My Bondage and My Freedom
different man. The name of the new overseer was Austin Gore. Upon this
individual I would fix particular attention; for under his rule there
was more suffering from violence and bloodshed than had—according to
the older slaves ever been experienced before on this plantation. I
confess, I hardly know how to bring this man fitly before the reader.
He was, it is true, an overseer, and possessed, to a large extent, the
peculiar characteristics of his class; yet, to call him merely an
overseer, would not give the reader a fair notion of the man. I speak
of overseers as a class. They are such. They are as distinct from the
slaveholding gentry of the south, as are the fishwomen of Paris, and
the coal-heavers of London, distinct from other members of society.
They constitute a separate fraternity at the south, not less marked
than is the fraternity of Park Lane bullies in New York. They have been
arranged and classified by that great law of attraction, which
determines the spheres and affinities of men; which ordains, that men,
whose malign and brutal propensities predominate over their moral and
intellectual endowments, shall, naturally, fall into those employments
which promise the largest gratification to those predominating
instincts or propensities. The office of overseer takes this raw
material of vulgarity and brutality, and stamps it as a distinct class
of southern society. But, in this class, as in all other classes, there
are characters of marked individuality, even while they bear a general
resemblance to the mass. Mr. Gore was one of those, to whom a general
characterization would do no manner of justice. He was an overseer; but
he was something more. With the malign and tyrannical qualities of an
overseer, he combined something of the lawful master. He had the
artfulness and the mean ambition of his class; but he was wholly free
from the disgusting swagger and noisy bravado of his fraternity. There
was an easy air of independence about him; a calm self-possession, and
a sternness of glance, which might well daunt hearts less timid than
those of poor slaves, accustomed from childhood and through life to
cower before a driver’s lash. The home plantation of Col. Lloyd
afforded an ample field for the exercise of the qualifications for
overseership, which he possessed in such an eminent degree.
Mr. Gore was one of those overseers, who could torture the slightest
word or look into impudence; he had the nerve, not only to resent, but
to punish, promptly and severely. He never allowed himself to be
answered back, by a slave. In this, he was as lordly and as imperious
as Col. Edward Lloyd, himself; acting always up to the maxim,
practically maintained by slaveholders, that it is better that a dozen
slaves suffer under the lash, without fault, than that the master or
the overseer should _seem_ to have been wrong in the presence of the
slave. _Everything must be absolute here_. Guilty or not guilty, it is
enough to be accused, to be sure of a flogging. The very presence of
this man Gore was painful, and I shunned him as I would have shunned a
rattlesnake. His piercing, black eyes, and sharp, shrill voice, ever
awakened sensations of terror among the slaves. For so young a man (I
describe him as he was, twenty-five or thirty years ago) Mr. Gore was
singularly reserved and grave in the presence of slaves. He indulged in
no jokes, said no funny things, and kept his own counsels. Other
overseers, how brutal soever they might be, were, at times, inclined to
gain favor with the slaves, by indulging a little pleasantry; but Gore
was never known to be guilty of any such weakness. He was always the
cold, distant, unapproachable _overseer_ of Col. Edward Lloyd’s
plantation, and needed no higher pleasure than was involved in a
faithful discharge of the duties of his office. When he whipped, he
seemed to do so from a sense of duty, and feared no consequences. What
Hopkins did reluctantly, Gore did with alacrity. There was a stern
will, an iron-like reality, about this Gore, which would have easily
made him the chief of a band of pirates, had his environments been
favorable to such a course of life. All the coolness, savage barbarity
and freedom from moral restraint, which are necessary in the character
of a pirate-chief, centered, I think, in this man Gore. Among many
other deeds of shocking cruelty which he perpetrated, while I was at
Mr. Lloyd’s, was the murder of a young colored man, named Denby. He was
sometimes called Bill Denby, or Demby; (I write from sound, and the
sounds on Lloyd’s plantation are not very certain.) I knew him well. He
was a powerful young man, full of animal spirits, and, so far as I
know, he was among the most valuable of Col. Lloyd’s slaves. In
something—I know not what—he offended this Mr. Austin Gore, and, in
accordance with the custom of the latter, he under took to flog him. He
gave Denby but few stripes; the latter broke away from him and plunged
into the creek, and, standing there to the depth of his neck in water,
he refused to come out at the order of the overseer; whereupon, for
this refusal, _Gore shot him dead!_ It is said that Gore gave Denby
three calls, telling him that if he did not obey the last call, he
would shoot him. When the third call was given, Denby stood his ground
firmly; and this raised the question, in the minds of the by-standing
slaves—“Will he dare to shoot?” Mr. Gore, without further parley, and
without making any further effort to induce Denby to come out of the
water, raised his gun deliberately to his face, took deadly aim at his
standing victim, and, in an instant, poor Denby was numbered with the
dead. His mangled body sank out of sight, and only his warm, red blood
marked the place where he had stood.
