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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
+       An American Slave
+
+Author: Frederick Douglass
+
+Release Date: January 1992 [eBook #23]
+[Most recently updated: February 28, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS  ***
+
+
+
+
+Narrative
+of the
+Life
+of
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+
+AN
+AMERICAN SLAVE.
+WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
+
+BOSTON
+
+ PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,
+ NO. 25 CORNHILL
+ 1845
+
+ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,
+ IN THE YEAR 1845
+ BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
+ IN THE CLERK’S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT
+OF MASSACHUSETTS.
+
+Note from the original file: This electronic book is being released at
+this time to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. [Born January
+15, 1929] [Officially celebrated January 20, 1992]
+
+
+Contents
+
+  PREFACE 
+  LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ. 
+  FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
+  CHAPTER I 
+  CHAPTER II 
+  CHAPTER III 
+  CHAPTER IV 
+  CHAPTER V 
+  CHAPTER VI 
+  CHAPTER VII 
+  CHAPTER VIII 
+  CHAPTER IX 
+  CHAPTER X 
+  CHAPTER XI 
+  APPENDIX 
+  A PARODY 
+
+
+
+
+ PREFACE
+
+
+In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in
+Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with
+_Frederick Douglass_, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a
+stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made
+his escape from the southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his
+curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the
+abolitionists,—of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description while
+he was a slave,—he was induced to give his attendance, on the occasion
+alluded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford.
+
+Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!—fortunate for the millions of his
+manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful
+thraldom!—fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of
+universal liberty!—fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has
+already done so much to save and bless!—fortunate for a large circle of
+friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly
+secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits
+of character, by his ever-abiding remembrance of those who are in
+bonds, as being bound with them!—fortunate for the multitudes, in
+various parts of our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the
+subject of slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or
+roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the
+enslavers of men!—fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into
+the field of public usefulness, “gave the world assurance of a MAN,”
+quickened the slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to
+the great work of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the
+oppressed go free!
+
+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—the
+applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous
+remarks. 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 proportion and stature
+commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a
+prodigy—in soul manifestly “created but a little lower than the
+angels”—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety,
+hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white
+person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the
+love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an
+intellectual and moral being—needing nothing but a comparatively small
+amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing
+to his race—by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the
+terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of
+burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!
+
+A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr. DOUGLASS  to address
+the convention. He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and
+embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a
+novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the
+audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and
+heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as
+a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble
+thoughts and thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken his seat,
+filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that PATRICK
+HENRY, of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the
+cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of
+that hunted fugitive. So I believed at that time—such is my belief now.
+I reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this
+self-emancipated young man at the North,—even in Massachusetts, on the
+soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary
+sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to be
+carried back into slavery,—law or no law, constitution or no
+constitution. The response was unanimous and in thunder-tones—“NO!”
+“Will you succor and protect him as a brother-man—a resident of the old
+Bay State?” “YES!” shouted the whole mass, with an energy so startling,
+that the ruthless tyrants south of Mason and Dixon’s line might almost
+have heard the mighty burst of feeling, and recognized it as the pledge
+of an invincible determination, on the part of those who gave it, never
+to betray him that wanders, but to hide the outcast, and firmly to
+abide the consequences.
+
+It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr. DOUGLASS
+could be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents to the promotion
+of the anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be given to
+it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern
+prejudice against a colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to
+instil hope and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to
+engage in a vocation so anomalous and responsible for a person in his
+situation; and I was seconded in this effort by warm-hearted friends,
+especially by the late General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
+Society, Mr. JOHN A. COLLINS, whose judgment in this instance entirely
+coincided with my own. At first, he could give no encouragement; with
+unfeigned diffidence, he expressed his conviction that he was not
+adequate to the performance of so great a task; the path marked out was
+wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely apprehensive that he should
+do more harm than good. After much deliberation, however, he consented
+to make a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted as a
+lecturing agent, under the auspices either of the American or the
+Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has been most
+abundant; and his success in combating prejudice, in gaining
+proselytes, in agitating the public mind, has far surpassed the most
+sanguine expectations that were raised at the commencement of his
+brilliant career. He has borne himself with gentleness and meekness,
+yet with true manliness of character. As a public speaker, he excels in
+pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency
+of language. There is in him that union of head and heart, which is
+indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of the
+hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May
+he continue to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God,” that he
+may be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity,
+whether at home or abroad!
+
+It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient
+advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive
+slave, in the person of _Frederick Douglass_; and that the free colored
+population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their
+own number, in the person of _Charles Lenox Remond_, whose eloquent
+appeals have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides
+of the Atlantic. Let the calumniators of the colored race despise
+themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and
+henceforth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who
+require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point
+of human excellence.
+
+It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the
+population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings
+and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the
+scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been
+left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase
+their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to
+mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of
+a most frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for
+centuries! To illustrate the effect of slavery on the white man,—to
+show that he has no powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior
+to those of his black brother,—_Daniel O’Connell_, the distinguished
+advocate of universal emancipation, and the mightiest champion of
+prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the following anecdote in
+a speech delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the
+Loyal National Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. “No matter,” said
+_Mr. O’Connell_, “under what specious term it may disguise itself,
+slavery is still hideous. _It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to
+brutalize every noble faculty of man._ An American sailor, who was cast
+away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three
+years, was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and
+stultified—he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his
+native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between Arabic
+and English, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself
+found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence
+of _The Domestic Institution_!” Admitting this to have been an
+extraordinary case of mental deterioration, it proves at least that the
+white slave can sink as low in the scale of humanity as the black one.
+
+_Mr. Douglass_ has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in
+his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to
+employ some one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production;
+and, considering how long and dark was the career he had to run as a
+slave,—how few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since he
+broke his iron fetters,—it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his
+head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving
+breast, an afflicted spirit,—without being filled with an unutterable
+abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a
+determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable
+system,—without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of
+a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose
+arm is not shortened that it cannot save,—must have a flinty heart, and
+be qualified to act the part of a trafficker “in slaves and the souls
+of men.” I am confident that it is essentially true in all its
+statements; that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing
+exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of
+the reality, rather than overstates a single fact in regard to _slavery
+as it is_. The experience of _Frederick Douglass_, as a slave, was not
+a peculiar one; his lot was not especially a hard one; his case may be
+regarded as a very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in
+Maryland, in which State it is conceded that they are better fed and
+less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana. Many have
+suffered incomparably more, while very few on the plantations have
+suffered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what
+terrible chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more
+shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble
+powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even
+by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ
+Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how
+destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest
+extremities! how heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded in
+blackness the last ray of hope, and filled the future with terror and
+gloom! what longings after freedom took possession of his breast, and
+how his misery augmented, in proportion as he grew reflective and
+intelligent,—thus demonstrating that a happy slave is an extinct man!
+how he thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver, with the
+chains upon his limbs! what perils he encountered in his endeavors to
+escape from his horrible doom! and how signal have been his deliverance
+and preservation in the midst of a nation of pitiless enemies!
+
+This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of
+great eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them
+all is the description _Douglass_ gives of his feelings, as he stood
+soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being
+a freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay—viewing the receding
+vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and
+apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who
+can read that passage, and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?
+Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought, feeling,
+and sentiment—all that can, all that need be urged, in the form of
+expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,—making
+man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system,
+which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image,
+reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a
+level with four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in human flesh
+above all that is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one
+hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its
+presence imply but the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man,
+on the part of the people of the United States? Heaven speed its
+eternal overthrow!
+
+So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that
+they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any
+recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They
+do not deny that the slaves are held as property; but that terrible
+fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure to
+outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of
+mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the
+banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be greatly
+indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements,
+such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if
+all these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery! As
+if it were less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of a
+thing, than to give him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of
+necessary food and clothing! As if whips, chains, thumb-screws,
+paddles, blood-hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols, were not all
+indispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give protection to their
+ruthless oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution is abolished,
+concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound; when
+all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to
+protect the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is
+assumed over life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destructive
+sway! Skeptics of this character abound in society. In some few
+instances, their incredulity arises from a want of reflection; but,
+generally, it indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield
+slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race,
+whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit the shocking tales of
+slaveholding cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative; but
+they will labor in vain. _Mr. Douglass_ has frankly disclosed the place
+of his birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and
+soul, and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has
+alleged against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be
+disproved, if they are untrue.
+
+In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
+cruelty,—in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging
+to a neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his
+lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out
+the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a
+bloody scourging. _Mr. Douglass_ states that in neither of these
+instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial
+investigation. The Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates a
+similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity—as
+follows:—“_Shooting a slave._—We learn, upon the authority of a letter
+from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city,
+that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and
+whose father, it is believed, holds an office at Washington, killed one
+of the slaves upon his father’s farm by shooting him. The letter states
+that young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave
+an order to the servant, which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to the
+house, _obtained a gun, and, returning, shot the servant._ He
+immediately, the letter continues, fled to his father’s residence,
+where he still remains unmolested.”—Let it never be forgotten, that no
+slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on
+the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony
+of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are
+adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though
+they were indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal
+protection in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave
+population; and any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with
+impunity. Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more
+horrible state of society?
+
+The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters
+is vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any
+thing but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the
+highest degree pernicious. The testimony of _Mr. Douglass_, on this
+point, is sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is
+unimpeachable. “A slaveholder’s profession of Christianity is a
+palpable imposture. He is a felon of the highest grade. He is a
+man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in the other scale.”
+
+Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on
+the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are
+you the foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared
+to do and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring
+in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.
+Come what may—cost what it may—inscribe on the banner which you unfurl
+to the breeze, as your religious and political motto—“NO COMPROMISE
+WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!”
+
+WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON,
+
+_May_ 1, 1845.
+
+
+
+
+ LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
+
+
+BOSTON, _April_ 22, 1845.
+
+My Dear Friend:
+
+You remember the old fable of “The Man and the Lion,” where the lion
+complained that he should not be so misrepresented “when the lions
+wrote history.”
+
+I am glad the time has come when the “lions write history.” We have
+been left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the
+involuntary evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest
+sufficiently satisfied with what, it is evident, must be, in general,
+the results of such a relation, without seeking farther to find whether
+they have followed in every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the
+half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the lashes on the slave’s
+back, are seldom the “stuff” out of which reformers and abolitionists
+are to be made. I remember that, in 1838, many were waiting for the
+results of the West India experiment, before they could come into our
+ranks. Those “results” have come long ago; but, alas! few of that
+number have come with them, as converts. A man must be disposed to
+judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the
+produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it
+starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone
+of his anti-slavery life.
+
+I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of
+God’s children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice
+done them. Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had
+mastered your A B C, or knew where the “white sails” of the Chesapeake
+were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave,
+not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the
+cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul.
+
+In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
+recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the
+more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are
+told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what
+it is at its best estate—gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and
+then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture,
+as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the
+Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along.
+
+Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence
+in your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak
+has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel,
+persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No
+one-sided portrait,—no wholesale complaints,—but strict justice done,
+whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the
+deadly system with which it was strangely allied. You have been with
+us, too, some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights,
+which your race enjoy at the North, with that “noon of night” under
+which they labor south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Tell us whether,
+after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than
+the pampered slave of the rice swamps!
+
+In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out
+some rare specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which
+even you have drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no
+individual ills, but such as must mingle always and necessarily in the
+lot of every slave. They are the essential ingredients, not the
+occasional results, of the system.
+
+After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years
+ago, when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace,
+you may remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of
+all. With the exception of a vague description, so I continued, till
+the other day, when you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the
+time, whether to thank you or not for the sight of them, when I
+reflected that it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men
+to tell their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the
+Declaration of Independence with the halter about their necks. You,
+too, publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you
+around. In all the broad lands which the Constitution of the United
+States overshadows, there is no single spot,—however narrow or
+desolate,—where a fugitive slave can plant himself and say, “I am
+safe.” The whole armory of Northern Law has no shield for you. I am
+free to say that, in your place, I should throw the MS. into the fire.
+
+You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, endeared as you are to so
+many warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to
+the service of others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and
+the fearless efforts of those who, trampling the laws and Constitution
+of the country under their feet, are determined that they will “hide
+the outcast,” and that their hearths shall be, spite of the law, an
+asylum for the oppressed, if, some time or other, the humblest may
+stand in our streets, and bear witness in safety against the cruelties
+of which he has been the victim.
+
+Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome
+your story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating
+contrary to the “statute in such case made and provided.” Go on, my
+dear friend, till you, and those who, like you, have been saved, so as
+by fire, from the dark prison-house, shall stereotype these free,
+illegal pulses into statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a
+blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house of refuge for the
+oppressed,—till we no longer merely “_hide_ the outcast,” or make a
+merit of standing idly by while he is hunted in our midst; but,
+consecrating anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the
+oppressed, proclaim our _welcome_ to the slave so loudly, that the
+tones shall reach every hut in the Carolinas, and make the
+broken-hearted bondman leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts.
+
+God speed the day!
+_Till then, and ever,_
+Yours truly,
+WENDELL PHILLIPS
+
+
+
+
+ FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+
+
+Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington
+Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the
+exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a
+young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he
+learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master’s wife. In
+1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he
+married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore.
+Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he
+addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in
+Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately
+employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that
+numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote
+_Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass_. During the Civil War he
+assisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th
+Massachusetts Regiments and consistently argued for the emancipation of
+slaves. After the war he was active in securing and protecting the
+rights of the freemen. In his later years, at different times, he was
+secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and recorder of
+deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti.
+His other autobiographical works are _My Bondage And My Freedom_ and
+_Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass_, published in 1855 and 1881
+respectively. He died in 1895.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+
+
+I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from
+Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my
+age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the
+larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know
+of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to
+keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a
+slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it
+than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or
+fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of
+unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell
+their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same
+privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master
+concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave
+improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The
+nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and
+twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say,
+some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
+
+My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and
+Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker
+complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.
+
+My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever
+heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my
+master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know
+nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I
+were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother.
+It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away,
+to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently,
+before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken
+from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and
+the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field
+labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to
+hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and
+to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child.
+This is the inevitable result.
+
+I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five
+times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration,
+and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve
+miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night,
+travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her
+day’s work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not
+being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission
+from his or her master to the contrary—a permission which they seldom
+get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a
+kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light
+of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and
+get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little
+communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little
+we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering.
+She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master’s farms,
+near Lee’s Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at
+her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about
+it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing
+presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her
+death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the
+death of a stranger.
+
+Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation
+of who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or
+may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to
+my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that
+slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children
+of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their
+mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own
+lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as
+well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder,
+in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of
+master and father.
+
+I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves
+invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with,
+than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their
+mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom
+do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she
+sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of
+showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his
+black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of
+his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and,
+cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own
+children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity
+for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them
+himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of
+but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to
+his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down
+to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for
+himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.
+
+Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was
+doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great
+statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the
+inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled
+or not, it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of
+people are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from
+those originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their
+increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument,
+that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the
+lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is
+certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for
+thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe
+their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently
+their own masters.
+
+I have had two masters. My first master’s name was Anthony. I do not
+remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony—a
+title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the
+Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two
+or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were
+under the care of an overseer. The overseer’s name was Plummer. Mr.
+Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage
+monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have
+known him to cut and slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even
+master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him
+if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane
+slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an
+overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of
+slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping
+a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most
+heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to
+a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered
+with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim,
+seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she
+screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there
+he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her
+to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to
+swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever
+witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well
+remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It
+was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed
+to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It
+was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery,
+through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I
+wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
+
+This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old
+master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one
+night,—where or for what I do not know,—and happened to be absent when
+my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go out
+evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in
+company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to
+Colonel Lloyd. The young man’s name was Ned Roberts, generally called
+Lloyd’s Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to
+conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions,
+having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance,
+among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.
+
+Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had
+been found in company with Lloyd’s Ned; which circumstance, I found,
+from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he
+been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought
+interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew
+him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced
+whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her
+from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely
+naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same
+time a d——d b—-h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong
+rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in
+for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to
+the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were
+stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of
+her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d——d b—-h, I’ll learn you how
+to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced
+to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid
+heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came
+dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the
+sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till
+long after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my
+turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it
+before. I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the
+plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger
+women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody
+scenes that often occurred on the plantation.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II
+
+
+My master’s family consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; one
+daughter, Lucretia, and her husband, Captain Thomas Auld. They lived in
+one house, upon the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. My master
+was Colonel Lloyd’s clerk and superintendent. He was what might be
+called the overseer of the overseers. I spent two years of childhood on
+this plantation in my old master’s family. It was here that I witnessed
+the bloody transaction recorded in the first chapter; and as I received
+my first impressions of slavery on this plantation, I will give some
+description of it, and of slavery as it there existed. The plantation
+is about twelve miles north of Easton, in Talbot county, and is
+situated on the border of Miles River. The principal products raised
+upon it were tobacco, corn, and wheat. These were raised in great
+abundance; so that, with the products of this and the other farms
+belonging to him, he was able to keep in almost constant employment a
+large sloop, in carrying them to market at Baltimore. This sloop was
+named Sally Lloyd, in honor of one of the colonel’s daughters. My
+master’s son-in-law, Captain Auld, was master of the vessel; she was
+otherwise manned by the colonel’s own slaves. Their names were Peter,
+Isaac, Rich, and Jake. These were esteemed very highly by the other
+slaves, and looked upon as the privileged ones of the plantation; for
+it was no small affair, in the eyes of the slaves, to be allowed to see
+Baltimore.
+
+Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home
+plantation, and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms
+belonging to him. The names of the farms nearest to the home plantation
+were Wye Town and New Design. “Wye Town” was under the overseership of
+a man named Noah Willis. New Design was under the overseership of a Mr.
+Townsend. The overseers of these, and all the rest of the farms,
+numbering over twenty, received advice and direction from the managers
+of the home plantation. This was the great business place. It was the
+seat of government for the whole twenty farms. All disputes among the
+overseers were settled here. If a slave was convicted of any high
+misdemeanor, became unmanageable, or evinced a determination to run
+away, he was brought immediately here, severely whipped, put on board
+the sloop, carried to Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk, or some
+other slave-trader, as a warning to the slaves remaining.
+
+Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly
+allowance of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves
+received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or
+its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly
+clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen
+trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter,
+made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of
+shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars.
+The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the
+old women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the
+field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to
+them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year.
+When these failed them, they went naked until the next allowance-day.
+Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked,
+might be seen at all seasons of the year.
+
+There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be
+considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This,
+however, is not considered a very great privation. They find less
+difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep;
+for when their day’s work in the field is done, the most of them having
+their washing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or none of
+the ordinary facilities for doing either of these, very many of their
+sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day;
+and when this is done, old and young, male and female, married and
+single, drop down side by side, on one common bed,—the cold, damp
+floor,—each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets;
+and here they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver’s
+horn. At the sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field.
+There must be no halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe
+betides them who hear not this morning summons to the field; for if
+they are not awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of
+feeling: no age nor sex finds any favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used
+to stand by the door of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick
+and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was so unfortunate as not
+to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented from being ready to
+start for the field at the sound of the horn.
+
+Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip
+a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this,
+too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother’s
+release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish
+barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was
+enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to
+hear him talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was commenced or
+concluded by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness his
+cruelty and profanity. His presence made it both the field of blood and
+of blasphemy. From the rising till the going down of the sun, he was
+cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field,
+in the most frightful manner. His career was short. He died very soon
+after I went to Colonel Lloyd’s; and he died as he lived, uttering,
+with his dying groans, bitter curses and horrid oaths. His death was
+regarded by the slaves as the result of a merciful providence.
+
+Mr. Severe’s place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different
+man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr.
+Severe. His course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations
+of cruelty. He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was
+called by the slaves a good overseer.
+
+The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country
+village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed
+here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting,
+coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the
+slaves on the home plantation. The whole place wore a business-like
+aspect very unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too,
+conspired to give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was
+called by the slaves the _Great House Farm._ Few privileges were
+esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being
+selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in
+their minds with greatness. A representative could not be prouder of
+his election to a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of
+the out-farms would be of his election to do errands at the Great House
+Farm. They regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them
+by their overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant
+desire to be out of the field from under the driver’s lash, that they
+esteemed it a high privilege, one worth careful living for. He was
+called the smartest and most trusty fellow, who had this honor
+conferred upon him the most frequently. The competitors for this office
+sought as diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers
+in the political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The
+same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd’s slaves, as
+are seen in the slaves of the political parties.
+
+The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly
+allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly
+enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods,
+for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once
+the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as
+they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that
+came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently
+in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic
+sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment
+in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to
+weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this,
+when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following
+words:—
+
+“I am going away to the Great House Farm!
+O, yea! O, yea! O!”
+
+
+This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem
+unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to
+themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those
+songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character
+of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the
+subject could do.
+
+I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
+apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I
+neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
+tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension;
+they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and
+complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone
+was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance
+from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my
+spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found
+myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs,
+even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an
+expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those
+songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing
+character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those
+songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my
+sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed
+with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd’s
+plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine
+woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall
+pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed,
+it will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”
+
+I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to
+find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence
+of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a
+greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs
+of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by
+them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such
+is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to
+express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike
+uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast
+away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as
+evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the
+songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III
+
+
+Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated garden, which afforded
+almost constant employment for four men, besides the chief gardener,
+(Mr. M’Durmond.) This garden was probably the greatest attraction of
+the place. During the summer months, people came from far and near—from
+Baltimore, Easton, and Annapolis—to see it. It abounded in fruits of
+almost every description, from the hardy apple of the north to the
+delicate orange of the south. This garden was not the least source of
+trouble on the plantation. Its excellent fruit was quite a temptation
+to the hungry swarms of boys, as well as the older slaves, belonging to
+the colonel, few of whom had the virtue or the vice to resist it.
+Scarcely a day passed, during the summer, but that some slave had to
+take the lash for stealing fruit. The colonel had to resort to all
+kinds of stratagems to keep his slaves out of the garden. The last and
+most successful one was that of tarring his fence all around; after
+which, if a slave was caught with any tar upon his person, it was
+deemed sufficient proof that he had either been into the garden, or had
+tried to get in. In either case, he was severely whipped by the chief
+gardener. This plan worked well; the slaves became as fearful of tar as
+of the lash. They seemed to realize the impossibility of touching _tar_
+without being defiled.
+
+The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage. His stable and
+carriage-house presented the appearance of some of our large city
+livery establishments. His horses were of the finest form and noblest
+blood. His carriage-house contained three splendid coaches, three or
+four gigs, besides dearborns and barouches of the most fashionable
+style.
+
+This establishment was under the care of two slaves—old Barney and
+young Barney—father and son. To attend to this establishment was their
+sole work. But it was by no means an easy employment; for in nothing
+was Colonel Lloyd more particular than in the management of his horses.
+The slightest inattention to these was unpardonable, and was visited
+upon those, under whose care they were placed, with the severest
+punishment; no excuse could shield them, if the colonel only suspected
+any want of attention to his horses—a supposition which he frequently
+indulged, and one which, of course, made the office of old and young
+Barney a very trying one. They never knew when they were safe from
+punishment. They were frequently whipped when least deserving, and
+escaped whipping when most deserving it. Every thing depended upon the
+looks of the horses, and the state of Colonel Lloyd’s own mind when his
+horses were brought to him for use. If a horse did not move fast
+enough, or hold his head high enough, it was owing to some fault of his
+keepers. It was painful to stand near the stable-door, and hear the
+various complaints against the keepers when a horse was taken out for
+use. “This horse has not had proper attention. He has not been
+sufficiently rubbed and curried, or he has not been properly fed; his
+food was too wet or too dry; he got it too soon or too late; he was too
+hot or too cold; he had too much hay, and not enough of grain; or he
+had too much grain, and not enough of hay; instead of old Barney’s
+attending to the horse, he had very improperly left it to his son.” To
+all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never
+a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a slave.
+When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was
+literally the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man
+between fifty and sixty years of age, uncover his bald head, kneel down
+upon the cold, damp ground, and receive upon his naked and toil-worn
+shoulders more than thirty lashes at the time. Colonel Lloyd had three
+sons—Edward, Murray, and Daniel,—and three sons-in-law, Mr. Winder, Mr.
+Nicholson, and Mr. Lowndes. All of these lived at the Great House Farm,
+and enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased, from
+old Barney down to William Wilkes, the coach-driver. I have seen Winder
+make one of the house-servants stand off from him a suitable distance
+to be touched with the end of his whip, and at every stroke raise great
+ridges upon his back.
+
+To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to
+describing the riches of Job. He kept from ten to fifteen
+house-servants. He was said to own a thousand slaves, and I think this
+estimate quite within the truth. Colonel Lloyd owned so many that he
+did not know them when he saw them; nor did all the slaves of the
+out-farms know him. It is reported of him, that, while riding along the
+road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual
+manner of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the
+south: “Well, boy, whom do you belong to?” “To Colonel Lloyd,” replied
+the slave. “Well, does the colonel treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the
+ready reply. “What, does he work you too hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well,
+don’t he give you enough to eat?” “Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such
+as it is.”
+
+The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the
+man also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been
+conversing with his master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of
+the matter, until two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then
+informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master,
+he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained
+and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched
+away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more
+unrelenting than death. This is the penalty of telling the truth, of
+telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.
+
+It is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired
+of as to their condition and the character of their masters, almost
+universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind.
+The slaveholders have been known to send in spies among their slaves,
+to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition. The
+frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the
+maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head. They suppress the truth
+rather than take the consequences of telling it, and in so doing prove
+themselves a part of the human family. If they have any thing to say of
+their masters, it is generally in their masters’ favor, especially when
+speaking to an untried man. I have been frequently asked, when a slave,
+if I had a kind master, and do not remember ever to have given a
+negative answer; nor did I, in pursuing this course, consider myself as
+uttering what was absolutely false; for I always measured the kindness
+of my master by the standard of kindness set up among slaveholders
+around us. Moreover, slaves are like other people, and imbibe
+prejudices quite common to others. They think their own better than
+that of others. Many, under the influence of this prejudice, think
+their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves; and
+this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is
+not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves
+about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the
+superior goodness of his own over that of the others. At the very same
+time, they mutually execrate their masters when viewed separately. It
+was so on our plantation. When Colonel Lloyd’s slaves met the slaves of
+Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters;
+Colonel Lloyd’s slaves contending that he was the richest, and Mr.
+Jepson’s slaves that he was the smartest, and most of a man. Colonel
+Lloyd’s slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson.
+Mr. Jepson’s slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel Lloyd.
+These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the parties,
+and those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at issue.
+They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was
+transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be
+a slave; but to be a poor man’s slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Mr. Hopkins remained but a short time in the office of overseer. Why
+his career was so short, I do not know, but suppose he lacked the
+necessary severity to suit Colonel Lloyd. Mr. Hopkins was succeeded by
+Mr. Austin Gore, a man possessing, in an eminent degree, all those
+traits of character indispensable to what is called a first-rate
+overseer. Mr. Gore had served Colonel Lloyd, in the capacity of
+overseer, upon one of the out-farms, and had shown himself worthy of
+the high station of overseer upon the home or Great House Farm.
+
+Mr. Gore was proud, ambitious, and persevering. He was artful, cruel,
+and obdurate. He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the
+place for such a man. It afforded scope for the full exercise of all
+his powers, and he seemed to be perfectly at home in it. He was one of
+those who could torture the slightest look, word, or gesture, on the
+part of the slave, into impudence, and would treat it accordingly.
+There must be no answering back to him; no explanation was allowed a
+slave, showing himself to have been wrongfully accused. Mr. Gore acted
+fully up to the maxim laid down by slaveholders,—“It is better that a
+dozen slaves should suffer under the lash, than that the overseer
+should be convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at
+fault.” No matter how innocent a slave might be—it availed him nothing,
+when accused by Mr. Gore of any misdemeanor. To be accused was to be
+convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always
+following the other with immutable certainty. To escape punishment was
+to escape accusation; and few slaves had the fortune to do either,
+under the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just proud enough to demand
+the most debasing homage of the slave, and quite servile enough to
+crouch, himself, at the feet of the master. He was ambitious enough to
+be contented with nothing short of the highest rank of overseers, and
+persevering enough to reach the height of his ambition. He was cruel
+enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to descend to
+the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice
+of a reproving conscience. He was, of all the overseers, the most
+dreaded by the slaves. His presence was painful; his eye flashed
+confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice heard, without
+producing horror and trembling in their ranks.
+
+Mr. Gore was a grave man, and, though a young man, he indulged in no
+jokes, said no funny words, seldom smiled. His words were in perfect
+keeping with his looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping with his
+words. Overseers will sometimes indulge in a witty word, even with the
+slaves; not so with Mr. Gore. He spoke but to command, and commanded
+but to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly with his words, and bountifully
+with his whip, never using the former where the latter would answer as
+well. When he whipped, he seemed to do so from a sense of duty, and
+feared no consequences. He did nothing reluctantly, no matter how
+disagreeable; always at his post, never inconsistent. He never promised
+but to fulfil. He was, in a word, a man of the most inflexible firmness
+and stone-like coolness.
+
+His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with
+which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves
+under his charge. Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel
+Lloyd’s slaves, by the name of Demby. He had given Demby but few
+stripes, when, to get rid of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself
+into a creek, and stood there at the depth of his shoulders, refusing
+to come out. Mr. Gore told him that he would give him three calls, and
+that, if he did not come out at the third call, he would shoot him. The
+first call was given. Demby made no response, but stood his ground. The
+second and third calls were given with the same result. Mr. Gore then,
+without consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving
+Demby an additional call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly
+aim at his standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more.
+His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the
+water where he had stood.
+
+A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon the plantation,
+excepting Mr. Gore. He alone seemed cool and collected. He was asked by
+Colonel Lloyd and my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary
+expedient. His reply was, (as well as I can remember,) that Demby had
+become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other
+slaves,—one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration
+on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and
+order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave refused to be
+corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy
+the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves,
+and the enslavement of the whites. Mr. Gore’s defence was satisfactory.
+He was continued in his station as overseer upon the home plantation.
+His fame as an overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not even
+submitted to judicial investigation. It was committed in the presence
+of slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor
+testify against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the
+bloodiest and most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, and
+uncensured by the community in which he lives. Mr. Gore lived in St.
+Michael’s, Talbot county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is
+still alive, he very probably lives there now; and if so, he is now, as
+he was then, as highly esteemed and as much respected as though his
+guilty soul had not been stained with his brother’s blood.
+
+I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave, or any colored
+person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either
+by the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St. Michael’s,
+killed two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking
+his brains out. He used to boast of the commission of the awful and
+bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly, saying, among other
+things, that he was the only benefactor of his country in the company,
+and that when others would do as much as he had done, we should be
+relieved of “the d——d niggers.”
+
+The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I
+used to live, murdered my wife’s cousin, a young girl between fifteen
+and sixteen years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible
+manner, breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor
+girl expired in a few hours afterward. She was immediately buried, but
+had not been in her untimely grave but a few hours before she was taken
+up and examined by the coroner, who decided that she had come to her
+death by severe beating. The offence for which this girl was thus
+murdered was this:—She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks’s
+baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She,
+having lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear the
+crying. They were both in the room with Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks, finding
+the girl slow to move, jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood
+by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl’s nose and breastbone, and
+thus ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder
+produced no sensation in the community. It did produce sensation, but
+not enough to bring the murderess to punishment. There was a warrant
+issued for her arrest, but it was never served. Thus she escaped not
+only punishment, but even the pain of being arraigned before a court
+for her horrid crime.
+
+Whilst I am detailing bloody deeds which took place during my stay on
+Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another, which
+occurred about the same time as the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore.
+
+Colonel Lloyd’s slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their
+nights and Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the
+deficiency of their scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel
+Lloyd, while thus engaged, happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel
+Lloyd’s, and on the premises of Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr.
+Bondly took offence, and with his musket came down to the shore, and
+blew its deadly contents into the poor old man.
+
+Mr. Bondly came over to see Colonel Lloyd the next day, whether to pay
+him for his property, or to justify himself in what he had done, I know
+not. At any rate, this whole fiendish transaction was soon hushed up.
+There was very little said about it at all, and nothing done. It was a
+common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a
+half-cent to kill a “nigger,” and a half-cent to bury one.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V
+
+
+As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, it
+was very similar to that of the other slave children. I was not old
+enough to work in the field, and there being little else than field
+work to do, I had a great deal of leisure time. The most I had to do
+was to drive up the cows at evening, keep the fowls out of the garden,
+keep the front yard clean, and run of errands for my old master’s
+daughter, Mrs. Lucretia Auld. The most of my leisure time I spent in
+helping Master Daniel Lloyd in finding his birds, after he had shot
+them. My connection with Master Daniel was of some advantage to me. He
+became quite attached to me, and was a sort of protector of me. He
+would not allow the older boys to impose upon me, and would divide his
+cakes with me.
+
+I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suffered little from any
+thing else than hunger and cold. I suffered much from hunger, but much
+more from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost
+naked—no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a
+coarse tow linen shirt, reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must
+have perished with cold, but that, the coldest nights, I used to steal
+a bag which was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into
+this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head
+in and feet out. My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the
+pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.
+
+We were not regularly allowanced. Our food was coarse corn meal boiled.
+This was called _mush_. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough,
+and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so
+many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush;
+some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked
+hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was
+strongest secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied.
+
+I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel
+Lloyd’s plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the
+ecstasy with which I received the intelligence that my old master
+(Anthony) had determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr.
+Hugh Auld, brother to my old master’s son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld.
+I received this information about three days before my departure. They
+were three of the happiest days I ever enjoyed. I spent the most part
+of all these three days in the creek, washing off the plantation scurf,
+and preparing myself for my departure.
+
+The pride of appearance which this would indicate was not my own. I
+spent the time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because
+Mrs. Lucretia had told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and
+knees before I could go to Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were
+very cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty. Besides, she was
+going to give me a pair of trousers, which I should not put on unless I
+got all the dirt off me. The thought of owning a pair of trousers was
+great indeed! It was almost a sufficient motive, not only to make me
+take off what would be called by pig-drovers the mange, but the skin
+itself. I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time with
+the hope of reward.
+
+The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all
+suspended in my case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home
+was charmless; it was not home to me; on parting from it, I could not
+feel that I was leaving any thing which I could have enjoyed by
+staying. My mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off, so that I
+seldom saw her. I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the
+same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had
+well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories. I
+looked for home elsewhere, and was confident of finding none which I
+should relish less than the one which I was leaving. If, however, I
+found in my new home hardship, hunger, whipping, and nakedness, I had
+the consolation that I should not have escaped any one of them by
+staying. Having already had more than a taste of them in the house of
+my old master, and having endured them there, I very naturally inferred
+my ability to endure them elsewhere, and especially at Baltimore; for I
+had something of the feeling about Baltimore that is expressed in the
+proverb, that “being hanged in England is preferable to dying a natural
+death in Ireland.” I had the strongest desire to see Baltimore. Cousin
+Tom, though not fluent in speech, had inspired me with that desire by
+his eloquent description of the place. I could never point out any
+thing at the Great House, no matter how beautiful or powerful, but that
+he had seen something at Baltimore far exceeding, both in beauty and
+strength, the object which I pointed out to him. Even the Great House
+itself, with all its pictures, was far inferior to many buildings in
+Baltimore. So strong was my desire, that I thought a gratification of
+it would fully compensate for whatever loss of comforts I should
+sustain by the exchange. I left without a regret, and with the highest
+hopes of future happiness.
+
+We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore on a Saturday morning. I
+remember only the day of the week, for at that time I had no knowledge
+of the days of the month, nor the months of the year. On setting sail,
+I walked aft, and gave to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation what I hoped would
+be the last look. I then placed myself in the bows of the sloop, and
+there spent the remainder of the day in looking ahead, interesting
+myself in what was in the distance rather than in things near by or
+behind.
+
+In the afternoon of that day, we reached Annapolis, the capital of the
+State. We stopped but a few moments, so that I had no time to go on
+shore. It was the first large town that I had ever seen, and though it
+would look small compared with some of our New England factory
+villages, I thought it a wonderful place for its size—more imposing
+even than the Great House Farm!
+
+We arrived at Baltimore early on Sunday morning, landing at Smith’s
+Wharf, not far from Bowley’s Wharf. We had on board the sloop a large
+flock of sheep; and after aiding in driving them to the slaughterhouse
+of Mr. Curtis on Louden Slater’s Hill, I was conducted by Rich, one of
+the hands belonging on board of the sloop, to my new home in Alliciana
+Street, near Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard, on Fells Point.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Auld were both at home, and met me at the door with their
+little son Thomas, to take care of whom I had been given. And here I
+saw what I had never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the
+most kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld.
+I wish I could describe the rapture that flashed through my soul as I
+beheld it. It was a new and strange sight to me, brightening up my
+pathway with the light of happiness. Little Thomas was told, there was
+his Freddy,—and I was told to take care of little Thomas; and thus I
+entered upon the duties of my new home with the most cheering prospect
+ahead.
+
+I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd’s plantation as one of the
+most interesting events of my life. It is possible, and even quite
+probable, that but for the mere circumstance of being removed from that
+plantation to Baltimore, I should have to-day, instead of being here
+seated by my own table, in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness
+of home, writing this Narrative, been confined in the galling chains of
+slavery. Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the
+gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity. I have ever regarded it as
+the first plain manifestation of that kind providence which has ever
+since attended me, and marked my life with so many favors. I regarded
+the selection of myself as being somewhat remarkable. There were a
+number of slave children that might have been sent from the plantation
+to Baltimore. There were those younger, those older, and those of the
+same age. I was chosen from among them all, and was the first, last,
+and only choice.
+
+I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this
+event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But
+I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I
+suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the
+hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false,
+and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the
+entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be
+able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my
+career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope
+departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me
+through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer
+thanksgiving and praise.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI
+
+
+My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at
+the door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had
+never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to
+her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living.
+She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business,
+she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and
+dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her
+goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely
+unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her
+as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early
+instruction was all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so
+acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward
+her. Her favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it.
+She did not deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in
+the face. The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and
+none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made
+of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.
+
+But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The
+fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon
+commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of
+slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet
+accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic
+face gave place to that of a demon.
+
+Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly
+commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she
+assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just
+at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and
+at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among
+other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave
+to read. To use his own words, further, he said, “If you give a nigger
+an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey
+his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would _spoil_ the best
+nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking
+of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever
+unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of
+no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a
+great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” These
+words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay
+slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.
+It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious
+things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but
+struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most
+perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the
+black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From
+that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was
+just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected
+it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind
+mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the
+merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the
+difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and
+a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The
+very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife
+with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince
+me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave
+me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on
+the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What
+he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most
+hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was
+to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he
+so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me
+with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe
+almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly
+aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.
+
+I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked
+difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed
+in the country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave
+on the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys
+privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is
+a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and
+check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the
+plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity
+of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated
+slave. Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation
+of being a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known
+as not giving a slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious
+to have it known of him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due
+to them to say, that most of them do give their slaves enough to eat.
+There are, however, some painful exceptions to this rule. Directly
+opposite to us, on Philpot Street, lived Mr. Thomas Hamilton. He owned
+two slaves. Their names were Henrietta and Mary. Henrietta was about
+twenty-two years of age, Mary was about fourteen; and of all the
+mangled and emaciated creatures I ever looked upon, these two were the
+most so. His heart must be harder than stone, that could look upon
+these unmoved. The head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut
+to pieces. I have frequently felt her head, and found it nearly covered
+with festering sores, caused by the lash of her cruel mistress. I do
+not know that her master ever whipped her, but I have been an
+eye-witness to the cruelty of Mrs. Hamilton. I used to be in Mr.
+Hamilton’s house nearly every day. Mrs. Hamilton used to sit in a large
+chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin always by her
+side, and scarce an hour passed during the day but was marked by the
+blood of one of these slaves. The girls seldom passed her without her
+saying, “Move faster, you _black gip!_” at the same time giving them a
+blow with the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing the
+blood. She would then say, “Take that, you _black gip!_” continuing,
+“If you don’t move faster, I’ll move you!” Added to the cruel lashings
+to which these slaves were subjected, they were kept nearly
+half-starved. They seldom knew what it was to eat a full meal. I have
+seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal thrown into the
+street. So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that she was oftener
+called “_pecked_” than by her name.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII
+
+
+I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I
+succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was
+compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My
+mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance
+with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to
+instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one
+else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did
+not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the
+depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at
+least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of
+irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as
+though I were a brute.
+
+My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and
+in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live
+with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat
+another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem
+to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and
+that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but
+dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me.
+When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman.
+There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had
+bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every
+mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to
+divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender
+heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of
+tiger-like fierceness. The first step in her downward course was in her
+ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband’s
+precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than
+her husband himself. She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as
+he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to
+make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to
+think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face
+made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that
+fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little
+experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and
+slavery were incompatible with each other.
+
+From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room
+any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a
+book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this,
+however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in
+teaching me the alphabet, had given me the _inch,_ and no precaution
+could prevent me from taking the _ell._
+
+The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful,
+was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in
+the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.
+With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different
+places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of
+errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my
+errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used
+also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house,
+and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this
+regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This
+bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return,
+would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly
+tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a
+testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence
+forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for
+it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this
+Christian country. It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that
+they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard.
+I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes
+say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got
+to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, _but I am a
+slave for life!_ Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?”
+These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the
+liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would
+occur by which I might be free.
+
+I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being _a slave for
+life_ began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got
+hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I
+got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter,
+I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was
+represented as having run away from his master three times. The
+dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them,
+when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole
+argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of
+which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very
+smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things which
+had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted
+in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.
+
+In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and
+in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me.
+I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave
+tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently
+flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral
+which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the
+conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold
+denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.
+The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to
+meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they
+relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more
+painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more
+I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no
+other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their
+homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a
+strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest
+as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the
+subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had
+predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment
+and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I
+would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than
+a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without
+the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder
+upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves
+for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred
+the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter
+what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my
+condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was
+pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or
+inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal
+wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was
+heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to
+torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without
+seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without
+feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm,
+breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
+
+I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself
+dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I
+should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have
+been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one
+speak of slavery. I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could
+hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found
+what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make
+it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in
+getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or
+did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of
+as the fruit of _abolition._ Hearing the word in this connection very
+often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me
+little or no help. I found it was “the act of abolishing;” but then I
+did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not
+dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was
+something they wanted me to know very little about. After a patient
+waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the
+number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of
+slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the
+States. From this time I understood the words _abolition_ and
+_abolitionist,_ and always drew near when that word was spoken,
+expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves.
+The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf
+of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I
+went, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came
+to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, “Are
+ye a slave for life?” I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed
+to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it
+was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for
+life. He said it was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run
+away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should
+be free. I pretended not to be interested in what they said, and
+treated them as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might
+be treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves to
+escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to
+their masters. I was afraid that these seemingly good men might use me
+so; but I nevertheless remembered their advice, and from that time I
+resolved to run away. I looked forward to a time at which it would be
+safe for me to escape. I was too young to think of doing so
+immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I might have
+occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I
+should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write.
+
+The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being
+in Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship
+carpenters, after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use,
+write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was
+intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the larboard side, it
+would be marked thus—“L.” When a piece was for the starboard side, it
+would be marked thus—“S.” A piece for the larboard side forward, would
+be marked thus—“L. F.” When a piece was for starboard side forward, it
+would be marked thus—“S. F.” For larboard aft, it would be marked
+thus—“L. A.” For starboard aft, it would be marked thus—“S. A.” I soon
+learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended
+when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately
+commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four
+letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could
+write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word
+would be, “I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.” I would then
+make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him
+to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which
+it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way.
+During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and
+pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned
+mainly how to write. I then commenced and continued copying the Italics
+in Webster’s Spelling Book, until I could make them all without looking
+on the book. By this time, my little Master Thomas had gone to school,
+and learned how to write, and had written over a number of copy-books.
+These had been brought home, and shown to some of our near neighbors,
+and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class meeting at the
+Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take
+care of the house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in writing
+in the spaces left in Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had
+written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar
+to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years,
+I finally succeeded in learning how to write.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+In a very short time after I went to live at Baltimore, my old master’s
+youngest son Richard died; and in about three years and six months
+after his death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leaving only his
+son, Andrew, and daughter, Lucretia, to share his estate. He died while
+on a visit to see his daughter at Hillsborough. Cut off thus
+unexpectedly, he left no will as to the disposal of his property. It
+was therefore necessary to have a valuation of the property, that it
+might be equally divided between Mrs. Lucretia and Master Andrew. I was
+immediately sent for, to be valued with the other property. Here again
+my feelings rose up in detestation of slavery. I had now a new
+conception of my degraded condition. Prior to this, I had become, if
+not insensible to my lot, at least partly so. I left Baltimore with a
+young heart overborne with sadness, and a soul full of apprehension. I
+took passage with Captain Rowe, in the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a
+sail of about twenty-four hours, I found myself near the place of my
+birth. I had now been absent from it almost, if not quite, five years.
+I, however, remembered the place very well. I was only about five years
+old when I left it, to go and live with my old master on Colonel
+Lloyd’s plantation; so that I was now between ten and eleven years old.
+
+We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and
+young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.
+There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all
+holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to
+the same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth,
+maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At
+this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of
+slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.
+
+After the valuation, then came the division. I have no language to
+express the high excitement and deep anxiety which were felt among us
+poor slaves during this time. Our fate for life was now to be decided.
+We had no more voice in that decision than the brutes among whom we
+were ranked. A single word from the white men was enough—against all
+our wishes, prayers, and entreaties—to sunder forever the dearest
+friends, dearest kindred, and strongest ties known to human beings. In
+addition to the pain of separation, there was the horrid dread of
+falling into the hands of Master Andrew. He was known to us all as
+being a most cruel wretch,—a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless
+mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a large
+portion of his father’s property. We all felt that we might as well be
+sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we
+knew that that would be our inevitable condition,—a condition held by
+us all in the utmost horror and dread.
+
+I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-slaves. I had known what
+it was to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind. They
+had seen little or nothing of the world. They were in very deed men and
+women of sorrow, and acquainted with grief. Their backs had been made
+familiar with the bloody lash, so that they had become callous; mine
+was yet tender; for while at Baltimore I got few whippings, and few
+slaves could boast of a kinder master and mistress than myself; and the
+thought of passing out of their hands into those of Master Andrew—a man
+who, but a few days before, to give me a sample of his bloody
+disposition, took my little brother by the throat, threw him on the
+ground, and with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the
+blood gushed from his nose and ears—was well calculated to make me
+anxious as to my fate. After he had committed this savage outrage upon
+my brother, he turned to me, and said that was the way he meant to
+serve me one of these days,—meaning, I suppose, when I came into his
+possession.
+
+Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion of Mrs. Lucretia,
+and was sent immediately back to Baltimore, to live again in the family
+of Master Hugh. Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow at my
+departure. It was a glad day to me. I had escaped a worse than lion’s
+jaws. I was absent from Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and
+division, just about one month, and it seemed to have been six.
+
+Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mistress, Lucretia, died,
+leaving her husband and one child, Amanda; and in a very short time
+after her death, Master Andrew died. Now all the property of my old
+master, slaves included, was in the hands of strangers,—strangers who
+had had nothing to do with accumulating it. Not a slave was left free.
+All remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest. If any one thing
+in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of
+the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable
+loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old
+grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old
+age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his
+plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his
+service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood,
+served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the
+cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless
+left a slave—a slave for life—a slave in the hands of strangers; and in
+their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her
+great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being
+gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her
+own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and
+fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having
+outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning
+and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but
+little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and
+complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they
+took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little
+mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting
+herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to
+die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter
+loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children,
+the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They
+are, in the language of the slave’s poet, Whittier,—
+
+“Gone, gone, sold and gone
+To the rice swamp dank and lone,
+Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
+Where the noisome insect stings,
+Where the fever-demon strews
+Poison with the falling dews,
+Where the sickly sunbeams glare
+Through the hot and misty air:—
+Gone, gone, sold and gone
+To the rice swamp dank and lone,
+From Virginia hills and waters—
+Woe is me, my stolen daughters!”
+
+
+The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who
+once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in
+the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her
+children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the
+screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And
+now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head
+inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence
+meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together—at this
+time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that
+tenderness and affection which children only can exercise towards a
+declining parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve
+children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim
+embers. She stands—she sits—she staggers—she falls—she groans—she
+dies—and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to
+wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place
+beneath the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for
+these things?
+
+In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas
+married his second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton. She was the
+eldest daughter of Mr. William Hamilton. Master now lived in St.
+Michael’s. Not long after his marriage, a misunderstanding took place
+between himself and Master Hugh; and as a means of punishing his
+brother, he took me from him to live with himself at St. Michael’s.
+Here I underwent another most painful separation. It, however, was not
+so severe as the one I dreaded at the division of property; for, during
+this interval, a great change had taken place in Master Hugh and his
+once kind and affectionate wife. The influence of brandy upon him, and
+of slavery upon her, had effected a disastrous change in the characters
+of both; so that, as far as they were concerned, I thought I had little
+to lose by the change. But it was not to them that I was attached. It
+was to those little Baltimore boys that I felt the strongest
+attachment. I had received many good lessons from them, and was still
+receiving them, and the thought of leaving them was painful indeed. I
+was leaving, too, without the hope of ever being allowed to return.
+Master Thomas had said he would never let me return again. The barrier
+betwixt himself and brother he considered impassable.
+
+I then had to regret that I did not at least make the attempt to carry
+out my resolution to run away; for the chances of success are tenfold
+greater from the city than from the country.
+
+I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael’s in the sloop Amanda, Captain
+Edward Dodson. On my passage, I paid particular attention to the
+direction which the steamboats took to go to Philadelphia. I found,
+instead of going down, on reaching North Point they went up the bay, in
+a north-easterly direction. I deemed this knowledge of the utmost
+importance. My determination to run away was again revived. I resolved
+to wait only so long as the offering of a favorable opportunity. When
+that came, I was determined to be off.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX
+
+
+I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left
+Baltimore, and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael’s,
+in March, 1832. It was now more than seven years since I lived with him
+in the family of my old master, on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. We of
+course were now almost entire strangers to each other. He was to me a
+new master, and I to him a new slave. I was ignorant of his temper and
+disposition; he was equally so of mine. A very short time, however,
+brought us into full acquaintance with each other. I was made
+acquainted with his wife not less than with himself. They were well
+matched, being equally mean and cruel. I was now, for the first time
+during a space of more than seven years, made to feel the painful
+gnawings of hunger—a something which I had not experienced before since
+I left Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. It went hard enough with me then,
+when I could look back to no period at which I had enjoyed a
+sufficiency. It was tenfold harder after living in Master Hugh’s
+family, where I had always had enough to eat, and of that which was
+good. I have said Master Thomas was a mean man. He was so. Not to give
+a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development
+of meanness even among slaveholders. The rule is, no matter how coarse
+the food, only let there be enough of it. This is the theory; and in
+the part of Maryland from which I came, it is the general
+practice,—though there are many exceptions. Master Thomas gave us
+enough of neither coarse nor fine food. There were four slaves of us in
+the kitchen—my sister Eliza, my aunt Priscilla, Henny, and myself; and
+we were allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and
+very little else, either in the shape of meat or vegetables. It was not
+enough for us to subsist upon. We were therefore reduced to the
+wretched necessity of living at the expense of our neighbors. This we
+did by begging and stealing, whichever came handy in the time of need,
+the one being considered as legitimate as the other. A great many times
+have we poor creatures been nearly perishing with hunger, when food in
+abundance lay mouldering in the safe and smoke-house, and our pious
+mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that mistress and her husband
+would kneel every morning, and pray that God would bless them in basket
+and store!
+
+Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every
+element of character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare
+sort. I do not know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The
+leading trait in his character was meanness; and if there were any
+other element in his nature, it was made subject to this. He was mean;
+and, like most other mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his
+meanness. Captain Auld was not born a slaveholder. He had been a poor
+man, master only of a Bay craft. He came into possession of all his
+slaves by marriage; and of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst.
+He was cruel, but cowardly. He commanded without firmness. In the
+enforcement of his rules, he was at times rigid, and at times lax. At
+times, he spoke to his slaves with the firmness of Napoleon and the
+fury of a demon; at other times, he might well be mistaken for an
+inquirer who had lost his way. He did nothing of himself. He might have
+passed for a lion, but for his ears. In all things noble which he
+attempted, his own meanness shone most conspicuous. His airs, words,
+and actions, were the airs, words, and actions of born slaveholders,
+and, being assumed, were awkward enough. He was not even a good
+imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the
+power. Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the
+copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of
+inconsistency; and of consequence he was an object of contempt, and was
+held as such even by his slaves. The luxury of having slaves of his own
+to wait upon him was something new and unprepared for. He was a
+slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves. He found himself
+incapable of managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud. We
+seldom called him “master;” we generally called him “Captain Auld,” and
+were hardly disposed to title him at all. I doubt not that our conduct
+had much to do with making him appear awkward, and of consequence
+fretful. Our want of reverence for him must have perplexed him greatly.
+He wished to have us call him master, but lacked the firmness necessary
+to command us to do so. His wife used to insist upon our calling him
+so, but to no purpose. In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist
+camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced
+religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to
+emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at
+any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both
+these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to
+emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him
+more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been
+a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his
+conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him
+in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious
+sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest
+pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed
+morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his
+brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity
+in revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands
+of the church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers’
+home. They used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for
+while he starved us, he stuffed them. We have had three or four
+preachers there at a time. The names of those who used to come most
+frequently while I lived there, were Mr. Storks, Mr. Ewery, Mr.
+Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at our
+house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We believed him to be a good man.
+We thought him instrumental in getting Mr. Samuel Harrison, a very rich
+slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by some means got the
+impression that he was laboring to effect the emancipation of all the
+slaves. When he was at our house, we were sure to be called in to
+prayers. When the others were there, we were sometimes called in and
+sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more notice of us than either of the
+other ministers. He could not come among us without betraying his
+sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the sagacity to see it.
+
+While I lived with my master in St. Michael’s, there was a white young
+man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the
+instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the
+New Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks,
+both class-leaders, with many others, came upon us with sticks and
+other missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended
+our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael’s.
+
+I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an
+example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I
+have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy
+cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip;
+and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage
+of Scripture—“He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not,
+shall be beaten with many stripes.”
+
+Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid
+situation four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up
+early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to
+his store, return at dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the
+places already made raw with his cruel lash. The secret of master’s
+cruelty toward “Henny” is found in the fact of her being almost
+helpless. When quite a child, she fell into the fire, and burned
+herself horribly. Her hands were so burnt that she never got the use of
+them. She could do very little but bear heavy burdens. She was to
+master a bill of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant
+offence to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of
+existence. He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift,
+she was not disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use
+his own words, “set her adrift to take care of herself.” Here was a
+recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same
+time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas
+was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very
+charitable purpose of taking care of them.
+
+My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found me
+unsuitable to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very
+pernicious effect upon me. It had almost ruined me for every good
+purpose, and fitted me for every thing which was bad. One of my
+greatest faults was that of letting his horse run away, and go down to
+his father-in-law’s farm, which was about five miles from St.
+Michael’s. I would then have to go after it. My reason for this kind of
+carelessness, or carefulness, was, that I could always get something to
+eat when I went there. Master William Hamilton, my master’s
+father-in-law, always gave his slaves enough to eat. I never left there
+hungry, no matter how great the need of my speedy return. Master Thomas
+at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine
+months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings,
+all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be
+broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named
+Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the
+place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it.
+Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young
+slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him
+to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could
+have had it done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought
+it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for
+the sake of the training to which they were subjected, without any
+other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in
+consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of
+Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a
+class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his
+reputation as a “nigger-breaker.” I was aware of all the facts, having
+been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I
+nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough
+to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X
+
+
+I had left Master Thomas’s house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on
+the 1st of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a
+field hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than
+a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home
+but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting
+my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as
+large as my little finger. The details of this affair are as follows:
+Mr. Covey sent me, very early in the morning of one of our coldest days
+in the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of wood. He gave
+me a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox, and
+which the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the
+horns of the in-hand ox, and gave me the other end of it, and told me,
+if the oxen started to run, that I must hold on upon the rope. I had
+never driven oxen before, and of course I was very awkward. I, however,
+succeeded in getting to the edge of the woods with little difficulty;
+but I had got a very few rods into the woods, when the oxen took
+fright, and started full tilt, carrying the cart against trees, and
+over stumps, in the most frightful manner. I expected every moment that
+my brains would be dashed out against the trees. After running thus for
+a considerable distance, they finally upset the cart, dashing it with
+great force against a tree, and threw themselves into a dense thicket.
+How I escaped death, I do not know. There I was, entirely alone, in a
+thick wood, in a place new to me. My cart was upset and shattered, my
+oxen were entangled among the young trees, and there was none to help
+me. After a long spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart
+righted, my oxen disentangled, and again yoked to the cart. I now
+proceeded with my team to the place where I had, the day before, been
+chopping wood, and loaded my cart pretty heavily, thinking in this way
+to tame my oxen. I then proceeded on my way home. I had now consumed
+one half of the day. I got out of the woods safely, and now felt out of
+danger. I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate; and just as I did so,
+before I could get hold of my ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed
+through the gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of the
+cart, tearing it to pieces, and coming within a few inches of crushing
+me against the gate-post. Thus twice, in one short day, I escaped death
+by the merest chance. On my return, I told Mr. Covey what had happened,
+and how it happened. He ordered me to return to the woods again
+immediately. I did so, and he followed on after me. Just as I got into
+the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart, and that he would
+teach me how to trifle away my time, and break gates. He then went to a
+large gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches, and, after
+trimming them up neatly with his pocketknife, he ordered me to take off
+my clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He
+repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip
+myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore
+off my clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his switches,
+cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for a long time
+after. This whipping was the first of a number just like it, and for
+similar offences.
+
+I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months, of that
+year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free
+from a sore back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for
+whipping me. We were worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long
+before day we were up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day
+we were off to the field with our hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey
+gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to eat it. We were often less
+than five minutes taking our meals. We were often in the field from the
+first approach of day till its last lingering ray had left us; and at
+saving-fodder time, midnight often caught us in the field binding
+blades.
+
+Covey would be out with us. The way he used to stand it, was this. He
+would spend the most of his afternoons in bed. He would then come out
+fresh in the evening, ready to urge us on with his words, example, and
+frequently with the whip. Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who
+could and did work with his hands. He was a hard-working man. He knew
+by himself just what a man or a boy could do. There was no deceiving
+him. His work went on in his absence almost as well as in his presence;
+and he had the faculty of making us feel that he was ever present with
+us. This he did by surprising us. He seldom approached the spot where
+we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed at
+taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him,
+among ourselves, “the snake.” When we were at work in the cornfield, he
+would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and
+all at once he would rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, “Ha, ha!
+Come, come! Dash on, dash on!” This being his mode of attack, it was
+never safe to stop a single minute. His comings were like a thief in
+the night. He appeared to us as being ever at hand. He was under every
+tree, behind every stump, in every bush, and at every window, on the
+plantation. He would sometimes mount his horse, as if bound to St.
+Michael’s, a distance of seven miles, and in half an hour afterwards
+you would see him coiled up in the corner of the wood-fence, watching
+every motion of the slaves. He would, for this purpose, leave his horse
+tied up in the woods. Again, he would sometimes walk up to us, and give
+us orders as though he was upon the point of starting on a long
+journey, turn his back upon us, and make as though he was going to the
+house to get ready; and, before he would get half way thither, he would
+turn short and crawl into a fence-corner, or behind some tree, and
+there watch us till the going down of the sun.
+
+Mr. Covey’s _forte_ consisted in his power to deceive. His life was
+devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions. Every
+thing he possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made
+conform to his disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal
+to deceiving the Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning,
+and a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would
+at times appear more devotional than he. The exercises of his family
+devotions were always commenced with singing; and, as he was a very
+poor singer himself, the duty of raising the hymn generally came upon
+me. He would read his hymn, and nod at me to commence. I would at times
+do so; at others, I would not. My non-compliance would almost always
+produce much confusion. To show himself independent of me, he would
+start and stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner.
+In this state of mind, he prayed with more than ordinary spirit. Poor
+man! such was his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily
+believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that
+he was a sincere worshipper of the most high God; and this, too, at a
+time when he may be said to have been guilty of compelling his woman
+slave to commit the sin of adultery. The facts in the case are these:
+Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was just commencing in life; he was only
+able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact, he bought her, as
+he said, for _a breeder_. This woman was named Caroline. Mr. Covey
+bought her from Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St. Michael’s.
+She was a large, able-bodied woman, about twenty years old. She had
+already given birth to one child, which proved her to be just what he
+wanted. After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr. Samuel
+Harrison, to live with him one year; and him he used to fasten up with
+her every night! The result was, that, at the end of the year, the
+miserable woman gave birth to twins. At this result Mr. Covey seemed to
+be highly pleased, both with the man and the wretched woman. Such was
+his joy, and that of his wife, that nothing they could do for Caroline
+during her confinement was too good, or too hard, to be done. The
+children were regarded as being quite an addition to his wealth.
+
+If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink
+the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six
+months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It
+was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or
+snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was
+scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days
+were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was
+somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this
+discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken
+in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my
+intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful
+spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed
+in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!
+
+Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
+stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I would
+rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
+accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and
+then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
+I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was
+prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this
+plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality.
+
+Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad
+bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
+globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to
+the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and
+torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the
+deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty
+banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
+eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The
+sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel
+utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour
+out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the
+moving multitude of ships:—
+
+“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my
+chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I
+sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels,
+that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were
+free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your
+protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go
+on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O,
+why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone;
+she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of
+unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is
+there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it.
+Get caught, or get clear, I’ll try it. I had as well die with ague as
+the fever. I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed
+running as die standing. Only think of it; one hundred miles straight
+north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God helping me, I will. It cannot be
+that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water. This very
+bay shall yet bear me into freedom. The steamboats steered in a
+north-east course from North Point. I will do the same; and when I get
+to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and walk straight
+through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not be
+required to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed. Let but
+the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I am off. Meanwhile,
+I will try to bear up under the yoke. I am not the only slave in the
+world. Why should I fret? I can bear as much as any of them. Besides, I
+am but a boy, and all boys are bound to some one. It may be that my
+misery in slavery will only increase my happiness when I get free.
+There is a better day coming.”
+
+Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak to myself; goaded almost
+to madness at one moment, and at the next reconciling myself to my
+wretched lot.
+
+I have already intimated that my condition was much worse, during the
+first six months of my stay at Mr. Covey’s, than in the last six. The
+circumstances leading to the change in Mr. Covey’s course toward me
+form an epoch in my humble history. You have seen how a man was made a
+slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. On one of the hottest
+days of the month of August, 1833, Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave
+named Eli, and myself, were engaged in fanning wheat. Hughes was
+clearing the fanned wheat from before the fan. Eli was turning, Smith
+was feeding, and I was carrying wheat to the fan. The work was simple,
+requiring strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely unused
+to such work, it came very hard. About three o’clock of that day, I
+broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching
+of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb.
+Finding what was coming, I nerved myself up, feeling it would never do
+to stop work. I stood as long as I could stagger to the hopper with
+grain. When I could stand no longer, I fell, and felt as if held down
+by an immense weight. The fan of course stopped; every one had his own
+work to do; and no one could do the work of the other, and have his own
+go on at the same time.
+
+Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred yards from the
+treading-yard where we were fanning. On hearing the fan stop, he left
+immediately, and came to the spot where we were. He hastily inquired
+what the matter was. Bill answered that I was sick, and there was no
+one to bring wheat to the fan. I had by this time crawled away under
+the side of the post and rail-fence by which the yard was enclosed,
+hoping to find relief by getting out of the sun. He then asked where I
+was. He was told by one of the hands. He came to the spot, and, after
+looking at me awhile, asked me what was the matter. I told him as well
+as I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a
+savage kick in the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but
+fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to
+rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but, stooping to
+get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and
+fell. While down in this situation, Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat
+with which Hughes had been striking off the half-bushel measure, and
+with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a large wound, and
+the blood ran freely; and with this again told me to get up. I made no
+effort to comply, having now made up my mind to let him do his worst.
+In a short time after receiving this blow, my head grew better. Mr.
+Covey had now left me to my fate. At this moment I resolved, for the
+first time, to go to my master, enter a complaint, and ask his
+protection. In order to do this, I must that afternoon walk seven
+miles; and this, under the circumstances, was truly a severe
+undertaking. I was exceedingly feeble; made so as much by the kicks and
+blows which I received, as by the severe fit of sickness to which I had
+been subjected. I, however, watched my chance, while Covey was looking
+in an opposite direction, and started for St. Michael’s. I succeeded in
+getting a considerable distance on my way to the woods, when Covey
+discovered me, and called after me to come back, threatening what he
+would do if I did not come. I disregarded both his calls and his
+threats, and made my way to the woods as fast as my feeble state would
+allow; and thinking I might be overhauled by him if I kept the road, I
+walked through the woods, keeping far enough from the road to avoid
+detection, and near enough to prevent losing my way. I had not gone far
+before my little strength again failed me. I could go no farther. I
+fell down, and lay for a considerable time. The blood was yet oozing
+from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to
+death; and think now that I should have done so, but that the blood so
+matted my hair as to stop the wound. After lying there about three
+quarters of an hour, I nerved myself up again, and started on my way,
+through bogs and briers, barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet
+sometimes at nearly every step; and after a journey of about seven
+miles, occupying some five hours to perform it, I arrived at master’s
+store. I then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart
+of iron. From the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered with
+blood. My hair was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff
+with blood. I suppose I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild
+beasts, and barely escaped them. In this state I appeared before my
+master, humbly entreating him to interpose his authority for my
+protection. I told him all the circumstances as well as I could, and it
+seemed, as I spoke, at times to affect him. He would then walk the
+floor, and seek to justify Covey by saying he expected I deserved it.
+He asked me what I wanted. I told him, to let me get a new home; that
+as sure as I lived with Mr. Covey again, I should live with but to die
+with him; that Covey would surely kill me; he was in a fair way for it.
+Master Thomas ridiculed the idea that there was any danger of Mr.
+Covey’s killing me, and said that he knew Mr. Covey; that he was a good
+man, and that he could not think of taking me from him; that, should he
+do so, he would lose the whole year’s wages; that I belonged to Mr.
+Covey for one year, and that I must go back to him, come what might;
+and that I must not trouble him with any more stories, or that he would
+himself _get hold of me_. After threatening me thus, he gave me a very
+large dose of salts, telling me that I might remain in St. Michael’s
+that night, (it being quite late,) but that I must be off back to Mr.
+Covey’s early in the morning; and that if I did not, he would _get hold
+of me,_ which meant that he would whip me. I remained all night, and,
+according to his orders, I started off to Covey’s in the morning,
+(Saturday morning,) wearied in body and broken in spirit. I got no
+supper that night, or breakfast that morning. I reached Covey’s about
+nine o’clock; and just as I was getting over the fence that divided
+Mrs. Kemp’s fields from ours, out ran Covey with his cowskin, to give
+me another whipping. Before he could reach me, I succeeded in getting
+to the cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it afforded me the
+means of hiding. He seemed very angry, and searched for me a long time.
+My behavior was altogether unaccountable. He finally gave up the chase,
+thinking, I suppose, that I must come home for something to eat; he
+would give himself no further trouble in looking for me. I spent that
+day mostly in the woods, having the alternative before me,—to go home
+and be whipped to death, or stay in the woods and be starved to death.
+That night, I fell in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave with whom I was
+somewhat acquainted. Sandy had a free wife who lived about four miles
+from Mr. Covey’s; and it being Saturday, he was on his way to see her.
+I told him my circumstances, and he very kindly invited me to go home
+with him. I went home with him, and talked this whole matter over, and
+got his advice as to what course it was best for me to pursue. I found
+Sandy an old adviser. He told me, with great solemnity, I must go back
+to Covey; but that before I went, I must go with him into another part
+of the woods, where there was a certain _root,_ which, if I would take
+some of it with me, carrying it _always on my right side,_ would render
+it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to whip me. He
+said he had carried it for years; and since he had done so, he had
+never received a blow, and never expected to while he carried it. I at
+first rejected the idea, that the simple carrying of a root in my
+pocket would have any such effect as he had said, and was not disposed
+to take it; but Sandy impressed the necessity with much earnestness,
+telling me it could do no harm, if it did no good. To please him, I at
+length took the root, and, according to his direction, carried it upon
+my right side. This was Sunday morning. I immediately started for home;
+and upon entering the yard gate, out came Mr. Covey on his way to
+meeting. He spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs from a lot
+near by, and passed on towards the church. Now, this singular conduct
+of Mr. Covey really made me begin to think that there was something in
+the _root_ which Sandy had given me; and had it been on any other day
+than Sunday, I could have attributed the conduct to no other cause than
+the influence of that root; and as it was, I was half inclined to think
+the _root_ to be something more than I at first had taken it to be. All
+went well till Monday morning. On this morning, the virtue of the
+_root_ was fully tested. Long before daylight, I was called to go and
+rub, curry, and feed, the horses. I obeyed, and was glad to obey. But
+whilst thus engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some blades
+from the loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope; and just
+as I was half out of the loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about
+tying me. As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring,
+and as I did so, he holding to my legs, I was brought sprawling on the
+stable floor. Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do
+what he pleased; but at this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t
+know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I
+seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to
+me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey
+seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf. This gave me
+assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I
+touched him with the ends of my fingers. Mr. Covey soon called out to
+Hughes for help. Hughes came, and, while Covey held me, attempted to
+tie my right hand. While he was in the act of doing so, I watched my
+chance, and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs. This kick
+fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left me in the hands of Mr. Covey.
+This kick had the effect of not only weakening Hughes, but Covey also.
+When he saw Hughes bending over with pain, his courage quailed. He
+asked me if I meant to persist in my resistance. I told him I did, come
+what might; that he had used me like a brute for six months, and that I
+was determined to be used so no longer. With that, he strove to drag me
+to a stick that was lying just out of the stable door. He meant to
+knock me down. But just as he was leaning over to get the stick, I
+seized him with both hands by his collar, and brought him by a sudden
+snatch to the ground. By this time, Bill came. Covey called upon him
+for assistance. Bill wanted to know what he could do. Covey said, “Take
+hold of him, take hold of him!” Bill said his master hired him out to
+work, and not to help to whip me; so he left Covey and myself to fight
+our own battle out. We were at it for nearly two hours. Covey at length
+let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying that if I had
+not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much. The truth was,
+that he had not whipped me at all. I considered him as getting entirely
+the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I
+had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr.
+Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He
+would occasionally say, he didn’t want to get hold of me again. “No,”
+thought I, “you need not; for you will come off worse than you did
+before.”
+
+This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a
+slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived
+within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed
+self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.
+The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for
+whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand
+the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by
+force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was
+a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of
+freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance
+took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a
+slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in
+fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man
+who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.
+
+From this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped,
+though I remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights,
+but was never whipped.
+
+It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me why Mr. Covey did not
+immediately have me taken by the constable to the whipping-post, and
+there regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a
+white man in defence of myself. And the only explanation I can now
+think of does not entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give
+it. Mr. Covey enjoyed the most unbounded reputation for being a
+first-rate overseer and negro-breaker. It was of considerable
+importance to him. That reputation was at stake; and had he sent me—a
+boy about sixteen years old—to the public whipping-post, his reputation
+would have been lost; so, to save his reputation, he suffered me to go
+unpunished.
+
+My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day,
+1833. The days between Christmas and New Year’s day are allowed as
+holidays; and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor,
+more than to feed and take care of the stock. This time we regarded as
+our own, by the grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused
+it nearly as we pleased. Those of us who had families at a distance,
+were generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society.
+This time, however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober,
+thinking and industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in
+making corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another class
+of us would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But
+by far the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing
+ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking
+whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most
+agreeable to the feelings of our masters. A slave who would work during
+the holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them.
+He was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his master. It was
+deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as
+lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the necessary means,
+during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas.
+
+From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I
+believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the
+slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the
+slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest
+doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves.
+These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the
+rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would
+be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the
+slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of
+those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go
+forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling
+earthquake.
+
+The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and
+inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the
+benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the
+result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon
+the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because
+they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but
+because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will
+be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves
+spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their
+ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust
+their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of
+dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the
+slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him
+drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink
+the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in
+getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks
+for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance,
+cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with
+the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the
+result was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think
+that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt,
+and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as
+to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of
+our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,—feeling,
+upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us
+into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.
+
+I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system
+of fraud and inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to
+disgust the slave with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse
+of it, is carried out in other things. For instance, a slave loves
+molasses; he steals some. His master, in many cases, goes off to town,
+and buys a large quantity; he returns, takes his whip, and commands the
+slave to eat the molasses, until the poor fellow is made sick at the
+very mention of it. The same mode is sometimes adopted to make the
+slaves refrain from asking for more food than their regular allowance.
+A slave runs through his allowance, and applies for more. His master is
+enraged at him; but, not willing to send him off without food, gives
+him more than is necessary, and compels him to eat it within a given
+time. Then, if he complains that he cannot eat it, he is said to be
+satisfied neither full nor fasting, and is whipped for being hard to
+please! I have an abundance of such illustrations of the same
+principle, drawn from my own observation, but think the cases I have
+cited sufficient. The practice is a very common one.
+
+On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. Covey, and went to live with
+Mr. William Freeland, who lived about three miles from St. Michael’s. I
+soon found Mr. Freeland a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not
+rich, he was what would be called an educated southern gentleman. Mr.
+Covey, as I have shown, was a well-trained negro-breaker and
+slave-driver. The former (slaveholder though he was) seemed to possess
+some regard for honor, some reverence for justice, and some respect for
+humanity. The latter seemed totally insensible to all such sentiments.
+Mr. Freeland had many of the faults peculiar to slaveholders, such as
+being very passionate and fretful; but I must do him the justice to
+say, that he was exceedingly free from those degrading vices to which
+Mr. Covey was constantly addicted. The one was open and frank, and we
+always knew where to find him. The other was a most artful deceiver,
+and could be understood only by such as were skilful enough to detect
+his cunningly-devised frauds. Another advantage I gained in my new
+master was, he made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion; and
+this, in my opinion, was truly a great advantage. I assert most
+unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for
+the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a
+sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which
+the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders
+find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains
+of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave
+of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For
+of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders
+are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most
+cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to
+belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such
+religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and
+in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were
+members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden
+owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This
+woman’s back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of
+this merciless, _religious_ wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim
+was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally
+to whip a slave, to remind him of his master’s authority. Such was his
+theory, and such his practice.
+
+Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his
+ability to manage slaves. The peculiar feature of his government was
+that of whipping slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed
+to have one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did
+this to alarm their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped.
+His plan was to whip for the smallest offences, to prevent the
+commission of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for
+whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding
+life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of
+which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,—a
+mistake, accident, or want of power,—are all matters for which a slave
+may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said,
+he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak
+loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded,
+and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull
+off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in
+reverence, and should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to
+vindicate his conduct, when censured for it? Then he is guilty of
+impudence,—one of the greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty.
+Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from
+that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting
+above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does
+he, while ploughing, break a plough,—or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It
+is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be
+whipped. Mr. Hopkins could always find something of this sort to
+justify the use of the lash, and he seldom failed to embrace such
+opportunities. There was not a man in the whole county, with whom the
+slaves who had the getting their own home, would not prefer to live,
+rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there was not a man any
+where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was more
+active in revivals,—more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and
+preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family,—that prayed
+earlier, later, louder, and longer,—than this same reverend
+slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins.
+
+But to return to Mr. Freeland, and to my experience while in his
+employment. He, like Mr. Covey, gave us enough to eat; but, unlike Mr.
+Covey, he also gave us sufficient time to take our meals. He worked us
+hard, but always between sunrise and sunset. He required a good deal of
+work to be done, but gave us good tools with which to work. His farm
+was large, but he employed hands enough to work it, and with ease,
+compared with many of his neighbors. My treatment, while in his
+employment, was heavenly, compared with what I experienced at the hands
+of Mr. Edward Covey.
+
+Mr. Freeland was himself the owner of but two slaves. Their names were
+Henry Harris and John Harris. The rest of his hands he hired. These
+consisted of myself, Sandy Jenkins,[1] and Handy Caldwell.
+
+ [1] This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my being
+ whipped by Mr. Covey. He was “a clever soul.” We used frequently to
+ talk about the fight with Covey, and as often as we did so, he would
+ claim my success as the result of the roots which he gave me. This
+ superstition is very common among the more ignorant slaves. A slave
+ seldom dies but that his death is attributed to trickery.
+
+
+Henry and John were quite intelligent, and in a very little while after
+I went there, I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn
+how to read. This desire soon sprang up in the others also. They very
+soon mustered up some old spelling-books, and nothing would do but that
+I must keep a Sabbath school. I agreed to do so, and accordingly
+devoted my Sundays to teaching these my loved fellow-slaves how to
+read. Neither of them knew his letters when I went there. Some of the
+slaves of the neighboring farms found what was going on, and also
+availed themselves of this little opportunity to learn to read. It was
+understood, among all who came, that there must be as little display
+about it as possible. It was necessary to keep our religious masters at
+St. Michael’s unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the
+Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to
+learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us
+engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like
+intellectual, moral, and accountable beings. My blood boils as I think
+of the bloody manner in which Messrs. Wright Fairbanks and Garrison
+West, both class-leaders, in connection with many others, rushed in
+upon us with sticks and stones, and broke up our virtuous little
+Sabbath school, at St. Michael’s—all calling themselves Christians!
+humble followers of the Lord Jesus Christ! But I am again digressing.
+
+I held my Sabbath school at the house of a free colored man, whose name
+I deem it imprudent to mention; for should it be known, it might
+embarrass him greatly, though the crime of holding the school was
+committed ten years ago. I had at one time over forty scholars, and
+those of the right sort, ardently desiring to learn. They were of all
+ages, though mostly men and women. I look back to those Sundays with an
+amount of pleasure not to be expressed. They were great days to my
+soul. The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest
+engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to
+leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When
+I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the
+prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready
+to ask, “Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he
+hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and
+deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?” These dear souls
+came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I
+teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment
+they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given
+thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds
+had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in
+mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul
+to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my
+race. I kept up my school nearly the whole year I lived with Mr.
+Freeland; and, beside my Sabbath school, I devoted three evenings in
+the week, during the winter, to teaching the slaves at home. And I have
+the happiness to know, that several of those who came to Sabbath school
+learned how to read; and that one, at least, is now free through my
+agency.
+
+The year passed off smoothly. It seemed only about half as long as the
+year which preceded it. I went through it without receiving a single
+blow. I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I
+ever had, _till I became my own master._ For the ease with which I
+passed the year, I was, however, somewhat indebted to the society of my
+fellow-slaves. They were noble souls; they not only possessed loving
+hearts, but brave ones. We were linked and interlinked with each other.
+I loved them with a love stronger than any thing I have experienced
+since. It is sometimes said that we slaves do not love and confide in
+each other. In answer to this assertion, I can say, I never loved any
+or confided in any people more than my fellow-slaves, and especially
+those with whom I lived at Mr. Freeland’s. I believe we would have died
+for each other. We never undertook to do any thing, of any importance,
+without a mutual consultation. We never moved separately. We were one;
+and as much so by our tempers and dispositions, as by the mutual
+hardships to which we were necessarily subjected by our condition as
+slaves.
+
+At the close of the year 1834, Mr. Freeland again hired me of my
+master, for the year 1835. But, by this time, I began to want to live
+_upon free land_ as well as _with Freeland;_ and I was no longer
+content, therefore, to live with him or any other slaveholder. I began,
+with the commencement of the year, to prepare myself for a final
+struggle, which should decide my fate one way or the other. My tendency
+was upward. I was fast approaching manhood, and year after year had
+passed, and I was still a slave. These thoughts roused me—I must do
