My Bondage and My Freedom
OF HOLIDAYS—A DEVICE OF SLAVERY—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COVEY AND
FREELAND—AN IRRELIGIOUS MASTER PREFERRED TO A RELIGIOUS ONE—CATALOGUE
OF FLOGGABLE OFFENSES—HARD LIFE AT COVEY’S USEFUL—IMPROVED CONDITION
NOT FOLLOWED BY CONTENTMENT—CONGENIAL SOCIETY AT FREELAND’S—SABBATH
SCHOOL INSTITUTED—SECRECY NECESSARY—AFFECTIONATE RELATIONS OF TUTOR AND
PUPILS—CONFIDENCE AND FRIENDSHIP AMONG SLAVES—I DECLINE PUBLISHING
PARTICULARS OF CONVERSATIONS WITH MY FRIENDS—SLAVERY THE INVITER OF
VENGEANCE.
My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day,
1834. I gladly left the snakish Covey, although he was now as gentle as
a lamb. My home for the year 1835 was already secured—my next master
was already selected. There is always more or less excitement about the
matter of changing hands, but I had become somewhat reckless. I cared
very little into whose hands I fell—I meant to fight my way. Despite of
Covey, too, the report got abroad, that I was hard to whip; that I was
guilty of kicking back; that though generally a good tempered Negro, I
sometimes “_got the devil in me_.” These sayings were rife in Talbot
county, and they distinguished me among my servile brethren. Slaves,
generally, will fight each other, and die at each other’s hands; but
there are few who are not held in awe by a white man. Trained from the
cradle up, to think and feel that their masters are superior, and
invested with a sort of sacredness, there are few who can outgrow or
rise above the control which that sentiment exercises. I had now got
free from it, and the thing was known. One bad sheep will spoil a whole
flock. Among the slaves, I was a bad sheep. I hated slavery,
slaveholders, and all pertaining to them; and I did not fail to inspire
others with the same feeling, wherever and whenever opportunity was
presented. This made me a marked lad among the slaves, and a suspected
one among the slaveholders. A knowledge of my ability to read and
write, got pretty widely spread, which was very much against me.
The days between Christmas day and New Year’s, are allowed the slaves
as holidays. During these days, all regular work was suspended, and
there was nothing to do but to keep fires, and look after the stock.
This time was regarded as our own, by the grace of our masters, and we,
therefore used it, or abused it, as we pleased. Those who had families
at a distance, were now expected to visit them, and to spend with them
the entire week. The younger slaves, or the unmarried ones, were
expected to see to the cattle, and attend to incidental duties at home.
The holidays were variously spent. The sober, thinking and industrious
ones of our number, would employ themselves in manufacturing corn
brooms, mats, horse collars and baskets, and some of these were very
well made. Another class spent their time in hunting opossums, coons,
rabbits, and other game. But the majority spent the holidays in sports,
ball playing, wrestling, boxing, running foot races, dancing, and
drinking whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was
generally most agreeable to their masters. A slave who would work
during the holidays, was thought, by his master, undeserving of
holidays. Such an one had rejected the favor of his master. There was,
in this simple act of continued work, an accusation against slaves; and
a slave could not help thinking, that if he made three dollars during
the holidays, he might make three hundred during the year. Not to be
drunk during the holidays, was disgraceful; and he was esteemed a lazy
and improvident man, who could not afford to drink whisky during
Christmas.
The fiddling, dancing and _“jubilee beating_,” was going on in all
directions. This latter performance is strictly southern. It supplies
the place of a violin, or of other musical instruments, and is played
so easily, that almost every farm has its “Juba” beater. The performer
improvises as he beats, and sings his merry songs, so ordering the
words as to have them fall pat with the movement of his hands. Among a
mass of nonsense and wild frolic, once in a while a sharp hit is given
to the meanness of slaveholders. Take the following, for an example:
_We raise de wheat,
Dey gib us de corn;
We bake de bread,
Dey gib us de cruss;
We sif de meal,
Dey gib us de huss;
We peal de meat,
Dey gib us de skin,
And dat’s de way
Dey takes us in.
We skim de pot,
Dey gib us the liquor,
And say dat’s good enough for nigger.
Walk over! walk over!
Tom butter and de fat;
Poor nigger you can’t get over dat;
Walk over_!
This is not a bad summary of the palpable injustice and fraud of
slavery, giving—as it does—to the lazy and idle, the comforts which God
designed should be given solely to the honest laborer. But to the
holiday’s.
Judging from my own observation and experience, I believe these
holidays to be among the most effective means, in the hands of
slaveholders, of keeping down the spirit of insurrection among the
slaves.
