Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities supported the electronic publication of this title. Text transcribed by Apex Data Services, Inc. Images scanned by Lee Fallon and Natalia Smith Text encoded by Lee Ann Morawski and Natalia Smith First edition, ca.

It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time, Including His Connection with the Anti-slavery Movement; His Labors in Great Britain as Well as in His Own Country; His Experience in the Conduct of an Influential Newspaper; His Connection with the Underground Railroad; His Relations with John Brown and the Harper's Ferry Raid; His Recruiting the 54th and 55th Mass.

Colored Regiments; His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson; His Appointment by Gen. Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission--Also to a Seat in the Council of the District of Columbia; His Appointment as United States Marshal by President R. Hayes; Also His Appointment to Be Recorder of Deeds in Washington by President J. Garfield; with Many Other Interesting and Important Events of His Most Eventful Life; With an Introduction by Mr.

Ruffin, of Boston Douglass, Frederick New Revised Edition p. The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved. Encountered typographical errors have been preserved, and appear in red type. All footnotes are inserted at the point of reference within paragraphs.

Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references. All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " and " respectively.

All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as ' and ' respectively. Running titles have not been preserved. Library of Congress Subject Headings Languages Used: English LC Subject Headings: Abolitionists -- United States -- Biography. African American abolitionists -- Maryland -- Biography. African Americans -- Maryland -- Biography.

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Antislavery movements -- United States. Fugitive slaves -- Maryland -- Biography. Plantation life -- Maryland -- History -- 19th century.

Slavery -- Maryland -- History -- 19th century. Slaves -- Maryland -- Biography. Slaves -- Maryland -- Social conditions -- 19th century. Slaves' writings, American -- Maryland. Yours truly, Frederick Douglass [Frontispiece Image]. Author's place of birth--Description of country--Its inhabitants--Genealogical trees--Method of counting time in slave districts--Date of author's birth--Names of grandparents--Their cabin--Home with them--Slave practice of separating mothers from their children--Author's recollections of his mother--Who was his father?

Author's early home--Its charms--Author's ignorance of "old master"--His gradual perception of the truth concerning him--His relations to Col. Edward Lloyd--Author's removal to "old master's" home--His journey thence--His separation from his grandmother--His grief. Lloyd's plantation--Aunt Katy--Her cruelty and ill-nature--Capt. Anthony's partiality to Aunt Katy--Allowance of food--Author's hunger--Unexpected rescue by his mother--The re-proof of Aunt Katy--Sleep--A slave-mother's love--Author's inheritance--His mother's acquirements--Her death.

Home plantation of Colonel Lloyd--Its isolation--Its industries--The slave rule--Power of overseers--Author finds some enjoyment Page 4 --Natural scenery--Sloop "Sally Lloyd"--Wind-mill--Slave quarter--"Old master's" house--Stables, store-houses, etc.

Increasing acquaintance with old master--Evils of unresisted passion--Apparent tenderness--A man of trouble--Custom of muttering to himself--Brutal outrage--A drunken overseer--Slaveholder's impatience--Wisdom of appeal--A base and selfish attempt to break up a courtship.

The author's early reflections on Slavery--Aunt Jennie and Uncle Noah--Presentiment of one day becoming a freeman--Conflict between an overseer and a slave woman--Advantage of resistance--Death of an overseer--Col. Lloyd's plantation home--Monthly distribution of food--Singing of Slaves--An explanation--The slaves' food and clothing--Naked children--Life in the quarter--Sleeping-places--not beds--Deprivation of sleep--Care of nursing babies--Ash cake--Contrast.

LUXURIES AT THE GREAT HOUSE. Contrasts--Great House luxuries--Its hospitality--Entertainments--Fault-finding--Shameful humiliation of an old and faithful coachman--William Wilks--Curious incident--Expressed satisfaction not always genuine--Reasons for suppressing the truth. Austin Gore--Sketch of his character--Overseers as a class--Their peculiar characteristics--The marked individuality of Page 5 Austin Gore--His sense of duty--Murder of poor Denby--Sensation--How Gore made his peace with Col.

Lloyd--Other horrible murders--No laws for the protection of slaves possible of being enforced. Miss Lucretia--Her kindness--How it was manifested--"Ike"--A battle with him--Miss Lucretia's balsam--Bread--How it was obtained--Gleams of sunset amidst the general darkness--Suffering from cold--How we took our meal mush--Preparations for going to Baltimore--Delight at the change--Cousin Tom's opinion of Baltimore--Arrival there--Kind reception--Mr.

Hugh Auld--Their son Tommy--My relations to them--My duties--A turning-point in my life. City annoyances--Plantation regrets--My mistress--Her history--Her kindness--My master--His sourness--My comforts--Increased sensitiveness--My occupation--Learning to read--Baneful effects of slaveholding on my dear, good mistress--Mr. Sophia to teach me further--Clouds gather on my bright prospects--Master Auld's exposition of the Philosophy of Slavery--City slaves--Country slaves--Contrasts--Exceptions--Mr.