+something. I therefore resolved that 1835 should not pass without
+witnessing an attempt, on my part, to secure my liberty. But I was not
+willing to cherish this determination alone. My fellow-slaves were dear
+to me. I was anxious to have them participate with me in this, my
+life-giving determination. I therefore, though with great prudence,
+commenced early to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to
+their condition, and to imbue their minds with thoughts of freedom. I
+bent myself to devising ways and means for our escape, and meanwhile
+strove, on all fitting occasions, to impress them with the gross fraud
+and inhumanity of slavery. I went first to Henry, next to John, then to
+the others. I found, in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits. They
+were ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible plan should be
+proposed. This was what I wanted. I talked to them of our want of
+manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement without at least one noble
+effort to be free. We met often, and consulted frequently, and told our
+hopes and fears, recounted the difficulties, real and imagined, which
+we should be called on to meet. At times we were almost disposed to
+give up, and try to content ourselves with our wretched lot; at others,
+we were firm and unbending in our determination to go. Whenever we
+suggested any plan, there was shrinking—the odds were fearful. Our path
+was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining
+the end of it, our right to be free was yet questionable—we were yet
+liable to be returned to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of
+the ocean, where we could be free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our
+knowledge of the north did not extend farther than New York; and to go
+there, and be forever harassed with the frightful liability of being
+returned to slavery—with the certainty of being treated tenfold worse
+than before—the thought was truly a horrible one, and one which it was
+not easy to overcome. The case sometimes stood thus: At every gate
+through which we were to pass, we saw a watchman—at every ferry a
+guard—on every bridge a sentinel—and in every wood a patrol. We were
+hemmed in upon every side. Here were the difficulties, real or
+imagined—the good to be sought, and the evil to be shunned. On the one
+hand, there stood slavery, a stern reality, glaring frightfully upon
+us,—its robes already crimsoned with the blood of millions, and even
+now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh. On the other hand,
+away back in the dim distance, under the flickering light of the north
+star, behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a
+doubtful freedom—half frozen—beckoning us to come and share its
+hospitality. This in itself was sometimes enough to stagger us; but
+when we permitted ourselves to survey the road, we were frequently
+appalled. Upon either side we saw grim death, assuming the most horrid
+shapes. Now it was starvation, causing us to eat our own flesh;—now we
+were contending with the waves, and were drowned;—now we were
+overtaken, and torn to pieces by the fangs of the terrible bloodhound.
+We were stung by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes,
+and finally, after having nearly reached the desired spot,—after
+swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts, sleeping in the woods,
+suffering hunger and nakedness,—we were overtaken by our pursuers, and,
+in our resistance, we were shot dead upon the spot! I say, this picture
+sometimes appalled us, and made us
+
+“rather bear those ills we had,
+Than fly to others, that we knew not of.”
+
+
+In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than
+Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a
+doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my
+part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.
+
+Sandy, one of our number, gave up the notion, but still encouraged us.
+Our company then consisted of Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey,
+Charles Roberts, and myself. Henry Bailey was my uncle, and belonged to
+my master. Charles married my aunt: he belonged to my master’s
+father-in-law, Mr. William Hamilton.
+
+The plan we finally concluded upon was, to get a large canoe belonging
+to Mr. Hamilton, and upon the Saturday night previous to Easter
+holidays, paddle directly up the Chesapeake Bay. On our arrival at the
+head of the bay, a distance of seventy or eighty miles from where we
+lived, it was our purpose to turn our canoe adrift, and follow the
+guidance of the north star till we got beyond the limits of Maryland.
+Our reason for taking the water route was, that we were less liable to
+be suspected as runaways; we hoped to be regarded as fishermen;
+whereas, if we should take the land route, we should be subjected to
+interruptions of almost every kind. Any one having a white face, and
+being so disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination.
+
+The week before our intended start, I wrote several protections, one
+for each of us. As well as I can remember, they were in the following
+words, to wit:—
+
+“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my
+servant, full liberty to go to Baltimore, and spend the Easter
+holidays. Written with mine own hand, &c., 1835.
+
+
+“WILLIAM HAMILTON,
+“Near St. Michael’s, in Talbot county, Maryland.”
+
+
+We were not going to Baltimore; but, in going up the bay, we went
+toward Baltimore, and these protections were only intended to protect
+us while on the bay.
+
+As the time drew near for our departure, our anxiety became more and
+more intense. It was truly a matter of life and death with us. The
+strength of our determination was about to be fully tested. At this
+time, I was very active in explaining every difficulty, removing every
+doubt, dispelling every fear, and inspiring all with the firmness
+indispensable to success in our undertaking; assuring them that half
+was gained the instant we made the move; we had talked long enough; we
+were now ready to move; if not now, we never should be; and if we did
+not intend to move now, we had as well fold our arms, sit down, and
+acknowledge ourselves fit only to be slaves. This, none of us were
+prepared to acknowledge. Every man stood firm; and at our last meeting,
+we pledged ourselves afresh, in the most solemn manner, that, at the
+time appointed, we would certainly start in pursuit of freedom. This
+was in the middle of the week, at the end of which we were to be off.
+We went, as usual, to our several fields of labor, but with bosoms
+highly agitated with thoughts of our truly hazardous undertaking. We
+tried to conceal our feelings as much as possible; and I think we
+succeeded very well.
+
+After a painful waiting, the Saturday morning, whose night was to
+witness our departure, came. I hailed it with joy, bring what of
+sadness it might. Friday night was a sleepless one for me. I probably
+felt more anxious than the rest, because I was, by common consent, at
+the head of the whole affair. The responsibility of success or failure
+lay heavily upon me. The glory of the one, and the confusion of the
+other, were alike mine. The first two hours of that morning were such
+as I never experienced before, and hope never to again. Early in the
+morning, we went, as usual, to the field. We were spreading manure; and
+all at once, while thus engaged, I was overwhelmed with an
+indescribable feeling, in the fulness of which I turned to Sandy, who
+was near by, and said, “We are betrayed!” “Well,” said he, “that
+thought has this moment struck me.” We said no more. I was never more
+certain of any thing.
+
+The horn was blown as usual, and we went up from the field to the house
+for breakfast. I went for the form, more than for want of any thing to
+eat that morning. Just as I got to the house, in looking out at the
+lane gate, I saw four white men, with two colored men. The white men
+were on horseback, and the colored ones were walking behind, as if
+tied. I watched them a few moments till they got up to our lane gate.
+Here they halted, and tied the colored men to the gate-post. I was not
+yet certain as to what the matter was. In a few moments, in rode Mr.
+Hamilton, with a speed betokening great excitement. He came to the
+door, and inquired if Master William was in. He was told he was at the
+barn. Mr. Hamilton, without dismounting, rode up to the barn with
+extraordinary speed. In a few moments, he and Mr. Freeland returned to
+the house. By this time, the three constables rode up, and in great
+haste dismounted, tied their horses, and met Master William and Mr.
+Hamilton returning from the barn; and after talking awhile, they all
+walked up to the kitchen door. There was no one in the kitchen but
+myself and John. Henry and Sandy were up at the barn. Mr. Freeland put
+his head in at the door, and called me by name, saying, there were some
+gentlemen at the door who wished to see me. I stepped to the door, and
+inquired what they wanted. They at once seized me, and, without giving
+me any satisfaction, tied me—lashing my hands closely together. I
+insisted upon knowing what the matter was. They at length said, that
+they had learned I had been in a “scrape,” and that I was to be
+examined before my master; and if their information proved false, I
+should not be hurt.
+
+In a few moments, they succeeded in tying John. They then turned to
+Henry, who had by this time returned, and commanded him to cross his
+hands. “I won’t!” said Henry, in a firm tone, indicating his readiness
+to meet the consequences of his refusal. “Won’t you?” said Tom Graham,
+the constable. “No, I won’t!” said Henry, in a still stronger tone.
+With this, two of the constables pulled out their shining pistols, and
+swore, by their Creator, that they would make him cross his hands or
+kill him. Each cocked his pistol, and, with fingers on the trigger,
+walked up to Henry, saying, at the same time, if he did not cross his
+hands, they would blow his damned heart out. “Shoot me, shoot me!” said
+Henry; “you can’t kill me but once. Shoot, shoot,—and be damned! _I
+won’t be tied!_” This he said in a tone of loud defiance; and at the
+same time, with a motion as quick as lightning, he with one single
+stroke dashed the pistols from the hand of each constable. As he did
+this, all hands fell upon him, and, after beating him some time, they
+finally overpowered him, and got him tied.
+
+During the scuffle, I managed, I know not how, to get my pass out, and,
+without being discovered, put it into the fire. We were all now tied;
+and just as we were to leave for Easton jail, Betsy Freeland, mother of
+William Freeland, came to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and
+divided them between Henry and John. She then delivered herself of a
+speech, to the following effect:—addressing herself to me, she said,
+“_You devil! You yellow devil!_ it was you that put it into the heads
+of Henry and John to run away. But for you, you long-legged mulatto
+devil! Henry nor John would never have thought of such a thing.” I made
+no reply, and was immediately hurried off towards St. Michael’s. Just a
+moment previous to the scuffle with Henry, Mr. Hamilton suggested the
+propriety of making a search for the protections which he had
+understood Frederick had written for himself and the rest. But, just at
+the moment he was about carrying his proposal into effect, his aid was
+needed in helping to tie Henry; and the excitement attending the
+scuffle caused them either to forget, or to deem it unsafe, under the
+circumstances, to search. So we were not yet convicted of the intention
+to run away.
+
+When we got about half way to St. Michael’s, while the constables
+having us in charge were looking ahead, Henry inquired of me what he
+should do with his pass. I told him to eat it with his biscuit, and own
+nothing; and we passed the word around, “_Own nothing;_” and “_Own
+nothing!_” said we all. Our confidence in each other was unshaken. We
+were resolved to succeed or fail together, after the calamity had
+befallen us as much as before. We were now prepared for any thing. We
+were to be dragged that morning fifteen miles behind horses, and then
+to be placed in the Easton jail. When we reached St. Michael’s, we
+underwent a sort of examination. We all denied that we ever intended to
+run away. We did this more to bring out the evidence against us, than
+from any hope of getting clear of being sold; for, as I have said, we
+were ready for that. The fact was, we cared but little where we went,
+so we went together. Our greatest concern was about separation. We
+dreaded that more than any thing this side of death. We found the
+evidence against us to be the testimony of one person; our master would
+not tell who it was; but we came to a unanimous decision among
+ourselves as to who their informant was. We were sent off to the jail
+at Easton. When we got there, we were delivered up to the sheriff, Mr.
+Joseph Graham, and by him placed in jail. Henry, John, and myself, were
+placed in one room together—Charles, and Henry Bailey, in another.
+Their object in separating us was to hinder concert.
+
+We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave
+traders, and agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us,
+and to ascertain if we were for sale. Such a set of beings I never saw
+before! I felt myself surrounded by so many fiends from perdition. A
+band of pirates never looked more like their father, the devil. They
+laughed and grinned over us, saying, “Ah, my boys! we have got you,
+haven’t we?” And after taunting us in various ways, they one by one
+went into an examination of us, with intent to ascertain our value.
+They would impudently ask us if we would not like to have them for our
+masters. We would make them no answer, and leave them to find out as
+best they could. Then they would curse and swear at us, telling us that
+they could take the devil out of us in a very little while, if we were
+only in their hands.
+
+While in jail, we found ourselves in much more comfortable quarters
+than we expected when we went there. We did not get much to eat, nor
+that which was very good; but we had a good clean room, from the
+windows of which we could see what was going on in the street, which
+was very much better than though we had been placed in one of the dark,
+damp cells. Upon the whole, we got along very well, so far as the jail
+and its keeper were concerned. Immediately after the holidays were
+over, contrary to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Freeland
+came up to Easton, and took Charles, the two Henrys, and John, out of
+jail, and carried them home, leaving me alone. I regarded this
+separation as a final one. It caused me more pain than any thing else
+in the whole transaction. I was ready for any thing rather than
+separation. I supposed that they had consulted together, and had
+decided that, as I was the whole cause of the intention of the others
+to run away, it was hard to make the innocent suffer with the guilty;
+and that they had, therefore, concluded to take the others home, and
+sell me, as a warning to the others that remained. It is due to the
+noble Henry to say, he seemed almost as reluctant at leaving the prison
+as at leaving home to come to the prison. But we knew we should, in all
+probability, be separated, if we were sold; and since he was in their
+hands, he concluded to go peaceably home.
+
+I was now left to my fate. I was all alone, and within the walls of a
+stone prison. But a few days before, and I was full of hope. I expected
+to have been safe in a land of freedom; but now I was covered with
+gloom, sunk down to the utmost despair. I thought the possibility of
+freedom was gone. I was kept in this way about one week, at the end of
+which, Captain Auld, my master, to my surprise and utter astonishment,
+came up, and took me out, with the intention of sending me, with a
+gentleman of his acquaintance, into Alabama. But, from some cause or
+other, he did not send me to Alabama, but concluded to send me back to
+Baltimore, to live again with his brother Hugh, and to learn a trade.
+
+Thus, after an absence of three years and one month, I was once more
+permitted to return to my old home at Baltimore. My master sent me
+away, because there existed against me a very great prejudice in the
+community, and he feared I might be killed.
+
+In a few weeks after I went to Baltimore, Master Hugh hired me to Mr.
+William Gardner, an extensive ship-builder, on Fell’s Point. I was put
+there to learn how to calk. It, however, proved a very unfavorable
+place for the accomplishment of this object. Mr. Gardner was engaged
+that spring in building two large man-of-war brigs, professedly for the
+Mexican government. The vessels were to be launched in the July of that
+year, and in failure thereof, Mr. Gardner was to lose a considerable
+sum; so that when I entered, all was hurry. There was no time to learn
+any thing. Every man had to do that which he knew how to do. In
+entering the shipyard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do whatever
+the carpenters commanded me to do. This was placing me at the beck and
+call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as masters.
+Their word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one. At
+times I needed a dozen pair of hands. I was called a dozen ways in the
+space of a single minute. Three or four voices would strike my ear at
+the same moment. It was—“Fred., come help me to cant this timber
+here.”—“Fred., come carry this timber yonder.”—“Fred., bring that
+roller here.”—“Fred., go get a fresh can of water.”—“Fred., come help
+saw off the end of this timber.”—“Fred., go quick, and get the
+crowbar.”—“Fred., hold on the end of this fall.”—“Fred., go to the
+blacksmith’s shop, and get a new punch.”—“Hurra, Fred! run and bring me
+a cold chisel.”—“I say, Fred., bear a hand, and get up a fire as quick
+as lightning under that steam-box.”—“Halloo, nigger! come, turn this
+grindstone.”—“Come, come! move, move! and _bowse_ this timber
+forward.”—“I say, darky, blast your eyes, why don’t you heat up some
+pitch?”—“Halloo! halloo! halloo!” (Three voices at the same time.)
+“Come here!—Go there!—Hold on where you are! Damn you, if you move,
+I’ll knock your brains out!”
+
+This was my school for eight months; and I might have remained there
+longer, but for a most horrid fight I had with four of the white
+apprentices, in which my left eye was nearly knocked out, and I was
+horribly mangled in other respects. The facts in the case were these:
+Until a very little while after I went there, white and black
+ship-carpenters worked side by side, and no one seemed to see any
+impropriety in it. All hands seemed to be very well satisfied. Many of
+the black carpenters were freemen. Things seemed to be going on very
+well. All at once, the white carpenters knocked off, and said they
+would not work with free colored workmen. Their reason for this, as
+alleged, was, that if free colored carpenters were encouraged, they
+would soon take the trade into their own hands, and poor white men
+would be thrown out of employment. They therefore felt called upon at
+once to put a stop to it. And, taking advantage of Mr. Gardner’s
+necessities, they broke off, swearing they would work no longer, unless
+he would discharge his black carpenters. Now, though this did not
+extend to me in form, it did reach me in fact. My fellow-apprentices
+very soon began to feel it degrading to them to work with me. They
+began to put on airs, and talk about the “niggers” taking the country,
+saying we all ought to be killed; and, being encouraged by the
+journeymen, they commenced making my condition as hard as they could,
+by hectoring me around, and sometimes striking me. I, of course, kept
+the vow I made after the fight with Mr. Covey, and struck back again,
+regardless of consequences; and while I kept them from combining, I
+succeeded very well; for I could whip the whole of them, taking them
+separately. They, however, at length combined, and came upon me, armed
+with sticks, stones, and heavy handspikes. One came in front with a
+half brick. There was one at each side of me, and one behind me. While
+I was attending to those in front, and on either side, the one behind
+ran up with the handspike, and struck me a heavy blow upon the head. It
+stunned me. I fell, and with this they all ran upon me, and fell to
+beating me with their fists. I let them lay on for a while, gathering
+strength. In an instant, I gave a sudden surge, and rose to my hands
+and knees. Just as I did that, one of their number gave me, with his
+heavy boot, a powerful kick in the left eye. My eyeball seemed to have
+burst. When they saw my eye closed, and badly swollen, they left me.
+With this I seized the handspike, and for a time pursued them. But here
+the carpenters interfered, and I thought I might as well give it up. It
+was impossible to stand my hand against so many. All this took place in
+sight of not less than fifty white ship-carpenters, and not one
+interposed a friendly word; but some cried, “Kill the damned nigger!
+Kill him! kill him! He struck a white person.” I found my only chance
+for life was in flight. I succeeded in getting away without an
+additional blow, and barely so; for to strike a white man is death by
+Lynch law,—and that was the law in Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard; nor is
+there much of any other out of Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard.
+
+I went directly home, and told the story of my wrongs to Master Hugh;
+and I am happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was
+heavenly, compared with that of his brother Thomas under similar
+circumstances. He listened attentively to my narration of the
+circumstances leading to the savage outrage, and gave many proofs of
+his strong indignation at it. The heart of my once overkind mistress
+was again melted into pity. My puffed-out eye and blood-covered face
+moved her to tears. She took a chair by me, washed the blood from my
+face, and, with a mother’s tenderness, bound up my head, covering the
+wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh beef. It was almost compensation
+for my suffering to witness, once more, a manifestation of kindness
+from this, my once affectionate old mistress. Master Hugh was very much
+enraged. He gave expression to his feelings by pouring out curses upon
+the heads of those who did the deed. As soon as I got a little the
+better of my bruises, he took me with him to Esquire Watson’s, on Bond
+Street, to see what could be done about the matter. Mr. Watson inquired
+who saw the assault committed. Master Hugh told him it was done in Mr.
+Gardner’s ship-yard at midday, where there were a large company of men
+at work. “As to that,” he said, “the deed was done, and there was no
+question as to who did it.” His answer was, he could do nothing in the
+case, unless some white man would come forward and testify. He could
+issue no warrant on my word. If I had been killed in the presence of a
+thousand colored people, their testimony combined would have been
+insufficient to have arrested one of the murderers. Master Hugh, for
+once, was compelled to say this state of things was too bad. Of course,
+it was impossible to get any white man to volunteer his testimony in my
+behalf, and against the white young men. Even those who may have
+sympathized with me were not prepared to do this. It required a degree
+of courage unknown to them to do so; for just at that time, the
+slightest manifestation of humanity toward a colored person was
+denounced as abolitionism, and that name subjected its bearer to
+frightful liabilities. The watchwords of the bloody-minded in that
+region, and in those days, were, “Damn the abolitionists!” and “Damn
+the niggers!” There was nothing done, and probably nothing would have
+been done if I had been killed. Such was, and such remains, the state
+of things in the Christian city of Baltimore.
+
+Master Hugh, finding he could get no redress, refused to let me go back
+again to Mr. Gardner. He kept me himself, and his wife dressed my wound
+till I was again restored to health. He then took me into the ship-yard
+of which he was foreman, in the employment of Mr. Walter Price. There I
+was immediately set to calking, and very soon learned the art of using
+my mallet and irons. In the course of one year from the time I left Mr.
+Gardner’s, I was able to command the highest wages given to the most
+experienced calkers. I was now of some importance to my master. I was
+bringing him from six to seven dollars per week. I sometimes brought
+him nine dollars per week: my wages were a dollar and a half a day.
+After learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own
+contracts, and collected the money which I earned. My pathway became
+much more smooth than before; my condition was now much more
+comfortable. When I could get no calking to do, I did nothing. During
+these leisure times, those old notions about freedom would steal over
+me again. When in Mr. Gardner’s employment, I was kept in such a
+perpetual whirl of excitement, I could think of nothing, scarcely, but
+my life; and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty. I have
+observed this in my experience of slavery,—that whenever my condition
+was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only
+increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain
+my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is
+necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his
+moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the
+power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in
+slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be
+brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.
+
+I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day.
+I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully
+my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to
+deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because
+he earned it,—not because he had any hand in earning it,—not because I
+owed it to him,—nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a
+right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give
+it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is
+exactly the same.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI
+
+
+I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally
+succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any
+of the peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my
+intention not to state all the facts connected with the transaction. My
+reasons for pursuing this course may be understood from the following:
+First, were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not
+only possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be
+involved in the most embarrassing difficulties. Secondly, such a
+statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part
+of slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would, of
+course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother
+bondman might escape his galling chains. I deeply regret the necessity
+that impels me to suppress any thing of importance connected with my
+experience in slavery. It would afford me great pleasure indeed, as
+well as materially add to the interest of my narrative, were I at
+liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I know exists in the minds of
+many, by an accurate statement of all the facts pertaining to my most
+fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this pleasure, and the
+curious of the gratification which such a statement would afford. I
+would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations which
+evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself, and
+thereby run the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a
+brother slave might clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
+
+I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our
+western friends have conducted what they call the _underground
+railroad,_ but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made
+most emphatically the _upperground railroad._ I honor those good men
+and women for their noble daring, and applaud them for willingly
+subjecting themselves to bloody persecution, by openly avowing their
+participation in the escape of slaves. I, however, can see very little
+good resulting from such a course, either to themselves or the slaves
+escaping; while, upon the other hand, I see and feel assured that those
+open declarations are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, who are
+seeking to escape. They do nothing towards enlightening the slave,
+whilst they do much towards enlightening the master. They stimulate him
+to greater watchfulness, and enhance his power to capture his slave. We
+owe something to the slave south of the line as well as to those north
+of it; and in aiding the latter on their way to freedom, we should be
+careful to do nothing which would be likely to hinder the former from
+escaping from slavery. I would keep the merciless slaveholder
+profoundly ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave. I
+would leave him to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible
+tormentors, ever ready to snatch from his infernal grasp his trembling
+prey. Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness
+commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at
+every step he takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running
+the frightful risk of having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible
+agency. Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by
+which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother. But enough of
+this. I will now proceed to the statement of those facts, connected
+with my escape, for which I am alone responsible, and for which no one
+can be made to suffer but myself.
+
+In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite restless. I could
+see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of
+my toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly
+wages, he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a
+robber-like fierceness, and ask, “Is this all?” He was satisfied with
+nothing less than the last cent. He would, however, when I made him six
+dollars, sometimes give me six cents, to encourage me. It had the
+opposite effect. I regarded it as a sort of admission of my right to
+the whole. The fact that he gave me any part of my wages was proof, to
+my mind, that he believed me entitled to the whole of them. I always
+felt worse for having received any thing; for I feared that the giving
+me a few cents would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself to
+be a pretty honorable sort of robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was
+ever on the look-out for means of escape; and, finding no direct means,
+I determined to try to hire my time, with a view of getting money with
+which to make my escape. In the spring of 1838, when Master Thomas came
+to Baltimore to purchase his spring goods, I got an opportunity, and
+applied to him to allow me to hire my time. He unhesitatingly refused
+my request, and told me this was another stratagem by which to escape.
+He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and that, in
+the event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts
+to catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He told
+me, if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He
+said, if I behaved myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed,
+he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me
+to depend solely upon him for happiness. He seemed to see fully the
+pressing necessity of setting aside my intellectual nature, in order to
+contentment in slavery. But in spite of him, and even in spite of
+myself, I continued to think, and to think about the injustice of my
+enslavement, and the means of escape.
+
+About two months after this, I applied to Master Hugh for the privilege
+of hiring my time. He was not acquainted with the fact that I had
+applied to Master Thomas, and had been refused. He too, at first,
+seemed disposed to refuse; but, after some reflection, he granted me
+the privilege, and proposed the following terms: I was to be allowed
+all my time, make all contracts with those for whom I worked, and find
+my own employment; and, in return for this liberty, I was to pay him
+three dollars at the end of each week; find myself in calking tools,
+and in board and clothing. My board was two dollars and a half per
+week. This, with the wear and tear of clothing and calking tools, made
+my regular expenses about six dollars per week. This amount I was
+compelled to make up, or relinquish the privilege of hiring my time.
+Rain or shine, work or no work, at the end of each week the money must
+be forthcoming, or I must give up my privilege. This arrangement, it
+will be perceived, was decidedly in my master’s favor. It relieved him
+of all need of looking after me. His money was sure. He received all
+the benefits of slaveholding without its evils; while I endured all the
+evils of a slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety of a freeman. I
+found it a hard bargain. But, hard as it was, I thought it better than
+the old mode of getting along. It was a step towards freedom to be
+allowed to bear the responsibilities of a freeman, and I was determined
+to hold on upon it. I bent myself to the work of making money. I was
+ready to work at night as well as day, and by the most untiring
+perseverance and industry, I made enough to meet my expenses, and lay
+up a little money every week. I went on thus from May till August.
+Master Hugh then refused to allow me to hire my time longer. The ground
+for his refusal was a failure on my part, one Saturday night, to pay
+him for my week’s time. This failure was occasioned by my attending a
+camp meeting about ten miles from Baltimore. During the week, I had
+entered into an engagement with a number of young friends to start from
+Baltimore to the camp ground early Saturday evening; and being detained
+by my employer, I was unable to get down to Master Hugh’s without
+disappointing the company. I knew that Master Hugh was in no special
+need of the money that night. I therefore decided to go to camp
+meeting, and upon my return pay him the three dollars. I staid at the
+camp meeting one day longer than I intended when I left. But as soon as
+I returned, I called upon him to pay him what he considered his due. I
+found him very angry; he could scarce restrain his wrath. He said he
+had a great mind to give me a severe whipping. He wished to know how I
+dared go out of the city without asking his permission. I told him I
+hired my time and while I paid him the price which he asked for it, I
+did not know that I was bound to ask him when and where I should go.
+This reply troubled him; and, after reflecting a few moments, he turned
+to me, and said I should hire my time no longer; that the next thing he
+should know of, I would be running away. Upon the same plea, he told me
+to bring my tools and clothing home forthwith. I did so; but instead of
+seeking work, as I had been accustomed to do previously to hiring my
+time, I spent the whole week without the performance of a single stroke
+of work. I did this in retaliation. Saturday night, he called upon me
+as usual for my week’s wages. I told him I had no wages; I had done no
+work that week. Here we were upon the point of coming to blows. He
+raved, and swore his determination to get hold of me. I did not allow
+myself a single word; but was resolved, if he laid the weight of his
+hand upon me, it should be blow for blow. He did not strike me, but
+told me that he would find me in constant employment in future. I
+thought the matter over during the next day, Sunday, and finally
+resolved upon the third day of September, as the day upon which I would
+make a second attempt to secure my freedom. I now had three weeks
+during which to prepare for my journey. Early on Monday morning, before
+Master Hugh had time to make any engagement for me, I went out and got
+employment of Mr. Butler, at his ship-yard near the drawbridge, upon
+what is called the City Block, thus making it unnecessary for him to
+seek employment for me. At the end of the week, I brought him between
+eight and nine dollars. He seemed very well pleased, and asked why I
+did not do the same the week before. He little knew what my plans were.
+My object in working steadily was to remove any suspicion he might
+entertain of my intent to run away; and in this I succeeded admirably.
+I suppose he thought I was never better satisfied with my condition
+than at the very time during which I was planning my escape. The second
+week passed, and again I carried him my full wages; and so well pleased
+was he, that he gave me twenty-five cents, (quite a large sum for a
+slaveholder to give a slave,) and bade me to make a good use of it. I
+told him I would.
+
+Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was
+trouble. It is impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of
+my contemplated start drew near. I had a number of warmhearted friends
+in Baltimore,—friends that I loved almost as I did my life,—and the
+thought of being separated from them forever was painful beyond
+expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery,
+who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to
+their friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most
+painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my
+tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else. Besides
+the pain of separation, the dread and apprehension of a failure
+exceeded what I had experienced at my first attempt. The appalling
+defeat I then sustained returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if
+I failed in this attempt, my case would be a hopeless one—it would seal
+my fate as a slave forever. I could not hope to get off with any thing
+less than the severest punishment, and being placed beyond the means of
+escape. It required no very vivid imagination to depict the most
+frightful scenes through which I should have to pass, in case I failed.
+The wretchedness of slavery, and the blessedness of freedom, were
+perpetually before me. It was life and death with me. But I remained
+firm, and, according to my resolution, on the third day of September,
+1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York without the
+slightest interruption of any kind. How I did so,—what means I
+adopted,—what direction I travelled, and by what mode of conveyance,—I
+must leave unexplained, for the reasons before mentioned.
+
+I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free
+State. I have never been able to answer the question with any
+satisfaction to myself. It was a moment of the highest excitement I
+ever experienced. I suppose I felt as one may imagine the unarmed
+mariner to feel when he is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the
+pursuit of a pirate. In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my
+arrival at New York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of
+hungry lions. This state of mind, however, very soon subsided; and I
+was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I
+was yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of
+slavery. This in itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm.
+But the loneliness overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands,
+and yet a perfect stranger; without home and without friends, in the
+midst of thousands of my own brethren—children of a common Father, and
+yet I dared not to unfold to any one of them my sad condition. I was
+afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and
+thereby falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose
+business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the
+ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey. The motto
+which I adopted when I started from slavery was this—“Trust no man!” I
+saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man cause
+for distrust. It was a most painful situation; and, to understand it,
+one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar
+circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave in a strange land—a land
+given up to be the hunting-ground for slaveholders—whose inhabitants
+are legalized kidnappers—where he is every moment subjected to the
+terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the
+hideous crocodile seizes upon his prey!—I say, let him place himself in
+my situation—without home or friends—without money or credit—wanting
+shelter, and no one to give it—wanting bread, and no money to buy
+it,—and at the same time let him feel that he is pursued by merciless
+men-hunters, and in total darkness as to what to do, where to go, or
+where to stay,—perfectly helpless both as to the means of defence and
+means of escape,—in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible
+gnawings of hunger,—in the midst of houses, yet having no home,—among
+fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose
+greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is
+only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up
+the helpless fish upon which they subsist,—I say, let him be placed in
+this most trying situation,—the situation in which I was placed,—then,
+and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know
+how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.
+
+Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in this distressed situation.
+I was relieved from it by the humane hand of _Mr. David Ruggles_, whose
+vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget. I am glad
+of an opportunity to express, as far as words can, the love and
+gratitude I bear him. Mr. Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and
+is himself in need of the same kind offices which he was once so
+forward in the performance of toward others. I had been in New York but
+a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to
+his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets. Mr.
+Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable _Darg_ case, as
+well as attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways
+and means for their successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed
+in on almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his
+enemies.
+
+Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished to know of me where I
+wanted to go; as he deemed it unsafe for me to remain in New York. I
+told him I was a calker, and should like to go where I could get work.
+I thought of going to Canada; but he decided against it, and in favor
+of my going to New Bedford, thinking I should be able to get work there
+at my trade. At this time, Anna,[2] my intended wife, came on; for I
+wrote to her immediately after my arrival at New York, (notwithstanding
+my homeless, houseless, and helpless condition,) informing her of my
+successful flight, and wishing her to come on forthwith. In a few days
+after her arrival, Mr. Ruggles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington,
+who, in the presence of Mr. Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and two or three
+others, performed the marriage ceremony, and gave us a certificate, of
+which the following is an exact copy:—
+
+“This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick
+Johnson[3] and Anna Murray, as man and wife, in the presence of Mr.
+David Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels.
+
+
+“JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON
+“_New York, Sept_. 15, 1838”
+
+
+ [2] She was free.
+
+
+ [3] I had changed my name from Frederick _Bailey_ to that of
+ _Johnson_.
+
+
+Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar bill from Mr.
+Ruggles, I shouldered one part of our baggage, and Anna took up the
+other, and we set out forthwith to take passage on board of the
+steamboat John W. Richmond for Newport, on our way to New Bedford. Mr.
+Ruggles gave me a letter to a Mr. Shaw in Newport, and told me, in case
+my money did not serve me to New Bedford, to stop in Newport and obtain
+further assistance; but upon our arrival at Newport, we were so anxious
+to get to a place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the
+necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take seats in the stage,
+and promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do
+this by two excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names
+I afterward ascertained to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber.
+They seemed at once to understand our circumstances, and gave us such
+assurance of their friendliness as put us fully at ease in their
+presence.
+
+It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time. Upon
+reaching New Bedford, we were directed to the house of Mr. Nathan
+Johnson, by whom we were kindly received, and hospitably provided for.
+Both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson took a deep and lively interest in our
+welfare. They proved themselves quite worthy of the name of
+abolitionists. When the stage-driver found us unable to pay our fare,
+he held on upon our baggage as security for the debt. I had but to
+mention the fact to Mr. Johnson, and he forthwith advanced the money.
+
+We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for
+the duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom. On the morning
+after our arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the
+question arose as to what name I should be called by. The name given me
+by my mother was, “Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.” I, however,
+had dispensed with the two middle names long before I left Maryland so
+that I was generally known by the name of “Frederick Bailey.” I started
+from Baltimore bearing the name of “Stanley.” When I got to New York, I
+again changed my name to “Frederick Johnson,” and thought that would be
+the last change. But when I got to New Bedford, I found it necessary
+again to change my name. The reason of this necessity was, that there
+were so many Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to
+distinguish between them. I gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of choosing
+me a name, but told him he must not take from me the name of
+“Frederick.” I must hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my
+identity. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and
+at once suggested that my name be “Douglass.” From that time until now
+I have been called “Frederick Douglass;” and as I am more widely known
+by that name than by either of the others, I shall continue to use it
+as my own.
+
+I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New
+Bedford. The impression which I had received respecting the character
+and condition of the people of the north, I found to be singularly
+erroneous. I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of
+the comforts, and scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at
+the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of the
+south. I probably came to this conclusion from the fact that northern
+people owned no slaves. I supposed that they were about upon a level
+with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew _they_ were
+exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their poverty as
+the necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had
+somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could
+be no wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north,
+I expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated
+population, living in the most Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing
+of the ease, luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such
+being my conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New
+Bedford may very readily infer how palpably I must have seen my
+mistake.
+
+In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the
+wharves, to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded
+with the strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding
+in the stream, I saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order,
+and of the largest size. Upon the right and left, I was walled in by
+granite warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their utmost
+capacity with the necessaries and comforts of life. Added to this,
+almost every body seemed to be at work, but noiselessly so, compared
+with what I had been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no loud
+songs heard from those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard
+no deep oaths or horrid curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of
+men; but all seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand
+his work, and went at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which
+betokened the deep interest which he felt in what he was doing, as well
+as a sense of his own dignity as a man. To me this looked exceedingly
+strange. From the wharves I strolled around and over the town, gazing
+with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful
+dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of wealth,
+comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of
+slaveholding Maryland.
+
+Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no
+dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked
+children and barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see in
+Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael’s, and Baltimore. The people looked
+more able, stronger, healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland. I
+was for once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being
+saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But the most astonishing as well as
+the most interesting thing to me was the condition of the colored
+people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped thither as a
+refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been seven
+years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently
+enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders
+in Maryland. I will venture to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan
+Johnson (of whom I can say with a grateful heart, “I was hungry, and he
+gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger,
+and he took me in”) lived in a neater house; dined at a better table;
+took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral,
+religious, and political character of the nation,—than nine tenths of
+the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a
+working man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but
+those also of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored people much more
+spirited than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a
+determination to protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper,
+at all hazards. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a circumstance
+which illustrated their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were
+on unfriendly terms. The former was heard to threaten the latter with
+informing his master of his whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was
+called among the colored people, under the stereotyped notice,
+“Business of importance!” The betrayer was invited to attend. The
+people came at the appointed hour, and organized the meeting by
+appointing a very religious old gentleman as president, who, I believe,
+made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as follows:
+“_Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you young
+men just take him outside the door, and kill him!_” With this, a number
+of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid
+than themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not
+been seen in New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such
+threats, and should there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be
+the consequence.
+
+I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop
+with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went
+at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It
+was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by
+those who have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which
+was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the
+moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a
+pleasure I had never before experienced. I was at work for myself and
+newly-married wife. It was to me the starting-point of a new existence.
+When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of
+calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among
+the white calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course I
+could get no employment.[4] Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I
+threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of
+work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse
+and saw, and I very soon found myself a plenty of work. There was no
+work too hard—none too dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal,
+carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,—all of which I did
+for nearly three years in New Bedford, before I became known to the
+anti-slavery world.
+
+ [4] I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking
+ in New Bedford—a result of anti-slavery effort.
+
+
+In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young
+man to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the “Liberator.” I
+told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I
+remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally
+became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to
+week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to
+describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on
+fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciations
+of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery—and its powerful
+attacks upon the upholders of the institution—sent a thrill of joy
+through my soul, such as I had never felt before!
+
+I had not long been a reader of the “Liberator,” before I got a pretty
+correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery
+reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what
+I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in
+an anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings,
+because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But,
+while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of
+August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time
+much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard
+me speak in the colored people’s meeting at New Bedford. It was a
+severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt
+myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me
+down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and
+said what I desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I
+have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren—with what
+success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my
+labors to decide.
+
+
+
+ APPENDIX
+
+
+I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in
+several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting
+religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious
+views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the
+liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the
+following brief explanation. What I have said respecting and against
+religion, I mean strictly to apply to the _slaveholding religion_ of
+this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for,
+between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ,
+I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the
+one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as
+bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity
+to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial
+Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding,
+women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical
+Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most
+deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I
+look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds,
+and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of
+“stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I
+am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious
+pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every
+where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers
+for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who
+wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on
+Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The
+man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a
+class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the
+path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of
+prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who
+proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of
+learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the
+religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred
+influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The
+warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that
+scatters whole families,—sundering husbands and wives, parents and
+children, sisters and brothers,—leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth
+desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer
+against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to
+support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the _Poor
+Heathen! All For The Glory Of God And The Good Of Souls!_ The slave
+auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other,
+and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the
+religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals
+in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the
+church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling
+of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the
+church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and
+souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they
+mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to
+support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal
+business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and
+robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and
+hell presenting the semblance of paradise.
+
+“Just God! and these are they,v Who minister at thine altar, God of
+right!
+Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay
+On Israel’s ark of light.
+
+“What! preach, and kidnap men?
+Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?
+Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
+Bolt hard the captive’s door?
+
+“What! servants of thy own
+Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
+The homeless and the outcast, fettering down
+The tasked and plundered slave!
+
+“Pilate and Herod friends!
+Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!
+Just God and holy! is that church which lends
+Strength to the spoiler thine?”
+
+
+The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may
+be as truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, “They
+bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s
+shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their
+fingers. All their works they do for to be seen of men.—They love the
+uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, . . .
+. . . and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.—But woe unto you, scribes
+and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against
+men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
+entering to go in. Ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make
+long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Ye
+compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye
+make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.—Woe unto you,
+scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise,
+and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
+mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
+other undone. Ye blind guides! which strain at a gnat, and swallow a
+camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make
+clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but within, they are
+full of extortion and excess.—Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
+hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear
+beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all
+uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but
+within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”
+
+Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of
+the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain
+at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our
+churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a
+_sheep_-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a
+_man_-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with
+them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward
+forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters
+of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to
+sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented
+as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate
+their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other
+side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible
+put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise
+and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors.
+
+Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to
+avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I
+mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words,
+deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling
+themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It
+is against religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it
+my duty to testify.
+
+I conclude these remarks by copying the following portrait of the
+religion of the south, (which is, by communion and fellowship, the
+religion of the north,) which I soberly affirm is “true to the life,”
+and without caricature or the slightest exaggeration. It is said to
+have been drawn, several years before the present anti-slavery
+agitation began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing
+at the south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners,
+and piety, with his own eyes. “Shall I not visit for these things?
+saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”
+
+
+A PARODY
+
+
+“Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell
+How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,
+And women buy and children sell,
+And preach all sinners down to hell,
+And sing of heavenly union.
+
+“They’ll bleat and baa, dona like goats,
+Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,
+Array their backs in fine black coats,
+Then seize their negroes by their throats,
+And choke, for heavenly union.
+
+“They’ll church you if you sip a dram,
+And damn you if you steal a lamb;
+Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,
+Of human rights, and bread and ham;
+Kidnapper’s heavenly union.
+
+“They’ll loudly talk of Christ’s reward,
+And bind his image with a cord,
+And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,
+And sell their brother in the Lord
+To handcuffed heavenly union.
+
+“They’ll read and sing a sacred song,
+And make a prayer both loud and long,
+And teach the right and do the wrong,
+Hailing the brother, sister throng,
+With words of heavenly union.
+
+“We wonder how such saints can sing,
+Or praise the Lord upon the wing,
+Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,
+And to their slaves and mammon cling,
+In guilty conscience union.
+
+“They’ll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,
+And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie,
+And lay up treasures in the sky,
+By making switch and cowskin fly,
+In hope of heavenly union.
+
+“They’ll crack old Tony on the skull,
+And preach and roar like Bashan bull,
+Or braying ass, of mischief full,
+Then seize old Jacob by the wool,
+And pull for heavenly union.
+
+“A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,
+Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,
+Yet never would afford relief
+To needy, sable sons of grief,
+Was big with heavenly union.
+
+“‘Love not the world,’ the preacher said,
+And winked his eye, and shook his head;
+He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,
+Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,
+Yet still loved heavenly union.
+
+“Another preacher whining spoke
+Of One whose heart for sinners broke:
+He tied old Nanny to an oak,
+And drew the blood at every stroke,
+And prayed for heavenly union.
+
+“Two others oped their iron jaws,
+And waved their children-stealing paws;
+There sat their children in gewgaws;
+By stinting negroes’ backs and maws,
+They kept up heavenly union.
+
+“All good from Jack another takes,
+And entertains their flirts and rakes,
+Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes,
+And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;
+And this goes down for union.”
+
+
+Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something
+toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the
+glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in
+bonds—faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice,
+for success in my humble efforts—and solemnly pledging my self anew to
+the sacred cause,—I subscribe myself,
+
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+
+
+LYNN, _Mass., April_ 28, 1845.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick
-Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
-       An American Slave
-
-Author: Frederick Douglass
-
-Release Date: January 10, 2006 [EBook #23]
-Last Updated: October 28, 2020
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FREDERICK DOUGLASS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      <br /> <br />
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-    Note from the original file: This electronic book is being released at
-    this time to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. [Born January
-    15, 1929] [Officially celebrated January 20, 1992]
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      <br /> <br />
-    </p>
-    <h2>
-      NARRATIVE<br /> OF THE<br /> LIFE<br /> OF<br />
-    </h2>
-    <h1>
-      FREDERICK DOUGLASS
-    </h1>
-    <h2>
-      AN<br /> AMERICAN SLAVE.<br /> WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      <br /> <br />
-    </p>
-    <h4>
-      BOSTON<br /><br /> PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,<br /> NO. 25
-      CORNHILL<br /> 1845<br /><br />
-    </h4>
-    <h5>
-      ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,<br /> IN THE YEAR 1845<br /> BY
-      FREDERICK DOUGLASS,<br /> IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT<br />
-      OF MASSACHUSETTS.<br />
-    </h5>
-    <p>
-      <br /> <br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <br /> <br />
-    </p>
-    <blockquote>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
-      </p>
-      <p>
-        <br />
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ. </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> FREDERICK DOUGLASS. </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2H_APPE"> APPENDIX </a>
-      </p>
-      <p class="toc">
-        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> A PARODY </a>
-      </p>
-    </blockquote>
-    <p>
-      <br /> <br />
-    </p>
-    <hr />
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
-    </p>
-    <h2>
-      PREFACE
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in
-      Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with
-      <i>Frederick Douglass</i>, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a
-      stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made
-      his escape from the southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his
-      curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the
-      abolitionists,&mdash;of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description
-      while he was a slave,&mdash;he was induced to give his attendance, on the
-      occasion alluded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!&mdash;fortunate for the millions of
-      his manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful
-      thraldom!&mdash;fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of
-      universal liberty!&mdash;fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has
-      already done so much to save and bless!&mdash;fortunate for a large circle
-      of friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly
-      secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits of
-      character, by his ever-abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as
-      being bound with them!&mdash;fortunate for the multitudes, in various
-      parts of our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of
-      slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to
-      virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the enslavers of
-      men!&mdash;fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into the field
-      of public usefulness, "gave the world assurance of a MAN," quickened the
-      slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to the great work of
-      breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I shall never forget his first speech at the convention&mdash;the
-      extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind&mdash;the powerful
-      impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely taken by
-      surprise&mdash;the applause which followed from the beginning to the end
-      of his felicitous remarks. 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 proportion and stature
-      commanding and exact&mdash;in intellect richly endowed&mdash;in natural
-      eloquence a prodigy&mdash;in soul manifestly "created but a little lower
-      than the angels"&mdash;yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,&mdash;trembling
-      for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a
-      single white person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards,
-      for the love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an
-      intellectual and moral being&mdash;needing nothing but a comparatively
-      small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a
-      blessing to his race&mdash;by the law of the land, by the voice of the
-      people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a
-      beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on <i>Mr. Douglass</i> to address the
-      convention. He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and
-      embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a
-      novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the
-      audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart,
-      he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave,
-      and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and
-      thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken his seat, filled with hope
-      and admiration, I rose, and declared that <i>Patrick Henry</i>, of revolutionary
-      fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the
-      one we had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive. So I
-      believed at that time&mdash;such is my belief now. I reminded the audience
-      of the peril which surrounded this self-emancipated young man at the
-      North,&mdash;even in Massachusetts, on the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers,
-      among the descendants of revolutionary sires; and I appealed to them,
-      whether they would ever allow him to be carried back into slavery,&mdash;law
-      or no law, constitution or no constitution. The response was unanimous and
-      in thunder-tones&mdash;"NO!" "Will you succor and protect him as a
-      brother-man&mdash;a resident of the old Bay State?" "YES!" shouted the
-      whole mass, with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants south
-      of Mason and Dixon's line might almost have heard the mighty burst of
-      feeling, and recognized it as the pledge of an invincible determination,
-      on the part of those who gave it, never to betray him that wanders, but to
-      hide the outcast, and firmly to abide the consequences.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if <i>Mr. Douglass</i> could
-      be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents to the promotion of the
-      anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be given to it, and a
-      stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern prejudice against a
-      colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to instil hope and courage into
-      his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a vocation so anomalous
-      and responsible for a person in his situation; and I was seconded in this
-      effort by warm-hearted friends, especially by the late General Agent of
-      the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, <i>Mr. John A. Collins</i>, whose
-      judgment in this instance entirely coincided with my own. At first, he
-      could give no encouragement; with unfeigned diffidence, he expressed his
-      conviction that he was not adequate to the performance of so great a task;
-      the path marked out was wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely
-      apprehensive that he should do more harm than good. After much
-      deliberation, however, he consented to make a trial; and ever since that
-      period, he has acted as a lecturing agent, under the auspices either of
-      the American or the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has
-      been most abundant; and his success in combating prejudice, in gaining
-      proselytes, in agitating the public mind, has far surpassed the most
-      sanguine expectations that were raised at the commencement of his
-      brilliant career. He has borne himself with gentleness and meekness, yet
-      with true manliness of character. As a public speaker, he excels in
-      pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of
-      language. There is in him that union of head and heart, which is
-      indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of the hearts
-      of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May he
-      continue to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God," that he may be
-      increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at
-      home or abroad!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient
-      advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive
-      slave, in the person of <i>Frederick Douglass</i>; and that the free colored
-      population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their
-      own number, in the person of <i>Charles Lenox Remond</i>, whose eloquent appeals
-      have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides of the
-      Atlantic. Let the calumniators of the colored race despise themselves for
-      their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of
-      the natural inferiority of those who require nothing but time and
-      opportunity to attain to the highest point of human excellence.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the
-      population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and
-      horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of
-      humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone
-      to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral
-      nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet
-      how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful
-      bondage, under which they have been groaning for centuries! To illustrate
-      the effect of slavery on the white man,&mdash;to show that he has no
-      powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior to those of his black
-      brother,&mdash;<i>Daniel O'Connell</i>, the distinguished advocate of universal
-      emancipation, and the mightiest champion of prostrate but not conquered
-      Ireland, relates the following anecdote in a speech delivered by him in
-      the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the Loyal National Repeal
-      Association, March 31, 1845. "No matter," said <i>Mr. O'Connell</i>, "under what
-      specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still hideous. <i>It has
-      a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble faculty of man.</i>
-      An American sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he was
-      kept in slavery for three years, was, at the expiration of that period,
-      found to be imbruted and stultified&mdash;he had lost all reasoning power;
-      and having forgotten his native language, could only utter some savage
-      gibberish between Arabic and English, which nobody could understand, and
-      which even he himself found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the
-      humanizing influence of <i>The Domestic Institution</i>!" Admitting this to have
-      been an extraordinary case of mental deterioration, it proves at least
-      that the white slave can sink as low in the scale of humanity as the black
-      one.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <i>Mr. Douglass</i> has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in his
-      own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to employ
-      some one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production; and,
-      considering how long and dark was the career he had to run as a slave,&mdash;how
-      few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his
-      iron fetters,&mdash;it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his head
-      and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast,
-      an afflicted spirit,&mdash;without being filled with an unutterable
-      abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a
-      determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable system,&mdash;without
-      trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God,
-      who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened
-      that it cannot save,&mdash;must have a flinty heart, and be qualified to
-      act the part of a trafficker "in slaves and the souls of men." I am
-      confident that it is essentially true in all its statements; that nothing
-      has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the
-      imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather than overstates a
-      single fact in regard to <i>slavery as it is</i>. The experience of <i>Frederick
-            Douglass</i>, as a slave, was not a peculiar one; his lot was not especially a
-      hard one; his case may be regarded as a very fair specimen of the
-      treatment of slaves in Maryland, in which State it is conceded that they
-      are better fed and less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or
-      Louisiana. Many have suffered incomparably more, while very few on the
-      plantations have suffered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his
-      situation! what terrible chastisements were inflicted upon his person!
-      what still more shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all
-      his noble powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated,
-      even by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ
-      Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how
-      destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest extremities!
-      how heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded in blackness the last ray
-      of hope, and filled the future with terror and gloom! what longings after
-      freedom took possession of his breast, and how his misery augmented, in
-      proportion as he grew reflective and intelligent,&mdash;thus demonstrating
-      that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he thought, reasoned, felt,
-      under the lash of the driver, with the chains upon his limbs! what perils
-      he encountered in his endeavors to escape from his horrible doom! and how
-      signal have been his deliverance and preservation in the midst of a nation
-      of pitiless enemies!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great
-      eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them all is the
-      description <i>Douglass</i> gives of his feelings, as he stood soliloquizing
-      respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being a freeman, on
-      the banks of the Chesapeake Bay&mdash;viewing the receding vessels as they
-      flew with their white wings before the breeze, and apostrophizing them as
-      animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who can read that passage, and
-      be insensible to its pathos and sublimity? Compressed into it is a whole
-      Alexandrian library of thought, feeling, and sentiment&mdash;all that can,
-      all that need be urged, in the form of expostulation, entreaty, rebuke,
-      against that crime of crimes,&mdash;making man the property of his
-      fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system, which entombs the godlike mind
-      of man, defaces the divine image, reduces those who by creation were
-      crowned with glory and honor to a level with four-footed beasts, and
-      exalts the dealer in human flesh above all that is called God! Why should
-      its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that
-      continually? What does its presence imply but the absence of all fear of
-      God, all regard for man, on the part of the people of the United States?
-      Heaven speed its eternal overthrow!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that
-      they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any
-      recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They do
-      not deny that the slaves are held as property; but that terrible fact
-      seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure to outrage,
-      or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of mutilations and
-      brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the banishment of all
-      light and knowledge, and they affect to be greatly indignant at such
-      enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements, such abominable
-      libels on the character of the southern planters! As if all these direful
-      outrages were not the natural results of slavery! As if it were less cruel
-      to reduce a human being to the condition of a thing, than to give him a
-      severe flagellation, or to deprive him of necessary food and clothing! As
-      if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles, blood-hounds, overseers, drivers,
-      patrols, were not all indispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give
-      protection to their ruthless oppressors! As if, when the marriage
-      institution is abolished, concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not
-      necessarily abound; when all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any
-      barrier remains to protect the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when
-      absolute power is assumed over life and liberty, it will not be wielded
-      with destructive sway! Skeptics of this character abound in society. In
-      some few instances, their incredulity arises from a want of reflection;
-      but, generally, it indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield
-      slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race,
-      whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit the shocking tales of
-      slaveholding cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative; but
-      they will labor in vain. <i>Mr. Douglass</i> has frankly disclosed the place of
-      his birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and soul,
-      and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has alleged
-      against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be disproved, if they
-      are untrue.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
-      cruelty,&mdash;in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave
-      belonging to a neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten
-      within his lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer
-      blew out the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape
-      a bloody scourging. <i>Mr. Douglass</i> states that in neither of these instances
-      was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial investigation. The
-      Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates a similar case of atrocity,
-      perpetrated with similar impunity&mdash;as follows:&mdash;"<i>Shooting a
-      slave.</i>&mdash;We learn, upon the authority of a letter from Charles
-      county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city, that a young man,
-      named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and whose father, it is
-      believed, holds an office at Washington, killed one of the slaves upon his
-      father's farm by shooting him. The letter states that young Matthews had
-      been left in charge of the farm; that he gave an order to the servant,
-      which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to the house, <i>obtained a gun,
-      and, returning, shot the servant.</i> He immediately, the letter
-      continues, fled to his father's residence, where he still remains
-      unmolested."&mdash;Let it never be forgotten, that no slaveholder or
-      overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on the person of a
-      slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony of colored
-      witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are adjudged to
-      be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though they were
-      indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal protection
-      in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave population; and any
-      amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with impunity. Is it possible
-      for the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters is
-      vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any thing
-      but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest degree
-      pernicious. The testimony of <i>Mr. Douglass</i>, on this point, is sustained by
-      a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. "A slaveholder's
-      profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He is a felon of the
-      highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in
-      the other scale."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the
-      side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the
-      foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do and
-      dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your
-      efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what may&mdash;cost
-      what it may&mdash;inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze,
-      as your religious and political motto&mdash;"NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY!
-      NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON,<br /> <i>May</i> 1, 1845.
-    </p>
-    <p>
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-    <h2>
-      LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
-    </h2>
-    <h3>
-      BOSTON, APRIL 22, 1845.
-    </h3>
-    <p>
-      My Dear Friend:
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      You remember the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion
-      complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote
-      history."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I am glad the time has come when the "lions write history." We have been
-      left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary
-      evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest sufficiently satisfied
-      with what, it is evident, must be, in general, the results of such a
-      relation, without seeking farther to find whether they have followed in
-      every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the half-peck of corn a week,
-      and love to count the lashes on the slave's back, are seldom the "stuff"
-      out of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made. I remember that,
-      in 1838, many were waiting for the results of the West India experiment,
-      before they could come into our ranks. Those "results" have come long ago;
-      but, alas! few of that number have come with them, as converts. A man must
-      be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has
-      increased the produce of sugar,&mdash;and to hate slavery for other
-      reasons than because it starves men and whips women,&mdash;before he is
-      ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of God's
-      children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice done them.
-      Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C,
-      or knew where the "white sails" of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I
-      see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and want,
-      not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which
-      gathers over his soul.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
-      recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the more
-      remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are told
-      slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is
-      at its best estate&mdash;gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then
-      imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture, as she
-      travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the Shadow of
-      Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in
-      your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak has
-      felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel,
-      persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No
-      one-sided portrait,&mdash;no wholesale complaints,&mdash;but strict
-      justice done, whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a
-      moment, the deadly system with which it was strangely allied. You have
-      been with us, too, some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of
-      rights, which your race enjoy at the North, with that "noon of night"
-      under which they labor south of Mason and Dixon's line. Tell us whether,
-      after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than
-      the pampered slave of the rice swamps!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out some
-      rare specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which even you
-      have drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no individual
-      ills, but such as must mingle always and necessarily in the lot of every
-      slave. They are the essential ingredients, not the occasional results, of
-      the system.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years ago,
-      when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace, you may
-      remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of all. With the
-      exception of a vague description, so I continued, till the other day, when
-      you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the time, whether to thank you
-      or not for the sight of them, when I reflected that it was still
-      dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men to tell their names! They say
-      the fathers, in 1776, signed the Declaration of Independence with the
-      halter about their necks. You, too, publish your declaration of freedom
-      with danger compassing you around. In all the broad lands which the
-      Constitution of the United States overshadows, there is no single spot,&mdash;however
-      narrow or desolate,&mdash;where a fugitive slave can plant himself and
-      say, "I am safe." The whole armory of Northern Law has no shield for you.
-      I am free to say that, in your place, I should throw the MS. into the
-      fire.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, endeared as you are to so
-      many warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to the
-      service of others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and the
-      fearless efforts of those who, trampling the laws and Constitution of the
-      country under their feet, are determined that they will "hide the
-      outcast," and that their hearths shall be, spite of the law, an asylum for
-      the oppressed, if, some time or other, the humblest may stand in our
-      streets, and bear witness in safety against the cruelties of which he has
-      been the victim.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome
-      your story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating
-      contrary to the "statute in such case made and provided." Go on, my dear
-      friend, till you, and those who, like you, have been saved, so as by fire,
-      from the dark prison-house, shall stereotype these free, illegal pulses
-      into statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a blood-stained Union,
-      shall glory in being the house of refuge for the oppressed,&mdash;till we
-      no longer merely "<i>hide</i> the outcast," or make a merit of standing
-      idly by while he is hunted in our midst; but, consecrating anew the soil
-      of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the oppressed, proclaim our <i>welcome</i> to
-      the slave so loudly, that the tones shall reach every hut in the
-      Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted bondman leap up at the thought of
-      old Massachusetts.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      God speed the day!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <i>Till then, and ever,</i> <br /> Yours truly, <br /> WENDELL PHILLIPS
-    </p>
-    <p>
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-    </div>
-    <h1>
-      FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
-    </h1>
-    <p>
-      Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington
-      Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the
-      exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young
-      boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to
-      read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he
-      escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna
-      Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter
-      he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he addressed a
-      convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so
-      greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an
-      agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous persons doubted if
-      he had ever been a slave, so he wrote <i>Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick
-            Douglass</i>. During the Civil War he assisted in the recruiting of colored
-      men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently argued
-      for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he was active in securing
-      and protecting the rights of the freemen. In his later years, at different
-      times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and
-      recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister
-      to Haiti. His other autobiographical works are <i>My Bondage And My Freedom</i>
-      and <i>Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass</i>, published in 1855 and 1881
-      respectively. He died in 1895.
-    </p>
-    <p>
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-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER I
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from
-      Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my
-      age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the
-      larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of
-      theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep
-      their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who
-      could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than
-      planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A
-      want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me
-      even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could
-      not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not
-      allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all
-      such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and
-      evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me
-      now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this,
-      from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen
-      years old.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and
-      Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker
-      complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard
-      speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was
-      my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the
-      means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when
-      I was but an infant&mdash;before I knew her as my mother. It is a common
-      custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children
-      from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has
-      reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on
-      some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the
-      care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is
-      done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's
-      affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural
-      affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times
-      in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at
-      night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from
-      my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the
-      whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was a
-      field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at
-      sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to
-      the contrary&mdash;a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives
-      to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not
-      recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in
-      the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long
-      before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place
-      between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived,
-      and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven
-      years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not allowed
-      to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone
-      long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any
-      considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care,
-      I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should
-      have probably felt at the death of a stranger.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation of
-      who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or may
-      not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my
-      purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that
-      slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of
-      slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and
-      this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a
-      gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable;
-      for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few,
-      sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves
-      invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than
-      others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their
-      mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom do
-      any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she sees
-      them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing
-      to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black slaves.
-      The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out
-      of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may
-      strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children to human
-      flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to do so; for,
-      unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by
-      and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker
-      complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if
-      he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental
-      partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the
-      slave whom he would protect and defend.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was
-      doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great
-      statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the inevitable
-      laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled or not, it is
-      nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of people are
-      springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from those
-      originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their increase do
-      no other good, it will do away the force of the argument, that God cursed
-      Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the lineal descendants of
-      Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at
-      the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into
-      the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white
-      fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have had two masters. My first master's name was Anthony. I do not
-      remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony&mdash;a
-      title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake
-      Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three
-      farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care
-      of an overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a
-      miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always
-      went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and
-      slash the women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at
-      his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself.
-      Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary
-      barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man,
-      hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take
-      great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn
-      of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he
-      used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was
-      literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his
-      gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The
-      louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran
-      fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream,
-      and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he
-      cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever
-      witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well
-      remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was
-      the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a
-      witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the
-      blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I
-      was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit
-      to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old
-      master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one
-      night,&mdash;where or for what I do not know,&mdash;and happened to be
-      absent when my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go
-      out evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in
-      company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to
-      Colonel Lloyd. The young man's name was Ned Roberts, generally called
-      Lloyd's Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to
-      conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions,
-      having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among
-      the colored or white women of our neighborhood.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been
-      found in company with Lloyd's Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what
-      he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of
-      pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting
-      the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of
-      any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her
-      into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck,
-      shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands,
-      calling her at the same time a d&mdash;&mdash;d b&mdash;-h. After crossing
-      her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a
-      large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the
-      stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal
-      purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she
-      stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, "Now, you d&mdash;&mdash;d
-      b&mdash;-h, I'll learn you how to disobey my orders!" and after rolling up
-      his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm,
-      red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him)
-      came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the
-      sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long
-      after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my turn
-      next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it before. I
-      had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation,
-      where she was put to raise the children of the younger women. I had
-      therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often
-      occurred on the plantation.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER II
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      My master's family consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; one
-      daughter, Lucretia, and her husband, Captain Thomas Auld. They lived in
-      one house, upon the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. My master was
-      Colonel Lloyd's clerk and superintendent. He was what might be called the
-      overseer of the overseers. I spent two years of childhood on this
-      plantation in my old master's family. It was here that I witnessed the
-      bloody transaction recorded in the first chapter; and as I received my
-      first impressions of slavery on this plantation, I will give some
-      description of it, and of slavery as it there existed. The plantation is
-      about twelve miles north of Easton, in Talbot county, and is situated on
-      the border of Miles River. The principal products raised upon it were
-      tobacco, corn, and wheat. These were raised in great abundance; so that,
-      with the products of this and the other farms belonging to him, he was
-      able to keep in almost constant employment a large sloop, in carrying them
-      to market at Baltimore. This sloop was named Sally Lloyd, in honor of one
-      of the colonel's daughters. My master's son-in-law, Captain Auld, was
-      master of the vessel; she was otherwise manned by the colonel's own
-      slaves. Their names were Peter, Isaac, Rich, and Jake. These were esteemed
-      very highly by the other slaves, and looked upon as the privileged ones of
-      the plantation; for it was no small affair, in the eyes of the slaves, to
-      be allowed to see Baltimore.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home
-      plantation, and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms
-      belonging to him. The names of the farms nearest to the home plantation
-      were Wye Town and New Design. "Wye Town" was under the overseership of a
-      man named Noah Willis. New Design was under the overseership of a Mr.
-      Townsend. The overseers of these, and all the rest of the farms, numbering
-      over twenty, received advice and direction from the managers of the home
-      plantation. This was the great business place. It was the seat of
-      government for the whole twenty farms. All disputes among the overseers
-      were settled here. If a slave was convicted of any high misdemeanor,
-      became unmanageable, or evinced a determination to run away, he was
-      brought immediately here, severely whipped, put on board the sloop,
-      carried to Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk, or some other
-      slave-trader, as a warning to the slaves remaining.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly
-      allowance of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves
-      received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its
-      equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly clothing
-      consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the
-      shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro
-      cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes; the whole of which
-      could not have cost more than seven dollars. The allowance of the slave
-      children was given to their mothers, or the old women having the care of
-      them. The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes,
-      stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing consisted
-      of two coarse linen shirts per year. When these failed them, they went
-      naked until the next allowance-day. Children from seven to ten years old,
-      of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be
-      considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This, however,
-      is not considered a very great privation. They find less difficulty from
-      the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep; for when their
-      day's work in the field is done, the most of them having their washing,
-      mending, and cooking to do, and having few or none of the ordinary
-      facilities for doing either of these, very many of their sleeping hours
-      are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day; and when this is
-      done, old and young, male and female, married and single, drop down side
-      by side, on one common bed,&mdash;the cold, damp floor,&mdash;each
-      covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets; and here they
-      sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver's horn. At the
-      sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field. There must be no
-      halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe betides them who
-      hear not this morning summons to the field; for if they are not awakened
-      by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of feeling: no age nor sex
-      finds any favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used to stand by the door of
-      the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick and heavy cowskin, ready to
-      whip any one who was so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other
-      cause, was prevented from being ready to start for the field at the sound
-      of the horn.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a
-      woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too,
-      in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother's release.
-      He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to
-      his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood
-      and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk. Scarce a
-      sentence escaped him but that was commenced or concluded by some horrid
-      oath. The field was the place to witness his cruelty and profanity. His
-      presence made it both the field of blood and of blasphemy. From the rising
-      till the going down of the sun, he was cursing, raving, cutting, and
-      slashing among the slaves of the field, in the most frightful manner. His
-      career was short. He died very soon after I went to Colonel Lloyd's; and
-      he died as he lived, uttering, with his dying groans, bitter curses and
-      horrid oaths. His death was regarded by the slaves as the result of a
-      merciful providence.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Severe's place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different
-      man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr.
-      Severe. His course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations of
-      cruelty. He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called
-      by the slaves a good overseer.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country
-      village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed
-      here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting,
-      coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves
-      on the home plantation. The whole place wore a business-like aspect very
-      unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too, conspired to give
-      it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was called by the slaves the
-      <i>Great House Farm.</i> Few privileges were esteemed higher, by the
-      slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do errands at the
-      Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with greatness. A
-      representative could not be prouder of his election to a seat in the
-      American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms would be of his
-      election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They regarded it as
-      evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it
-      was on this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field
-      from under the driver's lash, that they esteemed it a high privilege, one
-      worth careful living for. He was called the smartest and most trusty
-      fellow, who had this honor conferred upon him the most frequently. The
-      competitors for this office sought as diligently to please their
-      overseers, as the office-seekers in the political parties seek to please
-      and deceive the people. The same traits of character might be seen in
-      Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the slaves of the political
-      parties.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly
-      allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly
-      enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for
-      miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the
-      highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they
-      went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up,
-      came out&mdash;if not in the word, in the sound;&mdash;and as frequently
-      in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic
-      sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in
-      the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to weave
-      something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this, when
-      leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:&mdash;
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-     "I am going away to the Great House Farm!
-     O, yea! O, yea! O!"
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem
-      unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to
-      themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs
-      would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of
-      slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject
-      could do.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
-      apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I
-      neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
-      tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they
-      were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of
-      souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony
-      against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The
-      hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with
-      ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing
-      them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while
-      I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its
-      way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception
-      of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that
-      conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery,
-      and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to
-      be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to
-      Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the
-      deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that
-      shall pass through the chambers of his soul,&mdash;and if he is not thus
-      impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate
-      heart."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find
-      persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their
-      contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater
-      mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the
-      slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only
-      as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my
-      experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my
-      happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me
-      while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a
-      desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of
-      contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one
-      and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER III
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated garden, which afforded
-      almost constant employment for four men, besides the chief gardener, (Mr.
-      M'Durmond.) This garden was probably the greatest attraction of the place.
-      During the summer months, people came from far and near&mdash;from
-      Baltimore, Easton, and Annapolis&mdash;to see it. It abounded in fruits of
-      almost every description, from the hardy apple of the north to the
-      delicate orange of the south. This garden was not the least source of
-      trouble on the plantation. Its excellent fruit was quite a temptation to
-      the hungry swarms of boys, as well as the older slaves, belonging to the
-      colonel, few of whom had the virtue or the vice to resist it. Scarcely a
-      day passed, during the summer, but that some slave had to take the lash
-      for stealing fruit. The colonel had to resort to all kinds of stratagems
-      to keep his slaves out of the garden. The last and most successful one was
-      that of tarring his fence all around; after which, if a slave was caught
-      with any tar upon his person, it was deemed sufficient proof that he had
-      either been into the garden, or had tried to get in. In either case, he
-      was severely whipped by the chief gardener. This plan worked well; the
-      slaves became as fearful of tar as of the lash. They seemed to realize the
-      impossibility of touching <i>tar</i> without being defiled.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage. His stable and
-      carriage-house presented the appearance of some of our large city livery
-      establishments. His horses were of the finest form and noblest blood. His
-      carriage-house contained three splendid coaches, three or four gigs,
-      besides dearborns and barouches of the most fashionable style.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This establishment was under the care of two slaves&mdash;old Barney and
-      young Barney&mdash;father and son. To attend to this establishment was
-      their sole work. But it was by no means an easy employment; for in nothing
-      was Colonel Lloyd more particular than in the management of his horses.
-      The slightest inattention to these was unpardonable, and was visited upon
-      those, under whose care they were placed, with the severest punishment; no
-      excuse could shield them, if the colonel only suspected any want of
-      attention to his horses&mdash;a supposition which he frequently indulged,
-      and one which, of course, made the office of old and young Barney a very
-      trying one. They never knew when they were safe from punishment. They were
-      frequently whipped when least deserving, and escaped whipping when most
-      deserving it. Every thing depended upon the looks of the horses, and the
-      state of Colonel Lloyd's own mind when his horses were brought to him for
-      use. If a horse did not move fast enough, or hold his head high enough, it
-      was owing to some fault of his keepers. It was painful to stand near the
-      stable-door, and hear the various complaints against the keepers when a
-      horse was taken out for use. "This horse has not had proper attention. He
-      has not been sufficiently rubbed and curried, or he has not been properly
-      fed; his food was too wet or too dry; he got it too soon or too late; he
-      was too hot or too cold; he had too much hay, and not enough of grain; or
-      he had too much grain, and not enough of hay; instead of old Barney's
-      attending to the horse, he had very improperly left it to his son." To all
-      these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a
-      word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a slave. When
-      he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was literally
-      the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man between fifty
-      and sixty years of age, uncover his bald head, kneel down upon the cold,
-      damp ground, and receive upon his naked and toil-worn shoulders more than
-      thirty lashes at the time. Colonel Lloyd had three sons&mdash;Edward,
-      Murray, and Daniel,&mdash;and three sons-in-law, Mr. Winder, Mr.
-      Nicholson, and Mr. Lowndes. All of these lived at the Great House Farm,
-      and enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased, from
-      old Barney down to William Wilkes, the coach-driver. I have seen Winder
-      make one of the house-servants stand off from him a suitable distance to
-      be touched with the end of his whip, and at every stroke raise great
-      ridges upon his back.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to
-      describing the riches of Job. He kept from ten to fifteen house-servants.
-      He was said to own a thousand slaves, and I think this estimate quite
-      within the truth. Colonel Lloyd owned so many that he did not know them
-      when he saw them; nor did all the slaves of the out-farms know him. It is
-      reported of him, that, while riding along the road one day, he met a
-      colored man, and addressed him in the usual manner of speaking to colored
-      people on the public highways of the south: "Well, boy, whom do you belong
-      to?" "To Colonel Lloyd," replied the slave. "Well, does the colonel treat
-      you well?" "No, sir," was the ready reply. "What, does he work you too
-      hard?" "Yes, sir." "Well, don't he give you enough to eat?" "Yes, sir, he
-      gives me enough, such as it is."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the man
-      also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing
-      with his master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of the matter,
-      until two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then informed by his
-      overseer that, for having found fault with his master, he was now to be
-      sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and
-      thus, without a moment's warning, he was snatched away, and forever
-      sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than
-      death. This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple
-      truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired of
-      as to their condition and the character of their masters, almost
-      universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind. The
-      slaveholders have been known to send in spies among their slaves, to
-      ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition. The
-      frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the
-      maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head. They suppress the truth
-      rather than take the consequences of telling it, and in so doing prove
-      themselves a part of the human family. If they have any thing to say of
-      their masters, it is generally in their masters' favor, especially when
-      speaking to an untried man. I have been frequently asked, when a slave, if
-      I had a kind master, and do not remember ever to have given a negative
-      answer; nor did I, in pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering
-      what was absolutely false; for I always measured the kindness of my master
-      by the standard of kindness set up among slaveholders around us. Moreover,
-      slaves are like other people, and imbibe prejudices quite common to
-      others. They think their own better than that of others. Many, under the
-      influence of this prejudice, think their own masters are better than the
-      masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some cases, when the very
-      reverse is true. Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out
-      and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters,
-      each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the
-      others. At the very same time, they mutually execrate their masters when
-      viewed separately. It was so on our plantation. When Colonel Lloyd's
-      slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a
-      quarrel about their masters; Colonel Lloyd's slaves contending that he was
-      the richest, and Mr. Jepson's slaves that he was the smartest, and most of
-      a man. Colonel Lloyd's slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell
-      Jacob Jepson. Mr. Jepson's slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel
-      Lloyd. These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the
-      parties, and those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at
-      issue. They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was
-      transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a
-      slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER IV
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Hopkins remained but a short time in the office of overseer. Why his
-      career was so short, I do not know, but suppose he lacked the necessary
-      severity to suit Colonel Lloyd. Mr. Hopkins was succeeded by Mr. Austin
-      Gore, a man possessing, in an eminent degree, all those traits of
-      character indispensable to what is called a first-rate overseer. Mr. Gore
-      had served Colonel Lloyd, in the capacity of overseer, upon one of the
-      out-farms, and had shown himself worthy of the high station of overseer
-      upon the home or Great House Farm.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Gore was proud, ambitious, and persevering. He was artful, cruel, and
-      obdurate. He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the place
-      for such a man. It afforded scope for the full exercise of all his powers,
-      and he seemed to be perfectly at home in it. He was one of those who could
-      torture the slightest look, word, or gesture, on the part of the slave,
-      into impudence, and would treat it accordingly. There must be no answering
-      back to him; no explanation was allowed a slave, showing himself to have
-      been wrongfully accused. Mr. Gore acted fully up to the maxim laid down by
-      slaveholders,&mdash;"It is better that a dozen slaves should suffer under
-      the lash, than that the overseer should be convicted, in the presence of
-      the slaves, of having been at fault." No matter how innocent a slave might
-      be&mdash;it availed him nothing, when accused by Mr. Gore of any
-      misdemeanor. To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to
-      be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty.
-      To escape punishment was to escape accusation; and few slaves had the
-      fortune to do either, under the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just
-      proud enough to demand the most debasing homage of the slave, and quite
-      servile enough to crouch, himself, at the feet of the master. He was
-      ambitious enough to be contented with nothing short of the highest rank of
-      overseers, and persevering enough to reach the height of his ambition. He
-      was cruel enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to
-      descend to the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to
-      the voice of a reproving conscience. He was, of all the overseers, the
-      most dreaded by the slaves. His presence was painful; his eye flashed
-      confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice heard, without producing
-      horror and trembling in their ranks.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Gore was a grave man, and, though a young man, he indulged in no
-      jokes, said no funny words, seldom smiled. His words were in perfect
-      keeping with his looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping with his
-      words. Overseers will sometimes indulge in a witty word, even with the
-      slaves; not so with Mr. Gore. He spoke but to command, and commanded but
-      to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly with his words, and bountifully with his
-      whip, never using the former where the latter would answer as well. When
-      he whipped, he seemed to do so from a sense of duty, and feared no
-      consequences. He did nothing reluctantly, no matter how disagreeable;
-      always at his post, never inconsistent. He never promised but to fulfil.
-      He was, in a word, a man of the most inflexible firmness and stone-like
-      coolness.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with
-      which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves
-      under his charge. Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel Lloyd's
-      slaves, by the name of Demby. He had given Demby but few stripes, when, to
-      get rid of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself into a creek, and
-      stood there at the depth of his shoulders, refusing to come out. Mr. Gore
-      told him that he would give him three calls, and that, if he did not come
-      out at the third call, he would shoot him. The first call was given. Demby
-      made no response, but stood his ground. The second and third calls were
-      given with the same result. Mr. Gore then, without consultation or
-      deliberation with any one, not even giving Demby an additional call,
-      raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his standing victim,
-      and in an instant poor Demby was no more. His mangled body sank out of
-      sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon the plantation,
-      excepting Mr. Gore. He alone seemed cool and collected. He was asked by
-      Colonel Lloyd and my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary
-      expedient. His reply was, (as well as I can remember,) that Demby had
-      become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other
-      slaves,&mdash;one which, if suffered to pass without some such
-      demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of
-      all rule and order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave
-      refused to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would
-      soon copy the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the
-      slaves, and the enslavement of the whites. Mr. Gore's defence was
-      satisfactory. He was continued in his station as overseer upon the home
-      plantation. His fame as an overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not
-      even submitted to judicial investigation. It was committed in the presence
-      of slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor testify
-      against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the bloodiest and
-      most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, and uncensured by the
-      community in which he lives. Mr. Gore lived in St. Michael's, Talbot
-      county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is still alive, he very
-      probably lives there now; and if so, he is now, as he was then, as highly
-      esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had not been
-      stained with his brother's blood.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I speak advisedly when I say this,&mdash;that killing a slave, or any
-      colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime,
-      either by the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St.
-      Michael's, killed two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by
-      knocking his brains out. He used to boast of the commission of the awful
-      and bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly, saying, among other
-      things, that he was the only benefactor of his country in the company, and
-      that when others would do as much as he had done, we should be relieved of
-      "the d&mdash;&mdash;d niggers."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I used
-      to live, murdered my wife's cousin, a young girl between fifteen and
-      sixteen years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible manner,
-      breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor girl
-      expired in a few hours afterward. She was immediately buried, but had not
-      been in her untimely grave but a few hours before she was taken up and
-      examined by the coroner, who decided that she had come to her death by
-      severe beating. The offence for which this girl was thus murdered was
-      this:&mdash;She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks's baby, and
-      during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She, having lost her
-      rest for several nights previous, did not hear the crying. They were both
-      in the room with Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks, finding the girl slow to move,
-      jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood by the fireplace, and
-      with it broke the girl's nose and breastbone, and thus ended her life. I
-      will not say that this most horrid murder produced no sensation in the
-      community. It did produce sensation, but not enough to bring the murderess
-      to punishment. There was a warrant issued for her arrest, but it was never
-      served. Thus she escaped not only punishment, but even the pain of being
-      arraigned before a court for her horrid crime.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Whilst I am detailing bloody deeds which took place during my stay on
-      Colonel Lloyd's plantation, I will briefly narrate another, which occurred
-      about the same time as the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Colonel Lloyd's slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their
-      nights and Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the
-      deficiency of their scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel
-      Lloyd, while thus engaged, happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel
-      Lloyd's, and on the premises of Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr.
-      Bondly took offence, and with his musket came down to the shore, and blew
-      its deadly contents into the poor old man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Bondly came over to see Colonel Lloyd the next day, whether to pay him
-      for his property, or to justify himself in what he had done, I know not.
-      At any rate, this whole fiendish transaction was soon hushed up. There was
-      very little said about it at all, and nothing done. It was a common
-      saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a half-cent to
-      kill a "nigger," and a half-cent to bury one.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER V
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel Lloyd's plantation, it was
-      very similar to that of the other slave children. I was not old enough to
-      work in the field, and there being little else than field work to do, I
-      had a great deal of leisure time. The most I had to do was to drive up the
-      cows at evening, keep the fowls out of the garden, keep the front yard
-      clean, and run of errands for my old master's daughter, Mrs. Lucretia
-      Auld. The most of my leisure time I spent in helping Master Daniel Lloyd
-      in finding his birds, after he had shot them. My connection with Master
-      Daniel was of some advantage to me. He became quite attached to me, and
-      was a sort of protector of me. He would not allow the older boys to impose
-      upon me, and would divide his cakes with me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suffered little from any thing
-      else than hunger and cold. I suffered much from hunger, but much more from
-      cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost naked&mdash;no
-      shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow
-      linen shirt, reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must have perished
-      with cold, but that, the coldest nights, I used to steal a bag which was
-      used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into this bag, and there
-      sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out. My feet
-      have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing
-      might be laid in the gashes.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We were not regularly allowanced. Our food was coarse corn meal boiled.
-      This was called <i>mush</i>. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and
-      set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many
-      pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with
-      oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and
-      none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was strongest
-      secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel
-      Lloyd's plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the ecstasy
-      with which I received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony) had
-      determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, brother
-      to my old master's son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld. I received this
-      information about three days before my departure. They were three of the
-      happiest days I ever enjoyed. I spent the most part of all these three
-      days in the creek, washing off the plantation scurf, and preparing myself
-      for my departure.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The pride of appearance which this would indicate was not my own. I spent
-      the time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because Mrs.
-      Lucretia had told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and knees
-      before I could go to Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were very
-      cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty. Besides, she was going
-      to give me a pair of trousers, which I should not put on unless I got all
-      the dirt off me. The thought of owning a pair of trousers was great
-      indeed! It was almost a sufficient motive, not only to make me take off
-      what would be called by pig-drovers the mange, but the skin itself. I went
-      at it in good earnest, working for the first time with the hope of reward.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all suspended
-      in my case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home was
-      charmless; it was not home to me; on parting from it, I could not feel
-      that I was leaving any thing which I could have enjoyed by staying. My
-      mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off, so that I seldom saw her. I
-      had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the same house with me; but
-      the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact
-      of our relationship from our memories. I looked for home elsewhere, and
-      was confident of finding none which I should relish less than the one
-      which I was leaving. If, however, I found in my new home hardship, hunger,
-      whipping, and nakedness, I had the consolation that I should not have
-      escaped any one of them by staying. Having already had more than a taste
-      of them in the house of my old master, and having endured them there, I
-      very naturally inferred my ability to endure them elsewhere, and
-      especially at Baltimore; for I had something of the feeling about
-      Baltimore that is expressed in the proverb, that "being hanged in England
-      is preferable to dying a natural death in Ireland." I had the strongest
-      desire to see Baltimore. Cousin Tom, though not fluent in speech, had
-      inspired me with that desire by his eloquent description of the place. I
-      could never point out any thing at the Great House, no matter how
-      beautiful or powerful, but that he had seen something at Baltimore far
-      exceeding, both in beauty and strength, the object which I pointed out to
-      him. Even the Great House itself, with all its pictures, was far inferior
-      to many buildings in Baltimore. So strong was my desire, that I thought a
-      gratification of it would fully compensate for whatever loss of comforts I
-      should sustain by the exchange. I left without a regret, and with the
-      highest hopes of future happiness.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore on a Saturday morning. I
-      remember only the day of the week, for at that time I had no knowledge of
-      the days of the month, nor the months of the year. On setting sail, I
-      walked aft, and gave to Colonel Lloyd's plantation what I hoped would be
-      the last look. I then placed myself in the bows of the sloop, and there
-      spent the remainder of the day in looking ahead, interesting myself in
-      what was in the distance rather than in things near by or behind.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the afternoon of that day, we reached Annapolis, the capital of the
-      State. We stopped but a few moments, so that I had no time to go on shore.
-      It was the first large town that I had ever seen, and though it would look
-      small compared with some of our New England factory villages, I thought it
-      a wonderful place for its size&mdash;more imposing even than the Great
-      House Farm!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We arrived at Baltimore early on Sunday morning, landing at Smith's Wharf,
-      not far from Bowley's Wharf. We had on board the sloop a large flock of
-      sheep; and after aiding in driving them to the slaughterhouse of Mr.
-      Curtis on Louden Slater's Hill, I was conducted by Rich, one of the hands
-      belonging on board of the sloop, to my new home in Alliciana Street, near
-      Mr. Gardner's ship-yard, on Fells Point.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. and Mrs. Auld were both at home, and met me at the door with their
-      little son Thomas, to take care of whom I had been given. And here I saw
-      what I had never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the most
-      kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld. I wish I
-      could describe the rapture that flashed through my soul as I beheld it. It
-      was a new and strange sight to me, brightening up my pathway with the
-      light of happiness. Little Thomas was told, there was his Freddy,&mdash;and
-      I was told to take care of little Thomas; and thus I entered upon the
-      duties of my new home with the most cheering prospect ahead.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd's plantation as one of the
-      most interesting events of my life. It is possible, and even quite
-      probable, that but for the mere circumstance of being removed from that
-      plantation to Baltimore, I should have to-day, instead of being here
-      seated by my own table, in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness of
-      home, writing this Narrative, been confined in the galling chains of
-      slavery. Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the
-      gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity. I have ever regarded it as the
-      first plain manifestation of that kind providence which has ever since
-      attended me, and marked my life with so many favors. I regarded the
-      selection of myself as being somewhat remarkable. There were a number of
-      slave children that might have been sent from the plantation to Baltimore.
-      There were those younger, those older, and those of the same age. I was
-      chosen from among them all, and was the first, last, and only choice.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this
-      event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I
-      should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the
-      opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring
-      the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own
-      abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a
-      deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within
-      its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this
-      living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained
-      like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit
-      was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER VI
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the
-      door,&mdash;a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had
-      never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her
-      marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She
-      was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business, she
-      had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing
-      effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely
-      knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely unlike any other white
-      woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her as I was accustomed to
-      approach other white ladies. My early instruction was all out of place.
-      The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a slave, did
-      not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor was not gained by it; she
-      seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not deem it impudent or unmannerly
-      for a slave to look her in the face. The meanest slave was put fully at
-      ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen
-      her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil
-      music.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal
-      poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced
-      its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon
-      became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one
-      of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a
-      demon.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly
-      commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted
-      me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point
-      of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade
-      Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it
-      was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own
-      words, further, he said, "If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an
-      ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master&mdash;to do as he
-      is told to do. Learning would <i>spoil</i> the best nigger in the world.
-      Now," said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read,
-      there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.
-      He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to
-      himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make
-      him discontented and unhappy." These words sank deep into my heart,
-      stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into
-      existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special
-      revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful
-      understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what
-      had been to me a most perplexing difficulty&mdash;to wit, the white man's
-      power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized
-      it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to
-      freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the
-      least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid
-      of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which,
-      by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of
-      the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope,
-      and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.
-      The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his
-      wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to
-      convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It
-      gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on
-      the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he
-      most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated.
-      That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a
-      great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly
-      urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a
-      desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as
-      much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my
-      mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked
-      difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed in
-      the country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on
-      the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges
-      altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is a vestige of
-      decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and check those
-      outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the plantation. He
-      is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity of his
-      non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated slave. Few are
-      willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation of being a cruel
-      master; and above all things, they would not be known as not giving a
-      slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious to have it known of
-      him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due to them to say, that
-      most of them do give their slaves enough to eat. There are, however, some
-      painful exceptions to this rule. Directly opposite to us, on Philpot
-      Street, lived Mr. Thomas Hamilton. He owned two slaves. Their names were
-      Henrietta and Mary. Henrietta was about twenty-two years of age, Mary was
-      about fourteen; and of all the mangled and emaciated creatures I ever
-      looked upon, these two were the most so. His heart must be harder than
-      stone, that could look upon these unmoved. The head, neck, and shoulders
-      of Mary were literally cut to pieces. I have frequently felt her head, and
-      found it nearly covered with festering sores, caused by the lash of her
-      cruel mistress. I do not know that her master ever whipped her, but I have
-      been an eye-witness to the cruelty of Mrs. Hamilton. I used to be in Mr.
-      Hamilton's house nearly every day. Mrs. Hamilton used to sit in a large
-      chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin always by her side,
-      and scarce an hour passed during the day but was marked by the blood of
-      one of these slaves. The girls seldom passed her without her saying, "Move
-      faster, you <i>black gip!</i>" at the same time giving them a blow with
-      the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing the blood. She would
-      then say, "Take that, you <i>black gip!</i>" continuing, "If you don't
-      move faster, I'll move you!" Added to the cruel lashings to which these
-      slaves were subjected, they were kept nearly half-starved. They seldom
-      knew what it was to eat a full meal. I have seen Mary contending with the
-      pigs for the offal thrown into the street. So much was Mary kicked and cut
