My Bondage and My Freedom
building my eyes had then ever beheld, called, by every one on the
plantation, the “Great House.” This was occupied by Col. Lloyd and his
family. They occupied it; _I_ enjoyed it. The great house was
surrounded by numerous and variously shaped out-buildings. There were
kitchens, wash-houses, dairies, summer-house, green-houses, hen-houses,
turkey-houses, pigeon-houses, and arbors, of many sizes and devices,
all neatly painted, and altogether interspersed with grand old trees,
ornamental and primitive, which afforded delightful shade in summer,
and imparted to the scene a high degree of stately beauty. The great
house itself was a large, white, wooden building, with wings on three
sides of it. In front, a large portico, extending the entire length of
the building, and supported by a long range of columns, gave to the
whole establishment an air of solemn grandeur. It was a treat to my
young and gradually opening mind, to behold this elaborate exhibition
of wealth, power, and vanity. The carriage entrance to the house was a
large gate, more than a quarter of a mile distant from it; the
intermediate space was a beautiful lawn, very neatly trimmed, and
watched with the greatest care. It was dotted thickly over with
delightful trees, shrubbery, and flowers. The road, or lane, from the
gate to the great house, was richly paved with white pebbles from the
beach, and, in its course, formed a complete circle around the
beautiful lawn. Carriages going in and retiring from the great house,
made the circuit of the lawn, and their passengers were permitted to
behold a scene of almost Eden-like beauty. Outside this select
inclosure, were parks, where as about the residences of the English
nobility—rabbits, deer, and other wild game, might be seen, peering and
playing about, with none to molest them or make them afraid. The tops
of the stately poplars were often covered with the red-winged
black-birds, making all nature vocal with the joyous life and beauty of
their wild, warbling notes. These all belonged to me, as well as to
Col. Edward Lloyd, and for a time I greatly enjoyed them.
A short distance from the great house, were the stately mansions of the
dead, a place of somber aspect. Vast tombs, embowered beneath the
weeping willow and the fir tree, told of the antiquities of the Lloyd
family, as well as of their wealth. Superstition was rife among the
slaves about this family burying ground. Strange sights had been seen
there by some of the older slaves. Shrouded ghosts, riding on great
black horses, had been seen to enter; balls of fire had been seen to
fly there at midnight, and horrid sounds had been repeatedly heard.
Slaves know enough of the rudiments of theology to believe that those
go to hell who die slaveholders; and they often fancy such persons
wishing themselves back again, to wield the lash. Tales of sights and
sounds, strange and terrible, connected with the huge black tombs, were
a very great security to the grounds about them, for few of the slaves
felt like approaching them even in the day time. It was a dark, gloomy
and forbidding place, and it was difficult to feel that the spirits of
the sleeping dust there deposited, reigned with the blest in the realms
of eternal peace.
The business of twenty or thirty farms was transacted at this, called,
by way of eminence, “great house farm.” These farms all belonged to
Col. Lloyd, as did, also, the slaves upon them. Each farm was under the
management of an overseer. As I have said of the overseer of the home
plantation, so I may say of the overseers on the smaller ones; they
stand between the slave and all civil constitutions—their word is law,
and is implicitly obeyed.
The colonel, at this time, was reputed to be, and he apparently was,
very rich. His slaves, alone, were an immense fortune. These, small and
great, could not have been fewer than one thousand in number, and
though scarcely a month passed without the sale of one or more lots to
the Georgia traders, there was no apparent diminution in the number of
his human stock: the home plantation merely groaned at a removal of the
young increase, or human crop, then proceeded as lively as ever.
Horse-shoeing, cart-mending, plow-repairing, coopering, grinding, and
weaving, for all the neighboring farms, were performed here, and slaves
were employed in all these branches. “Uncle Tony” was the blacksmith;
“Uncle Harry” was the cartwright; “Uncle Abel” was the shoemaker; and
all these had hands to assist them in their several departments.
These mechanics were called “uncles” by all the younger slaves, not
because they really sustained that relationship to any, but according
to plantation _etiquette_, as a mark of respect, due from the younger
to the older slaves. Strange, and even ridiculous as it may seem, among
a people so uncultivated, and with so many stern trials to look in the
face, there is not to be found, among any people, a more rigid
enforcement of the law of respect to elders, than they maintain. I set
this down as partly constitutional with my race, and partly
conventional. There is no better material in the world for making a
gentleman, than is furnished in the African. He shows to others, and
exacts for himself, all the tokens of respect which he is compelled to
manifest toward his master. A young slave must approach the company of
the older with hat in hand, and woe betide him, if he fails to
acknowledge a favor, of any sort, with the accustomed _“tank’ee,”_ &c.
So uniformly are good manners enforced among slaves, I can easily
detect a “bogus” fugitive by his manners.
