My Bondage and My Freedom
of things as I have just mentioned. If any of these three millions find
for themselves companions, and prove themselves honest, upright,
virtuous persons to each other, yet in these cases—few as I am bound to
confess they are—the virtuous live in constant apprehension of being
torn asunder by the merciless men-stealers that claim them as their
property. This is American slavery; no marriage—no education—the light
of the gospel shut out from the dark mind of the bondman—and he
forbidden by law to learn to read. If a mother shall teach her children
to read, the law in Louisiana proclaims that she may be hanged by the
neck. If the father attempt to give his son a knowledge of letters, he
may be punished by the whip in one instance, and in another be killed,
at the discretion of the court. Three millions of people shut out from
the light of knowledge! It is easy for you to conceive the evil that
must result from such a state of things.
I now come to the physical evils of slavery. I do not wish to dwell at
length upon these, but it seems right to speak of them, not so much to
influence your minds on this question, as to let the slaveholders of
America know that the curtain which conceals their crimes is being
lifted abroad; that we are opening the dark cell, and leading the
people into the horrible recesses of what they are pleased to call
their domestic institution. We want them to know that a knowledge of
their whippings, their scourgings, their brandings, their chainings, is
not confined to their plantations, but that some Negro of theirs has
broken loose from his chains—has burst through the dark incrustation of
slavery, and is now exposing their deeds of deep damnation to the gaze
of the christian people of England.
The slaveholders resort to all kinds of cruelty. If I were disposed, I
have matter enough to interest you on this question for five or six
evenings, but I will not dwell at length upon these cruelties. Suffice
it to say, that all of the peculiar modes of torture that were resorted
to in the West India islands, are resorted to, I believe, even more
frequently, in the United States of America. Starvation, the bloody
whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, cat-hauling, the
cat-o’-nine-tails, the dungeon, the blood-hound, are all in requisition
to keep the slave in his condition as a slave in the United States. If
any one has a doubt upon this point, I would ask him to read the
chapter on slavery in Dickens’s _Notes on America_. If any man has a
doubt upon it, I have here the “testimony of a thousand witnesses,”
which I can give at any length, all going to prove the truth of my
statement. The blood-hound is regularly trained in the United States,
and advertisements are to be found in the southern papers of the Union,
from persons advertising themselves as blood-hound trainers, and
offering to hunt down slaves at fifteen dollars a piece, recommending
their hounds as the fleetest in the neighborhood, never known to fail.
Advertisements are from time to time inserted, stating that slaves have
escaped with iron collars about their necks, with bands of iron about
their feet, marked with the lash, branded with red-hot irons, the
initials of their master’s name burned into their flesh; and the
masters advertise the fact of their being thus branded with their own
signature, thereby proving to the world, that, however damning it may
appear to non-slavers, such practices are not regarded discreditable
among the slaveholders themselves. Why, I believe if a man should brand
his horse in this country—burn the initials of his name into any of his
cattle, and publish the ferocious deed here—that the united execrations
of Christians in Britain would descend upon him. Yet in the United
States, human beings are thus branded. As Whittier says—
... Our countrymen in chains,
The whip on woman’s shrinking flesh,
Our soil yet reddening with the stains
Caught from her scourgings warm and fresh.
The slave-dealer boldly publishes his infamous acts to the world. Of
all things that have been said of slavery to which exception has been
taken by slaveholders, this, the charge of cruelty, stands foremost,
and yet there is no charge capable of clearer demonstration, than that
of the most barbarous inhumanity on the part of the slaveholders toward
their slaves. And all this is necessary; it is necessary to resort to
these cruelties, in order to _make the slave a slave_, and to _keep him
a slave_. Why, my experience all goes to prove the truth of what you
will call a marvelous proposition, that the better you treat a slave,
the more you destroy his value _as a slave_, and enhance the
probability of his eluding the grasp of the slaveholder; the more
kindly you treat him, the more wretched you make him, while you keep
him in the condition of a slave. My experience, I say, confirms the
truth of this proposition. When I was treated exceedingly ill; when my
back was being scourged daily; when I was whipped within an inch of my
life—_life_ was all I cared for. “Spare my life,” was my continual
prayer. When I was looking for the blow about to be inflicted upon my
head, I was not thinking of my liberty; it was my life. But, as soon as
the blow was not to be feared, then came the longing for liberty. If a
slave has a bad master, his ambition is to get a better; when he gets a
better, he aspires to have the best; and when he gets the best, he
aspires to be his own master. But the slave must be brutalized to keep
him as a slave. The slaveholder feels this necessity. I admit this
necessity. If it be right to hold slaves at all, it is right to hold
them in the only way in which they can be held; and this can be done
only by shutting out the light of education from their minds, and
brutalizing their persons. The whip, the chain, the gag, the
thumb-screw, the blood-hound, the stocks, and all the other bloody
paraphernalia of the slave system, are indispensably necessary to the
relation of master and slave. The slave must be subjected to these, or
he ceases to be a slave. Let him know that the whip is burned; that the
fetters have been turned to some useful and profitable employment; that
the chain is no longer for his limbs; that the blood-hound is no longer
to be put upon his track; that his master’s authority over him is no
longer to be enforced by taking his life—and immediately he walks out
from the house of bondage and asserts his freedom as a man. The
slaveholder finds it necessary to have these implements to keep the
slave in bondage; finds it necessary to be able to say, “Unless you do
so and so; unless you do as I bid you—I will take away your life!”