-      to pieces, that she was oftener called "<i>pecked</i>" than by her name.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER VII
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      I lived in Master Hugh's family about seven years. During this time, I
-      succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was
-      compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My
-      mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with
-      the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but
-      had set her face against my being instructed by any one else. It is due,
-      however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course
-      of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable
-      to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to
-      have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her
-      equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in
-      the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with
-      her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another.
-      In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive
-      that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her
-      to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so.
-      Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she
-      was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or
-      suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry,
-      clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her
-      reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly
-      qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the
-      lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The first
-      step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me. She now
-      commenced to practise her husband's precepts. She finally became even more
-      violent in her opposition than her husband himself. She was not satisfied
-      with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do
-      better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a
-      newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her
-      rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a
-      newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension. She was an
-      apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction,
-      that education and slavery were incompatible with each other.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room
-      any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a
-      book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this,
-      however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in
-      teaching me the alphabet, had given me the <i>inch,</i> and no precaution
-      could prevent me from taking the <i>ell.</i>
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was
-      that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the
-      street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their
-      kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally
-      succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took
-      my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time
-      to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread with me,
-      enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always
-      welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor
-      white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the
-      hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable
-      bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or
-      three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and
-      affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;&mdash;not that it would
-      injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable
-      offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country. It is enough to
-      say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very
-      near Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard. I used to talk this matter of slavery
-      over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free
-      as they would be when they got to be men. "You will be free as soon as you
-      are twenty-one, <i>but I am a slave for life!</i> Have not I as good a
-      right to be free as you have?" These words used to trouble them; they
-      would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope
-      that something would occur by which I might be free.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being <i>a slave for
-      life</i> began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got
-      hold of a book entitled "The Columbian Orator." Every opportunity I got, I
-      used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in
-      it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as
-      having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the
-      conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the
-      third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was
-      brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave.
-      The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in
-      reply to his master&mdash;things which had the desired though unexpected
-      effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the
-      slave on the part of the master.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan's mighty speeches on and in
-      behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read
-      them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to
-      interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through
-      my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained
-      from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a
-      slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery,
-      and a powerful vindication of human rights. The reading of these documents
-      enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward
-      to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they
-      brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved.
-      The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I
-      could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who
-      had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes,
-      and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the
-      meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the
-      subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted
-      would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my
-      soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel
-      that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had
-      given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my
-      eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In
-      moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have
-      often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest
-      reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It
-      was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was
-      no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight
-      or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused
-      my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more
-      forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever
-      present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing
-      without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing
-      without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm,
-      breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead;
-      and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have
-      killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.
-      While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery.
-      I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could hear something about
-      the abolitionists. It was some time before I found what the word meant. It
-      was always used in such connections as to make it an interesting word to
-      me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave
-      killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did any thing very wrong in the
-      mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of <i>abolition.</i>
-      Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set about learning what
-      it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was
-      "the act of abolishing;" but then I did not know what was to be abolished.
-      Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask any one about its meaning, for
-      I was satisfied that it was something they wanted me to know very little
-      about. After a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing
-      an account of the number of petitions from the north, praying for the
-      abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade
-      between the States. From this time I understood the words <i>abolition</i>
-      and <i>abolitionist,</i> and always drew near when that word was spoken,
-      expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves. The
-      light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf of Mr.
-      Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went,
-      unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me and
-      asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, "Are ye a slave
-      for life?" I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply
-      affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine
-      a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a
-      shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to the north; that I
-      should find friends there, and that I should be free. I pretended not to
-      be interested in what they said, and treated them as if I did not
-      understand them; for I feared they might be treacherous. White men have
-      been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward,
-      catch them and return them to their masters. I was afraid that these
-      seemingly good men might use me so; but I nevertheless remembered their
-      advice, and from that time I resolved to run away. I looked forward to a
-      time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too young to think
-      of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I
-      might have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope
-      that I should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to
-      write.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in
-      Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters,
-      after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the
-      timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a
-      piece of timber was intended for the larboard side, it would be marked
-      thus&mdash;"L." When a piece was for the starboard side, it would be
-      marked thus&mdash;"S." A piece for the larboard side forward, would be
-      marked thus&mdash;"L. F." When a piece was for starboard side forward, it
-      would be marked thus&mdash;"S. F." For larboard aft, it would be marked
-      thus&mdash;"L. A." For starboard aft, it would be marked thus&mdash;"S.
-      A." I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were
-      intended when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I
-      immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make
-      the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew
-      could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word
-      would be, "I don't believe you. Let me see you try it." I would then make
-      the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat
-      that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite
-      possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time, my
-      copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink
-      was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. I then
-      commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster's Spelling Book,
-      until I could make them all without looking on the book. By this time, my
-      little Master Thomas had gone to school, and learned how to write, and had
-      written over a number of copy-books. These had been brought home, and
-      shown to some of our near neighbors, and then laid aside. My mistress used
-      to go to class meeting at the Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday
-      afternoon, and leave me to take care of the house. When left thus, I used
-      to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas's
-      copy-book, copying what he had written. I continued to do this until I
-      could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a
-      long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to
-      write.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER VIII
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      In a very short time after I went to live at Baltimore, my old master's
-      youngest son Richard died; and in about three years and six months after
-      his death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leaving only his son,
-      Andrew, and daughter, Lucretia, to share his estate. He died while on a
-      visit to see his daughter at Hillsborough. Cut off thus unexpectedly, he
-      left no will as to the disposal of his property. It was therefore
-      necessary to have a valuation of the property, that it might be equally
-      divided between Mrs. Lucretia and Master Andrew. I was immediately sent
-      for, to be valued with the other property. Here again my feelings rose up
-      in detestation of slavery. I had now a new conception of my degraded
-      condition. Prior to this, I had become, if not insensible to my lot, at
-      least partly so. I left Baltimore with a young heart overborne with
-      sadness, and a soul full of apprehension. I took passage with Captain
-      Rowe, in the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a sail of about twenty-four
-      hours, I found myself near the place of my birth. I had now been absent
-      from it almost, if not quite, five years. I, however, remembered the place
-      very well. I was only about five years old when I left it, to go and live
-      with my old master on Colonel Lloyd's plantation; so that I was now
-      between ten and eleven years old.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and
-      young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.
-      There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all
-      holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the
-      same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and
-      matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At this moment, I
-      saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both
-      slave and slaveholder.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      After the valuation, then came the division. I have no language to express
-      the high excitement and deep anxiety which were felt among us poor slaves
-      during this time. Our fate for life was now to be decided. We had no more
-      voice in that decision than the brutes among whom we were ranked. A single
-      word from the white men was enough&mdash;against all our wishes, prayers,
-      and entreaties&mdash;to sunder forever the dearest friends, dearest
-      kindred, and strongest ties known to human beings. In addition to the pain
-      of separation, there was the horrid dread of falling into the hands of
-      Master Andrew. He was known to us all as being a most cruel wretch,&mdash;a
-      common drunkard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and profligate
-      dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father's property. We
-      all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders, as
-      to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would be our inevitable
-      condition,&mdash;a condition held by us all in the utmost horror and
-      dread.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-slaves. I had known what it
-      was to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind. They had
-      seen little or nothing of the world. They were in very deed men and women
-      of sorrow, and acquainted with grief. Their backs had been made familiar
-      with the bloody lash, so that they had become callous; mine was yet
-      tender; for while at Baltimore I got few whippings, and few slaves could
-      boast of a kinder master and mistress than myself; and the thought of
-      passing out of their hands into those of Master Andrew&mdash;a man who,
-      but a few days before, to give me a sample of his bloody disposition, took
-      my little brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and with the
-      heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the blood gushed from his nose
-      and ears&mdash;was well calculated to make me anxious as to my fate. After
-      he had committed this savage outrage upon my brother, he turned to me, and
-      said that was the way he meant to serve me one of these days,&mdash;meaning,
-      I suppose, when I came into his possession.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion of Mrs. Lucretia, and
-      was sent immediately back to Baltimore, to live again in the family of
-      Master Hugh. Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow at my departure.
-      It was a glad day to me. I had escaped a worse than lion's jaws. I was
-      absent from Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and division, just
-      about one month, and it seemed to have been six.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mistress, Lucretia, died,
-      leaving her husband and one child, Amanda; and in a very short time after
-      her death, Master Andrew died. Now all the property of my old master,
-      slaves included, was in the hands of strangers,&mdash;strangers who had
-      had nothing to do with accumulating it. Not a slave was left free. All
-      remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest. If any one thing in my
-      experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of the
-      infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable loathing of
-      slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother.
-      She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had
-      been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with
-      slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his service. She had rocked
-      him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at
-      his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his
-      eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave&mdash;a slave for life&mdash;a
-      slave in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her children,
-      her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many
-      sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word,
-      as to their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base
-      ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old,
-      having outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the
-      beginning and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was
-      of but little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age,
-      and complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they
-      took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little
-      mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting
-      herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to
-      die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter
-      loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children, the
-      loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They are, in
-      the language of the slave's poet, Whittier,&mdash;
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-     "Gone, gone, sold and gone
-     To the rice swamp dank and lone,
-     Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
-     Where the noisome insect stings,
-     Where the fever-demon strews
-     Poison with the falling dews,
-     Where the sickly sunbeams glare
-     Through the hot and misty air:&mdash;
-     Gone, gone, sold and gone
-     To the rice swamp dank and lone,
-     From Virginia hills and waters&mdash;
-     Woe is me, my stolen daughters!"
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once
-      sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the
-      darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her
-      children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams
-      of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, when
-      weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head inclines to
-      the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence meet, and
-      helpless infancy and painful old age combine together&mdash;at this time,
-      this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that tenderness and
-      affection which children only can exercise towards a declining parent&mdash;my
-      poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve children, is left all
-      alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim embers. She stands&mdash;she
-      sits&mdash;she staggers&mdash;she falls&mdash;she groans&mdash;she dies&mdash;and
-      there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to wipe from her
-      wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her
-      fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for these things?
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas married
-      his second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton. She was the eldest daughter
-      of Mr. William Hamilton. Master now lived in St. Michael's. Not long after
-      his marriage, a misunderstanding took place between himself and Master
-      Hugh; and as a means of punishing his brother, he took me from him to live
-      with himself at St. Michael's. Here I underwent another most painful
-      separation. It, however, was not so severe as the one I dreaded at the
-      division of property; for, during this interval, a great change had taken
-      place in Master Hugh and his once kind and affectionate wife. The
-      influence of brandy upon him, and of slavery upon her, had effected a
-      disastrous change in the characters of both; so that, as far as they were
-      concerned, I thought I had little to lose by the change. But it was not to
-      them that I was attached. It was to those little Baltimore boys that I
-      felt the strongest attachment. I had received many good lessons from them,
-      and was still receiving them, and the thought of leaving them was painful
-      indeed. I was leaving, too, without the hope of ever being allowed to
-      return. Master Thomas had said he would never let me return again. The
-      barrier betwixt himself and brother he considered impassable.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I then had to regret that I did not at least make the attempt to carry out
-      my resolution to run away; for the chances of success are tenfold greater
-      from the city than from the country.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael's in the sloop Amanda, Captain
-      Edward Dodson. On my passage, I paid particular attention to the direction
-      which the steamboats took to go to Philadelphia. I found, instead of going
-      down, on reaching North Point they went up the bay, in a north-easterly
-      direction. I deemed this knowledge of the utmost importance. My
-      determination to run away was again revived. I resolved to wait only so
-      long as the offering of a favorable opportunity. When that came, I was
-      determined to be off.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER IX
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left
-      Baltimore, and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael's, in
-      March, 1832. It was now more than seven years since I lived with him in
-      the family of my old master, on Colonel Lloyd's plantation. We of course
-      were now almost entire strangers to each other. He was to me a new master,
-      and I to him a new slave. I was ignorant of his temper and disposition; he
-      was equally so of mine. A very short time, however, brought us into full
-      acquaintance with each other. I was made acquainted with his wife not less
-      than with himself. They were well matched, being equally mean and cruel. I
-      was now, for the first time during a space of more than seven years, made
-      to feel the painful gnawings of hunger&mdash;a something which I had not
-      experienced before since I left Colonel Lloyd's plantation. It went hard
-      enough with me then, when I could look back to no period at which I had
-      enjoyed a sufficiency. It was tenfold harder after living in Master Hugh's
-      family, where I had always had enough to eat, and of that which was good.
-      I have said Master Thomas was a mean man. He was so. Not to give a slave
-      enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development of meanness
-      even among slaveholders. The rule is, no matter how coarse the food, only
-      let there be enough of it. This is the theory; and in the part of Maryland
-      from which I came, it is the general practice,&mdash;though there are many
-      exceptions. Master Thomas gave us enough of neither coarse nor fine food.
-      There were four slaves of us in the kitchen&mdash;my sister Eliza, my aunt
-      Priscilla, Henny, and myself; and we were allowed less than a half of a
-      bushel of corn-meal per week, and very little else, either in the shape of
-      meat or vegetables. It was not enough for us to subsist upon. We were
-      therefore reduced to the wretched necessity of living at the expense of
-      our neighbors. This we did by begging and stealing, whichever came handy
-      in the time of need, the one being considered as legitimate as the other.
-      A great many times have we poor creatures been nearly perishing with
-      hunger, when food in abundance lay mouldering in the safe and smoke-house,
-      and our pious mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that mistress and
-      her husband would kneel every morning, and pray that God would bless them
-      in basket and store!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every element
-      of character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare sort. I do
-      not know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The leading trait
-      in his character was meanness; and if there were any other element in his
-      nature, it was made subject to this. He was mean; and, like most other
-      mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his meanness. Captain Auld was
-      not born a slaveholder. He had been a poor man, master only of a Bay
-      craft. He came into possession of all his slaves by marriage; and of all
-      men, adopted slaveholders are the worst. He was cruel, but cowardly. He
-      commanded without firmness. In the enforcement of his rules, he was at
-      times rigid, and at times lax. At times, he spoke to his slaves with the
-      firmness of Napoleon and the fury of a demon; at other times, he might
-      well be mistaken for an inquirer who had lost his way. He did nothing of
-      himself. He might have passed for a lion, but for his ears. In all things
-      noble which he attempted, his own meanness shone most conspicuous. His
-      airs, words, and actions, were the airs, words, and actions of born
-      slaveholders, and, being assumed, were awkward enough. He was not even a
-      good imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the
-      power. Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the
-      copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of
-      inconsistency; and of consequence he was an object of contempt, and was
-      held as such even by his slaves. The luxury of having slaves of his own to
-      wait upon him was something new and unprepared for. He was a slaveholder
-      without the ability to hold slaves. He found himself incapable of managing
-      his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud. We seldom called him "master;"
-      we generally called him "Captain Auld," and were hardly disposed to title
-      him at all. I doubt not that our conduct had much to do with making him
-      appear awkward, and of consequence fretful. Our want of reverence for him
-      must have perplexed him greatly. He wished to have us call him master, but
-      lacked the firmness necessary to command us to do so. His wife used to
-      insist upon our calling him so, but to no purpose. In August, 1832, my
-      master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot
-      county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his
-      conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did
-      not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was
-      disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to
-      his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character,
-      it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to
-      have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his
-      conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in
-      his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious
-      sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest
-      pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed
-      morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his
-      brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity in
-      revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of
-      the church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers' home.
-      They used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he
-      starved us, he stuffed them. We have had three or four preachers there at
-      a time. The names of those who used to come most frequently while I lived
-      there, were Mr. Storks, Mr. Ewery, Mr. Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have
-      also seen Mr. George Cookman at our house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We
-      believed him to be a good man. We thought him instrumental in getting Mr.
-      Samuel Harrison, a very rich slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by
-      some means got the impression that he was laboring to effect the
-      emancipation of all the slaves. When he was at our house, we were sure to
-      be called in to prayers. When the others were there, we were sometimes
-      called in and sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more notice of us than
-      either of the other ministers. He could not come among us without
-      betraying his sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the sagacity
-      to see it.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      While I lived with my master in St. Michael's, there was a white young
-      man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the
-      instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the New
-      Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both
-      class-leaders, with many others, came upon us with sticks and other
-      missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended our
-      little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael's.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an
-      example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I have
-      seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon
-      her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in
-      justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture&mdash;"He
-      that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with
-      many stripes."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid
-      situation four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up
-      early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to his
-      store, return at dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the places
-      already made raw with his cruel lash. The secret of master's cruelty
-      toward "Henny" is found in the fact of her being almost helpless. When
-      quite a child, she fell into the fire, and burned herself horribly. Her
-      hands were so burnt that she never got the use of them. She could do very
-      little but bear heavy burdens. She was to master a bill of expense; and as
-      he was a mean man, she was a constant offence to him. He seemed desirous
-      of getting the poor girl out of existence. He gave her away once to his
-      sister; but, being a poor gift, she was not disposed to keep her. Finally,
-      my benevolent master, to use his own words, "set her adrift to take care
-      of herself." Here was a recently-converted man, holding on upon the
-      mother, and at the same time turning out her helpless child, to starve and
-      die! Master Thomas was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves
-      for the very charitable purpose of taking care of them.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found me
-      unsuitable to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very
-      pernicious effect upon me. It had almost ruined me for every good purpose,
-      and fitted me for every thing which was bad. One of my greatest faults was
-      that of letting his horse run away, and go down to his father-in-law's
-      farm, which was about five miles from St. Michael's. I would then have to
-      go after it. My reason for this kind of carelessness, or carefulness, was,
-      that I could always get something to eat when I went there. Master William
-      Hamilton, my master's father-in-law, always gave his slaves enough to eat.
-      I never left there hungry, no matter how great the need of my speedy
-      return. Master Thomas at length said he would stand it no longer. I had
-      lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a number of
-      severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he
-      said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man
-      named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the
-      place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr.
-      Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and
-      this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his
-      farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had it
-      done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss
-      to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of the
-      training to which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He
-      could hire young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation.
-      Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of
-      religion&mdash;a pious soul&mdash;a member and a class-leader in the
-      Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a
-      "nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been made
-      acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless
-      made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is
-      not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER X
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      I had left Master Thomas's house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on the
-      1st of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a field
-      hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than a
-      country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home but
-      one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back,
-      causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my
-      little finger. The details of this affair are as follows: Mr. Covey sent
-      me, very early in the morning of one of our coldest days in the month of
-      January, to the woods, to get a load of wood. He gave me a team of
-      unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox, and which the off-hand
-      one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the horns of the in-hand
-      ox, and gave me the other end of it, and told me, if the oxen started to
-      run, that I must hold on upon the rope. I had never driven oxen before,
-      and of course I was very awkward. I, however, succeeded in getting to the
-      edge of the woods with little difficulty; but I had got a very few rods
-      into the woods, when the oxen took fright, and started full tilt, carrying
-      the cart against trees, and over stumps, in the most frightful manner. I
-      expected every moment that my brains would be dashed out against the
-      trees. After running thus for a considerable distance, they finally upset
-      the cart, dashing it with great force against a tree, and threw themselves
-      into a dense thicket. How I escaped death, I do not know. There I was,
-      entirely alone, in a thick wood, in a place new to me. My cart was upset
-      and shattered, my oxen were entangled among the young trees, and there was
-      none to help me. After a long spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my
-      cart righted, my oxen disentangled, and again yoked to the cart. I now
-      proceeded with my team to the place where I had, the day before, been
-      chopping wood, and loaded my cart pretty heavily, thinking in this way to
-      tame my oxen. I then proceeded on my way home. I had now consumed one half
-      of the day. I got out of the woods safely, and now felt out of danger. I
-      stopped my oxen to open the woods gate; and just as I did so, before I
-      could get hold of my ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed through the
-      gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of the cart, tearing it
-      to pieces, and coming within a few inches of crushing me against the
-      gate-post. Thus twice, in one short day, I escaped death by the merest
-      chance. On my return, I told Mr. Covey what had happened, and how it
-      happened. He ordered me to return to the woods again immediately. I did
-      so, and he followed on after me. Just as I got into the woods, he came up
-      and told me to stop my cart, and that he would teach me how to trifle away
-      my time, and break gates. He then went to a large gum-tree, and with his
-      axe cut three large switches, and, after trimming them up neatly with his
-      pocketknife, he ordered me to take off my clothes. I made him no answer,
-      but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his order. I still made him no
-      answer, nor did I move to strip myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the
-      fierceness of a tiger, tore off my clothes, and lashed me till he had worn
-      out his switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for
-      a long time after. This whipping was the first of a number just like it,
-      and for similar offences.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months, of that
-      year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free from
-      a sore back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for whipping me.
-      We were worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long before day we were
-      up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day we were off to the
-      field with our hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat,
-      but scarce time to eat it. We were often less than five minutes taking our
-      meals. We were often in the field from the first approach of day till its
-      last lingering ray had left us; and at saving-fodder time, midnight often
-      caught us in the field binding blades.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Covey would be out with us. The way he used to stand it, was this. He
-      would spend the most of his afternoons in bed. He would then come out
-      fresh in the evening, ready to urge us on with his words, example, and
-      frequently with the whip. Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who
-      could and did work with his hands. He was a hard-working man. He knew by
-      himself just what a man or a boy could do. There was no deceiving him. His
-      work went on in his absence almost as well as in his presence; and he had
-      the faculty of making us feel that he was ever present with us. This he
-      did by surprising us. He seldom approached the spot where we were at work
-      openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed at taking us by
-      surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him, among ourselves,
-      "the snake." When we were at work in the cornfield, he would sometimes
-      crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and all at once he would
-      rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, "Ha, ha! Come, come! Dash on,
-      dash on!" This being his mode of attack, it was never safe to stop a
-      single minute. His comings were like a thief in the night. He appeared to
-      us as being ever at hand. He was under every tree, behind every stump, in
-      every bush, and at every window, on the plantation. He would sometimes
-      mount his horse, as if bound to St. Michael's, a distance of seven miles,
-      and in half an hour afterwards you would see him coiled up in the corner
-      of the wood-fence, watching every motion of the slaves. He would, for this
-      purpose, leave his horse tied up in the woods. Again, he would sometimes
-      walk up to us, and give us orders as though he was upon the point of
-      starting on a long journey, turn his back upon us, and make as though he
-      was going to the house to get ready; and, before he would get half way
-      thither, he would turn short and crawl into a fence-corner, or behind some
-      tree, and there watch us till the going down of the sun.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Covey's <i>forte</i> consisted in his power to deceive. His life was devoted
-      to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions. Every thing he
-      possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made conform to his
-      disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the
-      Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning, and a long prayer
-      at night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would at times appear more
-      devotional than he. The exercises of his family devotions were always
-      commenced with singing; and, as he was a very poor singer himself, the
-      duty of raising the hymn generally came upon me. He would read his hymn,
-      and nod at me to commence. I would at times do so; at others, I would not.
-      My non-compliance would almost always produce much confusion. To show
-      himself independent of me, he would start and stagger through with his
-      hymn in the most discordant manner. In this state of mind, he prayed with
-      more than ordinary spirit. Poor man! such was his disposition, and success
-      at deceiving, I do verily believe that he sometimes deceived himself into
-      the solemn belief, that he was a sincere worshipper of the most high God;
-      and this, too, at a time when he may be said to have been guilty of
-      compelling his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery. The facts in the
-      case are these: Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was just commencing in life;
-      he was only able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact, he bought
-      her, as he said, for <i>a breeder</i>. This woman was named Caroline. Mr. Covey
-      bought her from Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St. Michael's. She
-      was a large, able-bodied woman, about twenty years old. She had already
-      given birth to one child, which proved her to be just what he wanted.
-      After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr. Samuel Harrison, to live
-      with him one year; and him he used to fasten up with her every night! The
-      result was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable woman gave birth
-      to twins. At this result Mr. Covey seemed to be highly pleased, both with
-      the man and the wretched woman. Such was his joy, and that of his wife,
-      that nothing they could do for Caroline during her confinement was too
-      good, or too hard, to be done. The children were regarded as being quite
-      an addition to his wealth.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the
-      bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of
-      my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too
-      hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us
-      to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the
-      day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the
-      shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first
-      went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey
-      succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My
-      natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition
-      to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the
-      dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into
-      a brute!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
-      stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I would
-      rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
-      accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and
-      then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I
-      was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was
-      prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this
-      plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom
-      was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those
-      beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of
-      freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me
-      with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the deep
-      stillness of a summer's Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of
-      that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the
-      countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of
-      these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance;
-      and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul's
-      complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of
-      ships:&mdash;
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      "You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains,
-      and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly
-      before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly
-      round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O,
-      that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing!
-      Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I
-      could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man,
-      of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim
-      distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save
-      me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? I
-      will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or get clear, I'll try it.
-      I had as well die with ague as the fever. I have only one life to lose. I
-      had as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it; one
-      hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God helping me,
-      I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the
-      water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom. The steamboats
-      steered in a north-east course from North Point. I will do the same; and
-      when I get to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and walk
-      straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not
-      be required to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed. Let but
-      the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I
-      will try to bear up under the yoke. I am not the only slave in the world.
-      Why should I fret? I can bear as much as any of them. Besides, I am but a
-      boy, and all boys are bound to some one. It may be that my misery in
-      slavery will only increase my happiness when I get free. There is a better
-      day coming."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak to myself; goaded almost to
-      madness at one moment, and at the next reconciling myself to my wretched
-      lot.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have already intimated that my condition was much worse, during the
-      first six months of my stay at Mr. Covey's, than in the last six. The
-      circumstances leading to the change in Mr. Covey's course toward me form
-      an epoch in my humble history. You have seen how a man was made a slave;
-      you shall see how a slave was made a man. On one of the hottest days of
-      the month of August, 1833, Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli,
-      and myself, were engaged in fanning wheat. Hughes was clearing the fanned
-      wheat from before the fan. Eli was turning, Smith was feeding, and I was
-      carrying wheat to the fan. The work was simple, requiring strength rather
-      than intellect; yet, to one entirely unused to such work, it came very
-      hard. About three o'clock of that day, I broke down; my strength failed
-      me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme
-      dizziness; I trembled in every limb. Finding what was coming, I nerved
-      myself up, feeling it would never do to stop work. I stood as long as I
-      could stagger to the hopper with grain. When I could stand no longer, I
-      fell, and felt as if held down by an immense weight. The fan of course
-      stopped; every one had his own work to do; and no one could do the work of
-      the other, and have his own go on at the same time.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred yards from the treading-yard
-      where we were fanning. On hearing the fan stop, he left immediately, and
-      came to the spot where we were. He hastily inquired what the matter was.
-      Bill answered that I was sick, and there was no one to bring wheat to the
-      fan. I had by this time crawled away under the side of the post and
-      rail-fence by which the yard was enclosed, hoping to find relief by
-      getting out of the sun. He then asked where I was. He was told by one of
-      the hands. He came to the spot, and, after looking at me awhile, asked me
-      what was the matter. I told him as well as I could, for I scarce had
-      strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the side, and told me
-      to get up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me
-      another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in
-      gaining my feet; but, stooping to get the tub with which I was feeding the
-      fan, I again staggered and fell. While down in this situation, Mr. Covey
-      took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking off the
-      half-bushel measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head,
-      making a large wound, and the blood ran freely; and with this again told
-      me to get up. I made no effort to comply, having now made up my mind to
-      let him do his worst. In a short time after receiving this blow, my head
-      grew better. Mr. Covey had now left me to my fate. At this moment I
-      resolved, for the first time, to go to my master, enter a complaint, and
-      ask his protection. In order to do this, I must that afternoon walk seven
-      miles; and this, under the circumstances, was truly a severe undertaking.
-      I was exceedingly feeble; made so as much by the kicks and blows which I
-      received, as by the severe fit of sickness to which I had been subjected.
-      I, however, watched my chance, while Covey was looking in an opposite
-      direction, and started for St. Michael's. I succeeded in getting a
-      considerable distance on my way to the woods, when Covey discovered me,
-      and called after me to come back, threatening what he would do if I did
-      not come. I disregarded both his calls and his threats, and made my way to
-      the woods as fast as my feeble state would allow; and thinking I might be
-      overhauled by him if I kept the road, I walked through the woods, keeping
-      far enough from the road to avoid detection, and near enough to prevent
-      losing my way. I had not gone far before my little strength again failed
-      me. I could go no farther. I fell down, and lay for a considerable time.
-      The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I
-      should bleed to death; and think now that I should have done so, but that
-      the blood so matted my hair as to stop the wound. After lying there about
-      three quarters of an hour, I nerved myself up again, and started on my
-      way, through bogs and briers, barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet
-      sometimes at nearly every step; and after a journey of about seven miles,
-      occupying some five hours to perform it, I arrived at master's store. I
-      then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart of iron.
-      From the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered with blood. My hair
-      was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff with blood. I
-      suppose I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild beasts, and
-      barely escaped them. In this state I appeared before my master, humbly
-      entreating him to interpose his authority for my protection. I told him
-      all the circumstances as well as I could, and it seemed, as I spoke, at
-      times to affect him. He would then walk the floor, and seek to justify
-      Covey by saying he expected I deserved it. He asked me what I wanted. I
-      told him, to let me get a new home; that as sure as I lived with Mr. Covey
-      again, I should live with but to die with him; that Covey would surely
-      kill me; he was in a fair way for it. Master Thomas ridiculed the idea
-      that there was any danger of Mr. Covey's killing me, and said that he knew
-      Mr. Covey; that he was a good man, and that he could not think of taking
-      me from him; that, should he do so, he would lose the whole year's wages;
-      that I belonged to Mr. Covey for one year, and that I must go back to him,
-      come what might; and that I must not trouble him with any more stories, or
-      that he would himself <i>get hold of me</i>. After threatening me thus, he gave
-      me a very large dose of salts, telling me that I might remain in St.
-      Michael's that night, (it being quite late,) but that I must be off back
-      to Mr. Covey's early in the morning; and that if I did not, he would <i>get
-      hold of me,</i> which meant that he would whip me. I remained all night,
-      and, according to his orders, I started off to Covey's in the morning,
-      (Saturday morning,) wearied in body and broken in spirit. I got no supper
-      that night, or breakfast that morning. I reached Covey's about nine
-      o'clock; and just as I was getting over the fence that divided Mrs. Kemp's
-      fields from ours, out ran Covey with his cowskin, to give me another
-      whipping. Before he could reach me, I succeeded in getting to the
-      cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it afforded me the means of
-      hiding. He seemed very angry, and searched for me a long time. My behavior
-      was altogether unaccountable. He finally gave up the chase, thinking, I
-      suppose, that I must come home for something to eat; he would give himself
-      no further trouble in looking for me. I spent that day mostly in the
-      woods, having the alternative before me,&mdash;to go home and be whipped
-      to death, or stay in the woods and be starved to death. That night, I fell
-      in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave with whom I was somewhat acquainted. Sandy
-      had a free wife who lived about four miles from Mr. Covey's; and it being
-      Saturday, he was on his way to see her. I told him my circumstances, and
-      he very kindly invited me to go home with him. I went home with him, and
-      talked this whole matter over, and got his advice as to what course it was
-      best for me to pursue. I found Sandy an old adviser. He told me, with
-      great solemnity, I must go back to Covey; but that before I went, I must
-      go with him into another part of the woods, where there was a certain <i>root,</i>
-      which, if I would take some of it with me, carrying it <i>always on my
-      right side,</i> would render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other
-      white man, to whip me. He said he had carried it for years; and since he
-      had done so, he had never received a blow, and never expected to while he
-      carried it. I at first rejected the idea, that the simple carrying of a
-      root in my pocket would have any such effect as he had said, and was not
-      disposed to take it; but Sandy impressed the necessity with much
-      earnestness, telling me it could do no harm, if it did no good. To please
-      him, I at length took the root, and, according to his direction, carried
-      it upon my right side. This was Sunday morning. I immediately started for
-      home; and upon entering the yard gate, out came Mr. Covey on his way to
-      meeting. He spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs from a lot
-      near by, and passed on towards the church. Now, this singular conduct of
-      Mr. Covey really made me begin to think that there was something in the
-      <i>root</i> which Sandy had given me; and had it been on any other day than
-      Sunday, I could have attributed the conduct to no other cause than the
-      influence of that root; and as it was, I was half inclined to think the <i>root</i>
-      to be something more than I at first had taken it to be. All went well
-      till Monday morning. On this morning, the virtue of the <i>root</i> was fully
-      tested. Long before daylight, I was called to go and rub, curry, and feed,
-      the horses. I obeyed, and was glad to obey. But whilst thus engaged,
-      whilst in the act of throwing down some blades from the loft, Mr. Covey
-      entered the stable with a long rope; and just as I was half out of the
-      loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying me. As soon as I
-      found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring, and as I did so, he
-      holding to my legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor. Mr. Covey
-      seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this
-      moment&mdash;from whence came the spirit I don't know&mdash;I resolved to
-      fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by
-      the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him. My
-      resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey seemed taken all aback.
-      He trembled like a leaf. This gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy,
-      causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of my fingers.
-      Mr. Covey soon called out to Hughes for help. Hughes came, and, while
-      Covey held me, attempted to tie my right hand. While he was in the act of
-      doing so, I watched my chance, and gave him a heavy kick close under the
-      ribs. This kick fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left me in the hands of
-      Mr. Covey. This kick had the effect of not only weakening Hughes, but
-      Covey also. When he saw Hughes bending over with pain, his courage
-      quailed. He asked me if I meant to persist in my resistance. I told him I
-      did, come what might; that he had used me like a brute for six months, and
-      that I was determined to be used so no longer. With that, he strove to
-      drag me to a stick that was lying just out of the stable door. He meant to
-      knock me down. But just as he was leaning over to get the stick, I seized
-      him with both hands by his collar, and brought him by a sudden snatch to
-      the ground. By this time, Bill came. Covey called upon him for assistance.
-      Bill wanted to know what he could do. Covey said, "Take hold of him, take
-      hold of him!" Bill said his master hired him out to work, and not to help
-      to whip me; so he left Covey and myself to fight our own battle out. We
-      were at it for nearly two hours. Covey at length let me go, puffing and
-      blowing at a great rate, saying that if I had not resisted, he would not
-      have whipped me half so much. The truth was, that he had not whipped me at
-      all. I considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain;
-      for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him. The whole six
-      months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight
-      of his finger upon me in anger. He would occasionally say, he didn't want
-      to get hold of me again. "No," thought I, "you need not; for you will come
-      off worse than you did before."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave.
-      It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a
-      sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and
-      inspired me again with a determination to be free. The gratification
-      afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might
-      follow, even death itself. He only can understand the deep satisfaction
-      which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of
-      slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection,
-      from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit
-      rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved
-      that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed
-      forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be
-      known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must
-      also succeed in killing me.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      From this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped,
-      though I remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights, but
-      was never whipped.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me why Mr. Covey did not
-      immediately have me taken by the constable to the whipping-post, and there
-      regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a white man in
-      defence of myself. And the only explanation I can now think of does not
-      entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give it. Mr. Covey enjoyed
-      the most unbounded reputation for being a first-rate overseer and
-      negro-breaker. It was of considerable importance to him. That reputation
-      was at stake; and had he sent me&mdash;a boy about sixteen years old&mdash;to
-      the public whipping-post, his reputation would have been lost; so, to save
-      his reputation, he suffered me to go unpunished.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day,
-      1833. The days between Christmas and New Year's day are allowed as
-      holidays; and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor,
-      more than to feed and take care of the stock. This time we regarded as our
-      own, by the grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused it
-      nearly as we pleased. Those of us who had families at a distance, were
-      generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society. This time,
-      however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober, thinking and
-      industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in making
-      corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another class of us
-      would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But by far the
-      larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball,
-      wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky; and
-      this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable to the
-      feelings of our masters. A slave who would work during the holidays was
-      considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as
-      one who rejected the favor of his master. It was deemed a disgrace not to
-      get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not
-      provided himself with the necessary means, during the year, to get whisky
-      enough to last him through Christmas.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I believe
-      them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder
-      in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders at once
-      to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to
-      an immediate insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as
-      conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of
-      enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would be forced up to the
-      wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the day he ventures
-      to remove or hinder the operation of those conductors! I warn him that, in
-      such an event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be dreaded
-      than the most appalling earthquake.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity
-      of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence
-      of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of
-      selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the
-      down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because they
-      would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they
-      know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will be seen by the
-      fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days
-      just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their
-      beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom,
-      by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the
-      slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but
-      will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on
-      their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk;
-      and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to
-      excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning
-      slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious
-      dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us
-      used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed;
-      many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between
-      liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as
-      well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered
-      up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the
-      field,&mdash;feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our
-      master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of
-      slavery.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system of
-      fraud and inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to
-      disgust the slave with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse of
-      it, is carried out in other things. For instance, a slave loves molasses;
-      he steals some. His master, in many cases, goes off to town, and buys a
-      large quantity; he returns, takes his whip, and commands the slave to eat
-      the molasses, until the poor fellow is made sick at the very mention of
-      it. The same mode is sometimes adopted to make the slaves refrain from
-      asking for more food than their regular allowance. A slave runs through
-      his allowance, and applies for more. His master is enraged at him; but,
-      not willing to send him off without food, gives him more than is
-      necessary, and compels him to eat it within a given time. Then, if he
-      complains that he cannot eat it, he is said to be satisfied neither full
-      nor fasting, and is whipped for being hard to please! I have an abundance
-      of such illustrations of the same principle, drawn from my own
-      observation, but think the cases I have cited sufficient. The practice is
-      a very common one.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. Covey, and went to live with Mr.
-      William Freeland, who lived about three miles from St. Michael's. I soon
-      found Mr. Freeland a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not rich,
-      he was what would be called an educated southern gentleman. Mr. Covey, as
-      I have shown, was a well-trained negro-breaker and slave-driver. The
-      former (slaveholder though he was) seemed to possess some regard for
-      honor, some reverence for justice, and some respect for humanity. The
-      latter seemed totally insensible to all such sentiments. Mr. Freeland had
-      many of the faults peculiar to slaveholders, such as being very passionate
-      and fretful; but I must do him the justice to say, that he was exceedingly
-      free from those degrading vices to which Mr. Covey was constantly
-      addicted. The one was open and frank, and we always knew where to find
-      him. The other was a most artful deceiver, and could be understood only by
-      such as were skilful enough to detect his cunningly-devised frauds.
-      Another advantage I gained in my new master was, he made no pretensions
-      to, or profession of, religion; and this, in my opinion, was truly a great
-      advantage. I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is
-      a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,&mdash;a justifier of the most
-      appalling barbarity,&mdash;a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,&mdash;and
-      a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most
-      infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be
-      again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should
-      regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that
-      could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met,
-      religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest
-      and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy
-      lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a
-      community of such religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev.
-      Daniel Weeden, and in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins.
-      These were members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr.
-      Weeden owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten.
-      This woman's back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash
-      of this merciless, <i>religious</i> wretch. He used to hire hands. His
-      maxim was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master
-      occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master's authority.
-      Such was his theory, and such his practice.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his
-      ability to manage slaves. The peculiar feature of his government was that
-      of whipping slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed to have
-      one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did this to
-      alarm their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped. His plan was
-      to whip for the smallest offences, to prevent the commission of large
-      ones. Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for whipping a slave. It
-      would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what
-      wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to
-      whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,&mdash;a mistake, accident, or
-      want of power,&mdash;are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at
-      any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in
-      him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by
-      his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken down a
-      button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a
-      white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for
-      it. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when censured for it?
-      Then he is guilty of impudence,&mdash;one of the greatest crimes of which
-      a slave can be guilty. Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of
-      doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed
-      presumptuous, and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging
-      will do for him. Does he, while ploughing, break a plough,&mdash;or, while
-      hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave
-      must always be whipped. Mr. Hopkins could always find something of this
-      sort to justify the use of the lash, and he seldom failed to embrace such
-      opportunities. There was not a man in the whole county, with whom the
-      slaves who had the getting their own home, would not prefer to live,
-      rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there was not a man any
-      where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was more active
-      in revivals,&mdash;more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and
-      preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family,&mdash;that prayed
-      earlier, later, louder, and longer,&mdash;than this same reverend
-      slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      But to return to Mr. Freeland, and to my experience while in his
-      employment. He, like Mr. Covey, gave us enough to eat; but, unlike Mr.
-      Covey, he also gave us sufficient time to take our meals. He worked us
-      hard, but always between sunrise and sunset. He required a good deal of
-      work to be done, but gave us good tools with which to work. His farm was
-      large, but he employed hands enough to work it, and with ease, compared
-      with many of his neighbors. My treatment, while in his employment, was
-      heavenly, compared with what I experienced at the hands of Mr. Edward
-      Covey.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Mr. Freeland was himself the owner of but two slaves. Their names were
-      Henry Harris and John Harris. The rest of his hands he hired. These
-      consisted of myself, Sandy Jenkins,* and Handy Caldwell.
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-     *This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my
-     being whipped by Mr. Covey. He was "a clever soul." We used
-     frequently to talk about the fight with Covey, and as often
-     as we did so, he would claim my success as the result of the
-     roots which he gave me. This superstition is very common
-     among the more ignorant slaves. A slave seldom dies but that
-     his death is attributed to trickery.
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      Henry and John were quite intelligent, and in a very little while after I
-      went there, I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn how
-      to read. This desire soon sprang up in the others also. They very soon
-      mustered up some old spelling-books, and nothing would do but that I must
-      keep a Sabbath school. I agreed to do so, and accordingly devoted my
-      Sundays to teaching these my loved fellow-slaves how to read. Neither of
-      them knew his letters when I went there. Some of the slaves of the
-      neighboring farms found what was going on, and also availed themselves of
-      this little opportunity to learn to read. It was understood, among all who
-      came, that there must be as little display about it as possible. It was
-      necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael's unacquainted with
-      the fact, that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and
-      drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of God; for
-      they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to see
-      us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings. My blood
-      boils as I think of the bloody manner in which Messrs. Wright Fairbanks
-      and Garrison West, both class-leaders, in connection with many others,
-      rushed in upon us with sticks and stones, and broke up our virtuous little
-      Sabbath school, at St. Michael's&mdash;all calling themselves Christians!
-      humble followers of the Lord Jesus Christ! But I am again digressing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I held my Sabbath school at the house of a free colored man, whose name I
-      deem it imprudent to mention; for should it be known, it might embarrass
-      him greatly, though the crime of holding the school was committed ten
-      years ago. I had at one time over forty scholars, and those of the right
-      sort, ardently desiring to learn. They were of all ages, though mostly men
-      and women. I look back to those Sundays with an amount of pleasure not to
-      be expressed. They were great days to my soul. The work of instructing my
-      dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever
-      blessed. We loved each other, and to leave them at the close of the
-      Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When I think that these precious souls
-      are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome
-      me, and I am almost ready to ask, "Does a righteous God govern the
-      universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand, if not
-      to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the
-      spoiler?" These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was
-      popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus
-      engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be
-      taken up, and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to
-      learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been
-      shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of
-      my soul to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of
-      my race. I kept up my school nearly the whole year I lived with Mr.
-      Freeland; and, beside my Sabbath school, I devoted three evenings in the
-      week, during the winter, to teaching the slaves at home. And I have the
-      happiness to know, that several of those who came to Sabbath school
-      learned how to read; and that one, at least, is now free through my
-      agency.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The year passed off smoothly. It seemed only about half as long as the
-      year which preceded it. I went through it without receiving a single blow.
-      I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had,
-      <i>till I became my own master.</i> For the ease with which I passed the
-      year, I was, however, somewhat indebted to the society of my
-      fellow-slaves. They were noble souls; they not only possessed loving
-      hearts, but brave ones. We were linked and interlinked with each other. I
-      loved them with a love stronger than any thing I have experienced since.
-      It is sometimes said that we slaves do not love and confide in each other.
-      In answer to this assertion, I can say, I never loved any or confided in
-      any people more than my fellow-slaves, and especially those with whom I
-      lived at Mr. Freeland's. I believe we would have died for each other. We
-      never undertook to do any thing, of any importance, without a mutual
-      consultation. We never moved separately. We were one; and as much so by
-      our tempers and dispositions, as by the mutual hardships to which we were
-      necessarily subjected by our condition as slaves.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      At the close of the year 1834, Mr. Freeland again hired me of my master,
-      for the year 1835. But, by this time, I began to want to live <i>upon free
-      land</i> as well as <i>with Freeland;</i> and I was no longer content,
-      therefore, to live with him or any other slaveholder. I began, with the
-      commencement of the year, to prepare myself for a final struggle, which
-      should decide my fate one way or the other. My tendency was upward. I was
-      fast approaching manhood, and year after year had passed, and I was still
-      a slave. These thoughts roused me&mdash;I must do something. I therefore
-      resolved that 1835 should not pass without witnessing an attempt, on my
-      part, to secure my liberty. But I was not willing to cherish this
-      determination alone. My fellow-slaves were dear to me. I was anxious to
-      have them participate with me in this, my life-giving determination. I
-      therefore, though with great prudence, commenced early to ascertain their
-      views and feelings in regard to their condition, and to imbue their minds
-      with thoughts of freedom. I bent myself to devising ways and means for our
-      escape, and meanwhile strove, on all fitting occasions, to impress them
-      with the gross fraud and inhumanity of slavery. I went first to Henry,
-      next to John, then to the others. I found, in them all, warm hearts and
-      noble spirits. They were ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible
-      plan should be proposed. This was what I wanted. I talked to them of our
-      want of manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement without at least one
-      noble effort to be free. We met often, and consulted frequently, and told
-      our hopes and fears, recounted the difficulties, real and imagined, which
-      we should be called on to meet. At times we were almost disposed to give
-      up, and try to content ourselves with our wretched lot; at others, we were
-      firm and unbending in our determination to go. Whenever we suggested any
-      plan, there was shrinking&mdash;the odds were fearful. Our path was beset
-      with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end of it,
-      our right to be free was yet questionable&mdash;we were yet liable to be
-      returned to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of the ocean, where
-      we could be free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our knowledge of the north
-      did not extend farther than New York; and to go there, and be forever
-      harassed with the frightful liability of being returned to slavery&mdash;with
-      the certainty of being treated tenfold worse than before&mdash;the thought
-      was truly a horrible one, and one which it was not easy to overcome. The
-      case sometimes stood thus: At every gate through which we were to pass, we
-      saw a watchman&mdash;at every ferry a guard&mdash;on every bridge a
-      sentinel&mdash;and in every wood a patrol. We were hemmed in upon every
-      side. Here were the difficulties, real or imagined&mdash;the good to be
-      sought, and the evil to be shunned. On the one hand, there stood slavery,
-      a stern reality, glaring frightfully upon us,&mdash;its robes already
-      crimsoned with the blood of millions, and even now feasting itself
-      greedily upon our own flesh. On the other hand, away back in the dim
-      distance, under the flickering light of the north star, behind some craggy
-      hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a doubtful freedom&mdash;half frozen&mdash;beckoning
-      us to come and share its hospitality. This in itself was sometimes enough
-      to stagger us; but when we permitted ourselves to survey the road, we were
-      frequently appalled. Upon either side we saw grim death, assuming the most
-      horrid shapes. Now it was starvation, causing us to eat our own flesh;&mdash;now
-      we were contending with the waves, and were drowned;&mdash;now we were
-      overtaken, and torn to pieces by the fangs of the terrible bloodhound. We
-      were stung by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes, and
-      finally, after having nearly reached the desired spot,&mdash;after
-      swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts, sleeping in the woods,
-      suffering hunger and nakedness,&mdash;we were overtaken by our pursuers,
-      and, in our resistance, we were shot dead upon the spot! I say, this
-      picture sometimes appalled us, and made us
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-     "rather bear those ills we had,
-     Than fly to others, that we knew not of."
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick
-      Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful
-      liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I
-      should prefer death to hopeless bondage.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Sandy, one of our number, gave up the notion, but still encouraged us. Our
-      company then consisted of Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey, Charles
-      Roberts, and myself. Henry Bailey was my uncle, and belonged to my master.
-      Charles married my aunt: he belonged to my master's father-in-law, Mr.
-      William Hamilton.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The plan we finally concluded upon was, to get a large canoe belonging to
-      Mr. Hamilton, and upon the Saturday night previous to Easter holidays,
-      paddle directly up the Chesapeake Bay. On our arrival at the head of the
-      bay, a distance of seventy or eighty miles from where we lived, it was our
-      purpose to turn our canoe adrift, and follow the guidance of the north
-      star till we got beyond the limits of Maryland. Our reason for taking the
-      water route was, that we were less liable to be suspected as runaways; we
-      hoped to be regarded as fishermen; whereas, if we should take the land
-      route, we should be subjected to interruptions of almost every kind. Any
-      one having a white face, and being so disposed, could stop us, and subject
-      us to examination.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The week before our intended start, I wrote several protections, one for
-      each of us. As well as I can remember, they were in the following words,
-      to wit:&mdash;
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-     "This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my
-     servant, full liberty to go to Baltimore, and spend the Easter holidays.
-     Written with mine own hand, &amp;c., 1835.
-
-     "WILLIAM HAMILTON,
-
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      "Near St. Michael's, in Talbot county, Maryland."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We were not going to Baltimore; but, in going up the bay, we went toward
-      Baltimore, and these protections were only intended to protect us while on
-      the bay.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      As the time drew near for our departure, our anxiety became more and more
-      intense. It was truly a matter of life and death with us. The strength of
-      our determination was about to be fully tested. At this time, I was very
-      active in explaining every difficulty, removing every doubt, dispelling
-      every fear, and inspiring all with the firmness indispensable to success
-      in our undertaking; assuring them that half was gained the instant we made
-      the move; we had talked long enough; we were now ready to move; if not
-      now, we never should be; and if we did not intend to move now, we had as
-      well fold our arms, sit down, and acknowledge ourselves fit only to be
-      slaves. This, none of us were prepared to acknowledge. Every man stood
-      firm; and at our last meeting, we pledged ourselves afresh, in the most
-      solemn manner, that, at the time appointed, we would certainly start in
-      pursuit of freedom. This was in the middle of the week, at the end of
-      which we were to be off. We went, as usual, to our several fields of
-      labor, but with bosoms highly agitated with thoughts of our truly
-      hazardous undertaking. We tried to conceal our feelings as much as
-      possible; and I think we succeeded very well.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      After a painful waiting, the Saturday morning, whose night was to witness
-      our departure, came. I hailed it with joy, bring what of sadness it might.
-      Friday night was a sleepless one for me. I probably felt more anxious than
-      the rest, because I was, by common consent, at the head of the whole
-      affair. The responsibility of success or failure lay heavily upon me. The
-      glory of the one, and the confusion of the other, were alike mine. The
-      first two hours of that morning were such as I never experienced before,
-      and hope never to again. Early in the morning, we went, as usual, to the
-      field. We were spreading manure; and all at once, while thus engaged, I
-      was overwhelmed with an indescribable feeling, in the fulness of which I
-      turned to Sandy, who was near by, and said, "We are betrayed!" "Well,"
-      said he, "that thought has this moment struck me." We said no more. I was
-      never more certain of any thing.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      The horn was blown as usual, and we went up from the field to the house
-      for breakfast. I went for the form, more than for want of any thing to eat
-      that morning. Just as I got to the house, in looking out at the lane gate,
-      I saw four white men, with two colored men. The white men were on
-      horseback, and the colored ones were walking behind, as if tied. I watched
-      them a few moments till they got up to our lane gate. Here they halted,
-      and tied the colored men to the gate-post. I was not yet certain as to
-      what the matter was. In a few moments, in rode Mr. Hamilton, with a speed
-      betokening great excitement. He came to the door, and inquired if Master
-      William was in. He was told he was at the barn. Mr. Hamilton, without
-      dismounting, rode up to the barn with extraordinary speed. In a few
-      moments, he and Mr. Freeland returned to the house. By this time, the
-      three constables rode up, and in great haste dismounted, tied their
-      horses, and met Master William and Mr. Hamilton returning from the barn;
-      and after talking awhile, they all walked up to the kitchen door. There
-      was no one in the kitchen but myself and John. Henry and Sandy were up at
-      the barn. Mr. Freeland put his head in at the door, and called me by name,
-      saying, there were some gentlemen at the door who wished to see me. I
-      stepped to the door, and inquired what they wanted. They at once seized
-      me, and, without giving me any satisfaction, tied me&mdash;lashing my
-      hands closely together. I insisted upon knowing what the matter was. They
-      at length said, that they had learned I had been in a "scrape," and that I
-      was to be examined before my master; and if their information proved
-      false, I should not be hurt.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In a few moments, they succeeded in tying John. They then turned to Henry,
-      who had by this time returned, and commanded him to cross his hands. "I
-      won't!" said Henry, in a firm tone, indicating his readiness to meet the
-      consequences of his refusal. "Won't you?" said Tom Graham, the constable.
-      "No, I won't!" said Henry, in a still stronger tone. With this, two of the
-      constables pulled out their shining pistols, and swore, by their Creator,
-      that they would make him cross his hands or kill him. Each cocked his
-      pistol, and, with fingers on the trigger, walked up to Henry, saying, at
-      the same time, if he did not cross his hands, they would blow his damned
-      heart out. "Shoot me, shoot me!" said Henry; "you can't kill me but once.
-      Shoot, shoot,&mdash;and be damned! <i>I won't be tied!</i>" This he said
-      in a tone of loud defiance; and at the same time, with a motion as quick
-      as lightning, he with one single stroke dashed the pistols from the hand
-      of each constable. As he did this, all hands fell upon him, and, after
-      beating him some time, they finally overpowered him, and got him tied.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      During the scuffle, I managed, I know not how, to get my pass out, and,
-      without being discovered, put it into the fire. We were all now tied; and
-      just as we were to leave for Easton jail, Betsy Freeland, mother of
-      William Freeland, came to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and
-      divided them between Henry and John. She then delivered herself of a
-      speech, to the following effect:&mdash;addressing herself to me, she said,
-      "<i>You devil! You yellow devil!</i> it was you that put it into the heads
-      of Henry and John to run away. But for you, you long-legged mulatto devil!
-      Henry nor John would never have thought of such a thing." I made no reply,
-      and was immediately hurried off towards St. Michael's. Just a moment
-      previous to the scuffle with Henry, Mr. Hamilton suggested the propriety
-      of making a search for the protections which he had understood Frederick
-      had written for himself and the rest. But, just at the moment he was about
-      carrying his proposal into effect, his aid was needed in helping to tie
-      Henry; and the excitement attending the scuffle caused them either to
-      forget, or to deem it unsafe, under the circumstances, to search. So we
-      were not yet convicted of the intention to run away.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      When we got about half way to St. Michael's, while the constables having
-      us in charge were looking ahead, Henry inquired of me what he should do
-      with his pass. I told him to eat it with his biscuit, and own nothing; and
-      we passed the word around, "<i>Own nothing;</i>" and "<i>Own nothing!</i>"
-      said we all. Our confidence in each other was unshaken. We were resolved
-      to succeed or fail together, after the calamity had befallen us as much as
-      before. We were now prepared for any thing. We were to be dragged that
-      morning fifteen miles behind horses, and then to be placed in the Easton
-      jail. When we reached St. Michael's, we underwent a sort of examination.
-      We all denied that we ever intended to run away. We did this more to bring
-      out the evidence against us, than from any hope of getting clear of being
-      sold; for, as I have said, we were ready for that. The fact was, we cared
-      but little where we went, so we went together. Our greatest concern was
-      about separation. We dreaded that more than any thing this side of death.
-      We found the evidence against us to be the testimony of one person; our
-      master would not tell who it was; but we came to a unanimous decision
-      among ourselves as to who their informant was. We were sent off to the
-      jail at Easton. When we got there, we were delivered up to the sheriff,
-      Mr. Joseph Graham, and by him placed in jail. Henry, John, and myself,
-      were placed in one room together&mdash;Charles, and Henry Bailey, in
-      another. Their object in separating us was to hinder concert.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave
-      traders, and agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us,
-      and to ascertain if we were for sale. Such a set of beings I never saw
-      before! I felt myself surrounded by so many fiends from perdition. A band
-      of pirates never looked more like their father, the devil. They laughed
-      and grinned over us, saying, "Ah, my boys! we have got you, haven't we?"
-      And after taunting us in various ways, they one by one went into an
-      examination of us, with intent to ascertain our value. They would
-      impudently ask us if we would not like to have them for our masters. We
-      would make them no answer, and leave them to find out as best they could.
-      Then they would curse and swear at us, telling us that they could take the
-      devil out of us in a very little while, if we were only in their hands.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      While in jail, we found ourselves in much more comfortable quarters than
-      we expected when we went there. We did not get much to eat, nor that which
-      was very good; but we had a good clean room, from the windows of which we
-      could see what was going on in the street, which was very much better than
-      though we had been placed in one of the dark, damp cells. Upon the whole,
-      we got along very well, so far as the jail and its keeper were concerned.
-      Immediately after the holidays were over, contrary to all our
-      expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Freeland came up to Easton, and took
-      Charles, the two Henrys, and John, out of jail, and carried them home,
-      leaving me alone. I regarded this separation as a final one. It caused me
-      more pain than any thing else in the whole transaction. I was ready for
-      any thing rather than separation. I supposed that they had consulted
-      together, and had decided that, as I was the whole cause of the intention
-      of the others to run away, it was hard to make the innocent suffer with
-      the guilty; and that they had, therefore, concluded to take the others
-      home, and sell me, as a warning to the others that remained. It is due to
-      the noble Henry to say, he seemed almost as reluctant at leaving the
-      prison as at leaving home to come to the prison. But we knew we should, in
-      all probability, be separated, if we were sold; and since he was in their
-      hands, he concluded to go peaceably home.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was now left to my fate. I was all alone, and within the walls of a
-      stone prison. But a few days before, and I was full of hope. I expected to
-      have been safe in a land of freedom; but now I was covered with gloom,
-      sunk down to the utmost despair. I thought the possibility of freedom was
-      gone. I was kept in this way about one week, at the end of which, Captain
-      Auld, my master, to my surprise and utter astonishment, came up, and took
-      me out, with the intention of sending me, with a gentleman of his
-      acquaintance, into Alabama. But, from some cause or other, he did not send
-      me to Alabama, but concluded to send me back to Baltimore, to live again
-      with his brother Hugh, and to learn a trade.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Thus, after an absence of three years and one month, I was once more
-      permitted to return to my old home at Baltimore. My master sent me away,
-      because there existed against me a very great prejudice in the community,
-      and he feared I might be killed.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In a few weeks after I went to Baltimore, Master Hugh hired me to Mr.
-      William Gardner, an extensive ship-builder, on Fell's Point. I was put
-      there to learn how to calk. It, however, proved a very unfavorable place
-      for the accomplishment of this object. Mr. Gardner was engaged that spring
-      in building two large man-of-war brigs, professedly for the Mexican
-      government. The vessels were to be launched in the July of that year, and
-      in failure thereof, Mr. Gardner was to lose a considerable sum; so that
-      when I entered, all was hurry. There was no time to learn any thing. Every
-      man had to do that which he knew how to do. In entering the shipyard, my
-      orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do whatever the carpenters commanded me
-      to do. This was placing me at the beck and call of about seventy-five men.
-      I was to regard all these as masters. Their word was to be my law. My
-      situation was a most trying one. At times I needed a dozen pair of hands.
-      I was called a dozen ways in the space of a single minute. Three or four
-      voices would strike my ear at the same moment. It was&mdash;"Fred., come
-      help me to cant this timber here."&mdash;"Fred., come carry this timber
-      yonder."&mdash;"Fred., bring that roller here."&mdash;"Fred., go get a
-      fresh can of water."&mdash;"Fred., come help saw off the end of this
-      timber."&mdash;"Fred., go quick, and get the crowbar."&mdash;"Fred., hold
-      on the end of this fall."&mdash;"Fred., go to the blacksmith's shop, and
-      get a new punch."&mdash;"Hurra, Fred! run and bring me a cold chisel."&mdash;"I
-      say, Fred., bear a hand, and get up a fire as quick as lightning under
-      that steam-box."&mdash;"Halloo, nigger! come, turn this grindstone."&mdash;"Come,
-      come! move, move! and <i>bowse</i> this timber forward."&mdash;"I say, darky,
-      blast your eyes, why don't you heat up some pitch?"&mdash;"Halloo! halloo!
-      halloo!" (Three voices at the same time.) "Come here!&mdash;Go there!&mdash;Hold
-      on where you are! Damn you, if you move, I'll knock your brains out!"
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      This was my school for eight months; and I might have remained there
-      longer, but for a most horrid fight I had with four of the white
-      apprentices, in which my left eye was nearly knocked out, and I was
-      horribly mangled in other respects. The facts in the case were these:
-      Until a very little while after I went there, white and black
-      ship-carpenters worked side by side, and no one seemed to see any
-      impropriety in it. All hands seemed to be very well satisfied. Many of the
-      black carpenters were freemen. Things seemed to be going on very well. All
-      at once, the white carpenters knocked off, and said they would not work
-      with free colored workmen. Their reason for this, as alleged, was, that if
-      free colored carpenters were encouraged, they would soon take the trade
-      into their own hands, and poor white men would be thrown out of
-      employment. They therefore felt called upon at once to put a stop to it.
-      And, taking advantage of Mr. Gardner's necessities, they broke off,
-      swearing they would work no longer, unless he would discharge his black
-      carpenters. Now, though this did not extend to me in form, it did reach me
-      in fact. My fellow-apprentices very soon began to feel it degrading to
-      them to work with me. They began to put on airs, and talk about the
-      "niggers" taking the country, saying we all ought to be killed; and, being
-      encouraged by the journeymen, they commenced making my condition as hard
-      as they could, by hectoring me around, and sometimes striking me. I, of
-      course, kept the vow I made after the fight with Mr. Covey, and struck
-      back again, regardless of consequences; and while I kept them from
-      combining, I succeeded very well; for I could whip the whole of them,
-      taking them separately. They, however, at length combined, and came upon
-      me, armed with sticks, stones, and heavy handspikes. One came in front
-      with a half brick. There was one at each side of me, and one behind me.
-      While I was attending to those in front, and on either side, the one
-      behind ran up with the handspike, and struck me a heavy blow upon the
-      head. It stunned me. I fell, and with this they all ran upon me, and fell
-      to beating me with their fists. I let them lay on for a while, gathering
-      strength. In an instant, I gave a sudden surge, and rose to my hands and
-      knees. Just as I did that, one of their number gave me, with his heavy
-      boot, a powerful kick in the left eye. My eyeball seemed to have burst.
-      When they saw my eye closed, and badly swollen, they left me. With this I
-      seized the handspike, and for a time pursued them. But here the carpenters
-      interfered, and I thought I might as well give it up. It was impossible to
-      stand my hand against so many. All this took place in sight of not less
-      than fifty white ship-carpenters, and not one interposed a friendly word;
-      but some cried, "Kill the damned nigger! Kill him! kill him! He struck a
-      white person." I found my only chance for life was in flight. I succeeded
-      in getting away without an additional blow, and barely so; for to strike a
-      white man is death by Lynch law,&mdash;and that was the law in Mr.
-      Gardner's ship-yard; nor is there much of any other out of Mr. Gardner's
-      ship-yard.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I went directly home, and told the story of my wrongs to Master Hugh; and
-      I am happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was heavenly,
-      compared with that of his brother Thomas under similar circumstances. He
-      listened attentively to my narration of the circumstances leading to the
-      savage outrage, and gave many proofs of his strong indignation at it. The
-      heart of my once overkind mistress was again melted into pity. My
-      puffed-out eye and blood-covered face moved her to tears. She took a chair
-      by me, washed the blood from my face, and, with a mother's tenderness,
-      bound up my head, covering the wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh
-      beef. It was almost compensation for my suffering to witness, once more, a
-      manifestation of kindness from this, my once affectionate old mistress.
-      Master Hugh was very much enraged. He gave expression to his feelings by
-      pouring out curses upon the heads of those who did the deed. As soon as I
-      got a little the better of my bruises, he took me with him to Esquire
-      Watson's, on Bond Street, to see what could be done about the matter. Mr.
-      Watson inquired who saw the assault committed. Master Hugh told him it was
-      done in Mr. Gardner's ship-yard at midday, where there were a large
-      company of men at work. "As to that," he said, "the deed was done, and
-      there was no question as to who did it." His answer was, he could do
-      nothing in the case, unless some white man would come forward and testify.
-      He could issue no warrant on my word. If I had been killed in the presence
-      of a thousand colored people, their testimony combined would have been
-      insufficient to have arrested one of the murderers. Master Hugh, for once,
-      was compelled to say this state of things was too bad. Of course, it was
-      impossible to get any white man to volunteer his testimony in my behalf,
-      and against the white young men. Even those who may have sympathized with
-      me were not prepared to do this. It required a degree of courage unknown
-      to them to do so; for just at that time, the slightest manifestation of
-      humanity toward a colored person was denounced as abolitionism, and that
-      name subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities. The watchwords of the
-      bloody-minded in that region, and in those days, were, "Damn the
-      abolitionists!" and "Damn the niggers!" There was nothing done, and
-      probably nothing would have been done if I had been killed. Such was, and
-      such remains, the state of things in the Christian city of Baltimore.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Master Hugh, finding he could get no redress, refused to let me go back
-      again to Mr. Gardner. He kept me himself, and his wife dressed my wound
-      till I was again restored to health. He then took me into the ship-yard of
-      which he was foreman, in the employment of Mr. Walter Price. There I was
-      immediately set to calking, and very soon learned the art of using my
-      mallet and irons. In the course of one year from the time I left Mr.
-      Gardner's, I was able to command the highest wages given to the most
-      experienced calkers. I was now of some importance to my master. I was
-      bringing him from six to seven dollars per week. I sometimes brought him
-      nine dollars per week: my wages were a dollar and a half a day. After
-      learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own contracts,
-      and collected the money which I earned. My pathway became much more smooth
-      than before; my condition was now much more comfortable. When I could get
-      no calking to do, I did nothing. During these leisure times, those old
-      notions about freedom would steal over me again. When in Mr. Gardner's
-      employment, I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of excitement, I could
-      think of nothing, scarcely, but my life; and in thinking of my life, I
-      almost forgot my liberty. I have observed this in my experience of
-      slavery,&mdash;that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its
-      increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set
-      me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a
-      contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is
-      necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible,
-      to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no
-      inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right;
-      and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I
-      contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my
-      own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver
-      every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned
-      it,&mdash;not because he had any hand in earning it,&mdash;not because I
-      owed it to him,&mdash;nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a
-      right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it
-      up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the
-      same.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      CHAPTER XI
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally
-      succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any of
-      the peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my intention
-      not to state all the facts connected with the transaction. My reasons for
-      pursuing this course may be understood from the following: First, were I
-      to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not only possible, but
-      quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in the most
-      embarrassing difficulties. Secondly, such a statement would most
-      undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part of slaveholders than has
-      existed heretofore among them; which would, of course, be the means of
-      guarding a door whereby some dear brother bondman might escape his galling
-      chains. I deeply regret the necessity that impels me to suppress any thing
-      of importance connected with my experience in slavery. It would afford me
-      great pleasure indeed, as well as materially add to the interest of my
-      narrative, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I know exists
-      in the minds of many, by an accurate statement of all the facts pertaining
-      to my most fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this pleasure,
-      and the curious of the gratification which such a statement would afford.
-      I would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations which
-      evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself, and thereby
-      run the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother slave
-      might clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our
-      western friends have conducted what they call the <i>underground railroad,</i>
-      but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made most
-      emphatically the <i>upperground railroad.</i> I honor those good men and
-      women for their noble daring, and applaud them for willingly subjecting
-      themselves to bloody persecution, by openly avowing their participation in
-      the escape of slaves. I, however, can see very little good resulting from
-      such a course, either to themselves or the slaves escaping; while, upon
-      the other hand, I see and feel assured that those open declarations are a
-      positive evil to the slaves remaining, who are seeking to escape. They do
-      nothing towards enlightening the slave, whilst they do much towards
-      enlightening the master. They stimulate him to greater watchfulness, and
-      enhance his power to capture his slave. We owe something to the slave
-      south of the line as well as to those north of it; and in aiding the
-      latter on their way to freedom, we should be careful to do nothing which
-      would be likely to hinder the former from escaping from slavery. I would
-      keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of flight
-      adopted by the slave. I would leave him to imagine himself surrounded by
-      myriads of invisible tormentors, ever ready to snatch from his infernal
-      grasp his trembling prey. Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let
-      darkness commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that
-      at every step he takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running
-      the frightful risk of having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible
-      agency. Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by
-      which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother. But enough of
-      this. I will now proceed to the statement of those facts, connected with
-      my escape, for which I am alone responsible, and for which no one can be
-      made to suffer but myself.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite restless. I could see
-      no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my
-      toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly wages,
-      he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a robber-like
-      fierceness, and ask, "Is this all?" He was satisfied with nothing less
-      than the last cent. He would, however, when I made him six dollars,
-      sometimes give me six cents, to encourage me. It had the opposite effect.
-      I regarded it as a sort of admission of my right to the whole. The fact
-      that he gave me any part of my wages was proof, to my mind, that he
-      believed me entitled to the whole of them. I always felt worse for having
-      received any thing; for I feared that the giving me a few cents would ease
-      his conscience, and make him feel himself to be a pretty honorable sort of
-      robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was ever on the look-out for means
-      of escape; and, finding no direct means, I determined to try to hire my
-      time, with a view of getting money with which to make my escape. In the
-      spring of 1838, when Master Thomas came to Baltimore to purchase his
-      spring goods, I got an opportunity, and applied to him to allow me to hire
-      my time. He unhesitatingly refused my request, and told me this was
-      another stratagem by which to escape. He told me I could go nowhere but
-      that he could get me; and that, in the event of my running away, he should
-      spare no pains in his efforts to catch me. He exhorted me to content
-      myself, and be obedient. He told me, if I would be happy, I must lay out
-      no plans for the future. He said, if I behaved myself properly, he would
-      take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the
-      future, and taught me to depend solely upon him for happiness. He seemed
-      to see fully the pressing necessity of setting aside my intellectual
-      nature, in order to contentment in slavery. But in spite of him, and even
-      in spite of myself, I continued to think, and to think about the injustice
-      of my enslavement, and the means of escape.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      About two months after this, I applied to Master Hugh for the privilege of
-      hiring my time. He was not acquainted with the fact that I had applied to
-      Master Thomas, and had been refused. He too, at first, seemed disposed to
-      refuse; but, after some reflection, he granted me the privilege, and
-      proposed the following terms: I was to be allowed all my time, make all
-      contracts with those for whom I worked, and find my own employment; and,
-      in return for this liberty, I was to pay him three dollars at the end of
-      each week; find myself in calking tools, and in board and clothing. My
-      board was two dollars and a half per week. This, with the wear and tear of
-      clothing and calking tools, made my regular expenses about six dollars per
-      week. This amount I was compelled to make up, or relinquish the privilege
-      of hiring my time. Rain or shine, work or no work, at the end of each week
-      the money must be forthcoming, or I must give up my privilege. This
-      arrangement, it will be perceived, was decidedly in my master's favor. It
-      relieved him of all need of looking after me. His money was sure. He
-      received all the benefits of slaveholding without its evils; while I
-      endured all the evils of a slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety of
-      a freeman. I found it a hard bargain. But, hard as it was, I thought it
-      better than the old mode of getting along. It was a step towards freedom
-      to be allowed to bear the responsibilities of a freeman, and I was
-      determined to hold on upon it. I bent myself to the work of making money.
-      I was ready to work at night as well as day, and by the most untiring
-      perseverance and industry, I made enough to meet my expenses, and lay up a
-      little money every week. I went on thus from May till August. Master Hugh
-      then refused to allow me to hire my time longer. The ground for his
-      refusal was a failure on my part, one Saturday night, to pay him for my
-      week's time. This failure was occasioned by my attending a camp meeting
-      about ten miles from Baltimore. During the week, I had entered into an
-      engagement with a number of young friends to start from Baltimore to the
-      camp ground early Saturday evening; and being detained by my employer, I
-      was unable to get down to Master Hugh's without disappointing the company.
-      I knew that Master Hugh was in no special need of the money that night. I
-      therefore decided to go to camp meeting, and upon my return pay him the
-      three dollars. I staid at the camp meeting one day longer than I intended
-      when I left. But as soon as I returned, I called upon him to pay him what
-      he considered his due. I found him very angry; he could scarce restrain
-      his wrath. He said he had a great mind to give me a severe whipping. He
-      wished to know how I dared go out of the city without asking his
-      permission. I told him I hired my time and while I paid him the price
-      which he asked for it, I did not know that I was bound to ask him when and
-      where I should go. This reply troubled him; and, after reflecting a few
-      moments, he turned to me, and said I should hire my time no longer; that
-      the next thing he should know of, I would be running away. Upon the same
-      plea, he told me to bring my tools and clothing home forthwith. I did so;
-      but instead of seeking work, as I had been accustomed to do previously to
-      hiring my time, I spent the whole week without the performance of a single
-      stroke of work. I did this in retaliation. Saturday night, he called upon
-      me as usual for my week's wages. I told him I had no wages; I had done no
-      work that week. Here we were upon the point of coming to blows. He raved,
-      and swore his determination to get hold of me. I did not allow myself a
-      single word; but was resolved, if he laid the weight of his hand upon me,
-      it should be blow for blow. He did not strike me, but told me that he
-      would find me in constant employment in future. I thought the matter over
-      during the next day, Sunday, and finally resolved upon the third day of
-      September, as the day upon which I would make a second attempt to secure
-      my freedom. I now had three weeks during which to prepare for my journey.
-      Early on Monday morning, before Master Hugh had time to make any
-      engagement for me, I went out and got employment of Mr. Butler, at his
-      ship-yard near the drawbridge, upon what is called the City Block, thus
-      making it unnecessary for him to seek employment for me. At the end of the
-      week, I brought him between eight and nine dollars. He seemed very well
-      pleased, and asked why I did not do the same the week before. He little
-      knew what my plans were. My object in working steadily was to remove any
-      suspicion he might entertain of my intent to run away; and in this I
-      succeeded admirably. I suppose he thought I was never better satisfied
-      with my condition than at the very time during which I was planning my
-      escape. The second week passed, and again I carried him my full wages; and
-      so well pleased was he, that he gave me twenty-five cents, (quite a large
-      sum for a slaveholder to give a slave,) and bade me to make a good use of
-      it. I told him I would.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was trouble.
-      It is impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of my
-      contemplated start drew near. I had a number of warmhearted friends in
-      Baltimore,&mdash;friends that I loved almost as I did my life,&mdash;and
-      the thought of being separated from them forever was painful beyond
-      expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who
-      now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their
-      friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful
-      thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my tender point,
-      and shook my decision more than all things else. Besides the pain of
-      separation, the dread and apprehension of a failure exceeded what I had
-      experienced at my first attempt. The appalling defeat I then sustained
-      returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if I failed in this attempt,
-      my case would be a hopeless one&mdash;it would seal my fate as a slave
-      forever. I could not hope to get off with any thing less than the severest
-      punishment, and being placed beyond the means of escape. It required no
-      very vivid imagination to depict the most frightful scenes through which I
-      should have to pass, in case I failed. The wretchedness of slavery, and
-      the blessedness of freedom, were perpetually before me. It was life and
-      death with me. But I remained firm, and, according to my resolution, on
-      the third day of September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in
-      reaching New York without the slightest interruption of any kind. How I
-      did so,&mdash;what means I adopted,&mdash;what direction I travelled, and
-      by what mode of conveyance,&mdash;I must leave unexplained, for the
-      reasons before mentioned.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free
-      State. I have never been able to answer the question with any satisfaction
-      to myself. It was a moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced. I
-      suppose I felt as one may imagine the unarmed mariner to feel when he is
-      rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate. In writing
-      to a dear friend, immediately after my arrival at New York, I said I felt
-      like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions. This state of mind,
-      however, very soon subsided; and I was again seized with a feeling of
-      great insecurity and loneliness. I was yet liable to be taken back, and
-      subjected to all the tortures of slavery. This in itself was enough to
-      damp the ardor of my enthusiasm. But the loneliness overcame me. There I
-      was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger; without home
-      and without friends, in the midst of thousands of my own brethren&mdash;children
-      of a common Father, and yet I dared not to unfold to any one of them my
-      sad condition. I was afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking to
-      the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving
-      kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive,
-      as the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey. The
-      motto which I adopted when I started from slavery was this&mdash;"Trust no
-      man!" I saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man
-      cause for distrust. It was a most painful situation; and, to understand
-      it, one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar
-      circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave in a strange land&mdash;a land
-      given up to be the hunting-ground for slaveholders&mdash;whose inhabitants
-      are legalized kidnappers&mdash;where he is every moment subjected to the
-      terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the hideous
-      crocodile seizes upon his prey!&mdash;I say, let him place himself in my
-      situation&mdash;without home or friends&mdash;without money or credit&mdash;wanting
-      shelter, and no one to give it&mdash;wanting bread, and no money to buy
-      it,&mdash;and at the same time let him feel that he is pursued by
-      merciless men-hunters, and in total darkness as to what to do, where to
-      go, or where to stay,&mdash;perfectly helpless both as to the means of
-      defence and means of escape,&mdash;in the midst of plenty, yet suffering
-      the terrible gnawings of hunger,&mdash;in the midst of houses, yet having
-      no home,&mdash;among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild
-      beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished
-      fugitive is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep
-      swallow up the helpless fish upon which they subsist,&mdash;I say, let him
-      be placed in this most trying situation,&mdash;the situation in which I
-      was placed,&mdash;then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the
-      hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and
-      whip-scarred fugitive slave.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in this distressed situation. I
-      was relieved from it by the humane hand of <i>Mr. David Ruggles</i>, whose
-      vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget. I am glad of
-      an opportunity to express, as far as words can, the love and gratitude I
-      bear him. Mr. Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and is himself in
-      need of the same kind offices which he was once so forward in the
-      performance of toward others. I had been in New York but a few days, when
-      Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to his boarding-house
-      at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets. Mr. Ruggles was then very
-      deeply engaged in the memorable <i>Darg</i> case, as well as attending to
-      a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways and means for their
-      successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed in on almost every side,
-      he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished to know of me where I
-      wanted to go; as he deemed it unsafe for me to remain in New York. I told
-      him I was a calker, and should like to go where I could get work. I
-      thought of going to Canada; but he decided against it, and in favor of my
-      going to New Bedford, thinking I should be able to get work there at my
-      trade. At this time, Anna,* my intended wife, came on; for I wrote to her
-      immediately after my arrival at New York, (notwithstanding my homeless,
-      houseless, and helpless condition,) informing her of my successful flight,
-      and wishing her to come on forthwith. In a few days after her arrival, Mr.
-      Ruggles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, who, in the presence of
-      Mr. Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and two or three others, performed the
-      marriage ceremony, and gave us a certificate, of which the following is an
-      exact copy:&mdash;
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-"This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick
-Johnson** and Anna Murray, as man and wife, in the presence of Mr. David
-Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels.
-
-"JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON
-"<i>New York, Sept. 15, 1838</i>"
-
-
-          *She was free.
-
-          **I had changed my name from Frederick <i>Bailey</i> to that of
-          <i>Johnson</i>.
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar bill from Mr. Ruggles,
-      I shouldered one part of our baggage, and Anna took up the other, and we
-      set out forthwith to take passage on board of the steamboat John W.
-      Richmond for Newport, on our way to New Bedford. Mr. Ruggles gave me a
-      letter to a Mr. Shaw in Newport, and told me, in case my money did not
-      serve me to New Bedford, to stop in Newport and obtain further assistance;
-      but upon our arrival at Newport, we were so anxious to get to a place of
-      safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the necessary money to pay our
-      fare, we decided to take seats in the stage, and promise to pay when we
-      got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do this by two excellent
-      gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names I afterward ascertained
-      to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber. They seemed at once to
-      understand our circumstances, and gave us such assurance of their
-      friendliness as put us fully at ease in their presence.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time. Upon
-      reaching New Bedford, we were directed to the house of Mr. Nathan Johnson,
-      by whom we were kindly received, and hospitably provided for. Both Mr. and
-      Mrs. Johnson took a deep and lively interest in our welfare. They proved
-      themselves quite worthy of the name of abolitionists. When the
-      stage-driver found us unable to pay our fare, he held on upon our baggage
-      as security for the debt. I had but to mention the fact to Mr. Johnson,
-      and he forthwith advanced the money.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for the
-      duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom. On the morning after our
-      arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the question arose
-      as to what name I should be called by. The name given me by my mother was,
-      "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey." I, however, had dispensed with the
-      two middle names long before I left Maryland so that I was generally known
-      by the name of "Frederick Bailey." I started from Baltimore bearing the
-      name of "Stanley." When I got to New York, I again changed my name to
-      "Frederick Johnson," and thought that would be the last change. But when I
-      got to New Bedford, I found it necessary again to change my name. The
-      reason of this necessity was, that there were so many Johnsons in New
-      Bedford, it was already quite difficult to distinguish between them. I
-      gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of choosing me a name, but told him he must
-      not take from me the name of "Frederick." I must hold on to that, to
-      preserve a sense of my identity. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the
-      "Lady of the Lake," and at once suggested that my name be "Douglass." From
-      that time until now I have been called "Frederick Douglass;" and as I am
-      more widely known by that name than by either of the others, I shall
-      continue to use it as my own.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New
-      Bedford. The impression which I had received respecting the character and
-      condition of the people of the north, I found to be singularly erroneous.
-      I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of the comforts,
-      and scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at the north,
-      compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of the south. I
-      probably came to this conclusion from the fact that northern people owned
-      no slaves. I supposed that they were about upon a level with the
-      non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew <i>they</i> were
-      exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their poverty as the
-      necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had somehow
-      imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no
-      wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I
-      expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population,
-      living in the most Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease,
-      luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such being my
-      conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may
-      very readily infer how palpably I must have seen my mistake.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the
-      wharves, to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded
-      with the strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding in
-      the stream, I saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order, and
-      of the largest size. Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite
-      warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their utmost capacity with
-      the necessaries and comforts of life. Added to this, almost every body
-      seemed to be at work, but noiselessly so, compared with what I had been
-      accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no loud songs heard from those
-      engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard no deep oaths or horrid
-      curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of men; but all seemed to go
-      smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went at it
-      with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the deep interest
-      which he felt in what he was doing, as well as a sense of his own dignity
-      as a man. To me this looked exceedingly strange. From the wharves I
-      strolled around and over the town, gazing with wonder and admiration at
-      the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens;
-      evincing an amount of wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I
-      had never seen in any part of slaveholding Maryland.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated
-      houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and
-      barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see in Hillsborough,
-      Easton, St. Michael's, and Baltimore. The people looked more able,
-      stronger, healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland. I was for once
-      made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being saddened by seeing
-      extreme poverty. But the most astonishing as well as the most interesting
-      thing to me was the condition of the colored people, a great many of whom,
-      like myself, had escaped thither as a refuge from the hunters of men. I
-      found many, who had not been seven years out of their chains, living in
-      finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than
-      the average of slaveholders in Maryland. I will venture to assert, that my
-      friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I can say with a grateful heart, "I was
-      hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a
-      stranger, and he took me in") lived in a neater house; dined at a better
-      table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the
-      moral, religious, and political character of the nation,&mdash;than nine
-      tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was
-      a working man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but
-      those also of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored people much more spirited
-      than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a determination to
-      protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all hazards. Soon
-      after my arrival, I was told of a circumstance which illustrated their
-      spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were on unfriendly terms. The
-      former was heard to threaten the latter with informing his master of his
-      whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was called among the colored people,
-      under the stereotyped notice, "Business of importance!" The betrayer was
-      invited to attend. The people came at the appointed hour, and organized
-      the meeting by appointing a very religious old gentleman as president,
-      who, I believe, made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as
-      follows: "<i>Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you
-      young men just take him outside the door, and kill him!</i>" With this, a
-      number of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid
-      than themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not
-      been seen in New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such
-      threats, and should there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be
-      the consequence.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop
-      with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at
-      it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It was a
-      happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those who
-      have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which was to be
-      entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I
-      earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I had
-      never before experienced. I was at work for myself and newly-married wife.
-      It was to me the starting-point of a new existence. When I got through
-      with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such was the
-      strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers, that they
-      refused to work with me, and of course I could get no employment.*
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-     * I am told that colored persons can now get employment at
-     calking in New Bedford&mdash;a result of anti-slavery effort.
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking
-      habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to do.
-      Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse and saw, and I very soon
-      found myself a plenty of work. There was no work too hard&mdash;none too
-      dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the
-      chimney, or roll oil casks,&mdash;all of which I did for nearly three
-      years in New Bedford, before I became known to the anti-slavery world.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man
-      to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the "Liberator." I told him
-      I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was
-      unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it.
-      The paper came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it
-      would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The paper became my
-      meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my
-      brethren in bonds&mdash;its scathing denunciations of slaveholders&mdash;its
-      faithful exposures of slavery&mdash;and its powerful attacks upon the
-      upholders of the institution&mdash;sent a thrill of joy through my soul,
-      such as I had never felt before!
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I had not long been a reader of the "Liberator," before I got a pretty
-      correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery
-      reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what I
-      could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in an
-      anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings, because
-      what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But, while
-      attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August,
-      1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged
-      to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in
-      the colored people's meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I
-      took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea
-      of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments,
-      when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable
-      ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause
-      of my brethren&mdash;with what success, and with what devotion, I leave
-      those acquainted with my labors to decide.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2H_APPE" id="link2H_APPE">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 4em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-    <h2>
-      APPENDIX
-    </h2>
-    <p>
-      I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in
-      several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion,
-      as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose
-      me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such
-      misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief
-      explanation. What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean
-      strictly to apply to the <i>slaveholding religion</i> of this land, and
-      with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the
-      Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the
-      widest possible difference&mdash;so wide, that to receive the one as good,
-      pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and
-      wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of
-      the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of
-      Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping,
-      cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
-      Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the
-      religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all
-      misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
-      Never was there a clearer case of "stealing the livery of the court of
-      heaven to serve the devil in." I am filled with unutterable loathing when
-      I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible
-      inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for
-      ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for
-      church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the
-      week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek
-      and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each
-      week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of
-      life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of
-      prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who
-      proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of
-      learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious
-      advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and
-      leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of
-      the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole
-      families,&mdash;sundering husbands and wives, parents and children,
-      sisters and brothers,&mdash;leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth
-      desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer
-      against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to
-      support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the <i>Poor
-            Heathen! All For The Glory Of God And The Good Of Souls!</i> The slave
-      auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and
-      the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious
-      shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the
-      slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church
-      stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains
-      in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be
-      heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect
-      their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each
-      other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and
-      the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of
-      Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other&mdash;devils
-      dressed in angels' robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-     "Just God! and these are they,
-     Who minister at thine altar, God of right!
-     Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay
-     On Israel's ark of light.
-
-     "What! preach, and kidnap men?
-     Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?
-     Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
-     Bolt hard the captive's door?
-
-     "What! servants of thy own
-     Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
-     The homeless and the outcast, fettering down
-     The tasked and plundered slave!
-
-     "Pilate and Herod friends!
-     Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!
-     Just God and holy! is that church which lends
-     Strength to the spoiler thine?"
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may be
-      as truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, "They bind
-      heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders,
-      but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. All
-      their works they do for to be seen of men.&mdash;They love the uppermost
-      rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, . . . . . . and to
-      be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.&mdash;But woe unto you, scribes and
-      Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men;
-      for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering
-      to go in. Ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers;
-      therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Ye compass sea and land
-      to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the
-      child of hell than yourselves.&mdash;Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
-      hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have
-      omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith;
-      these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind
-      guides! which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes
-      and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of
-      the platter; but within, they are full of extortion and excess.&mdash;Woe
-      unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited
-      sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of
-      dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear
-      righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity."
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the
-      overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a
-      gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches?
-      They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a
-      <i>sheep</i>-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a
-      <i>man</i>-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with them
-      for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of
-      religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law,
-      judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom
-      to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God
-      whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have
-      seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray
-      for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries
-      to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at
-      their own doors.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid
-      any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by
-      the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and
-      actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian
-      churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It is against religion, as
-      presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      I conclude these remarks by copying the following portrait of the religion
-      of the south, (which is, by communion and fellowship, the religion of the
-      north,) which I soberly affirm is "true to the life," and without
-      caricature or the slightest exaggeration. It is said to have been drawn,
-      several years before the present anti-slavery agitation began, by a
-      northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the south, had an
-      opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners, and piety, with his own
-      eyes. "Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord. Shall not my
-      soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
-      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
-    </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-
-               <b>A PARODY</b>
-
-     "Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell
-     How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,
-     And women buy and children sell,
-     And preach all sinners down to hell,
-     And sing of heavenly union.
-
-     "They'll bleat and baa, dona like goats,
-     Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,
-     Array their backs in fine black coats,
-     Then seize their negroes by their throats,
-     And choke, for heavenly union.
-
-     "They'll church you if you sip a dram,
-     And damn you if you steal a lamb;
-     Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,
-     Of human rights, and bread and ham;
-     Kidnapper's heavenly union.
-
-     "They'll loudly talk of Christ's reward,
-     And bind his image with a cord,
-     And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,
-     And sell their brother in the Lord
-     To handcuffed heavenly union.
-
-     "They'll read and sing a sacred song,
-     And make a prayer both loud and long,
-     And teach the right and do the wrong,
-     Hailing the brother, sister throng,
-     With words of heavenly union.
-
-     "We wonder how such saints can sing,
-     Or praise the Lord upon the wing,
-     Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,
-     And to their slaves and mammon cling,
-     In guilty conscience union.
-
-     "They'll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,
-     And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie,
-     And lay up treasures in the sky,
-     By making switch and cowskin fly,
-     In hope of heavenly union.
-
-     "They'll crack old Tony on the skull,
-     And preach and roar like Bashan bull,
-     Or braying ass, of mischief full,
-     Then seize old Jacob by the wool,
-     And pull for heavenly union.
-
-     "A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,
-     Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,
-     Yet never would afford relief
-     To needy, sable sons of grief,
-     Was big with heavenly union.
-
-     "'Love not the world,' the preacher said,
-     And winked his eye, and shook his head;
-     He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,
-     Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,
-     Yet still loved heavenly union.
-
-     "Another preacher whining spoke
-     Of One whose heart for sinners broke:
-     He tied old Nanny to an oak,
-     And drew the blood at every stroke,
-     And prayed for heavenly union.
-
-     "Two others oped their iron jaws,
-     And waved their children-stealing paws;
-     There sat their children in gewgaws;
-     By stinting negroes' backs and maws,
-     They kept up heavenly union.
-
-     "All good from Jack another takes,
-     And entertains their flirts and rakes,
-     Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes,
-     And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;
-     And this goes down for union."
-</pre>
-    <p>
-      Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something
-      toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad
-      day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds&mdash;faithfully
-      relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my
-      humble efforts&mdash;and solemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred
-      cause,&mdash;I subscribe myself,
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      FREDERICK DOUGLASS.<br /> LYNN, <i>Mass., April</i> 28, 1845.
-    </p>
-    <p>
-      THE END
-    </p>
-    <div style="height: 6em;">
-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-    </div>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
 