Hamilton's cruel treatment of them--Piteous aspect presented by them--No power to come between the slave and slaveholder. My mistress--Her slaveholding duties--Their effects on her originally noble nature--The conflict in her mind--She opposes my learning to read--Too late--She had given me the "inch," I was resolved to take the "ell"--How I pursued my study to read--My tutors--What progress I made--Slavery--What I heard said about it--Thirteen years old--Columbian orator--Dialogue--Speeches--Sheridan--Pitt--Lords Chatham and Fox--Knowledge increasing--Liberty--Singing--Sadness--Unhappiness Page 6 of Mrs.

Sophia--My hatred of slavery--One Upas tree overshadaws us all. Abolitionists spoken of--Eagerness to know the meaning of word--Consults the dictionary--Incendiary information--The enigma solved--"Nat Turner" insurrection--Cholera--Religion--Methodist minister--Religious impressions--Father Lawson--His character and occupation--His influence over me--Our mutual attachment--New hopes and aspirations--Heavenly light--Two Irishmen on wharf--Conversation with them--Learning to write--My aims.

Death of old Master's son Richard, speedily followed by that of old Master--Valuation and division of all the property, including the slaves--Sent for to come to Hillsborough to be valued and divided--Sad prospects and grief--Parting--Slaves have no voice in deciding their own destinies--General dread of falling into Master Andrew's hands--His drunkenness--Good fortune in falling to Miss Lucretia--She allows my return to Baltimore--Joy at Master Hugh's--Death of Miss Lucretia--Master Thomas Auld's second marriage--The new wife unlike the old--Again removed from Master Hugh's--Reasons for regret--Plan of escape.

Michaels and its inhabitants--Capt. Auld--His new wife--Sufferings from hunger--Forced to steal--Argument in vindication thereof--Southern camp-meeting--What Capt. Auld did there--Hopes--Suspicions--The result--Faith and works at various--Position in the church--Poor Cousin Henny--Methodist preachers--Their disregard of the slaves--One exception--Sabbath-school--How and by whom broken up--Sad change in my prospects--Covey, the negro-breaker. COVEY, THE NEGRO BREAKER.

Journey to Covey's--Meditations by the way--Covey's house--Family--Awkwardness as a field hand--A cruel beating--Why given--Description of Covey--First attempt at driving oxen--Hair-breadth escape--Ox and man alike property--Hard labor more effective than the whip for breaking down the spirit--Cunning and trickery of Covey--Family worship--Shocking and indecent contempt for chastity--Great mental agitation--Anguish beyond description.

ANOTHER PRESSURE OF THE TYRANT'S VISE. Experience at Covey's summed up--First six month's severer than the remaining six--Preliminaries to the change--Reasons for narrating the circumstances--Scene in the treading-yard--Author taken ill--Escapes to St. Michaels--The pursuit--Suffering in the woods--Talk with Master Thomas--His beating--Driven back to Covey's--The slaves never sick--Natural to expect them to feign sickness--Laziness of slaveholders.

A sleepless night--Return to Covey's--Punished by him--The chase defeated--Vengeance postponed--Musings in the woods--The alternative--Deplorable spectacle--Night in the woods--Expected attack--Accosted by Sandy--A friend, not a master--Sandy's hospitality--The ash-cake supper--Interview with Sandy--His advice--Sandy a conjuror as well as a Christian--The magic root--Strange meeting with Covey--His manner--Covey's Sunday face--Author's defensive resolve--The fight--The victory, and its results.

NEW RELATIONS AND DUTIES. Change of masters--Benefits derived by change--Fame of the fight with Covey--Reckless unconcern--Author's abhorrence of slavery--Ability to read a cause of prejudice--The holidays-- Page 8 How spent--Sharp hit at slavery--Effects of holidays--Difference between Covey and Freeland--An irreligious master preferred to a religious one--Hard life at Covey's useful to the author--Improved condition does not bring contentment--Congenial society at Freeland's--Author's Sabbath-school--Secrecy necessary--Affectionate relations of tutor and pupils--Confidence and friendship among slaves--Slavery the inviter of vengeance.

New Year's thoughts and meditations--Again hired by Freeland--Kindness no compensation for slavery--Incipient steps toward escape--Considerations leading thereto--Hostility to slavery--Solemn vow taken--Plan divulged to slaves--Columbian orator again--Scheme gains favor--Danger of discovery--Skill of slaveholders--Suspicion and coercion--Hymns with double meaning--Consultation--Pass-word--Hope and fear--Ignorance of Geography--Imaginary difficulties--Patrick Henry--Sandy a dreamer--Route to the north mapped out--Objections--Frauds--Passes--Anxieties--Fear of failure--Strange presentiment--Coincidence--Betrayal--Arrests--Resistance--Mrs.

Freeland--Prison--Brutal Jests--Passes eaten--Denial--Sandy--Dragged behind horses--Slave traders--Alone in prison--Sent to Baltimore. Nothing lost in my attempt to run away--Comrades at home--Reasons for sending me away--Return to Baltimore--Tommy changed--Caulking in Gardiner's ship yard--Desperate fight--Its causes--Conflict between white and black labor--Outrage--Testimony--Master Hugh--Slavery in Baltimore--My condition improves--New associations--Slaveholder's right to the slave's wages--How to make a discontented slave.