This devilish outrage, this fiendish murder, produced, as it was well
calculated to do, a tremendous sensation. A thrill of horror flashed
through every soul on the plantation, if I may except the guilty wretch
who had committed the hell-black deed. While the slaves generally were
panic-struck, and howling with alarm, the murderer himself was calm and
collected, and appeared as though nothing unusual had happened. The
atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out, in reprobation of it;
but the whole thing proved to be less than a nine days’ wonder. Both
Col. Lloyd and my old master arraigned Gore for his cruelty in the
matter, but this amounted to nothing. His reply, or explanation—as I
remember to have heard it at the time was, that the extraordinary
expedient was demanded by necessity; that Denby had become
unmanageable; that he had set a dangerous example to the other slaves;
and that, without some such prompt measure as that to which he had
resorted, were adopted, there would be an end to all rule and order on
the plantation. That very convenient covert for all manner of cruelty
and outrage that cowardly alarm-cry, that the slaves would _“take the
place,”_ was pleaded, in extenuation of this revolting crime, just as
it had been cited in defense of a thousand similar ones. He argued,
that if one slave refused to be corrected, and was allowed to escape
with his life, when he had been told that he should lose it if he
persisted in his course, the other slaves would soon copy his example;
the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves, and the
enslavement of the whites. I have every reason to believe that Mr.
Gore’s defense, or explanation, was deemed satisfactory—at least to
Col. Lloyd. He was continued in his office on the plantation. His fame
as an overseer went abroad, and his horrid crime was not even submitted
to judicial investigation. The murder was committed in the presence of
slaves, and they, of course, could neither institute a suit, nor
testify against the murderer. His bare word would go further in a court
of law, than the united testimony of ten thousand black witnesses.
All that Mr. Gore had to do, was to make his peace with Col. Lloyd.
This done, and the guilty perpetrator of one of the 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, when I left
Maryland; if he is still alive he probably yet resides there; and I
have no reason to doubt that he is now as highly esteemed, and as
greatly respected, as though his guilty soul had never been stained
with innocent blood. I am well aware that what I have now written will
by some be branded as false and malicious. It will be denied, not only
that such a thing ever did transpire, as I have now narrated, but that
such a thing could happen in _Maryland_. I can only say—believe it or
not—that I have said nothing but the literal truth, gainsay it who may.
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, ship carpenter, of
St. Michael’s, killed two slaves, one of whom he butchered 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.”
As an evidence of the reckless disregard of human life where the life
is that of a slave I may state the notorious fact, that the wife of Mr.
Giles Hicks, who lived but a short distance from Col. Lloyd’s, with her
own hands murdered my wife’s cousin, a young girl between fifteen and
sixteen years of age—mutilating her person in a most shocking manner.
The atrocious woman, in the paroxysm of her wrath, not content with
murdering her victim, literally mangled her face, and broke her breast
bone. Wild, however, and infuriated as she was, she took the precaution
to cause the slave-girl to be buried; but the facts of the case coming
abroad, very speedily led to the disinterment of the remains of the
murdered slave-girl. A coroner’s jury was assembled, who decided that
the girl had come to her death by severe beating. It was ascertained
that the offense for which this girl was thus hurried out of the world,
was this: she had been set that night, and several preceding nights, to
mind Mrs. Hicks’s baby, and having fallen into a sound sleep, the baby
cried, waking Mrs. Hicks, but not the slave-girl. Mrs. Hicks, becoming
infuriated at the girl’s tardiness, after calling several times, jumped
from her bed and seized a piece of fire-wood from the fireplace; and
then, as she lay fast asleep, she deliberately pounded in her skull and
breast-bone, and thus ended her life. I will not say that this most
horrid murder produced no sensation in the community. It _did_ produce
a sensation; but, incredible to tell, the moral sense of the community
was blunted too entirely by the ordinary nature of slavery horrors, to
bring the murderess to punishment. A warrant was issued for her arrest,
but, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served. Thus did
Mrs. Hicks not only escape condign punishment, but even the pain and
mortification of being arraigned before a court of justice.
Whilst I am detailing the bloody deeds that took place during my stay
on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another dark
transaction, which occurred about the same time as the murder of Denby
by Mr. Gore.
On the side of the river Wye, opposite from Col. Lloyd’s, there lived a
Mr. Beal Bondley, a wealthy slaveholder. In the direction of his land,
and near the shore, there was an excellent oyster fishing ground, and
to this, some of the slaves of Col. Lloyd occasionally resorted in
their little canoes, at night, with a view to make up the deficiency of