+</head>
 
+<body>
 
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass<br />
+An American Slave</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Frederick Douglass</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 1992 [eBook #23]<br />
+[Most recently updated: February 28, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS ***</div>
 
+<h1>Narrative<br />
+of the<br />
+Life<br />
+of<br />
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+</h1>
 
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick
-Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
+<h2 class="no-break">AN<br />
+AMERICAN SLAVE.<br />
+WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.</h2>
 
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FREDERICK DOUGLASS ***
+<h4>BOSTON<br />
+<br />
+ PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,<br />
+ NO. 25 CORNHILL<br />
+ 1845<br />
+<br />
+</h4>
 
-***** This file should be named 23-h.htm or 23-h.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/23/
+<h5>ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,<br />
+ IN THE YEAR 1845<br />
+ BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS,<br />
+ IN THE CLERK&rsquo;S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT<br />
+OF MASSACHUSETTS.<br />
+</h5>
 
-Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+<hr />
 
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.
+<p class="letter">
+Note from the original file: This electronic book is being released at this
+time to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. [Born January 15, 1929]
+[Officially celebrated January 20, 1992]
+</p>
 
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
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-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
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-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
+<hr />
 
+<h2>Contents</h2>
 
+<table summary="" style="">
 
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a></td>
+</tr>
 
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ. </a></td>
+</tr>
 
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
-http://gutenberg.org/license).
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> FREDERICK DOUGLASS. </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_APPE"> APPENDIX </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> A PARODY </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"></a> PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in
+Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with <i>Frederick
+Douglass</i>, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a stranger to
+nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made his escape from the
+southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity excited to
+ascertain the principles and measures of the abolitionists,&mdash;of whom he
+had heard a somewhat vague description while he was a slave,&mdash;he was
+induced to give his attendance, on the occasion alluded to, though at that time
+a resident in New Bedford.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!&mdash;fortunate for the millions of his
+manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful
+thraldom!&mdash;fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of universal
+liberty!&mdash;fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has already done
+so much to save and bless!&mdash;fortunate for a large circle of friends and
+acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly secured by the many
+sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits of character, by his
+ever-abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being bound with
+them!&mdash;fortunate for the multitudes, in various parts of our republic,
+whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of slavery, and who have been
+melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to virtuous indignation by his
+stirring eloquence against the enslavers of men!&mdash;fortunate for himself,
+as it at once brought him into the field of public usefulness, &ldquo;gave the
+world assurance of a <small>MAN</small>,&rdquo; quickened the slumbering
+energies of his soul, and consecrated him to the great work of breaking the rod
+of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall never forget his first speech at the convention&mdash;the extraordinary
+emotion it excited in my own mind&mdash;the powerful impression it created upon
+a crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise&mdash;the applause which
+followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks. 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
+proportion and stature commanding and exact&mdash;in intellect richly
+endowed&mdash;in natural eloquence a prodigy&mdash;in soul manifestly
+&ldquo;created but a little lower than the angels&rdquo;&mdash;yet a slave, ay,
+a fugitive slave,&mdash;trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that
+on the American soil, a single white person could be found who would befriend
+him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity! Capable of high
+attainments as an intellectual and moral being&mdash;needing nothing but a
+comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society
+and a blessing to his race&mdash;by the law of the land, by the voice of the
+people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a
+beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr. D<small>OUGLASS</small>  to
+address the convention. He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and
+embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a novel
+position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the audience that
+slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to
+narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave, and in the course of
+his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflections. As
+soon as he had taken his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and
+declared that P<small>ATRICK</small> H<small>ENRY</small>, of revolutionary
+fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one
+we had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive. So I believed at
+that time&mdash;such is my belief now. I reminded the audience of the peril
+which surrounded this self-emancipated young man at the North,&mdash;even in
+Massachusetts, on the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of
+revolutionary sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him
+to be carried back into slavery,&mdash;law or no law, constitution or no
+constitution. The response was unanimous and in
+thunder-tones&mdash;&ldquo;NO!&rdquo; &ldquo;Will you succor and protect him as
+a brother-man&mdash;a resident of the old Bay State?&rdquo; &ldquo;YES!&rdquo;
+shouted the whole mass, with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants
+south of Mason and Dixon&rsquo;s line might almost have heard the mighty burst
+of feeling, and recognized it as the pledge of an invincible determination, on
+the part of those who gave it, never to betray him that wanders, but to hide
+the outcast, and firmly to abide the consequences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr.
+D<small>OUGLASS</small> could be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents
+to the promotion of the anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be
+given to it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern
+prejudice against a colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to instil hope
+and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a vocation
+so anomalous and responsible for a person in his situation; and I was seconded
+in this effort by warm-hearted friends, especially by the late General Agent of
+the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. J<small>OHN</small> A.
+C<small>OLLINS</small>, whose judgment in this instance entirely coincided with
+my own. At first, he could give no encouragement; with unfeigned diffidence, he
+expressed his conviction that he was not adequate to the performance of so
+great a task; the path marked out was wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely
+apprehensive that he should do more harm than good. After much deliberation,
+however, he consented to make a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted
+as a lecturing agent, under the auspices either of the American or the
+Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has been most abundant; and
+his success in combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes, in agitating the
+public mind, has far surpassed the most sanguine expectations that were raised
+at the commencement of his brilliant career. He has borne himself with
+gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of character. As a public
+speaker, he excels in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of
+reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that union of head and
+heart, which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of
+the hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May he
+continue to &ldquo;grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God,&rdquo; that he
+may be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at
+home or abroad!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient
+advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive slave,
+in the person of <i>Frederick Douglass</i>; and that the free colored
+population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their own
+number, in the person of <i>Charles Lenox Remond</i>, whose eloquent appeals
+have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic.
+Let the calumniators of the colored race despise themselves for their baseness
+and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of the natural
+inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to
+the highest point of human excellence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the
+population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and
+horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of
+humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to
+cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature,
+obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully
+they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage, under which
+they have been groaning for centuries! To illustrate the effect of slavery on
+the white man,&mdash;to show that he has no powers of endurance, in such a
+condition, superior to those of his black brother,&mdash;<i>Daniel
+O&rsquo;Connell</i>, the distinguished advocate of universal emancipation, and
+the mightiest champion of prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the
+following anecdote in a speech delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall,
+Dublin, before the Loyal National Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. &ldquo;No
+matter,&rdquo; said <i>Mr. O&rsquo;Connell</i>, &ldquo;under what specious term
+it may disguise itself, slavery is still hideous. <i>It has a natural, an
+inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble faculty of man.</i> An American
+sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery
+for three years, was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted
+and stultified&mdash;he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his
+native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between Arabic and
+English, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself found
+difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence of <i>The
+Domestic Institution</i>!&rdquo; Admitting this to have been an extraordinary
+case of mental deterioration, it proves at least that the white slave can sink
+as low in the scale of humanity as the black one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mr. Douglass</i> has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in his
+own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to employ some
+one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production; and, considering how
+long and dark was the career he had to run as a slave,&mdash;how few have been
+his opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his iron fetters,&mdash;it
+is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his head and heart. He who can peruse
+it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,&mdash;without
+being filled with an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors,
+and animated with a determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that
+execrable system,&mdash;without trembling for the fate of this country in the
+hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose
+arm is not shortened that it cannot save,&mdash;must have a flinty heart, and
+be qualified to act the part of a trafficker &ldquo;in slaves and the souls of
+men.&rdquo; I am confident that it is essentially true in all its statements;
+that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn
+from the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather than
+overstates a single fact in regard to <i>slavery as it is</i>. The experience
+of <i>Frederick Douglass</i>, as a slave, was not a peculiar one; his lot was
+not especially a hard one; his case may be regarded as a very fair specimen of
+the treatment of slaves in Maryland, in which State it is conceded that they
+are better fed and less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana.
+Many have suffered incomparably more, while very few on the plantations have
+suffered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what
+terrible chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more shocking
+outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble powers and sublime
+aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even by those professing to have
+the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities
+was he continually subjected! how destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even
+in his greatest extremities! how heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded
+in blackness the last ray of hope, and filled the future with terror and gloom!
+what longings after freedom took possession of his breast, and how his misery
+augmented, in proportion as he grew reflective and intelligent,&mdash;thus
+demonstrating that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he thought, reasoned,
+felt, under the lash of the driver, with the chains upon his limbs! what perils
+he encountered in his endeavors to escape from his horrible doom! and how
+signal have been his deliverance and preservation in the midst of a nation of
+pitiless enemies!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great
+eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them all is the
+description <i>Douglass</i> gives of his feelings, as he stood soliloquizing
+respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being a freeman, on the
+banks of the Chesapeake Bay&mdash;viewing the receding vessels as they flew
+with their white wings before the breeze, and apostrophizing them as animated
+by the living spirit of freedom. Who can read that passage, and be insensible
+to its pathos and sublimity? Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library
+of thought, feeling, and sentiment&mdash;all that can, all that need be urged,
+in the form of expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of
+crimes,&mdash;making man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is
+that system, which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image,
+reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a level with
+four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in human flesh above all that is
+called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not evil,
+only evil, and that continually? What does its presence imply but the absence
+of all fear of God, all regard for man, on the part of the people of the United
+States? Heaven speed its eternal overthrow!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that they are
+stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any recital of the
+cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They do not deny that the
+slaves are held as property; but that terrible fact seems to convey to their
+minds no idea of injustice, exposure to outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them
+of cruel scourgings, of mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and
+blood, of the banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be
+greatly indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements,
+such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if all
+these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery! As if it were
+less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of a thing, than to give
+him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of necessary food and clothing! As
+if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles, blood-hounds, overseers, drivers,
+patrols, were not all indispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give
+protection to their ruthless oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution
+is abolished, concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound;
+when all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to protect
+the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is assumed over
+life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destructive sway! Skeptics of
+this character abound in society. In some few instances, their incredulity
+arises from a want of reflection; but, generally, it indicates a hatred of the
+light, a desire to shield slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of
+the colored race, whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit the shocking
+tales of slaveholding cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative;
+but they will labor in vain. <i>Mr. Douglass</i> has frankly disclosed the
+place of his birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and
+soul, and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has alleged
+against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be disproved, if they are
+untrue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
+cruelty,&mdash;in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging to
+a neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his lordly
+domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out the brains of a
+slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a bloody scourging. <i>Mr.
+Douglass</i> states that in neither of these instances was any thing done by
+way of legal arrest or judicial investigation. The Baltimore American, of March
+17, 1845, relates a similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar
+impunity&mdash;as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Shooting a slave.</i>&mdash;We
+learn, upon the authority of a letter from Charles county, Maryland, received
+by a gentleman of this city, that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of
+General Matthews, and whose father, it is believed, holds an office at
+Washington, killed one of the slaves upon his father&rsquo;s farm by shooting
+him. The letter states that young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm;
+that he gave an order to the servant, which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to
+the house, <i>obtained a gun, and, returning, shot the servant.</i> He
+immediately, the letter continues, fled to his father&rsquo;s residence, where
+he still remains unmolested.&rdquo;&mdash;Let it never be forgotten, that no
+slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on the
+person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony of colored
+witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are adjudged to be as
+incompetent to testify against a white man, as though they were indeed a part
+of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal protection in fact, whatever
+there may be in form, for the slave population; and any amount of cruelty may
+be inflicted on them with impunity. Is it possible for the human mind to
+conceive of a more horrible state of society?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters is
+vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any thing but
+salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest degree
+pernicious. The testimony of <i>Mr. Douglass</i>, on this point, is sustained
+by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. &ldquo;A
+slaveholder&rsquo;s profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He is a
+felon of the highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no importance what
+you put in the other scale.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side
+of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the foe of God
+and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do and dare in their
+behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every
+yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what may&mdash;cost what it
+may&mdash;inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze, as your
+religious and political motto&mdash;&ldquo;NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION
+WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON,
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>May</i> 1, 1845.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"></a> LETTER FROM WENDELL
+PHILLIPS, ESQ.</h2>
+
+<p class="right">
+B<small>OSTON</small>, <i>April</i> 22, 1845.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My Dear Friend:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You remember the old fable of &ldquo;The Man and the Lion,&rdquo; where the
+lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented &ldquo;when the lions
+wrote history.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am glad the time has come when the &ldquo;lions write history.&rdquo; We have
+been left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary
+evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest sufficiently satisfied with
+what, it is evident, must be, in general, the results of such a relation,
+without seeking farther to find whether they have followed in every instance.
+Indeed, those who stare at the half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the
+lashes on the slave&rsquo;s back, are seldom the &ldquo;stuff&rdquo; out of
+which reformers and abolitionists are to be made. I remember that, in 1838,
+many were waiting for the results of the West India experiment, before they
+could come into our ranks. Those &ldquo;results&rdquo; have come long ago; but,
+alas! few of that number have come with them, as converts. A man must be
+disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased
+the produce of sugar,&mdash;and to hate slavery for other reasons than because
+it starves men and whips women,&mdash;before he is ready to lay the first stone
+of his anti-slavery life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of God&rsquo;s
+children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice done them.
+Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C, or
+knew where the &ldquo;white sails&rdquo; of the Chesapeake were bound, you
+began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and
+want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which
+gathers over his soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
+recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the more
+remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are told slavery
+appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is at its best
+estate&mdash;gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination may
+task her powers to add dark lines to the picture, as she travels southward to
+that (for the colored man) Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi
+sweeps along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in your
+truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak has felt, and,
+I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel, persuaded that you
+give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No one-sided portrait,&mdash;no
+wholesale complaints,&mdash;but strict justice done, whenever individual
+kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the deadly system with which it was
+strangely allied. You have been with us, too, some years, and can fairly
+compare the twilight of rights, which your race enjoy at the North, with that
+&ldquo;noon of night&rdquo; under which they labor south of Mason and
+Dixon&rsquo;s line. Tell us whether, after all, the half-free colored man of
+Massachusetts is worse off than the pampered slave of the rice swamps!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out some rare
+specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which even you have
+drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no individual ills, but
+such as must mingle always and necessarily in the lot of every slave. They are
+the essential ingredients, not the occasional results, of the system.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years ago, when
+you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace, you may remember I
+stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of all. With the exception of a
+vague description, so I continued, till the other day, when you read me your
+memoirs. I hardly knew, at the time, whether to thank you or not for the sight
+of them, when I reflected that it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for
+honest men to tell their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the
+Declaration of Independence with the halter about their necks. You, too,
+publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you around. In all
+the broad lands which the Constitution of the United States overshadows, there
+is no single spot,&mdash;however narrow or desolate,&mdash;where a fugitive
+slave can plant himself and say, &ldquo;I am safe.&rdquo; The whole armory of
+Northern Law has no shield for you. I am free to say that, in your place, I
+should throw the MS. into the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, endeared as you are to so many
+warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to the service of
+others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and the fearless efforts of
+those who, trampling the laws and Constitution of the country under their feet,
+are determined that they will &ldquo;hide the outcast,&rdquo; and that their
+hearths shall be, spite of the law, an asylum for the oppressed, if, some time
+or other, the humblest may stand in our streets, and bear witness in safety
+against the cruelties of which he has been the victim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome your
+story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating contrary to
+the &ldquo;statute in such case made and provided.&rdquo; Go on, my dear
+friend, till you, and those who, like you, have been saved, so as by fire, from
+the dark prison-house, shall stereotype these free, illegal pulses into
+statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a blood-stained Union, shall
+glory in being the house of refuge for the oppressed,&mdash;till we no longer
+merely &ldquo;<i>hide</i> the outcast,&rdquo; or make a merit of standing idly
+by while he is hunted in our midst; but, consecrating anew the soil of the
+Pilgrims as an asylum for the oppressed, proclaim our <i>welcome</i> to the
+slave so loudly, that the tones shall reach every hut in the Carolinas, and
+make the broken-hearted bondman leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+God speed the day!                                <br />
+<i>Till then, and ever,</i>            <br />
+Yours truly, <br />
+W<small>ENDELL</small> P<small>HILLIPS</small>
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></a> FREDERICK DOUGLASS.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
+near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of
+his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to
+Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the
+assistance of his master&rsquo;s wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went
+to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he
+had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick
+Douglass. In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
+Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately
+employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous
+persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote <i>Narrative Of The
+Life Of Frederick Douglass</i>. During the Civil War he assisted in the
+recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and
+consistently argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he was active
+in securing and protecting the rights of the freemen. In his later years, at
+different times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and
+recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to
+Haiti. His other autobiographical works are <i>My Bondage And My Freedom</i>
+and <i>Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass</i>, published in 1855 and 1881
+respectively. He died in 1895.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"></a> CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p>
+I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton,
+in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never
+having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the
+slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the
+wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I
+do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They
+seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time,
+spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source
+of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their
+ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was
+not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all
+such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of
+a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between
+twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my
+master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey
+Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than
+either my grandmother or grandfather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak
+of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father;
+but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing
+was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an
+infant&mdash;before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part
+of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a
+very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its
+mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance
+off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field
+labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder
+the development of the child&rsquo;s affection toward its mother, and to blunt
+and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the
+inevitable result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my
+life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was
+hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her
+journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after
+the performance of her day&rsquo;s work. She was a field hand, and a whipping
+is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special
+permission from his or her master to the contrary&mdash;a permission which they
+seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a
+kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day.
+She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep,
+but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place
+between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and
+with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old,
+on one of my master&rsquo;s farms, near Lee&rsquo;s Mill. I was not allowed to
+be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long
+before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable
+extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the
+tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at
+the death of a stranger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation of who
+my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be
+true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst
+the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have
+ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all
+cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to
+administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires
+profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the
+slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of
+master and father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably
+suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are,
+in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed
+to find fault with them; they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is
+never better pleased than when she sees them under the lash, especially when
+she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto children favors which he
+withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell
+this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife;
+and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own
+children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to
+do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must
+stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker
+complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he
+lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and
+only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would
+protect and defend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was doubtless
+in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great statesman of the
+south predicted the downfall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population.
+Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled or not, it is nevertheless plain that a
+very different-looking class of people are springing up at the south, and are
+now held in slavery, from those originally brought to this country from Africa;
+and if their increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the
+argument, that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the
+lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain
+that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are
+ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to
+white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have had two masters. My first master&rsquo;s name was Anthony. I do not
+remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony&mdash;a title
+which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was
+not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about
+thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The
+overseer&rsquo;s name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a
+profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and
+a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women&rsquo;s heads so
+horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten
+to whip him if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane
+slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to
+affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He
+would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often
+been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own
+aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back
+till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from
+his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The
+louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest,
+there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to
+make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the
+blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible
+exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget
+it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such
+outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me
+with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of
+slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I
+wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old master,
+and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one
+night,&mdash;where or for what I do not know,&mdash;and happened to be absent
+when my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go out evenings,
+and warned her that she must never let him catch her in company with a young
+man, who was paying attention to her belonging to Colonel Lloyd. The young
+man&rsquo;s name was Ned Roberts, generally called Lloyd&rsquo;s Ned. Why
+master was so careful of her, may be safely left to conjecture. She was a woman
+of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer
+superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of our
+neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been found
+in company with Lloyd&rsquo;s Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what he
+said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of pure
+morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the
+innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any such
+virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen,
+and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back,
+entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same
+time a d&mdash;&mdash;d b&mdash;-h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with
+a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in
+for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the
+hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up
+at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said
+to her, &ldquo;Now, you d&mdash;&mdash;d b&mdash;-h, I&rsquo;ll learn you how
+to disobey my orders!&rdquo; and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to
+lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending
+shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was
+so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet,
+and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over. I
+expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any
+thing like it before. I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts
+of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger
+women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes
+that often occurred on the plantation.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"></a> CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p>
+My master&rsquo;s family consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; one
+daughter, Lucretia, and her husband, Captain Thomas Auld. They lived in one
+house, upon the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. My master was Colonel
+Lloyd&rsquo;s clerk and superintendent. He was what might be called the
+overseer of the overseers. I spent two years of childhood on this plantation in
+my old master&rsquo;s family. It was here that I witnessed the bloody
+transaction recorded in the first chapter; and as I received my first
+impressions of slavery on this plantation, I will give some description of it,
+and of slavery as it there existed. The plantation is about twelve miles north
+of Easton, in Talbot county, and is situated on the border of Miles River. The
+principal products raised upon it were tobacco, corn, and wheat. These were
+raised in great abundance; so that, with the products of this and the other
+farms belonging to him, he was able to keep in almost constant employment a
+large sloop, in carrying them to market at Baltimore. This sloop was named
+Sally Lloyd, in honor of one of the colonel&rsquo;s daughters. My
+master&rsquo;s son-in-law, Captain Auld, was master of the vessel; she was
+otherwise manned by the colonel&rsquo;s own slaves. Their names were Peter,
+Isaac, Rich, and Jake. These were esteemed very highly by the other slaves, and
+looked upon as the privileged ones of the plantation; for it was no small
+affair, in the eyes of the slaves, to be allowed to see Baltimore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home plantation,
+and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms belonging to him. The
+names of the farms nearest to the home plantation were Wye Town and New Design.
+&ldquo;Wye Town&rdquo; was under the overseership of a man named Noah Willis.
+New Design was under the overseership of a Mr. Townsend. The overseers of
+these, and all the rest of the farms, numbering over twenty, received advice
+and direction from the managers of the home plantation. This was the great
+business place. It was the seat of government for the whole twenty farms. All
+disputes among the overseers were settled here. If a slave was convicted of any
+high misdemeanor, became unmanageable, or evinced a determination to run away,
+he was brought immediately here, severely whipped, put on board the sloop,
+carried to Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk, or some other slave-trader,
+as a warning to the slaves remaining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly allowance
+of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves received, as their
+monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and
+one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen
+shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of
+trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one
+pair of shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars.
+The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the old
+women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the field had
+neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing
+consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. When these failed them, they
+went naked until the next allowance-day. Children from seven to ten years old,
+of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered
+such, and none but the men and women had these. This, however, is not
+considered a very great privation. They find less difficulty from the want of
+beds, than from the want of time to sleep; for when their day&rsquo;s work in
+the field is done, the most of them having their washing, mending, and cooking
+to do, and having few or none of the ordinary facilities for doing either of
+these, very many of their sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the
+field the coming day; and when this is done, old and young, male and female,
+married and single, drop down side by side, on one common bed,&mdash;the cold,
+damp floor,&mdash;each covering himself or herself with their miserable
+blankets; and here they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the
+driver&rsquo;s horn. At the sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the
+field. There must be no halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe
+betides them who hear not this morning summons to the field; for if they are
+not awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of feeling: no age
+nor sex finds any favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used to stand by the door of
+the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick and heavy cowskin, ready to whip
+any one who was so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other cause, was
+prevented from being ready to start for the field at the sound of the horn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman,
+causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst
+of her crying children, pleading for their mother&rsquo;s release. He seemed to
+take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he
+was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of
+an ordinary man to hear him talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was
+commenced or concluded by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness
+his cruelty and profanity. His presence made it both the field of blood and of
+blasphemy. From the rising till the going down of the sun, he was cursing,
+raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field, in the most
+frightful manner. His career was short. He died very soon after I went to
+Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s; and he died as he lived, uttering, with his dying
+groans, bitter curses and horrid oaths. His death was regarded by the slaves as
+the result of a merciful providence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Severe&rsquo;s place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different
+man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr. Severe. His
+course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations of cruelty. He
+whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called by the slaves a
+good overseer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country village.
+All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed here. The
+shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting, coopering, weaving,
+and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves on the home plantation.
+The whole place wore a business-like aspect very unlike the neighboring farms.
+The number of houses, too, conspired to give it advantage over the neighboring
+farms. It was called by the slaves the <i>Great House Farm.</i> Few privileges
+were esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being
+selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their
+minds with greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to
+a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms would be
+of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They regarded it as
+evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it was on
+this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field from under
+the driver&rsquo;s lash, that they esteemed it a high privilege, one worth
+careful living for. He was called the smartest and most trusty fellow, who had
+this honor conferred upon him the most frequently. The competitors for this
+office sought as diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers in
+the political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The same traits of
+character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s slaves, as are seen in the
+slaves of the political parties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance
+for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on
+their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate
+with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest
+sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither
+time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out&mdash;if not in the word, in
+the sound;&mdash;and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would
+sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the
+most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs
+they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would
+they do this, when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the
+following words:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;I am going away to the Great House Farm!<br />
+O, yea! O, yea! O!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning
+jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have
+sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress
+some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole
+volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
+apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither
+saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe
+which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud,
+long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over
+with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a
+prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes
+always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have
+frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to
+those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an
+expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I
+trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.
+I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen
+my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If
+any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let
+him go to Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation, and, on allowance-day, place
+himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the
+sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul,&mdash;and if he is not
+thus impressed, it will only be because &ldquo;there is no flesh in his
+obdurate heart.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find
+persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their
+contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake.
+Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent
+the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart
+is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to
+drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and
+singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The
+singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately
+considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave;
+the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"></a> CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated garden, which afforded almost
+constant employment for four men, besides the chief gardener, (Mr.
+M&rsquo;Durmond.) This garden was probably the greatest attraction of the
+place. During the summer months, people came from far and near&mdash;from
+Baltimore, Easton, and Annapolis&mdash;to see it. It abounded in fruits of
+almost every description, from the hardy apple of the north to the delicate
+orange of the south. This garden was not the least source of trouble on the
+plantation. Its excellent fruit was quite a temptation to the hungry swarms of
+boys, as well as the older slaves, belonging to the colonel, few of whom had
+the virtue or the vice to resist it. Scarcely a day passed, during the summer,
+but that some slave had to take the lash for stealing fruit. The colonel had to
+resort to all kinds of stratagems to keep his slaves out of the garden. The
+last and most successful one was that of tarring his fence all around; after
+which, if a slave was caught with any tar upon his person, it was deemed
+sufficient proof that he had either been into the garden, or had tried to get
+in. In either case, he was severely whipped by the chief gardener. This plan
+worked well; the slaves became as fearful of tar as of the lash. They seemed to
+realize the impossibility of touching <i>tar</i> without being defiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage. His stable and carriage-house
+presented the appearance of some of our large city livery establishments. His
+horses were of the finest form and noblest blood. His carriage-house contained
+three splendid coaches, three or four gigs, besides dearborns and barouches of
+the most fashionable style.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This establishment was under the care of two slaves&mdash;old Barney and young
+Barney&mdash;father and son. To attend to this establishment was their sole
+work. But it was by no means an easy employment; for in nothing was Colonel
+Lloyd more particular than in the management of his horses. The slightest
+inattention to these was unpardonable, and was visited upon those, under whose
+care they were placed, with the severest punishment; no excuse could shield
+them, if the colonel only suspected any want of attention to his horses&mdash;a
+supposition which he frequently indulged, and one which, of course, made the
+office of old and young Barney a very trying one. They never knew when they
+were safe from punishment. They were frequently whipped when least deserving,
+and escaped whipping when most deserving it. Every thing depended upon the
+looks of the horses, and the state of Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s own mind when his
+horses were brought to him for use. If a horse did not move fast enough, or
+hold his head high enough, it was owing to some fault of his keepers. It was
+painful to stand near the stable-door, and hear the various complaints against
+the keepers when a horse was taken out for use. &ldquo;This horse has not had
+proper attention. He has not been sufficiently rubbed and curried, or he has
+not been properly fed; his food was too wet or too dry; he got it too soon or
+too late; he was too hot or too cold; he had too much hay, and not enough of
+grain; or he had too much grain, and not enough of hay; instead of old
+Barney&rsquo;s attending to the horse, he had very improperly left it to his
+son.&rdquo; To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must
+answer never a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a
+slave. When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was
+literally the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man between
+fifty and sixty years of age, uncover his bald head, kneel down upon the cold,
+damp ground, and receive upon his naked and toil-worn shoulders more than
+thirty lashes at the time. Colonel Lloyd had three sons&mdash;Edward, Murray,
+and Daniel,&mdash;and three sons-in-law, Mr. Winder, Mr. Nicholson, and Mr.
+Lowndes. All of these lived at the Great House Farm, and enjoyed the luxury of
+whipping the servants when they pleased, from old Barney down to William
+Wilkes, the coach-driver. I have seen Winder make one of the house-servants
+stand off from him a suitable distance to be touched with the end of his whip,
+and at every stroke raise great ridges upon his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to describing the
+riches of Job. He kept from ten to fifteen house-servants. He was said to own a
+thousand slaves, and I think this estimate quite within the truth. Colonel
+Lloyd owned so many that he did not know them when he saw them; nor did all the
+slaves of the out-farms know him. It is reported of him, that, while riding
+along the road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual
+manner of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the south:
+&ldquo;Well, boy, whom do you belong to?&rdquo; &ldquo;To Colonel Lloyd,&rdquo;
+replied the slave. &ldquo;Well, does the colonel treat you well?&rdquo;
+&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; was the ready reply. &ldquo;What, does he work you too
+hard?&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo; &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t he give you
+enough to eat?&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the man also
+went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing with his
+master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of the matter, until two or
+three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then informed by his overseer that,
+for having found fault with his master, he was now to be sold to a Georgia
+trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a
+moment&rsquo;s warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his
+family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death. This is the penalty
+of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of
+plain questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired of as to
+their condition and the character of their masters, almost universally say they
+are contented, and that their masters are kind. The slaveholders have been
+known to send in spies among their slaves, to ascertain their views and
+feelings in regard to their condition. The frequency of this has had the effect
+to establish among the slaves the maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head.
+They suppress the truth rather than take the consequences of telling it, and in
+so doing prove themselves a part of the human family. If they have any thing to
+say of their masters, it is generally in their masters&rsquo; favor, especially
+when speaking to an untried man. I have been frequently asked, when a slave, if
+I had a kind master, and do not remember ever to have given a negative answer;
+nor did I, in pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what was
+absolutely false; for I always measured the kindness of my master by the
+standard of kindness set up among slaveholders around us. Moreover, slaves are
+like other people, and imbibe prejudices quite common to others. They think
+their own better than that of others. Many, under the influence of this
+prejudice, think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves;
+and this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is not
+uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the
+relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness
+of his own over that of the others. At the very same time, they mutually
+execrate their masters when viewed separately. It was so on our plantation.
+When Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson, they seldom
+parted without a quarrel about their masters; Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s slaves
+contending that he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson&rsquo;s slaves that he was
+the smartest, and most of a man. Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s slaves would boast his
+ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson. Mr. Jepson&rsquo;s slaves would boast his
+ability to whip Colonel Lloyd. These quarrels would almost always end in a
+fight between the parties, and those that whipped were supposed to have gained
+the point at issue. They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters
+was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a
+slave; but to be a poor man&rsquo;s slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"></a> CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Hopkins remained but a short time in the office of overseer. Why his career
+was so short, I do not know, but suppose he lacked the necessary severity to
+suit Colonel Lloyd. Mr. Hopkins was succeeded by Mr. Austin Gore, a man
+possessing, in an eminent degree, all those traits of character indispensable
+to what is called a first-rate overseer. Mr. Gore had served Colonel Lloyd, in
+the capacity of overseer, upon one of the out-farms, and had shown himself
+worthy of the high station of overseer upon the home or Great House Farm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Gore was proud, ambitious, and persevering. He was artful, cruel, and
+obdurate. He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the place for
+such a man. It afforded scope for the full exercise of all his powers, and he
+seemed to be perfectly at home in it. He was one of those who could torture the
+slightest look, word, or gesture, on the part of the slave, into impudence, and
+would treat it accordingly. There must be no answering back to him; no
+explanation was allowed a slave, showing himself to have been wrongfully
+accused. Mr. Gore acted fully up to the maxim laid down by
+slaveholders,&mdash;&ldquo;It is better that a dozen slaves should suffer under
+the lash, than that the overseer should be convicted, in the presence of the
+slaves, of having been at fault.&rdquo; No matter how innocent a slave might
+be&mdash;it availed him nothing, when accused by Mr. Gore of any misdemeanor.
+To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the
+one always following the other with immutable certainty. To escape punishment
+was to escape accusation; and few slaves had the fortune to do either, under
+the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just proud enough to demand the most
+debasing homage of the slave, and quite servile enough to crouch, himself, at
+the feet of the master. He was ambitious enough to be contented with nothing
+short of the highest rank of overseers, and persevering enough to reach the
+height of his ambition. He was cruel enough to inflict the severest punishment,
+artful enough to descend to the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be
+insensible to the voice of a reproving conscience. He was, of all the
+overseers, the most dreaded by the slaves. His presence was painful; his eye
+flashed confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice heard, without
+producing horror and trembling in their ranks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Gore was a grave man, and, though a young man, he indulged in no jokes,
+said no funny words, seldom smiled. His words were in perfect keeping with his
+looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping with his words. Overseers will
+sometimes indulge in a witty word, even with the slaves; not so with Mr. Gore.
+He spoke but to command, and commanded but to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly
+with his words, and bountifully with his whip, never using the former where the
+latter would answer as well. When he whipped, he seemed to do so from a sense
+of duty, and feared no consequences. He did nothing reluctantly, no matter how
+disagreeable; always at his post, never inconsistent. He never promised but to
+fulfil. He was, in a word, a man of the most inflexible firmness and stone-like
+coolness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with which he
+committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves under his charge.
+Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s slaves, by the
+name of Demby. He had given Demby but few stripes, when, to get rid of the
+scourging, he ran and plunged himself into a creek, and stood there at the
+depth of his shoulders, refusing to come out. Mr. Gore told him that he would
+give him three calls, and that, if he did not come out at the third call, he
+would shoot him. The first call was given. Demby made no response, but stood
+his ground. The second and third calls were given with the same result. Mr.
+Gore then, without consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving
+Demby an additional call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at
+his standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more. His mangled body
+sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon the plantation, excepting
+Mr. Gore. He alone seemed cool and collected. He was asked by Colonel Lloyd and
+my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary expedient. His reply was,
+(as well as I can remember,) that Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting
+a dangerous example to the other slaves,&mdash;one which, if suffered to pass
+without some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total
+subversion of all rule and order upon the plantation. He argued that if one
+slave refused to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves
+would soon copy the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the
+slaves, and the enslavement of the whites. Mr. Gore&rsquo;s defence was
+satisfactory. He was continued in his station as overseer upon the home
+plantation. His fame as an overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not even
+submitted to judicial investigation. It was committed in the presence of
+slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor testify against
+him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the bloodiest and most foul
+murders goes unwhipped of justice, and uncensured by the community in which he
+lives. Mr. Gore lived in St. Michael&rsquo;s, Talbot county, Maryland, when I
+left there; and if he is still alive, he very probably lives there now; and if
+so, he is now, as he was then, as highly esteemed and as much respected as
+though his guilty soul had not been stained with his brother&rsquo;s blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I speak advisedly when I say this,&mdash;that killing a slave, or any colored
+person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the
+courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St. Michael&rsquo;s, killed two
+slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains out. He
+used to boast of the commission of the awful and bloody deed. I have heard him
+do so laughingly, saying, among other things, that he was the only benefactor
+of his country in the company, and that when others would do as much as he had
+done, we should be relieved of &ldquo;the d&mdash;&mdash;d niggers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I used to
+live, murdered my wife&rsquo;s cousin, a young girl between fifteen and sixteen
+years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible manner, breaking her
+nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor girl expired in a few hours
+afterward. She was immediately buried, but had not been in her untimely grave
+but a few hours before she was taken up and examined by the coroner, who
+decided that she had come to her death by severe beating. The offence for which
+this girl was thus murdered was this:&mdash;She had been set that night to mind
+Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby
+cried. She, having lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear the
+crying. They were both in the room with Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks, finding the
+girl slow to move, jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood by the
+fireplace, and with it broke the girl&rsquo;s nose and breastbone, and thus
+ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder produced no
+sensation in the community. It did produce sensation, but not enough to bring
+the murderess to punishment. There was a warrant issued for her arrest, but it
+was never served. Thus she escaped not only punishment, but even the pain of
+being arraigned before a court for her horrid crime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whilst I am detailing bloody deeds which took place during my stay on Colonel
+Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation, I will briefly narrate another, which occurred about
+the same time as the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their
+nights and Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the
+deficiency of their scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel Lloyd,
+while thus engaged, happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s,
+and on the premises of Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr. Bondly took
+offence, and with his musket came down to the shore, and blew its deadly
+contents into the poor old man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bondly came over to see Colonel Lloyd the next day, whether to pay him for
+his property, or to justify himself in what he had done, I know not. At any
+rate, this whole fiendish transaction was soon hushed up. There was very little
+said about it at all, and nothing done. It was a common saying, even among
+little white boys, that it was worth a half-cent to kill a
+&ldquo;nigger,&rdquo; and a half-cent to bury one.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"></a> CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p>
+As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation, it
+was very similar to that of the other slave children. I was not old enough to
+work in the field, and there being little else than field work to do, I had a
+great deal of leisure time. The most I had to do was to drive up the cows at
+evening, keep the fowls out of the garden, keep the front yard clean, and run
+of errands for my old master&rsquo;s daughter, Mrs. Lucretia Auld. The most of
+my leisure time I spent in helping Master Daniel Lloyd in finding his birds,
+after he had shot them. My connection with Master Daniel was of some advantage
+to me. He became quite attached to me, and was a sort of protector of me. He
+would not allow the older boys to impose upon me, and would divide his cakes
+with me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suffered little from any thing else
+than hunger and cold. I suffered much from hunger, but much more from cold. In
+hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost naked&mdash;no shoes, no
+stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow linen shirt,
+reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must have perished with cold, but
+that, the coldest nights, I used to steal a bag which was used for carrying
+corn to the mill. I would crawl into this bag, and there sleep on the cold,
+damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out. My feet have been so cracked
+with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the
+gashes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were not regularly allowanced. Our food was coarse corn meal boiled. This
+was called <i>mush</i>. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set
+down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and
+like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-shells,
+others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He
+that ate fastest got most; he that was strongest secured the best place; and
+few left the trough satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel
+Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the ecstasy
+with which I received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony) had
+determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, brother to my
+old master&rsquo;s son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld. I received this information
+about three days before my departure. They were three of the happiest days I
+ever enjoyed. I spent the most part of all these three days in the creek,
+washing off the plantation scurf, and preparing myself for my departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pride of appearance which this would indicate was not my own. I spent the
+time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because Mrs. Lucretia had
+told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and knees before I could go to
+Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly, and would laugh at me
+if I looked dirty. Besides, she was going to give me a pair of trousers, which
+I should not put on unless I got all the dirt off me. The thought of owning a
+pair of trousers was great indeed! It was almost a sufficient motive, not only
+to make me take off what would be called by pig-drovers the mange, but the skin
+itself. I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time with the hope
+of reward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all suspended in my
+case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home was charmless; it was
+not home to me; on parting from it, I could not feel that I was leaving any
+thing which I could have enjoyed by staying. My mother was dead, my grandmother
+lived far off, so that I seldom saw her. I had two sisters and one brother,
+that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our
+mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories. I
+looked for home elsewhere, and was confident of finding none which I should
+relish less than the one which I was leaving. If, however, I found in my new
+home hardship, hunger, whipping, and nakedness, I had the consolation that I
+should not have escaped any one of them by staying. Having already had more
+than a taste of them in the house of my old master, and having endured them
+there, I very naturally inferred my ability to endure them elsewhere, and
+especially at Baltimore; for I had something of the feeling about Baltimore
+that is expressed in the proverb, that &ldquo;being hanged in England is
+preferable to dying a natural death in Ireland.&rdquo; I had the strongest
+desire to see Baltimore. Cousin Tom, though not fluent in speech, had inspired
+me with that desire by his eloquent description of the place. I could never
+point out any thing at the Great House, no matter how beautiful or powerful,
+but that he had seen something at Baltimore far exceeding, both in beauty and
+strength, the object which I pointed out to him. Even the Great House itself,
+with all its pictures, was far inferior to many buildings in Baltimore. So
+strong was my desire, that I thought a gratification of it would fully
+compensate for whatever loss of comforts I should sustain by the exchange. I
+left without a regret, and with the highest hopes of future happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore on a Saturday morning. I remember
+only the day of the week, for at that time I had no knowledge of the days of
+the month, nor the months of the year. On setting sail, I walked aft, and gave
+to Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation what I hoped would be the last look. I then
+placed myself in the bows of the sloop, and there spent the remainder of the
+day in looking ahead, interesting myself in what was in the distance rather
+than in things near by or behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon of that day, we reached Annapolis, the capital of the State.
+We stopped but a few moments, so that I had no time to go on shore. It was the
+first large town that I had ever seen, and though it would look small compared
+with some of our New England factory villages, I thought it a wonderful place
+for its size&mdash;more imposing even than the Great House Farm!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We arrived at Baltimore early on Sunday morning, landing at Smith&rsquo;s
+Wharf, not far from Bowley&rsquo;s Wharf. We had on board the sloop a large
+flock of sheep; and after aiding in driving them to the slaughterhouse of Mr.
+Curtis on Louden Slater&rsquo;s Hill, I was conducted by Rich, one of the hands
+belonging on board of the sloop, to my new home in Alliciana Street, near Mr.
+Gardner&rsquo;s ship-yard, on Fells Point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. and Mrs. Auld were both at home, and met me at the door with their little
+son Thomas, to take care of whom I had been given. And here I saw what I had
+never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the most kindly emotions;
+it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld. I wish I could describe the
+rapture that flashed through my soul as I beheld it. It was a new and strange
+sight to me, brightening up my pathway with the light of happiness. Little
+Thomas was told, there was his Freddy,&mdash;and I was told to take care of
+little Thomas; and thus I entered upon the duties of my new home with the most
+cheering prospect ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation as one of the
+most interesting events of my life. It is possible, and even quite probable,
+that but for the mere circumstance of being removed from that plantation to
+Baltimore, I should have to-day, instead of being here seated by my own table,
+in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness of home, writing this Narrative,
+been confined in the galling chains of slavery. Going to live at Baltimore laid
+the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity. I have
+ever regarded it as the first plain manifestation of that kind providence which
+has ever since attended me, and marked my life with so many favors. I regarded
+the selection of myself as being somewhat remarkable. There were a number of
+slave children that might have been sent from the plantation to Baltimore.
+There were those younger, those older, and those of the same age. I was chosen
+from among them all, and was the first, last, and only choice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as
+a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false
+to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to
+be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others,
+rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest
+recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would
+not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours
+of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed
+not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the
+gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and
+praise.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"></a> CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p>
+My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the
+door,&mdash;a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had
+a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she
+had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She was by trade a
+weaver; and by constant application to her business, she had been in a good
+degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was
+utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her.
+She was entirely unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not
+approach her as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early
+instruction was all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so
+acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her
+favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not deem
+it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face. The meanest
+slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling
+better for having seen her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice
+of tranquil music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal
+poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its
+infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became
+red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh
+and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly
+commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in
+learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my
+progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld
+to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful,
+as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he
+said, &ldquo;If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should
+know nothing but to obey his master&mdash;to do as he is told to do. Learning
+would <i>spoil</i> the best nigger in the world. Now,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if
+you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no
+keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become
+unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no
+good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and
+unhappy.&rdquo; These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments
+within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of
+thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious
+things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in
+vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing
+difficulty&mdash;to wit, the white man&rsquo;s power to enslave the black man.
+It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I
+understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and
+I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the
+thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the
+invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my
+master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set
+out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn
+how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress
+his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to
+convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave
+me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the
+results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most
+dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which
+to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be
+diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my
+learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to
+learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my
+master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked
+difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed in the
+country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the
+plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether
+unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is a vestige of decency, a sense
+of shame, that does much to curb and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty
+so commonly enacted upon the plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who
+will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his
+lacerated slave. Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation
+of being a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known as not
+giving a slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious to have it
+known of him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due to them to say, that
+most of them do give their slaves enough to eat. There are, however, some
+painful exceptions to this rule. Directly opposite to us, on Philpot Street,
+lived Mr. Thomas Hamilton. He owned two slaves. Their names were Henrietta and
+Mary. Henrietta was about twenty-two years of age, Mary was about fourteen; and
+of all the mangled and emaciated creatures I ever looked upon, these two were
+the most so. His heart must be harder than stone, that could look upon these
+unmoved. The head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut to pieces. I
+have frequently felt her head, and found it nearly covered with festering
+sores, caused by the lash of her cruel mistress. I do not know that her master
+ever whipped her, but I have been an eye-witness to the cruelty of Mrs.
+Hamilton. I used to be in Mr. Hamilton&rsquo;s house nearly every day. Mrs.
+Hamilton used to sit in a large chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy
+cowskin always by her side, and scarce an hour passed during the day but was
+marked by the blood of one of these slaves. The girls seldom passed her without
+her saying, &ldquo;Move faster, you <i>black gip!</i>&rdquo; at the same time
+giving them a blow with the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing
+the blood. She would then say, &ldquo;Take that, you <i>black gip!</i>&rdquo;
+continuing, &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t move faster, I&rsquo;ll move you!&rdquo;
+Added to the cruel lashings to which these slaves were subjected, they were
+kept nearly half-starved. They seldom knew what it was to eat a full meal. I
+have seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal thrown into the street.
+So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that she was oftener called
+&ldquo;<i>pecked</i>&rdquo; than by her name.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"></a> CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p>
+I lived in Master Hugh&rsquo;s family about seven years. During this time, I
+succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled
+to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had
+kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and
+direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face
+against my being instructed by any one else. It is due, however, to my mistress
+to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She
+at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental
+darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the
+exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me
+as though I were a brute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the
+simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to
+treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering
+upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained
+to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human
+being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to
+her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and
+tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a
+tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for
+every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to
+divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart
+became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like
+fierceness. The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to
+instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband&rsquo;s precepts. She
+finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself.
+She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed
+anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with
+a newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush
+at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a
+manner that fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little
+experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery
+were incompatible with each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any
+considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and
+was at once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too
+late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had
+given me the <i>inch,</i> and no precaution could prevent me from taking the
+<i>ell.</i>
+</p>
 
+<p>
+The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that
+of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As
+many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid,
+obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in
+learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me,
+and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before
+my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in
+the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this
+regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I
+used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me
+that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give the names
+of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and
+affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;&mdash;not that it would injure me,
+but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach
+slaves to read in this Christian country. It is enough to say of the dear
+little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and
+Bailey&rsquo;s ship-yard. I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them.
+I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be
+when they got to be men. &ldquo;You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one,
+<i>but I am a slave for life!</i> Have not I as good a right to be free as you
+have?&rdquo; These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the
+liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by
+which I might be free.
+</p>
 
-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
+<p>
+I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being <i>a slave for
+life</i> began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold
+of a book entitled &ldquo;The Columbian Orator.&rdquo; Every opportunity I got,
+I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it
+a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as having
+run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation
+which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In
+this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by
+the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to
+say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his
+master&mdash;things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the
+conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of
+the master.
+</p>
 