Closing incidents in my "Life as a Slave"--Discontent--Suspicions--Master's generosity--Difficulties in the way of escape--Plan Page 9 Plan to obtain money--Allowed to hire my time--A gleam of hope--Attend camp-meeting--Anger of Master Hugh--The result--Plans of escape--Day for departure fixed--Harassing doubts and fears--Painful thoughts of separation from friends. Reasons for not having revealed the manner of escape--Nothing of romance in the method--Danger--Free papers--Unjust tax--Protection papers--"Free trade and sailors' rights"--American eagle--Railroad train--Unobserving conductor--Capt.

McGowan--Honest German--Fears--Safe arrival in Philadelphia--Ditto in New York. LIFE AS A FREEMAN. Loneliness and insecurity--"Allender's Jake"--Succored by a sailor--David Ruggles--Marriage--Steamer J.

Richmond--Stage to New Bedford--Arrival there--Driver's detention of baggage--Nathan Johnson--Change of name--Why called "Douglass"--Obtaining Work--The Liberator and its Editor. Anti-Slavery Convention at Nantucket--First Speech--Much Sensation--Extraordinary Speech of Mr.

Garrison--Anti-Slavery Agency--Youthful Enthusiasm--Fugitive Slaveship Doubted--Experience in slavery written--Danger of Recapture. Work in Rhode Island--Dorr War--Recollections of old friends--Further labors in Rhode Island and elsewhere in New England. Anti-Slavery Conventions held in parts of New England, and in some of the Middle and Western States--Mobs--Incidents, etc.

Danger to be averted--A refuge sought abroad--Voyage on the steamship Cambria--Refusal of first-class passage--Attractions of the fore-castle deck--Hutchinson family--Invited to make a speech--Southerners feel insulted--Captain threatens to put them in irons--Experiences abroad--Attentions received--Impressions of different members of Parliament, and of other public men--Contrast with life in America--Kindness of friends--Their purchase of my person, and the gift of the same to myself--My return.

New Experiences--Painful Disagreement of Opinion with old Friends--Final Decision to publish my Paper in Rochester--Its Fortunes and its Friends--Change in my own Views Regarding the Constitution of the United States--Fidelity to Conviction--Loss of Old Friends--Support of New Ones--Loss of House, etc. JOHN BROWN AND MRS. My First Meeting with Capt. John Brown--The Free Soil Movement--Colored Convention--Uncle Tom's Cabin--Industrial School for Colored People--Letter to Mrs.

Increased demands of slavery--War in Kansas--John Brown's raid--His capture and execution--My escape to England from United States marshals. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. My connection with John Brown--To and from England--Presidential contest--Election of Abraham Lincoln. Recruiting of the 54th and 55th Colored Regiments--Visit to President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton--Promised a Commission as Adjutant-General to General Thomas--Disappointment.

HOPE FOR THE NATION. Proclamation of emancipation--Its reception in Boston--Objections brought against it--Its effect on the country--Interview with President Lincoln--New York riots--Re-election of Mr. Lincoln--His inauguration, inaugural--Vice-President Johnson--Presidential reception--The fall of Richmond--Fanueil Hall--The assassination--Condolence.

Satisfaction and anxiety, new fields of labor opening--Lyceums and colleges soliciting addresses--Literary attractions--Pecuniary gain--Still pleading for human rights--President Andy Johnson--Colored delegation--Their reply to him--National Loyalist Convention,and its procession--Not wanted--Meeting with an old friend--Joy and surprise--The old master's welcome, and Miss Amanda's friendship--Enfranchisement debated and accomplished--The negro a citizen.

Inducement to a political career--Objections--A newspaper enterprise--The New National Era--Its abandonment--The Freedman's Saving and Trust Company--Sad experience--Vindication. WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE.

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The Santo Domingo controversy--Decoration Day at Arlington, Speech delivered there--National colored convention at New Orleans, Elector at large for the State of New York--Death of Hon. Auld's admission "had I been in your place, I should have done as you did"--Speech at Easton--The old jail there--Invited to a sail on the revenue cutter Guthrie--Hon. Thomas--Visit to the old plantation--Home of Col. Lloyd--Kind reception and attentions--Familiar scenes--Old memories--Burial-ground--Hospitality--Gracious reception from Mrs.

Buchanan--A little girl's floral gift--A promise of a "good time coming"--Speech at Harper's Ferry, Decoration day, Storer College--Hon.

Gerrit Smith and Mr. Delevan--Experiences at Hotels and on Steamboats and other modes of travel--Hon. Beecher Stowe--Other Friends--Woman Suffrage. Meeting of colored citizens in Washington to express their sympathy at the great national bereavement, the death of President Garfield--Concluding reflections and conviction.

Oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen's monument, at Lincoln Park, Washington, D. Again summoned to the defense of his people--The difficulties of the task--The race problem--His life work--The antislavery movement.

