My Bondage and My Freedom
oversight of the coopers’ shop, wheelwrights’ shop, blacksmiths’ shop,
and shoemakers’ shop. Besides the care of these, he often had business
for the plantation which required him to be absent two and three days.
Thus largely employed, he had little time, and perhaps as little
disposition, to interfere with the children individually. What he was
to Col. Lloyd, he made Aunt Katy to him. When he had anything to say or
do about us, it was said or done in a wholesale manner; disposing of us
in classes or sizes, leaving all minor details to Aunt Katy, a person
of whom the reader has already received no very favorable impression.
Aunt Katy was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within
the margin of power granted to her, no matter how broad that authority
might be. Ambitious, ill-tempered and cruel, she found in her present
position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities.
She had a strong hold on old master she was considered a first rate
cook, and she really was very industrious. She was, therefore, greatly
favored by old master, and as one mark of his favor, she was the only
mother who was permitted to retain her children around her. Even to
these children she was often fiendish in her brutality. She pursued her
son Phil, one day, in my presence, with a huge butcher knife, and dealt
a blow with its edge which left a shocking gash on his arm, near the
wrist. For this, old master did sharply rebuke her, and threatened that
if she ever should do the like again, he would take the skin off her
back. Cruel, however, as Aunt Katy was to her own children, at times
she was not destitute of maternal feeling, as I often had occasion to
know, in the bitter pinches of hunger I had to endure. Differing from
the practice of Col. Lloyd, old master, instead of allowing so much for
each slave, committed the allowance for all to the care of Aunt Katy,
to be divided after cooking it, amongst us. The allowance, consisting
of coarse corn-meal, was not very abundant—indeed, it was very slender;
and in passing through Aunt Katy’s hands, it was made more slender
still, for some of us. William, Phil and Jerry were her children, and
it is not to accuse her too severely, to allege that she was often
guilty of starving myself and the other children, while she was
literally cramming her own. Want of food was my chief trouble the first
summer at my old master’s. Oysters and clams would do very well, with
an occasional supply of bread, but they soon failed in the absence of
bread. I speak but the simple truth, when I say, I have often been so
pinched with hunger, that I have fought with the dog—“Old Nep”—for the
smallest crumbs that fell from the kitchen table, and have been glad
when I won a single crumb in the combat. Many times have I followed,
with eager step, the waiting-girl when she went out to shake the table
cloth, to get the crumbs and small bones flung out for the cats. The
water, in which meat had been boiled, was as eagerly sought for by me.
It was a great thing to get the privilege of dipping a piece of bread
in such water; and the skin taken from rusty bacon, was a positive
luxury. Nevertheless, I sometimes got full meals and kind words from
sympathizing old slaves, who knew my sufferings, and received the
comforting assurance that I should be a man some day. “Never mind,
honey—better day comin’,” was even then a solace, a cheering
consolation to me in my troubles. Nor were all the kind words I
received from slaves. I had a friend in the parlor, as well, and one to
whom I shall be glad to do justice, before I have finished this part of
my story.
I was not long at old master’s, before I learned that his surname was
Anthony, and that he was generally called “Captain Anthony”—a title
which he probably acquired by sailing a craft in the Chesapeake Bay.
Col. Lloyd’s slaves never called Capt. Anthony “old master,” but always
Capt. Anthony; and _me_ they called “Captain Anthony Fred.” There is
not, probably, in the whole south, a plantation where the English
language is more imperfectly spoken than on Col. Lloyd’s. It is a
mixture of Guinea and everything else you please. At the time of which
I am now writing, there were slaves there who had been brought from the
coast of Africa. They never used the “s” in indication of the
possessive case. “Cap’n Ant’ney Tom,” “Lloyd Bill,” “Aunt Rose Harry,”
means “Captain Anthony’s Tom,” “Lloyd’s Bill,” &c. _“Oo you dem long
to?”_ means, “Whom do you belong to?” _“Oo dem got any peachy?”_ means,
“Have you got any peaches?” I could scarcely understand them when I
first went among them, so broken was their speech; and I am persuaded
that I could not have been dropped anywhere on the globe, where I could
reap less, in the way of knowledge, from my immediate associates, than
on this plantation. Even “MAS’ DANIEL,” by his association with his
father’s slaves, had measurably adopted their dialect and their ideas,
so far as they had ideas to be adopted. The equality of nature is
strongly asserted in childhood, and childhood requires children for
associates. _Color_ makes no difference with a child. Are you a child
with wants, tastes and pursuits common to children, not put on, but
natural? then, were you black as ebony you would be welcome to the
child of alabaster whiteness. The law of compensation holds here, as
well as elsewhere. Mas’ Daniel could not associate with ignorance
without sharing its shade; and he could not give his black playmates
his company, without giving them his intelligence, as well. Without
knowing this, or caring about it, at the time, I, for some cause or
other, spent much of my time with Mas’ Daniel, in preference to
spending it with most of the other boys.
Mas’ Daniel was the youngest son of Col. Lloyd; his older brothers were
Edward and Murray—both grown up, and fine looking men. Edward was
especially esteemed by the children, and by me among the rest; not that
he ever said anything to us or for us, which could be called especially
kind; it was enough for us, that he never looked nor acted scornfully
toward us. There were also three sisters, all married; one to Edward
Winder; a second to Edward Nicholson; a third to Mr. Lownes.
