Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce
bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds
of the north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. _They_ do the work.
Southern gentlemen indulge in the most contemptuous expressions about
the Yankees, while they, on their part, consent to do the vilest
work for them, such as the ferocious bloodhounds and the despised
negro-hunters are employed to do at home. When southerners go to the
north, they are proud to do them honor; but the northern man is not
welcome south of Mason and Dixon’s line, unless he suppresses every
thought and feeling at variance with their “peculiar institution.”
Nor is it enough to be silent. The masters are not pleased, unless
they obtain a greater degree of subservience than that; and they are
generally accommodated. Do they respect the northerner for this? I trow
not. Even the slaves despise “a northern man with southern principles;”
and that is the class they generally see. When northerners go to the
south to reside, they prove very apt scholars. They soon imbibe the
sentiments and disposition of their neighbors, and generally go beyond
their teachers. Of the two, they are proverbially the hardest masters.
They seem to satisfy their consciences with the doctrine that God
created the Africans to be slaves. What a libel upon the heavenly
Father, who “made of one blood all nations of men!” And then who _are_
Africans? Who can measure the amount of Anglo-Saxon blood coursing in
the veins of American slaves?
I have spoken of the pains slaveholders take to give their slaves a bad
opinion of the north; but, notwithstanding this, intelligent slaves are
aware that they have many friends in the Free States. Even the most
ignorant have some confused notions about it. They knew that I could
read; and I was often asked if I had seen any thing in the newspapers
about white folks over in the big north, who were trying to get their
freedom for them. Some believe that the abolitionists have already made
them free, and that it is established by law, but that their masters
prevent the law from going into effect. One woman begged me to get a
newspaper and read it over. She said her husband told her that the
black people had sent word to the queen of ’Merica that they were all
slaves; that she didn’t believe it, and went to Washington city to see
the president about it. They quarrelled; she drew her sword upon him,
and swore that he should help her to make them all free.
That poor, ignorant woman thought that America was governed by a
Queen, to whom the President was subordinate. I wish the President was
subordinate to Queen Justice.
IX. Sketches Of Neighboring Slaveholders.
There was a planter in the country, not far from us, whom I will call
Mr. Litch. He was an ill-bred, uneducated man, but very wealthy. He
had six hundred slaves, many of whom he did not know by sight. His
extensive plantation was managed by well-paid overseers. There was a
jail and a whipping post on his grounds; and whatever cruelties were
perpetrated there, they passed without comment. He was so effectually
screened by his great wealth that he was called to no account for his
crimes, not even for murder.
Various were the punishments resorted to. A favorite one was to tie a
rope round a man’s body, and suspend him from the ground. A fire was
kindled over him, from which was suspended a piece of fat pork. As
this cooked, the scalding drops of fat continually fell on the bare
flesh. On his own plantation, he required very strict obedience to the
eighth commandment. But depredations on the neighbors were allowable,
provided the culprit managed to evade detection or suspicion. If a
neighbor brought a charge of theft against any of his slaves, he was
browbeaten by the master, who assured him that his slaves had enough of
every thing at home, and had no inducement to steal. No sooner was the
neighbor’s back turned, than the accused was sought out, and whipped
for his lack of discretion. If a slave stole from him even a pound of
meat or a peck of corn, if detection followed, he was put in chains
and imprisoned, and so kept till his form was attenuated by hunger and
suffering.
A freshet once bore his wine cellar and meat house miles away from the
plantation. Some slaves followed, and secured bits of meat and bottles
of wine. Two were detected; a ham and some liquor being found in their
huts. They were summoned by their master. No words were used, but a
club felled them to the ground. A rough box was their coffin, and their
interment was a dog’s burial. Nothing was said.
Murder was so common on his plantation that he feared to be alone after
nightfall. He might have believed in ghosts.
His brother, if not equal in wealth, was at least equal in cruelty. His
bloodhounds were well trained. Their pen was spacious, and a terror to
the slaves. They were let loose on a runaway, and, if they tracked him,
they literally tore the flesh from his bones. When this slaveholder
died, his shrieks and groans were so frightful that they appalled his
own friends. His last words were, “I am going to hell; bury my money
with me.”
After death his eyes remained open. To press the lids down, silver
dollars were laid on them. These were buried with him. From this
circumstance, a rumor went abroad that his coffin was filled with
money. Three times his grave was opened, and his coffin taken out. The
last time, his body was found on the ground, and a flock of buzzards
were pecking at it. He was again interred, and a sentinel set over his
grave. The perpetrators were never discovered.
Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities. Mr. Conant, a
neighbor of Mr. Litch, returned from town one evening in a partial
state of intoxication. His body servant gave him some offence. He
was divested of his clothes, except his shirt, whipped, and tied to
a large tree in front of the house. It was a stormy night in winter.