-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+<p>
+In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan&rsquo;s mighty speeches on and in
+behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them
+over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting
+thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died
+away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the
+power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from
+Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of
+human rights. The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts,
+and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they
+relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than
+the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor
+and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of
+successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us
+from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as
+being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated
+the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted
+would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul
+to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that
+learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a
+view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the
+horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I
+envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a
+beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing,
+no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my
+condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed
+upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The
+silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now
+appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen
+in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched
+condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it,
+and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in
+every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and
+but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed
+myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this
+state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready
+listener. Every little while, I could hear something about the abolitionists.
+It was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such
+connections as to make it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and
+succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a
+barn, or did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken
+of as the fruit of <i>abolition.</i> Hearing the word in this connection very
+often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or
+no help. I found it was &ldquo;the act of abolishing;&rdquo; but then I did not
+know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask any
+one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was something they wanted me
+to know very little about. After a patient waiting, I got one of our city
+papers, containing an account of the number of petitions from the north,
+praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the
+slave trade between the States. From this time I understood the words
+<i>abolition</i> and <i>abolitionist,</i> and always drew near when that word
+was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and
+fellow-slaves. The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on
+the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I
+went, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me
+and asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, &ldquo;Are ye a
+slave for life?&rdquo; I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be
+deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so
+fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a
+shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should
+find friends there, and that I should be free. I pretended not to be interested
+in what they said, and treated them as if I did not understand them; for I
+feared they might be treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves
+to escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to their
+masters. I was afraid that these seemingly good men might use me so; but I
+nevertheless remembered their advice, and from that time I resolved to run
+away. I looked forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I
+was too young to think of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how
+to write, as I might have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with
+the hope that I should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to
+write.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in
+Durgin and Bailey&rsquo;s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters,
+after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber
+the name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of
+timber was intended for the larboard side, it would be marked
+thus&mdash;&ldquo;L.&rdquo; When a piece was for the starboard side, it would
+be marked thus&mdash;&ldquo;S.&rdquo; A piece for the larboard side forward,
+would be marked thus&mdash;&ldquo;L. F.&rdquo; When a piece was for starboard
+side forward, it would be marked thus&mdash;&ldquo;S. F.&rdquo; For larboard
+aft, it would be marked thus&mdash;&ldquo;L. A.&rdquo; For starboard aft, it
+would be marked thus&mdash;&ldquo;S. A.&rdquo; I soon learned the names of
+these letters, and for what they were intended when placed upon a piece of
+timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short
+time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any
+boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The
+next word would be, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you. Let me see you try
+it.&rdquo; I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to
+learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in
+writing, which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other
+way. During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and
+pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how
+to write. I then commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster&rsquo;s
+Spelling Book, until I could make them all without looking on the book. By this
+time, my little Master Thomas had gone to school, and learned how to write, and
+had written over a number of copy-books. These had been brought home, and shown
+to some of our near neighbors, and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to
+class meeting at the Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday afternoon, and leave
+me to take care of the house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in
+writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas&rsquo;s copy-book, copying what he
+had written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to
+that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally
+succeeded in learning how to write.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"></a> CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+In a very short time after I went to live at Baltimore, my old master&rsquo;s
+youngest son Richard died; and in about three years and six months after his
+death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leaving only his son, Andrew, and
+daughter, Lucretia, to share his estate. He died while on a visit to see his
+daughter at Hillsborough. Cut off thus unexpectedly, he left no will as to the
+disposal of his property. It was therefore necessary to have a valuation of the
+property, that it might be equally divided between Mrs. Lucretia and Master
+Andrew. I was immediately sent for, to be valued with the other property. Here
+again my feelings rose up in detestation of slavery. I had now a new conception
+of my degraded condition. Prior to this, I had become, if not insensible to my
+lot, at least partly so. I left Baltimore with a young heart overborne with
+sadness, and a soul full of apprehension. I took passage with Captain Rowe, in
+the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a sail of about twenty-four hours, I found
+myself near the place of my birth. I had now been absent from it almost, if not
+quite, five years. I, however, remembered the place very well. I was only about
+five years old when I left it, to go and live with my old master on Colonel
+Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation; so that I was now between ten and eleven years old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young,
+married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were
+horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank
+in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination.
+Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the
+same indelicate inspection. At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the
+brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the valuation, then came the division. I have no language to express the
+high excitement and deep anxiety which were felt among us poor slaves during
+this time. Our fate for life was now to be decided. We had no more voice in
+that decision than the brutes among whom we were ranked. A single word from the
+white men was enough&mdash;against all our wishes, prayers, and
+entreaties&mdash;to sunder forever the dearest friends, dearest kindred, and
+strongest ties known to human beings. In addition to the pain of separation,
+there was the horrid dread of falling into the hands of Master Andrew. He was
+known to us all as being a most cruel wretch,&mdash;a common drunkard, who had,
+by his reckless mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a
+large portion of his father&rsquo;s property. We all felt that we might as well
+be sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew
+that that would be our inevitable condition,&mdash;a condition held by us all
+in the utmost horror and dread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-slaves. I had known what it was
+to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind. They had seen little
+or nothing of the world. They were in very deed men and women of sorrow, and
+acquainted with grief. Their backs had been made familiar with the bloody lash,
+so that they had become callous; mine was yet tender; for while at Baltimore I
+got few whippings, and few slaves could boast of a kinder master and mistress
+than myself; and the thought of passing out of their hands into those of Master
+Andrew&mdash;a man who, but a few days before, to give me a sample of his
+bloody disposition, took my little brother by the throat, threw him on the
+ground, and with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the blood
+gushed from his nose and ears&mdash;was well calculated to make me anxious as
+to my fate. After he had committed this savage outrage upon my brother, he
+turned to me, and said that was the way he meant to serve me one of these
+days,&mdash;meaning, I suppose, when I came into his possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion of Mrs. Lucretia, and was
+sent immediately back to Baltimore, to live again in the family of Master Hugh.
+Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow at my departure. It was a glad day
+to me. I had escaped a worse than lion&rsquo;s jaws. I was absent from
+Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and division, just about one month, and
+it seemed to have been six.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mistress, Lucretia, died, leaving
+her husband and one child, Amanda; and in a very short time after her death,
+Master Andrew died. Now all the property of my old master, slaves included, was
+in the hands of strangers,&mdash;strangers who had had nothing to do with
+accumulating it. Not a slave was left free. All remained slaves, from the
+youngest to the oldest. If any one thing in my experience, more than another,
+served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to
+fill me with unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base
+ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully
+from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had
+peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his
+service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him
+through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat,
+and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave&mdash;a slave
+for life&mdash;a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw
+her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so
+many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word,
+as to their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base
+ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old,
+having outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning
+and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but little
+value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and complete
+helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they took her to the
+woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her
+welcome to the privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness;
+thus virtually turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother now lives,
+she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over
+the loss of children, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of
+great-grandchildren. They are, in the language of the slave&rsquo;s poet,
+Whittier,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Gone, gone, sold and gone<br />
+To the rice swamp dank and lone,<br />
+Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,<br />
+Where the noisome insect stings,<br />
+Where the fever-demon strews<br />
+Poison with the falling dews,<br />
+Where the sickly sunbeams glare<br />
+Through the hot and misty air:&mdash;<br />
+Gone, gone, sold and gone<br />
+To the rice swamp dank and lone,<br />
+From Virginia hills and waters&mdash;<br />
+Woe is me, my stolen daughters!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once sang
+and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the darkness of
+age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children, she hears by
+day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is
+gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, when weighed down by the pains and
+aches of old age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the beginning and
+ending of human existence meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age
+combine together&mdash;at this time, this most needful time, the time for the
+exercise of that tenderness and affection which children only can exercise
+towards a declining parent&mdash;my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of
+twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim
+embers. She stands&mdash;she sits&mdash;she staggers&mdash;she falls&mdash;she
+groans&mdash;she dies&mdash;and there are none of her children or grandchildren
+present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place
+beneath the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for these
+things?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas married his
+second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton. She was the eldest daughter of Mr.
+William Hamilton. Master now lived in St. Michael&rsquo;s. Not long after his
+marriage, a misunderstanding took place between himself and Master Hugh; and as
+a means of punishing his brother, he took me from him to live with himself at
+St. Michael&rsquo;s. Here I underwent another most painful separation. It,
+however, was not so severe as the one I dreaded at the division of property;
+for, during this interval, a great change had taken place in Master Hugh and
+his once kind and affectionate wife. The influence of brandy upon him, and of
+slavery upon her, had effected a disastrous change in the characters of both;
+so that, as far as they were concerned, I thought I had little to lose by the
+change. But it was not to them that I was attached. It was to those little
+Baltimore boys that I felt the strongest attachment. I had received many good
+lessons from them, and was still receiving them, and the thought of leaving
+them was painful indeed. I was leaving, too, without the hope of ever being
+allowed to return. Master Thomas had said he would never let me return again.
+The barrier betwixt himself and brother he considered impassable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then had to regret that I did not at least make the attempt to carry out my
+resolution to run away; for the chances of success are tenfold greater from the
+city than from the country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael&rsquo;s in the sloop Amanda, Captain
+Edward Dodson. On my passage, I paid particular attention to the direction
+which the steamboats took to go to Philadelphia. I found, instead of going
+down, on reaching North Point they went up the bay, in a north-easterly
+direction. I deemed this knowledge of the utmost importance. My determination
+to run away was again revived. I resolved to wait only so long as the offering
+of a favorable opportunity. When that came, I was determined to be off.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"></a> CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p>
+I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left Baltimore,
+and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael&rsquo;s, in March,
+1832. It was now more than seven years since I lived with him in the family of
+my old master, on Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation. We of course were now
+almost entire strangers to each other. He was to me a new master, and I to him
+a new slave. I was ignorant of his temper and disposition; he was equally so of
+mine. A very short time, however, brought us into full acquaintance with each
+other. I was made acquainted with his wife not less than with himself. They
+were well matched, being equally mean and cruel. I was now, for the first time
+during a space of more than seven years, made to feel the painful gnawings of
+hunger&mdash;a something which I had not experienced before since I left
+Colonel Lloyd&rsquo;s plantation. It went hard enough with me then, when I
+could look back to no period at which I had enjoyed a sufficiency. It was
+tenfold harder after living in Master Hugh&rsquo;s family, where I had always
+had enough to eat, and of that which was good. I have said Master Thomas was a
+mean man. He was so. Not to give a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most
+aggravated development of meanness even among slaveholders. The rule is, no
+matter how coarse the food, only let there be enough of it. This is the theory;
+and in the part of Maryland from which I came, it is the general
+practice,&mdash;though there are many exceptions. Master Thomas gave us enough
+of neither coarse nor fine food. There were four slaves of us in the
+kitchen&mdash;my sister Eliza, my aunt Priscilla, Henny, and myself; and we
+were allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and very
+little else, either in the shape of meat or vegetables. It was not enough for
+us to subsist upon. We were therefore reduced to the wretched necessity of
+living at the expense of our neighbors. This we did by begging and stealing,
+whichever came handy in the time of need, the one being considered as
+legitimate as the other. A great many times have we poor creatures been nearly
+perishing with hunger, when food in abundance lay mouldering in the safe and
+smoke-house, and our pious mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that
+mistress and her husband would kneel every morning, and pray that God would
+bless them in basket and store!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every element of
+character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare sort. I do not
+know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The leading trait in his
+character was meanness; and if there were any other element in his nature, it
+was made subject to this. He was mean; and, like most other mean men, he lacked
+the ability to conceal his meanness. Captain Auld was not born a slaveholder.
+He had been a poor man, master only of a Bay craft. He came into possession of
+all his slaves by marriage; and of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst.
+He was cruel, but cowardly. He commanded without firmness. In the enforcement
+of his rules, he was at times rigid, and at times lax. At times, he spoke to
+his slaves with the firmness of Napoleon and the fury of a demon; at other
+times, he might well be mistaken for an inquirer who had lost his way. He did
+nothing of himself. He might have passed for a lion, but for his ears. In all
+things noble which he attempted, his own meanness shone most conspicuous. His
+airs, words, and actions, were the airs, words, and actions of born
+slaveholders, and, being assumed, were awkward enough. He was not even a good
+imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the power.
+Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many,
+and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency; and of consequence
+he was an object of contempt, and was held as such even by his slaves. The
+luxury of having slaves of his own to wait upon him was something new and
+unprepared for. He was a slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves. He
+found himself incapable of managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud.
+We seldom called him &ldquo;master;&rdquo; we generally called him
+&ldquo;Captain Auld,&rdquo; and were hardly disposed to title him at all. I
+doubt not that our conduct had much to do with making him appear awkward, and
+of consequence fretful. Our want of reverence for him must have perplexed him
+greatly. He wished to have us call him master, but lacked the firmness
+necessary to command us to do so. His wife used to insist upon our calling him
+so, but to no purpose. In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist
+camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced
+religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to
+emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate,
+make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It
+neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had
+any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his
+ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than
+before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and
+sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found
+religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the
+greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed
+morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his
+brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity in
+revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the
+church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers&rsquo; home. They
+used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us,
+he stuffed them. We have had three or four preachers there at a time. The names
+of those who used to come most frequently while I lived there, were Mr. Storks,
+Mr. Ewery, Mr. Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at
+our house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We believed him to be a good man. We
+thought him instrumental in getting Mr. Samuel Harrison, a very rich
+slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by some means got the impression
+that he was laboring to effect the emancipation of all the slaves. When he was
+at our house, we were sure to be called in to prayers. When the others were
+there, we were sometimes called in and sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more
+notice of us than either of the other ministers. He could not come among us
+without betraying his sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the
+sagacity to see it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I lived with my master in St. Michael&rsquo;s, there was a white young
+man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the instruction of
+such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the New Testament. We met but
+three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both class-leaders, with many
+others, came upon us with sticks and other missiles, drove us off, and forbade
+us to meet again. Thus ended our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St.
+Michael&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an example,
+I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen him tie
+up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked
+shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the
+bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture&mdash;&ldquo;He that
+knoweth his master&rsquo;s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many
+stripes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid situation
+four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up early in the
+morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to his store, return at
+dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the places already made raw with his
+cruel lash. The secret of master&rsquo;s cruelty toward &ldquo;Henny&rdquo; is
+found in the fact of her being almost helpless. When quite a child, she fell
+into the fire, and burned herself horribly. Her hands were so burnt that she
+never got the use of them. She could do very little but bear heavy burdens. She
+was to master a bill of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant
+offence to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of existence.
+He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift, she was not
+disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use his own words,
+&ldquo;set her adrift to take care of herself.&rdquo; Here was a
+recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same time
+turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas was one of the
+many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very charitable purpose of
+taking care of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found me unsuitable
+to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very pernicious effect upon
+me. It had almost ruined me for every good purpose, and fitted me for every
+thing which was bad. One of my greatest faults was that of letting his horse
+run away, and go down to his father-in-law&rsquo;s farm, which was about five
+miles from St. Michael&rsquo;s. I would then have to go after it. My reason for
+this kind of carelessness, or carefulness, was, that I could always get
+something to eat when I went there. Master William Hamilton, my master&rsquo;s
+father-in-law, always gave his slaves enough to eat. I never left there hungry,
+no matter how great the need of my speedy return. Master Thomas at length said
+he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during which
+time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He
+resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let
+me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a
+farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he lived, as also the hands with
+which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking
+young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him
+to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had
+it done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss
+to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of the training
+to which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire
+young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added to the
+natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion&mdash;a
+pious soul&mdash;a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of
+this added weight to his reputation as a &ldquo;nigger-breaker.&rdquo; I was
+aware of all the facts, having been made acquainted with them by a young man
+who had lived there. I nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of
+getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"></a> CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p>
+I had left Master Thomas&rsquo;s house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on the
+1st of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a field hand.
+In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than a country boy
+appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home but one week before
+Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to
+run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger. The details
+of this affair are as follows: Mr. Covey sent me, very early in the morning of
+one of our coldest days in the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of
+wood. He gave me a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox,
+and which the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the
+horns of the in-hand ox, and gave me the other end of it, and told me, if the
+oxen started to run, that I must hold on upon the rope. I had never driven oxen
+before, and of course I was very awkward. I, however, succeeded in getting to
+the edge of the woods with little difficulty; but I had got a very few rods
+into the woods, when the oxen took fright, and started full tilt, carrying the
+cart against trees, and over stumps, in the most frightful manner. I expected
+every moment that my brains would be dashed out against the trees. After
+running thus for a considerable distance, they finally upset the cart, dashing
+it with great force against a tree, and threw themselves into a dense thicket.
+How I escaped death, I do not know. There I was, entirely alone, in a thick
+wood, in a place new to me. My cart was upset and shattered, my oxen were
+entangled among the young trees, and there was none to help me. After a long
+spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart righted, my oxen disentangled,
+and again yoked to the cart. I now proceeded with my team to the place where I
+had, the day before, been chopping wood, and loaded my cart pretty heavily,
+thinking in this way to tame my oxen. I then proceeded on my way home. I had
+now consumed one half of the day. I got out of the woods safely, and now felt
+out of danger. I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate; and just as I did so,
+before I could get hold of my ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed through
+the gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of the cart, tearing it to
+pieces, and coming within a few inches of crushing me against the gate-post.
+Thus twice, in one short day, I escaped death by the merest chance. On my
+return, I told Mr. Covey what had happened, and how it happened. He ordered me
+to return to the woods again immediately. I did so, and he followed on after
+me. Just as I got into the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart, and
+that he would teach me how to trifle away my time, and break gates. He then
+went to a large gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches, and, after
+trimming them up neatly with his pocketknife, he ordered me to take off my
+clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his
+order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip myself. Upon this he
+rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my clothes, and lashed me
+till he had worn out his switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks
+visible for a long time after. This whipping was the first of a number just
+like it, and for similar offences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months, of that year,
+scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free from a sore
+back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for whipping me. We were
+worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long before day we were up, our
+horses fed, and by the first approach of day we were off to the field with our
+hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to
+eat it. We were often less than five minutes taking our meals. We were often in
+the field from the first approach of day till its last lingering ray had left
+us; and at saving-fodder time, midnight often caught us in the field binding
+blades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Covey would be out with us. The way he used to stand it, was this. He would
+spend the most of his afternoons in bed. He would then come out fresh in the
+evening, ready to urge us on with his words, example, and frequently with the
+whip. Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who could and did work with his
+hands. He was a hard-working man. He knew by himself just what a man or a boy
+could do. There was no deceiving him. His work went on in his absence almost as
+well as in his presence; and he had the faculty of making us feel that he was
+ever present with us. This he did by surprising us. He seldom approached the
+spot where we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed
+at taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him, among
+ourselves, &ldquo;the snake.&rdquo; When we were at work in the cornfield, he
+would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and all at
+once he would rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, &ldquo;Ha, ha! Come,
+come! Dash on, dash on!&rdquo; This being his mode of attack, it was never safe
+to stop a single minute. His comings were like a thief in the night. He
+appeared to us as being ever at hand. He was under every tree, behind every
+stump, in every bush, and at every window, on the plantation. He would
+sometimes mount his horse, as if bound to St. Michael&rsquo;s, a distance of
+seven miles, and in half an hour afterwards you would see him coiled up in the
+corner of the wood-fence, watching every motion of the slaves. He would, for
+this purpose, leave his horse tied up in the woods. Again, he would sometimes
+walk up to us, and give us orders as though he was upon the point of starting
+on a long journey, turn his back upon us, and make as though he was going to
+the house to get ready; and, before he would get half way thither, he would
+turn short and crawl into a fence-corner, or behind some tree, and there watch
+us till the going down of the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Covey&rsquo;s <i>forte</i> consisted in his power to deceive. His life was
+devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions. Every thing he
+possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made conform to his
+disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the
+Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning, and a long prayer at
+night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would at times appear more
+devotional than he. The exercises of his family devotions were always commenced
+with singing; and, as he was a very poor singer himself, the duty of raising
+the hymn generally came upon me. He would read his hymn, and nod at me to
+commence. I would at times do so; at others, I would not. My non-compliance
+would almost always produce much confusion. To show himself independent of me,
+he would start and stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner.
+In this state of mind, he prayed with more than ordinary spirit. Poor man! such
+was his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily believe that he
+sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that he was a sincere
+worshipper of the most high God; and this, too, at a time when he may be said
+to have been guilty of compelling his woman slave to commit the sin of
+adultery. The facts in the case are these: Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was
+just commencing in life; he was only able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is
+the fact, he bought her, as he said, for <i>a breeder</i>. This woman was named
+Caroline. Mr. Covey bought her from Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St.
+Michael&rsquo;s. She was a large, able-bodied woman, about twenty years old.
+She had already given birth to one child, which proved her to be just what he
+wanted. After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr. Samuel Harrison, to
+live with him one year; and him he used to fasten up with her every night! The
+result was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable woman gave birth to
+twins. At this result Mr. Covey seemed to be highly pleased, both with the man
+and the wretched woman. Such was his joy, and that of his wife, that nothing
+they could do for Caroline during her confinement was too good, or too hard, to
+be done. The children were regarded as being quite an addition to his wealth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the
+bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my
+stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or
+too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in
+the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the
+night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too
+long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few
+months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was
+broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my
+intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that
+lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and
+behold a man transformed into a brute!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like stupor,
+between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I would rise up, a
+flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint
+beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished. I sank down
+again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my
+life, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear.
+My sufferings on this plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern
+reality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was
+ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those
+beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen,
+were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of
+my wretched condition. I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer&rsquo;s
+Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced,
+with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off
+to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My
+thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty,
+I would pour out my soul&rsquo;s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe
+to the moving multitude of ships:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains,
+and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the
+bloody whip! You are freedom&rsquo;s swift-winged angels, that fly round the
+world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on
+one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and
+you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but
+swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The
+glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell
+of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there
+any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or
+get clear, I&rsquo;ll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever. I have
+only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing. Only
+think of it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God
+helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take
+to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom. The steamboats
+steered in a north-east course from North Point. I will do the same; and when I
+get to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and walk straight
+through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not be required
+to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed. Let but the first
+opportunity offer, and, come what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I will try to bear
+up under the yoke. I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I
+can bear as much as any of them. Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are
+bound to some one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my
+happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak to myself; goaded almost to
+madness at one moment, and at the next reconciling myself to my wretched lot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have already intimated that my condition was much worse, during the first six
+months of my stay at Mr. Covey&rsquo;s, than in the last six. The circumstances
+leading to the change in Mr. Covey&rsquo;s course toward me form an epoch in my
+humble history. You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a
+slave was made a man. On one of the hottest days of the month of August, 1833,
+Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli, and myself, were engaged in
+fanning wheat. Hughes was clearing the fanned wheat from before the fan. Eli
+was turning, Smith was feeding, and I was carrying wheat to the fan. The work
+was simple, requiring strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely
+unused to such work, it came very hard. About three o&rsquo;clock of that day,
+I broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the
+head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb. Finding what
+was coming, I nerved myself up, feeling it would never do to stop work. I stood
+as long as I could stagger to the hopper with grain. When I could stand no
+longer, I fell, and felt as if held down by an immense weight. The fan of
+course stopped; every one had his own work to do; and no one could do the work
+of the other, and have his own go on at the same time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred yards from the treading-yard
+where we were fanning. On hearing the fan stop, he left immediately, and came
+to the spot where we were. He hastily inquired what the matter was. Bill
+answered that I was sick, and there was no one to bring wheat to the fan. I had
+by this time crawled away under the side of the post and rail-fence by which
+the yard was enclosed, hoping to find relief by getting out of the sun. He then
+asked where I was. He was told by one of the hands. He came to the spot, and,
+after looking at me awhile, asked me what was the matter. I told him as well as
+I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in
+the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the
+attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and
+succeeded in gaining my feet; but, stooping to get the tub with which I was
+feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell. While down in this situation, Mr.
+Covey took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking off the
+half-bushel measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a
+large wound, and the blood ran freely; and with this again told me to get up. I
+made no effort to comply, having now made up my mind to let him do his worst.
+In a short time after receiving this blow, my head grew better. Mr. Covey had
+now left me to my fate. At this moment I resolved, for the first time, to go to
+my master, enter a complaint, and ask his protection. In order to do this, I
+must that afternoon walk seven miles; and this, under the circumstances, was
+truly a severe undertaking. I was exceedingly feeble; made so as much by the
+kicks and blows which I received, as by the severe fit of sickness to which I
+had been subjected. I, however, watched my chance, while Covey was looking in
+an opposite direction, and started for St. Michael&rsquo;s. I succeeded in
+getting a considerable distance on my way to the woods, when Covey discovered
+me, and called after me to come back, threatening what he would do if I did not
+come. I disregarded both his calls and his threats, and made my way to the
+woods as fast as my feeble state would allow; and thinking I might be
+overhauled by him if I kept the road, I walked through the woods, keeping far
+enough from the road to avoid detection, and near enough to prevent losing my
+way. I had not gone far before my little strength again failed me. I could go
+no farther. I fell down, and lay for a considerable time. The blood was yet
+oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death;
+and think now that I should have done so, but that the blood so matted my hair
+as to stop the wound. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, I
+nerved myself up again, and started on my way, through bogs and briers,
+barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet sometimes at nearly every step; and
+after a journey of about seven miles, occupying some five hours to perform it,
+I arrived at master&rsquo;s store. I then presented an appearance enough to
+affect any but a heart of iron. From the crown of my head to my feet, I was
+covered with blood. My hair was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was
+stiff with blood. I suppose I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild
+beasts, and barely escaped them. In this state I appeared before my master,
+humbly entreating him to interpose his authority for my protection. I told him
+all the circumstances as well as I could, and it seemed, as I spoke, at times
+to affect him. He would then walk the floor, and seek to justify Covey by
+saying he expected I deserved it. He asked me what I wanted. I told him, to let
+me get a new home; that as sure as I lived with Mr. Covey again, I should live
+with but to die with him; that Covey would surely kill me; he was in a fair way
+for it. Master Thomas ridiculed the idea that there was any danger of Mr.
+Covey&rsquo;s killing me, and said that he knew Mr. Covey; that he was a good
+man, and that he could not think of taking me from him; that, should he do so,
+he would lose the whole year&rsquo;s wages; that I belonged to Mr. Covey for
+one year, and that I must go back to him, come what might; and that I must not
+trouble him with any more stories, or that he would himself <i>get hold of
+me</i>. After threatening me thus, he gave me a very large dose of salts,
+telling me that I might remain in St. Michael&rsquo;s that night, (it being
+quite late,) but that I must be off back to Mr. Covey&rsquo;s early in the
+morning; and that if I did not, he would <i>get hold of me,</i> which meant
+that he would whip me. I remained all night, and, according to his orders, I
+started off to Covey&rsquo;s in the morning, (Saturday morning,) wearied in
+body and broken in spirit. I got no supper that night, or breakfast that
+morning. I reached Covey&rsquo;s about nine o&rsquo;clock; and just as I was
+getting over the fence that divided Mrs. Kemp&rsquo;s fields from ours, out ran
+Covey with his cowskin, to give me another whipping. Before he could reach me,
+I succeeded in getting to the cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it
+afforded me the means of hiding. He seemed very angry, and searched for me a
+long time. My behavior was altogether unaccountable. He finally gave up the
+chase, thinking, I suppose, that I must come home for something to eat; he
+would give himself no further trouble in looking for me. I spent that day
+mostly in the woods, having the alternative before me,&mdash;to go home and be
+whipped to death, or stay in the woods and be starved to death. That night, I
+fell in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave with whom I was somewhat acquainted. Sandy
+had a free wife who lived about four miles from Mr. Covey&rsquo;s; and it being
+Saturday, he was on his way to see her. I told him my circumstances, and he
+very kindly invited me to go home with him. I went home with him, and talked
+this whole matter over, and got his advice as to what course it was best for me
+to pursue. I found Sandy an old adviser. He told me, with great solemnity, I
+must go back to Covey; but that before I went, I must go with him into another
+part of the woods, where there was a certain <i>root,</i> which, if I would
+take some of it with me, carrying it <i>always on my right side,</i> would
+render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to whip me. He said
+he had carried it for years; and since he had done so, he had never received a
+blow, and never expected to while he carried it. I at first rejected the idea,
+that the simple carrying of a root in my pocket would have any such effect as
+he had said, and was not disposed to take it; but Sandy impressed the necessity
+with much earnestness, telling me it could do no harm, if it did no good. To
+please him, I at length took the root, and, according to his direction, carried
+it upon my right side. This was Sunday morning. I immediately started for home;
+and upon entering the yard gate, out came Mr. Covey on his way to meeting. He
+spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs from a lot near by, and passed
+on towards the church. Now, this singular conduct of Mr. Covey really made me
+begin to think that there was something in the <i>root</i> which Sandy had
+given me; and had it been on any other day than Sunday, I could have attributed
+the conduct to no other cause than the influence of that root; and as it was, I
+was half inclined to think the <i>root</i> to be something more than I at first
+had taken it to be. All went well till Monday morning. On this morning, the
+virtue of the <i>root</i> was fully tested. Long before daylight, I was called
+to go and rub, curry, and feed, the horses. I obeyed, and was glad to obey. But
+whilst thus engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some blades from the
+loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope; and just as I was half out
+of the loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying me. As soon as I
+found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring, and as I did so, he holding to
+my legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor. Mr. Covey seemed now to
+think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment&mdash;from
+whence came the spirit I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I resolved to fight; and,
+suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as
+I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely
+unexpected that Covey seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf. This
+gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I
+touched him with the ends of my fingers. Mr. Covey soon called out to Hughes
+for help. Hughes came, and, while Covey held me, attempted to tie my right
+hand. While he was in the act of doing so, I watched my chance, and gave him a
+heavy kick close under the ribs. This kick fairly sickened Hughes, so that he
+left me in the hands of Mr. Covey. This kick had the effect of not only
+weakening Hughes, but Covey also. When he saw Hughes bending over with pain,
+his courage quailed. He asked me if I meant to persist in my resistance. I told
+him I did, come what might; that he had used me like a brute for six months,
+and that I was determined to be used so no longer. With that, he strove to drag
+me to a stick that was lying just out of the stable door. He meant to knock me
+down. But just as he was leaning over to get the stick, I seized him with both
+hands by his collar, and brought him by a sudden snatch to the ground. By this
+time, Bill came. Covey called upon him for assistance. Bill wanted to know what
+he could do. Covey said, &ldquo;Take hold of him, take hold of him!&rdquo; Bill
+said his master hired him out to work, and not to help to whip me; so he left
+Covey and myself to fight our own battle out. We were at it for nearly two
+hours. Covey at length let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying
+that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much. The
+truth was, that he had not whipped me at all. I considered him as getting
+entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I
+had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he
+never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He would occasionally
+say, he didn&rsquo;t want to get hold of me again. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; thought I,
+&ldquo;you need not; for you will come off worse than you did before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It
+rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of
+my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again
+with a determination to be free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was
+a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only
+can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself
+repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It
+was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of
+freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took
+its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in
+form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not
+hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed
+in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped, though I
+remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights, but was never
+whipped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me why Mr. Covey did not
+immediately have me taken by the constable to the whipping-post, and there
+regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a white man in
+defence of myself. And the only explanation I can now think of does not
+entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give it. Mr. Covey enjoyed the
+most unbounded reputation for being a first-rate overseer and negro-breaker. It
+was of considerable importance to him. That reputation was at stake; and had he
+sent me&mdash;a boy about sixteen years old&mdash;to the public whipping-post,
+his reputation would have been lost; so, to save his reputation, he suffered me
+to go unpunished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day, 1833. The
+days between Christmas and New Year&rsquo;s day are allowed as holidays; and,
+accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor, more than to feed and
+take care of the stock. This time we regarded as our own, by the grace of our
+masters; and we therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased. Those of us
+who had families at a distance, were generally allowed to spend the whole six
+days in their society. This time, however, was spent in various ways. The
+staid, sober, thinking and industrious ones of our number would employ
+themselves in making corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another
+class of us would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But by
+far the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball,
+wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky; and this
+latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable to the feelings
+of our masters. A slave who would work during the holidays was considered by
+our masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the
+favor of his master. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas;
+and he was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the
+necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through
+Christmas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I believe them
+to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping
+down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders at once to abandon this
+practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate
+insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or
+safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for
+these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide
+the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those
+conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their
+midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of
+slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the
+slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one
+of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave. They do not give
+the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its
+continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it.
+This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves
+spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending
+as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with
+freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance,
+the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but
+will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their
+slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this
+way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the
+slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his
+ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled
+with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result
+was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was
+little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too,
+that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays
+ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and
+marched to the field,&mdash;feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from
+what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of
+slavery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system of fraud
+and inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to disgust the slave
+with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse of it, is carried out in
+other things. For instance, a slave loves molasses; he steals some. His master,
+in many cases, goes off to town, and buys a large quantity; he returns, takes
+his whip, and commands the slave to eat the molasses, until the poor fellow is
+made sick at the very mention of it. The same mode is sometimes adopted to make
+the slaves refrain from asking for more food than their regular allowance. A
+slave runs through his allowance, and applies for more. His master is enraged
+at him; but, not willing to send him off without food, gives him more than is
+necessary, and compels him to eat it within a given time. Then, if he complains
+that he cannot eat it, he is said to be satisfied neither full nor fasting, and
+is whipped for being hard to please! I have an abundance of such illustrations
+of the same principle, drawn from my own observation, but think the cases I
+have cited sufficient. The practice is a very common one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. Covey, and went to live with Mr.
+William Freeland, who lived about three miles from St. Michael&rsquo;s. I soon
+found Mr. Freeland a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not rich, he was
+what would be called an educated southern gentleman. Mr. Covey, as I have
+shown, was a well-trained negro-breaker and slave-driver. The former
+(slaveholder though he was) seemed to possess some regard for honor, some
+reverence for justice, and some respect for humanity. The latter seemed totally
+insensible to all such sentiments. Mr. Freeland had many of the faults peculiar
+to slaveholders, such as being very passionate and fretful; but I must do him
+the justice to say, that he was exceedingly free from those degrading vices to
+which Mr. Covey was constantly addicted. The one was open and frank, and we
+always knew where to find him. The other was a most artful deceiver, and could
+be understood only by such as were skilful enough to detect his
+cunningly-devised frauds. Another advantage I gained in my new master was, he
+made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion; and this, in my opinion,
+was truly a great advantage. I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of
+the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,&mdash;a justifier of
+the most appalling barbarity,&mdash;a sanctifier of the most hateful
+frauds,&mdash;and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest,
+and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I
+to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I
+should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that
+could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious
+slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the
+most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to
+belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such
+religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the
+same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were members and
+ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among others, a
+woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman&rsquo;s back, for weeks,
+was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this merciless, <i>religious</i>
+wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim was, Behave well or behave ill, it is
+the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his
+master&rsquo;s authority. Such was his theory, and such his practice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his ability to
+manage slaves. The peculiar feature of his government was that of whipping
+slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed to have one or more of his
+slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did this to alarm their fears, and
+strike terror into those who escaped. His plan was to whip for the smallest
+offences, to prevent the commission of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always
+find some excuse for whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a
+slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find
+things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or
+motion,&mdash;a mistake, accident, or want of power,&mdash;are all matters for
+which a slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is
+said, he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly
+when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be
+taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the
+approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be
+whipped for it. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when censured
+for it? Then he is guilty of impudence,&mdash;one of the greatest crimes of
+which a slave can be guilty. Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode
+of doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous,
+and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him.
+Does he, while ploughing, break a plough,&mdash;or, while hoeing, break a hoe?
+It is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped. Mr.
+Hopkins could always find something of this sort to justify the use of the
+lash, and he seldom failed to embrace such opportunities. There was not a man
+in the whole county, with whom the slaves who had the getting their own home,
+would not prefer to live, rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there
+was not a man any where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was
+more active in revivals,&mdash;more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer
+and preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family,&mdash;that prayed
+earlier, later, louder, and longer,&mdash;than this same reverend slave-driver,
+Rigby Hopkins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to return to Mr. Freeland, and to my experience while in his employment.
+He, like Mr. Covey, gave us enough to eat; but, unlike Mr. Covey, he also gave
+us sufficient time to take our meals. He worked us hard, but always between
+sunrise and sunset. He required a good deal of work to be done, but gave us
+good tools with which to work. His farm was large, but he employed hands enough
+to work it, and with ease, compared with many of his neighbors. My treatment,
+while in his employment, was heavenly, compared with what I experienced at the
+hands of Mr. Edward Covey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Freeland was himself the owner of but two slaves. Their names were Henry
+Harris and John Harris. The rest of his hands he hired. These consisted of
+myself, Sandy Jenkins,<a href="#fn-1" name="fnref-1" id="fnref-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a>
+and Handy Caldwell.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn-1" id="fn-1"></a> <a href="#fnref-1">[1]</a>
+This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my being whipped by Mr.
+Covey. He was &ldquo;a clever soul.&rdquo; We used frequently to talk about the
+fight with Covey, and as often as we did so, he would claim my success as the
+result of the roots which he gave me. This superstition is very common among
+the more ignorant slaves. A slave seldom dies but that his death is attributed
+to trickery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry and John were quite intelligent, and in a very little while after I went
+there, I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn how to read.
+This desire soon sprang up in the others also. They very soon mustered up some
+old spelling-books, and nothing would do but that I must keep a Sabbath school.
+I agreed to do so, and accordingly devoted my Sundays to teaching these my
+loved fellow-slaves how to read. Neither of them knew his letters when I went
+there. Some of the slaves of the neighboring farms found what was going on, and
+also availed themselves of this little opportunity to learn to read. It was
+understood, among all who came, that there must be as little display about it
+as possible. It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St.
+Michael&rsquo;s unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the
+Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how
+to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those
+degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and
+accountable beings. My blood boils as I think of the bloody manner in which
+Messrs. Wright Fairbanks and Garrison West, both class-leaders, in connection
+with many others, rushed in upon us with sticks and stones, and broke up our
+virtuous little Sabbath school, at St. Michael&rsquo;s&mdash;all calling
+themselves Christians! humble followers of the Lord Jesus Christ! But I am
+again digressing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I held my Sabbath school at the house of a free colored man, whose name I deem
+it imprudent to mention; for should it be known, it might embarrass him
+greatly, though the crime of holding the school was committed ten years ago. I
+had at one time over forty scholars, and those of the right sort, ardently
+desiring to learn. They were of all ages, though mostly men and women. I look
+back to those Sundays with an amount of pleasure not to be expressed. They were
+great days to my soul. The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the
+sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to
+leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When I think
+that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my
+feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, &ldquo;Does a righteous God
+govern the universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand,
+if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the
+spoiler?&rdquo; These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was
+popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus
+engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken
+up, and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their
+minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental
+darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing
+something that looked like bettering the condition of my race. I kept up my
+school nearly the whole year I lived with Mr. Freeland; and, beside my Sabbath
+school, I devoted three evenings in the week, during the winter, to teaching
+the slaves at home. And I have the happiness to know, that several of those who
+came to Sabbath school learned how to read; and that one, at least, is now free
+through my agency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The year passed off smoothly. It seemed only about half as long as the year
+which preceded it. I went through it without receiving a single blow. I will
+give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, <i>till I
+became my own master.</i> For the ease with which I passed the year, I was,
+however, somewhat indebted to the society of my fellow-slaves. They were noble
+souls; they not only possessed loving hearts, but brave ones. We were linked
+and interlinked with each other. I loved them with a love stronger than any
+thing I have experienced since. It is sometimes said that we slaves do not love
+and confide in each other. In answer to this assertion, I can say, I never
+loved any or confided in any people more than my fellow-slaves, and especially
+those with whom I lived at Mr. Freeland&rsquo;s. I believe we would have died
+for each other. We never undertook to do any thing, of any importance, without
+a mutual consultation. We never moved separately. We were one; and as much so
+by our tempers and dispositions, as by the mutual hardships to which we were
+necessarily subjected by our condition as slaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the close of the year 1834, Mr. Freeland again hired me of my master, for
+the year 1835. But, by this time, I began to want to live <i>upon free land</i>
+as well as <i>with Freeland;</i> and I was no longer content, therefore, to
+live with him or any other slaveholder. I began, with the commencement of the
+year, to prepare myself for a final struggle, which should decide my fate one
+way or the other. My tendency was upward. I was fast approaching manhood, and
+year after year had passed, and I was still a slave. These thoughts roused
+me&mdash;I must do something. I therefore resolved that 1835 should not pass
+without witnessing an attempt, on my part, to secure my liberty. But I was not
+willing to cherish this determination alone. My fellow-slaves were dear to me.
+I was anxious to have them participate with me in this, my life-giving
+determination. I therefore, though with great prudence, commenced early to
+ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition, and to imbue
+their minds with thoughts of freedom. I bent myself to devising ways and means
+for our escape, and meanwhile strove, on all fitting occasions, to impress them
+with the gross fraud and inhumanity of slavery. I went first to Henry, next to
+John, then to the others. I found, in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits.
+They were ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible plan should be
+proposed. This was what I wanted. I talked to them of our want of manhood, if
+we submitted to our enslavement without at least one noble effort to be free.
+We met often, and consulted frequently, and told our hopes and fears, recounted
+the difficulties, real and imagined, which we should be called on to meet. At
+times we were almost disposed to give up, and try to content ourselves with our
+wretched lot; at others, we were firm and unbending in our determination to go.
+Whenever we suggested any plan, there was shrinking&mdash;the odds were
+fearful. Our path was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in
+gaining the end of it, our right to be free was yet questionable&mdash;we were
+yet liable to be returned to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of the
+ocean, where we could be free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our knowledge of
+the north did not extend farther than New York; and to go there, and be forever
+harassed with the frightful liability of being returned to slavery&mdash;with
+the certainty of being treated tenfold worse than before&mdash;the thought was
+truly a horrible one, and one which it was not easy to overcome. The case
+sometimes stood thus: At every gate through which we were to pass, we saw a
+watchman&mdash;at every ferry a guard&mdash;on every bridge a
+sentinel&mdash;and in every wood a patrol. We were hemmed in upon every side.
+Here were the difficulties, real or imagined&mdash;the good to be sought, and
+the evil to be shunned. On the one hand, there stood slavery, a stern reality,
+glaring frightfully upon us,&mdash;its robes already crimsoned with the blood
+of millions, and even now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh. On the
+other hand, away back in the dim distance, under the flickering light of the
+north star, behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a doubtful
+freedom&mdash;half frozen&mdash;beckoning us to come and share its hospitality.
+This in itself was sometimes enough to stagger us; but when we permitted
+ourselves to survey the road, we were frequently appalled. Upon either side we
+saw grim death, assuming the most horrid shapes. Now it was starvation, causing
+us to eat our own flesh;&mdash;now we were contending with the waves, and were
+drowned;&mdash;now we were overtaken, and torn to pieces by the fangs of the
+terrible bloodhound. We were stung by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten
+by snakes, and finally, after having nearly reached the desired
+spot,&mdash;after swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts, sleeping in the
+woods, suffering hunger and nakedness,&mdash;we were overtaken by our pursuers,
+and, in our resistance, we were shot dead upon the spot! I say, this picture
+sometimes appalled us, and made us
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;rather bear those ills we had,<br />
+Than fly to others, that we knew not of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry,
+when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at
+most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death
+to hopeless bondage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sandy, one of our number, gave up the notion, but still encouraged us. Our
+company then consisted of Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey, Charles
+Roberts, and myself. Henry Bailey was my uncle, and belonged to my master.
+Charles married my aunt: he belonged to my master&rsquo;s father-in-law, Mr.
+William Hamilton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The plan we finally concluded upon was, to get a large canoe belonging to Mr.
+Hamilton, and upon the Saturday night previous to Easter holidays, paddle
+directly up the Chesapeake Bay. On our arrival at the head of the bay, a
+distance of seventy or eighty miles from where we lived, it was our purpose to
+turn our canoe adrift, and follow the guidance of the north star till we got
+beyond the limits of Maryland. Our reason for taking the water route was, that
+we were less liable to be suspected as runaways; we hoped to be regarded as
+fishermen; whereas, if we should take the land route, we should be subjected to
+interruptions of almost every kind. Any one having a white face, and being so
+disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The week before our intended start, I wrote several protections, one for each
+of us. As well as I can remember, they were in the following words, to
+wit:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my
+servant, full liberty to go to Baltimore, and spend the Easter holidays.
+Written with mine own hand, &amp;c., 1835.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;W<small>ILLIAM</small> H<small>AMILTON</small>,<br />
+&ldquo;Near St. Michael&rsquo;s, in Talbot county, Maryland.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were not going to Baltimore; but, in going up the bay, we went toward
+Baltimore, and these protections were only intended to protect us while on the
+bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the time drew near for our departure, our anxiety became more and more
+intense. It was truly a matter of life and death with us. The strength of our
+determination was about to be fully tested. At this time, I was very active in
+explaining every difficulty, removing every doubt, dispelling every fear, and
+inspiring all with the firmness indispensable to success in our undertaking;
+assuring them that half was gained the instant we made the move; we had talked
+long enough; we were now ready to move; if not now, we never should be; and if
+we did not intend to move now, we had as well fold our arms, sit down, and
+acknowledge ourselves fit only to be slaves. This, none of us were prepared to
+acknowledge. Every man stood firm; and at our last meeting, we pledged
+ourselves afresh, in the most solemn manner, that, at the time appointed, we
+would certainly start in pursuit of freedom. This was in the middle of the
+week, at the end of which we were to be off. We went, as usual, to our several
+fields of labor, but with bosoms highly agitated with thoughts of our truly
+hazardous undertaking. We tried to conceal our feelings as much as possible;
+and I think we succeeded very well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a painful waiting, the Saturday morning, whose night was to witness our
+departure, came. I hailed it with joy, bring what of sadness it might. Friday
+night was a sleepless one for me. I probably felt more anxious than the rest,
+because I was, by common consent, at the head of the whole affair. The
+responsibility of success or failure lay heavily upon me. The glory of the one,
+and the confusion of the other, were alike mine. The first two hours of that
+morning were such as I never experienced before, and hope never to again. Early
+in the morning, we went, as usual, to the field. We were spreading manure; and
+all at once, while thus engaged, I was overwhelmed with an indescribable
+feeling, in the fulness of which I turned to Sandy, who was near by, and said,
+&ldquo;We are betrayed!&rdquo; &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that thought
+has this moment struck me.&rdquo; We said no more. I was never more certain of
+any thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horn was blown as usual, and we went up from the field to the house for
+breakfast. I went for the form, more than for want of any thing to eat that
+morning. Just as I got to the house, in looking out at the lane gate, I saw
+four white men, with two colored men. The white men were on horseback, and the
+colored ones were walking behind, as if tied. I watched them a few moments till
+they got up to our lane gate. Here they halted, and tied the colored men to the
+gate-post. I was not yet certain as to what the matter was. In a few moments,
+in rode Mr. Hamilton, with a speed betokening great excitement. He came to the
+door, and inquired if Master William was in. He was told he was at the barn.
+Mr. Hamilton, without dismounting, rode up to the barn with extraordinary
+speed. In a few moments, he and Mr. Freeland returned to the house. By this
+time, the three constables rode up, and in great haste dismounted, tied their
+horses, and met Master William and Mr. Hamilton returning from the barn; and
+after talking awhile, they all walked up to the kitchen door. There was no one
+in the kitchen but myself and John. Henry and Sandy were up at the barn. Mr.
+Freeland put his head in at the door, and called me by name, saying, there were
+some gentlemen at the door who wished to see me. I stepped to the door, and
+inquired what they wanted. They at once seized me, and, without giving me any
+satisfaction, tied me&mdash;lashing my hands closely together. I insisted upon
+knowing what the matter was. They at length said, that they had learned I had
+been in a &ldquo;scrape,&rdquo; and that I was to be examined before my master;
+and if their information proved false, I should not be hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a few moments, they succeeded in tying John. They then turned to Henry, who
+had by this time returned, and commanded him to cross his hands. &ldquo;I
+won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Henry, in a firm tone, indicating his readiness to
+meet the consequences of his refusal. &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said Tom
+Graham, the constable. &ldquo;No, I won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Henry, in a still
+stronger tone. With this, two of the constables pulled out their shining
+pistols, and swore, by their Creator, that they would make him cross his hands
+or kill him. Each cocked his pistol, and, with fingers on the trigger, walked
+up to Henry, saying, at the same time, if he did not cross his hands, they
+would blow his damned heart out. &ldquo;Shoot me, shoot me!&rdquo; said Henry;
+&ldquo;you can&rsquo;t kill me but once. Shoot, shoot,&mdash;and be damned!
+<i>I won&rsquo;t be tied!</i>&rdquo; This he said in a tone of loud defiance;
+and at the same time, with a motion as quick as lightning, he with one single
+stroke dashed the pistols from the hand of each constable. As he did this, all
+hands fell upon him, and, after beating him some time, they finally overpowered
+him, and got him tied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the scuffle, I managed, I know not how, to get my pass out, and, without
+being discovered, put it into the fire. We were all now tied; and just as we
+were to leave for Easton jail, Betsy Freeland, mother of William Freeland, came
+to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and divided them between Henry and
+John. She then delivered herself of a speech, to the following
+effect:&mdash;addressing herself to me, she said, &ldquo;<i>You devil! You
+yellow devil!</i> it was you that put it into the heads of Henry and John to
+run away. But for you, you long-legged mulatto devil! Henry nor John would
+never have thought of such a thing.&rdquo; I made no reply, and was immediately
+hurried off towards St. Michael&rsquo;s. Just a moment previous to the scuffle
+with Henry, Mr. Hamilton suggested the propriety of making a search for the
+protections which he had understood Frederick had written for himself and the
+rest. But, just at the moment he was about carrying his proposal into effect,
+his aid was needed in helping to tie Henry; and the excitement attending the
+scuffle caused them either to forget, or to deem it unsafe, under the
+circumstances, to search. So we were not yet convicted of the intention to run
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we got about half way to St. Michael&rsquo;s, while the constables having
+us in charge were looking ahead, Henry inquired of me what he should do with
+his pass. I told him to eat it with his biscuit, and own nothing; and we passed
+the word around, &ldquo;<i>Own nothing;</i>&rdquo; and &ldquo;<i>Own
+nothing!</i>&rdquo; said we all. Our confidence in each other was unshaken. We
+were resolved to succeed or fail together, after the calamity had befallen us
+as much as before. We were now prepared for any thing. We were to be dragged
+that morning fifteen miles behind horses, and then to be placed in the Easton
+jail. When we reached St. Michael&rsquo;s, we underwent a sort of examination.
+We all denied that we ever intended to run away. We did this more to bring out
+the evidence against us, than from any hope of getting clear of being sold;
+for, as I have said, we were ready for that. The fact was, we cared but little
+where we went, so we went together. Our greatest concern was about separation.
+We dreaded that more than any thing this side of death. We found the evidence
+against us to be the testimony of one person; our master would not tell who it
+was; but we came to a unanimous decision among ourselves as to who their
+informant was. We were sent off to the jail at Easton. When we got there, we
+were delivered up to the sheriff, Mr. Joseph Graham, and by him placed in jail.
+Henry, John, and myself, were placed in one room together&mdash;Charles, and
+Henry Bailey, in another. Their object in separating us was to hinder concert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave traders, and
+agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us, and to ascertain if
+we were for sale. Such a set of beings I never saw before! I felt myself
+surrounded by so many fiends from perdition. A band of pirates never looked
+more like their father, the devil. They laughed and grinned over us, saying,
+&ldquo;Ah, my boys! we have got you, haven&rsquo;t we?&rdquo; And after
+taunting us in various ways, they one by one went into an examination of us,
+with intent to ascertain our value. They would impudently ask us if we would
+not like to have them for our masters. We would make them no answer, and leave
+them to find out as best they could. Then they would curse and swear at us,
+telling us that they could take the devil out of us in a very little while, if
+we were only in their hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While in jail, we found ourselves in much more comfortable quarters than we
+expected when we went there. We did not get much to eat, nor that which was
+very good; but we had a good clean room, from the windows of which we could see
+what was going on in the street, which was very much better than though we had
+been placed in one of the dark, damp cells. Upon the whole, we got along very
+well, so far as the jail and its keeper were concerned. Immediately after the
+holidays were over, contrary to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr.
+Freeland came up to Easton, and took Charles, the two Henrys, and John, out of
+jail, and carried them home, leaving me alone. I regarded this separation as a
+final one. It caused me more pain than any thing else in the whole transaction.
+I was ready for any thing rather than separation. I supposed that they had
+consulted together, and had decided that, as I was the whole cause of the
+intention of the others to run away, it was hard to make the innocent suffer
+with the guilty; and that they had, therefore, concluded to take the others
+home, and sell me, as a warning to the others that remained. It is due to the
+noble Henry to say, he seemed almost as reluctant at leaving the prison as at
+leaving home to come to the prison. But we knew we should, in all probability,
+be separated, if we were sold; and since he was in their hands, he concluded to
+go peaceably home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was now left to my fate. I was all alone, and within the walls of a stone
+prison. But a few days before, and I was full of hope. I expected to have been
+safe in a land of freedom; but now I was covered with gloom, sunk down to the
+utmost despair. I thought the possibility of freedom was gone. I was kept in
+this way about one week, at the end of which, Captain Auld, my master, to my
+surprise and utter astonishment, came up, and took me out, with the intention
+of sending me, with a gentleman of his acquaintance, into Alabama. But, from
+some cause or other, he did not send me to Alabama, but concluded to send me
+back to Baltimore, to live again with his brother Hugh, and to learn a trade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, after an absence of three years and one month, I was once more permitted
+to return to my old home at Baltimore. My master sent me away, because there
+existed against me a very great prejudice in the community, and he feared I
+might be killed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a few weeks after I went to Baltimore, Master Hugh hired me to Mr. William
+Gardner, an extensive ship-builder, on Fell&rsquo;s Point. I was put there to
+learn how to calk. It, however, proved a very unfavorable place for the
+accomplishment of this object. Mr. Gardner was engaged that spring in building
+two large man-of-war brigs, professedly for the Mexican government. The vessels
+were to be launched in the July of that year, and in failure thereof, Mr.
+Gardner was to lose a considerable sum; so that when I entered, all was hurry.
+There was no time to learn any thing. Every man had to do that which he knew
+how to do. In entering the shipyard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do
+whatever the carpenters commanded me to do. This was placing me at the beck and
+call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as masters. Their
+word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one. At times I needed a
+dozen pair of hands. I was called a dozen ways in the space of a single minute.
+Three or four voices would strike my ear at the same moment. It
+was&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., come help me to cant this timber
+here.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., come carry this timber
+yonder.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., bring that roller
+here.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., go get a fresh can of
+water.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., come help saw off the end of this
+timber.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., go quick, and get the
+crowbar.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., hold on the end of this
+fall.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fred., go to the blacksmith&rsquo;s shop, and get a
+new punch.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Hurra, Fred! run and bring me a cold
+chisel.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I say, Fred., bear a hand, and get up a fire as
+quick as lightning under that steam-box.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Halloo, nigger!
+come, turn this grindstone.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Come, come! move, move! and
+<i>bowse</i> this timber forward.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I say, darky, blast your
+eyes, why don&rsquo;t you heat up some pitch?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Halloo!
+halloo! halloo!&rdquo; (Three voices at the same time.) &ldquo;Come
+here!&mdash;Go there!&mdash;Hold on where you are! Damn you, if you move,
+I&rsquo;ll knock your brains out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was my school for eight months; and I might have remained there longer,
+but for a most horrid fight I had with four of the white apprentices, in which
+my left eye was nearly knocked out, and I was horribly mangled in other
+respects. The facts in the case were these: Until a very little while after I
+went there, white and black ship-carpenters worked side by side, and no one
+seemed to see any impropriety in it. All hands seemed to be very well
+satisfied. Many of the black carpenters were freemen. Things seemed to be going
+on very well. All at once, the white carpenters knocked off, and said they
+would not work with free colored workmen. Their reason for this, as alleged,
+was, that if free colored carpenters were encouraged, they would soon take the
+trade into their own hands, and poor white men would be thrown out of
+employment. They therefore felt called upon at once to put a stop to it. And,
+taking advantage of Mr. Gardner&rsquo;s necessities, they broke off, swearing
+they would work no longer, unless he would discharge his black carpenters. Now,
+though this did not extend to me in form, it did reach me in fact. My
+fellow-apprentices very soon began to feel it degrading to them to work with
+me. They began to put on airs, and talk about the &ldquo;niggers&rdquo; taking
+the country, saying we all ought to be killed; and, being encouraged by the
+journeymen, they commenced making my condition as hard as they could, by
+hectoring me around, and sometimes striking me. I, of course, kept the vow I
+made after the fight with Mr. Covey, and struck back again, regardless of
+consequences; and while I kept them from combining, I succeeded very well; for
+I could whip the whole of them, taking them separately. They, however, at
+length combined, and came upon me, armed with sticks, stones, and heavy
+handspikes. One came in front with a half brick. There was one at each side of
+me, and one behind me. While I was attending to those in front, and on either
+side, the one behind ran up with the handspike, and struck me a heavy blow upon
+the head. It stunned me. I fell, and with this they all ran upon me, and fell
+to beating me with their fists. I let them lay on for a while, gathering
+strength. In an instant, I gave a sudden surge, and rose to my hands and knees.
+Just as I did that, one of their number gave me, with his heavy boot, a
+powerful kick in the left eye. My eyeball seemed to have burst. When they saw
+my eye closed, and badly swollen, they left me. With this I seized the
+handspike, and for a time pursued them. But here the carpenters interfered, and
+I thought I might as well give it up. It was impossible to stand my hand
+against so many. All this took place in sight of not less than fifty white
+ship-carpenters, and not one interposed a friendly word; but some cried,
+&ldquo;Kill the damned nigger! Kill him! kill him! He struck a white
+person.&rdquo; I found my only chance for life was in flight. I succeeded in
+getting away without an additional blow, and barely so; for to strike a white
+man is death by Lynch law,&mdash;and that was the law in Mr. Gardner&rsquo;s
+ship-yard; nor is there much of any other out of Mr. Gardner&rsquo;s ship-yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went directly home, and told the story of my wrongs to Master Hugh; and I am
+happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was heavenly, compared
+with that of his brother Thomas under similar circumstances. He listened
+attentively to my narration of the circumstances leading to the savage outrage,
+and gave many proofs of his strong indignation at it. The heart of my once
+overkind mistress was again melted into pity. My puffed-out eye and
+blood-covered face moved her to tears. She took a chair by me, washed the blood
+from my face, and, with a mother&rsquo;s tenderness, bound up my head, covering
+the wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh beef. It was almost compensation for
+my suffering to witness, once more, a manifestation of kindness from this, my
+once affectionate old mistress. Master Hugh was very much enraged. He gave
+expression to his feelings by pouring out curses upon the heads of those who
+did the deed. As soon as I got a little the better of my bruises, he took me
+with him to Esquire Watson&rsquo;s, on Bond Street, to see what could be done
+about the matter. Mr. Watson inquired who saw the assault committed. Master
+Hugh told him it was done in Mr. Gardner&rsquo;s ship-yard at midday, where
+there were a large company of men at work. &ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;the deed was done, and there was no question as to who did it.&rdquo;
+His answer was, he could do nothing in the case, unless some white man would
+come forward and testify. He could issue no warrant on my word. If I had been
+killed in the presence of a thousand colored people, their testimony combined
+would have been insufficient to have arrested one of the murderers. Master
+Hugh, for once, was compelled to say this state of things was too bad. Of
+course, it was impossible to get any white man to volunteer his testimony in my
+behalf, and against the white young men. Even those who may have sympathized
+with me were not prepared to do this. It required a degree of courage unknown
+to them to do so; for just at that time, the slightest manifestation of
+humanity toward a colored person was denounced as abolitionism, and that name
+subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities. The watchwords of the
+bloody-minded in that region, and in those days, were, &ldquo;Damn the
+abolitionists!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Damn the niggers!&rdquo; There was nothing
+done, and probably nothing would have been done if I had been killed. Such was,
+and such remains, the state of things in the Christian city of Baltimore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Hugh, finding he could get no redress, refused to let me go back again
+to Mr. Gardner. He kept me himself, and his wife dressed my wound till I was
+again restored to health. He then took me into the ship-yard of which he was
+foreman, in the employment of Mr. Walter Price. There I was immediately set to
+calking, and very soon learned the art of using my mallet and irons. In the
+course of one year from the time I left Mr. Gardner&rsquo;s, I was able to
+command the highest wages given to the most experienced calkers. I was now of
+some importance to my master. I was bringing him from six to seven dollars per
+week. I sometimes brought him nine dollars per week: my wages were a dollar and
+a half a day. After learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my
+own contracts, and collected the money which I earned. My pathway became much
+more smooth than before; my condition was now much more comfortable. When I
+could get no calking to do, I did nothing. During these leisure times, those
+old notions about freedom would steal over me again. When in Mr.
+Gardner&rsquo;s employment, I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of excitement,
+I could think of nothing, scarcely, but my life; and in thinking of my life, I
+almost forgot my liberty. I have observed this in my experience of
+slavery,&mdash;that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its
+increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me
+to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented
+slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his
+moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of
+reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be
+made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he
+ceases to be a man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I
+contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own;
+yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent
+of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,&mdash;not
+because he had any hand in earning it,&mdash;not because I owed it to
+him,&mdash;nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but
+solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the
+grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"></a> CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p>
+I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally
+succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any of the
+peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my intention not to
+state all the facts connected with the transaction. My reasons for pursuing
+this course may be understood from the following: First, were I to give a
+minute statement of all the facts, it is not only possible, but quite probable,
+that others would thereby be involved in the most embarrassing difficulties.
+Secondly, such a statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on
+the part of slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would,
+of course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother bondman
+might escape his galling chains. I deeply regret the necessity that impels me
+to suppress any thing of importance connected with my experience in slavery. It
+would afford me great pleasure indeed, as well as materially add to the
+interest of my narrative, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I
+know exists in the minds of many, by an accurate statement of all the facts
+pertaining to my most fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this
+pleasure, and the curious of the gratification which such a statement would
+afford. I would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations which
+evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself, and thereby run
+the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother slave might clear
+himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western
+friends have conducted what they call the <i>underground railroad,</i> but
+which I think, by their open declarations, has been made most emphatically the
+<i>upperground railroad.</i> I honor those good men and women for their noble
+daring, and applaud them for willingly subjecting themselves to bloody
+persecution, by openly avowing their participation in the escape of slaves. I,
+however, can see very little good resulting from such a course, either to
+themselves or the slaves escaping; while, upon the other hand, I see and feel
+assured that those open declarations are a positive evil to the slaves
+remaining, who are seeking to escape. They do nothing towards enlightening the
+slave, whilst they do much towards enlightening the master. They stimulate him
+to greater watchfulness, and enhance his power to capture his slave. We owe
+something to the slave south of the line as well as to those north of it; and
+in aiding the latter on their way to freedom, we should be careful to do
+nothing which would be likely to hinder the former from escaping from slavery.
+I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of
+flight adopted by the slave. I would leave him to imagine himself surrounded by
+myriads of invisible tormentors, ever ready to snatch from his infernal grasp
+his trembling prey. Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness
+commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at every step
+he takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running the frightful risk of
+having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible agency. Let us render the
+tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints
+of our flying brother. But enough of this. I will now proceed to the statement
+of those facts, connected with my escape, for which I am alone responsible, and
+for which no one can be made to suffer but myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite restless. I could see no
+reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my toil into
+the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly wages, he would, after
+counting the money, look me in the face with a robber-like fierceness, and ask,
+&ldquo;Is this all?&rdquo; He was satisfied with nothing less than the last
+cent. He would, however, when I made him six dollars, sometimes give me six
+cents, to encourage me. It had the opposite effect. I regarded it as a sort of
+admission of my right to the whole. The fact that he gave me any part of my
+wages was proof, to my mind, that he believed me entitled to the whole of them.
+I always felt worse for having received any thing; for I feared that the giving
+me a few cents would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself to be a
+pretty honorable sort of robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was ever on the
+look-out for means of escape; and, finding no direct means, I determined to try
+to hire my time, with a view of getting money with which to make my escape. In
+the spring of 1838, when Master Thomas came to Baltimore to purchase his spring
+goods, I got an opportunity, and applied to him to allow me to hire my time. He
+unhesitatingly refused my request, and told me this was another stratagem by
+which to escape. He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and
+that, in the event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts
+to catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He told me, if
+I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He said, if I behaved
+myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete
+thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to depend solely upon him for
+happiness. He seemed to see fully the pressing necessity of setting aside my
+intellectual nature, in order to contentment in slavery. But in spite of him,
+and even in spite of myself, I continued to think, and to think about the
+injustice of my enslavement, and the means of escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About two months after this, I applied to Master Hugh for the privilege of
+hiring my time. He was not acquainted with the fact that I had applied to
+Master Thomas, and had been refused. He too, at first, seemed disposed to
+refuse; but, after some reflection, he granted me the privilege, and proposed
+the following terms: I was to be allowed all my time, make all contracts with
+those for whom I worked, and find my own employment; and, in return for this
+liberty, I was to pay him three dollars at the end of each week; find myself in
+calking tools, and in board and clothing. My board was two dollars and a half
+per week. This, with the wear and tear of clothing and calking tools, made my
+regular expenses about six dollars per week. This amount I was compelled to
+make up, or relinquish the privilege of hiring my time. Rain or shine, work or
+no work, at the end of each week the money must be forthcoming, or I must give
+up my privilege. This arrangement, it will be perceived, was decidedly in my
+master&rsquo;s favor. It relieved him of all need of looking after me. His
+money was sure. He received all the benefits of slaveholding without its evils;
+while I endured all the evils of a slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety
+of a freeman. I found it a hard bargain. But, hard as it was, I thought it
+better than the old mode of getting along. It was a step towards freedom to be
+allowed to bear the responsibilities of a freeman, and I was determined to hold
+on upon it. I bent myself to the work of making money. I was ready to work at
+night as well as day, and by the most untiring perseverance and industry, I
+made enough to meet my expenses, and lay up a little money every week. I went
+on thus from May till August. Master Hugh then refused to allow me to hire my
+time longer. The ground for his refusal was a failure on my part, one Saturday
+night, to pay him for my week&rsquo;s time. This failure was occasioned by my
+attending a camp meeting about ten miles from Baltimore. During the week, I had
+entered into an engagement with a number of young friends to start from
+Baltimore to the camp ground early Saturday evening; and being detained by my
+employer, I was unable to get down to Master Hugh&rsquo;s without disappointing
+the company. I knew that Master Hugh was in no special need of the money that
+night. I therefore decided to go to camp meeting, and upon my return pay him
+the three dollars. I staid at the camp meeting one day longer than I intended
+when I left. But as soon as I returned, I called upon him to pay him what he
+considered his due. I found him very angry; he could scarce restrain his wrath.
+He said he had a great mind to give me a severe whipping. He wished to know how
+I dared go out of the city without asking his permission. I told him I hired my
+time and while I paid him the price which he asked for it, I did not know that
+I was bound to ask him when and where I should go. This reply troubled him;
+and, after reflecting a few moments, he turned to me, and said I should hire my
+time no longer; that the next thing he should know of, I would be running away.
+Upon the same plea, he told me to bring my tools and clothing home forthwith. I
+did so; but instead of seeking work, as I had been accustomed to do previously
+to hiring my time, I spent the whole week without the performance of a single
+stroke of work. I did this in retaliation. Saturday night, he called upon me as
+usual for my week&rsquo;s wages. I told him I had no wages; I had done no work
+that week. Here we were upon the point of coming to blows. He raved, and swore
+his determination to get hold of me. I did not allow myself a single word; but
+was resolved, if he laid the weight of his hand upon me, it should be blow for
+blow. He did not strike me, but told me that he would find me in constant
+employment in future. I thought the matter over during the next day, Sunday,
+and finally resolved upon the third day of September, as the day upon which I
+would make a second attempt to secure my freedom. I now had three weeks during
+which to prepare for my journey. Early on Monday morning, before Master Hugh
+had time to make any engagement for me, I went out and got employment of Mr.
+Butler, at his ship-yard near the drawbridge, upon what is called the City
+Block, thus making it unnecessary for him to seek employment for me. At the end
+of the week, I brought him between eight and nine dollars. He seemed very well
+pleased, and asked why I did not do the same the week before. He little knew
+what my plans were. My object in working steadily was to remove any suspicion
+he might entertain of my intent to run away; and in this I succeeded admirably.
+I suppose he thought I was never better satisfied with my condition than at the
+very time during which I was planning my escape. The second week passed, and
+again I carried him my full wages; and so well pleased was he, that he gave me
+twenty-five cents, (quite a large sum for a slaveholder to give a slave,) and
+bade me to make a good use of it. I told him I would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was trouble. It
+is impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of my contemplated
+start drew near. I had a number of warmhearted friends in
+Baltimore,&mdash;friends that I loved almost as I did my life,&mdash;and the
+thought of being separated from them forever was painful beyond expression. It
+is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who now remain, but for
+the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends. The thought of
+leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to
+contend. The love of them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than
+all things else. Besides the pain of separation, the dread and apprehension of
+a failure exceeded what I had experienced at my first attempt. The appalling
+defeat I then sustained returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if I
+failed in this attempt, my case would be a hopeless one&mdash;it would seal my
+fate as a slave forever. I could not hope to get off with any thing less than
+the severest punishment, and being placed beyond the means of escape. It
+required no very vivid imagination to depict the most frightful scenes through
+which I should have to pass, in case I failed. The wretchedness of slavery, and
+the blessedness of freedom, were perpetually before me. It was life and death
+with me. But I remained firm, and, according to my resolution, on the third day
+of September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York
+without the slightest interruption of any kind. How I did so,&mdash;what means
+I adopted,&mdash;what direction I travelled, and by what mode of
+conveyance,&mdash;I must leave unexplained, for the reasons before mentioned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State. I
+have never been able to answer the question with any satisfaction to myself. It
+was a moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced. I suppose I felt as
+one may imagine the unarmed mariner to feel when he is rescued by a friendly
+man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate. In writing to a dear friend,
+immediately after my arrival at New York, I said I felt like one who had
+escaped a den of hungry lions. This state of mind, however, very soon subsided;
+and I was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I was
+yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. This
+in itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm. But the loneliness
+overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger;
+without home and without friends, in the midst of thousands of my own
+brethren&mdash;children of a common Father, and yet I dared not to unfold to
+any one of them my sad condition. I was afraid to speak to any one for fear of
+speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving
+kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as
+the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey. The motto which
+I adopted when I started from slavery was this&mdash;&ldquo;Trust no
+man!&rdquo; I saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man
+cause for distrust. It was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one
+must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances. Let him
+be a fugitive slave in a strange land&mdash;a land given up to be the
+hunting-ground for slaveholders&mdash;whose inhabitants are legalized
+kidnappers&mdash;where he is every moment subjected to the terrible liability
+of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the hideous crocodile seizes upon his
+prey!&mdash;I say, let him place himself in my situation&mdash;without home or
+friends&mdash;without money or credit&mdash;wanting shelter, and no one to give
+it&mdash;wanting bread, and no money to buy it,&mdash;and at the same time let
+him feel that he is pursued by merciless men-hunters, and in total darkness as
+to what to do, where to go, or where to stay,&mdash;perfectly helpless both as
+to the means of defence and means of escape,&mdash;in the midst of plenty, yet
+suffering the terrible gnawings of hunger,&mdash;in the midst of houses, yet
+having no home,&mdash;among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild
+beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive
+is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the
+helpless fish upon which they subsist,&mdash;I say, let him be placed in this
+most trying situation,&mdash;the situation in which I was placed,&mdash;then,
+and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how to
+sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in this distressed situation. I was
+relieved from it by the humane hand of <i>Mr. David Ruggles</i>, whose
+vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget. I am glad of an
+opportunity to express, as far as words can, the love and gratitude I bear him.
+Mr. Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and is himself in need of the same
+kind offices which he was once so forward in the performance of toward others.
+I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very
+kindly took me to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard
+Streets. Mr. Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable <i>Darg</i>
+case, as well as attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways
+and means for their successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed in on
+almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished to know of me where I wanted
+to go; as he deemed it unsafe for me to remain in New York. I told him I was a
+calker, and should like to go where I could get work. I thought of going to
+Canada; but he decided against it, and in favor of my going to New Bedford,
+thinking I should be able to get work there at my trade. At this time,
+Anna,<a href="#fn-2" name="fnref-2" id="fnref-2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> my intended
+wife, came on; for I wrote to her immediately after my arrival at New York,
+(notwithstanding my homeless, houseless, and helpless condition,) informing her
+of my successful flight, and wishing her to come on forthwith. In a few days
+after her arrival, Mr. Ruggles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, who, in
+the presence of Mr. Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and two or three others, performed
+the marriage ceremony, and gave us a certificate, of which the following is an
+exact copy:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick
+Johnson<a href="#fn-3" name="fnref-3" id="fnref-3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> and Anna
+Murray, as man and wife, in the presence of Mr. David Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;J<small>AMES</small> W. C. P<small>ENNINGTON</small><br />
+&ldquo;<i>New York, Sept</i>. 15, 1838&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn-2" id="fn-2"></a> <a href="#fnref-2">[2]</a>
+She was free.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn-3" id="fn-3"></a> <a href="#fnref-3">[3]</a>
+I had changed my name from Frederick <i>Bailey</i> to that of <i>Johnson</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar bill from Mr. Ruggles, I
+shouldered one part of our baggage, and Anna took up the other, and we set out
+forthwith to take passage on board of the steamboat John W. Richmond for
+Newport, on our way to New Bedford. Mr. Ruggles gave me a letter to a Mr. Shaw
+in Newport, and told me, in case my money did not serve me to New Bedford, to
+stop in Newport and obtain further assistance; but upon our arrival at Newport,
+we were so anxious to get to a place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked
+the necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take seats in the stage, and
+promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do this by two
+excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names I afterward
+ascertained to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber. They seemed at once to
+understand our circumstances, and gave us such assurance of their friendliness
+as put us fully at ease in their presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time. Upon reaching New
+Bedford, we were directed to the house of Mr. Nathan Johnson, by whom we were
+kindly received, and hospitably provided for. Both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson took a
+deep and lively interest in our welfare. They proved themselves quite worthy of
+the name of abolitionists. When the stage-driver found us unable to pay our
+fare, he held on upon our baggage as security for the debt. I had but to
+mention the fact to Mr. Johnson, and he forthwith advanced the money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for the
+duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom. On the morning after our
+arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the question arose as to
+what name I should be called by. The name given me by my mother was,
+&ldquo;Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.&rdquo; I, however, had dispensed
+with the two middle names long before I left Maryland so that I was generally
+known by the name of &ldquo;Frederick Bailey.&rdquo; I started from Baltimore
+bearing the name of &ldquo;Stanley.&rdquo; When I got to New York, I again
+changed my name to &ldquo;Frederick Johnson,&rdquo; and thought that would be
+the last change. But when I got to New Bedford, I found it necessary again to
+change my name. The reason of this necessity was, that there were so many
+Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to distinguish between
+them. I gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of choosing me a name, but told him he
+must not take from me the name of &ldquo;Frederick.&rdquo; I must hold on to
+that, to preserve a sense of my identity. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the
+&ldquo;Lady of the Lake,&rdquo; and at once suggested that my name be
+&ldquo;Douglass.&rdquo; From that time until now I have been called
+&ldquo;Frederick Douglass;&rdquo; and as I am more widely known by that name
+than by either of the others, I shall continue to use it as my own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New Bedford.
+The impression which I had received respecting the character and condition of
+the people of the north, I found to be singularly erroneous. I had very
+strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of the comforts, and scarcely
+any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at the north, compared with what were
+enjoyed by the slaveholders of the south. I probably came to this conclusion
+from the fact that northern people owned no slaves. I supposed that they were
+about upon a level with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew
+<i>they</i> were exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their
+poverty as the necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had
+somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no
+wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I expected to
+meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population, living in the most
+Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury, pomp, and
+grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such being my conjectures, any one
+acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may very readily infer how
+palpably I must have seen my mistake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the wharves,
+to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded with the
+strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding in the stream, I
+saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order, and of the largest size.
+Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite warehouses of the widest
+dimensions, stowed to their utmost capacity with the necessaries and comforts
+of life. Added to this, almost every body seemed to be at work, but noiselessly
+so, compared with what I had been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no
+loud songs heard from those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard no
+deep oaths or horrid curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of men; but all
+seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went
+at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the deep interest
+which he felt in what he was doing, as well as a sense of his own dignity as a
+man. To me this looked exceedingly strange. From the wharves I strolled around
+and over the town, gazing with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches,
+beautiful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of
+wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of
+slaveholding Maryland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated
+houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and barefooted
+women, such as I had been accustomed to see in Hillsborough, Easton, St.
+Michael&rsquo;s, and Baltimore. The people looked more able, stronger,
+healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland. I was for once made glad by a
+view of extreme wealth, without being saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But
+the most astonishing as well as the most interesting thing to me was the
+condition of the colored people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped
+thither as a refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been
+seven years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying
+more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders in Maryland. I
+will venture to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I can say
+with a grateful heart, &ldquo;I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty,
+and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in&rdquo;) lived in a
+neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read, more
+newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of
+the nation,&mdash;than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county
+Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man. His hands were hardened by toil,
+and not his alone, but those also of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored people
+much more spirited than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a
+determination to protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all
+hazards. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a circumstance which illustrated
+their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were on unfriendly terms. The
+former was heard to threaten the latter with informing his master of his
+whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was called among the colored people, under
+the stereotyped notice, &ldquo;Business of importance!&rdquo; The betrayer was
+invited to attend. The people came at the appointed hour, and organized the
+meeting by appointing a very religious old gentleman as president, who, I
+believe, made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as follows:
+&ldquo;<i>Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you young
+men just take him outside the door, and kill him!</i>&rdquo; With this, a
+number of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid than
+themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not been seen in
+New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such threats, and should
+there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be the consequence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a
+load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a
+glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It was a happy moment,
+the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been slaves. It
+was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no
+Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I
+worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced. I was at work
+for myself and newly-married wife. It was to me the starting-point of a new
+existence. When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of
+calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white
+calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course I could get no
+employment.<a href="#fn-4" name="fnref-4" id="fnref-4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>
+Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments,
+and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson
+kindly let me have his wood-horse and saw, and I very soon found myself a
+plenty of work. There was no work too hard&mdash;none too dirty. I was ready to
+saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil
+casks,&mdash;all of which I did for nearly three years in New Bedford, before I
+became known to the anti-slavery world.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn-4" id="fn-4"></a> <a href="#fnref-4">[4]</a>
+I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New
+Bedford&mdash;a result of anti-slavery effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to me,
+and inquired if I did not wish to take the &ldquo;Liberator.&rdquo; I told him
+I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was
+unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The
+paper came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be
+quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The paper became my meat and my
+drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in
+bonds&mdash;its scathing denunciations of slaveholders&mdash;its faithful
+exposures of slavery&mdash;and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the
+institution&mdash;sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never
+felt before!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had not long been a reader of the &ldquo;Liberator,&rdquo; before I got a
+pretty correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery
+reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what I
+could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in an
+anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings, because what I
+wanted to say was said so much better by others. But, while attending an
+anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt
+strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by Mr.
+William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored
+people&rsquo;s meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I took it up
+reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to
+white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree
+of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease. From that time
+until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren&mdash;with
+what success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my labors
+to decide.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_APPE" id="link2H_APPE"></a> APPENDIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in several
+instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may
+possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an
+opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I
+deem it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I have said
+respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the
+<i>slaveholding religion</i> of this land, and with no possible reference to
+Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the
+Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference&mdash;so
+wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to
+reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is
+of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and
+impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding,
+women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of
+this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling
+the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all
+misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was
+there a clearer case of &ldquo;stealing the livery of the court of heaven to
+serve the devil in.&rdquo; I am filled with unutterable loathing when I
+contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible
+inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for
+ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church
+members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the
+pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The
+man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a
+class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of
+salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth
+as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read
+the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made
+me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its
+sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The
+warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that
+scatters whole families,&mdash;sundering husbands and wives, parents and
+children, sisters and brothers,&mdash;leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth
+desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against
+adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel,
+and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the <i>Poor Heathen! All For The Glory Of
+God And The Good Of Souls!</i> The slave auctioneer&rsquo;s bell and the
+church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the
+heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master.
+Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together.
+The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters
+and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer
+in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and
+souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually
+help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit,
+and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of
+Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each
+other&mdash;devils dressed in angels&rsquo; robes, and hell presenting the
+semblance of paradise.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Just God! and these are they,v Who minister at thine altar, God of
+right!<br />
+Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay<br />
+On Israel&rsquo;s ark of light.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;What! preach, and kidnap men?<br />
+Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?<br />
+Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then<br />
+Bolt hard the captive&rsquo;s door?<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;What! servants of thy own<br />
+Merciful Son, who came to seek and save<br />
+The homeless and the outcast, fettering down<br />
+The tasked and plundered slave!<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;Pilate and Herod friends!<br />
+Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!<br />
+Just God and holy! is that church which lends<br />
+Strength to the spoiler thine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may be as
+truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, &ldquo;They bind
+heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men&rsquo;s shoulders,
+but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. All their
+works they do for to be seen of men.&mdash;They love the uppermost rooms at
+feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, . . . . . . and to be called of
+men, Rabbi, Rabbi.&mdash;But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
+for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in
+yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Ye devour
+widows&rsquo; houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall
+receive the greater damnation. Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte,
+and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than
+yourselves.&mdash;Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay
+tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of
+the law, judgment, mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, and not to
+leave the other undone. Ye blind guides! which strain at a gnat, and swallow a
+camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the
+outside of the cup and of the platter; but within, they are full of extortion
+and excess.&mdash;Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are
+like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are
+within full of dead men&rsquo;s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also
+outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and
+iniquity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the
+overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat,
+and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would
+be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a <i>sheep</i>-stealer; and at
+the same time they hug to their communion a <i>man</i>-stealer, and brand me
+with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with
+Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time
+neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are
+always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are
+represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate
+their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of
+the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his
+hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect
+the heathen at their own doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any
+misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the
+religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions,
+of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and
+yet in union with slaveholders. It is against religion, as presented by these
+bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I conclude these remarks by copying the following portrait of the religion of
+the south, (which is, by communion and fellowship, the religion of the north,)
+which I soberly affirm is &ldquo;true to the life,&rdquo; and without
+caricature or the slightest exaggeration. It is said to have been drawn,
+several years before the present anti-slavery agitation began, by a northern
+Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the south, had an opportunity to see
+slaveholding morals, manners, and piety, with his own eyes. &ldquo;Shall I not
+visit for these things? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a
+nation as this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"></a>
+<b>A PARODY</b>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell<br />
+How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,<br />
+And women buy and children sell,<br />
+And preach all sinners down to hell,<br />
+And sing of heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll bleat and baa, dona like goats,<br />
+Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,<br />
+Array their backs in fine black coats,<br />
+Then seize their negroes by their throats,<br />
+And choke, for heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll church you if you sip a dram,<br />
+And damn you if you steal a lamb;<br />
+Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,<br />
+Of human rights, and bread and ham;<br />
+Kidnapper&rsquo;s heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll loudly talk of Christ&rsquo;s reward,<br />
+And bind his image with a cord,<br />
+And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,<br />
+And sell their brother in the Lord<br />
+To handcuffed heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll read and sing a sacred song,<br />
+And make a prayer both loud and long,<br />
+And teach the right and do the wrong,<br />
+Hailing the brother, sister throng,<br />
+With words of heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;We wonder how such saints can sing,<br />
+Or praise the Lord upon the wing,<br />
+Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,<br />
+And to their slaves and mammon cling,<br />
+In guilty conscience union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,<br />
+And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie,<br />
+And lay up treasures in the sky,<br />
+By making switch and cowskin fly,<br />
+In hope of heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll crack old Tony on the skull,<br />
+And preach and roar like Bashan bull,<br />
+Or braying ass, of mischief full,<br />
+Then seize old Jacob by the wool,<br />
+And pull for heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,<br />
+Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,<br />
+Yet never would afford relief<br />
+To needy, sable sons of grief,<br />
+Was big with heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Love not the world,&rsquo; the preacher said,<br />
+And winked his eye, and shook his head;<br />
+He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,<br />
+Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,<br />
+Yet still loved heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;Another preacher whining spoke<br />
+Of One whose heart for sinners broke:<br />
+He tied old Nanny to an oak,<br />
+And drew the blood at every stroke,<br />
+And prayed for heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;Two others oped their iron jaws,<br />
+And waved their children-stealing paws;<br />
+There sat their children in gewgaws;<br />
+By stinting negroes&rsquo; backs and maws,<br />
+They kept up heavenly union.<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;All good from Jack another takes,<br />
+And entertains their flirts and rakes,<br />
+Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes,<br />
+And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;<br />
+And this goes down for union.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward
+throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of
+deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds&mdash;faithfully relying
+upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my humble
+efforts&mdash;and solemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred cause,&mdash;I
+subscribe myself,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+L<small>YNN</small>, <i>Mass., April</i> 28, 1845.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS  ***</div>
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+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick
+Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
+it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
+       An American Slave
+
+Author: Frederick Douglass
+
+Release Date: January 10, 2006 [EBook #23]
+Last Updated: October 28, 2020
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FREDERICK DOUGLASS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Note from the original file: This electronic book is being released at
+    this time to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. [Born January
+    15, 1929] [Officially celebrated January 20, 1992]
+
+
+
+NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+
+AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
+
+
+BOSTON
+
+PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE, NO. 25 CORNHILL 1845
+
+ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1845 BY FREDERICK
+DOUGLASS, IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+
+ PREFACE
+
+ LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
+
+ FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+
+ CHAPTER I
+
+ CHAPTER II
+
+ CHAPTER III
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+
+ CHAPTER V
+
+ CHAPTER VI
+
+ CHAPTER VII
+
+ CHAPTER VIII
+
+ CHAPTER IX
+
+ CHAPTER X
+
+ CHAPTER XI
+
+ APPENDIX
+
+ A PARODY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention
+in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with
+_Frederick Douglass_, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a
+stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made
+his escape from the southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling
+his curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the
+abolitionists,--of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description while
+he was a slave,--he was induced to give his attendance, on the occasion
+alluded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford.
+
+Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!--fortunate for the millions of
+his manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful
+thraldom!--fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of
+universal liberty!--fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has
+already done so much to save and bless!--fortunate for a large circle of
+friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly
+secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits of
+character, by his ever-abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as
+being bound with them!--fortunate for the multitudes, in various parts of
+our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of slavery,
+and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to virtuous
+indignation by his stirring eloquence against the enslavers of
+men!--fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into the field of
+public usefulness, "gave the world assurance of a MAN," quickened the
+slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to the great work
+of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!
+
+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--the
+applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous
+remarks. 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 proportion and stature
+commanding and exact--in intellect richly endowed--in natural eloquence
+a prodigy--in soul manifestly "created but a little lower than the
+angels"--yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,--trembling for his safety,
+hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white
+person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the
+love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an intellectual
+and moral being--needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of
+cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to his
+race--by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms
+of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of burden, a
+chattel personal, nevertheless!
+
+A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on _Mr. Douglass_ to address
+the convention. He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and
+embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a
+novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the
+audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and
+heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as
+a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble
+thoughts and thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken his seat,
+filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that _Patrick
+Henry_, of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the
+cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of
+that hunted fugitive. So I believed at that time--such is my belief
+now. I reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this
+self-emancipated young man at the North,--even in Massachusetts, on the
+soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary
+sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to
+be carried back into slavery,--law or no law, constitution or no
+constitution. The response was unanimous and in thunder-tones--"NO!"
+"Will you succor and protect him as a brother-man--a resident of the old
+Bay State?" "YES!" shouted the whole mass, with an energy so startling,
+that the ruthless tyrants south of Mason and Dixon's line might almost
+have heard the mighty burst of feeling, and recognized it as the pledge
+of an invincible determination, on the part of those who gave it, never
+to betray him that wanders, but to hide the outcast, and firmly to abide
+the consequences.
+
+It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if _Mr. Douglass_
+could be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents to the promotion
+of the anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be given to
+it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern prejudice
+against a colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to instil hope
+and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a
+vocation so anomalous and responsible for a person in his situation; and
+I was seconded in this effort by warm-hearted friends, especially by the
+late General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, _Mr. John
+A. Collins_, whose judgment in this instance entirely coincided with
+my own. At first, he could give no encouragement; with unfeigned
+diffidence, he expressed his conviction that he was not adequate to
+the performance of so great a task; the path marked out was wholly an
+untrodden one; he was sincerely apprehensive that he should do more
+harm than good. After much deliberation, however, he consented to make
+a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted as a lecturing
+agent, under the auspices either of the American or the Massachusetts
+Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has been most abundant; and his
+success in combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes, in agitating the
+public mind, has far surpassed the most sanguine expectations that were
+raised at the commencement of his brilliant career. He has borne himself
+with gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of character. As
+a public speaker, he excels in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation,
+strength of reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that
+union of head and heart, which is indispensable to an enlightenment
+of the heads and a winning of the hearts of others. May his strength
+continue to be equal to his day! May he continue to "grow in grace, and
+in the knowledge of God," that he may be increasingly serviceable in the
+cause of bleeding humanity, whether at home or abroad!
+
+It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient
+advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive
+slave, in the person of _Frederick Douglass_; and that the free colored
+population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their
+own number, in the person of _Charles Lenox Remond_, whose eloquent
+appeals have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides
+of the Atlantic. Let the calumniators of the colored race despise
+themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth
+cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who require nothing
+but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point of human
+excellence.
+
+It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the
+population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings
+and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale
+of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left
+undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their
+moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind;
+and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most
+frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for centuries! To
+illustrate the effect of slavery on the white man,--to show that he has
+no powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior to those of
+his black brother,--_Daniel O'Connell_, the distinguished advocate of
+universal emancipation, and the mightiest champion of prostrate but not
+conquered Ireland, relates the following anecdote in a speech delivered
+by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the Loyal National
+Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. "No matter," said _Mr. O'Connell_,
+"under what specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still
+hideous. _It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every
+noble faculty of man._ An American sailor, who was cast away on the
+shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three years, was, at
+the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and stultified--he
+had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his native language,
+could only utter some savage gibberish between Arabic and English, which
+nobody could understand, and which even he himself found difficulty
+in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence of _The Domestic
+Institution_!" Admitting this to have been an extraordinary case of
+mental deterioration, it proves at least that the white slave can sink
+as low in the scale of humanity as the black one.
+
+_Mr. Douglass_ has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in
+his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than
+to employ some one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production;
+and, considering how long and dark was the career he had to run as a
+slave,--how few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since he
+broke his iron fetters,--it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his
+head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving
+breast, an afflicted spirit,--without being filled with an unutterable
+abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a
+determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable
+system,--without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of
+a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm
+is not shortened that it cannot save,--must have a flinty heart, and be
+qualified to act the part of a trafficker "in slaves and the souls of
+men." I am confident that it is essentially true in all its statements;
+that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing
+drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather
+than overstates a single fact in regard to _slavery as it is_. The
+experience of _Frederick Douglass_, as a slave, was not a peculiar one;
+his lot was not especially a hard one; his case may be regarded as a
+very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in Maryland, in which
+State it is conceded that they are better fed and less cruelly treated
+than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana. Many have suffered incomparably
+more, while very few on the plantations have suffered less, than
+himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what terrible
+chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more shocking
+outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble powers and
+sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even by those
+professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus! to
+what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how destitute
+of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest extremities! how heavy
+was the midnight of woe which shrouded in blackness the last ray of
+hope, and filled the future with terror and gloom! what longings after
+freedom took possession of his breast, and how his misery augmented,
+in proportion as he grew reflective and intelligent,--thus demonstrating
+that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he thought, reasoned, felt,
+under the lash of the driver, with the chains upon his limbs! what
+perils he encountered in his endeavors to escape from his horrible doom!
+and how signal have been his deliverance and preservation in the midst
+of a nation of pitiless enemies!
+
+This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great
+eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them all
+is the description _Douglass_ gives of his feelings, as he stood
+soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being
+a freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay--viewing the receding
+vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and
+apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who
+can read that passage, and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?
+Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought, feeling,
+and sentiment--all that can, all that need be urged, in the form of
+expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,--making
+man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system,
+which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image, reduces
+those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a level with
+four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in human flesh above all that
+is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not
+evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its presence imply but
+the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man, on the part of the
+people of the United States? Heaven speed its eternal overthrow!
+
+So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that
+they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any
+recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They
+do not deny that the slaves are held as property; but that terrible
+fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure
+to outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of
+mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the
+banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be greatly
+indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements,
+such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if
+all these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery!
+As if it were less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of
+a thing, than to give him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of
+necessary food and clothing! As if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles,
+blood-hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols, were not all indispensable
+to keep the slaves down, and to give protection to their ruthless
+oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution is abolished,
+concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound; when all
+the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to protect
+the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is assumed
+over life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destructive sway!
+Skeptics of this character abound in society. In some few instances,
+their incredulity arises from a want of reflection; but, generally, it
+indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield slavery from the
+assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race, whether bond or
+free. Such will try to discredit the shocking tales of slaveholding
+cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative; but they will
+labor in vain. _Mr. Douglass_ has frankly disclosed the place of his
+birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and soul,
+and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has
+alleged against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be
+disproved, if they are untrue.
+
+In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
+cruelty,--in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging
+to a neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his
+lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out
+the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape
+a bloody scourging. _Mr. Douglass_ states that in neither of these
+instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial
+investigation. The Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates
+a similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity--as
+follows:--"_Shooting a slave._--We learn, upon the authority of a letter
+from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city,
+that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and
+whose father, it is believed, holds an office at Washington, killed one
+of the slaves upon his father's farm by shooting him. The letter states
+that young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave
+an order to the servant, which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to
+the house, _obtained a gun, and, returning, shot the servant._ He
+immediately, the letter continues, fled to his father's residence,
+where he still remains unmolested."--Let it never be forgotten, that no
+slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on
+the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony
+of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are
+adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though
+they were indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no
+legal protection in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave
+population; and any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with
+impunity. Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more
+horrible state of society?
+
+The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters
+is vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any
+thing but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest
+degree pernicious. The testimony of _Mr. Douglass_, on this point, is
+sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. "A
+slaveholder's profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He
+is a felon of the highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no
+importance what you put in the other scale."
+
+Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the
+side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the
+foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do
+and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your
+efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what
+may--cost what it may--inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the
+breeze, as your religious and political motto--"NO COMPROMISE WITH
+SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"
+
+WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON, _May_ 1, 1845.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
+
+BOSTON, APRIL 22, 1845.
+
+My Dear Friend:
+
+You remember the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion
+complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote
+history."
+
+I am glad the time has come when the "lions write history." We have been
+left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary
+evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest sufficiently satisfied
+with what, it is evident, must be, in general, the results of such a
+relation, without seeking farther to find whether they have followed in
+every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the half-peck of corn a week,
+and love to count the lashes on the slave's back, are seldom the "stuff"
+out of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made. I remember
+that, in 1838, many were waiting for the results of the West India
+experiment, before they could come into our ranks. Those "results" have
+come long ago; but, alas! few of that number have come with them, as
+converts. A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests
+than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,--and to hate slavery
+for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,--before he
+is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.
+
+I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of
+God's children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice
+done them. Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had
+mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white sails" of the Chesapeake
+were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave,
+not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel
+and blighting death which gathers over his soul.
+
+In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
+recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the
+more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are
+told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what
+it is at its best estate--gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and
+then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture,
+as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the
+Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along.
+
+Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in
+your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak
+has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel,
+persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No
+one-sided portrait,--no wholesale complaints,--but strict justice done,
+whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the deadly
+system with which it was strangely allied. You have been with us, too,
+some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights, which your
+race enjoy at the North, with that "noon of night" under which they
+labor south of Mason and Dixon's line. Tell us whether, after all, the
+half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than the pampered
+slave of the rice swamps!
+
+In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out
+some rare specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which
+even you have drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no
+individual ills, but such as must mingle always and necessarily in
+the lot of every slave. They are the essential ingredients, not the
+occasional results, of the system.
+
+After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years
+ago, when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace,
+you may remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of
+all. With the exception of a vague description, so I continued, till the
+other day, when you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the time,
+whether to thank you or not for the sight of them, when I reflected that
+it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men to tell
+their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the Declaration of
+Independence with the halter about their necks. You, too, publish your
+declaration of freedom with danger compassing you around. In all the
+broad lands which the Constitution of the United States overshadows,
+there is no single spot,--however narrow or desolate,--where a fugitive
+slave can plant himself and say, "I am safe." The whole armory of
+Northern Law has no shield for you. I am free to say that, in your
+place, I should throw the MS. into the fire.
+
+You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, endeared as you are to so
+many warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to
+the service of others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and the
+fearless efforts of those who, trampling the laws and Constitution of
+the country under their feet, are determined that they will "hide the
+outcast," and that their hearths shall be, spite of the law, an asylum
+for the oppressed, if, some time or other, the humblest may stand in our
+streets, and bear witness in safety against the cruelties of which he
+has been the victim.
+
+Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome
+your story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating
+contrary to the "statute in such case made and provided." Go on, my dear
+friend, till you, and those who, like you, have been saved, so as by
+fire, from the dark prison-house, shall stereotype these free,
+illegal pulses into statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a
+blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house of refuge for the
+oppressed,--till we no longer merely "_hide_ the outcast," or make
+a merit of standing idly by while he is hunted in our midst; but,
+consecrating anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the
+oppressed, proclaim our _welcome_ to the slave so loudly, that the tones
+shall reach every hut in the Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted
+bondman leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts.
+
+God speed the day!
+
+_Till then, and ever,_ Yours truly, WENDELL PHILLIPS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+
+Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington
+Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the
+exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a
+young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he
+learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In
+1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married
+Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon
+thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he
+addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in
+Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately
+employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous
+persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote _Narrative Of
+The Life Of Frederick Douglass_. During the Civil War he assisted in the
+recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments
+and consistently argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he
+was active in securing and protecting the rights of the freemen. In his
+later years, at different times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo
+Commission, marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia,
+and United States Minister to Haiti. His other autobiographical works
+are _My Bondage And My Freedom_ and _Life And Times Of Frederick
+Douglass_, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He died in 1895.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from
+Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my
+age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the
+larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of
+theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep
+their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave
+who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than
+planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A
+want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me
+even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could
+not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not
+allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed
+all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and
+evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me
+now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this,
+from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen
+years old.
+
+My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and
+Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker
+complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.
+
+My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever
+heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my
+master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know
+nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were
+separated when I was but an infant--before I knew her as my mother. It is
+a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part
+children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the
+child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and
+hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is
+placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For
+what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the
+development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and
+destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the
+inevitable result.
+
+I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times
+in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at
+night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from
+my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the
+whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was
+a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at
+sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to
+the contrary--a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives
+to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not
+recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me
+in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long
+before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place
+between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived,
+and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about
+seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not
+allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She
+was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to
+any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful
+care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I
+should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.
+
+Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation
+of who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or
+may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to
+my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that
+slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children
+of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers;
+and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and
+make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as
+pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases
+not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and
+father.
+
+I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves
+invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with,
+than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their
+mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom
+do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she
+sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of
+showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black
+slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his
+slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel
+as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children
+to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to
+do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself,
+but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few
+shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his
+naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to
+his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for
+himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.
+
+Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was
+doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great
+statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the
+inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled
+or not, it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of
+people are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery,
+from those originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their
+increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument,
+that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the
+lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is
+certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for
+thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe
+their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently
+their own masters.
+
+I have had two masters. My first master's name was Anthony. I do not
+remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony--a title
+which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay.
+He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms,
+and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an
+overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable
+drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed
+with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash
+the women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at
+his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself.
+Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary
+barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man,
+hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take
+great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the
+dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine,
+whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she
+was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from
+his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose.
+The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran
+fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream,
+and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would
+he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I
+ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well
+remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was
+the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be
+a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the
+blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which
+I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could
+commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
+
+This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old
+master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one
+night,--where or for what I do not know,--and happened to be absent
+when my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go
+out evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in
+company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to
+Colonel Lloyd. The young man's name was Ned Roberts, generally called
+Lloyd's Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to
+conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions,
+having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance,
+among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.
+
+Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been
+found in company with Lloyd's Ned; which circumstance, I found, from
+what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a
+man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in
+protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not
+suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt
+Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to
+waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then
+told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d----d b---h.
+After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her
+to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He
+made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now
+stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their
+full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said
+to her, "Now, you d----d b---h, I'll learn you how to disobey my orders!"
+and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy
+cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from
+her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so
+terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a
+closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction
+was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me.
+I had never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my
+grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to
+raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until
+now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the
+plantation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+My master's family consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; one
+daughter, Lucretia, and her husband, Captain Thomas Auld. They lived in
+one house, upon the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. My master
+was Colonel Lloyd's clerk and superintendent. He was what might be
+called the overseer of the overseers. I spent two years of childhood on
+this plantation in my old master's family. It was here that I witnessed
+the bloody transaction recorded in the first chapter; and as I received
+my first impressions of slavery on this plantation, I will give some
+description of it, and of slavery as it there existed. The plantation is
+about twelve miles north of Easton, in Talbot county, and is situated
+on the border of Miles River. The principal products raised upon it were
+tobacco, corn, and wheat. These were raised in great abundance; so that,
+with the products of this and the other farms belonging to him, he was
+able to keep in almost constant employment a large sloop, in carrying
+them to market at Baltimore. This sloop was named Sally Lloyd, in honor
+of one of the colonel's daughters. My master's son-in-law, Captain Auld,
+was master of the vessel; she was otherwise manned by the colonel's
+own slaves. Their names were Peter, Isaac, Rich, and Jake. These
+were esteemed very highly by the other slaves, and looked upon as the
+privileged ones of the plantation; for it was no small affair, in the
+eyes of the slaves, to be allowed to see Baltimore.
+
+Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home
+plantation, and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms
+belonging to him. The names of the farms nearest to the home plantation
+were Wye Town and New Design. "Wye Town" was under the overseership of
+a man named Noah Willis. New Design was under the overseership of a
+Mr. Townsend. The overseers of these, and all the rest of the farms,
+numbering over twenty, received advice and direction from the managers
+of the home plantation. This was the great business place. It was the
+seat of government for the whole twenty farms. All disputes among
+the overseers were settled here. If a slave was convicted of any high
+misdemeanor, became unmanageable, or evinced a determination to run
+away, he was brought immediately here, severely whipped, put on board
+the sloop, carried to Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk, or some
+other slave-trader, as a warning to the slaves remaining.
+
+Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly
+allowance of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves
+received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork,
+or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly
+clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen
+trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter,
+made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of
+shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars.
+The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the
+old women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the
+field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to
+them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year.
+When these failed them, they went naked until the next allowance-day.
+Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked, might
+be seen at all seasons of the year.
+
+There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be
+considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This,
+however, is not considered a very great privation. They find less
+difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep;
+for when their day's work in the field is done, the most of them having
+their washing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or none of
+the ordinary facilities for doing either of these, very many of their
+sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day;
+and when this is done, old and young, male and female, married and
+single, drop down side by side, on one common bed,--the cold, damp
+floor,--each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets;
+and here they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver's
+horn. At the sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field.
+There must be no halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe
+betides them who hear not this morning summons to the field; for if
+they are not awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of
+feeling: no age nor sex finds any favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used
+to stand by the door of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick
+and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was so unfortunate as not
+to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented from being ready to
+start for the field at the sound of the horn.
+
+Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a
+woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this,
+too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother's
+release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish
+barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough
+to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him
+talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was commenced or concluded
+by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness his cruelty
+and profanity. His presence made it both the field of blood and of
+blasphemy. From the rising till the going down of the sun, he was
+cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field, in
+the most frightful manner. His career was short. He died very soon after
+I went to Colonel Lloyd's; and he died as he lived, uttering, with his
+dying groans, bitter curses and horrid oaths. His death was regarded by
+the slaves as the result of a merciful providence.
+
+Mr. Severe's place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different
+man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr.
+Severe. His course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations
+of cruelty. He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was
+called by the slaves a good overseer.
+
+The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country
+village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed
+here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting,
+coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves
+on the home plantation. The whole place wore a business-like aspect very
+unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too, conspired
+to give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was called by the
+slaves the _Great House Farm._ Few privileges were esteemed higher, by
+the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do
+errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with
+greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to
+a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms
+would be of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They
+regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their
+overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to
+be out of the field from under the driver's lash, that they esteemed
+it a high privilege, one worth careful living for. He was called the
+smartest and most trusty fellow, who had this honor conferred upon
+him the most frequently. The competitors for this office sought as
+diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers in the
+political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The same traits
+of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the
+slaves of the political parties.
+
+The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly
+allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly
+enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods,
+for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once
+the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as
+they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came
+up, came out--if not in the word, in the sound;--and as frequently in
+the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic
+sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment
+in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to
+weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this,
+when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following
+words:--
+
+
+     "I am going away to the Great House Farm!
+     O, yea! O, yea! O!"
+
+This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem
+unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to
+themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those
+songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of
+slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject
+could do.
+
+I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
+apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I
+neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
+tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension;
+they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and
+complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone
+was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance
+from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit,
+and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in
+tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even
+now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of
+feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace
+my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.
+I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to
+deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren
+in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing
+effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on
+allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him,
+in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers
+of his soul,--and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because
+"there is no flesh in his obdurate heart."
+
+I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find
+persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of
+their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a
+greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs
+of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by
+them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such
+is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to
+express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike
+uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast
+away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as
+evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the
+songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated garden, which afforded
+almost constant employment for four men, besides the chief gardener,
+(Mr. M'Durmond.) This garden was probably the greatest attraction of
+the place. During the summer months, people came from far and near--from
+Baltimore, Easton, and Annapolis--to see it. It abounded in fruits of
+almost every description, from the hardy apple of the north to the
+delicate orange of the south. This garden was not the least source of
+trouble on the plantation. Its excellent fruit was quite a temptation to
+the hungry swarms of boys, as well as the older slaves, belonging to the
+colonel, few of whom had the virtue or the vice to resist it. Scarcely a
+day passed, during the summer, but that some slave had to take the lash
+for stealing fruit. The colonel had to resort to all kinds of stratagems
+to keep his slaves out of the garden. The last and most successful one
+was that of tarring his fence all around; after which, if a slave was
+caught with any tar upon his person, it was deemed sufficient proof that
+he had either been into the garden, or had tried to get in. In either
+case, he was severely whipped by the chief gardener. This plan worked
+well; the slaves became as fearful of tar as of the lash. They seemed to
+realize the impossibility of touching _tar_ without being defiled.
+
+The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage. His stable and
+carriage-house presented the appearance of some of our large city livery
+establishments. His horses were of the finest form and noblest blood.
+His carriage-house contained three splendid coaches, three or four gigs,
+besides dearborns and barouches of the most fashionable style.
+
+This establishment was under the care of two slaves--old Barney and young
+Barney--father and son. To attend to this establishment was their sole
+work. But it was by no means an easy employment; for in nothing was
+Colonel Lloyd more particular than in the management of his horses. The
+slightest inattention to these was unpardonable, and was visited upon
+those, under whose care they were placed, with the severest punishment;
+no excuse could shield them, if the colonel only suspected any want of
+attention to his horses--a supposition which he frequently indulged, and
+one which, of course, made the office of old and young Barney a very
+trying one. They never knew when they were safe from punishment. They
+were frequently whipped when least deserving, and escaped whipping when
+most deserving it. Every thing depended upon the looks of the horses,
+and the state of Colonel Lloyd's own mind when his horses were brought
+to him for use. If a horse did not move fast enough, or hold his head
+high enough, it was owing to some fault of his keepers. It was painful
+to stand near the stable-door, and hear the various complaints against
+the keepers when a horse was taken out for use. "This horse has not had
+proper attention. He has not been sufficiently rubbed and curried, or
+he has not been properly fed; his food was too wet or too dry; he got it
+too soon or too late; he was too hot or too cold; he had too much hay,
+and not enough of grain; or he had too much grain, and not enough
+of hay; instead of old Barney's attending to the horse, he had very
+improperly left it to his son." To all these complaints, no matter how
+unjust, the slave must answer never a word. Colonel Lloyd could not
+brook any contradiction from a slave. When he spoke, a slave must
+stand, listen, and tremble; and such was literally the case. I have seen
+Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man between fifty and sixty years of
+age, uncover his bald head, kneel down upon the cold, damp ground, and
+receive upon his naked and toil-worn shoulders more than thirty
+lashes at the time. Colonel Lloyd had three sons--Edward, Murray, and
+Daniel,--and three sons-in-law, Mr. Winder, Mr. Nicholson, and Mr.
+Lowndes. All of these lived at the Great House Farm, and enjoyed the
+luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased, from old Barney down
+to William Wilkes, the coach-driver. I have seen Winder make one of the
+house-servants stand off from him a suitable distance to be touched with
+the end of his whip, and at every stroke raise great ridges upon his
+back.
+
+To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal
+to describing the riches of Job. He kept from ten to fifteen
+house-servants. He was said to own a thousand slaves, and I think this
+estimate quite within the truth. Colonel Lloyd owned so many that he did
+not know them when he saw them; nor did all the slaves of the out-farms
+know him. It is reported of him, that, while riding along the road one
+day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual manner of
+speaking to colored people on the public highways of the south: "Well,
+boy, whom do you belong to?" "To Colonel Lloyd," replied the slave.
+"Well, does the colonel treat you well?" "No, sir," was the ready reply.
+"What, does he work you too hard?" "Yes, sir." "Well, don't he give you
+enough to eat?" "Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it is."
+
+The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on;
+the man also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been
+conversing with his master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of
+the matter, until two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then
+informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master,
+he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained
+and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment's warning, he was snatched
+away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more
+unrelenting than death. This is the penalty of telling the truth, of
+telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.
+
+It is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired
+of as to their condition and the character of their masters, almost
+universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind.
+The slaveholders have been known to send in spies among their slaves,
+to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition. The
+frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the
+maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head. They suppress the truth
+rather than take the consequences of telling it, and in so doing prove
+themselves a part of the human family. If they have any thing to say of
+their masters, it is generally in their masters' favor, especially when
+speaking to an untried man. I have been frequently asked, when a
+slave, if I had a kind master, and do not remember ever to have given a
+negative answer; nor did I, in pursuing this course, consider myself as
+uttering what was absolutely false; for I always measured the kindness
+of my master by the standard of kindness set up among slaveholders
+around us. Moreover, slaves are like other people, and imbibe prejudices
+quite common to others. They think their own better than that of others.
+Many, under the influence of this prejudice, think their own masters are
+better than the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some cases,
+when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves
+even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative
+goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of
+his own over that of the others. At the very same time, they mutually
+execrate their masters when viewed separately. It was so on our
+plantation. When Colonel Lloyd's slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson,
+they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters; Colonel
+Lloyd's slaves contending that he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson's
+slaves that he was the smartest, and most of a man. Colonel Lloyd's
+slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson. Mr.
+Jepson's slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel Lloyd. These
+quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the parties, and
+those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at issue. They
+seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to
+themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to
+be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Mr. Hopkins remained but a short time in the office of overseer. Why his
+career was so short, I do not know, but suppose he lacked the necessary
+severity to suit Colonel Lloyd. Mr. Hopkins was succeeded by Mr. Austin
+Gore, a man possessing, in an eminent degree, all those traits of
+character indispensable to what is called a first-rate overseer. Mr.
+Gore had served Colonel Lloyd, in the capacity of overseer, upon one
+of the out-farms, and had shown himself worthy of the high station of
+overseer upon the home or Great House Farm.
+
+Mr. Gore was proud, ambitious, and persevering. He was artful, cruel,
+and obdurate. He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the
+place for such a man. It afforded scope for the full exercise of all his
+powers, and he seemed to be perfectly at home in it. He was one of those
+who could torture the slightest look, word, or gesture, on the part of
+the slave, into impudence, and would treat it accordingly. There must
+be no answering back to him; no explanation was allowed a slave, showing
+himself to have been wrongfully accused. Mr. Gore acted fully up to
+the maxim laid down by slaveholders,--"It is better that a dozen
+slaves should suffer under the lash, than that the overseer should be
+convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at fault."
+No matter how innocent a slave might be--it availed him nothing,
+when accused by Mr. Gore of any misdemeanor. To be accused was to
+be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always
+following the other with immutable certainty. To escape punishment was
+to escape accusation; and few slaves had the fortune to do either, under
+the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just proud enough to demand the
+most debasing homage of the slave, and quite servile enough to crouch,
+himself, at the feet of the master. He was ambitious enough to be
+contented with nothing short of the highest rank of overseers, and
+persevering enough to reach the height of his ambition. He was cruel
+enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to descend to
+the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice
+of a reproving conscience. He was, of all the overseers, the most
+dreaded by the slaves. His presence was painful; his eye flashed
+confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice heard, without
+producing horror and trembling in their ranks.
+
+Mr. Gore was a grave man, and, though a young man, he indulged in no
+jokes, said no funny words, seldom smiled. His words were in perfect
+keeping with his looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping with his
+words. Overseers will sometimes indulge in a witty word, even with the
+slaves; not so with Mr. Gore. He spoke but to command, and commanded but
+to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly with his words, and bountifully with
+his whip, never using the former where the latter would answer as well.
+When he whipped, he seemed to do so from a sense of duty, and feared no
+consequences. He did nothing reluctantly, no matter how disagreeable;
+always at his post, never inconsistent. He never promised but to fulfil.
+He was, in a word, a man of the most inflexible firmness and stone-like
+coolness.
+
+His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with
+which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves
+under his charge. Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel Lloyd's
+slaves, by the name of Demby. He had given Demby but few stripes, when,
+to get rid of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself into a creek,
+and stood there at the depth of his shoulders, refusing to come out. Mr.
+Gore told him that he would give him three calls, and that, if he did
+not come out at the third call, he would shoot him. The first call was
+given. Demby made no response, but stood his ground. The second and
+third calls were given with the same result. Mr. Gore then, without
+consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving Demby an
+additional call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his
+standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more. His mangled
+body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he
+had stood.
+
+A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon the plantation,
+excepting Mr. Gore. He alone seemed cool and collected. He was asked by
+Colonel Lloyd and my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary
+expedient. His reply was, (as well as I can remember,) that Demby had
+become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other
+slaves,--one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration
+on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and
+order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave refused to be
+corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy
+the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves,
+and the enslavement of the whites. Mr. Gore's defence was satisfactory.
+He was continued in his station as overseer upon the home plantation.
+His fame as an overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not even
+submitted to judicial investigation. It was committed in the presence of
+slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor testify
+against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the bloodiest
+and most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, and uncensured by the
+community in which he lives. Mr. Gore lived in St. Michael's, Talbot
+county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is still alive, he very
+probably lives there now; and if so, he is now, as he was then, as
+highly esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had not
+been stained with his brother's blood.
+
+I speak advisedly when I say this,--that killing a slave, or any colored
+person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by
+the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St. Michael's, killed
+two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains
+out. He used to boast of the commission of the awful and bloody deed. I
+have heard him do so laughingly, saying, among other things, that he was
+the only benefactor of his country in the company, and that when others
+would do as much as he had done, we should be relieved of "the d----d
+niggers."
+
+The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I
+used to live, murdered my wife's cousin, a young girl between fifteen
+and sixteen years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible
+manner, breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor
+girl expired in a few hours afterward. She was immediately buried, but
+had not been in her untimely grave but a few hours before she was taken
+up and examined by the coroner, who decided that she had come to her
+death by severe beating. The offence for which this girl was thus
+murdered was this:--She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks's
+baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She,
+having lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear the
+crying. They were both in the room with Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks, finding
+the girl slow to move, jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood
+by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl's nose and breastbone,
+and thus ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder
+produced no sensation in the community. It did produce sensation, but
+not enough to bring the murderess to punishment. There was a warrant
+issued for her arrest, but it was never served. Thus she escaped not
+only punishment, but even the pain of being arraigned before a court for
+her horrid crime.
+
+Whilst I am detailing bloody deeds which took place during my stay
+on Colonel Lloyd's plantation, I will briefly narrate another, which
+occurred about the same time as the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore.
+
+Colonel Lloyd's slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their
+nights and Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the
+deficiency of their scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel
+Lloyd, while thus engaged, happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel
+Lloyd's, and on the premises of Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr.
+Bondly took offence, and with his musket came down to the shore, and
+blew its deadly contents into the poor old man.
+
+Mr. Bondly came over to see Colonel Lloyd the next day, whether to pay
+him for his property, or to justify himself in what he had done, I know
+not. At any rate, this whole fiendish transaction was soon hushed up.
+There was very little said about it at all, and nothing done. It was
+a common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a
+half-cent to kill a "nigger," and a half-cent to bury one.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel Lloyd's plantation,
+it was very similar to that of the other slave children. I was not old
+enough to work in the field, and there being little else than field work
+to do, I had a great deal of leisure time. The most I had to do was to
+drive up the cows at evening, keep the fowls out of the garden, keep the
+front yard clean, and run of errands for my old master's daughter, Mrs.
+Lucretia Auld. The most of my leisure time I spent in helping Master
+Daniel Lloyd in finding his birds, after he had shot them. My connection
+with Master Daniel was of some advantage to me. He became quite attached
+to me, and was a sort of protector of me. He would not allow the older
+boys to impose upon me, and would divide his cakes with me.
+
+I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suffered little from any
+thing else than hunger and cold. I suffered much from hunger, but much
+more from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost
+naked--no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a
+coarse tow linen shirt, reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must
+have perished with cold, but that, the coldest nights, I used to steal
+a bag which was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into
+this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in
+and feet out. My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen
+with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.
+
+We were not regularly allowanced. Our food was coarse corn meal boiled.
+This was called _mush_. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough,
+and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so
+many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush;
+some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked
+hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was
+strongest secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied.
+
+I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel
+Lloyd's plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the ecstasy
+with which I received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony)
+had determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr. Hugh Auld,
+brother to my old master's son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld. I received
+this information about three days before my departure. They were three
+of the happiest days I ever enjoyed. I spent the most part of all these
+three days in the creek, washing off the plantation scurf, and preparing
+myself for my departure.
+
+The pride of appearance which this would indicate was not my own. I
+spent the time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because
+Mrs. Lucretia had told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and
+knees before I could go to Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were
+very cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty. Besides, she was
+going to give me a pair of trousers, which I should not put on unless
+I got all the dirt off me. The thought of owning a pair of trousers was
+great indeed! It was almost a sufficient motive, not only to make me
+take off what would be called by pig-drovers the mange, but the skin
+itself. I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time with
+the hope of reward.
+
+The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all suspended
+in my case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home was
+charmless; it was not home to me; on parting from it, I could not feel
+that I was leaving any thing which I could have enjoyed by staying. My
+mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off, so that I seldom saw her.
+I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the same house with me;
+but the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the
+fact of our relationship from our memories. I looked for home elsewhere,
+and was confident of finding none which I should relish less than the
+one which I was leaving. If, however, I found in my new home hardship,
+hunger, whipping, and nakedness, I had the consolation that I should not
+have escaped any one of them by staying. Having already had more than
+a taste of them in the house of my old master, and having endured them
+there, I very naturally inferred my ability to endure them elsewhere,
+and especially at Baltimore; for I had something of the feeling about
+Baltimore that is expressed in the proverb, that "being hanged in
+England is preferable to dying a natural death in Ireland." I had the
+strongest desire to see Baltimore. Cousin Tom, though not fluent in
+speech, had inspired me with that desire by his eloquent description
+of the place. I could never point out any thing at the Great House,
+no matter how beautiful or powerful, but that he had seen something at
+Baltimore far exceeding, both in beauty and strength, the object which I
+pointed out to him. Even the Great House itself, with all its pictures,
+was far inferior to many buildings in Baltimore. So strong was my
+desire, that I thought a gratification of it would fully compensate
+for whatever loss of comforts I should sustain by the exchange. I left
+without a regret, and with the highest hopes of future happiness.
+
+We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore on a Saturday morning. I
+remember only the day of the week, for at that time I had no knowledge
+of the days of the month, nor the months of the year. On setting sail, I
+walked aft, and gave to Colonel Lloyd's plantation what I hoped would be
+the last look. I then placed myself in the bows of the sloop, and there
+spent the remainder of the day in looking ahead, interesting myself in
+what was in the distance rather than in things near by or behind.
+
+In the afternoon of that day, we reached Annapolis, the capital of the
+State. We stopped but a few moments, so that I had no time to go on
+shore. It was the first large town that I had ever seen, and though it
+would look small compared with some of our New England factory villages,
+I thought it a wonderful place for its size--more imposing even than the
+Great House Farm!
+
+We arrived at Baltimore early on Sunday morning, landing at Smith's
+Wharf, not far from Bowley's Wharf. We had on board the sloop a large
+flock of sheep; and after aiding in driving them to the slaughterhouse
+of Mr. Curtis on Louden Slater's Hill, I was conducted by Rich, one of
+the hands belonging on board of the sloop, to my new home in Alliciana
+Street, near Mr. Gardner's ship-yard, on Fells Point.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Auld were both at home, and met me at the door with their
+little son Thomas, to take care of whom I had been given. And here I saw
+what I had never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the most
+kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld. I wish
+I could describe the rapture that flashed through my soul as I beheld
+it. It was a new and strange sight to me, brightening up my pathway
+with the light of happiness. Little Thomas was told, there was his
+Freddy,--and I was told to take care of little Thomas; and thus I entered
+upon the duties of my new home with the most cheering prospect ahead.
+
+I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd's plantation as one of
+the most interesting events of my life. It is possible, and even quite
+probable, that but for the mere circumstance of being removed from that
+plantation to Baltimore, I should have to-day, instead of being here
+seated by my own table, in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness
+of home, writing this Narrative, been confined in the galling chains of
+slavery. Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the
+gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity. I have ever regarded it as the
+first plain manifestation of that kind providence which has ever since
+attended me, and marked my life with so many favors. I regarded the
+selection of myself as being somewhat remarkable. There were a number
+of slave children that might have been sent from the plantation to
+Baltimore. There were those younger, those older, and those of the same
+age. I was chosen from among them all, and was the first, last, and only
+choice.
+
+I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this
+event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But
+I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed
+the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of
+incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my
+own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment
+of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold
+me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in
+slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from
+me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom.
+This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and
+praise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at
+the door,--a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had
+never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to
+her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living.
+She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business,
+she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and
+dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her
+goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely
+unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her
+as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early instruction
+was all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a
+quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor
+was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not
+deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face.
+The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none
+left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made of
+heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.
+
+But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The
+fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon
+commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence
+of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet
+accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic
+face gave place to that of a demon.
+
+Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly
+commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she
+assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at
+this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at
+once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other
+things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to
+read. To use his own words, further, he said, "If you give a nigger an
+inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his
+master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would _spoil_ the best nigger
+in the world. Now," said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of
+myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever
+unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no
+value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great
+deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy." These
+words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay
+slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.
+It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious
+things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but
+struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most
+perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's power to enslave the
+black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that
+moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just
+what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it.
+Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind
+mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the
+merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the
+difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and
+a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The
+very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife
+with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince
+me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me
+the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the
+results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he
+most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most
+hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was
+to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he
+so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire
+me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe
+almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly
+aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.
+
+I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked
+difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed
+in the country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a
+slave on the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys
+privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is
+a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and
+check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the
+plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity
+of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated slave.
+Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation of being
+a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known as not
+giving a slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious to have
+it known of him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due to them
+to say, that most of them do give their slaves enough to eat. There are,
+however, some painful exceptions to this rule. Directly opposite to us,
+on Philpot Street, lived Mr. Thomas Hamilton. He owned two slaves. Their
+names were Henrietta and Mary. Henrietta was about twenty-two years
+of age, Mary was about fourteen; and of all the mangled and emaciated
+creatures I ever looked upon, these two were the most so. His heart
+must be harder than stone, that could look upon these unmoved. The
+head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut to pieces. I have
+frequently felt her head, and found it nearly covered with festering
+sores, caused by the lash of her cruel mistress. I do not know that her
+master ever whipped her, but I have been an eye-witness to the cruelty
+of Mrs. Hamilton. I used to be in Mr. Hamilton's house nearly every day.
+Mrs. Hamilton used to sit in a large chair in the middle of the room,
+with a heavy cowskin always by her side, and scarce an hour passed
+during the day but was marked by the blood of one of these slaves. The
+girls seldom passed her without her saying, "Move faster, you _black
+gip!_" at the same time giving them a blow with the cowskin over the
+head or shoulders, often drawing the blood. She would then say, "Take
+that, you _black gip!_" continuing, "If you don't move faster, I'll move
+you!" Added to the cruel lashings to which these slaves were subjected,
+they were kept nearly half-starved. They seldom knew what it was to eat
+a full meal. I have seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal
+thrown into the street. So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that
+she was oftener called "_pecked_" than by her name.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+I lived in Master Hugh's family about seven years. During this time, I
+succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was
+compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My
+mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance
+with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to
+instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one
+else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did
+not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the
+depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was
+at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of
+irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as
+though I were a brute.
+
+My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in
+the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with
+her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another.
+In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to
+perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and
+that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but
+dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When
+I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was
+no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for
+the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that
+came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of
+these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became
+stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like
+fierceness. The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to
+instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband's precepts. She
+finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband
+himself. She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had
+commanded; she seemed anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to make her
+more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that
+here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face made all up
+of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed
+her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon
+demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were
+incompatible with each other.
+
+From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room
+any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having
+a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this,
+however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in
+teaching me the alphabet, had given me the _inch,_ and no precaution
+could prevent me from taking the _ell._
+
+The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful,
+was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in
+the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With
+their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places,
+I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I
+always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly,
+I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry
+bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I
+was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many
+of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to
+bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me
+that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give
+the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the
+gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;--not that
+it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an
+unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country.
+It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on
+Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard. I used to talk
+this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I
+wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. "You
+will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, _but I am a slave for life!_
+Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?" These words used
+to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and
+console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be
+free.
+
+I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being _a slave for
+life_ began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got
+hold of a book entitled "The Columbian Orator." Every opportunity I
+got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter,
+I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was
+represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue
+represented the conversation which took place between them, when the
+slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument
+in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was
+disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as
+well as impressive things in reply to his master--things which had the
+desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the
+voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.
+
+In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan's mighty speeches on and
+in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me.
+I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue
+to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed
+through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I
+gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of
+even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation
+of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights. The reading
+of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the
+arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved
+me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than
+the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led
+to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light
+than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to
+Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced
+us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most
+wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very
+discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning
+to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable
+anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to
+read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view
+of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the
+horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of
+agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often
+wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile
+to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was
+this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was
+no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within
+sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom
+had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to
+disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in
+every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my
+wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing
+without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from
+every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved
+in every storm.
+
+I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself
+dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I
+should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have
+been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one
+speak of slavery. I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could
+hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found
+what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make
+it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in
+getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or
+did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of
+as the fruit of _abolition._ Hearing the word in this connection very
+often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me
+little or no help. I found it was "the act of abolishing;" but then I
+did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not
+dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was
+something they wanted me to know very little about. After a patient
+waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the
+number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery
+in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the States.
+From this time I understood the words _abolition_ and _abolitionist,_
+and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting to hear
+something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves. The light broke in
+upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. Waters;
+and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went, unasked, and
+helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me and asked
+me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, "Are ye a slave for
+life?" I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply
+affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so
+fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it
+was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to the north;
+that I should find friends there, and that I should be free. I pretended
+not to be interested in what they said, and treated them as if I did not
+understand them; for I feared they might be treacherous. White men have
+been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward,
+catch them and return them to their masters. I was afraid that these
+seemingly good men might use me so; but I nevertheless remembered their
+advice, and from that time I resolved to run away. I looked forward to
+a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too young to
+think of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write,
+as I might have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with
+the hope that I should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would
+learn to write.
+
+The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by
+being in Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship
+carpenters, after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use,
+write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was
+intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the larboard side, it
+would be marked thus--"L." When a piece was for the starboard side, it
+would be marked thus--"S." A piece for the larboard side forward, would
+be marked thus--"L. F." When a piece was for starboard side forward,
+it would be marked thus--"S. F." For larboard aft, it would be marked
+thus--"L. A." For starboard aft, it would be marked thus--"S. A." I soon
+learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when
+placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced
+copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters
+named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I
+would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, "I
+don't believe you. Let me see you try it." I would then make the letters
+which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that.
+In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite
+possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time,
+my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and
+ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. I
+then commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster's Spelling
+Book, until I could make them all without looking on the book. By this
+time, my little Master Thomas had gone to school, and learned how to
+write, and had written over a number of copy-books. These had been
+brought home, and shown to some of our near neighbors, and then laid
+aside. My mistress used to go to class meeting at the Wilk Street
+meetinghouse every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take care of the
+house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in writing in the
+spaces left in Master Thomas's copy-book, copying what he had written. I
+continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of
+Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally
+succeeded in learning how to write.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+In a very short time after I went to live at Baltimore, my old master's
+youngest son Richard died; and in about three years and six months after
+his death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leaving only his son,
+Andrew, and daughter, Lucretia, to share his estate. He died while on a
+visit to see his daughter at Hillsborough. Cut off thus unexpectedly,
+he left no will as to the disposal of his property. It was therefore
+necessary to have a valuation of the property, that it might be equally
+divided between Mrs. Lucretia and Master Andrew. I was immediately sent
+for, to be valued with the other property. Here again my feelings rose
+up in detestation of slavery. I had now a new conception of my degraded
+condition. Prior to this, I had become, if not insensible to my lot,
+at least partly so. I left Baltimore with a young heart overborne with
+sadness, and a soul full of apprehension. I took passage with Captain
+Rowe, in the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a sail of about twenty-four
+hours, I found myself near the place of my birth. I had now been absent
+from it almost, if not quite, five years. I, however, remembered the
+place very well. I was only about five years old when I left it, to go
+and live with my old master on Colonel Lloyd's plantation; so that I was
+now between ten and eleven years old.
+
+We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and
+young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.
+There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all
+holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to
+the same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth,
+maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At
+this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of
+slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.
+
+After the valuation, then came the division. I have no language to
+express the high excitement and deep anxiety which were felt among us
+poor slaves during this time. Our fate for life was now to be decided.
+We had no more voice in that decision than the brutes among whom we
+were ranked. A single word from the white men was enough--against all our
+wishes, prayers, and entreaties--to sunder forever the dearest friends,
+dearest kindred, and strongest ties known to human beings. In addition
+to the pain of separation, there was the horrid dread of falling into
+the hands of Master Andrew. He was known to us all as being a most cruel
+wretch,--a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and
+profligate dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father's
+property. We all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the
+Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would
+be our inevitable condition,--a condition held by us all in the utmost
+horror and dread.
+
+I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-slaves. I had known what
+it was to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind. They
+had seen little or nothing of the world. They were in very deed men and
+women of sorrow, and acquainted with grief. Their backs had been made
+familiar with the bloody lash, so that they had become callous; mine was
+yet tender; for while at Baltimore I got few whippings, and few slaves
+could boast of a kinder master and mistress than myself; and the thought
+of passing out of their hands into those of Master Andrew--a man who, but
+a few days before, to give me a sample of his bloody disposition, took
+my little brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and with the
+heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the blood gushed from his
+nose and ears--was well calculated to make me anxious as to my fate.
+After he had committed this savage outrage upon my brother, he turned
+to me, and said that was the way he meant to serve me one of these
+days,--meaning, I suppose, when I came into his possession.
+
+Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion of Mrs. Lucretia, and
+was sent immediately back to Baltimore, to live again in the family
+of Master Hugh. Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow at my
+departure. It was a glad day to me. I had escaped a worse than lion's
+jaws. I was absent from Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and
+division, just about one month, and it seemed to have been six.
+
+Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mistress, Lucretia, died,
+leaving her husband and one child, Amanda; and in a very short time
+after her death, Master Andrew died. Now all the property of my old
+master, slaves included, was in the hands of strangers,--strangers who
+had had nothing to do with accumulating it. Not a slave was left free.
+All remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest. If any one thing
+in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction
+of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable
+loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old
+grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old
+age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his
+plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his
+service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood,
+served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the
+cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left
+a slave--a slave for life--a slave in the hands of strangers; and in
+their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her
+great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being
+gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or
+her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude
+and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having
+outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning
+and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but
+little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and
+complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs,
+they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little
+mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting
+herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to
+die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter
+loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children,
+the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They
+are, in the language of the slave's poet, Whittier,--
+
+
+     "Gone, gone, sold and gone
+     To the rice swamp dank and lone,
+     Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
+     Where the noisome insect stings,
+     Where the fever-demon strews
+     Poison with the falling dews,
+     Where the sickly sunbeams glare
+     Through the hot and misty air:&mdash;
+     Gone, gone, sold and gone
+     To the rice swamp dank and lone,
+     From Virginia hills and waters&mdash;
+     Woe is me, my stolen daughters!"
+
+The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once
+sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the
+darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her
+children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the
+screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And
+now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head
+inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence
+meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together--at
+this time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that
+tenderness and affection which children only can exercise towards a
+declining parent--my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve
+children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim
+embers. She stands--she sits--she staggers--she falls--she groans--she
+dies--and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to
+wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath
+the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for these
+things?
+
+In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas
+married his second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton. She was the
+eldest daughter of Mr. William Hamilton. Master now lived in St.
+Michael's. Not long after his marriage, a misunderstanding took place
+between himself and Master Hugh; and as a means of punishing his
+brother, he took me from him to live with himself at St. Michael's. Here
+I underwent another most painful separation. It, however, was not so
+severe as the one I dreaded at the division of property; for, during
+this interval, a great change had taken place in Master Hugh and his
+once kind and affectionate wife. The influence of brandy upon him, and
+of slavery upon her, had effected a disastrous change in the characters
+of both; so that, as far as they were concerned, I thought I had little
+to lose by the change. But it was not to them that I was attached. It
+was to those little Baltimore boys that I felt the strongest attachment.
+I had received many good lessons from them, and was still receiving
+them, and the thought of leaving them was painful indeed. I was leaving,
+too, without the hope of ever being allowed to return. Master Thomas had
+said he would never let me return again. The barrier betwixt himself and
+brother he considered impassable.
+
+I then had to regret that I did not at least make the attempt to carry
+out my resolution to run away; for the chances of success are tenfold
+greater from the city than from the country.
+
+I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael's in the sloop Amanda, Captain
+Edward Dodson. On my passage, I paid particular attention to the
+direction which the steamboats took to go to Philadelphia. I found,
+instead of going down, on reaching North Point they went up the bay,
+in a north-easterly direction. I deemed this knowledge of the utmost
+importance. My determination to run away was again revived. I resolved
+to wait only so long as the offering of a favorable opportunity. When
+that came, I was determined to be off.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left
+Baltimore, and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael's,
+in March, 1832. It was now more than seven years since I lived with him
+in the family of my old master, on Colonel Lloyd's plantation. We of
+course were now almost entire strangers to each other. He was to me a
+new master, and I to him a new slave. I was ignorant of his temper and
+disposition; he was equally so of mine. A very short time, however,
+brought us into full acquaintance with each other. I was made acquainted
+with his wife not less than with himself. They were well matched, being
+equally mean and cruel. I was now, for the first time during a space
+of more than seven years, made to feel the painful gnawings of hunger--a
+something which I had not experienced before since I left Colonel
+Lloyd's plantation. It went hard enough with me then, when I could look
+back to no period at which I had enjoyed a sufficiency. It was tenfold
+harder after living in Master Hugh's family, where I had always had
+enough to eat, and of that which was good. I have said Master Thomas was
+a mean man. He was so. Not to give a slave enough to eat, is regarded as
+the most aggravated development of meanness even among slaveholders. The
+rule is, no matter how coarse the food, only let there be enough of it.
+This is the theory; and in the part of Maryland from which I came, it
+is the general practice,--though there are many exceptions. Master Thomas
+gave us enough of neither coarse nor fine food. There were four slaves
+of us in the kitchen--my sister Eliza, my aunt Priscilla, Henny, and
+myself; and we were allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal
+per week, and very little else, either in the shape of meat or
+vegetables. It was not enough for us to subsist upon. We were therefore
+reduced to the wretched necessity of living at the expense of our
+neighbors. This we did by begging and stealing, whichever came handy in
+the time of need, the one being considered as legitimate as the other.
+A great many times have we poor creatures been nearly perishing
+with hunger, when food in abundance lay mouldering in the safe and
+smoke-house, and our pious mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that
+mistress and her husband would kneel every morning, and pray that God
+would bless them in basket and store!
+
+Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every
+element of character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare
+sort. I do not know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The
+leading trait in his character was meanness; and if there were any other
+element in his nature, it was made subject to this. He was mean; and,
+like most other mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his meanness.
+Captain Auld was not born a slaveholder. He had been a poor man, master
+only of a Bay craft. He came into possession of all his slaves by
+marriage; and of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst. He was
+cruel, but cowardly. He commanded without firmness. In the enforcement
+of his rules, he was at times rigid, and at times lax. At times, he
+spoke to his slaves with the firmness of Napoleon and the fury of a
+demon; at other times, he might well be mistaken for an inquirer who
+had lost his way. He did nothing of himself. He might have passed for a
+lion, but for his ears. In all things noble which he attempted, his own
+meanness shone most conspicuous. His airs, words, and actions, were the
+airs, words, and actions of born slaveholders, and, being assumed, were
+awkward enough. He was not even a good imitator. He possessed all the
+disposition to deceive, but wanted the power. Having no resources within
+himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he
+was forever the victim of inconsistency; and of consequence he was an
+object of contempt, and was held as such even by his slaves. The luxury
+of having slaves of his own to wait upon him was something new and
+unprepared for. He was a slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves.
+He found himself incapable of managing his slaves either by force,
+fear, or fraud. We seldom called him "master;" we generally called him
+"Captain Auld," and were hardly disposed to title him at all. I doubt
+not that our conduct had much to do with making him appear awkward,
+and of consequence fretful. Our want of reverence for him must have
+perplexed him greatly. He wished to have us call him master, but lacked
+the firmness necessary to command us to do so. His wife used to insist
+upon our calling him so, but to no purpose. In August, 1832, my master
+attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county,
+and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his
+conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did
+not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was
+disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane
+to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his
+character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I
+believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than
+before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity
+to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his
+conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding
+cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was
+the house of prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very
+soon distinguished himself among his brethren, and was soon made a
+class-leader and exhorter. His activity in revivals was great, and he
+proved himself an instrument in the hands of the church in converting
+many souls. His house was the preachers' home. They used to take great
+pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he stuffed
+them. We have had three or four preachers there at a time. The names
+of those who used to come most frequently while I lived there, were Mr.
+Storks, Mr. Ewery, Mr. Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have also seen Mr.
+George Cookman at our house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We believed
+him to be a good man. We thought him instrumental in getting Mr. Samuel
+Harrison, a very rich slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by some
+means got the impression that he was laboring to effect the emancipation
+of all the slaves. When he was at our house, we were sure to be called
+in to prayers. When the others were there, we were sometimes called in
+and sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more notice of us than either of
+the other ministers. He could not come among us without betraying his
+sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the sagacity to see it.
+
+While I lived with my master in St. Michael's, there was a white
+young man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the
+instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the New
+Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks,
+both class-leaders, with many others, came upon us with sticks and other
+missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended our
+little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael's.
+
+I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an
+example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge.
+I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy
+cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip;
+and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of
+Scripture--"He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be
+beaten with many stripes."
+
+Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid
+situation four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up
+early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to
+his store, return at dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the
+places already made raw with his cruel lash. The secret of master's
+cruelty toward "Henny" is found in the fact of her being almost
+helpless. When quite a child, she fell into the fire, and burned herself
+horribly. Her hands were so burnt that she never got the use of them.
+She could do very little but bear heavy burdens. She was to master a
+bill of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant offence
+to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of existence.
+He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift, she was
+not disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use his
+own words, "set her adrift to take care of herself." Here was a
+recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same time
+turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas was one
+of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very charitable
+purpose of taking care of them.
+
+My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found
+me unsuitable to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very
+pernicious effect upon me. It had almost ruined me for every good
+purpose, and fitted me for every thing which was bad. One of my greatest
+faults was that of letting his horse run away, and go down to his
+father-in-law's farm, which was about five miles from St. Michael's. I
+would then have to go after it. My reason for this kind of carelessness,
+or carefulness, was, that I could always get something to eat when I
+went there. Master William Hamilton, my master's father-in-law, always
+gave his slaves enough to eat. I never left there hungry, no matter
+how great the need of my speedy return. Master Thomas at length said he
+would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during
+which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good
+purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for
+this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr.
+Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he
+lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired
+a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation
+was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with
+much less expense to himself than he could have had it done without such
+a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr.
+Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of the training to
+which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire
+young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added
+to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of
+religion--a pious soul--a member and a class-leader in the
+Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a
+"nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been made
+acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless
+made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which
+is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+I had left Master Thomas's house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on
+the 1st of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a
+field hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than
+a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home
+but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my
+back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large
+as my little finger. The details of this affair are as follows: Mr.
+Covey sent me, very early in the morning of one of our coldest days in
+the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of wood. He gave me
+a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox, and which
+the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the horns
+of the in-hand ox, and gave me the other end of it, and told me, if
+the oxen started to run, that I must hold on upon the rope. I had
+never driven oxen before, and of course I was very awkward. I, however,
+succeeded in getting to the edge of the woods with little difficulty;
+but I had got a very few rods into the woods, when the oxen took fright,
+and started full tilt, carrying the cart against trees, and over stumps,
+in the most frightful manner. I expected every moment that my brains
+would be dashed out against the trees. After running thus for a
+considerable distance, they finally upset the cart, dashing it with
+great force against a tree, and threw themselves into a dense thicket.
+How I escaped death, I do not know. There I was, entirely alone, in a
+thick wood, in a place new to me. My cart was upset and shattered, my
+oxen were entangled among the young trees, and there was none to
+help me. After a long spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart
+righted, my oxen disentangled, and again yoked to the cart. I now
+proceeded with my team to the place where I had, the day before, been
+chopping wood, and loaded my cart pretty heavily, thinking in this way
+to tame my oxen. I then proceeded on my way home. I had now consumed
+one half of the day. I got out of the woods safely, and now felt out of
+danger. I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate; and just as I did so,
+before I could get hold of my ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed
+through the gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of the
+cart, tearing it to pieces, and coming within a few inches of crushing
+me against the gate-post. Thus twice, in one short day, I escaped death
+by the merest chance. On my return, I told Mr. Covey what had happened,
+and how it happened. He ordered me to return to the woods again
+immediately. I did so, and he followed on after me. Just as I got into
+the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart, and that he would
+teach me how to trifle away my time, and break gates. He then went to
+a large gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches, and, after
+trimming them up neatly with his pocketknife, he ordered me to take
+off my clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He
+repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip
+myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore
+off my clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his switches, cutting
+me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for a long time after.
+This whipping was the first of a number just like it, and for similar
+offences.
+
+I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months, of that
+year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free
+from a sore back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for
+whipping me. We were worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long
+before day we were up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day
+we were off to the field with our hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey
+gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to eat it. We were often less
+than five minutes taking our meals. We were often in the field from the
+first approach of day till its last lingering ray had left us; and
+at saving-fodder time, midnight often caught us in the field binding
+blades.
+
+Covey would be out with us. The way he used to stand it, was this. He
+would spend the most of his afternoons in bed. He would then come out
+fresh in the evening, ready to urge us on with his words, example, and
+frequently with the whip. Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who
+could and did work with his hands. He was a hard-working man. He knew by
+himself just what a man or a boy could do. There was no deceiving him.
+His work went on in his absence almost as well as in his presence; and
+he had the faculty of making us feel that he was ever present with us.
+This he did by surprising us. He seldom approached the spot where we
+were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed at
+taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him,
+among ourselves, "the snake." When we were at work in the cornfield, he
+would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and
+all at once he would rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, "Ha, ha!
+Come, come! Dash on, dash on!" This being his mode of attack, it was
+never safe to stop a single minute. His comings were like a thief in the
+night. He appeared to us as being ever at hand. He was under every
+tree, behind every stump, in every bush, and at every window, on the
+plantation. He would sometimes mount his horse, as if bound to St.
+Michael's, a distance of seven miles, and in half an hour afterwards you
+would see him coiled up in the corner of the wood-fence, watching every
+motion of the slaves. He would, for this purpose, leave his horse tied
+up in the woods. Again, he would sometimes walk up to us, and give us
+orders as though he was upon the point of starting on a long journey,
+turn his back upon us, and make as though he was going to the house
+to get ready; and, before he would get half way thither, he would turn
+short and crawl into a fence-corner, or behind some tree, and there
+watch us till the going down of the sun.
+
+Mr. Covey's _forte_ consisted in his power to deceive. His life was
+devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions. Every
+thing he possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made conform
+to his disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal to
+deceiving the Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning, and
+a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would
+at times appear more devotional than he. The exercises of his family
+devotions were always commenced with singing; and, as he was a very poor
+singer himself, the duty of raising the hymn generally came upon me. He
+would read his hymn, and nod at me to commence. I would at times do so;
+at others, I would not. My non-compliance would almost always produce
+much confusion. To show himself independent of me, he would start and
+stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner. In this
+state of mind, he prayed with more than ordinary spirit. Poor man! such
+was his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily believe that
+he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that he was a
+sincere worshipper of the most high God; and this, too, at a time when
+he may be said to have been guilty of compelling his woman slave to
+commit the sin of adultery. The facts in the case are these: Mr. Covey
+was a poor man; he was just commencing in life; he was only able to buy
+one slave; and, shocking as is the fact, he bought her, as he said, for
+_a breeder_. This woman was named Caroline. Mr. Covey bought her from
+Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St. Michael's. She was a large,
+able-bodied woman, about twenty years old. She had already given birth
+to one child, which proved her to be just what he wanted. After buying
+her, he hired a married man of Mr. Samuel Harrison, to live with him one
+year; and him he used to fasten up with her every night! The result was,
+that, at the end of the year, the miserable woman gave birth to twins.
+At this result Mr. Covey seemed to be highly pleased, both with the man
+and the wretched woman. Such was his joy, and that of his wife, that
+nothing they could do for Caroline during her confinement was too good,
+or too hard, to be done. The children were regarded as being quite an
+addition to his wealth.
+
+If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the
+bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of
+my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too
+hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for
+us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order
+of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him,
+and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable
+when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me.
+Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and
+spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the
+disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my
+eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man
+transformed into a brute!
+
+Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
+stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I
+would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
+accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and
+then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
+I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was
+prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this
+plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality.
+
+Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad
+bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
+globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to
+the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and
+torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the
+deep stillness of a summer's Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty
+banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
+eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The
+sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel
+utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour
+out my soul's complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the
+moving multitude of ships:--
+
+"You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my
+chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and
+I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels,
+that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I
+were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your
+protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go
+on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O,
+why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone;
+she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending
+slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any
+God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught,
+or get clear, I'll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever.
+I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die
+standing. Only think of it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am
+free! Try it? Yes! God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall
+live and die a slave. I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet
+bear me into freedom. The steamboats steered in a north-east course from
+North Point. I will do the same; and when I get to the head of the bay,
+I will turn my canoe adrift, and walk straight through Delaware into
+Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not be required to have a pass;
+I can travel without being disturbed. Let but the first opportunity
+offer, and, come what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I will try to bear up
+under the yoke. I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret?
+I can bear as much as any of them. Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys
+are bound to some one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only
+increase my happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming."
+
+Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak to myself; goaded almost
+to madness at one moment, and at the next reconciling myself to my
+wretched lot.
+
+I have already intimated that my condition was much worse, during the
+first six months of my stay at Mr. Covey's, than in the last six. The
+circumstances leading to the change in Mr. Covey's course toward me form
+an epoch in my humble history. You have seen how a man was made a slave;
+you shall see how a slave was made a man. On one of the hottest days
+of the month of August, 1833, Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave named
+Eli, and myself, were engaged in fanning wheat. Hughes was clearing the
+fanned wheat from before the fan. Eli was turning, Smith was feeding,
+and I was carrying wheat to the fan. The work was simple, requiring
+strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely unused to such
+work, it came very hard. About three o'clock of that day, I broke down;
+my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head,
+attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb. Finding what
+was coming, I nerved myself up, feeling it would never do to stop work.
+I stood as long as I could stagger to the hopper with grain. When I
+could stand no longer, I fell, and felt as if held down by an immense
+weight. The fan of course stopped; every one had his own work to do;
+and no one could do the work of the other, and have his own go on at the
+same time.
+
+Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred yards from the
+treading-yard where we were fanning. On hearing the fan stop, he left
+immediately, and came to the spot where we were. He hastily inquired
+what the matter was. Bill answered that I was sick, and there was no
+one to bring wheat to the fan. I had by this time crawled away under the
+side of the post and rail-fence by which the yard was enclosed, hoping
+to find relief by getting out of the sun. He then asked where I was. He
+was told by one of the hands. He came to the spot, and, after looking at
+me awhile, asked me what was the matter. I told him as well as I could,
+for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in
+the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the
+attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again
+tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but, stooping to get the tub
+with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell. While down
+in this situation, Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat with which Hughes
+had been striking off the half-bushel measure, and with it gave me
+a heavy blow upon the head, making a large wound, and the blood ran
+freely; and with this again told me to get up. I made no effort to
+comply, having now made up my mind to let him do his worst. In a short
+time after receiving this blow, my head grew better. Mr. Covey had now
+left me to my fate. At this moment I resolved, for the first time, to go
+to my master, enter a complaint, and ask his protection. In order to
+do this, I must that afternoon walk seven miles; and this, under the
+circumstances, was truly a severe undertaking. I was exceedingly feeble;
+made so as much by the kicks and blows which I received, as by the
+severe fit of sickness to which I had been subjected. I, however,
+watched my chance, while Covey was looking in an opposite direction,
+and started for St. Michael's. I succeeded in getting a considerable
+distance on my way to the woods, when Covey discovered me, and called
+after me to come back, threatening what he would do if I did not come. I
+disregarded both his calls and his threats, and made my way to the
+woods as fast as my feeble state would allow; and thinking I might
+be overhauled by him if I kept the road, I walked through the woods,
+keeping far enough from the road to avoid detection, and near enough
+to prevent losing my way. I had not gone far before my little strength
+again failed me. I could go no farther. I fell down, and lay for a
+considerable time. The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head.
+For a time I thought I should bleed to death; and think now that I
+should have done so, but that the blood so matted my hair as to stop
+the wound. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, I nerved
+myself up again, and started on my way, through bogs and briers,
+barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet sometimes at nearly every
+step; and after a journey of about seven miles, occupying some five
+hours to perform it, I arrived at master's store. I then presented an
+appearance enough to affect any but a heart of iron. From the crown of
+my head to my feet, I was covered with blood. My hair was all clotted
+with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff with blood. I suppose I looked
+like a man who had escaped a den of wild beasts, and barely escaped
+them. In this state I appeared before my master, humbly entreating
+him to interpose his authority for my protection. I told him all the
+circumstances as well as I could, and it seemed, as I spoke, at times to
+affect him. He would then walk the floor, and seek to justify Covey by
+saying he expected I deserved it. He asked me what I wanted. I told him,
+to let me get a new home; that as sure as I lived with Mr. Covey again,
+I should live with but to die with him; that Covey would surely kill me;
+he was in a fair way for it. Master Thomas ridiculed the idea that there
+was any danger of Mr. Covey's killing me, and said that he knew Mr.
+Covey; that he was a good man, and that he could not think of taking me
+from him; that, should he do so, he would lose the whole year's wages;
+that I belonged to Mr. Covey for one year, and that I must go back to
+him, come what might; and that I must not trouble him with any more
+stories, or that he would himself _get hold of me_. After threatening
+me thus, he gave me a very large dose of salts, telling me that I might
+remain in St. Michael's that night, (it being quite late,) but that I
+must be off back to Mr. Covey's early in the morning; and that if I did
+not, he would _get hold of me,_ which meant that he would whip me.
+I remained all night, and, according to his orders, I started off to
+Covey's in the morning, (Saturday morning,) wearied in body and broken
+in spirit. I got no supper that night, or breakfast that morning. I
+reached Covey's about nine o'clock; and just as I was getting over the
+fence that divided Mrs. Kemp's fields from ours, out ran Covey with
+his cowskin, to give me another whipping. Before he could reach me, I
+succeeded in getting to the cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it
+afforded me the means of hiding. He seemed very angry, and searched for
+me a long time. My behavior was altogether unaccountable. He finally
+gave up the chase, thinking, I suppose, that I must come home for
+something to eat; he would give himself no further trouble in looking
+for me. I spent that day mostly in the woods, having the alternative
+before me,--to go home and be whipped to death, or stay in the woods and
+be starved to death. That night, I fell in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave
+with whom I was somewhat acquainted. Sandy had a free wife who lived
+about four miles from Mr. Covey's; and it being Saturday, he was on his
+way to see her. I told him my circumstances, and he very kindly invited
+me to go home with him. I went home with him, and talked this whole
+matter over, and got his advice as to what course it was best for me to
+pursue. I found Sandy an old adviser. He told me, with great solemnity,
+I must go back to Covey; but that before I went, I must go with him into
+another part of the woods, where there was a certain _root,_ which, if
+I would take some of it with me, carrying it _always on my right side,_
+would render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to
+whip me. He said he had carried it for years; and since he had done so,
+he had never received a blow, and never expected to while he carried it.
+I at first rejected the idea, that the simple carrying of a root in my
+pocket would have any such effect as he had said, and was not disposed
+to take it; but Sandy impressed the necessity with much earnestness,
+telling me it could do no harm, if it did no good. To please him, I at
+length took the root, and, according to his direction, carried it upon
+my right side. This was Sunday morning. I immediately started for
+home; and upon entering the yard gate, out came Mr. Covey on his way to
+meeting. He spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs from a lot
+near by, and passed on towards the church. Now, this singular conduct of
+Mr. Covey really made me begin to think that there was something in the
+_root_ which Sandy had given me; and had it been on any other day than
+Sunday, I could have attributed the conduct to no other cause than the
+influence of that root; and as it was, I was half inclined to think the
+_root_ to be something more than I at first had taken it to be. All went
+well till Monday morning. On this morning, the virtue of the _root_ was
+fully tested. Long before daylight, I was called to go and rub, curry,
+and feed, the horses. I obeyed, and was glad to obey. But whilst thus
+engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some blades from the loft,
+Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope; and just as I was half
+out of the loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying me. As
+soon as I found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring, and as I did
+so, he holding to my legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor.
+Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased;
+but at this moment--from whence came the spirit I don't know--I resolved
+to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard
+by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him.
+My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey seemed taken all
+aback. He trembled like a leaf. This gave me assurance, and I held him
+uneasy, causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of my
+fingers. Mr. Covey soon called out to Hughes for help. Hughes came, and,
+while Covey held me, attempted to tie my right hand. While he was in the
+act of doing so, I watched my chance, and gave him a heavy kick close
+under the ribs. This kick fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left me in
+the hands of Mr. Covey. This kick had the effect of not only weakening
+Hughes, but Covey also. When he saw Hughes bending over with pain, his
+courage quailed. He asked me if I meant to persist in my resistance. I
+told him I did, come what might; that he had used me like a brute for
+six months, and that I was determined to be used so no longer. With
+that, he strove to drag me to a stick that was lying just out of the
+stable door. He meant to knock me down. But just as he was leaning
+over to get the stick, I seized him with both hands by his collar, and
+brought him by a sudden snatch to the ground. By this time, Bill came.
+Covey called upon him for assistance. Bill wanted to know what he could
+do. Covey said, "Take hold of him, take hold of him!" Bill said his
+master hired him out to work, and not to help to whip me; so he left
+Covey and myself to fight our own battle out. We were at it for nearly
+two hours. Covey at length let me go, puffing and blowing at a great
+rate, saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped
+me half so much. The truth was, that he had not whipped me at all. I
+considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for
+he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him. The whole six months
+afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his
+finger upon me in anger. He would occasionally say, he didn't want to
+get hold of me again. "No," thought I, "you need not; for you will come
+off worse than you did before."
+
+This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a
+slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived
+within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed
+self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.
+The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for
+whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand
+the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by
+force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was
+a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of
+freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance
+took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain
+a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in
+fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man
+who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.
+
+From this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped,
+though I remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights,
+but was never whipped.
+
+It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me why Mr. Covey did not
+immediately have me taken by the constable to the whipping-post, and
+there regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a white
+man in defence of myself. And the only explanation I can now think of
+does not entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give it. Mr.
+Covey enjoyed the most unbounded reputation for being a first-rate
+overseer and negro-breaker. It was of considerable importance to him.
+That reputation was at stake; and had he sent me--a boy about sixteen
+years old--to the public whipping-post, his reputation would have been
+lost; so, to save his reputation, he suffered me to go unpunished.
+
+My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day,
+1833. The days between Christmas and New Year's day are allowed as
+holidays; and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor,
+more than to feed and take care of the stock. This time we regarded as
+our own, by the grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused it
+nearly as we pleased. Those of us who had families at a distance, were
+generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society. This
+time, however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober, thinking
+and industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in making
+corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another class of us
+would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But by far
+the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball,
+wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky;
+and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable
+to the feelings of our masters. A slave who would work during the
+holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them. He
+was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his master. It was deemed
+a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as lazy
+indeed, who had not provided himself with the necessary means, during
+the year, to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas.
+
+From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I
+believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of
+the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the
+slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest
+doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves.
+These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the
+rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would
+be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder,
+the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those
+conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in
+their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake.
+
+The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and
+inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by
+the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the
+result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the
+down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because they
+would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because
+they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will be seen
+by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those
+days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of
+their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with
+freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For
+instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his
+own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan
+is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky
+without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole
+multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous
+freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him
+with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of
+liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just
+what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was
+little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly
+too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the
+holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a
+long breath, and marched to the field,--feeling, upon the whole, rather
+glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was
+freedom, back to the arms of slavery.
+
+I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system
+of fraud and inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to
+disgust the slave with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse
+of it, is carried out in other things. For instance, a slave loves
+molasses; he steals some. His master, in many cases, goes off to town,
+and buys a large quantity; he returns, takes his whip, and commands the
+slave to eat the molasses, until the poor fellow is made sick at the
+very mention of it. The same mode is sometimes adopted to make the
+slaves refrain from asking for more food than their regular allowance.
+A slave runs through his allowance, and applies for more. His master is
+enraged at him; but, not willing to send him off without food, gives him
+more than is necessary, and compels him to eat it within a given time.
+Then, if he complains that he cannot eat it, he is said to be satisfied
+neither full nor fasting, and is whipped for being hard to please! I
+have an abundance of such illustrations of the same principle, drawn
+from my own observation, but think the cases I have cited sufficient.
+The practice is a very common one.
+
+On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. Covey, and went to live with
+Mr. William Freeland, who lived about three miles from St. Michael's. I
+soon found Mr. Freeland a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not
+rich, he was what would be called an educated southern gentleman.
+Mr. Covey, as I have shown, was a well-trained negro-breaker and
+slave-driver. The former (slaveholder though he was) seemed to possess
+some regard for honor, some reverence for justice, and some respect for
+humanity. The latter seemed totally insensible to all such sentiments.
+Mr. Freeland had many of the faults peculiar to slaveholders, such as
+being very passionate and fretful; but I must do him the justice to say,
+that he was exceedingly free from those degrading vices to which Mr.
+Covey was constantly addicted. The one was open and frank, and we always
+knew where to find him. The other was a most artful deceiver, and
+could be understood only by such as were skilful enough to detect his
+cunningly-devised frauds. Another advantage I gained in my new master
+was, he made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion; and this, in
+my opinion, was truly a great advantage. I assert most unhesitatingly,
+that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid
+crimes,--a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,--a sanctifier of
+the most hateful frauds,--and a dark shelter under, which the darkest,
+foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the
+strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of
+slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a
+religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all
+slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the
+worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and
+cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a
+religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists.
+Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the same
+neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were members and
+ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among
+others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman's
+back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this
+merciless, _religious_ wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim was,
+Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to
+whip a slave, to remind him of his master's authority. Such was his
+theory, and such his practice.
+
+Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his
+ability to manage slaves. The peculiar feature of his government was
+that of whipping slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed to
+have one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did this
+to alarm their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped. His
+plan was to whip for the smallest offences, to prevent the commission
+of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for whipping
+a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to
+see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to
+make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,--a mistake,
+accident, or want of power,--are all matters for which a slave may be
+whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has
+the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when
+spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be
+taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at
+the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and
+should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct,
+when censured for it? Then he is guilty of impudence,--one of the
+greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty. Does he ever venture to
+suggest a different mode of doing things from that pointed out by
+his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting above himself; and
+nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does he, while ploughing,
+break a plough,--or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his
+carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped. Mr. Hopkins
+could always find something of this sort to justify the use of the lash,
+and he seldom failed to embrace such opportunities. There was not a man
+in the whole county, with whom the slaves who had the getting their own
+home, would not prefer to live, rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins.
+And yet there was not a man any where round, who made higher professions
+of religion, or was more active in revivals,--more attentive to the
+class, love-feast, prayer and preaching meetings, or more devotional in
+his family,--that prayed earlier, later, louder, and longer,--than this
+same reverend slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins.
+
+But to return to Mr. Freeland, and to my experience while in his
+employment. He, like Mr. Covey, gave us enough to eat; but, unlike Mr.
+Covey, he also gave us sufficient time to take our meals. He worked us
+hard, but always between sunrise and sunset. He required a good deal of
+work to be done, but gave us good tools with which to work. His farm was
+large, but he employed hands enough to work it, and with ease, compared
+with many of his neighbors. My treatment, while in his employment, was
+heavenly, compared with what I experienced at the hands of Mr. Edward
+Covey.
+
+Mr. Freeland was himself the owner of but two slaves. Their names were
+Henry Harris and John Harris. The rest of his hands he hired. These
+consisted of myself, Sandy Jenkins,* and Handy Caldwell.
+
+
+     *This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my
+     being whipped by Mr. Covey. He was "a clever soul." We used
+     frequently to talk about the fight with Covey, and as often
+     as we did so, he would claim my success as the result of the
+     roots which he gave me. This superstition is very common
+     among the more ignorant slaves. A slave seldom dies but that
+     his death is attributed to trickery.
+
+Henry and John were quite intelligent, and in a very little while after
+I went there, I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn
+how to read. This desire soon sprang up in the others also. They very
+soon mustered up some old spelling-books, and nothing would do but that
+I must keep a Sabbath school. I agreed to do so, and accordingly devoted
+my Sundays to teaching these my loved fellow-slaves how to read. Neither
+of them knew his letters when I went there. Some of the slaves of the
+neighboring farms found what was going on, and also availed themselves
+of this little opportunity to learn to read. It was understood, among
+all who came, that there must be as little display about it as possible.
+It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael's
+unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the Sabbath in
+wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to
+read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those
+degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and
+accountable beings. My blood boils as I think of the bloody manner in
+which Messrs. Wright Fairbanks and Garrison West, both class-leaders, in
+connection with many others, rushed in upon us with sticks and stones,
+and broke up our virtuous little Sabbath school, at St. Michael's--all
+calling themselves Christians! humble followers of the Lord Jesus
+Christ! But I am again digressing.
+
+I held my Sabbath school at the house of a free colored man, whose
+name I deem it imprudent to mention; for should it be known, it might
+embarrass him greatly, though the crime of holding the school was
+committed ten years ago. I had at one time over forty scholars, and
+those of the right sort, ardently desiring to learn. They were of all
+ages, though mostly men and women. I look back to those Sundays with an
+amount of pleasure not to be expressed. They were great days to my
+soul. The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest
+engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to
+leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When
+I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house
+of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask,
+"Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he hold the
+thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver
+the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?" These dear souls came not
+to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them
+because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent
+in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-nine
+lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had
+been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental
+darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be
+doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my race. I
+kept up my school nearly the whole year I lived with Mr. Freeland; and,
+beside my Sabbath school, I devoted three evenings in the week, during
+the winter, to teaching the slaves at home. And I have the happiness to
+know, that several of those who came to Sabbath school learned how to
+read; and that one, at least, is now free through my agency.
+
+The year passed off smoothly. It seemed only about half as long as the
+year which preceded it. I went through it without receiving a single
+blow. I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master
+I ever had, _till I became my own master._ For the ease with which I
+passed the year, I was, however, somewhat indebted to the society of
+my fellow-slaves. They were noble souls; they not only possessed loving
+hearts, but brave ones. We were linked and interlinked with each other.
+I loved them with a love stronger than any thing I have experienced
+since. It is sometimes said that we slaves do not love and confide in
+each other. In answer to this assertion, I can say, I never loved any or
+confided in any people more than my fellow-slaves, and especially those
+with whom I lived at Mr. Freeland's. I believe we would have died for
+each other. We never undertook to do any thing, of any importance,
+without a mutual consultation. We never moved separately. We were
+one; and as much so by our tempers and dispositions, as by the mutual
+hardships to which we were necessarily subjected by our condition as
+slaves.
+
+At the close of the year 1834, Mr. Freeland again hired me of my master,
+for the year 1835. But, by this time, I began to want to live _upon
+free land_ as well as _with Freeland;_ and I was no longer content,
+therefore, to live with him or any other slaveholder. I began, with the
+commencement of the year, to prepare myself for a final struggle, which
+should decide my fate one way or the other. My tendency was upward. I
+was fast approaching manhood, and year after year had passed, and I was
+still a slave. These thoughts roused me--I must do something. I therefore
+resolved that 1835 should not pass without witnessing an attempt, on
+my part, to secure my liberty. But I was not willing to cherish this
+determination alone. My fellow-slaves were dear to me. I was anxious to
+have them participate with me in this, my life-giving determination.
+I therefore, though with great prudence, commenced early to ascertain
+their views and feelings in regard to their condition, and to imbue
+their minds with thoughts of freedom. I bent myself to devising ways and
+means for our escape, and meanwhile strove, on all fitting occasions,
+to impress them with the gross fraud and inhumanity of slavery. I went
+first to Henry, next to John, then to the others. I found, in them all,
+warm hearts and noble spirits. They were ready to hear, and ready to
+act when a feasible plan should be proposed. This was what I wanted.
+I talked to them of our want of manhood, if we submitted to our
+enslavement without at least one noble effort to be free. We met often,
+and consulted frequently, and told our hopes and fears, recounted the
+difficulties, real and imagined, which we should be called on to
+meet. At times we were almost disposed to give up, and try to content
+ourselves with our wretched lot; at others, we were firm and unbending
+in our determination to go. Whenever we suggested any plan, there was
+shrinking--the odds were fearful. Our path was beset with the greatest
+obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end of it, our right to be
+free was yet questionable--we were yet liable to be returned to bondage.
+We could see no spot, this side of the ocean, where we could be free.
+We knew nothing about Canada. Our knowledge of the north did not extend
+farther than New York; and to go there, and be forever harassed with the
+frightful liability of being returned to slavery--with the certainty of
+being treated tenfold worse than before--the thought was truly a horrible
+one, and one which it was not easy to overcome. The case sometimes stood
+thus: At every gate through which we were to pass, we saw a watchman--at
+every ferry a guard--on every bridge a sentinel--and in every wood a
+patrol. We were hemmed in upon every side. Here were the difficulties,
+real or imagined--the good to be sought, and the evil to be shunned. On
+the one hand, there stood slavery, a stern reality, glaring frightfully
+upon us,--its robes already crimsoned with the blood of millions, and
+even now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh. On the other hand,
+away back in the dim distance, under the flickering light of the north
+star, behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a doubtful
+freedom--half frozen--beckoning us to come and share its hospitality.
+This in itself was sometimes enough to stagger us; but when we permitted
+ourselves to survey the road, we were frequently appalled. Upon either
+side we saw grim death, assuming the most horrid shapes. Now it was
+starvation, causing us to eat our own flesh;--now we were contending with
+the waves, and were drowned;--now we were overtaken, and torn to pieces
+by the fangs of the terrible bloodhound. We were stung by scorpions,
+chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes, and finally, after having
+nearly reached the desired spot,--after swimming rivers, encountering
+wild beasts, sleeping in the woods, suffering hunger and nakedness,--we
+were overtaken by our pursuers, and, in our resistance, we were shot
+dead upon the spot! I say, this picture sometimes appalled us, and made
+us
+
+
+     "rather bear those ills we had,
+     Than fly to others, that we knew not of."
+
+In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick
+Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful
+liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I
+should prefer death to hopeless bondage.
+
+Sandy, one of our number, gave up the notion, but still encouraged us.
+Our company then consisted of Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey,
+Charles Roberts, and myself. Henry Bailey was my uncle, and belonged
+to my master. Charles married my aunt: he belonged to my master's
+father-in-law, Mr. William Hamilton.
+
+The plan we finally concluded upon was, to get a large canoe belonging
+to Mr. Hamilton, and upon the Saturday night previous to Easter
+holidays, paddle directly up the Chesapeake Bay. On our arrival at the
+head of the bay, a distance of seventy or eighty miles from where we
+lived, it was our purpose to turn our canoe adrift, and follow the
+guidance of the north star till we got beyond the limits of Maryland.
+Our reason for taking the water route was, that we were less liable to
+be suspected as runaways; we hoped to be regarded as fishermen;
+whereas, if we should take the land route, we should be subjected to
+interruptions of almost every kind. Any one having a white face, and
+being so disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination.
+
+The week before our intended start, I wrote several protections, one for
+each of us. As well as I can remember, they were in the following words,
+to wit:--
+
+
+     "This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my
+     servant, full liberty to go to Baltimore, and spend the Easter holidays.
+     Written with mine own hand, &amp;c., 1835.
+
+     "WILLIAM HAMILTON,
+
+
+"Near St. Michael's, in Talbot county, Maryland."
+
+We were not going to Baltimore; but, in going up the bay, we went toward
+Baltimore, and these protections were only intended to protect us while
+on the bay.
+
+As the time drew near for our departure, our anxiety became more and
+more intense. It was truly a matter of life and death with us. The
+strength of our determination was about to be fully tested. At this
+time, I was very active in explaining every difficulty, removing every
+doubt, dispelling every fear, and inspiring all with the firmness
+indispensable to success in our undertaking; assuring them that half was
+gained the instant we made the move; we had talked long enough; we were
+now ready to move; if not now, we never should be; and if we did
+not intend to move now, we had as well fold our arms, sit down, and
+acknowledge ourselves fit only to be slaves. This, none of us were
+prepared to acknowledge. Every man stood firm; and at our last meeting,
+we pledged ourselves afresh, in the most solemn manner, that, at the
+time appointed, we would certainly start in pursuit of freedom. This
+was in the middle of the week, at the end of which we were to be off. We
+went, as usual, to our several fields of labor, but with bosoms highly
+agitated with thoughts of our truly hazardous undertaking. We tried to
+conceal our feelings as much as possible; and I think we succeeded very
+well.
+
+After a painful waiting, the Saturday morning, whose night was to