Inauguration of President Garfield--A valuable precedent--An affecting scene--The greed of the office-seekers--Conference with President Garfield--Distrust of the Vice-President. DOUBTS AS TO GARFIELD'S COURSE. Garfield not a stalwart--Encounter of Garfield with Tucker--Hope in promises of a new departure--The sorrow-stricken nation. Activity in behalf of his people--Income of the Recorder of Deeds--False impressions as to his wealth--Appeals for assistance--Persistent beggars.

Circumstances of Cleveland's election--Political standing of the District of Columbia--Estimate of Cleveland's character--Respect for Mr. Cleveland--Decline for strength in the Republican party--Time of gloom for the colored people--Reason for the defeat of Blaine.

THE SUPREME COURT DECISION. Action of the Supreme Court--Its effects on the colored people--Address at Lincoln Hall. DEFEAT OF JAMES G. Causes of the Republican defeat--Tariff and free trade--No confidence in the Democratic party. Revisits Parliament--Changes in Parliament--Recollections of Lord Brougham--Listens to Gladstone--Meeting with old friends.

Through France--Dijon and Lyons--The palace of the Popes--The Amphitheater at Arles--Visits Nice--Pisa and its leaning tower--The Pantheon--Modern Rome--Religion at Rome--Rome of the Past--Vesuvius and Naples--Through the Suez Canal--Life in the East--The Nile--The religion of Mahomet--At the graves of Theodore Parker and Mrs.

Browning--The mountains of the Tyrol. THE CAMPAIGN OF Preference for John Sherman--Speech at the convention--On the stump--The Tariff question. Appointed minister at Haiti--Unfriendly criticism--Admiral Gherardi.

Nicolas--Close of the interview. PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR Frontispiece 2. THE LAST TIME HE SAW HIS MOTHER 36 3. WHIPPING OF OLD BARNEY 70 4. GORE SHOOTING DENBY 78 5. AULD TEACHING HIM TO READ 94 6. FOUND IN THE WOODS BY SANDY 7. DRIVEN TO JAIL FOR RUNNING AWAY 8. AT THE WHARF IN NEWPORT FIGHTING THE MOB IN INDIANA HARRIET BEECHER STOWE PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON PORTRAIT OF WENDELL PHILLIPS CHARLES SUMNER REVISITS HIS OLD HOME JUST what this country has in store to benefit or to startle the world in the future, no tongue can tell.

We know full well the wonderful things which have occurred or have been accomplished here in the past, but the still more wonderful things which we may well say will happen in the centuries of development which lie before us, is vain conjecture; it lies in the domain of speculation.

America will be the field for the demonstration of truths not now accepted and the establishment of a new and higher civilization. Horace Walpole's prophecy will be verified when there shall be a Xenophon at New York and a Thucydides at Boston. Up to this time the most remarkable contribution this country has given to the world is the Author and subject of this book, now being introduced to the public--Frederick Douglass.

The contribution comes naturally and legitimately and to some not unexpectedly, nevertheless it is altogether unique and must be regarded as truly remarkable. Our Pantheon contains many that are illustrious and worthy, but Douglass is unlike all others, he is sui generis. For every other great character we can bring forward, Europe can produce another equally as great; when we bring forward Douglass, he cannot be matched. Douglass was born a slave, he won his liberty; he is of negro extraction, and consequently was despised and outraged; he has by his own energy and force of character commanded the respect of the Nation; he was ignorant, he has, against law and by stealth and entirely unaided, educated himself; he was poor, he has by honest toil and industry become rich and independent, so to speak; he, a chattel slave of a hated and cruelly wronged race, in the teeth of American prejudice and in face of nearly every kind of hindrance and draw-back, has come to be one of the foremost orators of the age, with a reputation established on both sides of the Atlantic; a writer of power and elegance of expression; a thinker whose views Page 18 are potent in controlling and shaping public opinion; a high officer in the National Government; a cultivated gentleman whose virtues as a husband, father, and citizen are the highest honor a man can have.

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Frederick Douglass stands upon a pedestal; he has reached this lofty height through years of toil and strife, but it has been the strife of moral ideas; strife in the battle for human rights.

No bitter memories come from this strife; no feelings of remorse can rise to cast their gloomy shadows over his soul; Douglass has now reached and passed the meridian of life, his co-laborers in the strife have now nearly all passed away. Garrison has gone, Gerritt Smith has gone, Giddings and Sumner have gone,--nearly all the abolitionists are gone to their reward.

The culmination of his life work has been reached; the object dear to his heart--the Emancipation of the slaves--had been accomplished, through the blessings of God; he stands facing the goal, already reached by his co-laborers, with a halo of peace about him, and nothing but serenity and gratitude must fill his breast. To those, who in the past--in ante-bellum days--in any degree shared with Douglass his hopes and feelings on the slavery question, this serenity of mind, this gratitude, can be understood and felt.

All Americans, no matter what may have been their views on slavery, now that freedom has come and slavery is ended, must have a restful feeling and be glad that the source of bitterness and trouble is removed. The man who is sorry because of the abolition of slavery, has outlived his day and generation; he should have insisted upon being buried with the "lost cause" at Appomatox.

We rejoice that Douglass has attained unto this exalted position--this pedestal. It has been honorably reached; it is a just recognition of talent and effort; it is another proof that success attends high and noble aim.