Among other slave notabilities of the plantation, was one called by
everybody Uncle Isaac Copper. It is seldom that a slave gets a surname
from anybody in Maryland; and so completely has the south shaped the
manners of the north, in this respect, that even abolitionists make
very little of the surname of a Negro. The only improvement on the
“Bills,” “Jacks,” “Jims,” and “Neds” of the south, observable here is,
that “William,” “John,” “James,” “Edward,” are substituted. It goes
against the grain to treat and address a Negro precisely as they would
treat and address a white man. But, once in a while, in slavery as in
the free states, by some extraordinary circumstance, the Negro has a
surname fastened to him, and holds it against all conventionalities.
This was the case with Uncle Isaac Copper. When the “uncle” was
dropped, he generally had the prefix “doctor,” in its stead. He was our
doctor of medicine, and doctor of divinity as well. Where he took his
degree I am unable to say, for he was not very communicative to
inferiors, and I was emphatically such, being but a boy seven or eight
years old. He was too well established in his profession to permit
questions as to his native skill, or his attainments. One qualification
he undoubtedly had—he was a confirmed _cripple;_ and he could neither
work, nor would he bring anything if offered for sale in the market.
The old man, though lame, was no sluggard. He was a man that made his
crutches do him good service. He was always on the alert, looking up
the sick, and all such as were supposed to need his counsel. His
remedial prescriptions embraced four articles. For diseases of the
body, _Epsom salts and castor oil;_ for those of the soul, _the Lord’s
Prayer_, and _hickory switches_!
I was not long at Col. Lloyd’s before I was placed under the care of
Doctor Issac Copper. I was sent to him with twenty or thirty other
children, to learn the “Lord’s Prayer.” I found the old gentleman
seated on a huge three-legged oaken stool, armed with several large
hickory switches; and, from his position, he could reach—lame as he
was—any boy in the room. After standing awhile to learn what was
expected of us, the old gentleman, in any other than a devotional tone,
commanded us to kneel down. This done, he commenced telling us to say
everything he said. “Our Father”—this was repeated after him with
promptness and uniformity; “Who art in heaven”—was less promptly and
uniformly repeated; and the old gentleman paused in the prayer, to give
us a short lecture upon the consequences of inattention, both immediate
and future, and especially those more immediate. About these he was
absolutely certain, for he held in his right hand the means of bringing
all his predictions and warnings to pass. On he proceeded with the
prayer; and we with our thick tongues and unskilled ears, followed him
to the best of our ability. This, however, was not sufficient to please
the old gentleman. Everybody, in the south, wants the privilege of
whipping somebody else. Uncle Isaac shared the common passion of his
country, and, therefore, seldom found any means of keeping his
disciples in order short of flogging. “Say everything I say;” and bang
would come the switch on some poor boy’s undevotional head. _“What you
looking at there”—“Stop that pushing”_—and down again would come the
lash.
The whip is all in all. It is supposed to secure obedience to the
slaveholder, and is held as a sovereign remedy among the slaves
themselves, for every form of disobedience, temporal or spiritual.
Slaves, as well as slaveholders, use it with an unsparing hand. Our
devotions at Uncle Isaac’s combined too much of the tragic and comic,
to make them very salutary in a spiritual point of view; and it is due
to truth to say, I was often a truant when the time for attending the
praying and flogging of Doctor Isaac Copper came on.
The windmill under the care of Mr. Kinney, a kind hearted old
Englishman, was to me a source of infinite interest and pleasure. The
old man always seemed pleased when he saw a troop of darkey little
urchins, with their tow-linen shirts fluttering in the breeze,
approaching to view and admire the whirling wings of his wondrous
machine. From the mill we could see other objects of deep interest.
These were, the vessels from St. Michael’s, on their way to Baltimore.
It was a source of much amusement to view the flowing sails and
complicated rigging, as the little crafts dashed by, and to speculate
upon Baltimore, as to the kind and quality of the place. With so many
sources of interest around me, the reader may be prepared to learn that
I began to think very highly of Col. L.‘s plantation. It was just a
place to my boyish taste. There were fish to be caught in the creek, if
one only had a hook and line; and crabs, clams and oysters were to be
caught by wading, digging and raking for them. Here was a field for
industry and enterprise, strongly inviting; and the reader may be
assured that I entered upon it with spirit.
Even the much dreaded old master, whose merciless fiat had brought me
from Tuckahoe, gradually, to my mind, parted with his terrors. Strange
enough, his reverence seemed to take no particular notice of me, nor of
my coming. Instead of leaping out and devouring me, he scarcely seemed
conscious of my presence. The fact is, he was occupied with matters
more weighty and important than either looking after or vexing me. He
probably thought as little of my advent, as he would have thought of
the addition of a single pig to his stock!
As the chief butler on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, his duties were
numerous and perplexing. In almost all important matters he answered in
Col. Lloyd’s stead. The overseers of all the farms were in some sort
under him, and received the law from his mouth. The colonel himself
seldom addressed an overseer, or allowed an overseer to address him.
Old master carried the keys of all store houses; measured out the
allowance for each slave at the end of every month; superintended the
storing of all goods brought to the plantation; dealt out the raw
material to all the handicraftsmen; shipped the grain, tobacco, and all
saleable produce of the plantation to market, and had the general