My Bondage and My Freedom
and others, _I ought to be burnt_, others, I ought to have the _“hide”_
taken from my back; while no one gave us a kind word or sympathizing
look, except the poor slaves, who were lifting their heavy hoes, and
who cautiously glanced at us through the post-and-rail fences, behind
which they were at work. Our sufferings, that morning, can be more
easily imagined than described. Our hopes were all blasted, at a blow.
The cruel injustice, the victorious crime, and the helplessness of
innocence, led me to ask, in my ignorance and weakness “Where now is
the God of justice and mercy? And why have these wicked men the power
thus to trample upon our rights, and to insult our feelings?” And yet,
in the next moment, came the consoling thought, _“The day of oppressor
will come at last.”_ Of one thing I could be glad—not one of my dear
friends, upon whom I had brought this great calamity, either by word or
look, reproached me for having led them into it. We were a band of
brothers, and never dearer to each other than now. The thought which
gave us the most pain, was the probable separation which would now take
place, in case we were sold off to the far south, as we were likely to
be. While the constables were looking forward, Henry and I, being
fastened together, could occasionally exchange a word, without being
observed by the kidnappers who had us in charge. “What shall I do with
my pass?” said Henry. “Eat it with your biscuit,” said I; “it won’t do
to tear it up.” We were now near St. Michael’s. The direction
concerning the passes was passed around, and executed. _“Own nothing!”_
said I. _“Own nothing!”_ was passed around and enjoined, and assented
to. Our confidence in each other was unshaken; and we were quite
resolved to succeed or fail together—as much after the calamity which
had befallen us, as before.
On reaching St. Michael’s, we underwent a sort of examination at my
master’s store, and it was evident to my mind, that Master Thomas
suspected the truthfulness of the evidence upon which they had acted in
arresting us; and that he only affected, to some extent, the
positiveness with which he asserted our guilt. There was nothing said
by any of our company, which could, in any manner, prejudice our cause;
and there was hope, yet, that we should be able to return to our
homes—if for nothing else, at least to find out the guilty man or woman
who had betrayed us.
To this end, we all denied that we had been guilty of intended flight.
Master Thomas said that the evidence he had of our intention to run
away, was strong enough to hang us, in a case of murder. “But,” said I,
“the cases are not equal. If murder were committed, some one must have
committed it—the thing is done! In our case, nothing has been done! We
have not run away. Where is the evidence against us? We were quietly at
our work.” I talked thus, with unusual freedom, to bring out the
evidence against us, for we all wanted, above all things, to know the
guilty wretch who had betrayed us, that we might have something
tangible upon which to pour the execrations. From something which
dropped, in the course of the talk, it appeared that there was but one
witness against us—and that that witness could not be produced. Master
Thomas would not tell us _who_ his informant was; but we suspected, and
suspected _one_ person _only_. Several circumstances seemed to point
SANDY out, as our betrayer. His entire knowledge of our plans his
participation in them—his withdrawal from us—his dream, and his
simultaneous presentiment that we were betrayed—the taking us, and the
leaving him—were calculated to turn suspicion toward him; and yet, we
could not suspect him. We all loved him too well to think it _possible_
that he could have betrayed us. So we rolled the guilt on other
shoulders.
We were literally dragged, that morning, behind horses, a distance of
fifteen miles, and placed in the Easton jail. We were glad to reach the
end of our journey, for our pathway had been the scene of insult and
mortification. Such is the power of public opinion, that it is hard,
even for the innocent, to feel the happy consolations of innocence,
when they fall under the maledictions of this power. How could we
regard ourselves as in the right, when all about us denounced us as
criminals, and had the power and the disposition to treat us as such.
In jail, we were placed under the care of Mr. Joseph Graham, the
sheriff of the county. Henry, and John, and myself, were placed in one
room, and Henry Baily and Charles Roberts, in another, by themselves.
This separation was intended to deprive us of the advantage of concert,
and to prevent trouble in jail.
Once shut up, a new set of tormentors came upon us. A swarm of imps, in
human shape the slave-traders, deputy slave-traders, and agents of
slave-traders—that gather in every country town of the state, watching
for chances to buy human flesh (as buzzards to eat carrion) flocked in
upon us, to ascertain if our masters had placed us in jail to be sold.
Such a set of debased and villainous creatures, I never saw before, and
hope never to see again. I felt myself surrounded as by a pack of
_fiends_, fresh from _perdition_. They laughed, leered, and grinned at
us; saying, “Ah! boys, we’ve got you, havn’t we? So you were about to
make your escape? Where were you going to?” After taunting us, and
peering at us, as long as they liked, they one by one subjected us to
an examination, with a view to ascertain our value; feeling our arms
and legs, and shaking us by the shoulders to see if we were sound and
healthy; impudently asking us, “how we would like to have them for
masters?” To such questions, we were, very much to their annoyance,
quite dumb, disdaining to answer them. For one, I detested the
whisky-bloated gamblers in human flesh; and I believe I was as much
detested by them in turn. One fellow told me, “if he had me, he would
cut the devil out of me pretty quick.”
