition does not necessarily affect that of the
child. He may be the slave of Mr. Tilgman; and his child, when born,
may be the slave of Mr. Gross. He may be a _freeman;_ and yet his child
may be a _chattel_. He may be white, glorying in the purity of his
Anglo-Saxon blood; and his child may be ranked with the blackest
slaves. Indeed, he _may_ be, and often _is_, master and father to the
same child. He can be father without being a husband, and may sell his
child without incurring reproach, if the child be by a woman in whose
veins courses one thirty-second part of African blood. My father was a
white man, or nearly white. It was sometimes whispered that my master
was my father.
But to return, or rather, to begin. My knowledge of my mother is very
scanty, but very distinct. Her personal appearance and bearing are
ineffaceably stamped upon my memory. She was tall, and finely
proportioned; of deep black, glossy complexion; had regular features,
and, among the other slaves, was remarkably sedate in her manners.
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.
Yet I cannot say that I was very deeply attached to my mother;
certainly not so deeply as I should have been had our relations in
childhood been different. We were separated, according to the common
custom, when I was but an infant, and, of course, before I knew my
mother from any one else.
The germs of affection with which the Almighty, in his wisdom and
mercy, arms the hopeless infant against the ills and vicissitudes of
his lot, had been directed in their growth toward that loving old
grandmother, whose gentle hand and kind deportment it was in the first
effort of my infantile understanding to comprehend and appreciate.
Accordingly, the tenderest affection which a beneficent Father allows,
as a partial compensation to the mother for the pains and lacerations
of her heart, incident to the maternal relation, was, in my case,
diverted from its true and natural object, by the envious, greedy, and
treacherous hand of slavery. The slave-mother can be spared long enough
from the field to endure all the bitterness of a mother’s anguish, when
it adds another name to a master’s ledger, but _not_ long enough to
receive the joyous reward afforded by the intelligent smiles of her
child. I never think of this terrible interference of slavery with my
infantile affections, and its diverting them from their natural course,
without feelings to which I can give no adequate expression.
I do not remember to have seen my mother at my grandmother’s at any
time. I remember her only in her visits to me at Col. Lloyd’s
plantation, and in the kitchen of my old master. Her visits to me there
were few in number, brief in duration, and mostly made in the night.
The pains she took, and the toil she endured, to see me, tells me that
a true mother’s heart was hers, and that slavery had difficulty in
paralyzing it with unmotherly indifference.
My mother was hired out to a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles
from old master’s, and, being a field hand, she seldom had leisure, by
day, for the performance of the journey. The nights and the distance
were both obstacles to her visits. She was obliged to walk, unless
chance flung into her way an opportunity to ride; and the latter was
sometimes her good luck. But she always had to walk one way or the
other. It was a greater luxury than slavery could afford, to allow a
black slave-mother a horse or a mule, upon which to travel twenty-four
miles, when she could walk the distance. Besides, it is deemed a
foolish whim for a slave-mother to manifest concern to see her
children, and, in one point of view, the case is made out—she can do
nothing for them. She has no control over them; the master is even more
than the mother, in all matters touching the fate of her child. Why,
then, should she give herself any concern? She has no responsibility.
Such is the reasoning, and such the practice. The iron rule of the
plantation, always passionately and violently enforced in that
neighborhood, makes flogging the penalty of failing to be in the field
before sunrise in the morning, unless special permission be given to
the absenting slave. “I went to see my child,” is no excuse to the ear
or heart of the overseer.
One of the visits of my mother to me, while at Col. Lloyd’s, I remember
very vividly, as affording a bright gleam of a mother’s love, and the
earnestness of a mother’s care.
“I had on that day offended “Aunt Katy,” (called “Aunt” by way of
respect,) the cook of old master’s establishment. I do not now remember
the nature of my offense in this instance, for my offenses were
numerous in that quarter, greatly depending, however, upon the mood of
Aunt Katy, as to their heinousness; but she had adopted, that day, her
favorite mode of punishing me, namely, making me go without food all
day—that is, from after breakfast. The first hour or two after dinner,
I succeeded pretty well in keeping up my spirits; but though I made an
excellent stand against the foe, and fought bravely during the
afternoon, I knew I must be conquered at last, unless I got the
accustomed reenforcement of a slice of corn bread, at sundown. Sundown
came, but _no bread_, and, in its stead, their came the threat, with a
scowl well suited to its terrible import, that she “meant to _starve
the life out of me!”_ Brandishing her knife, she chopped off the heavy
slices for the other children, and put the loaf away, muttering, all
the while, her savage designs upon myself. Against this disappointment,
for I was expecting that her heart would relent at last, I made an
extra effort to maintain my dignity; but when I saw all the other
children around me with merry and satisfied faces, I could stand it no
longer. I went out behind the house, and cried like a fine fellow! When
tired of this, I returned to the kitchen, sat by the fire, and brooded
over my hard lot. I was too hungry to sleep. While I sat in the corner,
I caught sight of an ear of Indian corn on an upper shelf of the
kitchen. I watched my chance, and got it, and, shelling off a few
grains, I put it back again. The grains in my hand, I quickly put in
some ashes, and covered them with embers, to roast them. All this I did
at the risk of getting a brutual thumping, for Aunt Katy could beat, as
well as starve me. My corn was not long in roasting, and, with my keen
appetite, it did not matter even if the grains were not exactly done. I
eagerly pulled them out, and placed them on my stool, in a clever
little pile. Just as I began to help myself to my very dry meal, in
came my dear mother. And now, dear reader, a scene occurred which was
altogether worth beholding, and to me it was instructive as well as
interesting. The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need—and
when he did not dare to look for succor—found himself in the strong,
protecting arms of a mother; a mother who was, at the moment (being
endowed with high powers of manner as well as matter) more than a match
for all his enemies. I shall never forget the indescribable expression
of her countenance, when I told her that I had had no food since
morning; and that Aunt Katy said she “meant to starve the life out of
me.” There was pity in her glance at me, and a fiery indignation at
Aunt Katy at the same time; and, while she took the corn from me, and
gave me a large ginger cake, in its stead, she read Aunt Katy a lecture
which she never forgot. My mother threatened her with complaining to
old master in my behalf; for the latter, though harsh and cruel
himself, at times, did not sanction the meanness, injustice, partiality
and oppressions enacted by Aunt Katy in the kitchen. That night I
learned the fact, that I was, not only a child, but _somebody’s_ child.
