My Bondage and My Freedom
observed, with a view to increasing the number and quality of the
former, as of the latter.
I will here reproduce what I said of my own experience in this wretched
place, more than ten years ago:
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 all weathers. It was
never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, snow, or hail too
hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more
the order of the day than the night. The longest days were too short
for him, and the shortest nights were too long for him. I was somewhat
unmanageable when I first went there; but a few months of his
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, 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 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 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
around 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 with 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 coast 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 will 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.”
I shall never be able to narrate the mental experience through which it
was my lot to pass during my stay at Covey’s. I was completely wrecked,
changed and bewildered; goaded almost to madness at one time, and at
another reconciling myself to my wretched condition. Everything in the
way of kindness, which I had experienced at Baltimore; all my former
hopes and aspirations for usefulness in the world, and the happy
moments spent in the exercises of religion, contrasted with my then
present lot, but increased my anguish.
I suffered bodily as well as mentally. I had neither sufficient time in
which to eat or to sleep, except on Sundays. The overwork, and the
brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that
ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought—“_I am a slave—a slave for
life—a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom_”—rendered me
a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness.
CHAPTER XVI. _Another Pressure of the Tyrant’s Vice_
EXPERIENCE AT COVEY’S SUMMED UP—FIRST SIX MONTHS SEVERER THAN THE
SECOND—PRELIMINARIES TO THE CHANCE—REASONS FOR NARRATING THE
CIRCUMSTANCES—SCENE IN TREADING YARD—TAKEN ILL—UNUSUAL BRUTALITY OF
COVEY—ESCAPE TO ST. MICHAEL’S—THE PURSUIT—SUFFERING IN THE WOODS—DRIVEN
BACK AGAIN TO COVEY’S—BEARING OF MASTER THOMAS—THE SLAVE IS NEVER
SICK—NATURAL TO EXPECT SLAVES TO FEIGN SICKNESS—LAZINESS OF
SLAVEHOLDERS.
The foregoing chapter, with all its horrid incidents and shocking
features, may be taken as a fair representation of the first six months
of my life at Covey’s. The reader has but to repeat, in his own mind,
once a week, the scene in the woods, where Covey subjected me to his
merciless lash, to have a true idea of my bitter experience there,
during the first period of the breaking process through which Mr. Covey
carried me. I have no heart to repeat each separate transaction, in
which I was victim of his violence and brutality. Such a narration
would fill a volume much larger than the present one. I aim only to
give the reader a truthful impression of my slave life, without
unnecessarily affecting him with harrowing details.
As I have elsewhere intimated that my hardships were much greater
during the first six months of my stay at Covey’s, than during the
remainder of the year, and as the change in my condition was owing to
causes which may help the reader to a better understanding of human
nature, when subjected to the terrible extremities of slavery, I will
narrate the circumstances of this change, although I may seem thereby
to applaud my own courage. You have, dear reader, seen me humbled,
degraded, broken down, enslaved, and brutalized, and you understand how
it was done; now let us see the converse of all this, and how it was
brought about; and this will take us through the year 1834.
On one of the hottest days of the month of August, of the year just
mentioned, had the reader been passing through Covey’s farm, he might
have seen me at work, in what is there called the “treading yard”—a
yard upon which wheat is trodden out from the straw, by the horses’
feet. I was there, at work, feeding the “fan,” or rather bringing wheat
to the fan, while Bill Smith was feeding. Our force consisted of Bill
Hughes, Bill Smith, and a slave by the name of Eli; the latter having
been hired for this occasion. The work was simple, and required
strength and activity, rather than any skill or intelligence, and yet,
to one entirely unused to such work, it came very hard. The heat was
intense and overpowering, and there was much hurry to get the wheat,
trodden out that day, through the fan; since, if that work was done an
hour before sundown, the hands would have, according to a promise of
Covey, that hour added to their night’s rest. I was not behind any of
them in the wish to complete the day’s work before sundown, and, hence,
I struggled with all my might to get the work forward. The promise of
one hour’s repose on a week day, was sufficient to quicken my pace, and
to spur me on to extra endeavor. Besides, we had all planned to go
fishing, and I certainly wished to have a hand in that. But I was
disappointed, and the day turned out to be one of the bitterest I ever
experienced. About three o’clock, while the sun was pouring down his
burning rays, and not a breeze was stirring, I broke down; my strength
failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended
with extreme dizziness, and trembling in every limb. Finding what was
coming, and feeling it would never do to stop work, I nerved myself up,
and staggered on until I fell by the side of the wheat fan, feeling
that the earth had fallen upon me. This brought the entire work to a
dead stand. There was work for four; each one had his part to perform,
and each part depended on the other, so that when one stopped, all were
compelled to stop. Covey, who had now become my dread, as well as my
tormentor, was at the house, about a hundred yards from where I was
fanning, and instantly, upon hearing the fan stop, he came down to the
treading yard, to inquire into the cause of our stopping. Bill Smith
told him I was sick, and that I was unable longer to bring wheat to the
fan.
I had, by this time, crawled away, under the side of a post-and-rail
fence, in the shade, and was exceeding ill. The intense heat of the
sun, the heavy dust rising from the fan, the stooping, to take up the
wheat from the yard, together with the hurrying, to get through, had
caused a rush of blood to my head. In this condition, Covey finding out
where I was, came to me; and, after standing over me a while, he asked
me what the matter was. I told him as well as I could, for it was with
difficulty that I could speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the
side, which jarred my whole frame, and commanded me to get up. The man
had obtained complete control over me; and if he had commanded me to do
any possible thing, I should, in my then state of mind, have endeavored
to comply. I made an effort to rise, but fell back in the attempt,
before gaining my feet. The brute now gave me another heavy kick, and
again told me to rise. I again tried to rise, and succeeded in gaining
my feet; but upon stooping to get the tub with which I was feeding the
fan, I again staggered and fell to the ground; and I must have so
fallen, had I been sure that a hundred bullets would have pierced me,
as the consequence. While down, in this sad condition, and perfectly
helpless, the merciless Negro breaker took up the hickory slab, with
which Hughes had been striking off the wheat to a level with the sides
of the half bushel measure (a very hard weapon) and with the sharp edge
of it, he dealt me a heavy blow on my head which made a large gash, and
caused the blood to run freely, saying, at the same time, “If _you have
got the headache, I’ll cure you_.” This done, he ordered me again to
rise, but I made no effort to do so; for I had made up my mind that it
was useless, and that the heartless monster might now do his worst; he
could but kill me, and that might put me out of my misery. Finding me
unable to rise, or rather despairing of my doing so, Covey left me,
with a view to getting on with the work without me. I was bleeding very
freely, and my face was soon covered with my warm blood. Cruel and
merciless as was the motive that dealt that blow, dear reader, the
wound was fortunate for me. Bleeding was never more efficacious. The
pain in my head speedily abated, and I was soon able to rise. Covey
had, as I have said, now left me to my fate; and the question was,