To enslave men, successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their
minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of
which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must be
kept before them. These holidays serve the purpose of keeping the minds
of the slaves occupied with prospective pleasure, within the limits of
slavery. The young man can go wooing; the married man can visit his
wife; the father and mother can see their children; the industrious and
money loving can make a few dollars; the great wrestler can win
laurels; the young people can meet, and enjoy each other’s society; the
drunken man can get plenty of whisky; and the religious man can hold
prayer meetings, preach, pray and exhort during the holidays. Before
the holidays, these are pleasures in prospect; after the holidays, they
become pleasures of memory, and they serve to keep out thoughts and
wishes of a more dangerous character. Were slaveholders at once to
abandon the practice of allowing their slaves these liberties,
periodically, and to keep them, the year round, closely confined to the
narrow circle of their homes, I doubt not that the south would blaze
with insurrections. These holidays are conductors or safety valves to
carry off the explosive elements inseparable from the human mind, when
reduced to the condition of slavery. But for these, the rigors of
bondage would become too severe for endurance, and the slave would be
forced up to dangerous desperation. Woe to the slaveholder when he
undertakes to hinder or to prevent the operation of these electric
conductors. A succession of earthquakes would be less destructive, than
the insurrectionary fires which would be sure to burst forth in
different parts of the south, from such interference.
Thus, the holidays, became part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrongs
and inhumanity of slavery. Ostensibly, they are institutions of
benevolence, designed to mitigate the rigors of slave life, but,
practically, they are a fraud, instituted by human selfishness, the
better to secure the ends of injustice and oppression. The slave’s
happiness is not the end sought, but, rather, the master’s safety. It
is not from a generous unconcern for the slave’s labor that this
cessation from labor is allowed, but from a prudent regard to the
safety of the slave system. I am strengthened in this opinion, by the
fact, that most slaveholders like to have their slaves spend the
holidays in such a manner as to be of no real benefit to the slaves. It
is plain, that everything like rational enjoyment among the slaves, is
frowned upon; and only those wild and low sports, peculiar to
semi-civilized people, are encouraged. All the license allowed, appears
to have no other object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary
freedom, and to make them as glad to return to their work, as they were
to leave it. By plunging them into exhausting depths of drunkenness and
dissipation, this effect is almost certain to follow. I have known
slaveholders resort to cunning tricks, with a view of getting their
slaves deplorably drunk. A usual plan is, to make bets on a slave, that
he can drink more whisky than any other; and so to induce a rivalry
among them, for the mastery in this degradation. The scenes, brought
about in this way, were often scandalous and loathsome in the extreme.
Whole multitudes might be found stretched out in brutal drunkenness, at
once helpless and disgusting. Thus, when the slave asks for a few hours
of virtuous freedom, his cunning master takes advantage of his
ignorance, and cheers him with a dose of vicious and revolting
dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of LIBERTY. We were induced
to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were over, we all
staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a long breath, and went
away to our various fields of work; feeling, upon the whole, rather
glad to go from that which our masters artfully deceived us into the
belief was freedom, back again to the arms of slavery. It was not what
we had taken it to be, nor what it might have been, had it not been
abused by us. It was about as well to be a slave to _master_, as to be
a slave to _rum_ and _whisky._
I am the more induced to take this view of the holiday system, adopted
by slaveholders, from what I know of their treatment of slaves, in
regard to other things. It is the commonest thing for them to try to
disgust their slaves with what they do not want them to have, or to
enjoy. A slave, for instance, likes molasses; he steals some; to cure
him of the taste for it, his master, in many cases, will go away to
town, and buy a large quantity of the _poorest_ quality, and set it
before his slave, and, with whip in hand, compel him to eat it, until
the poor fellow is made to sicken at the very thought of molasses. The
same course is often adopted to cure slaves of the disagreeable and
inconvenient practice of asking for more food, when their allowance has
failed them. The same disgusting process works well, too, in other
things, but I need not cite them. When a slave is drunk, the
slaveholder has no fear that he will plan an insurrection; no fear that
he will escape to the north. It is the sober, thinking slave who is
dangerous, and needs the vigilance of his master, to keep him a slave.
But, to proceed with my narrative.
On the first of January, 1835, I proceeded from St. Michael’s to Mr.
William Freeland’s, my new home. Mr. Freeland lived only three miles
from St. Michael’s, on an old worn out farm, which required much labor
to restore it to anything like a self-supporting establishment.
I was not long in finding Mr. Freeland to be a very different man from
Mr. Covey. Though not rich, Mr. Freeland was what may be called a
well-bred southern gentleman, as different from Covey, as a
well-trained and hardened Negro breaker is from the best specimen of
the first families of the south. Though Freeland was a slaveholder, and
shared many of the vices of his class, he seemed alive to the sentiment
of honor. He had some sense of justice, and some feelings of humanity.
He was fretful, impulsive and passionate, but I must do him the justice
to say, he was free from the mean and selfish characteristics which
distinguished the creature from which I had now, happily, escaped. He
was open, frank, imperative, and practiced no concealments, disdaining
to play the spy. In all this, he was the opposite of the crafty Covey.
Among the many advantages gained in my change from Covey’s to
Freeland’s—startling as the statement may be—was the fact that the
latter gentleman made no profession of religion. I assert _most
unhesitatingly_, that the religion of the south—as I have observed it
and proved it—is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes; the