With this example, the black boy as well as the white boy can take hope and courage in the race of life. Douglass' life has been a romance--and a fragrance--to the age. There has been just enough mystery about his origin and escape from slavery to throw a charm about them. The odd proceedings in the purchase of his freedom after his escape from slavery; his movements in connection with the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry and his subsequent flight across the ocean are romantic as anything which took place among the crags and the cliffs, the Roderick Dhus and Douglasses of the Lady of the Lake; while the pure life he has led and his spotless character are sweet by contrast Page 19 with the lives of mere politicians and time-serving statesmen.

It is well to contemplate one like him, who has had "hair-breadth escapes. To say that his life has been eventful, is hardly the word. From the time when he first saw the light on the Tuckahoe plantation up to the time he was called to fill a high official position, his life has been crowded with events which in some sense may be called miracles, and now since his autobiography has come to be written, we must understand the hour of retrospect has come--for casting up and balancing accounts as to work done or left undone.

It is more than forty years now that he has been before the world as a writer and speaker--busy, active, wonderful years to him--and we are called upon to pass judgment upon his labors. What can we say? Can he claim the well done good and faithful? The record shows this, and we must state it, generally speaking, his life had been devoted to his race and the cause of his race. The freedom and elevation of his people has been his life work, and it has been done well and faithfully.

That is the record, and that is sufficient. No higher eulogium can be pronounced than that Long-fellow says of the Village Blacksmith: He has given the best years of his life to the improvement of their condition, and, now that he looks back upon his labors, may he not say he has "attempted" and "done" something?

The first twenty-three years of Douglass' life were twenty-three years of slavery, obscurity, and degradation, yet doubtless in time to come these years will be regarded by the student of history the most interesting portion of his life; to those who in the future would know the inside history of American slavery, this part of his life will be specially instructive. Plantation life at Tuckahoe as related by him is not fiction, it is fact; it is not the historian's dissertation on slavery, it is slavery itself, the slave's life, acts, and thoughts, and the life, acts, and thoughts of those around him.

It is Macauley I think who says that a copy of a daily newspaper [if there were such] published at Rome would give more information and be of more value than any history we have.

So, too, this Page 20 photographic view of slave life as given to us in the autobiography of an ex-slave will give to the reader a clearer insight of the system of slavery than can be gained from the examination of general history. Lloyd's plantation, where Douglass belonged, was very much like other plantations of the south.

Here was the great house and the cabins, the old Aunties, and patriarchal Uncles, little picanninies and picanninies not so little, of every shade of complexion, from ebony black to whiteness of the master race; mules, overseers, and broken down fences. Here was the negro Doctor learned in the science of roots and herbs; also the black conjurer with his divination.

Here was slave-breeding and slave-selling, whipping, torturing and beating to death. All this came under the observation of Douglass and is a part of the education he received while under the yoke of bondage. He was there in the midst of this confusion, ignorance, and brutality. Little did the overseer on this plantation think that he had in his gang a man of superior order and undaunted spirit, whose mind, far above the minds of the grovelling creatures about him, was at that very time plotting schemes for his liberty; nor did the thought ever enter the mind of Col.

Lloyd, the rich slaveholder, that he had upon his estate one who was destined to assail the system of slavery with more power and effect than any other person. Douglass' fame will rest mainly, no doubt, upon his oratory. His powers in this direction are very great, and, in some respects, unparalleled by our living speakers. His oratory is his own, and apparently formed after the model of no single person. It is not after the Edmund Burke style, which has been so closely followed by Everett, Sumner, and others, and which has resulted in giving us splendid and highly embellished essays rather than natural and not overwrought speeches.

If his oratory must be classified, it should be placed somewhere between the Fox and Henry Clay schools. Like Clay, Douglass' greatest effect is upon his immediate hearers, those who see him and feel his presence, and, like Clay, a good part of his oratorical fame will be tradition. The most striking feature of Douglass' oratory is his fire, not the quick and flashy kind, but the steady and intense kind. If oratory consists of the power to move men by spoken words, Douglass is a complete orator.

He can make men laugh or cry, at Page 21 his will. He has power of statement, logic, withering denunciation, pathos, humor, and inimitable wit. Daniel Webster, with his immense intellectuality, had no humor, not a particle. It does not appear that he could even see the point of a joke.

Douglass is brim full of humor, at times, of the dryest kind. It is of a quiet kind. You can see it coming a long way off in a peculiar twitch of his mouth. It increases and broadens gradually until it becomes irresistible and all-pervading with his audience. Douglass' rank as a writer is high, and justly so. His writings, if anything, are more meritorious than his speaking. For many years he was the editor of newspapers, doing all of the editorial work.

He has contributed largely to magazines. He is a forcible and thoughtful writer. His style is pure and graceful, and he has great felicity of expression. His written productions, in finish, compare favorably with the written productions of our most cultivated writers. His style comes partly, no doubt, from his long and constant practice, but the true source is his clear mind, which is well stored by a close acquaintance with the best authors. His range of reading has been wide and extensive.