+witness our departure, came. I hailed it with joy, bring what of sadness
+it might. Friday night was a sleepless one for me. I probably felt more
+anxious than the rest, because I was, by common consent, at the head of
+the whole affair. The responsibility of success or failure lay heavily
+upon me. The glory of the one, and the confusion of the other, were
+alike mine. The first two hours of that morning were such as I never
+experienced before, and hope never to again. Early in the morning, we
+went, as usual, to the field. We were spreading manure; and all at once,
+while thus engaged, I was overwhelmed with an indescribable feeling, in
+the fulness of which I turned to Sandy, who was near by, and said, "We
+are betrayed!" "Well," said he, "that thought has this moment struck
+me." We said no more. I was never more certain of any thing.
+
+The horn was blown as usual, and we went up from the field to the house
+for breakfast. I went for the form, more than for want of any thing to
+eat that morning. Just as I got to the house, in looking out at the lane
+gate, I saw four white men, with two colored men. The white men were
+on horseback, and the colored ones were walking behind, as if tied. I
+watched them a few moments till they got up to our lane gate. Here they
+halted, and tied the colored men to the gate-post. I was not yet certain
+as to what the matter was. In a few moments, in rode Mr. Hamilton, with
+a speed betokening great excitement. He came to the door, and inquired
+if Master William was in. He was told he was at the barn. Mr. Hamilton,
+without dismounting, rode up to the barn with extraordinary speed. In
+a few moments, he and Mr. Freeland returned to the house. By this time,
+the three constables rode up, and in great haste dismounted, tied their
+horses, and met Master William and Mr. Hamilton returning from the barn;
+and after talking awhile, they all walked up to the kitchen door. There
+was no one in the kitchen but myself and John. Henry and Sandy were up
+at the barn. Mr. Freeland put his head in at the door, and called me by
+name, saying, there were some gentlemen at the door who wished to see
+me. I stepped to the door, and inquired what they wanted. They at once
+seized me, and, without giving me any satisfaction, tied me--lashing my
+hands closely together. I insisted upon knowing what the matter was.
+They at length said, that they had learned I had been in a "scrape,"
+and that I was to be examined before my master; and if their information
+proved false, I should not be hurt.
+
+In a few moments, they succeeded in tying John. They then turned to
+Henry, who had by this time returned, and commanded him to cross his
+hands. "I won't!" said Henry, in a firm tone, indicating his readiness
+to meet the consequences of his refusal. "Won't you?" said Tom Graham,
+the constable. "No, I won't!" said Henry, in a still stronger tone. With
+this, two of the constables pulled out their shining pistols, and swore,
+by their Creator, that they would make him cross his hands or kill him.
+Each cocked his pistol, and, with fingers on the trigger, walked up to
+Henry, saying, at the same time, if he did not cross his hands, they
+would blow his damned heart out. "Shoot me, shoot me!" said Henry; "you
+can't kill me but once. Shoot, shoot,--and be damned! _I won't be tied!_"
+This he said in a tone of loud defiance; and at the same time, with
+a motion as quick as lightning, he with one single stroke dashed the
+pistols from the hand of each constable. As he did this, all hands fell
+upon him, and, after beating him some time, they finally overpowered
+him, and got him tied.
+
+During the scuffle, I managed, I know not how, to get my pass out, and,
+without being discovered, put it into the fire. We were all now tied;
+and just as we were to leave for Easton jail, Betsy Freeland, mother of
+William Freeland, came to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and
+divided them between Henry and John. She then delivered herself of a
+speech, to the following effect:--addressing herself to me, she said,
+"_You devil! You yellow devil!_ it was you that put it into the heads of
+Henry and John to run away. But for you, you long-legged mulatto devil!
+Henry nor John would never have thought of such a thing." I made no
+reply, and was immediately hurried off towards St. Michael's. Just a
+moment previous to the scuffle with Henry, Mr. Hamilton suggested the
+propriety of making a search for the protections which he had understood
+Frederick had written for himself and the rest. But, just at the moment
+he was about carrying his proposal into effect, his aid was needed in
+helping to tie Henry; and the excitement attending the scuffle caused
+them either to forget, or to deem it unsafe, under the circumstances, to
+search. So we were not yet convicted of the intention to run away.
+
+When we got about half way to St. Michael's, while the constables having
+us in charge were looking ahead, Henry inquired of me what he should do
+with his pass. I told him to eat it with his biscuit, and own nothing;
+and we passed the word around, "_Own nothing;_" and "_Own nothing!_"
+said we all. Our confidence in each other was unshaken. We were resolved
+to succeed or fail together, after the calamity had befallen us as much
+as before. We were now prepared for any thing. We were to be dragged
+that morning fifteen miles behind horses, and then to be placed in
+the Easton jail. When we reached St. Michael's, we underwent a sort of
+examination. We all denied that we ever intended to run away. We did
+this more to bring out the evidence against us, than from any hope of
+getting clear of being sold; for, as I have said, we were ready for
+that. The fact was, we cared but little where we went, so we went
+together. Our greatest concern was about separation. We dreaded that
+more than any thing this side of death. We found the evidence against us
+to be the testimony of one person; our master would not tell who it
+was; but we came to a unanimous decision among ourselves as to who
+their informant was. We were sent off to the jail at Easton. When we got
+there, we were delivered up to the sheriff, Mr. Joseph Graham, and by
+him placed in jail. Henry, John, and myself, were placed in one
+room together--Charles, and Henry Bailey, in another. Their object in
+separating us was to hinder concert.
+
+We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave
+traders, and agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us,
+and to ascertain if we were for sale. Such a set of beings I never saw
+before! I felt myself surrounded by so many fiends from perdition. A
+band of pirates never looked more like their father, the devil. They
+laughed and grinned over us, saying, "Ah, my boys! we have got you,
+haven't we?" And after taunting us in various ways, they one by one
+went into an examination of us, with intent to ascertain our value.
+They would impudently ask us if we would not like to have them for our
+masters. We would make them no answer, and leave them to find out as
+best they could. Then they would curse and swear at us, telling us that
+they could take the devil out of us in a very little while, if we were
+only in their hands.
+
+While in jail, we found ourselves in much more comfortable quarters than
+we expected when we went there. We did not get much to eat, nor that
+which was very good; but we had a good clean room, from the windows of
+which we could see what was going on in the street, which was very much
+better than though we had been placed in one of the dark, damp cells.
+Upon the whole, we got along very well, so far as the jail and its
+keeper were concerned. Immediately after the holidays were over,
+contrary to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Freeland came up
+to Easton, and took Charles, the two Henrys, and John, out of jail, and
+carried them home, leaving me alone. I regarded this separation as
+a final one. It caused me more pain than any thing else in the whole
+transaction. I was ready for any thing rather than separation. I
+supposed that they had consulted together, and had decided that, as I
+was the whole cause of the intention of the others to run away, it was
+hard to make the innocent suffer with the guilty; and that they had,
+therefore, concluded to take the others home, and sell me, as a warning
+to the others that remained. It is due to the noble Henry to say, he
+seemed almost as reluctant at leaving the prison as at leaving home
+to come to the prison. But we knew we should, in all probability,
+be separated, if we were sold; and since he was in their hands, he
+concluded to go peaceably home.
+
+I was now left to my fate. I was all alone, and within the walls of a
+stone prison. But a few days before, and I was full of hope. I expected
+to have been safe in a land of freedom; but now I was covered with
+gloom, sunk down to the utmost despair. I thought the possibility of
+freedom was gone. I was kept in this way about one week, at the end of
+which, Captain Auld, my master, to my surprise and utter astonishment,
+came up, and took me out, with the intention of sending me, with a
+gentleman of his acquaintance, into Alabama. But, from some cause or
+other, he did not send me to Alabama, but concluded to send me back to
+Baltimore, to live again with his brother Hugh, and to learn a trade.
+
+Thus, after an absence of three years and one month, I was once more
+permitted to return to my old home at Baltimore. My master sent me
+away, because there existed against me a very great prejudice in the
+community, and he feared I might be killed.
+
+In a few weeks after I went to Baltimore, Master Hugh hired me to Mr.
+William Gardner, an extensive ship-builder, on Fell's Point. I was put
+there to learn how to calk. It, however, proved a very unfavorable place
+for the accomplishment of this object. Mr. Gardner was engaged that
+spring in building two large man-of-war brigs, professedly for the
+Mexican government. The vessels were to be launched in the July of that
+year, and in failure thereof, Mr. Gardner was to lose a considerable
+sum; so that when I entered, all was hurry. There was no time to learn
+any thing. Every man had to do that which he knew how to do. In entering
+the shipyard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do whatever the
+carpenters commanded me to do. This was placing me at the beck and call
+of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as masters. Their
+word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one. At times I
+needed a dozen pair of hands. I was called a dozen ways in the space of
+a single minute. Three or four voices would strike my ear at the same
+moment. It was--"Fred., come help me to cant this timber here."--"Fred.,
+come carry this timber yonder."--"Fred., bring that roller here."--"Fred.,
+go get a fresh can of water."--"Fred., come help saw off the end of this
+timber."--"Fred., go quick, and get the crowbar."--"Fred., hold on the
+end of this fall."--"Fred., go to the blacksmith's shop, and get a new
+punch."--"Hurra, Fred! run and bring me a cold chisel."--"I say, Fred.,
+bear a hand, and get up a fire as quick as lightning under that
+steam-box."--"Halloo, nigger! come, turn this grindstone."--"Come, come!
+move, move! and _bowse_ this timber forward."--"I say, darky, blast
+your eyes, why don't you heat up some pitch?"--"Halloo! halloo! halloo!"
+(Three voices at the same time.) "Come here!--Go there!--Hold on where you
+are! Damn you, if you move, I'll knock your brains out!"
+
+This was my school for eight months; and I might have remained there
+longer, but for a most horrid fight I had with four of the white
+apprentices, in which my left eye was nearly knocked out, and I was
+horribly mangled in other respects. The facts in the case were
+these: Until a very little while after I went there, white and black
+ship-carpenters worked side by side, and no one seemed to see any
+impropriety in it. All hands seemed to be very well satisfied. Many of
+the black carpenters were freemen. Things seemed to be going on very
+well. All at once, the white carpenters knocked off, and said they would
+not work with free colored workmen. Their reason for this, as alleged,
+was, that if free colored carpenters were encouraged, they would soon
+take the trade into their own hands, and poor white men would be thrown
+out of employment. They therefore felt called upon at once to put a stop
+to it. And, taking advantage of Mr. Gardner's necessities, they broke
+off, swearing they would work no longer, unless he would discharge his
+black carpenters. Now, though this did not extend to me in form, it
+did reach me in fact. My fellow-apprentices very soon began to feel it
+degrading to them to work with me. They began to put on airs, and
+talk about the "niggers" taking the country, saying we all ought to be
+killed; and, being encouraged by the journeymen, they commenced
+making my condition as hard as they could, by hectoring me around, and
+sometimes striking me. I, of course, kept the vow I made after the fight
+with Mr. Covey, and struck back again, regardless of consequences; and
+while I kept them from combining, I succeeded very well; for I could
+whip the whole of them, taking them separately. They, however, at
+length combined, and came upon me, armed with sticks, stones, and heavy
+handspikes. One came in front with a half brick. There was one at each
+side of me, and one behind me. While I was attending to those in front,
+and on either side, the one behind ran up with the handspike, and struck
+me a heavy blow upon the head. It stunned me. I fell, and with this they
+all ran upon me, and fell to beating me with their fists. I let them
+lay on for a while, gathering strength. In an instant, I gave a sudden
+surge, and rose to my hands and knees. Just as I did that, one of their
+number gave me, with his heavy boot, a powerful kick in the left eye.
+My eyeball seemed to have burst. When they saw my eye closed, and badly
+swollen, they left me. With this I seized the handspike, and for a time
+pursued them. But here the carpenters interfered, and I thought I might
+as well give it up. It was impossible to stand my hand against so
+many. All this took place in sight of not less than fifty white
+ship-carpenters, and not one interposed a friendly word; but some cried,
+"Kill the damned nigger! Kill him! kill him! He struck a white person."
+I found my only chance for life was in flight. I succeeded in getting
+away without an additional blow, and barely so; for to strike a white
+man is death by Lynch law,--and that was the law in Mr. Gardner's
+ship-yard; nor is there much of any other out of Mr. Gardner's
+ship-yard.
+
+I went directly home, and told the story of my wrongs to Master Hugh;
+and I am happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct
+was heavenly, compared with that of his brother Thomas under similar
+circumstances. He listened attentively to my narration of the
+circumstances leading to the savage outrage, and gave many proofs of
+his strong indignation at it. The heart of my once overkind mistress was
+again melted into pity. My puffed-out eye and blood-covered face moved
+her to tears. She took a chair by me, washed the blood from my face,
+and, with a mother's tenderness, bound up my head, covering the wounded
+eye with a lean piece of fresh beef. It was almost compensation for my
+suffering to witness, once more, a manifestation of kindness from this,
+my once affectionate old mistress. Master Hugh was very much enraged. He
+gave expression to his feelings by pouring out curses upon the heads
+of those who did the deed. As soon as I got a little the better of my
+bruises, he took me with him to Esquire Watson's, on Bond Street, to
+see what could be done about the matter. Mr. Watson inquired who saw
+the assault committed. Master Hugh told him it was done in Mr. Gardner's
+ship-yard at midday, where there were a large company of men at work.
+"As to that," he said, "the deed was done, and there was no question as
+to who did it." His answer was, he could do nothing in the case, unless
+some white man would come forward and testify. He could issue no warrant
+on my word. If I had been killed in the presence of a thousand colored
+people, their testimony combined would have been insufficient to have
+arrested one of the murderers. Master Hugh, for once, was compelled to
+say this state of things was too bad. Of course, it was impossible to
+get any white man to volunteer his testimony in my behalf, and against
+the white young men. Even those who may have sympathized with me were
+not prepared to do this. It required a degree of courage unknown to them
+to do so; for just at that time, the slightest manifestation of humanity
+toward a colored person was denounced as abolitionism, and that name
+subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities. The watchwords of
+the bloody-minded in that region, and in those days, were, "Damn the
+abolitionists!" and "Damn the niggers!" There was nothing done, and
+probably nothing would have been done if I had been killed. Such
+was, and such remains, the state of things in the Christian city of
+Baltimore.
+
+Master Hugh, finding he could get no redress, refused to let me go back
+again to Mr. Gardner. He kept me himself, and his wife dressed my wound
+till I was again restored to health. He then took me into the ship-yard
+of which he was foreman, in the employment of Mr. Walter Price. There I
+was immediately set to calking, and very soon learned the art of using
+my mallet and irons. In the course of one year from the time I left Mr.
+Gardner's, I was able to command the highest wages given to the most
+experienced calkers. I was now of some importance to my master. I was
+bringing him from six to seven dollars per week. I sometimes brought him
+nine dollars per week: my wages were a dollar and a half a day. After
+learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own contracts,
+and collected the money which I earned. My pathway became much more
+smooth than before; my condition was now much more comfortable. When I
+could get no calking to do, I did nothing. During these leisure times,
+those old notions about freedom would steal over me again. When in
+Mr. Gardner's employment, I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of
+excitement, I could think of nothing, scarcely, but my life; and in
+thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty. I have observed this
+in my experience of slavery,--that whenever my condition was improved,
+instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire
+to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I
+have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a
+thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision,
+and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be
+able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel
+that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases
+to be a man.
+
+I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I
+contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my
+own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver
+every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned
+it,--not because he had any hand in earning it,--not because I owed it to
+him,--nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but
+solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of
+the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally
+succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any of
+the peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my intention
+not to state all the facts connected with the transaction. My reasons
+for pursuing this course may be understood from the following: First,
+were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not only
+possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in
+the most embarrassing difficulties. Secondly, such a statement would
+most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part of slaveholders
+than has existed heretofore among them; which would, of course, be the
+means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother bondman might escape
+his galling chains. I deeply regret the necessity that impels me
+to suppress any thing of importance connected with my experience in
+slavery. It would afford me great pleasure indeed, as well as materially
+add to the interest of my narrative, were I at liberty to gratify a
+curiosity, which I know exists in the minds of many, by an accurate
+statement of all the facts pertaining to my most fortunate escape. But
+I must deprive myself of this pleasure, and the curious of the
+gratification which such a statement would afford. I would allow myself
+to suffer under the greatest imputations which evil-minded men might
+suggest, rather than exculpate myself, and thereby run the hazard
+of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother slave might clear
+himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
+
+I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of
+our western friends have conducted what they call the _underground
+railroad,_ but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made
+most emphatically the _upperground railroad._ I honor those good
+men and women for their noble daring, and applaud them for willingly
+subjecting themselves to bloody persecution, by openly avowing their
+participation in the escape of slaves. I, however, can see very little
+good resulting from such a course, either to themselves or the slaves
+escaping; while, upon the other hand, I see and feel assured that those
+open declarations are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, who
+are seeking to escape. They do nothing towards enlightening the slave,
+whilst they do much towards enlightening the master. They stimulate him
+to greater watchfulness, and enhance his power to capture his slave. We
+owe something to the slave south of the line as well as to those north
+of it; and in aiding the latter on their way to freedom, we should be
+careful to do nothing which would be likely to hinder the former from
+escaping from slavery. I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly
+ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave. I would leave him
+to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors, ever
+ready to snatch from his infernal grasp his trembling prey. Let him be
+left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness commensurate with his
+crime hover over him; and let him feel that at every step he takes,
+in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running the frightful risk of
+having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible agency. Let us render
+the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the
+footprints of our flying brother. But enough of this. I will now proceed
+to the statement of those facts, connected with my escape, for which
+I am alone responsible, and for which no one can be made to suffer but
+myself.
+
+In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite restless. I could see
+no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my
+toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly
+wages, he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a
+robber-like fierceness, and ask, "Is this all?" He was satisfied with
+nothing less than the last cent. He would, however, when I made him
+six dollars, sometimes give me six cents, to encourage me. It had the
+opposite effect. I regarded it as a sort of admission of my right to the
+whole. The fact that he gave me any part of my wages was proof, to my
+mind, that he believed me entitled to the whole of them. I always felt
+worse for having received any thing; for I feared that the giving me a
+few cents would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself to be a
+pretty honorable sort of robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was ever
+on the look-out for means of escape; and, finding no direct means, I
+determined to try to hire my time, with a view of getting money with
+which to make my escape. In the spring of 1838, when Master Thomas came
+to Baltimore to purchase his spring goods, I got an opportunity, and
+applied to him to allow me to hire my time. He unhesitatingly refused my
+request, and told me this was another stratagem by which to escape. He
+told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and that, in the
+event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts to
+catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He told me,
+if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He said, if
+I behaved myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised
+me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to depend
+solely upon him for happiness. He seemed to see fully the pressing
+necessity of setting aside my intellectual nature, in order to
+contentment in slavery. But in spite of him, and even in spite of
+myself, I continued to think, and to think about the injustice of my
+enslavement, and the means of escape.
+
+About two months after this, I applied to Master Hugh for the privilege
+of hiring my time. He was not acquainted with the fact that I had
+applied to Master Thomas, and had been refused. He too, at first,
+seemed disposed to refuse; but, after some reflection, he granted me the
+privilege, and proposed the following terms: I was to be allowed all my
+time, make all contracts with those for whom I worked, and find my own
+employment; and, in return for this liberty, I was to pay him three
+dollars at the end of each week; find myself in calking tools, and in
+board and clothing. My board was two dollars and a half per week. This,
+with the wear and tear of clothing and calking tools, made my regular
+expenses about six dollars per week. This amount I was compelled to make
+up, or relinquish the privilege of hiring my time. Rain or shine, work
+or no work, at the end of each week the money must be forthcoming, or I
+must give up my privilege. This arrangement, it will be perceived, was
+decidedly in my master's favor. It relieved him of all need of
+looking after me. His money was sure. He received all the benefits
+of slaveholding without its evils; while I endured all the evils of a
+slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety of a freeman. I found it a
+hard bargain. But, hard as it was, I thought it better than the old mode
+of getting along. It was a step towards freedom to be allowed to bear
+the responsibilities of a freeman, and I was determined to hold on upon
+it. I bent myself to the work of making money. I was ready to work
+at night as well as day, and by the most untiring perseverance and
+industry, I made enough to meet my expenses, and lay up a little money
+every week. I went on thus from May till August. Master Hugh then
+refused to allow me to hire my time longer. The ground for his refusal
+was a failure on my part, one Saturday night, to pay him for my week's
+time. This failure was occasioned by my attending a camp meeting
+about ten miles from Baltimore. During the week, I had entered into an
+engagement with a number of young friends to start from Baltimore to the
+camp ground early Saturday evening; and being detained by my employer,
+I was unable to get down to Master Hugh's without disappointing the
+company. I knew that Master Hugh was in no special need of the money
+that night. I therefore decided to go to camp meeting, and upon my
+return pay him the three dollars. I staid at the camp meeting one day
+longer than I intended when I left. But as soon as I returned, I called
+upon him to pay him what he considered his due. I found him very angry;
+he could scarce restrain his wrath. He said he had a great mind to give
+me a severe whipping. He wished to know how I dared go out of the city
+without asking his permission. I told him I hired my time and while
+I paid him the price which he asked for it, I did not know that I was
+bound to ask him when and where I should go. This reply troubled him;
+and, after reflecting a few moments, he turned to me, and said I should
+hire my time no longer; that the next thing he should know of, I would
+be running away. Upon the same plea, he told me to bring my tools and
+clothing home forthwith. I did so; but instead of seeking work, as I had
+been accustomed to do previously to hiring my time, I spent the whole
+week without the performance of a single stroke of work. I did this in
+retaliation. Saturday night, he called upon me as usual for my week's
+wages. I told him I had no wages; I had done no work that week. Here
+we were upon the point of coming to blows. He raved, and swore his
+determination to get hold of me. I did not allow myself a single word;
+but was resolved, if he laid the weight of his hand upon me, it should
+be blow for blow. He did not strike me, but told me that he would find
+me in constant employment in future. I thought the matter over during
+the next day, Sunday, and finally resolved upon the third day of
+September, as the day upon which I would make a second attempt to
+secure my freedom. I now had three weeks during which to prepare for my
+journey. Early on Monday morning, before Master Hugh had time to make
+any engagement for me, I went out and got employment of Mr. Butler, at
+his ship-yard near the drawbridge, upon what is called the City Block,
+thus making it unnecessary for him to seek employment for me. At the
+end of the week, I brought him between eight and nine dollars. He seemed
+very well pleased, and asked why I did not do the same the week before.
+He little knew what my plans were. My object in working steadily was to
+remove any suspicion he might entertain of my intent to run away; and
+in this I succeeded admirably. I suppose he thought I was never better
+satisfied with my condition than at the very time during which I was
+planning my escape. The second week passed, and again I carried him
+my full wages; and so well pleased was he, that he gave me twenty-five
+cents, (quite a large sum for a slaveholder to give a slave,) and bade
+me to make a good use of it. I told him I would.
+
+Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was
+trouble. It is impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of
+my contemplated start drew near. I had a number of warmhearted friends
+in Baltimore,--friends that I loved almost as I did my life,--and
+the thought of being separated from them forever was painful beyond
+expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery,
+who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to
+their friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most
+painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my
+tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else. Besides
+the pain of separation, the dread and apprehension of a failure exceeded
+what I had experienced at my first attempt. The appalling defeat I then
+sustained returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if I failed in
+this attempt, my case would be a hopeless one--it would seal my fate as a
+slave forever. I could not hope to get off with any thing less than the
+severest punishment, and being placed beyond the means of escape. It
+required no very vivid imagination to depict the most frightful scenes
+through which I should have to pass, in case I failed. The wretchedness
+of slavery, and the blessedness of freedom, were perpetually before me.
+It was life and death with me. But I remained firm, and, according to my
+resolution, on the third day of September, 1838, I left my chains, and
+succeeded in reaching New York without the slightest interruption of any
+kind. How I did so,--what means I adopted,--what direction I travelled,
+and by what mode of conveyance,--I must leave unexplained, for the
+reasons before mentioned.
+
+I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a
+free State. I have never been able to answer the question with any
+satisfaction to myself. It was a moment of the highest excitement I ever
+experienced. I suppose I felt as one may imagine the unarmed mariner to
+feel when he is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a
+pirate. In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my arrival at New
+York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions. This
+state of mind, however, very soon subsided; and I was again seized with
+a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I was yet liable to be
+taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. This in
+itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm. But the loneliness
+overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect
+stranger; without home and without friends, in the midst of thousands
+of my own brethren--children of a common Father, and yet I dared not to
+unfold to any one of them my sad condition. I was afraid to speak to any
+one for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the
+hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait
+for the panting fugitive, as the ferocious beasts of the forest lie
+in wait for their prey. The motto which I adopted when I started from
+slavery was this--"Trust no man!" I saw in every white man an enemy, and
+in almost every colored man cause for distrust. It was a most painful
+situation; and, to understand it, one must needs experience it, or
+imagine himself in similar circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave
+in a strange land--a land given up to be the hunting-ground for
+slaveholders--whose inhabitants are legalized kidnappers--where he is
+every moment subjected to the terrible liability of being seized upon by
+his fellowmen, as the hideous crocodile seizes upon his prey!--I say, let
+him place himself in my situation--without home or friends--without money
+or credit--wanting shelter, and no one to give it--wanting bread, and no
+money to buy it,--and at the same time let him feel that he is pursued by
+merciless men-hunters, and in total darkness as to what to do, where to
+go, or where to stay,--perfectly helpless both as to the means of defence
+and means of escape,--in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible
+gnawings of hunger,--in the midst of houses, yet having no home,--among
+fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose
+greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is
+only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the
+helpless fish upon which they subsist,--I say, let him be placed in this
+most trying situation,--the situation in which I was placed,--then, and
+not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how
+to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.
+
+Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in this distressed situation.
+I was relieved from it by the humane hand of _Mr. David Ruggles_, whose
+vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget. I am
+glad of an opportunity to express, as far as words can, the love and
+gratitude I bear him. Mr. Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and
+is himself in need of the same kind offices which he was once so forward
+in the performance of toward others. I had been in New York but a few
+days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to his
+boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets. Mr.
+Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable _Darg_ case, as
+well as attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways
+and means for their successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed in
+on almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies.
+
+Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished to know of me where
+I wanted to go; as he deemed it unsafe for me to remain in New York. I
+told him I was a calker, and should like to go where I could get work.
+I thought of going to Canada; but he decided against it, and in favor of
+my going to New Bedford, thinking I should be able to get work there at
+my trade. At this time, Anna,* my intended wife, came on; for I wrote
+to her immediately after my arrival at New York, (notwithstanding
+my homeless, houseless, and helpless condition,) informing her of my
+successful flight, and wishing her to come on forthwith. In a few days
+after her arrival, Mr. Ruggles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington,
+who, in the presence of Mr. Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and two or three
+others, performed the marriage ceremony, and gave us a certificate, of
+which the following is an exact copy:--
+
+
+"This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick
+Johnson** and Anna Murray, as man and wife, in the presence of Mr. David
+Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels.
+
+"JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON "_New York, Sept. 15, 1838_"
+
+
+          *She was free.
+
+          **I had changed my name from Frederick _Bailey_ to that of
+          _Johnson_.
+
+Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar bill from Mr.
+Ruggles, I shouldered one part of our baggage, and Anna took up
+the other, and we set out forthwith to take passage on board of the
+steamboat John W. Richmond for Newport, on our way to New Bedford. Mr.
+Ruggles gave me a letter to a Mr. Shaw in Newport, and told me, in case
+my money did not serve me to New Bedford, to stop in Newport and obtain
+further assistance; but upon our arrival at Newport, we were so anxious
+to get to a place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the
+necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take seats in the stage,
+and promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do
+this by two excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names I
+afterward ascertained to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber.
+They seemed at once to understand our circumstances, and gave us
+such assurance of their friendliness as put us fully at ease in their
+presence.
+
+It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time. Upon
+reaching New Bedford, we were directed to the house of Mr. Nathan
+Johnson, by whom we were kindly received, and hospitably provided
+for. Both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson took a deep and lively interest in
+our welfare. They proved themselves quite worthy of the name of
+abolitionists. When the stage-driver found us unable to pay our fare, he
+held on upon our baggage as security for the debt. I had but to mention
+the fact to Mr. Johnson, and he forthwith advanced the money.
+
+We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for
+the duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom. On the morning
+after our arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the
+question arose as to what name I should be called by. The name given me
+by my mother was, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey." I, however,
+had dispensed with the two middle names long before I left Maryland so
+that I was generally known by the name of "Frederick Bailey." I started
+from Baltimore bearing the name of "Stanley." When I got to New York, I
+again changed my name to "Frederick Johnson," and thought that would
+be the last change. But when I got to New Bedford, I found it necessary
+again to change my name. The reason of this necessity was, that there
+were so many Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to
+distinguish between them. I gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of
+choosing me a name, but told him he must not take from me the name of
+"Frederick." I must hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my identity.
+Mr. Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of the Lake," and at once
+suggested that my name be "Douglass." From that time until now I have
+been called "Frederick Douglass;" and as I am more widely known by that
+name than by either of the others, I shall continue to use it as my own.
+
+I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New
+Bedford. The impression which I had received respecting the character
+and condition of the people of the north, I found to be singularly
+erroneous. I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of
+the comforts, and scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at
+the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of the
+south. I probably came to this conclusion from the fact that northern
+people owned no slaves. I supposed that they were about upon a level
+with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew _they_ were
+exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their poverty as
+the necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had somehow
+imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no
+wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I
+expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population,
+living in the most Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing of the
+ease, luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such being my
+conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may
+very readily infer how palpably I must have seen my mistake.
+
+In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the
+wharves, to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded
+with the strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding in
+the stream, I saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order, and
+of the largest size. Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite
+warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their utmost capacity
+with the necessaries and comforts of life. Added to this, almost every
+body seemed to be at work, but noiselessly so, compared with what I had
+been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no loud songs heard from
+those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard no deep oaths or
+horrid curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of men; but all seemed
+to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went
+at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the deep
+interest which he felt in what he was doing, as well as a sense of his
+own dignity as a man. To me this looked exceedingly strange. From the
+wharves I strolled around and over the town, gazing with wonder
+and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and
+finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of wealth, comfort, taste,
+and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of slaveholding
+Maryland.
+
+Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no
+dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked
+children and barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see in
+Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael's, and Baltimore. The people looked
+more able, stronger, healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland.
+I was for once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being
+saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But the most astonishing as well
+as the most interesting thing to me was the condition of the colored
+people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped thither as a
+refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been seven
+years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently
+enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders
+in Maryland. I will venture to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson
+(of whom I can say with a grateful heart, "I was hungry, and he gave me
+meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took
+me in") lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid
+for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious,
+and political character of the nation,--than nine tenths of the
+slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working
+man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but those also
+of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored people much more spirited than
+I had supposed they would be. I found among them a determination to
+protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all hazards.
+Soon after my arrival, I was told of a circumstance which illustrated
+their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were on unfriendly
+terms. The former was heard to threaten the latter with informing his
+master of his whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was called among the
+colored people, under the stereotyped notice, "Business of importance!"
+The betrayer was invited to attend. The people came at the appointed
+hour, and organized the meeting by appointing a very religious old
+gentleman as president, who, I believe, made a prayer, after which he
+addressed the meeting as follows: "_Friends, we have got him here, and
+I would recommend that you young men just take him outside the door,
+and kill him!_" With this, a number of them bolted at him; but they were
+intercepted by some more timid than themselves, and the betrayer escaped
+their vengeance, and has not been seen in New Bedford since. I believe
+there have been no more such threats, and should there be hereafter, I
+doubt not that death would be the consequence.
+
+I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop
+with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went
+at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It
+was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those
+who have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which was to
+be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment
+I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I
+had never before experienced. I was at work for myself and newly-married
+wife. It was to me the starting-point of a new existence. When I got
+through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such
+was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers,
+that they refused to work with me, and of course I could get no
+employment.*
+
+
+     * I am told that colored persons can now get employment at
+     calking in New Bedford&mdash;a result of anti-slavery effort.
+
+Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking
+habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to
+do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse and saw, and I very
+soon found myself a plenty of work. There was no work too hard--none
+too dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the
+chimney, or roll oil casks,--all of which I did for nearly three years in
+New Bedford, before I became known to the anti-slavery world.
+
+In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man
+to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the "Liberator." I told
+him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that
+I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber
+to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to week with such
+feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The
+paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire.
+Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds--its scathing denunciations of
+slaveholders--its faithful exposures of slavery--and its powerful attacks
+upon the upholders of the institution--sent a thrill of joy through my
+soul, such as I had never felt before!
+
+I had not long been a reader of the "Liberator," before I got a pretty
+correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery
+reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what
+I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when
+in an anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings,
+because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But,
+while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of
+August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time
+much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard
+me speak in the colored people's meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe
+cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a
+slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke
+but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I
+desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been
+engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren--with what success, and with
+what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my labors to decide.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have,
+in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting
+religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious
+views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability
+of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief
+explanation. What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean
+strictly to apply to the _slaveholding religion_ of this land, and
+with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the
+Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize
+the widest possible difference--so wide, that to receive the one as good,
+pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and
+wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy
+of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity
+of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping,
+cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
+Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the
+religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all
+misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
+Never was there a clearer case of "stealing the livery of the court of
+heaven to serve the devil in." I am filled with unutterable loathing
+when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the
+horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have
+men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries,
+and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the
+blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and
+claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs
+me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on
+Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation.
+He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as
+the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to
+read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the
+God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole
+millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of
+wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family
+relation is the same that scatters whole families,--sundering husbands
+and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers,--leaving the hut
+vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against
+theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build
+churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase
+Bibles for the _Poor Heathen! All For The Glory Of God And The Good Of
+Souls!_ The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime
+in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave
+are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of
+religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together.
+The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of
+fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm
+and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The
+dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence
+of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his
+blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return,
+covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have
+religion and robbery the allies of each other--devils dressed in angels'
+robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.
+
+
+     "Just God! and these are they,
+     Who minister at thine altar, God of right!
+     Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay
+     On Israel's ark of light.
+
+     "What! preach, and kidnap men?
+     Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?
+     Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
+     Bolt hard the captive's door?
+
+     "What! servants of thy own
+     Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
+     The homeless and the outcast, fettering down
+     The tasked and plundered slave!
+
+     "Pilate and Herod friends!
+     Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!
+     Just God and holy! is that church which lends
+     Strength to the spoiler thine?"
+
+The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may
+be as truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, "They
+bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's
+shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their
+fingers. All their works they do for to be seen of men.--They love the
+uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, . . .
+. . . and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.--But woe unto you, scribes
+and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against
+men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
+entering to go in. Ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make
+long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Ye
+compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye
+make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.--Woe unto you,
+scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise,
+and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
+mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
+other undone. Ye blind guides! which strain at a gnat, and swallow a
+camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make
+clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but within, they are
+full of extortion and excess.--Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
+hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear
+beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all
+uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but
+within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity."
+
+Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of
+the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain
+at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our
+churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping
+a _sheep_-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a
+_man_-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with
+them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward
+forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of
+the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice,
+but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as
+professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their
+brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of
+the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into
+his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and
+totally neglect the heathen at their own doors.
+
+Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to
+avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I
+mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words,
+deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves
+Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It is against
+religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my duty to
+testify.
+
+I conclude these remarks by copying the following portrait of the
+religion of the south, (which is, by communion and fellowship, the
+religion of the north,) which I soberly affirm is "true to the life,"
+and without caricature or the slightest exaggeration. It is said to
+have been drawn, several years before the present anti-slavery agitation
+began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the
+south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners, and
+piety, with his own eyes. "Shall I not visit for these things? saith the
+Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"
+
+
+
+
+               <b>A PARODY</b>
+
+     "Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell
+     How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,
+     And women buy and children sell,
+     And preach all sinners down to hell,
+     And sing of heavenly union.
+
+     "They'll bleat and baa, dona like goats,
+     Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,
+     Array their backs in fine black coats,
+     Then seize their negroes by their throats,
+     And choke, for heavenly union.
+
+     "They'll church you if you sip a dram,
+     And damn you if you steal a lamb;
+     Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,
+     Of human rights, and bread and ham;
+     Kidnapper's heavenly union.
+
+     "They'll loudly talk of Christ's reward,
+     And bind his image with a cord,
+     And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,
+     And sell their brother in the Lord
+     To handcuffed heavenly union.
+
+     "They'll read and sing a sacred song,
+     And make a prayer both loud and long,
+     And teach the right and do the wrong,
+     Hailing the brother, sister throng,
+     With words of heavenly union.
+
+     "We wonder how such saints can sing,
+     Or praise the Lord upon the wing,
+     Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,
+     And to their slaves and mammon cling,
+     In guilty conscience union.
+
+     "They'll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,
+     And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie,
+     And lay up treasures in the sky,
+     By making switch and cowskin fly,
+     In hope of heavenly union.
+
+     "They'll crack old Tony on the skull,
+     And preach and roar like Bashan bull,
+     Or braying ass, of mischief full,
+     Then seize old Jacob by the wool,
+     And pull for heavenly union.
+
+     "A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,
+     Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,
+     Yet never would afford relief
+     To needy, sable sons of grief,
+     Was big with heavenly union.
+
+     "'Love not the world,' the preacher said,
+     And winked his eye, and shook his head;
+     He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,
+     Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,
+     Yet still loved heavenly union.
+
+     "Another preacher whining spoke
+     Of One whose heart for sinners broke:
+     He tied old Nanny to an oak,
+     And drew the blood at every stroke,
+     And prayed for heavenly union.
+
+     "Two others oped their iron jaws,
+     And waved their children-stealing paws;
+     There sat their children in gewgaws;
+     By stinting negroes' backs and maws,
+     They kept up heavenly union.
+
+     "All good from Jack another takes,
+     And entertains their flirts and rakes,
+     Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes,
+     And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;
+     And this goes down for union."
+
+Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something
+toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening
+the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in
+bonds--faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for
+success in my humble efforts--and solemnly pledging my self anew to the
+sacred cause,--I subscribe myself,
+
+FREDERICK DOUGLASS. LYNN, _Mass., April_ 28, 1845.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Narrative of the Life of
+Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
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+This is the January 1992 Project Gutenberg release of:
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+ 
+The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
+                An American Slave
+ 
+This electronic book is being released at this time
+to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.
+[Born January 15, 1929]
+[Officially celebrated January 20, 1992]
+
+
+
+
+ 
+ 
+                           NARRATIVE
+ 
+                             OF THE
+ 
+                              LIFE
+ 
+                               OF
+ 
+                       FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
+ 
+                               AN
+ 
+                         AMERICAN SLAVE.
+ 
+ 
+                         ---------------
+                       WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
+                         ---------------
+ 
+ 
+                             BOSTON
+              PUBLISHED AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,
+                         NO. 25 CORNHILL
+                              1845
+ 
+                            NARRATIVE
+                          OF THE LIFE OF
+                        FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
+                         AN AMERICAN SLAVE
+ 
+                        WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
+ 
+ 
+ 
+             ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,
+                        IN THE YEAR 1845
+                     BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
+           IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT
+                        OF MASSACHUSETTS.
+ 
+ 
+                             PREFACE
+ 
+ 
+  In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-
+slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was
+my happiness to become acquainted with FREDERICK
+DOUGLASS, the writer of the following Narrative.  He
+was a stranger to nearly every member of that body;
+but, having recently made his escape from the south-
+ern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity
+excited to ascertain the principles and measures of
+the abolitionists,--of whom he had heard a somewhat
+vague description while he was a slave,--he was in-
+duced to give his attendance, on the occasion al-
+luded to, though at that time a resident in New
+Bedford.
+ 
+  Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!--fortunate
+for the millions of his manacled brethren, yet pant-
+ing for deliverance from their awful thraldom!--for-
+tunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of
+universal liberty!--fortunate for the land of his birth,
+which he has already done so much to save and bless!
+--fortunate for a large circle of friends and acquaint-
+ances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly
+secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by
+his virtuous traits of character, by his ever-abiding
+remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being
+bound with them!--fortunate for the multitudes, in
+various parts of our republic, whose minds he has
+enlightened on the subject of slavery, and who have
+been melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to
+virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against
+the enslavers of men!--fortunate for himself, as
+it at once brought him into the field of public use-
+fulness, "gave the world assurance of a MAN," quick-
+ened the slumbering energies of his soul, and con-
+secrated him to the great work of breaking the rod
+of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!
+ 
+  I shall never forget his first speech at the conven-
+tion--the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own
+mind--the powerful impression it created upon a
+crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise--the
+applause which followed from the beginning to the
+end of his felicitous remarks.  I think I never hated
+slavery so intensely as at that moment; certainly, my
+perception of the enormous outrage which is in-
+flicted by it, on the godlike nature of its victims, was
+rendered far more clear than ever.  There stood one,
+in physical proportion and stature commanding and
+exact--in intellect richly endowed--in natural elo-
+quence a prodigy--in soul manifestly "created but a
+little lower than the angels"--yet a slave, ay, a fugi-
+tive slave,--trembling for his safety, hardly daring to
+believe that on the American soil, a single white
+person could be found who would befriend him at
+all hazards, for the love of God and humanity!  Ca-
+pable of high attainments as an intellectual and
+moral being--needing nothing but a comparatively
+small amount of cultivation to make him an orna-
+ment to society and a blessing to his race--by the law
+of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms
+of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a
+beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!
+ 
+  A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on
+Mr. DOUGLASS to address the convention: He came
+forward to the platform with a hesitancy and embar-
+rassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive
+mind in such a novel position.  After apologizing for
+his ignorance, and reminding the audience that slav-
+ery was a poor school for the human intellect and
+heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in
+his own history as a slave, and in the course of his
+speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and
+thrilling reflections.  As soon as he had taken his
+seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and
+declared that PATRICK HENRY, of revolutionary fame,
+never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of
+liberty, than the one we had just listened to from
+the lips of that hunted fugitive.  So I believed at
+that time--such is my belief now.  I reminded the
+audience of the peril which surrounded this self-
+emancipated young man at the North,--even in Mas-
+sachusetts, on the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among
+the descendants of revolutionary sires; and I ap-
+pealed to them, whether they would ever allow him
+to be carried back into slavery,--law or no law, con-
+stitution or no constitution.  The response was unani-
+mous and in thunder-tones--"NO!"  "Will you succor
+and protect him as a brother-man--a resident of the
+old Bay State?"  "YES!" shouted the whole mass,
+with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants
+south of Mason and Dixon's line might almost have
+heard the mighty burst of feeling, and recognized
+it as the pledge of an invincible determination, on
+the part of those who gave it, never to betray him
+that wanders, but to hide the outcast, and firmly to
+abide the consequences.
+ 
+  It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind,
+that, if Mr. DOUGLASS could be persuaded to conse-
+crate his time and talents to the promotion of the
+anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would
+be given to it, and a stunning blow at the same time
+inflicted on northern prejudice against a colored
+complexion.  I therefore endeavored to instil hope
+and courage into his mind, in order that he might
+dare to engage in a vocation so anomalous and re-
+sponsible for a person in his situation; and I was
+seconded in this effort by warm-hearted friends, es-
+pecially by the late General Agent of the Massa-
+chusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. JOHN A. COLLINS,
+whose judgment in this instance entirely coincided
+with my own.  At first, he could give no encourage-
+ment; with unfeigned diffidence, he expressed his
+conviction that he was not adequate to the perform-
+ance of so great a task; the path marked out was
+wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely appre-
+hensive that he should do more harm than good.
+After much deliberation, however, he consented to
+make a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted
+as a lecturing agent, under the auspices either of the
+American or the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
+In labors he has been most abundant; and his success
+in combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes, in agi-
+tating the public mind, has far surpassed the most
+sanguine expectations that were raised at the com-
+mencement of his brilliant career.  He has borne him-
+self with gentleness and meekness, yet with true
+manliness of character.  As a public speaker, he excels
+in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of
+reasoning, and fluency of language.  There is in him
+that union of head and heart, which is indispensable
+to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of
+the hearts of others.  May his strength continue to
+be equal to his day!  May he continue to "grow in
+grace, and in the knowledge of God," that he may
+be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding
+humanity, whether at home or abroad!
+ 
+  It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of
+the most efficient advocates of the slave population,
+now before the public, is a fugitive slave, in the
+person of FREDERICK DOUGLASS; and that the free
+colored population of the United States are as ably
+represented by one of their own number, in the per-
+son of CHARLES LENOX REMOND, whose eloquent
+appeals have extorted the highest applause of multi-
+tudes on both sides of the Atlantic.  Let the calum-
+niators of the colored race despise themselves for
+their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and hence-
+forth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those
+who require nothing but time and opportunity to
+attain to the highest point of human excellence.
+ 
+  It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any
+other portion of the population of the earth could
+have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors
+of slavery, without having become more degraded
+in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African
+descent.  Nothing has been left undone to cripple
+their intellects, darken their minds, debase their
+moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relation-
+ship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have
+sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bond-
+age, under which they have been groaning for cen-
+turies!  To illustrate the effect of slavery on the white
+man,--to show that he has no powers of endurance,
+in such a condition, superior to those of his black
+brother,--DANIEL O'CONNELL, the distinguished
+advocate of universal emancipation, and the mighti-
+est champion of prostrate but not conquered Ireland,
+relates the following anecdote in a speech delivered
+by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the
+Loyal National Repeal Association, March 31, 1845.
+"No matter," said Mr. O'CONNELL, "under what
+specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still
+hideous.  ~It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to
+brutalize every noble faculty of man.~  An American
+sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa,
+where he was kept in slavery for three years, was, at
+the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted
+and stultified--he had lost all reasoning power; and
+having forgotten his native language, could only ut-
+ter some savage gibberish between Arabic and Eng-
+lish, which nobody could understand, and which
+even he himself found difficulty in pronouncing.  So
+much for the humanizing influence of THE DOMESTIC
+INSTITUTION!"  Admitting this to have been an ex-
+traordinary case of mental deterioration, it proves at
+least that the white slave can sink as low in the
+scale of humanity as the black one.
+ 
+  Mr. DOUGLASS has very properly chosen to write
+his own Narrative, in his own style, and according
+to the best of his ability, rather than to employ some
+one else.  It is, therefore, entirely his own produc-
+tion; and, considering how long and dark was the ca-
+reer he had to run as a slave,--how few have been his
+opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his
+iron fetters,--it is, in my judgment, highly creditable
+to his head and heart.  He who can peruse it without
+a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,--
+without being filled with an unutterable abhorrence
+of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a
+determination to seek the immediate overthrow of
+that execrable system,--without trembling for the
+fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God,
+who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose
+arm is not shortened that it cannot save,--must have
+a flinty heart, and be qualified to act the part of a
+trafficker "in slaves and the souls of men."  I am con-
+fident that it is essentially true in all its statements;
+that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing
+exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination;
+that it comes short of the reality, rather than over-
+states a single fact in regard to SLAVERY AS IT IS.
+The experience of FREDERICK DOUGLASS, as a slave,
+was not a peculiar one; his lot was not especially
+a hard one; his case may be regarded as a very fair
+specimen of the treatment of slaves in Maryland, in
+which State it is conceded that they are better fed
+and less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama,
+or Louisiana.  Many have suffered incomparably
+more, while very few on the plantations have suf-
+fered less, than himself.  Yet how deplorable was his
+situation! what terrible chastisements were inflicted
+upon his person! what still more shocking outrages
+were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble
+powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute
+was he treated, even by those professing to have the
+same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus! to what
+dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how
+destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his
+greatest extremities! how heavy was the midnight of
+woe which shrouded in blackness the last ray of hope,
+and filled the future with terror and gloom! what
+longings after freedom took possession of his breast,
+and how his misery augmented, in proportion as he
+grew reflective and intelligent,--thus demonstrating
+that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he
+thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver,
+with the chains upon his limbs! what perils he en-
+countered in his endeavors to escape from his hor-
+rible doom! and how signal have been his deliverance
+and preservation in the midst of a nation of pitiless
+enemies!
+ 
+  This Narrative contains many affecting incidents,
+many passages of great eloquence and power; but I
+think the most thrilling one of them all is the de-
+scription DOUGLASS gives of his feelings, as he stood
+soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of
+his one day being a freeman, on the banks of the
+Chesapeake Bay--viewing the receding vessels as they
+flew with their white wings before the breeze, and
+apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit
+of freedom.  Who can read that passage, and be in-
+sensible to its pathos and sublimity?  Compressed
+into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought,
+feeling, and sentiment--all that can, all that need be
+urged, in the form of expostulation, entreaty, rebuke,
+against that crime of crimes,--making man the prop-
+erty of his fellow-man!  O, how accursed is that
+system, which entombs the godlike mind of man,
+defaces the divine image, reduces those who by crea-
+tion were crowned with glory and honor to a level
+with four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in hu-
+man flesh above all that is called God!  Why should
+its existence be prolonged one hour?  Is it not evil,
+only evil, and that continually?  What does its pres-
+ence imply but the absence of all fear of God, all
+regard for man, on the part of the people of the
+United States?  Heaven speed its eternal overthrow!
+ 
+  So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery
+are many persons, that they are stubbornly incredu-
+lous whenever they read or listen to any recital of
+the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims.
+They do not deny that the slaves are held as prop-
+erty; but that terrible fact seems to convey to their
+minds no idea of injustice, exposure to outrage, or
+savage barbarity.  Tell them of cruel scourgings, of
+mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution
+and blood, of the banishment of all light and knowl-
+edge, and they affect to be greatly indignant at such
+enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstate-
+ments, such abominable libels on the character of
+the southern planters!  As if all these direful outrages
+were not the natural results of slavery!  As if it were
+less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition
+of a thing, than to give him a severe flagellation,
+or to deprive him of necessary food and clothing!
+As if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles, blood-
+hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols, were not all in-
+dispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give
+protection to their ruthless oppressors!  As if, when
+the marriage institution is abolished, concubinage,
+adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound;
+when all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any
+barrier remains to protect the victim from the fury
+of the spoiler; when absolute power is assumed over
+life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destruc-
+tive sway!  Skeptics of this character abound in so-
+ciety.  In some few instances, their incredulity arises
+from a want of reflection; but, generally, it indicates
+a hatred of the light, a desire to shield slavery from
+the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored
+race, whether bond or free.  Such will try to discredit
+the shocking tales of slaveholding cruelty which are
+recorded in this truthful Narrative; but they will
+labor in vain.  Mr. DOUGLASS has frankly disclosed
+the place of his birth, the names of those who
+claimed ownership in his body and soul, and the
+names also of those who committed the crimes which
+he has alleged against them.  His statements, there-
+fore, may easily be disproved, if they are untrue.
+ 
+  In the course of his Narrative, he relates two in-
+stances of murderous cruelty,--in one of which a
+planter deliberately shot a slave belonging to a neigh-
+boring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten
+within his lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the
+other, an overseer blew out the brains of a slave who
+had fled to a stream of water to escape a bloody
+scourging.  Mr. DOUGLASS states that in neither of
+these instances was any thing done by way of legal
+arrest or judicial investigation.  The Baltimore Amer-
+ican, of March 17, 1845, relates a similar case of
+atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity--as fol-
+lows:--"~Shooting a slave.~--We learn, upon the au-
+thority of a letter from Charles county, Maryland,
+received by a gentleman of this city, that a young
+man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Mat-
+thews, and whose father, it is believed, holds an of-
+fice at Washington, killed one of the slaves upon his
+father's farm by shooting him.  The letter states that
+young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm;
+that he gave an order to the servant, which was dis-
+obeyed, when he proceeded to the house, ~obtained
+a gun, and, returning, shot the servant.~  He immedi-
+ately, the letter continues, fled to his father's resi-
+dence, where he still remains unmolested."--Let it
+never be forgotten, that no slaveholder or overseer
+can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on the
+person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on
+the testimony of colored witnesses, whether bond
+or free.  By the slave code, they are adjudged to be
+as incompetent to testify against a white man, as
+though they were indeed a part of the brute creation.
+Hence, there is no legal protection in fact, whatever
+there may be in form, for the slave population; and
+any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them
+with impunity.  Is it possible for the human mind
+to conceive of a more horrible state of society?
+ 
+  The effect of a religious profession on the conduct
+of southern masters is vividly described in the fol-
+lowing Narrative, and shown to be any thing but
+salutary.  In the nature of the case, it must be in
+the highest degree pernicious.  The testimony of Mr.
+DOUGLASS, on this point, is sustained by a cloud of
+witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable.  "A slave-
+holder's profession of Christianity is a palpable im-
+posture.  He is a felon of the highest grade.  He is a
+man-stealer.  It is of no importance what you put in
+the other scale."
+ 
+  Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy
+and purpose, or on the side of their down-trodden
+victims?  If with the former, then are you the foe of
+God and man.  If with the latter, what are you pre-
+pared to do and dare in their behalf?  Be faithful,
+be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every
+yoke, and let the oppressed go free.  Come what may
+--cost what it may--inscribe on the banner which
+you unfurl to the breeze, as your religious and po-
+litical motto--"NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY!  NO
+UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"
+ 
+                 WM. LLOYD GARRISON
+BOSTON, ~May~ 1, 1845.
+ 
+ 
+                          LETTER
+ 
+                FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
+ 
+ 
+                  BOSTON, APRIL 22, 1845.
+ 
+  My Dear Friend:
+ 
+  You remember the old fable of "The Man and
+the Lion," where the lion complained that he should
+not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote his-
+tory."
+ 
+  I am glad the time has come when the "lions
+write history."  We have been left long enough to
+gather the character of slavery from the involuntary
+evidence of the masters.  One might, indeed, rest
+sufficiently satisfied with what, it is evident, must
+be, in general, the results of such a relation, with-
+out seeking farther to find whether they have fol-
+lowed in every instance.  Indeed, those who stare at
+the half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the
+lashes on the slave's back, are seldom the "stuff" out
+of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made.
+I remember that, in 1838, many were waiting for
+the results of the West India experiment, before
+they could come into our ranks.  Those "results" have
+come long ago; but, alas! few of that number have
+come with them, as converts.  A man must be dis-
+posed to judge of emancipation by other tests than
+whether it has increased the produce of sugar,--and
+to hate slavery for other reasons than because it
+starves men and whips women,--before he is ready
+to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.
+ 
+  I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the
+most neglected of God's children waken to a sense
+of their rights, and of the injustice done them.  Ex-
+perience is a keen teacher; and long before you had
+mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white
+sails" of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I
+see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by
+his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but
+by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over
+his soul.
+ 
+  In connection with this, there is one circumstance
+which makes your recollections peculiarly valuable,
+and renders your early insight the more remarkable.
+You come from that part of the country where we
+are told slavery appears with its fairest features.  Let
+us hear, then, what it is at its best estate--gaze on
+its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination
+may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture,
+as she travels southward to that (for the colored
+man) Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the
+Mississippi sweeps along.
+ 
+  Again, we have known you long, and can put the
+most entire confidence in your truth, candor, and
+sincerity.  Every one who has heard you speak has
+felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your
+book will feel, persuaded that you give them a fair
+specimen of the whole truth.  No one-sided portrait,
+--no wholesale complaints,--but strict justice done,
+whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for
+a moment, the deadly system with which it was
+strangely allied.  You have been with us, too, some
+years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights,
+which your race enjoy at the North, with that "noon
+of night" under which they labor south of Mason
+and Dixon's line.  Tell us whether, after all, the half-
+free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than
+the pampered slave of the rice swamps!
+ 
+  In reading your life, no one can say that we have
+unfairly picked out some rare specimens of cruelty.
+We know that the bitter drops, which even you have
+drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations,
+no individual ills, but such as must mingle always
+and necessarily in the lot of every slave.  They are the
+essential ingredients, not the occasional results, of
+the system.
+ 
+  After all, I shall read your book with trembling
+for you.  Some years ago, when you were beginning
+to tell me your real name and birthplace, you may
+remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain
+ignorant of all.  With the exception of a vague de-
+scription, so I continued, till the other day, when
+you read me your memoirs.  I hardly knew, at the
+time, whether to thank you or not for the sight of
+them, when I reflected that it was still dangerous,
+in Massachusetts, for honest men to tell their names!
+They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the Declaration
+of Independence with the halter about their necks.
+You, too, publish your declaration of freedom with
+danger compassing you around.  In all the broad lands
+which the Constitution of the United States over-
+shadows, there is no single spot,--however narrow or
+desolate,--where a fugitive slave can plant himself
+and say, "I am safe."  The whole armory of North-
+ern Law has no shield for you.  I am free to say that,
+in your place, I should throw the MS. into the fire.
+ 
+  You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, en-
+deared as you are to so many warm hearts by rare
+gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to the service
+of others.  But it will be owing only to your labors,
+and the fearless efforts of those who, trampling the
+laws and Constitution of the country under their
+feet, are determined that they will "hide the out-
+cast," and that their hearths shall be, spite of the
+law, an asylum for the oppressed, if, some time or
+other, the humblest may stand in our streets, and
+bear witness in safety against the cruelties of which
+he has been the victim.
+ 
+  Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing
+hearts which welcome your story, and form your best
+safeguard in telling it, are all beating contrary to the
+"statute in such case made and provided."  Go on,
+my dear friend, till you, and those who, like you,
+have been saved, so as by fire, from the dark prison-
+house, shall stereotype these free, illegal pulses into
+statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a
+blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house
+of refuge for the oppressed,--till we no longer merely
+"~hide~ the outcast," or make a merit of standing idly
+by while he is hunted in our midst; but, consecrat-
+ing anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the
+oppressed, proclaim our WELCOME to the slave so
+loudly, that the tones shall reach every hut in the
+Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted bondman
+leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts.
+ 
+                 God speed the day!
+ 
+                      ~Till then, and ever,~
+                              ~Yours truly,~
+                          ~WENDELL PHILLIPS~
+ 
+  FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+ 
+ 
+  Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Fred-
+erick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in
+Talbot County, Maryland.  He was not sure of the
+exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817
+or 1818.  As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore,
+to be a house servant, where he learned to read and
+write, with the assistance of his master's wife.  In
+1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York
+City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored
+woman whom he had met in Baltimore.  Soon there-
+after he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.
+In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massa-
+chusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so
+greatly impressed the group that they immediately
+employed him as an agent.  He was such an impres-
+sive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had
+ever been a slave, so he wrote NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE
+OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.  During the Civil War he as-
+sisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th
+and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently
+argued for the emancipation of slaves.  After the war
+he was active in securing and protecting the rights
+of the freemen.  In his later years, at different times,
+he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission,
+marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of
+Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti.  His
+other autobiographical works are MY BONDAGE AND
+MY FREEDOM and LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK
+DOUGLASS, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively.
+He died in 1895.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                     CHAPTER I
+ 
+ 
+  I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and
+about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county,
+Maryland.  I have no accurate knowledge of my age,
+never having seen any authentic record containing it.
+By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of
+their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish
+of most masters within my knowledge to keep their
+slaves thus ignorant.  I do not remember to have ever
+met a slave who could tell of his birthday.  They
+seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-
+time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time.  A want
+of information concerning my own was a source of
+unhappiness to me even during childhood.  The white
+children could tell their ages.  I could not tell why I
+ought to be deprived of the same privilege.  I was
+not allowed to make any inquiries of my master con-
+cerning it.  He deemed all such inquiries on the part
+of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence
+of a restless spirit.  The nearest estimate I can give
+makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-
+eight years of age.  I come to this, from hearing my
+master say, some time during 1835, I was about
+seventeen years old.
+ 
+  My mother was named Harriet Bailey.  She was
+the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both col-
+ored, and quite dark.  My mother was of a darker
+complexion than either my grandmother or grand-
+father.
+ 
+  My father was a white man.  He was admitted to
+be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage.
+The opinion was also whispered that my master was
+my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I
+know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld
+from me.  My mother and I were separated when I
+was but an infant--before I knew her as my mother.
+It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland
+from which I ran away, to part children from their
+mothers at a very early age.  Frequently, before the
+child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is
+taken from it, and hired out on some farm a con-
+siderable distance off, and the child is placed under
+the care of an old woman, too old for field labor.
+For what this separation is done, I do not know,
+unless it be to hinder the development of the child's
+affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy
+the natural affection of the mother for the child.
+This is the inevitable result.
+ 
+  I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more
+than four or five times in my life; and each of these
+times was very short in duration, and at night.  She
+was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve
+miles from my home.  She made her journeys to see
+me in the night, travelling the whole distance on
+foot, after the performance of her day's work.  She
+was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of
+not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has
+special permission from his or her master to the con-
+trary--a permission which they seldom get, and one
+that gives to him that gives it the proud name of
+being a kind master.  I do not recollect of ever seeing
+my mother by the light of day.  She was with me in
+the night.  She would lie down with me, and get me
+to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.  Very
+little communication ever took place between us.
+Death soon ended what little we could have while
+she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering.
+She died when I was about seven years old, on one
+of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill.  I was not al-
+lowed to be present during her illness, at her death,
+or burial.  She was gone long before I knew any thing
+about it.  Never having enjoyed, to any considerable
+extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watch-
+ful care, I received the tidings of her death with
+much the same emotions I should have probably
+felt at the death of a stranger.
+ 
+  Called thus suddenly away, she left me without
+the slightest intimation of who my father was.  The
+whisper that my master was my father, may or may
+not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little con-
+sequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains,
+in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have
+ordained, and by law established, that the children
+of slave women shall in all cases follow the condi-
+tion of their mothers; and this is done too obviously
+to administer to their own lusts, and make a grati-
+fication of their wicked desires profitable as well as
+pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the
+slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves
+the double relation of master and father.
+ 
+  I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark
+that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships,
+and have more to contend with, than others.  They
+are, in the first place, a constant offence to their
+mistress.  She is ever disposed to find fault with them;
+they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is
+never better pleased than when she sees them under
+the lash, especially when she suspects her husband
+of showing to his mulatto children favors which he
+withholds from his black slaves.  The master is fre-
+quently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out
+of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and,
+cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a
+man to sell his own children to human flesh-mongers,
+it is often the dictate of humanity for him to do so;
+for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them
+himself, but must stand by and see one white son
+tie up his brother, of but few shades darker com-
+plexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his
+naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval,
+it is set down to his parental partiality, and only
+makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the
+slave whom he would protect and defend.
+ 
+  Every year brings with it multitudes of this class
+of slaves.  It was doubtless in consequence of a knowl-
+edge of this fact, that one great statesman of the
+south predicted the downfall of slavery by the in-
+evitable laws of population.  Whether this prophecy
+is ever fulfilled or not, it is nevertheless plain that a
+very different-looking class of people are springing up
+at the south, and are now held in slavery, from those
+originally brought to this country from Africa; and
+if their increase do no other good, it will do
+away the force of the argument, that God cursed
+Ham, and therefore American slavery is right.  If the
+lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scriptur-
+ally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south
+must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are
+ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself,
+owe their existence to white fathers, and those fa-
+thers most frequently their own masters.
+ 
+  I have had two masters.  My first master's name
+was Anthony.  I do not remember his first name.
+He was generally called Captain Anthony--a title
+which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on
+the Chesapeake Bay.  He was not considered a rich
+slaveholder.  He owned two or three farms, and about
+thirty slaves.  His farms and slaves were under the
+care of an overseer.  The overseer's name was
+Plummer.  Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard,
+a profane swearer, and a savage monster.  He always
+went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel.  I
+have known him to cut and slash the women's heads
+so horribly, that even master would be enraged at
+his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he
+did not mind himself.  Master, however, was not a
+humane slaveholder.  It required extraordinary bar-
+barity on the part of an overseer to affect him.  He
+was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slave-
+holding.  He would at times seem to take great pleas-
+ure in whipping a slave.  I have often been awakened
+at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks
+of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up
+to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she
+was literally covered with blood.  No words, no tears,
+no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move
+his iron heart from its bloody purpose.  The louder
+she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where
+the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest.  He
+would whip her to make her scream, and whip her
+to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue,
+would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin.
+I remember the first time I ever witnessed this hor-
+rible exhibition.  I was quite a child, but I well re-
+member it.  I never shall forget it whilst I remember
+any thing.  It was the first of a long series of such out-
+rages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a
+participant.  It struck me with awful force.  It was
+the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of
+slavery, through which I was about to pass.  It was
+a most terrible spectacle.  I wish I could commit to
+paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
+ 
+  This occurrence took place very soon after I went
+to live with my old master, and under the following
+circumstances.  Aunt Hester went out one night,--
+where or for what I do not know,--and happened to
+be absent when my master desired her presence.  He
+had ordered her not to go out evenings, and warned
+her that she must never let him catch her in com-
+pany with a young man, who was paying attention
+to her belonging to Colonel Lloyd.  The young man's
+name was Ned Roberts, generally called Lloyd's
+Ned.  Why master was so careful of her, may be
+safely left to conjecture.  She was a woman of noble
+form, and of graceful proportions, having very few
+equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance,
+among the colored or white women of our neighbor-
+hood.
+ 
+  Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in
+going out, but had been found in company with
+Lloyd's Ned; which circumstance, I found, from
+what he said while whipping her, was the chief of-
+fence.  Had he been a man of pure morals himself,
+he might have been thought interested in protecting
+the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him
+will not suspect him of any such virtue.  Before
+he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her
+into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist,
+leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely
+naked.  He then told her to cross her hands, calling
+her at the same time a d----d b---h.  After crossing
+her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led
+her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put
+in for the purpose.  He made her get upon the stool,
+and tied her hands to the hook.  She now stood fair
+for his infernal purpose.  Her arms were stretched
+up at their full length, so that she stood upon the
+ends of her toes.  He then said to her, "Now, you
+d----d b---h, I'll learn you how to disobey my
+orders!" and after rolling up his sleeves, he com-
+menced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the
+warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from
+her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to
+the floor.  I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the
+sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not
+venture out till long after the bloody transaction was
+over.  I expected it would be my turn next.  It was
+all new to me.  I had never seen any thing like it
+before.  I had always lived with my grandmother on
+the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to
+raise the children of the younger women.  I had there-
+fore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody
+scenes that often occurred on the plantation.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                    CHAPTER II
+ 
+ 
+  My master's family consisted of two sons, Andrew
+and Richard; one daughter, Lucretia, and her hus-
+band, Captain Thomas Auld.  They lived in one
+house, upon the home plantation of Colonel Edward
+Lloyd.  My master was Colonel Lloyd's clerk and
+superintendent.  He was what might be called the
+overseer of the overseers.  I spent two years of child-
+hood on this plantation in my old master's family.
+It was here that I witnessed the bloody transaction
+recorded in the first chapter; and as I received my
+first impressions of slavery on this plantation,
+I will give some description of it, and of slavery as
+it there existed.  The plantation is about twelve miles
+north of Easton, in Talbot county, and is situated
+on the border of Miles River.  The principal products
+raised upon it were tobacco, corn, and wheat.  These
+were raised in great abundance; so that, with the
+products of this and the other farms belonging to
+him, he was able to keep in almost constant em-
+ployment a large sloop, in carrying them to market
+at Baltimore.  This sloop was named Sally Lloyd,
+in honor of one of the colonel's daughters.  My mas-
+ter's son-in-law, Captain Auld, was master of the
+vessel; she was otherwise manned by the colonel's
+own slaves.  Their names were Peter, Isaac, Rich, and
+Jake.  These were esteemed very highly by the other
+slaves, and looked upon as the privileged ones of the
+plantation; for it was no small affair, in the eyes of
+the slaves, to be allowed to see Baltimore.
+ 
+  Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred
+slaves on his home plantation, and owned a large
+number more on the neighboring farms belonging to
+him.  The names of the farms nearest to the home
+plantation were Wye Town and New Design.  "Wye
+Town" was under the overseership of a man named
+Noah Willis.  New Design was under the overseer-
+ship of a Mr. Townsend.  The overseers of these,
+and all the rest of the farms, numbering over twenty,
+received advice and direction from the managers of
+the home plantation.  This was the great business
+place.  It was the seat of government for the whole
+twenty farms.  All disputes among the overseers were
+settled here.  If a slave was convicted of any high
+misdemeanor, became unmanageable, or evinced a
+determination to run away, he was brought immedi-
+ately here, severely whipped, put on board the sloop,
+carried to Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk,
+or some other slave-trader, as a warning to the slaves
+remaining.
+ 
+  Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received
+their monthly allowance of food, and their yearly
+clothing.  The men and women slaves received, as
+their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of
+pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of
+corn meal.  Their yearly clothing consisted of two
+coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like
+the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter,
+made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings,
+and one pair of shoes; the whole of which could not
+have cost more than seven dollars.  The allowance
+of the slave children was given to their mothers, or
+the old women having the care of them.  The chil-
+dren unable to work in the field had neither shoes,
+stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their
+clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year.
+When these failed them, they went naked until the
+next allowance-day.  Children from seven to ten years
+old, of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen
+at all seasons of the year.
+ 
+  There were no beds given the slaves, unless one
+coarse blanket be considered such, and none but
+the men and women had these.  This, however, is
+not considered a very great privation.  They find less
+difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want
+of time to sleep; for when their day's work in the
+field is done, the most of them having their wash-
+ing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or
+none of the ordinary facilities for doing either of
+these, very many of their sleeping hours are con-
+sumed in preparing for the field the coming day;
+and when this is done, old and young, male and
+female, married and single, drop down side by side,
+on one common bed,--the cold, damp floor,--each
+covering himself or herself with their miserable
+blankets; and here they sleep till they are summoned
+to the field by the driver's horn.  At the sound of
+this, all must rise, and be off to the field.  There
+must be no halting; every one must be at his or
+her post; and woe betides them who hear not this
+morning summons to the field; for if they are not
+awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the
+sense of feeling: no age nor sex finds any favor.
+Mr. Severe, the overseer, used to stand by the door
+of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick
+and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was
+so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other
+cause, was prevented from being ready to start for
+the field at the sound of the horn.
+ 
+  Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel
+man.  I have seen him whip a woman, causing the
+blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too,
+in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their
+mother's release.  He seemed to take pleasure in
+manifesting his fiendish barbarity.  Added to his
+cruelty, he was a profane swearer.  It was enough to
+chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary
+man to hear him talk.  Scarce a sentence escaped him
+but that was commenced or concluded by some hor-
+rid oath.  The field was the place to witness his
+cruelty and profanity.  His presence made it both
+the field of blood and of blasphemy.  From the rising
+till the going down of the sun, he was cursing, raving,
+cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field,
+in the most frightful manner.  His career was short.
+He died very soon after I went to Colonel Lloyd's;
+and he died as he lived, uttering, with his dying
+groans, bitter curses and horrid oaths.  His death was
+regarded by the slaves as the result of a merciful
+providence.
+ 
+  Mr. Severe's place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins.
+He was a very different man.  He was less cruel, less
+profane, and made less noise, than Mr. Severe.  His
+course was characterized by no extraordinary demon-
+strations of cruelty.  He whipped, but seemed to take
+no pleasure in it.  He was called by the slaves a good
+overseer.
+ 
+  The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the
+appearance of a country village.  All the mechanical
+operations for all the farms were performed here.
+The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing,
+cartwrighting, coopering, weaving, and grain-grind-
+ing, were all performed by the slaves on the home
+plantation.  The whole place wore a business-like as-
+pect very unlike the neighboring farms.  The num-
+ber of houses, too, conspired to give it advantage
+over the neighboring farms.  It was called by the
+slaves the ~Great House Farm.~  Few privileges were
+esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than
+that of being selected to do errands at the Great
+House Farm.  It was associated in their minds with
+greatness.  A representative could not be prouder of
+his election to a seat in the American Congress,
+than a slave on one of the out-farms would be of his
+election to do errands at the Great House Farm.
+They regarded it as evidence of great confidence re-
+posed in them by their overseers; and it was on
+this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of
+the field from under the driver's lash, that they es-
+teemed it a high privilege, one worth careful living
+for.  He was called the smartest and most trusty fel-
+low, who had this honor conferred upon him the
+most frequently.  The competitors for this office
+sought as diligently to please their overseers, as the
+office-seekers in the political parties seek to please
+and deceive the people.  The same traits of character
+might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen
+in the slaves of the political parties.
+ 
+  The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm,
+for the monthly allowance for themselves and their
+fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic.  While on
+their way, they would make the dense old woods,
+for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs,
+revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest
+sadness.  They would compose and sing as they went
+along, consulting neither time nor tune.  The thought
+that came up, came out--if not in the word, in the
+sound;--and as frequently in the one as in the other.
+They would sometimes sing the most pathetic senti-
+ment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rap-
+turous sentiment in the most pathetic tone.  Into all
+of their songs they would manage to weave some-
+thing of the Great House Farm.  Especially would
+they do this, when leaving home.  They would then
+sing most exultingly the following words:--
+ 
+ 
+         "I am going away to the Great House Farm!
+ 
+                   O, yea!  O, yea!  O!"
+This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to
+many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which,
+nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves.  I
+have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of
+those songs would do more to impress some minds
+with the horrible character of slavery, than the read-
+ing of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject
+could do.
+ 
+  I did not, when a slave, understand the deep
+meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent
+songs.  I was myself within the circle; so that I nei-
+ther saw nor heard as those without might see and
+hear.  They told a tale of woe which was then al-
+together beyond my feeble comprehension; they
+were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the
+prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the
+bitterest anguish.  Every tone was a testimony against
+slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
+chains.  The hearing of those wild notes always de-
+pressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sad-
+ness.  I have frequently found myself in tears while
+hearing them.  The mere recurrence to those songs,
+even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these
+lines, an expression of feeling has already found its
+way down my cheek.  To those songs I trace my first
+glimmering conception of the dehumanizing char-
+acter of slavery.  I can never get rid of that concep-
+tion.  Those songs still follow me, to deepen my
+hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for
+my brethren in bonds.  If any one wishes to be im-
+pressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let
+him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allow-
+ance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and
+there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that
+shall pass through the chambers of his soul,--and if
+he is not thus impressed, it will only be because
+"there is no flesh in his obdurate heart."
+ 
+  I have often been utterly astonished, since I came
+to the north, to find persons who could speak of
+the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their con-
+tentment and happiness.  It is impossible to conceive
+of a greater mistake.  Slaves sing most when they are
+most unhappy.  The songs of the slave represent the
+sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only
+as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.  At least,
+such is my experience.  I have often sung to drown
+my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness.
+Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike un-
+common to me while in the jaws of slavery.  The
+singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island
+might be as appropriately considered as evidence of
+contentment and happiness, as the singing of a
+slave; the songs of the one and of the other are
+prompted by the same emotion.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                    CHAPTER III
+ 
+ 
+  Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated
+garden, which afforded almost constant employment
+for four men, besides the chief gardener, (Mr.
+M'Durmond.)  This garden was probably the great-
+est attraction of the place.  During the summer
+months, people came from far and near--from
+Baltimore, Easton, and Annapolis--to see it.  It
+abounded in fruits of almost every description, from
+the hardy apple of the north to the delicate orange
+of the south.  This garden was not the least source
+of trouble on the plantation.  Its excellent fruit was
+quite a temptation to the hungry swarms of boys,
+as well as the older slaves, belonging to the colonel,
+few of whom had the virtue or the vice to resist
+it.  Scarcely a day passed, during the summer, but
+that some slave had to take the lash for stealing fruit.
+The colonel had to resort to all kinds of stratagems
+to keep his slaves out of the garden.  The last and
+most successful one was that of tarring his fence
+all around; after which, if a slave was caught with
+any tar upon his person, it was deemed sufficient
+proof that he had either been into the garden, or had
+tried to get in.  In either case, he was severely whip-
+ped by the chief gardener.  This plan worked well;
+the slaves became as fearful of tar as of the lash.
+They seemed to realize the impossibility of touching
+TAR without being defiled.
+ 
+  The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage.
+His stable and carriage-house presented the appear-
+ance of some of our large city livery establishments.
+His horses were of the finest form and noblest blood.
+His carriage-house contained three splendid coaches,
+three or four gigs, besides dearborns and barouches
+of the most fashionable style.
+ 
+  This establishment was under the care of two
+slaves--old Barney and young Barney--father and son.
+To attend to this establishment was their sole work.
+But it was by no means an easy employment; for in
+nothing was Colonel Lloyd more particular than in
+the management of his horses.  The slightest inat-
+tention to these was unpardonable, and was visited
+upon those, under whose care they were placed, with
+the severest punishment; no excuse could shield
+them, if the colonel only suspected any want of
+attention to his horses--a supposition which he fre-
+quently indulged, and one which, of course, made
+the office of old and young Barney a very trying one.
+They never knew when they were safe from punish-
+ment.  They were frequently whipped when least
+deserving, and escaped whipping when most deserv-
+ing it.  Every thing depended upon the looks of the
+horses, and the state of Colonel Lloyd's own mind
+when his horses were brought to him for use.  If a
+horse did not move fast enough, or hold his head
+high enough, it was owing to some fault of his keep-
+ers.  It was painful to stand near the stable-door,
+and hear the various complaints against the keepers
+when a horse was taken out for use.  "This horse has
+not had proper attention.  He has not been suffi-
+ciently rubbed and curried, or he has not been prop-
+erly fed; his food was too wet or too dry; he got it
+too soon or too late; he was too hot or too cold; he
+had too much hay, and not enough of grain; or he
+had too much grain, and not enough of hay; instead
+of old Barney's attending to the horse, he had very
+improperly left it to his son."  To all these com-
+plaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must an-
+swer never a word.  Colonel Lloyd could not brook
+any contradiction from a slave.  When he spoke, a
+slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was
+literally the case.  I have seen Colonel Lloyd make
+old Barney, a man between fifty and sixty years of
+age, uncover his bald head, kneel down upon the
+cold, damp ground, and receive upon his naked and
+toil-worn shoulders more than thirty lashes at the
+time.  Colonel Lloyd had three sons--Edward, Mur-
+ray, and Daniel,--and three sons-in-law, Mr. Winder,
+Mr. Nicholson, and Mr. Lowndes.  All of these lived
+at the Great House Farm, and enjoyed the luxury of
+whipping the servants when they pleased, from old
+Barney down to William Wilkes, the coach-driver.
+I have seen Winder make one of the house-servants
+stand off from him a suitable distance to be touched
+with the end of his whip, and at every stroke raise
+great ridges upon his back.
+ 
+  To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would
+be almost equal to describing the riches of Job.  He
+kept from ten to fifteen house-servants.  He was said
+to own a thousand slaves, and I think this estimate
+quite within the truth.  Colonel Lloyd owned so
+many that he did not know them when he saw them;
+nor did all the slaves of the out-farms know him.  It
+is reported of him, that, while riding along the road
+one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him
+in the usual manner of speaking to colored people
+on the public highways of the south: "Well, boy,
+whom do you belong to?"  "To Colonel Lloyd," re-
+plied the slave.  "Well, does the colonel treat you
+well?"  "No, sir," was the ready reply.  "What, does
+he work you too hard?"  "Yes, sir."  "Well, don't he
+give you enough to eat?"  "Yes, sir, he gives me
+enough, such as it is."
+ 
+  The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave
+belonged, rode on; the man also went on about his
+business, not dreaming that he had been conversing
+with his master.  He thought, said, and heard noth-
+ing more of the matter, until two or three weeks
+afterwards.  The poor man was then informed by his
+overseer that, for having found fault with his master,
+he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader.  He was
+immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus,
+without a moment's warning, he was snatched away,
+and forever sundered, from his family and friends,
+by a hand more unrelenting than death.  This is the
+penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple
+truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.
+ 
+  It is partly in consequence of such facts, that
+slaves, when inquired of as to their condition and
+the character of their masters, almost universally say
+they are contented, and that their masters are kind.
+The slaveholders have been known to send in spies
+among their slaves, to ascertain their views and feel-
+ings in regard to their condition.  The frequency of
+this has had the effect to establish among the slaves
+the maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head.
+They suppress the truth rather than take the con-
+sequences of telling it, and in so doing prove them-
+selves a part of the human family.  If they have any
+thing to say of their masters, it is generally in their
+masters' favor, especially when speaking to an un-
+tried man.  I have been frequently asked, when a
+slave, if I had a kind master, and do not remember
+ever to have given a negative answer; nor did I, in
+pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what
+was absolutely false; for I always measured the kind-
+ness of my master by the standard of kindness set
+up among slaveholders around us.  Moreover, slaves
+are like other people, and imbibe prejudices quite
+common to others.  They think their own better than
+that of others.  Many, under the influence of this
+prejudice, think their own masters are better than
+the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some
+cases, when the very reverse is true.  Indeed, it is
+not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quar-
+rel among themselves about the relative goodness of
+their masters, each contending for the superior good-
+ness of his own over that of the others.  At the very
+same time, they mutually execrate their masters
+when viewed separately.  It was so on our plantation.
+When Colonel Lloyd's slaves met the slaves of Jacob
+Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about
+their masters; Colonel Lloyd's slaves contending that
+he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson's slaves that he
+was the smartest, and most of a man.  Colonel Lloyd's
+slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob
+Jepson.  Mr. Jepson's slaves would boast his ability
+to whip Colonel Lloyd.  These quarrels would almost
+always end in a fight between the parties, and those
+that whipped were supposed to have gained the
+point at issue.  They seemed to think that the great-
+ness of their masters was transferable to themselves.
+It was considered as being bad enough to be a
+slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a
+disgrace indeed!
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                    CHAPTER IV
+ 
+ 
+  Mr. Hopkins remained but a short time in the
+office of overseer.  Why his career was so short, I
+do not know, but suppose he lacked the necessary
+severity to suit Colonel Lloyd.  Mr. Hopkins was suc-
+ceeded by Mr. Austin Gore, a man possessing, in
+an eminent degree, all those traits of character in-
+dispensable to what is called a first-rate overseer.  Mr.
+Gore had served Colonel Lloyd, in the capacity of
+overseer, upon one of the out-farms, and had shown
+himself worthy of the high station of overseer upon
+the home or Great House Farm.
+ 
+  Mr. Gore was proud, ambitious, and persevering.
+He was artful, cruel, and obdurate.  He was just the
+man for such a place, and it was just the place for
+such a man.  It afforded scope for the full exercise
+of all his powers, and he seemed to be perfectly
+at home in it.  He was one of those who could torture
+the slightest look, word, or gesture, on the part of
+the slave, into impudence, and would treat it ac-
+cordingly.  There must be no answering back to him;
+no explanation was allowed a slave, showing himself
+to have been wrongfully accused.  Mr. Gore acted
+fully up to the maxim laid down by slaveholders,--
+"It is better that a dozen slaves should suffer under the
+lash, than that the overseer should be convicted, in
+the presence of the slaves, of having been at fault."
+No matter how innocent a slave might be--it availed
+him nothing, when accused by Mr. Gore of any
+misdemeanor.  To be accused was to be convicted,
+and to be convicted was to be punished; the one
+always following the other with immutable certainty.
+To escape punishment was to escape accusation; and
+few slaves had the fortune to do either, under the
+overseership of Mr. Gore.  He was just proud enough
+to demand the most debasing homage of the slave,
+and quite servile enough to crouch, himself, at the
+feet of the master.  He was ambitious enough to be
+contented with nothing short of the highest rank
+of overseers, and persevering enough to reach the
+height of his ambition.  He was cruel enough to in-
+flict the severest punishment, artful enough to de-
+scend to the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to
+be insensible to the voice of a reproving conscience.
+He was, of all the overseers, the most dreaded by
+the slaves.  His presence was painful; his eye flashed
+confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice
+heard, without producing horror and trembling in
+their ranks.
+ 
+  Mr. Gore was a grave man, and, though a young
+man, he indulged in no jokes, said no funny words,
+seldom smiled.  His words were in perfect keeping
+with his looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping
+with his words.  Overseers will sometimes indulge in
+a witty word, even with the slaves; not so with Mr.
+Gore.  He spoke but to command, and commanded
+but to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly with his words,
+and bountifully with his whip, never using the
+former where the latter would answer as well.  When
+he whipped, he seemed to do so from a sense of
+duty, and feared no consequences.  He did nothing
+reluctantly, no matter how disagreeable; always at his
+post, never inconsistent.  He never promised but to
+fulfil.  He was, in a word, a man of the most in-
+flexible firmness and stone-like coolness.
+ 
+  His savage barbarity was equalled only by the con-
+summate coolness with which he committed the
+grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves under
+his charge.  Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of
+Colonel Lloyd's slaves, by the name of Demby.  He
+had given Demby but few stripes, when, to get rid
+of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself into a
+creek, and stood there at the depth of his shoulders,
+refusing to come out.  Mr. Gore told him that he
+would give him three calls, and that, if he did not
+come out at the third call, he would shoot him.
+The first call was given.  Demby made no response,
+but stood his ground.  The second and third calls
+were given with the same result.  Mr. Gore then,
+without consultation or deliberation with any one,
+not even giving Demby an additional call, raised
+his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his
+standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was
+no more.  His mangled body sank out of sight, and
+blood and brains marked the water where he had
+stood.
+ 
+  A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon
+the plantation, excepting Mr. Gore.  He alone
+seemed cool and collected.  He was asked by Colonel
+Lloyd and my old master, why he resorted to this
+extraordinary expedient.  His reply was, (as well as
+I can remember,) that Demby had become unman-
+ageable.  He was setting a dangerous example to the
+other slaves,--one which, if suffered to pass without
+some such demonstration on his part, would finally
+lead to the total subversion of all rule and order
+upon the plantation.  He argued that if one slave re-
+fused to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the
+other slaves would soon copy the example; the re-
+sult of which would be, the freedom of the slaves,
+and the enslavement of the whites.  Mr. Gore's de-
+fence was satisfactory.  He was continued in his sta-
+tion as overseer upon the home plantation.  His
+fame as an overseer went abroad.  His horrid crime
+was not even submitted to judicial investigation.  It
+was committed in the presence of slaves, and they of
+course could neither institute a suit, nor testify
+against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of
+the bloodiest and most foul murders goes unwhipped
+of justice, and uncensured by the community in
+which he lives.  Mr. Gore lived in St. Michael's, Tal-
+bot county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he
+is still alive, he very probably lives there now; and if
+so, he is now, as he was then, as highly esteemed
+and as much respected as though his guilty soul
+had not been stained with his brother's blood.
+ 
+  I speak advisedly when I say this,--that killing
+a slave, or any colored person, in Talbot county,
+Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the
+courts or the community.  Mr. Thomas Lanman, of
+St. Michael's, killed two slaves, one of whom he
+killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains out.  He
+used to boast of the commission of the awful and
+bloody deed.  I have heard him do so laughingly,
+saying, among other things, that he was the only
+benefactor of his country in the company, and that
+when others would do as much as he had done, we
+should be relieved of "the d----d niggers."
+ 
+  The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short
+distance from where I used to live, murdered my
+wife's cousin, a young girl between fifteen and six-
+teen years of age, mangling her person in the most
+horrible manner, breaking her nose and breastbone
+with a stick, so that the poor girl expired in a few
+hours afterward.  She was immediately buried, but
+had not been in her untimely grave but a few hours
+before she was taken up and examined by the cor-
+oner, who decided that she had come to her death
+by severe beating.  The offence for which this girl
+was thus murdered was this:--She had been set
+that night to mind Mrs. Hicks's baby, and during the
+night she fell asleep, and the baby cried.  She, having
+lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear
+the crying.  They were both in the room with Mrs.
+Hicks.  Mrs. Hicks, finding the girl slow to move,
+jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood
+by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl's nose
+and breastbone, and thus ended her life.  I will not
+say that this most horrid murder produced no sen-
+sation in the community.  It did produce sensation,
+but not enough to bring the murderess to punish-
+ment.  There was a warrant issued for her arrest,
+but it was never served.  Thus she escaped not only
+punishment, but even the pain of being arraigned
+before a court for her horrid crime.
+ 
+  Whilst I am detailing bloody deeds which took
+place during my stay on Colonel Lloyd's plantation,
+I will briefly narrate another, which occurred about
+the same time as the murder of Demby by Mr.
+Gore.
+ 
+  Colonel Lloyd's slaves were in the habit of spend-
+ing a part of their nights and Sundays in fishing for
+oysters, and in this way made up the deficiency of
+their scanty allowance.  An old man belonging to
+Colonel Lloyd, while thus engaged, happened to get
+beyond the limits of Colonel Lloyd's, and on the
+premises of Mr. Beal Bondly.  At this trespass, Mr.
+Bondly took offence, and with his musket came
+down to the shore, and blew its deadly contents
+into the poor old man.
+ 
+  Mr. Bondly came over to see Colonel Lloyd the
+next day, whether to pay him for his property, or
+to justify himself in what he had done, I know not.
+At any rate, this whole fiendish transaction was soon
+hushed up.  There was very little said about it at all,
+and nothing done.  It was a common saying, even
+among little white boys, that it was worth a half-
+cent to kill a "nigger," and a half-cent to bury one.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                     CHAPTER V
+ 
+ 
+  As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel
+Lloyd's plantation, it was very similar to that of the
+other slave children.  I was not old enough to work in
+the field, and there being little else than field work
+to do, I had a great deal of leisure time.  The most
+I had to do was to drive up the cows at evening,
+keep the fowls out of the garden, keep the front
+yard clean, and run of errands for my old master's
+daughter, Mrs. Lucretia Auld.  The most of my lei-
+sure time I spent in helping Master Daniel Lloyd
+in finding his birds, after he had shot them.  My
+connection with Master Daniel was of some advan-
+tage to me.  He became quite attached to me, and
+was a sort of protector of me.  He would not allow
+the older boys to impose upon me, and would divide
+his cakes with me.
+ 
+  I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suf-
+fered little from any thing else than hunger and
+cold.  I suffered much from hunger, but much more
+from cold.  In hottest summer and coldest winter, I
+was kept almost naked--no shoes, no stockings, no
+jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow linen
+shirt, reaching only to my knees.  I had no bed.  I
+must have perished with cold, but that, the coldest
+nights, I used to steal a bag which was used for carry-
+ing corn to the mill.  I would crawl into this bag,
+and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with
+my head in and feet out.  My feet have been so
+cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I
+am writing might be laid in the gashes.
+ 
+  We were not regularly allowanced.  Our food was
+coarse corn meal boiled.  This was called MUSH.  It
+was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set
+down upon the ground.  The children were then
+called, like so many pigs, and like so many pigs they
+would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-
+shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked
+hands, and none with spoons.  He that ate fastest
+got most; he that was strongest secured the best
+place; and few left the trough satisfied.
+ 
+  I was probably between seven and eight years old
+when I left Colonel Lloyd's plantation.  I left it with
+joy.  I shall never forget the ecstasy with which I
+received the intelligence that my old master (An-
+thony) had determined to let me go to Baltimore,
+to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, brother to my old
+master's son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld.  I re-
+ceived this information about three days before my
+departure.  They were three of the happiest days
+I ever enjoyed.  I spent the most part of all these
+three days in the creek, washing off the plantation
+scurf, and preparing myself for my departure.
+ 
+  The pride of appearance which this would indicate
+was not my own.  I spent the time in washing, not so
+much because I wished to, but because Mrs.
+Lucretia had told me I must get all the dead skin
+off my feet and knees before I could go to Balti-
+more; for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly,
+and would laugh at me if I looked dirty.  Besides,
+she was going to give me a pair of trousers, which I
+should not put on unless I got all the dirt off me.
+The thought of owning a pair of trousers was great
+indeed!  It was almost a sufficient motive, not only
+to make me take off what would be called by pig-
+drovers the mange, but the skin itself.  I went at it
+in good earnest, working for the first time with the
+hope of reward.
+ 
+  The ties that ordinarily bind children to their
+homes were all suspended in my case.  I found no
+severe trial in my departure.  My home was charm-
+less; it was not home to me; on parting from it, I
+could not feel that I was leaving any thing which I
+could have enjoyed by staying.  My mother was dead,
+my grandmother lived far off, so that I seldom saw
+her.  I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in
+the same house with me; but the early separation of
+us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact
+of our relationship from our memories.  I looked for
+home elsewhere, and was confident of finding none
+which I should relish less than the one which I was
+leaving.  If, however, I found in my new home hard-
+ship, hunger, whipping, and nakedness, I had the
+consolation that I should not have escaped any one
+of them by staying.  Having already had more than
+a taste of them in the house of my old master, and
+having endured them there, I very naturally inferred
+my ability to endure them elsewhere, and especially
+at Baltimore; for I had something of the feeling
+about Baltimore that is expressed in the proverb,
+that "being hanged in England is preferable to
+dying a natural death in Ireland."  I had the strongest
+desire to see Baltimore.  Cousin Tom, though not
+fluent in speech, had inspired me with that desire
+by his eloquent description of the place.  I could
+never point out any thing at the Great House, no
+matter how beautiful or powerful, but that he had
+seen something at Baltimore far exceeding, both in
+beauty and strength, the object which I pointed out
+to him.  Even the Great House itself, with all its
+pictures, was far inferior to many buildings in Bal-
+timore.  So strong was my desire, that I thought a
+gratification of it would fully compensate for what-
+ever loss of comforts I should sustain by the ex-
+change.  I left without a regret, and with the highest
+hopes of future happiness.
+ 
+  We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore on a
+Saturday morning.  I remember only the day of the
+week, for at that time I had no knowledge of the
+days of the month, nor the months of the year.  On
+setting sail, I walked aft, and gave to Colonel Lloyd's
+plantation what I hoped would be the last look.  I
+then placed myself in the bows of the sloop, and
+there spent the remainder of the day in looking
+ahead, interesting myself in what was in the distance
+rather than in things near by or behind.
+ 
+  In the afternoon of that day, we reached Annap-
+olis, the capital of the State.  We stopped but a
+few moments, so that I had no time to go on shore.
+It was the first large town that I had ever seen, and
+though it would look small compared with some of
+our New England factory villages, I thought it a
+wonderful place for its size--more imposing even
+than the Great House Farm!
+ 
+  We arrived at Baltimore early on Sunday morn-
+ing, landing at Smith's Wharf, not far from Bow-
+ley's Wharf.  We had on board the sloop a large
+flock of sheep; and after aiding in driving them to
+the slaughterhouse of Mr. Curtis on Louden Slater's
+Hill, I was conducted by Rich, one of the hands
+belonging on board of the sloop, to my new home
+in Alliciana Street, near Mr. Gardner's ship-yard, on
+Fells Point.
+ 
+  Mr. and Mrs. Auld were both at home, and met
+me at the door with their little son Thomas, to take
+care of whom I had been given.  And here I saw what
+I had never seen before; it was a white face beaming
+with the most kindly emotions; it was the face of
+my new mistress, Sophia Auld.  I wish I could de-
+scribe the rapture that flashed through my soul as I
+beheld it.  It was a new and strange sight to me,
+brightening up my pathway with the light of happi-
+ness.  Little Thomas was told, there was his Freddy,
+--and I was told to take care of little Thomas; and
+thus I entered upon the duties of my new home with
+the most cheering prospect ahead.
+ 
+  I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd's
+plantation as one of the most interesting events of
+my life.  It is possible, and even quite probable, that
+but for the mere circumstance of being removed
+from that plantation to Baltimore, I should have
+to-day, instead of being here seated by my own table,
+in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness of
+home, writing this Narrative, been confined in the
+galling chains of slavery.  Going to live at Baltimore
+laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all
+my subsequent prosperity.  I have ever regarded it
+as the first plain manifestation of that kind provi-
+dence which has ever since attended me, and marked
+my life with so many favors.  I regarded the selection
+of myself as being somewhat remarkable.  There were
+a number of slave children that might have been
+sent from the plantation to Baltimore.  There were
+those younger, those older, and those of the same
+age.  I was chosen from among them all, and was
+the first, last, and only choice.
+ 
+  I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotisti-
+cal, in regarding this event as a special interposition
+of divine Providence in my favor.  But I should be
+false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I sup-
+pressed the opinion.  I prefer to be true to myself,
+even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others,
+rather than to be false, and incur my own abhor-
+rence.  From my earliest recollection, I date the en-
+tertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would
+not always be able to hold me within its foul em-
+brace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slav-
+ery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope de-
+parted not from me, but remained like ministering
+angels to cheer me through the gloom.  This good
+spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving
+and praise.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                    CHAPTER VI
+ 
+ 
+  My new mistress proved to be all she appeared
+when I first met her at the door,--a woman of the
+kindest heart and finest feelings.  She had never had
+a slave under her control previously to myself, and
+prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon
+her own industry for a living.  She was by trade a
+weaver; and by constant application to her business,
+she had been in a good degree preserved from the
+blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery.  I was
+utterly astonished at her goodness.  I scarcely knew
+how to behave towards her.  She was entirely unlike
+any other white woman I had ever seen.  I could not
+approach her as I was accustomed to approach other
+white ladies.  My early instruction was all out of
+place.  The crouching servility, usually so acceptable
+a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested
+toward her.  Her favor was not gained by it; she
+seemed to be disturbed by it.  She did not deem it
+impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in
+the face.  The meanest slave was put fully at ease
+in her presence, and none left without feeling bet-
+ter for having seen her.  Her face was made of heav-
+enly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.
+ 
+  But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to
+remain such.  The fatal poison of irresponsible power
+was already in her hands, and soon commenced its
+infernal work.  That cheerful eye, under the influ-
+ence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that
+voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of
+harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave
+place to that of a demon.
+ 
+  Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs.
+Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the
+A, B, C.  After I had learned this, she assisted me in
+learning to spell words of three or four letters.  Just
+at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out
+what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld
+to instruct me further, telling her, among other
+things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to
+teach a slave to read.  To use his own words, further,
+he said, "If you give a nigger an inch, he will take
+an ell.  A nigger should know nothing but to obey
+his master--to do as he is told to do.  Learning would
+~spoil~ the best nigger in the world.  Now," said he, "if
+you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to
+read, there would be no keeping him.  It would for-
+ever unfit him to be a slave.  He would at once be-
+come unmanageable, and of no value to his master.
+As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great
+deal of harm.  It would make him discontented and
+unhappy."  These words sank deep into my heart,
+stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering,
+and called into existence an entirely new train of
+thought.  It was a new and special revelation, ex-
+plaining dark and mysterious things, with which my
+youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled
+in vain.  I now understood what had been to me a
+most perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's
+power to enslave the black man.  It was a grand
+achievement, and I prized it highly.  From that mo-
+ment, I understood the pathway from slavery to free-
+dom.  It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a
+time when I the least expected it.  Whilst I was sad-
+dened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind
+mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruc-
+tion which, by the merest accident, I had gained
+from my master.  Though conscious of the difficulty
+of learning without a teacher, I set out with high
+hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trou-
+ble, to learn how to read.  The very decided manner
+with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife
+with the evil consequences of giving me instruction,
+served to convince me that he was deeply sensible
+of the truths he was uttering.  It gave me the best
+assurance that I might rely with the utmost confi-
+dence on the results which, he said, would flow from
+teaching me to read.  What he most dreaded, that
+I most desired.  What he most loved, that I most
+hated.  That which to him was a great evil, to be
+carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be
+diligently sought; and the argument which he so
+warmly urged, against my learning to read, only
+served to inspire me with a desire and determina-
+tion to learn.  In learning to read, I owe almost as
+much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to
+the kindly aid of my mistress.  I acknowledge the
+benefit of both.
+ 
+  I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before
+I observed a marked difference, in the treatment of
+slaves, from that which I had witnessed in the coun-
+try.  A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with
+a slave on the plantation.  He is much better fed and
+clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown
+to the slave on the plantation.  There is a vestige of
+decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb
+and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so
+commonly enacted upon the plantation.  He is a des-
+perate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity of
+his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his
+lacerated slave.  Few are willing to incur the odium
+attaching to the reputation of being a cruel master;
+and above all things, they would not be known as
+not giving a slave enough to eat.  Every city slave-
+holder is anxious to have it known of him, that he
+feeds his slaves well; and it is due to them to say,
+that most of them do give their slaves enough to eat.
+There are, however, some painful exceptions to this
+rule.  Directly opposite to us, on Philpot Street, lived
+Mr. Thomas Hamilton.  He owned two slaves.  Their
+names were Henrietta and Mary.  Henrietta was
+about twenty-two years of age, Mary was about four-
+teen; and of all the mangled and emaciated creatures
+I ever looked upon, these two were the most so.  His
+heart must be harder than stone, that could look
+upon these unmoved.  The head, neck, and shoulders
+of Mary were literally cut to pieces.  I have fre-
+quently felt her head, and found it nearly covered
+with festering sores, caused by the lash of her cruel
+mistress.  I do not know that her master ever whipped
+her, but I have been an eye-witness to the cruelty of
+Mrs. Hamilton.  I used to be in Mr. Hamilton's house
+nearly every day.  Mrs. Hamilton used to sit in a large
+chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cow-
+skin always by her side, and scarce an hour passed
+during the day but was marked by the blood of one
+of these slaves.  The girls seldom passed her without
+her saying, "Move faster, you ~black gip!~" at the same
+time giving them a blow with the cowskin over the
+head or shoulders, often drawing the blood.  She
+would then say, "Take that, you ~black gip!~" con-
+tinuing, "If you don't move faster, I'll move you!"
+Added to the cruel lashings to which these slaves
+were subjected, they were kept nearly half-starved.
+They seldom knew what it was to eat a full meal.
+I have seen Mary contending with the pigs for the
+offal thrown into the street.  So much was Mary
+kicked and cut to pieces, that she was oftener called
+"~pecked~" than by her name.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                    CHAPTER VII
+ 
+ 
+  I lived in Master Hugh's family about seven years.
+During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and
+write.  In accomplishing this, I was compelled to re-
+sort to various stratagems.  I had no regular teacher.
+My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct
+me, had, in compliance with the advice and direc-
+tion of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but
+had set her face against my being instructed by any
+one else.  It is due, however, to my mistress to say
+of her, that she did not adopt this course of treat-
+ment immediately.  She at first lacked the depravity
+indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness.
+It was at least necessary for her to have some training
+in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her
+equal to the task of treating me as though I were
+a brute.
+ 
+  My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-
+hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she
+commenced, when I first went to live with her, to
+treat me as she supposed one human being ought
+to treat another.  In entering upon the duties of a
+slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sus-
