My Bondage and My Freedom
his hair woolly, what could they do to remove prejudice?’ ‘Immediately
pass laws entitling black men to all civil, political and social
privileges,’ was the instant reply—and the questioning ceased.”
The most remarkable mental phenomenon in Mr. Douglass, is his style in
writing and speaking. In March, 1855, he delivered an address in the
assembly chamber before the members of the legislature of the state of
New York. An eye witness 5 describes the crowded and most intelligent
audience, and their rapt attention to the speaker, as the grandest
scene he ever witnessed in the capitol. Among those whose eyes were
riveted on the speaker full two hours and a half, were Thurlow Weed and
Lieutenant Governor Raymond; the latter, at the conclusion of the
address, exclaimed to a friend, “I would give twenty thousand dollars,
if I could deliver that address in that manner.” Mr. Raymond is a first
class graduate of Dartmouth, a rising politician, ranking foremost in
the legislature; of course, his ideal of oratory must be of the most
polished and finished description.
The style of Mr. Douglass in writing, is to me an intellectual puzzle.
The strength, affluence and terseness may easily be accounted for,
because the style of a man is the man; but how are we to account for
that rare polish in his style of writing, which, most critically
examined, seems the result of careful early culture among the best
classics of our language; it equals if it does not surpass the style of
Hugh Miller, which was the wonder of the British literary public, until
he unraveled the mystery in the most interesting of autobiographies.
But Frederick Douglass was still calking the seams of Baltimore
clippers, and had only written a “pass,” at the age when Miller’s style
was already formed.
I asked William Whipper, of Pennsylvania, the gentleman alluded to
above, whether he thought Mr. Douglass’s power inherited from the
Negroid, or from what is called the Caucasian side of his make up?
After some reflection, he frankly answered, “I must admit, although
sorry to do so, that the Caucasian predominates.” At that time, I
almost agreed with him; but, facts narrated in the first part of this
work, throw a different light on this interesting question.
We are left in the dark as to who was the paternal ancestor of our
author; a fact which generally holds good of the Romuluses and Remuses
who are to inaugurate the new birth of our republic. In the absence of
testimony from the Caucasian side, we must see what evidence is given
on the other side of the house.
“My grandmother, though advanced in years, * * * was yet a woman of
power and spirit. She was marvelously straight in figure, elastic and
muscular.” (p. 46.)
After describing her skill in constructing nets, her perseverance in
using them, and her wide-spread fame in the agricultural way he adds,
“It happened to her—as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person
residing in an ignorant and improvident neighborhood—to enjoy the
reputation of being born to good luck.” And his grandmother was a black
woman.
“My mother was tall, and finely proportioned; of deep black, glossy
complexion; had regular features; and among other slaves was remarkably
sedate in her manners.” “Being a field hand, she was obliged to walk
twelve miles and return, between nightfall and daybreak, to see her
children” (p. 54.) “I shall never forget the indescribable expression
of her countenance when I told her that I had had no food since
morning. * * * There was pity in her glance at me, and a fiery
indignation at Aunt Katy at the same time; * * * * she read Aunt Katy a
lecture which she never forgot.” (p. 56.) “I learned after my mother’s
death, that she could read, and that she was the _only_ one of all the
slaves and colored people in Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How
she acquired this knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place
in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning.”
(p. 57.) “There is, in _Prichard’s Natural History of Man_, the head of
a figure—on page 157—the features of which so resemble those of my
mother, that I often recur to it with something of the feeling which I
suppose others experience when looking upon the pictures of dear
departed ones.” (p. 52.)
The head alluded to is copied from the statue of Ramses the Great, an
Egyptian king of the nineteenth dynasty. The authors of the _Types of
Mankind_ give a side view of the same on page 148, remarking that the
profile, “like Napoleon’s, is superbly European!” The nearness of its
resemblance to Mr. Douglass’ mother rests upon the evidence of his
memory, and judging from his almost marvelous feats of recollection of
forms and outlines recorded in this book, this testimony may be
admitted.
These facts show that for his energy, perseverance, eloquence,
invective, sagacity, and wide sympathy, he is indebted to his Negro
blood. The very marvel of his style would seem to be a development of
that other marvel—how his mother learned to read. The versatility of
talent which he wields, in common with Dumas, Ira Aldridge, and Miss
Greenfield, would seem to be the result of the grafting of the
Anglo-Saxon on good, original, Negro stock. If the friends of
“Caucasus” choose to claim, for that region, what remains after this
analysis—to wit: combination—they are welcome to it. They will forgive
me for reminding them that the term “Caucasian” is dropped by recent
writers on Ethnology; for the people about Mount Caucasus, are, and
have ever been, Mongols. The great “white race” now seek paternity,
according to Dr. Pickering, in Arabia—“Arida Nutrix” of the best breed
of horses &c. Keep on, gentlemen; you will find yourselves in Africa,
by-and-by. The Egyptians, like the Americans, were a _mixed race_, with
some Negro blood circling around the throne, as well as in the mud
hovels.