The wind blew bitterly cold, and the boughs of the old tree crackled
under falling sleet. A member of the family, fearing he would freeze
to death, begged that he might be taken down; but the master would
not relent. He remained there three hours; and, when he was cut down,
he was more dead than alive. Another slave, who stole a pig from this
master, to appease his hunger, was terribly flogged. In desperation, he
tried to run away. But at the end of two miles, he was so faint with
loss of blood, he thought he was dying. He had a wife, and he longed to
see her once more. Too sick to walk, he crept back that long distance
on his hands and knees. When he reached his master’s, it was night.
He had not strength to rise and open the gate. He moaned, and tried
to call for help. I had a friend living in the same family. At last
his cry reached her. She went out and found the prostrate man at the
gate. She ran back to the house for assistance, and two men returned
with her. They carried him in, and laid him on the floor. The back of
his shirt was one clot of blood. By means of lard, my friend loosened
it from the raw flesh. She bandaged him, gave him cool drink, and left
him to rest. The master said he deserved a hundred more lashes. When
his own labor was stolen from him, he had stolen food to appease his
hunger. This was his crime.
Another neighbor was a Mrs. Wade. At no hour of the day was there
cessation of the lash on her premises. Her labors began with the
dawn, and did not cease till long after nightfall. The barn was her
particular place of torture. There she lashed the slaves with the might
of a man. An old slave of hers once said to me, “It is hell in missis’s
house. ’Pears I can never get out. Day and night I prays to die.”
The mistress died before the old woman, and, when dying, entreated her
husband not to permit any one of her slaves to look on her after death.
A slave who had nursed her children, and had still a child in her care,
watched her chance, and stole with it in her arms to the room where
lay her dead mistress. She gazed a while on her, then raised her hand
and dealt two blows on her face, saying, as she did so, “The devil is
got you _now_!” She forgot that the child was looking on. She had just
begun to talk; and she said to her father, “I did see ma, and mammy
did strike ma, so,” striking her own face with her little hand. The
master was startled. He could not imagine how the nurse could obtain
access to the room where the corpse lay; for he kept the door locked.
He questioned her. She confessed that what the child had said was true,
and told how she had procured the key. She was sold to Georgia.
In my childhood I knew a valuable slave, named Charity, and loved
her, as all children did. Her young mistress married, and took her to
Louisiana. Her little boy, James, was sold to a good sort of master.
He became involved in debt, and James was sold again to a wealthy
slaveholder, noted for his cruelty. With this man he grew up to
manhood, receiving the treatment of a dog. After a severe whipping,
to save himself from further infliction of the lash, with which he
was threatened, he took to the woods. He was in a most miserable
condition—cut by the cowskin, half naked, half starved, and without the
means of procuring a crust of bread.
Some weeks after his escape, he was captured, tied, and carried back to
his master’s plantation. This man considered punishment in his jail, on
bread and water, after receiving hundreds of lashes, too mild for the
poor slave’s offence. Therefore he decided, after the overseer should
have whipped him to his satisfaction, to have him placed between the
screws of the cotton gin, to stay as long as he had been in the woods.
This wretched creature was cut with the whip from his head to his feet,
then washed with strong brine, to prevent the flesh from mortifying,
and make it heal sooner than it otherwise would. He was then put into
the cotton gin, which was screwed down, only allowing him room to turn
on his side when he could not lie on his back. Every morning a slave
was sent with a piece of bread and bowl of water, which were placed
within reach of the poor fellow. The slave was charged, under penalty
of severe punishment, not to speak to him.
Four days passed, and the slave continued to carry the bread and
water. On the second morning, he found the bread gone, but the water
untouched. When he had been in the press four days and five nights,
the slave informed his master that the water had not been used for
four mornings, and that a horrible stench came from the gin house. The
overseer was sent to examine into it. When the press was unscrewed, the
dead body was found partly eaten by rats and vermin. Perhaps the rats
that devoured his bread had gnawed him before life was extinct. Poor
Charity! Grandmother and I often asked each other how her affectionate
heart would bear the news, if she should ever hear of the murder of
her son. We had known her husband, and knew that James was like him in
manliness and intelligence. These were the qualities that made it so
hard for him to be a plantation slave. They put him into a rough box,
and buried him with less feeling than would have been manifested for
an old house dog. Nobody asked any questions. He was a slave; and the
feeling was that the master had a right to do what he pleased with his
own property. And what did _he_ care for the value of a slave? He had
hundreds of them. When they had finished their daily toil, they must
hurry to eat their little morsels, and be ready to extinguish their
pine knots before nine o’clock, when the overseer went his patrol
rounds. He entered every cabin, to see that men and their wives had
gone to bed together, lest the men, from over-fatigue, should fall