He has been a hard student. In every sense of the word, he is a self-made man. By dint of hard study he has educated himself, and to-day it may be said he has a well-trained intellect.

He has surmounted the disadvantage of not having a university education, by application and well-directed effort. He seems to have realized the fact, that to one who is anxious to become educated and is really in earnest, it is not positively necessary to go to college, and that information may be had outside of college walks; books may be obtained and read elsewhere.

They are not chained to desks in college libraries, as they were in early times at Oxford. Professors' lectures may be bought already printed, learned doctors may be listened to in the lyceum, and the printing-press has made it easy and cheap to get information on every subject and topic that is discussed and taught in the university. Douglass never made the mistake a common one of considering that his education was finished.

He has continued to study, he studies now, and is a growing man, and at this present moment he is a stronger man intellectually than ever before. Soon after Douglass' escape from Maryland to the Northern States, he commenced his public career. It was at New Bedford, as a local Methodist preacher, and by taking part in small public meetings held by colored people, wherein anti-slavery and other Page 22 matters were discussed. There he laid the foundation of the splendid career which is now about drawing to a close.

In these meetings Douglass gave evidence that he possessed uncommon powers, and it was plainly to be seen that he needed only a field and opportunity to display them. That field and opportunity soon came, as it always does to possessors of genius. He became a member and agent of the American Anti-Slavery society. Then commenced his great crusade against slavery in behalf of his oppressed brethren at the South. He waged violent and unceasing war against slavery.

He went through every town and hamlet in the Free States, raising his voice against the iniquitous system. Just escaped from the prison-house himself, to tear down the walls of the same and to let the oppressed go free was the mission which engaged the powers of his soul and body.

North, East, and West, all through the land went this escaped slave, delivering his warning message against the doomed cities of the South.

The ocean did not stop nor hinder him. Across the Atlantic he went, through England, Ireland, and Scotland. Wherever people could be found to listen to his story, he pleaded the cause of his enslaved and down-trodden brethren with vehemence and great power. From tothe time of the commencement of the civil war, which extirpated slavery in this country, Douglass was continually speaking on the platform, writing for his newspaper and for magazines, or working in conventions for the abolition of slavery.

The life and work of Douglass has been a complete vindication of the colored people in this respect. It has refuted and overthrown the position taken by some writers, that colored people were deficient in mental qualifications and were incapable of attaining high intellectual position.

We may reasonably expect to hear no more of this now, the argument is exploded. Douglass has settled the fact the right way, and it is something to settle a fact. That Douglass is a brave man there can be little doubt.

He has physical as well as moral courage. His encounter with the overseer of the eastern shore plantation attests his pluck. There the odds were against him, everything was against him.

There the unwritten rule of law was, that the negro who dared to strike a white man must be killed; but Douglass fought the overseer and whipped him. His plotting with other slaves to escape, writing and giving them passes, and the unequal and desperate fight maintained by him in the Baltimore ship yard, where law and public Page 23 sentiment were against him, also show that he has courage.

But since the day of his slavery, while living here at the North, many instances have happened which show very plainly that he is a man of courage and determination.

If he had not been, he would have long since succumbed to the brutality and violence of the low and mean-spirited people found in the Free States. Up to a very recent date it has been deemed quite safe, even here in the North, to insult and impose on inoffensive colored people, to elbow a colored man from the sidewalk, to jeer at him and apply vile epithets to him.

In some localities this has been the rule and not the exception, and to put him out of public conveyances and public places by force was of common occurrence. It made little difference that the colored man was decent, civil, and respectably clad, and had paid his fare.

If the proprietor of the place or his patrons took the notion that the presence of the colored man was an affront to their dignity or inconsistent with their notions of self-respect, out he must go. Nor must he stand upon the order of his going, but go at once.

It was against this feeling that Douglass had to contend. He met it often. He was a prominent colored man traveling from place to place. A good part of the time he was in strange cities, stopping at strange taverns--that is, when he was allowed to stop.

Time and again has he been refused accommodation in hotels. Time and again has he been in a strange place with nowhere to lay his head until some kind anti-slavery person would come forward and give him shelter. The writer of this remembers well, because he was present and saw the transaction, the John Brown meeting in Tremont Temple, inwhen a violent mob, composed of the rough element from the slums of the city, led and encouraged by bankers and brokers, came into the hall to break up the meeting.

The mob was armed; the police were powerless; the mayor could not or would not do anything. On came the mob, surging through the aisles, over benches, and upon the platform. The women in the audience became alarmed and fled. The hirelings were prepared to do anything; they had the power and could with impunity.

Douglass sat upon the platform with a few chosen spirits, cool and undaunted. The mob had got about and around him. He did not heed their howling nor was he moved by their threats. It was not until their leader, a rich banker, with his followers, had mounted the platform and wrenched the chair from under him that he was dispossessed.

By main force and personal Page 24 violence Douglass resisting all the time they removed him from the platform. It affords me great pleasure to introduce to the public this book, "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. To the names of Toussaint L'Overture and Alexander Dumas is to be added that of Frederick Douglass. We point with pride to this trio of illustrious names. I bid my follow countrymen take new hope and courage. The near future will bring us other men of worth and genius, and our list of illustrious names will become lengthened.