The “sweet cake” my mother gave me was in the shape of a heart, with a
rich, dark ring glazed upon the edge of it. I was victorious, and well
off for the moment; prouder, on my mother’s knee, than a king upon his
throne. But my triumph was short. I dropped off to sleep, and waked in
the morning only to find my mother gone, and myself left at the mercy
of the sable virago, dominant in my old master’s kitchen, whose fiery
wrath was my constant dread.
I do not remember to have seen my mother after this occurrence. Death
soon ended the little communication that had existed between us; and
with it, I believe, a life judging from her weary, sad, down-cast
countenance and mute demeanor—full of heartfelt sorrow. I was not
allowed to visit her during any part of her long illness; nor did I see
her for a long time before she was taken ill and died. The heartless
and ghastly form of _slavery_ rises between mother and child, even at
the bed of death. The mother, at the verge of the grave, may not gather
her children, to impart to them her holy admonitions, and invoke for
them her dying benediction. The bond-woman lives as a slave, and is
left to die as a beast; often with fewer attentions than are paid to a
favorite horse. Scenes of sacred tenderness, around the death-bed,
never forgotten, and which often arrest the vicious and confirm the
virtuous during life, must be looked for among the free, though they
sometimes occur among the slaves. It has been a life-long, standing
grief to me, that I knew 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 her’s treasured up.
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. I can, therefore, fondly and proudly
ascribe to her an earnest love of knowledge. That a “field hand” should
learn to read, in any slave state, is remarkable; but the achievement
of my mother, considering the place, was very extraordinary; and, in
view of that fact, I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any
love of letters I possess, and for which I have got—despite of
prejudices only too much credit, _not_ to my admitted Anglo-Saxon
paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and
uncultivated _mother_—a woman, who belonged to a race whose mental
endowments it is, at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and
contempt.
Summoned away to her account, with the impassable gulf of slavery
between us during her entire illness, my mother died without leaving me
a single intimation of _who_ my father was. There was a whisper, that
my master was my father; yet it was only a whisper, and I cannot say
that I ever gave it credence. Indeed, I now have reason to think he was
not; nevertheless, the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness,
that, by the laws of slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to
the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest
license to brutal slaveholders, and their profligate sons, brothers,
relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the additional
attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written on this single
feature of slavery, as I have observed it.
One might imagine, that the children of such connections, would fare
better, in the hands of their masters, than other slaves. The rule is
quite the other way; and a very little reflection will satisfy the
reader that such is the case. A man who will enslave his own blood, may
not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who
remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent—and the
mulatto child’s face is a standing accusation against him who is master
and father to the child. What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is
a constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence, and when a
slaveholding woman hates, she wants not means to give that hate telling
effect. Women—white women, I mean—are IDOLS at the south, not WIVES,
for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these
_idols_ but nod, or lift a finger, woe to the poor victim: kicks, cuffs
and stripes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to
sell this class of their slaves, out of deference to the feelings of
their white wives; and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man
to sell his own blood to the traffickers in human flesh, it is often an
act of humanity toward the slave-child to be thus removed from his
merciless tormentors.
It is not within the scope of the design of my simple story, to comment
upon every phase of slavery not within my experience as a slave.
But, I may remark, that, if the lineal descendants of Ham are only to
be enslaved, according to the scriptures, slavery in this country will
soon become an unscriptural institution; for thousands are ushered into
the world, annually, who—like myself—owe their existence to white
fathers, and, most frequently, to their masters, and master’s sons. The
slave-woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her
master. The thoughtful know the rest.
After what I have now said of the circumstances of my mother, and my
relations to her, the reader will not be surprised, nor be disposed to
censure me, when I tell but the simple truth, viz: that I received the
tidings of her death with no strong emotions of sorrow for her, and
with very little regret for myself on account of her loss. I had to
learn the value of my mother long after her death, and by witnessing
the devotion of other mothers to their children.
There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so
destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers
to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded
my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in
the world.
My mother died when I could not have been more than eight or nine years
old, on one of old master’s farms in Tuckahoe, in the neighborhood of
Hillsborough. Her grave is, as the grave of the dead at sea, unmarked,
and without stone or stake.