+tained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and
+that for her to treat me as a human being was not
+only wrong, but dangerously so.  Slavery proved as
+injurious to her as it did to me.  When I went there,
+she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman.
+There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had
+not a tear.  She had bread for the hungry, clothes for
+the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came
+within her reach.  Slavery soon proved its ability to
+divest her of these heavenly qualities.  Under its in-
+fluence, the tender heart became stone, and the
+lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like
+fierceness.  The first step in her downward course was
+in her ceasing to instruct me.  She now commenced
+to practise her husband's precepts.  She finally be-
+came even more violent in her opposition than her
+husband himself.  She was not satisfied with simply
+doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed
+anxious to do better.  Nothing seemed to make her
+more angry than to see me with a newspaper.  She
+seemed to think that here lay the danger.  I have had
+her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and
+snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully
+revealed her apprehension.  She was an apt woman;
+and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her
+satisfaction, that education and slavery were incom-
+patible with each other.
+ 
+  From this time I was most narrowly watched.  If I
+was in a separate room any considerable length of
+time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book,
+and was at once called to give an account of myself.
+All this, however, was too late.  The first step had
+been taken.  Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet,
+had given me the ~inch,~ and no precaution could pre-
+vent me from taking the ~ell.~
+ 
+  The plan which I adopted, and the one by which
+I was most successful, was that of making friends of
+all the little white boys whom I met in the street.
+As many of these as I could, I converted into teach-
+ers.  With their kindly aid, obtained at different times
+and in different places, I finally succeeded in learn-
+ing to read.  When I was sent of errands, I always
+took my book with me, and by going one part of
+my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson be-
+fore my return.  I used also to carry bread with me,
+enough of which was always in the house, and to
+which I was always welcome; for I was much better
+off in this regard than many of the poor white chil-
+dren in our neighborhood.  This bread I used to be-
+stow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return,
+would give me that more valuable bread of knowl-
+edge.  I am strongly tempted to give the names of
+two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of
+the gratitude and affection I bear them; but pru-
+dence forbids;--not that it would injure me, but it
+might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpar-
+donable offence to teach slaves to read in this Chris-
+tian country.  It is enough to say of the dear little
+fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near
+Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard.  I used to talk this
+matter of slavery over with them.  I would sometimes
+say to them, I wished I could be as free as they
+would be when they got to be men.  "You will be
+free as soon as you are twenty-one, ~but I am a slave
+for life!~  Have not I as good a right to be free as
+you have?"  These words used to trouble them; they
+would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and con-
+sole me with the hope that something would occur
+by which I might be free.
+ 
+  I was now about twelve years old, and the thought
+of being ~a slave for life~ began to bear heavily upon
+my heart.  Just about this time, I got hold of a book
+entitled "The Columbian Orator."  Every opportu-
+nity I got, I used to read this book.  Among much of
+other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue be-
+tween a master and his slave.  The slave was repre-
+sented as having run away from his master three
+times.  The dialogue represented the conversation
+which took place between them, when the slave was
+retaken the third time.  In this dialogue, the whole
+argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward
+by the master, all of which was disposed of by the
+slave.  The slave was made to say some very smart as
+well as impressive things in reply to his master--
+things which had the desired though unexpected ef-
+fect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary
+emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.
+ 
+  In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan's
+mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic eman-
+cipation.  These were choice documents to me.  I read
+them over and over again with unabated interest.
+They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own
+soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind,
+and died away for want of utterance.  The moral
+which I gained from the dialogue was the power of
+truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder.  What
+I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slav-
+ery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.
+The reading of these documents enabled me to
+utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments
+brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they
+relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on an-
+other even more painful than the one of which I was
+relieved.  The more I read, the more I was led to
+abhor and detest my enslavers.  I could regard them
+in no other light than a band of successful robbers,
+who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and
+stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land
+reduced us to slavery.  I loathed them as being the
+meanest as well as the most wicked of men.  As I
+read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very
+discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted
+would follow my learning to read had already come,
+to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish.
+As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that
+learning to read had been a curse rather than a bless-
+ing.  It had given me a view of my wretched condi-
+tion, without the remedy.  It opened my eyes to the
+horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.
+In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for
+their stupidity.  I have often wished myself a beast.
+I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to
+my own.  Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of
+thinking!  It was this everlasting thinking of my con-
+dition that tormented me.  There was no getting rid
+of it.  It was pressed upon me by every object within
+sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.  The silver
+trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal
+wakefulness.  Freedom now appeared, to disappear
+no more forever.  It was heard in every sound, and
+seen in every thing.  It was ever present to torment
+me with a sense of my wretched condition.  I saw
+nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without
+hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it.  It
+looked from every star, it smiled in every calm,
+breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
+ 
+  I often found myself regretting my own existence,
+and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of
+being free, I have no doubt but that I should have
+killed myself, or done something for which I should
+have been killed.  While in this state of mind, I was
+eager to hear any one speak of slavery.  I was a ready
+listener.  Every little while, I could hear something
+about the abolitionists.  It was some time before I
+found what the word meant.  It was always used in
+such connections as to make it an interesting word
+to me.  If a slave ran away and succeeded in getting
+clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a
+barn, or did any thing very wrong in the mind of a
+slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of ~abolition.~
+Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set
+about learning what it meant.  The dictionary af-
+forded me little or no help.  I found it was "the act
+of abolishing;" but then I did not know what was
+to be abolished.  Here I was perplexed.  I did not
+dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was
+satisfied that it was something they wanted me to
+know very little about.  After a patient waiting, I got
+one of our city papers, containing an account of the
+number of petitions from the north, praying for the
+abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and
+of the slave trade between the States.  From this
+time I understood the words ~abolition~ and ~abolition-
+ist,~ and always drew near when that word was spoken,
+expecting to hear something of importance to my-
+self and fellow-slaves.  The light broke in upon me
+by degrees.  I went one day down on the wharf of
+Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a
+scow of stone, I went, unasked, and helped them.
+When we had finished, one of them came to me
+and asked me if I were a slave.  I told him I was.  He
+asked, "Are ye a slave for life?"  I told him that I
+was.  The good Irishman seemed to be deeply af-
+fected by the statement.  He said to the other that
+it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should
+be a slave for life.  He said it was a shame to hold
+me.  They both advised me to run away to the north;
+that I should find friends there, and that I should
+be free.  I pretended not to be interested in what
+they said, and treated them as if I did not under-
+stand them; for I feared they might be treacherous.
+White men have been known to encourage slaves to
+escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and
+return them to their masters.  I was afraid that these
+seemingly good men might use me so; but I never-
+theless remembered their advice, and from that time
+I resolved to run away.  I looked forward to a time
+at which it would be safe for me to escape.  I was
+too young to think of doing so immediately; besides,
+I wished to learn how to write, as I might have oc-
+casion to write my own pass.  I consoled myself with
+the hope that I should one day find a good chance.
+Meanwhile, I would learn to write.
+ 
+  The idea as to how I might learn to write was
+suggested to me by being in Durgin and Bailey's
+ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters,
+after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready
+for use, write on the timber the name of that part
+of the ship for which it was intended.  When a piece
+of timber was intended for the larboard side, it
+would be marked thus--"L."  When a piece was for
+the starboard side, it would be marked thus--"S."  A
+piece for the larboard side forward, would be marked
+thus--"L. F."  When a piece was for starboard side
+forward, it would be marked thus--"S. F."  For lar-
+board aft, it would be marked thus--"L. A."  For star-
+board aft, it would be marked thus--"S. A."  I soon
+learned the names of these letters, and for what
+they were intended when placed upon a piece of
+timber in the ship-yard.  I immediately commenced
+copying them, and in a short time was able to make
+the four letters named.  After that, when I met with
+any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him
+I could write as well as he.  The next word would be,
+"I don't believe you.  Let me see you try it."  I would
+then make the letters which I had been so fortunate
+as to learn, and ask him to beat that.  In this way I
+got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite
+possible I should never have gotten in any other way.
+During this time, my copy-book was the board fence,
+brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a
+lump of chalk.  With these, I learned mainly how to
+write.  I then commenced and continued copying the
+Italics in Webster's Spelling Book, until I could make
+them all without looking on the book.  By this time,
+my little Master Thomas had gone to school, and
+learned how to write, and had written over a number
+of copy-books.  These had been brought home, and
+shown to some of our near neighbors, and then laid
+aside.  My mistress used to go to class meeting at
+the Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday after-
+noon, and leave me to take care of the house.  When
+left thus, I used to spend the time in writing in the
+spaces left in Master Thomas's copy-book, copying
+what he had written.  I continued to do this until I
+could write a hand very similar to that of Master
+Thomas.  Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years,
+I finally succeeded in learning how to write.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                   CHAPTER VIII
+ 
+ 
+  In a very short time after I went to live at Balti-
+more, my old master's youngest son Richard died;
+and in about three years and six months after his
+death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leav-
+only his son, Andrew, and daughter, Lucretia, to
+share his estate.  He died while on a visit to see his
+daughter at Hillsborough.  Cut off thus unexpectedly,
+he left no will as to the disposal of his property.  It
+was therefore necessary to have a valuation of the
+property, that it might be equally divided between
+Mrs. Lucretia and Master Andrew.  I was immedi-
+ately sent for, to be valued with the other property.
+Here again my feelings rose up in detestation of
+slavery.  I had now a new conception of my degraded
+condition.  Prior to this, I had become, if not in-
+sensible to my lot, at least partly so.  I left Baltimore
+with a young heart overborne with sadness, and a
+soul full of apprehension.  I took passage with Cap-
+tain Rowe, in the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a
+sail of about twenty-four hours, I found myself near
+the place of my birth.  I had now been absent from
+it almost, if not quite, five years.  I, however, re-
+membered the place very well.  I was only about
+five years old when I left it, to go and live with my
+old master on Colonel Lloyd's plantation; so that
+I was now between ten and eleven years old.
+ 
+  We were all ranked together at the valuation.  Men
+and women, old and young, married and single, were
+ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.  There were
+horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and chil-
+dren, all holding the same rank in the scale of being,
+and were all subjected to the same narrow examina-
+tion.  Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids
+and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate
+inspection.  At this moment, I saw more clearly than
+ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both
+slave and slaveholder.
+ 
+  After the valuation, then came the division.  I have
+no language to express the high excitement and deep
+anxiety which were felt among us poor slaves during
+this time.  Our fate for life was now to be decided.
+we had no more voice in that decision than the
+brutes among whom we were ranked.  A single word
+from the white men was enough--against all our
+wishes, prayers, and entreaties--to sunder forever the
+dearest friends, dearest kindred, and strongest ties
+known to human beings.  In addition to the pain of
+separation, there was the horrid dread of falling into
+the hands of Master Andrew.  He was known to us
+all as being a most cruel wretch,--a common drunk-
+ard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and
+profligate dissipation, already wasted a large por-
+tion of his father's property.  We all felt that we
+might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders,
+as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that
+would be our inevitable condition,--a condition held
+by us all in the utmost horror and dread.
+ 
+  I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-
+slaves.  I had known what it was to be kindly treated;
+they had known nothing of the kind.  They had seen
+little or nothing of the world.  They were in very
+deed men and women of sorrow, and acquainted with
+grief.  Their backs had been made familiar with the
+bloody lash, so that they had become callous; mine
+was yet tender; for while at Baltimore I got few whip-
+pings, and few slaves could boast of a kinder master
+and mistress than myself; and the thought of pass-
+ing out of their hands into those of Master Andrew--
+a man who, but a few days before, to give me a
+sample of his bloody disposition, took my little
+brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and
+with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head
+till the blood gushed from his nose and ears--was
+well calculated to make me anxious as to my fate.
+After he had committed this savage outrage upon
+my brother, he turned to me, and said that was the
+way he meant to serve me one of these days,--mean-
+ing, I suppose, when I came into his possession.
+ 
+  Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion
+of Mrs. Lucretia, and was sent immediately back
+to Baltimore, to live again in the family of Master
+Hugh.  Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow
+at my departure.  It was a glad day to me.  I had
+escaped a worse than lion's jaws.  I was absent from
+Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and division,
+just about one month, and it seemed to have been
+six.
+ 
+  Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mis-
+tress, Lucretia, died, leaving her husband and one
+child, Amanda; and in a very short time after her
+death, Master Andrew died.  Now all the property
+of my old master, slaves included, was in the hands
+of strangers,--strangers who had had nothing to do
+with accumulating it.  Not a slave was left free.  All
+remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest.  If
+any one thing in my experience, more than another,
+served to deepen my conviction of the infernal char-
+acter of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable
+loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingrati-
+tude to my poor old grandmother.  She had served
+my old master faithfully from youth to old age.  She
+had been the source of all his wealth; she had peo-
+pled his plantation with slaves; she had become a
+great grandmother in his service.  She had rocked
+him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served
+him through life, and at his death wiped from his
+icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes
+forever.  She was nevertheless left a slave--a slave for
+life--a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their
+hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and
+her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep,
+without being gratified with the small privilege of a
+single word, as to their or her own destiny.  And, to
+cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish
+barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old,
+having outlived my old master and all his children,
+having seen the beginning and end of all of them,
+and her present owners finding she was of but little
+value, her frame already racked with the pains of old
+age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her
+once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built
+her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and
+then made her welcome to the privilege of support-
+ing herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually
+turning her out to die!  If my poor old grandmother
+now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she
+lives to remember and mourn over the loss of chil-
+dren, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-
+grandchildren.  They are, in the language of the
+slave's poet, Whittier,--
+ 
+ 
+  "Gone, gone, sold and gone
+ 
+  To the rice swamp dank and lone,
+ 
+  Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
+ 
+  Where the noisome insect stings,
+ 
+  Where the fever-demon strews
+ 
+  Poison with the falling dews,
+ 
+  Where the sickly sunbeams glare
+ 
+  Through the hot and misty air:--
+ 
+    Gone, gone, sold and gone
+ 
+    To the rice swamp dank and lone,
+ 
+    From Virginia hills and waters--
+ 
+    Woe is me, my stolen daughters!"
+ 
+ 
+  The hearth is desolate.  The children, the uncon-
+scious children, who once sang and danced in her
+presence, are gone.  She gropes her way, in the dark-
+ness of age, for a drink of water.  Instead of the voices
+of her children, she hears by day the moans of the
+dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl.
+All is gloom.  The grave is at the door.  And now,
+when weighed down by the pains and aches of old
+age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the
+beginning and ending of human existence meet, and
+helpless infancy and painful old age combine to-
+gether--at this time, this most needful time, the time
+for the exercise of that tenderness and affection
+which children only can exercise towards a declining
+parent--my poor old grandmother, the devoted
+mother of twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder
+little hut, before a few dim embers.  She stands--
+she sits--she staggers--she falls--she groans--she dies
+--and there are none of her children or grandchildren
+present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold
+sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her
+fallen remains.  Will not a righteous God visit for
+these things?
+ 
+  In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lu-
+cretia, Master Thomas married his second wife.  Her
+name was Rowena Hamilton.  She was the eldest
+daughter of Mr. William Hamilton.  Master now
+lived in St. Michael's.  Not long after his marriage,
+a misunderstanding took place between himself and
+Master Hugh; and as a means of punishing his
+brother, he took me from him to live with himself
+at St. Michael's.  Here I underwent another most
+painful separation.  It, however, was not so severe
+as the one I dreaded at the division of property; for,
+during this interval, a great change had taken place
+in Master Hugh and his once kind and affectionate
+wife.  The influence of brandy upon him, and of
+slavery upon her, had effected a disastrous change
+in the characters of both; so that, as far as they
+were concerned, I thought I had little to lose by the
+change.  But it was not to them that I was attached.
+It was to those little Baltimore boys that I felt the
+strongest attachment.  I had received many good
+lessons from them, and was still receiving them, and
+the thought of leaving them was painful indeed.  I
+was leaving, too, without the hope of ever being
+allowed to return.  Master Thomas had said he would
+never let me return again.  The barrier betwixt him-
+self and brother he considered impassable.
+ 
+  I then had to regret that I did not at least make
+the attempt to carry out my resolution to run away;
+for the chances of success are tenfold greater from
+the city than from the country.
+ 
+  I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael's in the
+sloop Amanda, Captain Edward Dodson.  On my
+passage, I paid particular attention to the direction
+which the steamboats took to go to Philadelphia.  I
+found, instead of going down, on reaching North
+Point they went up the bay, in a north-easterly direc-
+tion.  I deemed this knowledge of the utmost im-
+portance.  My determination to run away was again
+revived.  I resolved to wait only so long as the offering
+of a favorable opportunity.  When that came, I was
+determined to be off.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                    CHAPTER IX
+ 
+ 
+  I have now reached a period of my life when I
+can give dates.  I left Baltimore, and went to live
+with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael's, in
+March, 1832.  It was now more than seven years
+since I lived with him in the family of my old mas-
+ter, on Colonel Lloyd's plantation.  We of course
+were now almost entire strangers to each other.  He
+was to me a new master, and I to him a new slave.
+I was ignorant of his temper and disposition; he
+was equally so of mine.  A very short time, however,
+brought us into full acquaintance with each other.
+I was made acquainted with his wife not less than
+with himself.  They were well matched, being equally
+mean and cruel.  I was now, for the first time during
+a space of more than seven years, made to feel the
+painful gnawings of hunger--a something which I
+had not experienced before since I left Colonel
+Lloyd's plantation.  It went hard enough with me
+then, when I could look back to no period at which
+I had enjoyed a sufficiency.  It was tenfold harder
+after living in Master Hugh's family, where I had
+always had enough to eat, and of that which was
+good.  I have said Master Thomas was a mean man.
+He was so.  Not to give a slave enough to eat, is
+regarded as the most aggravated development of
+meanness even among slaveholders.  The rule is, no
+matter how coarse the food, only let there be enough
+of it.  This is the theory; and in the part of Maryland
+from which I came, it is the general practice,--though
+there are many exceptions.  Master Thomas gave us
+enough of neither coarse nor fine food.  There were
+four slaves of us in the kitchen--my sister Eliza, my
+aunt Priscilla, Henny, and myself; and we were al-
+lowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per
+week, and very little else, either in the shape of
+meat or vegetables.  It was not enough for us to
+subsist upon.  We were therefore reduced to the
+wretched necessity of living at the expense of our
+neighbors.  This we did by begging and stealing,
+whichever came handy in the time of need, the one
+being considered as legitimate as the other.  A great
+many times have we poor creatures been nearly
+perishing with hunger, when food in abundance lay
+mouldering in the safe and smoke-house, and our
+pious mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that
+mistress and her husband would kneel every morn-
+ing, and pray that God would bless them in basket
+and store!
+ 
+  Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one
+destitute of every element of character commanding
+respect.  My master was one of this rare sort.  I do
+not know of one single noble act ever performed by
+him.  The leading trait in his character was mean-
+ness; and if there were any other element in his
+nature, it was made subject to this.  He was mean;
+and, like most other mean men, he lacked the ability
+to conceal his meanness.  Captain Auld was not born
+a slaveholder.  He had been a poor man, master only
+of a Bay craft.  He came into possession of all his
+slaves by marriage; and of all men, adopted slave-
+holders are the worst.  He was cruel, but cowardly.
+He commanded without firmness.  In the enforce-
+ment of his rules, he was at times rigid, and at times
+lax.  At times, he spoke to his slaves with the firmness
+of Napoleon and the fury of a demon; at other times,
+he might well be mistaken for an inquirer who had
+lost his way.  He did nothing of himself.  He might
+have passed for a lion, but for his ears.  In all things
+noble which he attempted, his own meanness shone
+most conspicuous.  His airs, words, and actions,
+were the airs, words, and actions of born slave-
+holders, and, being assumed, were awkward enough.
+He was not even a good imitator.  He possessed all
+the disposition to deceive, but wanted the power.
+Having no resources within himself, he was com-
+pelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he
+was forever the victim of inconsistency; and of con-
+sequence he was an object of contempt, and was held
+as such even by his slaves.  The luxury of having
+slaves of his own to wait upon him was something
+new and unprepared for.  He was a slaveholder with-
+out the ability to hold slaves.  He found himself in-
+capable of managing his slaves either by force, fear,
+or fraud.  We seldom called him "master;" we gen-
+erally called him "Captain Auld," and were hardly
+disposed to title him at all.  I doubt not that our
+conduct had much to do with making him appear
+awkward, and of consequence fretful.  Our want of
+reverence for him must have perplexed him greatly.
+He wished to have us call him master, but lacked
+the firmness necessary to command us to do so.  His
+wife used to insist upon our calling him so, but to
+no purpose.  In August, 1832, my master attended a
+Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Tal-
+bot county, and there experienced religion.  I in-
+dulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead
+him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not
+do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind
+and humane.  I was disappointed in both these re-
+spects.  It neither made him to be humane to his
+slaves, nor to emancipate them.  If it had any effect
+on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful
+in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much
+worse man after his conversion than before.  Prior
+to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity
+to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity;
+but after his conversion, he found religious sanction
+and support for his slaveholding cruelty.  He made
+the greatest pretensions to piety.  His house was the
+house of prayer.  He prayed morning, noon, and
+night.  He very soon distinguished himself among
+his brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and
+exhorter.  His activity in revivals was great, and he
+proved himself an instrument in the hands of the
+church in converting many souls.  His house was the
+preachers' home.  They used to take great pleasure
+in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he
+stuffed them.  We have had three or four preachers
+there at a time.  The names of those who used to
+come most frequently while I lived there, were Mr.
+Storks, Mr. Ewery, Mr. Humphry, and Mr. Hickey.
+I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at our house.
+We slaves loved Mr. Cookman.  We believed him to
+be a good man.  We thought him instrumental in get-
+ting Mr. Samuel Harrison, a very rich slaveholder, to
+emancipate his slaves; and by some means got the
+impression that he was laboring to effect the emanci-
+pation of all the slaves.  When he was at our house,
+we were sure to be called in to prayers.  When the
+others were there, we were sometimes called in and
+sometimes not.  Mr. Cookman took more notice of
+us than either of the other ministers.  He could not
+come among us without betraying his sympathy for
+us, and, stupid as we were, we had the sagacity to
+see it.
+ 
+  While I lived with my master in St. Michael's,
+there was a white young man, a Mr. Wilson, who
+proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the instruction
+of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read
+the New Testament.  We met but three times, when
+Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both class-leaders,
+with many others, came upon us with sticks and
+other missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet
+again.  Thus ended our little Sabbath school in the
+pious town of St. Michael's.
+ 
+  I have said my master found religious sanction
+for his cruelty.  As an example, I will state one of
+many facts going to prove the charge.  I have seen
+him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with
+a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing
+the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification
+of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of
+Scripture--"He that knoweth his master's will, and
+doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes."
+ 
+  Master would keep this lacerated young woman
+tied up in this horrid situation four or five hours at
+a time.  I have known him to tie her up early in the
+morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her,
+go to his store, return at dinner, and whip her again,
+cutting her in the places already made raw with his
+cruel lash.  The secret of master's cruelty toward
+"Henny" is found in the fact of her being almost
+helpless.  When quite a child, she fell into the fire,
+and burned herself horribly.  Her hands were so
+burnt that she never got the use of them.  She could
+do very little but bear heavy burdens.  She was to
+master a bill of expense; and as he was a mean man,
+she was a constant offence to him.  He seemed
+desirous of getting the poor girl out of existence.
+He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a
+poor gift, she was not disposed to keep her.  Finally,
+my benevolent master, to use his own words, "set
+her adrift to take care of herself."  Here was a re-
+cently-converted man, holding on upon the mother,
+and at the same time turning out her helpless child,
+to starve and die!  Master Thomas was one of the
+many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the
+very charitable purpose of taking care of them.
+ 
+  My master and myself had quite a number of
+differences.  He found me unsuitable to his purpose.
+My city life, he said, had had a very pernicious effect
+upon me.  It had almost ruined me for every good
+purpose, and fitted me for every thing which was
+bad.  One of my greatest faults was that of letting
+his horse run away, and go down to his father-in-
+law's farm, which was about five miles from St.
+Michael's.  I would then have to go after it.  My
+reason for this kind of carelessness, or carefulness,
+was, that I could always get something to eat when
+I went there.  Master William Hamilton, my master's
+father-in-law, always gave his slaves enough to eat.
+I never left there hungry, no matter how great the
+need of my speedy return.  Master Thomas at length
+said he would stand it no longer.  I had lived with
+him nine months, during which time he had given
+me a number of severe whippings, all to no good
+purpose.  He resolved to put me out, as he said, to
+be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one
+year to a man named Edward Covey.  Mr. Covey
+was a poor man, a farm-renter.  He rented the place
+upon which he lived, as also the hands with which
+he tilled it.  Mr. Covey had acquired a very high
+reputation for breaking young slaves, and this repu-
+tation was of immense value to him.  It enabled him
+to get his farm tilled with much less expense to
+himself than he could have had it done without
+such a reputation.  Some slaveholders thought it not
+much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves
+one year, for the sake of the training to which they
+were subjected, without any other compensation.
+He could hire young help with great ease, in con-
+sequence of this reputation.  Added to the natural
+good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of
+religion--a pious soul--a member and a class-leader in
+the Methodist church.  All of this added weight to
+his reputation as a "nigger-breaker."  I was aware of
+all the facts, having been made acquainted with
+them by a young man who had lived there.  I never-
+theless made the change gladly; for I was sure of
+getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest
+consideration to a hungry man.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                     CHAPTER X
+ 
+ 
+  I had left Master Thomas's house, and went to live
+with Mr. Covey, on the 1st of January, 1833.  I was
+now, for the first time in my life, a field hand.  In
+my new employment, I found myself even more
+awkward than a country boy appeared to be in a
+large city.  I had been at my new home but one
+week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whip-
+ping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run,
+and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger.
+The details of this affair are as follows: Mr. Covey
+sent me, very early in the morning of one of our
+coldest days in the month of January, to the woods,
+to get a load of wood.  He gave me a team of un-
+broken oxen.  He told me which was the in-hand ox,
+and which the off-hand one.  He then tied the end
+of a large rope around the horns of the in-hand ox,
+and gave me the other end of it, and told me, if
+the oxen started to run, that I must hold on upon
+the rope.  I had never driven oxen before, and of
+course I was very awkward.  I, however, succeeded in
+getting to the edge of the woods with little diffi-
+culty; but I had got a very few rods into the woods,
+when the oxen took fright, and started full tilt, carry-
+ing the cart against trees, and over stumps, in the
+most frightful manner.  I expected every moment
+that my brains would be dashed out against the
+trees.  After running thus for a considerable dis-
+tance, they finally upset the cart, dashing it with
+great force against a tree, and threw themselves into
+a dense thicket.  How I escaped death, I do not
+know.  There I was, entirely alone, in a thick wood,
+in a place new to me.  My cart was upset and shat-
+tered, my oxen were entangled among the young
+trees, and there was none to help me.  After a long
+spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart righted,
+my oxen disentangled, and again yoked to the cart.
+I now proceeded with my team to the place where
+I had, the day before, been chopping wood, and
+loaded my cart pretty heavily, thinking in this way
+to tame my oxen.  I then proceeded on my way
+home.  I had now consumed one half of the day.  I
+got out of the woods safely, and now felt out of
+danger.  I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate;
+and just as I did so, before I could get hold of my
+ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed through the
+gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of
+the cart, tearing it to pieces, and coming within a
+few inches of crushing me against the gate-post.  Thus
+twice, in one short day, I escaped death by the
+merest chance.  On my return, I told Mr. Covey
+what had happened, and how it happened.  He or-
+dered me to return to the woods again immediately.
+I did so, and he followed on after me.  Just as I got
+into the woods, he came up and told me to stop my
+cart, and that he would teach me how to trifle away
+my time, and break gates.  He then went to a large
+gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches,
+and, after trimming them up neatly with his pocket-
+knife, he ordered me to take off my clothes.  I made
+him no answer, but stood with my clothes on.  He
+repeated his order.  I still made him no answer, nor
+did I move to strip myself.  Upon this he rushed
+at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my
+clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his
+switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks
+visible for a long time after.  This whipping was the
+first of a number just like it, and for similar of-
+fences.
+ 
+  I lived with Mr. Covey one year.  During the first
+six months, of that year, scarce a week passed with-
+out his whipping me.  I was seldom free from a sore
+back.  My awkwardness was almost always his ex-
+cuse for whipping me.  We were worked fully up
+to the point of endurance.  Long before day we were
+up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day
+we were off to the field with our hoes and plough-
+ing teams.  Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat, but
+scarce time to eat it.  We were often less than five
+minutes taking our meals.  We were often in the field
+from the first approach of day till its last lingering
+ray had left us; and at saving-fodder time, midnight
+often caught us in the field binding blades.
+ 
+  Covey would be out with us.  The way he used to
+stand it, was this.  He would spend the most of his
+afternoons in bed.  He would then come out fresh
+in the evening, ready to urge us on with his words,
+example, and frequently with the whip.  Mr. Covey
+was one of the few slaveholders who could and did
+work with his hands.  He was a hard-working man.
+He knew by himself just what a man or a boy could
+do.  There was no deceiving him.  His work went on
+in his absence almost as well as in his presence; and
+he had the faculty of making us feel that he was
+ever present with us.  This he did by surprising us.
+He seldom approached the spot where we were at
+work openly, if he could do it secretly.  He always
+aimed at taking us by surprise.  Such was his cunning,
+that we used to call him, among ourselves, "the
+snake."  When we were at work in the cornfield, he
+would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to
+avoid detection, and all at once he would rise
+nearly in our midst, and scream out, "Ha, ha!
+Come, come!  Dash on, dash on!"  This being his
+mode of attack, it was never safe to stop a single
+minute.  His comings were like a thief in the night.
+He appeared to us as being ever at hand.  He was
+under every tree, behind every stump, in every bush,
+and at every window, on the plantation.  He would
+sometimes mount his horse, as if bound to St. Mi-
+chael's, a distance of seven miles, and in half an
+hour afterwards you would see him coiled up in
+the corner of the wood-fence, watching every motion
+of the slaves.  He would, for this purpose, leave his
+horse tied up in the woods.  Again, he would some-
+times walk up to us, and give us orders as though
+he was upon the point of starting on a long journey,
+turn his back upon us, and make as though he was
+going to the house to get ready; and, before he would
+get half way thither, he would turn short and crawl
+into a fence-corner, or behind some tree, and there
+watch us till the going down of the sun.
+ 
+  Mr. Covey's FORTE consisted in his power to de-
+ceive.  His life was devoted to planning and perpe-
+trating the grossest deceptions.  Every thing he pos-
+sessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made
+conform to his disposition to deceive.  He seemed
+to think himself equal to deceiving the Almighty.
+He would make a short prayer in the morning, and
+a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem,
+few men would at times appear more devotional
+than he.  The exercises of his family devotions were
+always commenced with singing; and, as he was a
+very poor singer himself, the duty of raising the
+hymn generally came upon me.  He would read his
+hymn, and nod at me to commence.  I would at
+times do so; at others, I would not.  My non-com-
+pliance would almost always produce much confu-
+sion.  To show himself independent of me, he would
+start and stagger through with his hymn in the most
+discordant manner.  In this state of mind, he prayed
+with more than ordinary spirit.  Poor man! such was
+his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily
+believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the
+solemn belief, that he was a sincere worshipper of
+the most high God; and this, too, at a time when
+he may be said to have been guilty of compelling
+his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery.  The
+facts in the case are these:  Mr. Covey was a poor
+man; he was just commencing in life; he was only
+able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact,
+he bought her, as he said, for A BREEDER.  This woman
+was named Caroline.  Mr. Covey bought her from
+Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St. Mi-
+chael's.  She was a large, able-bodied woman, about
+twenty years old.  She had already given birth to one
+child, which proved her to be just what he wanted.
+After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr.
+Samuel Harrison, to live with him one year; and him
+he used to fasten up with her every night!  The re-
+sult was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable
+woman gave birth to twins.  At this result Mr. Covey
+seemed to be highly pleased, both with the man and
+the wretched woman.  Such was his joy, and that of
+his wife, that nothing they could do for Caroline
+during her confinement was too good, or too hard,
+to be done.  The children were regarded as being
+quite an addition to his wealth.
+ 
+  If at any one time of my life more than another,
+I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery,
+that time was during the first six months of my stay
+with Mr. Covey.  We were worked in all weathers.
+It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain,
+blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the
+field.  Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order
+of the day than of the night.  The longest days were
+too short for him, and the shortest nights too long
+for him.  I was somewhat unmanageable when I first
+went there, but a few months of this discipline
+tamed me.  Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me.  I
+was broken in body, soul, and spirit.  My natural
+elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the
+disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that
+lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery
+closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed
+into a brute!
+ 
+  Sunday was my only leisure time.  I spent this in
+a sort of beast-like stupor, between sleep and wake,
+under some large tree.  At times I would rise up, a
+flash of energetic freedom would dart through my
+soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that
+flickered for a moment, and then vanished.  I sank
+down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
+I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that
+of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of
+hope and fear.  My sufferings on this plantation seem
+now like a dream rather than a stern reality.
+ 
+  Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesa-
+peake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with
+sails from every quarter of the habitable globe.
+Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so
+delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so
+many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me
+with thoughts of my wretched condition.  I have of-
+ten, in the deep stillness of a summer's Sabbath,
+stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble
+bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
+eye, the countless number of sails moving off to
+the mighty ocean.  The sight of these always affected
+me powerfully.  My thoughts would compel utter-
+ance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty,
+I would pour out my soul's complaint, in my rude
+way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of
+ships:--
+ 
+  "You are loosed from your moorings, and are free;
+I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!  You move
+merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before
+the bloody whip!  You are freedom's swift-winged
+angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in
+bands of iron!  O that I were free!  O, that I were
+on one of your gallant decks, and under your pro-
+tecting wing!  Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid
+waters roll.  Go on, go on.  O that I could also go!
+Could I but swim!  If I could fly!  O, why was I born
+a man, of whom to make a brute!  The glad ship
+is gone; she hides in the dim distance.  I am left in
+the hottest hell of unending slavery.  O God, save
+me!  God, deliver me!  Let me be free!  Is there any
+God?  Why am I a slave?  I will run away.  I will not
+stand it.  Get caught, or get clear, I'll try it.  I had
+as well die with ague as the fever.  I have only one
+life to lose.  I had as well be killed running as die
+standing.  Only think of it; one hundred miles
+straight north, and I am free!  Try it?  Yes!  God
+helping me, I will.  It cannot be that I shall live
+and die a slave.  I will take to the water.  This very
+bay shall yet bear me into freedom.  The steam-
+boats steered in a north-east course from North
+Point.  I will do the same; and when I get to the
+head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and
+walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania.
+When I get there, I shall not be required to have a
+pass; I can travel without being disturbed.  Let but
+the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I
+am off.  Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under the
+yoke.  I am not the only slave in the world.  Why
+should I fret?  I can bear as much as any of them.
+Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to
+some one.  It may be that my misery in slavery will
+only increase my happiness when I get free.  There
+is a better day coming."
+ 
+  Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak
+to myself; goaded almost to madness at one mo-
+ment, and at the next reconciling myself to my
+wretched lot.
+ 
+  I have already intimated that my condition was
+much worse, during the first six months of my stay
+at Mr. Covey's, than in the last six.  The circum-
+stances leading to the change in Mr. Covey's course
+toward me form an epoch in my humble history.
+You have seen how a man was made a slave; you
+shall see how a slave was made a man.  On one of
+the hottest days of the month of August, 1833, Bill
+Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli, and
+myself, were engaged in fanning wheat.  Hughes was
+clearing the fanned wheat from before the fan.  Eli
+was turning, Smith was feeding, and I was carrying
+wheat to the fan.  The work was simple, requiring
+strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely
+unused to such work, it came very hard.  About three
+o'clock of that day, I broke down; my strength failed
+me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head,
+attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every
+limb.  Finding what was coming, I nerved myself
+up, feeling it would never do to stop work.  I stood
+as long as I could stagger to the hopper with grain.
+When I could stand no longer, I fell, and felt as
+if held down by an immense weight.  The fan of
+course stopped; every one had his own work to do;
+and no one could do the work of the other, and
+have his own go on at the same time.
+ 
+  Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred
+yards from the treading-yard where we were fanning.
+On hearing the fan stop, he left immediately, and
+came to the spot where we were.  He hastily in-
+quired what the matter was.  Bill answered that I
+was sick, and there was no one to bring wheat to the
+fan.  I had by this time crawled away under the
+side of the post and rail-fence by which the yard
+was enclosed, hoping to find relief by getting out
+of the sun.  He then asked where I was.  He was
+told by one of the hands.  He came to the spot, and,
+after looking at me awhile, asked me what was
+the matter.  I told him as well as I could, for I scarce
+had strength to speak.  He then gave me a savage
+kick in the side, and told me to get up.  I tried to
+do so, but fell back in the attempt.  He gave me
+another kick, and again told me to rise.  I again
+tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but, stoop-
+ing to get the tub with which I was feeding the
+fan, I again staggered and fell.  While down in this
+situation, Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat with
+which Hughes had been striking off the half-bushel
+measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon
+the head, making a large wound, and the blood ran
+freely; and with this again told me to get up.  I made
+no effort to comply, having now made up my mind
+to let him do his worst.  In a short time after re-
+ceiving this blow, my head grew better.  Mr. Covey
+had now left me to my fate.  At this moment I re-
+solved, for the first time, to go to my master, enter
+a complaint, and ask his protection.  In order to do
+this, I must that afternoon walk seven miles; and
+this, under the circumstances, was truly a severe
+undertaking.  I was exceedingly feeble; made so as
+much by the kicks and blows which I received, as
+by the severe fit of sickness to which I had been
+subjected.  I, however, watched my chance, while
+Covey was looking in an opposite direction, and
+started for St. Michael's.  I succeeded in getting a
+considerable distance on my way to the woods, when
+Covey discovered me, and called after me to come
+back, threatening what he would do if I did not
+come.  I disregarded both his calls and his threats,
+and made my way to the woods as fast as my feeble
+state would allow; and thinking I might be over-
+hauled by him if I kept the road, I walked through
+the woods, keeping far enough from the road to
+avoid detection, and near enough to prevent losing
+my way.  I had not gone far before my little strength
+again failed me.  I could go no farther.  I fell down,
+and lay for a considerable time.  The blood was yet
+oozing from the wound on my head.  For a time I
+thought I should bleed to death; and think now that
+I should have done so, but that the blood so matted
+my hair as to stop the wound.  After lying there
+about three quarters of an hour, I nerved myself
+up again, and started on my way, through bogs and
+briers, barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet
+sometimes at nearly every step; and after a journey
+of about seven miles, occupying some five hours to
+perform it, I arrived at master's store.  I then pre-
+sented an appearance enough to affect any but a
+heart of iron.  From the crown of my head to my
+feet, I was covered with blood.  My hair was all
+clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff with
+blood.  I suppose I looked like a man who had es-
+caped a den of wild beasts, and barely escaped them.
+In this state I appeared before my master, humbly
+entreating him to interpose his authority for my
+protection.  I told him all the circumstances as well
+as I could, and it seemed, as I spoke, at times to
+affect him.  He would then walk the floor, and seek
+to justify Covey by saying he expected I deserved
+it.  He asked me what I wanted.  I told him, to let
+me get a new home; that as sure as I lived with Mr.
+Covey again, I should live with but to die with
+him; that Covey would surely kill me; he was in a
+fair way for it.  Master Thomas ridiculed the idea
+that there was any danger of Mr. Covey's killing
+me, and said that he knew Mr. Covey; that he was
+a good man, and that he could not think of taking
+me from him; that, should he do so, he would lose
+the whole year's wages; that I belonged to Mr. Covey
+for one year, and that I must go back to him, come
+what might; and that I must not trouble him with
+any more stories, or that he would himself GET HOLD
+OF ME.  After threatening me thus, he gave me a very
+large dose of salts, telling me that I might remain
+in St. Michael's that night, (it being quite late,)
+but that I must be off back to Mr. Covey's early
+in the morning; and that if I did not, he would
+~get hold of me,~ which meant that he would whip
+me.  I remained all night, and, according to his or-
+ders, I started off to Covey's in the morning, (Sat-
+urday morning,) wearied in body and broken in
+spirit.  I got no supper that night, or breakfast that
+morning.  I reached Covey's about nine o'clock; and
+just as I was getting over the fence that divided
+Mrs. Kemp's fields from ours, out ran Covey with
+his cowskin, to give me another whipping.  Before
+he could reach me, I succeeded in getting to the
+cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it afforded
+me the means of hiding.  He seemed very angry, and
+searched for me a long time.  My behavior was al-
+together unaccountable.  He finally gave up the
+chase, thinking, I suppose, that I must come home
+for something to eat; he would give himself no fur-
+ther trouble in looking for me.  I spent that day
+mostly in the woods, having the alternative before
+me,--to go home and be whipped to death, or stay
+in the woods and be starved to death.  That night,
+I fell in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave with whom
+I was somewhat acquainted.  Sandy had a free wife
+who lived about four miles from Mr. Covey's; and
+it being Saturday, he was on his way to see her.  I
+told him my circumstances, and he very kindly in-
+vited me to go home with him.  I went home with
+him, and talked this whole matter over, and got his
+advice as to what course it was best for me to pursue.
+I found Sandy an old adviser.  He told me, with
+great solemnity, I must go back to Covey; but that
+before I went, I must go with him into another
+part of the woods, where there was a certain ~root,~
+which, if I would take some of it with me, carrying
+it ~always on my right side,~ would render it impos-
+sible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to
+whip me.  He said he had carried it for years; and
+since he had done so, he had never received a blow,
+and never expected to while he carried it.  I at first
+rejected the idea, that the simple carrying of a root
+in my pocket would have any such effect as he had
+said, and was not disposed to take it; but Sandy
+impressed the necessity with much earnestness, tell-
+ing me it could do no harm, if it did no good.  To
+please him, I at length took the root, and, ac-
+cording to his direction, carried it upon my right
+side.  This was Sunday morning.  I immediately
+started for home; and upon entering the yard gate,
+out came Mr. Covey on his way to meeting.  He
+spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs
+from a lot near by, and passed on towards the
+church.  Now, this singular conduct of Mr. Covey
+really made me begin to think that there was some-
+thing in the ROOT which Sandy had given me; and
+had it been on any other day than Sunday, I could
+have attributed the conduct to no other cause than
+the influence of that root; and as it was, I was half
+inclined to think the ~root~ to be something more
+than I at first had taken it to be.  All went well till
+Monday morning.  On this morning, the virtue of
+the ROOT was fully tested.  Long before daylight, I
+was called to go and rub, curry, and feed, the horses.
+I obeyed, and was glad to obey.  But whilst thus
+engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some
+blades from the loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable
+with a long rope; and just as I was half out of the
+loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying
+me.  As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave
+a sudden spring, and as I did so, he holding to my
+legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor.
+Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and
+could do what he pleased; but at this moment--
+from whence came the spirit I don't know--I re-
+solved to fight; and, suiting my action to the reso-
+lution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I
+did so, I rose.  He held on to me, and I to him.  My
+resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey
+seemed taken all aback.  He trembled like a leaf.
+This gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy,
+causing the blood to run where I touched him with
+the ends of my fingers.  Mr. Covey soon called out
+to Hughes for help.  Hughes came, and, while Covey
+held me, attempted to tie my right hand.  While he
+was in the act of doing so, I watched my chance,
+and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs.
+This kick fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left
+me in the hands of Mr. Covey.  This kick had the
+effect of not only weakening Hughes, but Covey also.
+When he saw Hughes bending over with pain, his
+courage quailed.  He asked me if I meant to persist
+in my resistance.  I told him I did, come what
+might; that he had used me like a brute for six
+months, and that I was determined to be used so
+no longer.  With that, he strove to drag me to a
+stick that was lying just out of the stable door.  He
+meant to knock me down.  But just as he was leaning
+over to get the stick, I seized him with both hands
+by his collar, and brought him by a sudden snatch
+to the ground.  By this time, Bill came.  Covey called
+upon him for assistance.  Bill wanted to know what
+he could do.  Covey said, "Take hold of him, take
+hold of him!"  Bill said his master hired him out to
+work, and not to help to whip me; so he left Covey
+and myself to fight our own battle out.  We were
+at it for nearly two hours.  Covey at length let me
+go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying that
+if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped
+me half so much.  The truth was, that he had not
+whipped me at all.  I considered him as getting en-
+tirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn
+no blood from me, but I had from him.  The whole
+six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey,
+he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in
+anger.  He would occasionally say, he didn't want
+to get hold of me again.  "No," thought I, "you
+need not; for you will come off worse than you did
+before."
+ 
+  This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-
+point in my career as a slave.  It rekindled the few
+expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me
+a sense of my own manhood.  It recalled the de-
+parted self-confidence, and inspired me again with
+a determination to be free.  The gratification af-
+forded by the triumph was a full compensation for
+whatever else might follow, even death itself.  He
+only can understand the deep satisfaction which I
+experienced, who has himself repelled by force the
+bloody arm of slavery.  I felt as I never felt before.
+It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of
+slavery, to the heaven of freedom.  My long-crushed
+spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took
+its place; and I now resolved that, however long I
+might remain a slave in form, the day had passed
+forever when I could be a slave in fact.  I did not
+hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white
+man who expected to succeed in whipping, must
+also succeed in killing me.
+ 
+  From this time I was never again what might be
+called fairly whipped, though I remained a slave
+four years afterwards.  I had several fights, but was
+never whipped.
+ 
+  It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me
+why Mr. Covey did not immediately have me taken
+by the constable to the whipping-post, and there
+regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand
+against a white man in defence of myself.  And the
+only explanation I can now think of does not entirely
+satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give it.  Mr. Covey
+enjoyed the most unbounded reputation for being
+a first-rate overseer and negro-breaker.  It was of con-
+siderable importance to him.  That reputation was at
+stake; and had he sent me--a boy about sixteen years
+old--to the public whipping-post, his reputation
+would have been lost; so, to save his reputation, he
+suffered me to go unpunished.
+ 
+  My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey
+ended on Christmas day, 1833.  The days between
+Christmas and New Year's day are allowed as holi-
+days; and, accordingly, we were not required to per-
+form any labor, more than to feed and take care of
+the stock.  This time we regarded as our own, by the
+grace of our masters; and we therefore used or
+abused it nearly as we pleased.  Those of us who had
+families at a distance, were generally allowed to
+spend the whole six days in their society.  This time,
+however, was spent in various ways.  The staid, sober,
+thinking and industrious ones of our number would
+employ themselves in making corn-brooms, mats,
+horse-collars, and baskets; and another class of us
+would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares,
+and coons.  But by far the larger part engaged in
+such sports and merriments as playing ball, wres-
+tling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and
+drinking whisky; and this latter mode of spending
+the time was by far the most agreeable to the feel-
+ings of our masters.  A slave who would work during
+the holidays was considered by our masters as
+scarcely deserving them.  He was regarded as one
+who rejected the favor of his master.  It was deemed
+a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he
+was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided
+himself with the necessary means, during the year,
+to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas.
+ 
+  From what I know of the effect of these holidays
+upon the slave, I believe them to be among the
+most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder
+in keeping down the spirit of insurrection.  Were
+the slaveholders at once to abandon this practice,
+I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an
+immediate insurrection among the slaves.  These
+holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry
+off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity.  But
+for these, the slave would be forced up to the wild-
+est desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the
+day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation
+of those conductors!  I warn him that, in such an
+event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to
+be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake.
+ 
+  The holidays are part and parcel of the gross
+fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery.  They are
+professedly a custom established by the benevolence
+of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the
+result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds
+committed upon the down-trodden slave.  They do
+not give the slaves this time because they would
+not like to have their work during its continuance,
+but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive
+them of it.  This will be seen by the fact, that the
+slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those
+days just in such a manner as to make them as glad
+of their ending as of their beginning.  Their object
+seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom,
+by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipa-
+tion.  For instance, the slaveholders not only like to
+see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt
+various plans to make him drunk.  One plan is, to
+make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the
+most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way
+they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink
+to excess.  Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous
+freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ig-
+norance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissi-
+pation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty.
+The most of us used to drink it down, and the result
+was just what might be supposed; many of us
+were led to think that there was little to choose
+between liberty and slavery.  We felt, and very prop-
+erly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to
+man as to rum.  So, when the holidays ended, we
+staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took
+a long breath, and marched to the field,--feeling,
+upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our
+master had deceived us into a belief was freedom,
+back to the arms of slavery.
+ 
+  I have said that this mode of treatment is a part
+of the whole system of fraud and inhumanity of
+slavery.  It is so.  The mode here adopted to disgust
+the slave with freedom, by allowing him to see only
+the abuse of it, is carried out in other things.  For
+instance, a slave loves molasses; he steals some.
+His master, in many cases, goes off to town, and
+buys a large quantity; he returns, takes his whip,
+and commands the slave to eat the molasses, until
+the poor fellow is made sick at the very mention
+of it.  The same mode is sometimes adopted to make
+the slaves refrain from asking for more food than
+their regular allowance.  A slave runs through his
+allowance, and applies for more.  His master is en-
+raged at him; but, not willing to send him off with-
+out food, gives him more than is necessary, and com-
+pels him to eat it within a given time.  Then, if he
+complains that he cannot eat it, he is said to be
+satisfied neither full nor fasting, and is whipped
+for being hard to please!  I have an abundance of
+such illustrations of the same principle, drawn from
+my own observation, but think the cases I have cited
+sufficient.  The practice is a very common one.
+ 
+  On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. Covey,
+and went to live with Mr. William Freeland, who
+lived about three miles from St. Michael's.  I soon
+found Mr. Freeland a very different man from Mr.
+Covey.  Though not rich, he was what would be
+called an educated southern gentleman.  Mr. Covey,
+as I have shown, was a well-trained negro-breaker
+and slave-driver.  The former (slaveholder though he
+was) seemed to possess some regard for honor,
+some reverence for justice, and some respect for
+humanity.  The latter seemed totally insensible to
+all such sentiments.  Mr. Freeland had many of the
+faults peculiar to slaveholders, such as being very
+passionate and fretful; but I must do him the
+justice to say, that he was exceedingly free from
+those degrading vices to which Mr. Covey was con-
+stantly addicted.  The one was open and frank, and
+we always knew where to find him.  The other was a
+most artful deceiver, and could be understood only
+by such as were skilful enough to detect his cun-
+ningly-devised frauds.  Another advantage I gained
+in my new master was, he made no pretensions to,
+or profession of, religion; and this, in my opinion,
+was truly a great advantage.  I assert most unhesi-
+tatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere
+covering for the most horrid crimes,--a justifier of
+the most appalling barbarity,--a sanctifier of the
+most hateful frauds,--and a dark shelter under,
+which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infer-
+nal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protec-
+tion.  Were I to be again reduced to the chains of
+slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard
+being the slave of a religious master the greatest
+calamity that could befall me.  For of all slaveholders
+with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders
+are the worst.  I have ever found them the meanest
+and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all oth-
+ers.  It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a
+religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of
+such religionists.  Very near Mr. Freeland lived the
+Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the same neighborhood
+lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins.  These were members
+and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church.
+Mr. Weeden owned, among others, a woman slave,
+whose name I have forgotten.  This woman's back,
+for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the
+lash of this merciless, ~religious~ wretch.  He used to
+hire hands.  His maxim was, Behave well or behave
+ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip
+a slave, to remind him of his master's authority.
+Such was his theory, and such his practice.
+ 
+  Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden.
+His chief boast was his ability to manage slaves.
+The peculiar feature of his government was that
+of whipping slaves in advance of deserving it.  He
+always managed to have one or more of his slaves
+to whip every Monday morning.  He did this to alarm
+their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped.
+His plan was to whip for the smallest offences, to
+prevent the commission of large ones.  Mr. Hopkins
+could always find some excuse for whipping a slave.
+It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slave-
+holding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slave-
+holder can find things, of which to make occasion
+to whip a slave.  A mere look, word, or motion,--a
+mistake, accident, or want of power,--are all matters
+for which a slave may be whipped at any time.  Does
+a slave look dissatisfied?  It is said, he has the devil
+in him, and it must be whipped out.  Does he speak
+loudly when spoken to by his master?  Then he is
+getting high-minded, and should be taken down a
+button-hole lower.  Does he forget to pull off his
+hat at the approach of a white person?  Then he is
+wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for
+it.  Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct,
+when censured for it?  Then he is guilty of impu-
+dence,--one of the greatest crimes of which a slave
+can be guilty.  Does he ever venture to suggest a
+different mode of doing things from that pointed
+out by his master?  He is indeed presumptuous, and
+getting above himself; and nothing less than a flog-
+ging will do for him.  Does he, while ploughing,
+break a plough,--or, while hoeing, break a hoe?  It
+is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must
+always be whipped.  Mr. Hopkins could always find
+something of this sort to justify the use of the lash,
+and he seldom failed to embrace such opportunities.
+There was not a man in the whole county, with
+whom the slaves who had the getting their own
+home, would not prefer to live, rather than with
+this Rev. Mr. Hopkins.  And yet there was not a
+man any where round, who made higher professions
+of religion, or was more active in revivals,--more
+attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and preach-
+ing meetings, or more devotional in his family,--
+that prayed earlier, later, louder, and longer,--than
+this same reverend slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins.
+ 
+  But to return to Mr. Freeland, and to my experi-
+ence while in his employment.  He, like Mr. Covey,
+gave us enough to eat; but, unlike Mr. Covey, he
+also gave us sufficient time to take our meals.  He
+worked us hard, but always between sunrise and
+sunset.  He required a good deal of work to be done,
+but gave us good tools with which to work.  His
+farm was large, but he employed hands enough to
+work it, and with ease, compared with many of
+his neighbors.  My treatment, while in his employ-
+ment, was heavenly, compared with what I experi-
+enced at the hands of Mr. Edward Covey.
+ 
+  Mr. Freeland was himself the owner of but two
+slaves.  Their names were Henry Harris and John
+Harris.  The rest of his hands he hired.  These con-
+sisted of myself, Sandy Jenkins,* and Handy Cald-
+well.  Henry and John were quite intelligent, and in
+a very little while after I went there, I succeeded in
+creating in them a strong desire to learn how to
+read.  This desire soon sprang up in the others also.
+They very soon mustered up some old spelling-books,
+and nothing would do but that I must keep a Sab-
+bath school.  I agreed to do so, and accordingly
+devoted my Sundays to teaching these my loved fel-
+low-slaves how to read.  Neither of them knew his
+letters when I went there.  Some of the slaves of the
+neighboring farms found what was going on, and
+also availed themselves of this little opportunity to
+learn to read.  It was understood, among all who
+came, that there must be as little display about it
+as possible.  It was necessary to keep our religious
+masters at St. Michael's unacquainted with the fact,
+that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling,
+boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn
+how to read the will of God; for they had much
+ 
+ 
+  *This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent
+my being whipped by Mr. Covey.  He was "a clever soul."
+We used frequently to talk about the fight with Covey, and
+as often as we did so, he would claim my success as the
+result of the roots which he gave me.  This superstition
+is very common among the more ignorant slaves.  A slave
+seldom dies but that his death is attributed to trickery.
+rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than
+to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and ac-
+countable beings.  My blood boils as I think of the
+bloody manner in which Messrs. Wright Fairbanks
+and Garrison West, both class-leaders, in connection
+with many others, rushed in upon us with sticks
+and stones, and broke up our virtuous little Sab-
+bath school, at St. Michael's--all calling themselves
+Christians! humble followers of the Lord Jesus
+Christ!  But I am again digressing.
+ 
+  I held my Sabbath school at the house of a free
+colored man, whose name I deem it imprudent to
+mention; for should it be known, it might embar-
+rass him greatly, though the crime of holding the
+school was committed ten years ago.  I had at one
+time over forty scholars, and those of the right sort,
+ardently desiring to learn.  They were of all ages,
+though mostly men and women.  I look back to those
+Sundays with an amount of pleasure not to be ex-
+pressed.  They were great days to my soul.  The work
+of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest
+engagement with which I was ever blessed.  We loved
+each other, and to leave them at the close of the
+Sabbath was a severe cross indeed.  When I think
+that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the
+prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me,
+and I am almost ready to ask, "Does a righteous
+God govern the universe? and for what does he hold
+the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the
+oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand
+of the spoiler?"  These dear souls came not to Sab-
+bath school because it was popular to do so, nor did
+I teach them because it was reputable to be thus
+engaged.  Every moment they spent in that school,
+they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-
+nine lashes.  They came because they wished to
+learn.  Their minds had been starved by their cruel
+masters.  They had been shut up in mental darkness.
+I taught them, because it was the delight of my
+soul to be doing something that looked like better-
+ing the condition of my race.  I kept up my school
+nearly the whole year I lived with Mr. Freeland;
+and, beside my Sabbath school, I devoted three eve-
+nings in the week, during the winter, to teaching the
+slaves at home.  And I have the happiness to know,
+that several of those who came to Sabbath school
+learned how to read; and that one, at least, is now
+free through my agency.
+ 
+  The year passed off smoothly.  It seemed only
+about half as long as the year which preceded it.
+I went through it without receiving a single blow.
+I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the
+best master I ever had, ~till I became my own mas-
+ter.~  For the ease with which I passed the year, I
+was, however, somewhat indebted to the society of
+my fellow-slaves.  They were noble souls; they not
+only possessed loving hearts, but brave ones.  We
+were linked and interlinked with each other.  I loved
+them with a love stronger than any thing I have
+experienced since.  It is sometimes said that we
+slaves do not love and confide in each other.  In
+answer to this assertion, I can say, I never loved
+any or confided in any people more than my fellow-
+slaves, and especially those with whom I lived at
+Mr. Freeland's.  I believe we would have died for
+each other.  We never undertook to do any thing,
+of any importance, without a mutual consultation.
+We never moved separately.  We were one; and as
+much so by our tempers and dispositions, as by the
+mutual hardships to which we were necessarily sub-
+jected by our condition as slaves.
+ 
+  At the close of the year 1834, Mr. Freeland again
+hired me of my master, for the year 1835.  But, by
+this time, I began to want to live ~upon free land~
+as well as ~with freeland;~ and I was no longer con-
+tent, therefore, to live with him or any other slave-
+holder.  I began, with the commencement of the
+year, to prepare myself for a final struggle, which
+should decide my fate one way or the other.  My
+tendency was upward.  I was fast approaching man-
+hood, and year after year had passed, and I was
+still a slave.  These thoughts roused me--I must do
+something.  I therefore resolved that 1835 should
+not pass without witnessing an attempt, on my part,
+to secure my liberty.  But I was not willing to cherish
+this determination alone.  My fellow-slaves were dear
+to me.  I was anxious to have them participate with
+me in this, my life-giving determination.  I therefore,
+though with great prudence, commenced early to
+ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their
+condition, and to imbue their minds with thoughts
+of freedom.  I bent myself to devising ways and
+means for our escape, and meanwhile strove, on all
+fitting occasions, to impress them with the gross
+fraud and inhumanity of slavery.  I went first to
+Henry, next to John, then to the others.  I found,
+in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits.  They
+were ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible
+plan should be proposed.  This was what I wanted.
+I talked to them of our want of manhood, if we
+submitted to our enslavement without at least one
+noble effort to be free.  We met often, and consulted
+frequently, and told our hopes and fears, recounted
+the difficulties, real and imagined, which we should
+be called on to meet.  At times we were almost dis-
+posed to give up, and try to content ourselves with
+our wretched lot; at others, we were firm and un-
+bending in our determination to go.  Whenever we
+suggested any plan, there was shrinking--the odds
+were fearful.  Our path was beset with the greatest
+obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end
+of it, our right to be free was yet questionable--we
+were yet liable to be returned to bondage.  We could
+see no spot, this side of the ocean, where we could
+be free.  We knew nothing about Canada.  Our
+knowledge of the north did not extend farther than
+New York; and to go there, and be forever harassed
+with the frightful liability of being returned to
+slavery--with the certainty of being treated tenfold
+worse than before--the thought was truly a horrible
+one, and one which it was not easy to overcome.
+The case sometimes stood thus: At every gate
+through which we were to pass, we saw a watchman
+--at every ferry a guard--on every bridge a sentinel--
+and in every wood a patrol.  We were hemmed in
+upon every side.  Here were the difficulties, real or
+imagined--the good to be sought, and the evil to be
+shunned.  On the one hand, there stood slavery, a
+stern reality, glaring frightfully upon us,--its robes
+already crimsoned with the blood of millions, and
+even now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh.
+On the other hand, away back in the dim distance,
+under the flickering light of the north star, behind
+some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood
+a doubtful freedom--half frozen--beckoning us to
+come and share its hospitality.  This in itself was
+sometimes enough to stagger us; but when we per-
+mitted ourselves to survey the road, we were fre-
+quently appalled.  Upon either side we saw grim
+death, assuming the most horrid shapes.  Now it was
+starvation, causing us to eat our own flesh;--now we
+were contending with the waves, and were drowned;
+--now we were overtaken, and torn to pieces by the
+fangs of the terrible bloodhound.  We were stung
+by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes,
+and finally, after having nearly reached the desired
+spot,--after swimming rivers, encountering wild
+beasts, sleeping in the woods, suffering hunger and
+nakedness,--we were overtaken by our pursuers, and,
+in our resistance, we were shot dead upon the spot!
+I say, this picture sometimes appalled us, and made
+us
+ 
+ 
+              "rather bear those ills we had,
+ 
+         Than fly to others, that we knew not of."
+ 
+ 
+  In coming to a fixed determination to run away,
+we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved
+upon liberty or death.  With us it was a doubtful
+liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed.
+For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bond-
+age.
+ 
+  Sandy, one of our number, gave up the notion,
+but still encouraged us.  Our company then consisted
+of Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey, Charles
+Roberts, and myself.  Henry Bailey was my uncle,
+and belonged to my master.  Charles married my
+aunt: he belonged to my master's father-in-law, Mr.
+William Hamilton.
+ 
+  The plan we finally concluded upon was, to get
+a large canoe belonging to Mr. Hamilton, and upon
+the Saturday night previous to Easter holidays,
+paddle directly up the Chesapeake Bay.  On our ar-
+rival at the head of the bay, a distance of seventy
+or eighty miles from where we lived, it was our
+purpose to turn our canoe adrift, and follow the
+guidance of the north star till we got beyond the
+limits of Maryland.  Our reason for taking the water
+route was, that we were less liable to be suspected as
+runaways; we hoped to be regarded as fishermen;
+whereas, if we should take the land route, we should
+be subjected to interruptions of almost every kind.
+Any one having a white face, and being so disposed,
+could stop us, and subject us to examination.
+ 
+  The week before our intended start, I wrote sev-
+eral protections, one for each of us.  As well as I
+can remember, they were in the following words, to
+wit:--
+ 
+ 
+  "This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have
+given the bearer, my servant, full liberty to go to
+Baltimore, and spend the Easter holidays.  Written
+with mine own hand, &c., 1835.
+ 
+            "WILLIAM HAMILTON,
+ 
+  "Near St. Michael's, in Talbot county, Maryland."
+ 
+ 
+  We were not going to Baltimore; but, in going up
+the bay, we went toward Baltimore, and these pro-
+tections were only intended to protect us while on
+the bay.
+ 
+  As the time drew near for our departure, our
+anxiety became more and more intense.  It was truly
+a matter of life and death with us.  The strength of
+our determination was about to be fully tested.  At
+this time, I was very active in explaining every dif-
+ficulty, removing every doubt, dispelling every fear,
+and inspiring all with the firmness indispensable to
+success in our undertaking; assuring them that half
+was gained the instant we made the move; we had
+talked long enough; we were now ready to move;
+if not now, we never should be; and if we did not
+intend to move now, we had as well fold our arms,
+sit down, and acknowledge ourselves fit only to be
+slaves.  This, none of us were prepared to acknowl-
+edge.  Every man stood firm; and at our last meeting,
+we pledged ourselves afresh, in the most solemn
+manner, that, at the time appointed, we would cer-
+tainly start in pursuit of freedom.  This was in the
+middle of the week, at the end of which we were
+to be off.  We went, as usual, to our several fields
+of labor, but with bosoms highly agitated with
+thoughts of our truly hazardous undertaking.  We
+tried to conceal our feelings as much as possible;
+and I think we succeeded very well.
+ 
+  After a painful waiting, the Saturday morning,
+whose night was to witness our departure, came.  I
+hailed it with joy, bring what of sadness it might.
+Friday night was a sleepless one for me.  I probably
+felt more anxious than the rest, because I was, by
+common consent, at the head of the whole affair.
+The responsibility of success or failure lay heavily
+upon me.  The glory of the one, and the confusion
+of the other, were alike mine.  The first two hours
+of that morning were such as I never experienced
+before, and hope never to again.  Early in the
+morning, we went, as usual, to the field.  We were
+spreading manure; and all at once, while thus en-
+gaged, I was overwhelmed with an indescribable feel-
+ing, in the fulness of which I turned to Sandy, who
+was near by, and said, "We are betrayed!"  "Well,"
+said he, "that thought has this moment struck me."
+We said no more.  I was never more certain of any
+thing.
+ 
+  The horn was blown as usual, and we went up
+from the field to the house for breakfast.  I went for
+the form, more than for want of any thing to eat
+that morning.  Just as I got to the house, in looking
+out at the lane gate, I saw four white men, with
+two colored men.  The white men were on horseback,
+and the colored ones were walking behind, as if tied.
+I watched them a few moments till they got up to
+our lane gate.  Here they halted, and tied the colored
+men to the gate-post.  I was not yet certain as to
+what the matter was.  In a few moments, in rode
+Mr. Hamilton, with a speed betokening great excite-
+ment.  He came to the door, and inquired if Master
+William was in.  He was told he was at the barn.  Mr.
+Hamilton, without dismounting, rode up to the barn
+with extraordinary speed.  In a few moments, he and
+Mr. Freeland returned to the house.  By this time,
+the three constables rode up, and in great haste dis-
+mounted, tied their horses, and met Master William
+and Mr. Hamilton returning from the barn; and
+after talking awhile, they all walked up to the
+kitchen door.  There was no one in the kitchen but
+myself and John.  Henry and Sandy were up at the
+barn.  Mr. Freeland put his head in at the door, and
+called me by name, saying, there were some gentle-
+men at the door who wished to see me.  I stepped
+to the door, and inquired what they wanted.  They
+at once seized me, and, without giving me any satis-
+faction, tied me--lashing my hands closely together.
+I insisted upon knowing what the matter was.  They
+at length said, that they had learned I had been in a
+"scrape," and that I was to be examined before my
+master; and if their information proved false, I
+should not be hurt.
+ 
+  In a few moments, they succeeded in tying John.
+They then turned to Henry, who had by this time
+returned, and commanded him to cross his hands.
+"I won't!" said Henry, in a firm tone, indicating his
+readiness to meet the consequences of his refusal.
+"Won't you?" said Tom Graham, the constable.  "No,
+I won't!" said Henry, in a still stronger tone.  With
+this, two of the constables pulled out their shining
+pistols, and swore, by their Creator, that they would
+make him cross his hands or kill him.  Each cocked
+his pistol, and, with fingers on the trigger, walked
+up to Henry, saying, at the same time, if he did not
+cross his hands, they would blow his damned heart
+out.  "Shoot me, shoot me!" said Henry; "you can't
+kill me but once.  Shoot, shoot,--and be damned!  ~I
+won't be tied!~"  This he said in a tone of loud defi-
+ance; and at the same time, with a motion as quick
+as lightning, he with one single stroke dashed the
+pistols from the hand of each constable.  As he did
+this, all hands fell upon him, and, after beating
+him some time, they finally overpowered him, and
+got him tied.
+ 
+  During the scuffle, I managed, I know not how,
+to get my pass out, and, without being discovered,
+put it into the fire.  We were all now tied; and just
+as we were to leave for Easton jail, Betsy Freeland,
+mother of William Freeland, came to the door with
+her hands full of biscuits, and divided them between
+Henry and John.  She then delivered herself of a
+speech, to the following effect:--addressing herself
+to me, she said, "~You devil!  You yellow devil!~ it was
+you that put it into the heads of Henry and John
+to run away.  But for you, you long-legged mulatto
+devil! Henry nor John would never have thought
+of such a thing."  I made no reply, and was imme-
+diately hurried off towards St. Michael's.  Just a mo-
+ment previous to the scuffle with Henry, Mr. Hamil-
+ton suggested the propriety of making a search for
+the protections which he had understood Frederick
+had written for himself and the rest.  But, just at
+the moment he was about carrying his proposal into
+effect, his aid was needed in helping to tie Henry;
+and the excitement attending the scuffle caused
+them either to forget, or to deem it unsafe, under
+the circumstances, to search.  So we were not yet
+convicted of the intention to run away.
+ 
+  When we got about half way to St. Michael's,
+while the constables having us in charge were look-
+ing ahead, Henry inquired of me what he should
+do with his pass.  I told him to eat it with his biscuit,
+and own nothing; and we passed the word around,
+"~Own nothing;~" and "~Own nothing!~" said we all.
+Our confidence in each other was unshaken.  We
+were resolved to succeed or fail together, after the
+calamity had befallen us as much as before.  We
+were now prepared for any thing.  We were to be
+dragged that morning fifteen miles behind horses,
+and then to be placed in the Easton jail.  When we
+reached St. Michael's, we underwent a sort of exami-
+nation.  We all denied that we ever intended to run
+away.  We did this more to bring out the evidence
+against us, than from any hope of getting clear of
+being sold; for, as I have said, we were ready for
+that.  The fact was, we cared but little where we
+went, so we went together.  Our greatest concern was
+about separation.  We dreaded that more than any
+thing this side of death.  We found the evidence
+against us to be the testimony of one person; our
+master would not tell who it was; but we came to
+a unanimous decision among ourselves as to who
+their informant was.  We were sent off to the jail at
+Easton.  When we got there, we were delivered up
+to the sheriff, Mr. Joseph Graham, and by him
+placed in jail.  Henry, John, and myself, were placed
+in one room together--Charles, and Henry Bailey,
+in another.  Their object in separating us was to
+hinder concert.
+ 
+  We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes,
+when a swarm of slave traders, and agents for slave
+traders, flocked into jail to look at us, and to as-
+certain if we were for sale.  Such a set of beings I
+never saw before!  I felt myself surrounded by so
+many fiends from perdition.  A band of pirates never
+looked more like their father, the devil.  They
+laughed and grinned over us, saying, "Ah, my boys!
+we have got you, haven't we?"  And after taunting
+us in various ways, they one by one went into an
+examination of us, with intent to ascertain our value.
+They would impudently ask us if we would not like
+to have them for our masters.  We would make them
+no answer, and leave them to find out as best they
+could.  Then they would curse and swear at us, telling
+us that they could take the devil out of us in a very
+little while, if we were only in their hands.
+ 
+  While in jail, we found ourselves in much more
+comfortable quarters than we expected when we
+went there.  We did not get much to eat, nor that
+which was very good; but we had a good clean room,
+from the windows of which we could see what was go-
+ing on in the street, which was very much better
+than though we had been placed in one of the dark,
+damp cells.  Upon the whole, we got along very well,
+so far as the jail and its keeper were concerned.
+Immediately after the holidays were over, contrary
+to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Free-
+land came up to Easton, and took Charles, the two
+Henrys, and John, out of jail, and carried them
+home, leaving me alone.  I regarded this separation
+as a final one.  It caused me more pain than any
+thing else in the whole transaction.  I was ready for
+any thing rather than separation.  I supposed that
+they had consulted together, and had decided that,
+as I was the whole cause of the intention of the
+others to run away, it was hard to make the innocent
+suffer with the guilty; and that they had, therefore,
+concluded to take the others home, and sell me, as
+a warning to the others that remained.  It is due
+to the noble Henry to say, he seemed almost as
+reluctant at leaving the prison as at leaving home
+to come to the prison.  But we knew we should, in
+all probability, be separated, if we were sold; and
+since he was in their hands, he concluded to go
+peaceably home.
+ 
+  I was now left to my fate.  I was all alone, and
+within the walls of a stone prison.  But a few days
+before, and I was full of hope.  I expected to have
+been safe in a land of freedom; but now I was cov-
+ered with gloom, sunk down to the utmost despair.
+I thought the possibility of freedom was gone.  I
+was kept in this way about one week, at the end
+of which, Captain Auld, my master, to my surprise
+and utter astonishment, came up, and took me out,
+with the intention of sending me, with a gentleman
+of his acquaintance, into Alabama.  But, from some
+cause or other, he did not send me to Alabama,
+but concluded to send me back to Baltimore, to
+live again with his brother Hugh, and to learn a
+trade.
+ 
+  Thus, after an absence of three years and one
+month, I was once more permitted to return to my
+old home at Baltimore.  My master sent me away,
+because there existed against me a very great preju-
+dice in the community, and he feared I might be
+killed.
+ 
+  In a few weeks after I went to Baltimore, Master
+Hugh hired me to Mr. William Gardner, an ex-
+tensive ship-builder, on Fell's Point.  I was put there
+to learn how to calk.  It, however, proved a very
+unfavorable place for the accomplishment of this
+object.  Mr. Gardner was engaged that spring in
+building two large man-of-war brigs, professedly for
+the Mexican government.  The vessels were to be
+launched in the July of that year, and in failure
+thereof, Mr. Gardner was to lose a considerable sum;
+so that when I entered, all was hurry.  There was
+no time to learn any thing.  Every man had to do
+that which he knew how to do.  In entering the ship-
+yard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do what-
+ever the carpenters commanded me to do.  This was
+placing me at the beck and call of about seventy-five
+men.  I was to regard all these as masters.  Their
+word was to be my law.  My situation was a most
+trying one.  At times I needed a dozen pair of hands.
+I was called a dozen ways in the space of a single
+minute.  Three or four voices would strike my ear
+at the same moment.  It was--"Fred., come help me
+to cant this timber here."--"Fred., come carry this
+timber yonder."--"Fred., bring that roller here."--
+"Fred., go get a fresh can of water."--"Fred., come
+help saw off the end of this timber."--"Fred., go
+quick, and get the crowbar."--"Fred., hold on the
+end of this fall."--"Fred., go to the blacksmith's
+shop, and get a new punch."--"Hurra, Fred.! run
+and bring me a cold chisel."--"I say, Fred., bear a
+hand, and get up a fire as quick as lightning under
+that steam-box."--"Halloo, nigger! come, turn this
+grindstone."--"Come, come! move, move! and BOWSE
+this timber forward."--"I say, darky, blast your eyes,
+why don't you heat up some pitch?"--"Halloo!
+halloo! halloo!"  (Three voices at the same time.)
+"Come here!--Go there!--Hold on where you are!
+Damn you, if you move, I'll knock your brains out!"
+ 
+  This was my school for eight months; and I might
+have remained there longer, but for a most horrid
+fight I had with four of the white apprentices, in
+which my left eye was nearly knocked out, and I
+was horribly mangled in other respects.  The facts
+in the case were these: Until a very little while
+after I went there, white and black ship-carpenters
+worked side by side, and no one seemed to see any
+impropriety in it.  All hands seemed to be very well
+satisfied.  Many of the black carpenters were freemen.
+Things seemed to be going on very well.  All at once,
+the white carpenters knocked off, and said they
+would not work with free colored workmen.  Their
+reason for this, as alleged, was, that if free colored
+carpenters were encouraged, they would soon take
+the trade into their own hands, and poor white men
+would be thrown out of employment.  They therefore
+felt called upon at once to put a stop to it.  And,
+taking advantage of Mr. Gardner's necessities, they
+broke off, swearing they would work no longer, unless
+he would discharge his black carpenters.  Now,
+though this did not extend to me in form, it did
+reach me in fact.  My fellow-apprentices very soon
+began to feel it degrading to them to work with
+me.  They began to put on airs, and talk about the
+"niggers" taking the country, saying we all ought to
+be killed; and, being encouraged by the journey-
+men, they commenced making my condition as
+hard as they could, by hectoring me around, and
+sometimes striking me.  I, of course, kept the vow
+I made after the fight with Mr. Covey, and struck
+back again, regardless of consequences; and while
+I kept them from combining, I succeeded very well;
+for I could whip the whole of them, taking them
+separately.  They, however, at length combined, and
+came upon me, armed with sticks, stones, and heavy
+handspikes.  One came in front with a half brick.
+There was one at each side of me, and one behind
+me.  While I was attending to those in front, and on
+either side, the one behind ran up with the hand-
+spike, and struck me a heavy blow upon the head.
+It stunned me.  I fell, and with this they all ran
+upon me, and fell to beating me with their fists.  I
+let them lay on for a while, gathering strength.  In
+an instant, I gave a sudden surge, and rose to my
+hands and knees.  Just as I did that, one of their
+number gave me, with his heavy boot, a powerful
+kick in the left eye.  My eyeball seemed to have
+burst.  When they saw my eye closed, and badly
+swollen, they left me.  With this I seized the hand-
+spike, and for a time pursued them.  But here the
+carpenters interfered, and I thought I might as well
+give it up.  It was impossible to stand my hand
+against so many.  All this took place in sight of not
+less than fifty white ship-carpenters, and not one
+interposed a friendly word; but some cried, "Kill
+the damned nigger!  Kill him! kill him!  He struck
+a white person."  I found my only chance for life
+was in flight.  I succeeded in getting away without
+an additional blow, and barely so; for to strike a
+white man is death by Lynch law,--and that was the
+law in Mr. Gardner's ship-yard; nor is there much
+of any other out of Mr. Gardner's ship-yard.
+ 
+  I went directly home, and told the story of my
+wrongs to Master Hugh; and I am happy to say of
+him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was heavenly,
+compared with that of his brother Thomas under
+similar circumstances.  He listened attentively to my
+narration of the circumstances leading to the savage
+outrage, and gave many proofs of his strong indigna-
+tion at it.  The heart of my once overkind mistress
+was again melted into pity.  My puffed-out eye and
+blood-covered face moved her to tears.  She took a
+chair by me, washed the blood from my face, and,
+with a mother's tenderness, bound up my head,
+covering the wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh
+beef.  It was almost compensation for my suffering
+to witness, once more, a manifestation of kindness
+from this, my once affectionate old mistress.  Master
+Hugh was very much enraged.  He gave expression
+to his feelings by pouring out curses upon the heads
+of those who did the deed.  As soon as I got a little
+the better of my bruises, he took me with him to
+Esquire Watson's, on Bond Street, to see what could
+be done about the matter.  Mr. Watson inquired who
+saw the assault committed.  Master Hugh told him
+it was done in Mr. Gardner's ship-yard at midday,
+where there were a large company of men at work.
+"As to that," he said, "the deed was done, and there
+was no question as to who did it."  His answer was,
+he could do nothing in the case, unless some white
+man would come forward and testify.  He could
+issue no warrant on my word.  If I had been killed
+in the presence of a thousand colored people, their
+testimony combined would have been insufficient
+to have arrested one of the murderers.  Master Hugh,
+for once, was compelled to say this state of things
+was too bad.  Of course, it was impossible to get any
+white man to volunteer his testimony in my behalf,
+and against the white young men.  Even those who
+may have sympathized with me were not prepared
+to do this.  It required a degree of courage unknown
+to them to do so; for just at that time, the slightest
+manifestation of humanity toward a colored person
+was denounced as abolitionism, and that name sub-
+jected its bearer to frightful liabilities.  The watch-
+words of the bloody-minded in that region, and in
+those days, were, "Damn the abolitionists!" and
+"Damn the niggers!"  There was nothing done, and
+probably nothing would have been done if I had
+been killed.  Such was, and such remains, the state
+of things in the Christian city of Baltimore.
+ 
+  Master Hugh, finding he could get no redress, re-
+fused to let me go back again to Mr. Gardner.  He
+kept me himself, and his wife dressed my wound
+till I was again restored to health.  He then took me
+into the ship-yard of which he was foreman, in the
+employment of Mr. Walter Price.  There I was im-
+mediately set to calking, and very soon learned the
+art of using my mallet and irons.  In the course of
+one year from the time I left Mr. Gardner's, I was
+able to command the highest wages given to the
+most experienced calkers.  I was now of some impor-
+tance to my master.  I was bringing him from six
+to seven dollars per week.  I sometimes brought him
+nine dollars per week: my wages were a dollar and
+a half a day.  After learning how to calk, I sought
+my own employment, made my own contracts, and
+collected the money which I earned.  My pathway
+became much more smooth than before; my condi-
+tion was now much more comfortable.  When I could
+get no calking to do, I did nothing.  During these
+leisure times, those old notions about freedom would
+steal over me again.  When in Mr. Gardner's employ-
+ment, I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of ex-
+citement, I could think of nothing, scarcely, but
+my life; and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot
+my liberty.  I have observed this in my experience
+of slavery,--that whenever my condition was im-
+proved, instead of its increasing my contentment,
+it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to
+thinking of plans to gain my freedom.  I have found
+that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to
+make a thoughtless one.  It is necessary to darken his
+moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to
+annihilate the power of reason.  He must be able to
+detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made
+to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought
+to that only when he ceases to be a man.
+ 
+  I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and
+fifty cents per day.  I contracted for it; I earned it;
+it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet,
+upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled
+to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh.
+And why?  Not because he earned it,--not because
+he had any hand in earning it,--not because I owed
+it to him,--nor because he possessed the slightest
+shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had
+the power to compel me to give it up.  The right of
+the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly
+the same.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                    CHAPTER XI
+ 
+ 
+  I now come to that part of my life during which I
+planned, and finally succeeded in making, my escape
+from slavery.  But before narrating any of the pe-
+culiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make
+known my intention not to state all the facts con-
+nected with the transaction.  My reasons for pursuing
+this course may be understood from the following:
+First, were I to give a minute statement of all the
+facts, it is not only possible, but quite probable, that
+others would thereby be involved in the most embar-
+rassing difficulties.  Secondly, such a statement would
+most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the
+part of slaveholders than has existed heretofore
+among them; which would, of course, be the means
+of guarding a door whereby some dear brother bond-
+man might escape his galling chains.  I deeply regret
+the necessity that impels me to suppress any thing
+of importance connected with my experience in
+slavery.  It would afford me great pleasure indeed,
+as well as materially add to the interest of my nar-
+rative, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity, which
+I know exists in the minds of many, by an accurate
+statement of all the facts pertaining to my most
+fortunate escape.  But I must deprive myself of this
+pleasure, and the curious of the gratification which
+such a statement would afford.  I would allow my-
+self to suffer under the greatest imputations which
+evil-minded men might suggest, rather than excul-
+pate myself, and thereby run the hazard of closing
+the slightest avenue by which a brother slave might
+clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
+ 
+  I have never approved of the very public manner
+in which some of our western friends have conducted
+what they call the ~underground railroad,~ but which
+I think, by their open declarations, has been made
+most emphatically the ~upperground railroad.~  I honor
+those good men and women for their noble daring,
+and applaud them for willingly subjecting them-
+selves to bloody persecution, by openly avowing their
+participation in the escape of slaves.  I, however, can
+see very little good resulting from such a course,
+either to themselves or the slaves escaping; while,
+upon the other hand, I see and feel assured that
+those open declarations are a positive evil to the
+slaves remaining, who are seeking to escape.  They
+do nothing towards enlightening the slave, whilst
+they do much towards enlightening the master.
+They stimulate him to greater watchfulness, and
+enhance his power to capture his slave.  We owe
+something to the slave south of the line as well as
+to those north of it; and in aiding the latter on their
+way to freedom, we should be careful to do nothing
+which would be likely to hinder the former from
+escaping from slavery.  I would keep the merciless
+slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of
+flight adopted by the slave.  I would leave him to
+imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible
+tormentors, ever ready to snatch from his infernal
+grasp his trembling prey.  Let him be left to feel
+his way in the dark; let darkness commensurate with
+his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at
+every step he takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman,
+he is running the frightful risk of having his hot
+brains dashed out by an invisible agency.  Let us
+render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light
+by which he can trace the footprints of our flying
+brother.  But enough of this.  I will now proceed to
+the statement of those facts, connected with my
+escape, for which I am alone responsible, and for
+which no one can be made to suffer but myself.
+ 
+  In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite
+restless.  I could see no reason why I should, at the
+end of each week, pour the reward of my toil into
+the purse of my master.  When I carried to him my
+weekly wages, he would, after counting the money,
+look me in the face with a robber-like fierceness,
+and ask, "Is this all?"  He was satisfied with nothing
+less than the last cent.  He would, however, when I
+made him six dollars, sometimes give me six cents,
+to encourage me.  It had the opposite effect.  I re-
+garded it as a sort of admission of my right to the
+whole.  The fact that he gave me any part of my
+wages was proof, to my mind, that he believed me
+entitled to the whole of them.  I always felt worse
+for having received any thing; for I feared that the
+giving me a few cents would ease his conscience,
+and make him feel himself to be a pretty honorable
+sort of robber.  My discontent grew upon me.  I was
+ever on the look-out for means of escape; and, find-
+ing no direct means, I determined to try to hire my
+time, with a view of getting money with which to
+make my escape.  In the spring of 1838, when Master
+Thomas came to Baltimore to purchase his spring
+goods, I got an opportunity, and applied to him to
+allow me to hire my time.  He unhesitatingly refused
+my request, and told me this was another stratagem
+by which to escape.  He told me I could go nowhere
+but that he could get me; and that, in the event
+of my running away, he should spare no pains in his
+efforts to catch me.  He exhorted me to content
+myself, and be obedient.  He told me, if I would
+be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future.
+He said, if I behaved myself properly, he would take
+care of me.  Indeed, he advised me to complete
+thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to de-
+pend solely upon him for happiness.  He seemed to
+see fully the pressing necessity of setting aside my
+intellectual nature, in order to contentment in
+slavery.  But in spite of him, and even in spite of
+myself, I continued to think, and to think about
+the injustice of my enslavement, and the means of
+escape.
+ 
+  About two months after this, I applied to Master
+Hugh for the privilege of hiring my time.  He was
+not acquainted with the fact that I had applied to
+Master Thomas, and had been refused.  He too, at
+first, seemed disposed to refuse; but, after some re-
+flection, he granted me the privilege, and proposed
+the following terms: I was to be allowed all my
+time, make all contracts with those for whom I
+worked, and find my own employment; and, in re-
+turn for this liberty, I was to pay him three dollars
+at the end of each week; find myself in calking tools,
+and in board and clothing.  My board was two dol-
+lars and a half per week.  This, with the wear and
+tear of clothing and calking tools, made my regular
+expenses about six dollars per week.  This amount
+I was compelled to make up, or relinquish the
+privilege of hiring my time.  Rain or shine, work or
+no work, at the end of each week the money must
+be forthcoming, or I must give up my privilege.  This
+arrangement, it will be perceived, was decidedly in
+my master's favor.  It relieved him of all need of
+looking after me.  His money was sure.  He received
+all the benefits of slaveholding without its evils;
+while I endured all the evils of a slave, and suffered
+all the care and anxiety of a freeman.  I found it a
+hard bargain.  But, hard as it was, I thought it better
+than the old mode of getting along.  It was a step
+towards freedom to be allowed to bear the respon-
+sibilities of a freeman, and I was determined to hold
+on upon it.  I bent myself to the work of making
+money.  I was ready to work at night as well as day,
+and by the most untiring perseverance and industry,
+I made enough to meet my expenses, and lay up
+a little money every week.  I went on thus from May
+till August.  Master Hugh then refused to allow me
+to hire my time longer.  The ground for his refusal
+was a failure on my part, one Saturday night, to pay
+him for my week's time.  This failure was occasioned
+by my attending a camp meeting about ten miles
+from Baltimore.  During the week, I had entered
+into an engagement with a number of young friends
+to start from Baltimore to the camp ground early
+Saturday evening; and being detained by my em-
+ployer, I was unable to get down to Master Hugh's
+without disappointing the company.  I knew that
+Master Hugh was in no special need of the money
+that night.  I therefore decided to go to camp meet-
+ing, and upon my return pay him the three dollars.
+I staid at the camp meeting one day longer than I
+intended when I left.  But as soon as I returned, I
+called upon him to pay him what he considered his
+due.  I found him very angry; he could scarce restrain
+his wrath.  He said he had a great mind to give me a
+severe whipping.  He wished to know how I dared
+go out of the city without asking his permission.  I
+told him I hired my time and while I paid him the
+price which he asked for it, I did not know that I
+was bound to ask him when and where I should go.
+This reply troubled him; and, after reflecting a few
+moments, he turned to me, and said I should hire
+my time no longer; that the next thing he should
+know of, I would be running away.  Upon the same
+plea, he told me to bring my tools and clothing
+home forthwith.  I did so; but instead of seeking
+work, as I had been accustomed to do previously to
+hiring my time, I spent the whole week without
+the performance of a single stroke of work.  I did this
+in retaliation.  Saturday night, he called upon me
+as usual for my week's wages.  I told him I had no
+wages; I had done no work that week.  Here we
+were upon the point of coming to blows.  He raved,
+and swore his determination to get hold of me.  I did
+not allow myself a single word; but was resolved, if
+he laid the weight of his hand upon me, it should
+be blow for blow.  He did not strike me, but told me
+that he would find me in constant employment in
+future.  I thought the matter over during the next day,
+Sunday, and finally resolved upon the third day of
+September, as the day upon which I would make a
+second attempt to secure my freedom.  I now had
+three weeks during which to prepare for my journey.
+Early on Monday morning, before Master Hugh had
+time to make any engagement for me, I went out
+and got employment of Mr. Butler, at his ship-yard
+near the drawbridge, upon what is called the City
+Block, thus making it unnecessary for him to seek
+employment for me.  At the end of the week, I
+brought him between eight and nine dollars.  He
+seemed very well pleased, and asked why I did not
+do the same the week before.  He little knew what
+my plans were.  My object in working steadily was
+to remove any suspicion he might entertain of my
+intent to run away; and in this I succeeded admi-
+rably.  I suppose he thought I was never better
+satisfied with my condition than at the very time
+during which I was planning my escape.  The second
+week passed, and again I carried him my full wages;
+and so well pleased was he, that he gave me twenty-
+five cents, (quite a large sum for a slaveholder to
+give a slave,) and bade me to make a good use of it.
+I told him I would.
+ 
+  Things went on without very smoothly indeed,
+but within there was trouble.  It is impossible for
+me to describe my feelings as the time of my con-
+templated start drew near.  I had a number of warm-
+hearted friends in Baltimore,--friends that I loved
+almost as I did my life,--and the thought of being
+separated from them forever was painful beyond
+expression.  It is my opinion that thousands would
+escape from slavery, who now remain, but for the
+strong cords of affection that bind them to their
+friends.  The thought of leaving my friends was de-
+cidedly the most painful thought with which I had
+to contend.  The love of them was my tender point,
+and shook my decision more than all things else.
+Besides the pain of separation, the dread and appre-
+hension of a failure exceeded what I had experienced
+at my first attempt.  The appalling defeat I then
+sustained returned to torment me.  I felt assured
+that, if I failed in this attempt, my case would be
+a hopeless one--it would seal my fate as a slave for-
+ever.  I could not hope to get off with any thing less
+than the severest punishment, and being placed
+beyond the means of escape.  It required no very
+vivid imagination to depict the most frightful
+scenes through which I should have to pass, in case
+I failed.  The wretchedness of slavery, and the
+blessedness of freedom, were perpetually before me.
+It was life and death with me.  But I remained
+firm, and, according to my resolution, on the third
+day of September, 1838, I left my chains, and suc-
+ceeded in reaching New York without the slightest
+interruption of any kind.  How I did so,--what means
+I adopted,--what direction I travelled, and by what
+mode of conveyance,--I must leave unexplained,
+for the reasons before mentioned.
+ 
+  I have been frequently asked how I felt when I
+found myself in a free State.  I have never been able
+to answer the question with any satisfaction to my-
+self.  It was a moment of the highest excitement I
+ever experienced.  I suppose I felt as one may imagine
+the unarmed mariner to feel when he is rescued
+by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate.
+In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my
+arrival at New York, I said I felt like one who had
+escaped a den of hungry lions.  This state of mind,
+however, very soon subsided; and I was again seized
+with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness.  I
+was yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to
+all the tortures of slavery.  This in itself was enough
+to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm.  But the lone-
+liness overcame me.  There I was in the midst of
+thousands, and yet a perfect stranger; without home
+and without friends, in the midst of thousands of my
+own brethren--children of a common Father, and
+yet I dared not to unfold to any one of them my
+sad condition.  I was afraid to speak to any one for
+fear of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby fall-
+ing into the hands of money-loving kidnappers,
+whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting
+fugitive, as the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in
+wait for their prey.  The motto which I adopted
+when I started from slavery was this--"Trust no
+man!"  I saw in every white man an enemy, and in
+almost every colored man cause for distrust.  It was
+a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one
+must needs experience it, or imagine himself in
+similar circumstances.  Let him be a fugitive slave in
+a strange land--a land given up to be the hunting-
+ground for slaveholders--whose inhabitants are legal-
+ized kidnappers--where he is every moment sub-
+jected to the terrible liability of being seized upon
+by his fellowmen, as the hideous crocodile seizes
+upon his prey!--I say, let him place himself in my
+situation--without home or friends--without money
+or credit--wanting shelter, and no one to give it--
+wanting bread, and no money to buy it,--and at the
+same time let him feel that he is pursued by merci-
+less men-hunters, and in total darkness as to what
+to do, where to go, or where to stay,--perfectly help-
+less both as to the means of defence and means of
+escape,--in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the ter-
+rible gnawings of hunger,--in the midst of houses,
+yet having no home,--among fellow-men, yet feeling
+as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose greediness
+to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugi-
+tive is only equalled by that with which the monsters
+of the deep swallow up the helpless fish upon which
+they subsist,--I say, let him be placed in this most
+trying situation,--the situation in which I was placed,
+--then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the
+hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the
+toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.
+ 
+  Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in
+this distressed situation.  I was relieved from it by the
+humane hand of Mr. DAVID RUGGLES, whose vigi-
+lance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never for-
+get.  I am glad of an opportunity to express, as far as
+words can, the love and gratitude I bear him.  Mr.
+Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and is him-
+self in need of the same kind offices which he was
+once so forward in the performance of toward others.
+I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr.
+Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me
+to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and
+Lespenard Streets.  Mr. Ruggles was then very deeply
+engaged in the memorable ~Darg~ case, as well as at-
+tending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devis-
+ing ways and means for their successful escape; and,
+though watched and hemmed in on almost every
+side, he seemed to be more than a match for his
+enemies.
+ 
+  Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished
+to know of me where I wanted to go; as he deemed
+it unsafe for me to remain in New York.  I told him
+I was a calker, and should like to go where I could
+get work.  I thought of going to Canada; but he de-
+cided against it, and in favor of my going to New
+Bedford, thinking I should be able to get work there
+at my trade.  At this time, Anna,* my intended wife,
+came on; for I wrote to her immediately after my
+arrival at New York, (notwithstanding my homeless,
+houseless, and helpless condition,) informing her of
+my successful flight, and wishing her to come on
+forthwith.  In a few days after her arrival, Mr. Rug-
+gles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, who, in
+the presence of Mr. Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and
+two or three others, performed the marriage cere-
+mony, and gave us a certificate, of which the fol-
+lowing is an exact copy:--
+ 
+ 
+  "This may certify, that I joined together in holy
+matrimony Frederick Johnson+ and Anna Murray, as
+man and wife, in the presence of Mr. David Ruggles
+and Mrs. Michaels.
+ 
+                 "JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON
+ 
+  "NEW YORK, SEPT. 15, 1838"
+ 
+ 
+  Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar
+bill from Mr. Ruggles, I shouldered one part of our
+baggage, and Anna took up the other, and we set
+out forthwith to take passage on board of the steam-
+boat John W. Richmond for Newport, on our way
+to New Bedford.  Mr. Ruggles gave me a letter to a
+Mr. Shaw in Newport, and told me, in case my
+money did not serve me to New Bedford, to stop in
+Newport and obtain further assistance; but upon our
+ 
+ 
+  *She was free.
+ 
+  +I had changed my name from Frederick BAILEY
+to that of JOHNSON.
+ 
+ 
+arrival at Newport, we were so anxious to get to a
+place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the
+necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take
+seats in the stage, and promise to pay when we got
+to New Bedford.  We were encouraged to do this by
+two excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford,
+whose names I afterward ascertained to be Joseph
+Ricketson and William C. Taber.  They seemed at
+once to understand our circumstances, and gave us
+such assurance of their friendliness as put us fully
+at ease in their presence.  It was good indeed to meet
+with such friends, at such a time.  Upon reaching
+New Bedford, we were directed to the house of Mr.
+Nathan Johnson, by whom we were kindly received,
+and hospitably provided for.  Both Mr. and Mrs.
+Johnson took a deep and lively interest in our wel-
+fare.  They proved themselves quite worthy of the
+name of abolitionists.  When the stage-driver found
+us unable to pay our fare, he held on upon our bag-
+gage as security for the debt.  I had but to mention
+the fact to Mr. Johnson, and he forthwith advanced
+the money.
+ 
+  We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to
+prepare ourselves for the duties and responsibilities
+of a life of freedom.  On the morning after our ar-
+rival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table,
+the question arose as to what name I should be
+called by.  The name given me by my mother was,
+"Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey."  I, how-
+ever, had dispensed with the two middle names long
+before I left Maryland so that I was generally known
+by the name of "Frederick Bailey."  I started from
+Baltimore bearing the name of "Stanley."  When I
+got to New York, I again changed my name to "Fred-
+erick Johnson," and thought that would be the last
+change.  But when I got to New Bedford, I found it
+necessary again to change my name.  The reason of
+this necessity was, that there were so many Johnsons
+in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to
+distinguish between them.  I gave Mr. Johnson the
+privilege of choosing me a name, but told him he
+must not take from me the name of "Frederick."
+I must hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my
+identity.  Mr. Johnson had just been reading the
+"Lady of the Lake," and at once suggested that my
+name be "Douglass."  From that time until now I
+have been called "Frederick Douglass;" and as I am
+more widely known by that name than by either of
+the others, I shall continue to use it as my own.
+ 
+  I was quite disappointed at the general appear-
+ance of things in New Bedford.  The impression
+which I had received respecting the character and
+condition of the people of the north, I found to be
+singularly erroneous.  I had very strangely supposed,
+while in slavery, that few of the comforts, and
+scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at
+the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the
+slaveholders of the south.  I probably came to this
+conclusion from the fact that northern people owned
+no slaves.  I supposed that they were about upon a
+level with the non-slaveholding population of the
+south.  I knew ~they~ were exceedingly poor, and I had
+been accustomed to regard their poverty as the nec-
+essary consequence of their being non-slaveholders.
+I had somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the
+absence of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very
+little refinement.  And upon coming to the north, I
+expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and
+uncultivated population, living in the most Spartan-
+like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury,
+pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders.  Such
+being my conjectures, any one acquainted with the
+appearance of New Bedford may very readily infer
+how palpably I must have seen my mistake.
+ 
+  In the afternoon of the day when I reached New
+Bedford, I visited the wharves, to take a view of the
+shipping.  Here I found myself surrounded with the
+strongest proofs of wealth.  Lying at the wharves, and
+riding in the stream, I saw many ships of the finest
+model, in the best order, and of the largest size.
+Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite
+warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their
+utmost capacity with the necessaries and comforts
+of life.  Added to this, almost every body seemed to
+be at work, but noiselessly so, compared with what
+I had been accustomed to in Baltimore.  There were
+no loud songs heard from those engaged in loading
+and unloading ships.  I heard no deep oaths or horrid
+curses on the laborer.  I saw no whipping of men;
+but all seemed to go smoothly on.  Every man ap-
+peared to understand his work, and went at it with
+a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened
+the deep interest which he felt in what he was doing,
+as well as a sense of his own dignity as a man.  To me
+this looked exceedingly strange.  From the wharves I
+strolled around and over the town, gazing with won-
+der and admiration at the splendid churches, beauti-
+ful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing
+an amount of wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement,
+such as I had never seen in any part of slaveholding
+Maryland.
+ 
+  Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful.  I
+saw few or no dilapidated houses, with poverty-
+stricken inmates; no half-naked children and bare-
+footed women, such as I had been accustomed to see
+in Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael's, and Balti-
+more.  The people looked more able, stronger, health-
+ier, and happier, than those of Maryland.  I was for
+once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without
+being saddened by seeing extreme poverty.  But the
+most astonishing as well as the most interesting thing
+to me was the condition of the colored people, a
+great many of whom, like myself, had escaped
+thither as a refuge from the hunters of men.  I found
+many, who had not been seven years out of their
+chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying
+more of the comforts of life, than the average of
+slaveholders in Maryland.  I will venture to assert,
+that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I
+can say with a grateful heart, "I was hungry, and he
+gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink;
+I was a stranger, and he took me in") lived in a
+neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid
+for, and read, more newspapers; better understood
+the moral, religious, and political character of the
+nation,--than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Tal-
+bot county Maryland.  Yet Mr. Johnson was a work-
+ing man.  His hands were hardened by toil, and not
+his alone, but those also of Mrs. Johnson.  I found the
+colored people much more spirited than I had sup-
+posed they would be.  I found among them a deter-
+mination to protect each other from the blood-thirsty
+kidnapper, at all hazards.  Soon after my arrival, I
+was told of a circumstance which illustrated their
+spirit.  A colored man and a fugitive slave were on
+unfriendly terms.  The former was heard to threaten
+the latter with informing his master of his where-
+abouts.  Straightway a meeting was called among the
+colored people, under the stereotyped notice, "Busi-
+ness of importance!"  The betrayer was invited to at-
+tend.  The people came at the appointed hour, and
+organized the meeting by appointing a very religious
+old gentleman as president, who, I believe, made a
+prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as fol-
+lows: "~Friends, we have got him here, and I would
+recommend that you young men just take him out-
+side the door, and kill him!~"  With this, a number
+of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted
+by some more timid than themselves, and the be-
+trayer escaped their vengeance, and has not been
+seen in New Bedford since.  I believe there have
+been no more such threats, and should there be here-
+after, I doubt not that death would be the conse-
+quence.
+ 
+  I found employment, the third day after my ar-
+rival, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil.  It was
+new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it
+with a glad heart and a willing hand.  I was now my
+own master.  It was a happy moment, the rapture of
+which can be understood only by those who have
+been slaves.  It was the first work, the reward of
+which was to be entirely my own.  There was no Mas-
+ter Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the
+money, to rob me of it.  I worked that day with a
+pleasure I had never before experienced.  I was at
+work for myself and newly-married wife.  It was to me
+the starting-point of a new existence.  When I got
+through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of
+calking; but such was the strength of prejudice
+against color, among the white calkers, that they re-
+fused to work with me, and of course I could get no
+employment.*  Finding my trade of no immediate
+benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and pre-
+pared myself to do any kind of work I could get to
+do.  Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse
+and saw, and I very soon found myself a plenty of
+work.  There was no work too hard--none too dirty.
+I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood,
+sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,--all of which I
+ 
+ 
+  * I am told that colored persons can now get employment
+at calking in New Bedford--a result of anti-slavery effort.
+did for nearly three years in New Bedford, before I
+became known to the anti-slavery world.
+ 
+  In about four months after I went to New Bed-
+ford, there came a young man to me, and inquired
+if I did not wish to take the "Liberator."  I told him
+I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery,
+I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then.  I,
+however, finally became a subscriber to it.  The paper
+came, and I read it from week to week with such
+feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt
+to describe.  The paper became my meat and my
+drink.  My soul was set all on fire.  Its sympathy for
+my brethren in bonds--its scathing denunciations of
+slaveholders--its faithful exposures of slavery--and its
+powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institu-
+tion--sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as
+I had never felt before!
+ 
+  I had not long been a reader of the "Liberator,"
+before I got a pretty correct idea of the principles,
+measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform.  I took
+right hold of the cause.  I could do but little; but
+what I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt
+happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting.  I sel-
+dom had much to say at the meetings, because what
+I wanted to say was said so much better by others.
+But, while attending an anti-slavery convention at
+Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt
+strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time
+much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a
+gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored
+people's meeting at New Bedford.  It was a severe
+cross, and I took it up reluctantly.  The truth was,
+I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to
+white people weighed me down.  I spoke but a few
+moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said
+what I desired with considerable ease.  From that
+time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the
+cause of my brethren--with what success, and with
+what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my la-
+bors to decide.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+                         APPENDIX
+ 
+ 
+  I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative,
+that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a
+tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possi-
+bly lead those unacquainted with my religious views
+to suppose me an opponent of all religion.  To re-
+move the liability of such misapprehension, I deem
+it proper to append the following brief explanation.
+What I have said respecting and against religion, I
+mean strictly to apply to the ~slaveholding religion~ of
+this land, and with no possible reference to Christi-
+anity proper; for, between the Christianity of this
+land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the
+widest possible difference--so wide, that to receive
+the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to re-
+ject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked.  To be the
+friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy
+of the other.  I love the pure, peaceable, and impar-
+tial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the cor-
+rupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plunder-
+ing, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
+Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful
+one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.
+I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the
+boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
+Never was there a clearer case of "stealing the livery
+of the court of heaven to serve the devil in."  I am
+filled with unutterable loathing when I contem-
+plate the religious pomp and show, together with the
+horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround
+me.  We have men-stealers for ministers, women-
+whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for
+church members.  The man who wields the blood-
+clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on
+Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and
+lowly Jesus.  The man who robs me of my earnings
+at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader
+on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life,
+and the path of salvation.  He who sells my sister,
+for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pi-
+ous advocate of purity.  He who proclaims it a re-
+ligious duty to read the Bible denies me the right
+of learning to read the name of the God who made
+me.  He who is the religious advocate of marriage
+robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves
+them to the ravages of wholesale pollution.  The
+warm defender of the sacredness of the family re-
+lation is the same that scatters whole families,--sun-
+dering husbands and wives, parents and children,
+sisters and brothers,--leaving the hut vacant, and the
+hearth desolate.  We see the thief preaching against
+theft, and the adulterer against adultery.  We have
+men sold to build churches, women sold to support
+the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for
+the POOR HEATHEN! ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE
+GOOD OF SOULS!  The slave auctioneer's bell and the
+church-going bell chime in with each other, and the
+bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned
+in the religious shouts of his pious master.  Revivals
+of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand
+in hand together.  The slave prison and the church
+stand near each other.  The clanking of fetters and
+the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious
+psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be
+heard at the same time.  The dealers in the bodies
+and souls of men erect their stand in the presence
+of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other.
+The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support
+the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his in-
+fernal business with the garb of Christianity.  Here
+we have religion and robbery the allies of each other
+--devils dressed in angels' robes, and hell presenting
+the semblance of paradise.
+ 
+"Just God! and these are they,
+   Who minister at thine altar, God of right!
+Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay
+   On Israel's ark of light.
+ 
+"What! preach, and kidnap men?
+   Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?
+Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
+   Bolt hard the captive's door?
+ 
+"What! servants of thy own
+   Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
+The homeless and the outcast, fettering down
+   The tasked and plundered slave!
+ 
+"Pilate and Herod friends!
+   Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!
+Just God and holy! is that church which lends
+   Strength to the spoiler thine?"
+ 
+ 
+  The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of
+whose votaries it may be as truly said, as it was of
+the ancient scribes and Pharisees, "They bind heavy
+burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on
+men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move
+them with one of their fingers.  All their works they
+do for to be seen of men.--They love the upper-
+most rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the syna-
+gogues, . . . . . . and to be called of men, Rabbi,
+Rabbi.--But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
+hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven
+against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither
+suffer ye them that are entering to go in.  Ye devour
+widows' houses, and for a pretence make long
+prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater dam-
+nation.  Ye compass sea and land to make one prose-
+lyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold
+more the child of hell than yourselves.--Woe unto
+you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay
+tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omit-
+ted the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
+mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, and
+not to leave the other undone.  Ye blind guides!
+which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.  Woe
+unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye
+make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter;
+but within, they are full of extortion and excess.--
+Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for
+ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed ap-
+pear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead
+men's bones, and of all uncleanness.  Even so ye also
+outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within
+ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity."
+ 
+  Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be
+strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed
+Christians in America.  They strain at a gnat, and
+swallow a camel.  Could any thing be more true of
+our churches?  They would be shocked at the propo-
+sition of fellowshipping a SHEEP-stealer; and at the
+same time they hug to their communion a MAN-
+stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I
+find fault with them for it.  They attend with Phari-
+saical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and
+at the same time neglect the weightier matters of
+the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.  They are al-
+ways ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy.
+They are they who are represented as professing to
+love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate
+their brother whom they have seen.  They love the
+heathen on the other side of the globe.  They can
+pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into
+his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while
+they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their
+own doors.
+ 
+  Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of
+this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, grow-
+ing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the
+religion of this land, that which is revealed in the
+words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and
+south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet
+in union with slaveholders.  It is against religion, as
+presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my
+duty to testify.
+ 
+  I conclude these remarks by copying the following
+portrait of the religion of the south, (which is, by
+communion and fellowship, the religion of the
+north,) which I soberly affirm is "true to the life,"
+and without caricature or the slightest exaggeration.
+It is said to have been drawn, several years before
+the present anti-slavery agitation began, by a north-
+ern Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the
+south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding mor-
+als, manners, and piety, with his own eyes.  "Shall
+I not visit for these things? saith the Lord.  Shall not
+my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"
+ 
+ 
+                         A PARODY
+ 
+"Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell
+How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,
+And women buy and children sell,
+And preach all sinners down to hell,
+  And sing of heavenly union.
+"They'll bleat and baa, dona like goats,
+Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,
+Array their backs in fine black coats,
+Then seize their negroes by their throats,
+  And choke, for heavenly union.
+ 
+"They'll church you if you sip a dram,
+And damn you if you steal a lamb;
+Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,
+Of human rights, and bread and ham;
+  Kidnapper's heavenly union.
+ 
+"They'll loudly talk of Christ's reward,
+And bind his image with a cord,
+And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,
+And sell their brother in the Lord
+  To handcuffed heavenly union.
+ 
+"They'll read and sing a sacred song,
+And make a prayer both loud and long,
+And teach the right and do the wrong,
+Hailing the brother, sister throng,
+  With words of heavenly union.
+ 
+"We wonder how such saints can sing,
+Or praise the Lord upon the wing,
+Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,
+And to their slaves and mammon cling,
+  In guilty conscience union.
+ 
+"They'll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,
+And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie,
+And lay up treasures in the sky,
+By making switch and cowskin fly,
+  In hope of heavenly union.
+"They'll crack old Tony on the skull,
+And preach and roar like Bashan bull,
+Or braying ass, of mischief full,
+Then seize old Jacob by the wool,
+  And pull for heavenly union.
+ 
+"A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,
+Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,
+Yet never would afford relief
+To needy, sable sons of grief,
+  Was big with heavenly union.
+ 
+"'Love not the world,' the preacher said,
+And winked his eye, and shook his head;
+He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,
+Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,
+  Yet still loved heavenly union.
+ 
+"Another preacher whining spoke
+Of One whose heart for sinners broke:
+He tied old Nanny to an oak,
+And drew the blood at every stroke,
+  And prayed for heavenly union.
+ 
+"Two others oped their iron jaws,
+And waved their children-stealing paws;
+There sat their children in gewgaws;
+By stinting negroes' backs and maws,
+  They kept up heavenly union.
+ 
+"All good from Jack another takes,
+And entertains their flirts and rakes,
+Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes,
+And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;
+  And this goes down for union."
+ 
+  Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book
+may do something toward throwing light on the
+American slave system, and hastening the glad day
+of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in
+bonds--faithfully relying upon the power of truth,
+love, and justice, for success in my humble efforts
+--and solemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred
+cause,--I subscribe myself,
+ 
+                 FREDERICK DOUGLASS
+LYNN, ~Mass., April~ 28, 1845.
+ 
+ 
+                          THE END
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
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