These Negro buyers are very offensive to the genteel southern Christian
public. They are looked upon, in respectable Maryland society, as
necessary, but detestable characters. As a class, they are hardened
ruffians, made such by nature and by occupation. Their ears are made
quite familiar with the agonizing cry of outraged and woe-smitted
humanity. Their eyes are forever open to human misery. They walk amid
desecrated affections, insulted virtue, and blasted hopes. They have
grown intimate with vice and blood; they gloat over the wildest
illustrations of their soul-damning and earth-polluting business, and
are moral pests. Yes; they are a legitimate fruit of slavery; and it is
a puzzle to make out a case of greater villainy for them, than for the
slaveholders, who make such a class _possible_. They are mere hucksters
of the surplus slave produce of Maryland and Virginia coarse, cruel,
and swaggering bullies, whose very breathing is of blasphemy and blood.
Aside from these slave-buyers, who infested the prison, from time to
time, our quarters were much more comfortable than we had any right to
expect they would be. Our allowance of food was small and coarse, but
our room was the best in the jail—neat and spacious, and with nothing
about it necessarily reminding us of being in prison, but its heavy
locks and bolts and the black, iron lattice-work at the windows. We
were prisoners of state, compared with most slaves who are put into
that Easton jail. But the place was not one of contentment. Bolts, bars
and grated windows are not acceptable to freedom-loving people of any
color. The suspense, too, was painful. Every step on the stairway was
listened to, in the hope that the comer would cast a ray of light on
our fate. We would have given the hair off our heads for half a dozen
words with one of the waiters in Sol. Lowe’s hotel. Such waiters were
in the way of hearing, at the table, the probable course of things. We
could see them flitting about in their white jackets in front of this
hotel, but could speak to none of them.
Soon after the holidays were over, contrary to all our expectations,
Messrs. Hamilton and Freeland came up to Easton; not to make a bargain
with the “Georgia traders,” nor to send us up to Austin Woldfolk, as is
usual in the case of run-away slaves, but to release Charles, Henry
Harris, Henry Baily and John Harris, from prison, and this, too,
without the infliction of a single blow. I was now left entirely alone
in prison. The innocent had been taken, and the guilty left. My friends
were separated from me, and apparently forever. This circumstance
caused me more pain than any other incident connected with our capture
and imprisonment. Thirty-nine lashes on my naked and bleeding back,
would have been joyfully borne, in preference to this separation from
these, the friends of my youth. And yet, I could not but feel that I
was the victim of something like justice. Why should these young men,
who were led into this scheme by me, suffer as much as the instigator?
I felt glad that they were leased from prison, and from the dread
prospect of a life (or death I should rather say) in the rice swamps.
It is due to the noble Henry, to say, that he seemed almost as
reluctant to leave the prison with me in it, as he was to be tied and
dragged to prison. But he and the rest knew that we should, in all the
likelihoods of the case, be separated, in the event of being sold; and
since we were now completely in the hands of our owners, we all
concluded it would be best to go peaceably home.
Not until this last separation, dear reader, had I touched those
profounder depths of desolation, which it is the lot of slaves often to
reach. I was solitary in the world, and alone within the walls of a
stone prison, left to a fate of life-long misery. I had hoped and
expected much, for months before, but my hopes and expectations were
now withered and blasted. The ever dreaded slave life in Georgia,
Louisiana and Alabama—from which escape is next to impossible now, in
my loneliness, stared me in the face. The possibility of ever becoming
anything but an abject slave, a mere machine in the hands of an owner,
had now fled, and it seemed to me it had fled forever. A life of living
death, beset with the innumerable horrors of the cotton field, and the
sugar plantation, seemed to be my doom. The fiends, who rushed into the
prison when we were first put there, continued to visit me, and to ply
me with questions and with their tantalizing remarks. I was insulted,
but helpless; keenly alive to the demands of justice and liberty, but
with no means of asserting them. To talk to those imps about justice
and mercy, would have been as absurd as to reason with bears and
tigers. Lead and steel are the only arguments that they understand.
After remaining in this life of misery and despair about a week, which,
by the way, seemed a month, Master Thomas, very much to my surprise,
and greatly to my relief, came to the prison, and took me out, for the
purpose, as he said, of sending me to Alabama, with a friend of his,
who would emancipate me at the end of eight years. I was glad enough to
get out of prison; but I had no faith in the story that this friend of
Capt. Auld would emancipate me, at the end of the time indicated.
Besides, I never had heard of his having a friend in Alabama, and I
took the announcement, simply as an easy and comfortable method of
shipping me off to the far south. There was a little scandal, too,
connected with the idea of one Christian selling another to the Georgia
traders, while it was deemed every way proper for them to sell to
others. I thought this friend in Alabama was an invention, to meet this
difficulty, for Master Thomas was quite jealous of his Christian
reputation, however unconcerned he might be about his real Christian