This is the proper place to remark of our author, that the same strong
self-hood, which led him to measure strength with Mr. Covey, and to
wrench himself from the embrace of the Garrisonians, and which has
borne him through many resistances to the personal indignities offered
him as a colored man, sometimes becomes a hyper-sensitiveness to such
assaults as men of his mark will meet with, on paper. Keen and
unscrupulous opponents have sought, and not unsuccessfully, to pierce
him in this direction; for well they know, that if assailed, he will
smite back.
It is not without a feeling of pride, dear reader, that I present you
with this book. The son of a self-emancipated bond-woman, I feel joy in
introducing to you my brother, who has rent his own bonds, and who, in
his every relation—as a public man, as a husband and as a father—is
such as does honor to the land which gave him birth. I shall place this
book in the hands of the only child spared me, bidding him to strive
and emulate its noble example. You may do likewise. It is an American
book, for Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea. It shows that
the worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down
energy, truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right. It proves the
justice and practicability of Immediate Emancipation. It shows that any
man in our land, “no matter in what battle his liberty may have been
cloven down, * * * * no matter what complexion an Indian or an African
sun may have burned upon him,” not only may “stand forth redeemed and
disenthralled,” but may also stand up a candidate for the highest
suffrage of a great people—the tribute of their honest, hearty
admiration. Reader, _Vale! New York_
JAMES M’CUNE SMITH
CHAPTER I. _Childhood_
PLACE OF BIRTH—CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT—TUCKAHOE—ORIGIN OF THE
NAME—CHOPTANK RIVER—TIME OF BIRTH—GENEALOGICAL TREES—MODE OF COUNTING
TIME—NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS—THEIR POSITION—GRANDMOTHER ESPECIALLY
ESTEEMED—“BORN TO GOOD LUCK”—SWEET POTATOES—SUPERSTITION—THE LOG
CABIN—ITS CHARMS—SEPARATING CHILDREN—MY AUNTS—THEIR NAMES—FIRST
KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A SLAVE—OLD MASTER—GRIEFS AND JOYS OF
CHILDHOOD—COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF THE SLAVE-BOY AND THE SON OF A
SLAVEHOLDER.
In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town
of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated,
and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out,
sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation of
its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its
inhabitants, and the prevalence of ague and fever.
The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken
district is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black and
white. It was given to this section of country probably, at the first,
merely in derision; or it may possibly have been applied to it, as I
have heard, because some one of its earlier inhabitants had been guilty
of the petty meanness of stealing a hoe—or taking a hoe that did not
belong to him. Eastern Shore men usually pronounce the word _took_, as
_tuck; Took-a-hoe_, therefore, is, in Maryland parlance, _Tuckahoe_.
But, whatever may have been its origin—and about this I will not be
positive—that name has stuck to the district in question; and it is
seldom mentioned but with contempt and derision, on account of the
barrenness of its soil, and the ignorance, indolence, and poverty of
its people. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin
population of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for the
Choptank river, which runs through it, from which they take abundance
of shad and herring, and plenty of ague and fever.
It was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or neighborhood,
surrounded by a white population of the lowest order, indolent and
drunken to a proverb, and among slaves, who seemed to ask, _“Oh! what’s
the use?”_ every time they lifted a hoe, that I—without any fault of
mine was born, and spent the first years of my childhood.
The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth, on the
score that it is always a fact of some importance to know where a man
is born, if, indeed, it be important to know anything about him. In
regard to the _time_ of my birth, I cannot be as definite as I have
been respecting the _place_. Nor, indeed, can I impart much knowledge
concerning my parents. Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves.
A person of some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated
_father_, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice. It is
only once in a while that an exception is found to this statement. I
never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was. Few
slave-mothers know anything of the months of the year, nor of the days
of the month. They keep no family records, with marriages, births, and
deaths. They measure the ages of their children by spring time, winter
time, harvest time, planting time, and the like; but these soon become
undistinguishable and forgotten. Like other slaves, I cannot tell how
old I am. This destitution was among my earliest troubles. I learned
when I grew up, that my master—and this is the case with masters
generally—allowed no questions to be put to him, by which a slave might
learn his age. Such questions deemed evidence of impatience, and even
of impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of which
I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born about the year
1817.
The first experience of life with me that I now remember—and I remember
it but hazily—began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather.
Betsey and Isaac Baily. They were quite advanced in life, and had long
lived on the spot where they then resided. They were considered old
settlers in the neighborhood, and, from certain circumstances, I infer