The family of old master consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; his
daughter, Lucretia, and her newly married husband, Capt. Auld. This was
the house family. The kitchen family consisted of Aunt Katy, Aunt
Esther, and ten or a dozen children, most of them older than myself.
Capt. Anthony was not considered a rich slaveholder, but was pretty
well off in the world. He owned about thirty _“head”_ of slaves, and
three farms in Tuckahoe. The most valuable part of his property was his
slaves, of whom he could afford to sell one every year. This crop,
therefore, brought him seven or eight hundred dollars a year, besides
his yearly salary, and other revenue from his farms.
The idea of rank and station was rigidly maintained on Col. Lloyd’s
plantation. Our family never visited the great house, and the Lloyds
never came to our home. Equal non-intercourse was observed between
Capt. Anthony’s family and that of Mr. Sevier, the overseer.
Such, kind reader, was the community, and such the place, in which my
earliest and most lasting impressions of slavery, and of slave-life,
were received; of which impressions you will learn more in the coming
chapters of this book.
CHAPTER V. _Gradual Initiation to the Mysteries of Slavery_
GROWING ACQUAINTANCE WITH OLD MASTER—HIS CHARACTER—EVILS OF
UNRESTRAINED PASSION—APPARENT TENDERNESS—OLD MASTER A MAN OF
TROUBLE—CUSTOM OF MUTTERING TO HIMSELF—NECESSITY OF BEING AWARE OF HIS
WORDS—THE SUPPOSED OBTUSENESS OF SLAVE-CHILDREN—BRUTAL OUTRAGE—DRUNKEN
OVERSEER—SLAVEHOLDER’S IMPATIENCE—WISDOM OF APPEALING TO SUPERIORS—THE
SLAVEHOLDER S WRATH BAD AS THAT OF THE OVERSEER—A BASE AND SELFISH
ATTEMPT TO BREAK UP A COURTSHIP—A HARROWING SCENE.
Although my old master—Capt. Anthony—gave me at first, (as the reader
will have already seen) very little attention, and although that little
was of a remarkably mild and gentle description, a few months only were
sufficient to convince me that mildness and gentleness were not the
prevailing or governing traits of his character. These excellent
qualities were displayed only occasionally. He could, when it suited
him, appear to be literally insensible to the claims of humanity, when
appealed to by the helpless against an aggressor, and he could himself
commit outrages, deep, dark and nameless. Yet he was not by nature
worse than other men. Had he been brought up in a free state,
surrounded by the just restraints of free society—restraints which are
necessary to the freedom of all its members, alike and equally—Capt.
Anthony might have been as humane a man, and every way as respectable,
as many who now oppose the slave system; certainly as humane and
respectable as are members of society generally. The slaveholder, as
well as the slave, is the victim of the slave system. A man’s character
greatly takes its hue and shape from the form and color of things about
him. Under the whole heavens there is no relation more unfavorable to
the development of honorable character, than that sustained by the
slaveholder to the slave. Reason is imprisoned here, and passions run
wild. Like the fires of the prairie, once lighted, they are at the
mercy of every wind, and must burn, till they have consumed all that is
combustible within their remorseless grasp. Capt. Anthony could be
kind, and, at times, he even showed an affectionate disposition. Could
the reader have seen him gently leading me by the hand—as he sometimes
did—patting me on the head, speaking to me in soft, caressing tones and
calling me his “little Indian boy,” he would have deemed him a kind old
man, and really, almost fatherly. But the pleasant moods of a
slaveholder are remarkably brittle; they are easily snapped; they
neither come often, nor remain long. His temper is subjected to
perpetual trials; but, since these trials are never borne patiently,
they add nothing to his natural stock of patience.
Old master very early impressed me with the idea that he was an unhappy
man. Even to my child’s eye, he wore a troubled, and at times, a
haggard aspect. His strange movements excited my curiosity, and
awakened my compassion. He seldom walked alone without muttering to
himself; and he occasionally stormed about, as if defying an army of
invisible foes. “He would do this, that, and the other; he’d be d—d if
he did not,”—was the usual form of his threats. Most of his leisure was
spent in walking, cursing and gesticulating, like one possessed by a
demon. Most evidently, he was a wretched man, at war with his own soul,
and with all the world around him. To be overheard by the children,
disturbed him very little. He made no more of our presence, than of
that of the ducks and geese which he met on the green. He little
thought that the little black urchins around him, could see, through
those vocal crevices, the very secrets of his heart. Slaveholders ever
underrate the intelligence with which they have to grapple. I really
understood the old man’s mutterings, attitudes and gestures, about as
well as he did himself. But slaveholders never encourage that kind of
communication, with the slaves, by which they might learn to measure
the depths of his knowledge. Ignorance is a high virtue in a human
chattel; and as the master studies to keep the slave ignorant, the
slave is cunning enough to make the master think he succeeds. The slave
fully appreciates the saying, “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to
be wise.” When old master’s gestures were violent, ending with a
threatening shake of the head, and a sharp snap of his middle finger