Until that time the duty is to work and wait. Page 25 LIFE AS A SLAVE. IN Talbot County, Eastern Shore, State of Maryland, near Easton, the county town, 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.

It was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district or neighborhood, bordered by the Choptank river, among the laziest and muddiest of streams, surrounded by a white population of the lowest order, indolent and drunken to a proverb, and among slaves who, in point of ignorance and indolence, were fully in accord with their surroundings, that I, without any fault of my own, was born, and spent the first years of my childhood.

The reader must not expect me to say much of my family. Genealogical trees did not flourish among slaves. A person of some consequence in civilized society, sometimes designated as father, was literally unknown to Page 26 slave law and to slave practice. I never met with a slave in that part of the country who could tell me with any certainty how old he was.

Few at that time knew anything of the months of the year or of the days of the month. They measured the ages of their children by spring-time, winter-time, harvest-time, planting-time, and the like.

Masters allowed no questions concerning their ages to be put to them by slaves. Such questions were regarded by the masters as evidence of an impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of which I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born in February, My first experience of life, as I now remember it, and I remember it but hazily, began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather, Betsey and Isaac Bailey.

They were considered old settlers in the neighborhood, and from certain circumstances I infer that my grandmother, especially, was held in high esteem, far higher than was the lot of most colored persons in that region. She was a good nurse, and a capital hand at making nets used for catching shad and herring, and was, withal, somewhat famous as a fisherwoman. I have known her to be in the water waist deep, for hours, seine-hauling.

She was a gardener as well as a fisherwoman, and remarkable for her success in keeping her seedling sweet potatoes through the months of winter, and easily got the reputation of being born to "good luck.

This reputation was full of advantage to her and her grandchildren, for a good crop, after her planting for the neighbors, brought her a share of the harvest. Whether because she was too old for field service, or Page 27 because she had so faithfully discharged the duties of her station in early life, I know not, but she enjoyed the high privilege of living in a cabin separate from the quarters, having imposed upon her only the charge of the young children and the burden of her own support.

She esteemed it great good fortune to live so, and took much comfort in having the children. The practice of separating mothers from their children and hiring them out at distances too great to admit of their meeting, save at long intervals, was a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave system; but it was in harmony with the grand aim of that system, which always and everywhere sought to reduce man to a level with the brute.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes. My grandmother's five daughters were hired out in this way, and my only recollections of my own mother are of a few hasty visits made in the night on foot, after the daily tasks were over, and when she was under the necessity of returning in time to respond to the driver's call to the field in the early morning.

These little glimpses of my mother, obtained under such circumstances and against such odds, meager as they were, are ineffaceably stamped upon my memory. She was tall and finely proportioned, of dark, glossy complexion, with regular features, and amongst the slaves was remarkably sedate and dignified. There is, in "Prichard's Natural History of Man," the head of a figure, on pagethe features of which so resemble my mother that I often recur to it with something of the feelings which I suppose others experience when looking upon the likenesses of their own dear departed ones.

Of my father I know nothing. Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as none of families. That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose. By its Page 28 law the child followed the condition of its mother. The father might be a freeman and the child a slave. The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and the child ranked with the blackest slaves. Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

Page 29 CHAPTER II. LIVING thus with my grandmother, whose kindness and love stood in place of my mother's, it was some time before I knew myself to be a slave. I knew many other things before I knew that. Her little cabin had to me the attractions of a palace. Its fence-railed floor--which was equally floor and bedstead--up stairs, and its clay floor down stairs, its dirt and straw chimney, and windowless sides, and that most curious piece of workmanship, the ladder stairway, and the hole so strangely dug in front of the fire-place, beneath which grandmamma placed her sweet potatoes, to keep them from frost in winter, were full of interest to my childish observation.

The squirrels, as they skipped the fences, climbed the trees, or gathered their nuts, were an unceasing delight to me. There, too, right at the side of the hut, stood the old well, with its stately and skyward-pointing beam, so aptly placed between the limbs of what had once been a tree, and so nicely balanced, that I could move it up and down with only one hand, and could get a drink myself without calling for help.

Nor were these all the attractions of the place. At a little distance stood Mr. Lee's mill, where the people came in large numbers to get their corn ground. I can never tell the many Page 30 things thought and felt, as I sat on the bank and watched that mill, and the turning of its ponderous wheel. The mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my pin-hook and thread-line, I could get amusing nibbles if I could catch no fish.

It was not long, however, before I began to learn the sad fact that this house of my childhood belonged not to my dear old grandmother, but to some one I had never seen, and who lived a great distance off. I learned, too, the sadder fact, that not only the home and lot, but that grandmother herself and all the little children around her belonged to a mysterious personage, called by grandmother, with every mark of reverence, "Old Master.

I learned that this old master, whose name seemed ever to be mentioned with fear and shuddering, only allowed the little children to live with grandmother for a limited time, and that as soon as they were big enough they were promptly taken away to live with the said old master.