Some of the most awful scenes of cruelty are constantly taking place in
the middle states of the Union. We have in those states what are called
the slave-breeding states. Allow me to speak plainly. Although it is
harrowing to your feelings, it is necessary that the facts of the case
should be stated. We have in the United States slave-breeding states.
The very state from which the minister from our court to yours comes,
is one of these states—Maryland, where men, women, and children are
reared for the market, just as horses, sheep, and swine are raised for
the market. Slave-rearing is there looked upon as a legitimate trade;
the law sanctions it, public opinion upholds it, the church does not
condemn it. It goes on in all its bloody horrors, sustained by the
auctioneer’s block. If you would see the cruelties of this system, hear
the following narrative. Not long since the following scene occurred. A
slave-woman and a slaveman had united themselves as man and wife in the
absence of any law to protect them as man and wife. They had lived
together by the permission, not by right, of their master, and they had
reared a family. The master found it expedient, and for his interest,
to sell them. He did not ask them their wishes in regard to the matter
at all; they were not consulted. The man and woman were brought to the
auctioneer’s block, under the sound of the hammer. The cry was raised,
“Here goes; who bids cash?” Think of it—a man and wife to be sold! The
woman was placed on the auctioneer’s block; her limbs, as is customary,
were brutally exposed to the purchasers, who examined her with all the
freedom with which they would examine a horse. There stood the husband,
powerless; no right to his wife; the master’s right preeminent. She was
sold. He was next brought to the auctioneer’s block. His eyes followed
his wife in the distance; and he looked beseechingly, imploringly, to
the man that had bought his wife, to buy him also. But he was at length
bid off to another person. He was about to be separated forever from
her he loved. No word of his, no work of his, could save him from this
separation. He asked permission of his new master to go and take the
hand of his wife at parting. It was denied him. In the agony of his
soul he rushed from the man who had just bought him, that he might take
a farewell of his wife; but his way was obstructed, he was struck over
the head with a loaded whip, and was held for a moment; but his agony
was too great. When he was let go, he fell a corpse at the feet of his
master. His heart was broken. Such scenes are the everyday fruits of
American slavery. Some two years since, the Hon. Seth. M. Gates, an
anti-slavery gentleman of the state of New York, a representative in
the congress of the United States, told me he saw with his own eyes the
following circumstances. In the national District of Columbia, over
which the star-spangled emblem is constantly waving, where orators are
ever holding forth on the subject of American liberty, American
democracy, American republicanism, there are two slave prisons. When
going across a bridge, leading to one of these prisons, he saw a young
woman run out, bare-footed and bare-headed, and with very little
clothing on. She was running with all speed to the bridge he was
approaching. His eye was fixed upon her, and he stopped to see what was
the matter. He had not paused long before he saw three men run out
after her. He now knew what the nature of the case was; a slave
escaping from her chains—a young woman, a sister—escaping from the
bondage in which she had been held. She made her way to the bridge, but
had not reached, ere from the Virginia side there came two
slaveholders. As soon as they saw them, her pursuers called out, “Stop
her!” True to their Virginian instincts, they came to the rescue of
their brother kidnappers, across the bridge. The poor girl now saw that
there was no chance for her. It was a trying time. She knew if she went
back, she must be a slave forever—she must be dragged down to the
scenes of pollution which the slaveholders continually provide for most
of the poor, sinking, wretched young women, whom they call their
property. She formed her resolution; and just as those who were about
to take her, were going to put hands upon her, to drag her back, she
leaped over the balustrades of the bridge, and down she went to rise no
more. She chose death, rather than to go back into the hands of those
christian slaveholders from whom she had escaped.
Can it be possible that such things as these exist in the United
States? Are not these the exceptions? Are any such scenes as this
general? Are not such deeds condemned by the law and denounced by
public opinion? Let me read to you a few of the laws of the
slaveholding states of America. I think no better exposure of slavery
can be made than is made by the laws of the states in which slavery
exists. I prefer reading the laws to making any statement in
confirmation of what I have said myself; for the slaveholders cannot
object to this testimony, since it is the calm, the cool, the
deliberate enactment of their wisest heads, of their most