These were distressing revelations, indeed. My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes. This mysterious old master was really a man of some consequence. He owned several farms in Tuckahoe, was the chief clerk and butler on the home plantation of Colonel Lloyd, had overseers as well as slaves on his own farms, and gave directions to the overseers on the farms owned by Colonel Lloyd.

Captain Aaron Anthony, for such is the name and title of my old master, lived on Colonel Lloyd's plantation, which was situated on the Wye river, and which was one of the largest, most fertile, and best appointed in the State.

About this plantation and this old master I was most Page 31 eager to know everything which could be known; and, unhappily for me, all the information I could get concerning him increased my dread of being separated from my grandmother and grandfather.

I wished that it was possible for me to remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them. Everything about the cabin became doubly dear and I was sure that there could be no other spot on earth equal to it. But the time came when I must go, and my grandmother, knowing my fears, and in pity for them, kindly kept me ignorant of the dreaded moment up to the morning a beautiful summer morning when we were to start; and, indeed, during the whole journey, which, child as I was, I remember as well as if it were yesterday, she kept the unwelcome truth hidden from me.

The distance from Tuckahoe to Colonel Lloyd's, where my old master lived, was full twelve miles, and the walk was quite a severe test of the endurance of my young legs. The journey would have proved too severe for me, but that my dear old grandmother blessings on her memory afforded occasional relief by "toteing" me on her shoulder.

Advanced in years as she was, as was evident from the more than one gray hair which peeped from between the ample and graceful folds of her newly and smoothly-ironed bandana turban, grandmother was yet a woman of power and spirit. She was remarkably straight in figure, and elastic and muscular in movement. I seemed hardly to be a burden to her. She would have "toted" me farther, but I felt myself too much of a man to allow it.

Yet while I walked I was not independent of her. She often found me holding her skirts lest something should come out of the woods and eat me up. Several old logs and stumps imposed upon me, and got themselves taken for enormous animals.

I could plainly see their legs, eyes, ears, and teeth, till I got close Page 32 enough to see that the eyes were knots, washed white with rain, and the legs were broken limbs, and the ears and teeth only such because of the point from which they were seen. As the day advanced the heat increased, and it was not until the afternoon that we reached the much-dreaded end of the journey.

Here I found myself in the midst of a group of children of all sizes and of many colors,--black, brown, copper-colored, and nearly white. I had not before seen so many children. As a new-comer I was an object of special interest. After laughing and yelling around me el nino effect on stock market playing all sorts of wild tricks, they asked me to go out and play with them. This I refused to do.

Grandmamma looked sad, and I could not help feeling that our being there boded no good to me. She was soon to lose another object of affection, as she had lost many before. Affectionately patting me on the head, she told me to be vanguard total stock market index fund history good boy and go out to stock markets open new years eve with the children.

They are "kin to you," she said, "go and play with them. I had never seen them before, and though I had sometimes heard of them and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me or I to them.

Brothers and sisters we were by blood, but slavery had made us strangers. They were already initiated into the mysteries of old master's domicile, and they seemed to look upon me with a certain degree of compassion. I really wanted to play with them, but they were strangers to me, and I was full of fear that my grandmother might leave for home without taking me with her.

Entreated to do so, however, and that, too, by my dear grandmother, I went to the back part of the house to play with them and the other children. Play, however, I did not, but stood with my back against the wall witnessing the playing of Page 33 the others. At last, while standing there, one of the children, who had been in the kitchen, ran up to me in a sort of roguish glee, exclaiming, "Fed, Fed, grandmamma gone!

Yet, fearing the worst, I ran into the kitchen to see for myself, and lo! I need not tell all that happened now. Almost heart-broken at the discovery, I fell upon the ground and wept a boy's bitter tears, refusing to be comforted. My brother gave me peaches and pears to quiet me, but I promptly threw them on the ground.

I had never been deceived before and something of resentment mingled with my grief at parting with my grandmother.

It was now late in the afternoon. The day had been an exciting and wearisome one, and I know not where, but I suppose I sobbed myself to sleep; and its balm was never more welcome to any stock traders almanac daily probabilities soul than to mine.

The reader may be surprised that I relate so minutely an incident apparently so trivial, and which must have occurred stocks stock markets and market efficiency I was less than seven years old; but, as I wish to give a faithful history of my experience in slavery, I cannot withhold a circumstance which at the time affected me so deeply, and which I still remember so vividly. Besides, this was my first introduction to the realities of the slave system.

Page 34 CHAPTER III. Anthony's partiality to Aunt Katy--Allowance of food--Author's hunger--Unexpected rescue by his mother--The reproof of Aunt Moneycontrol forex rates slave-mother's love--Author's inheritance--His mother's acquirements--Her death. ONCE established on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd--I was with the children there, left chrysler stock market tickers symbols the tender mercies of Aunt Katy, a slave woman, who was to my master what he was to Col.

Disposing of us in classes or sizes, he left to Aunt Katy all the minor details concerning our management. She was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within the limits of delegated power, no matter how broad that authority might be. Ambitious of old master's favor, ill-tempered and cruel by nature, she found in her present position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities.

She had a strong hold upon old master, for she was a first-rate cook, and very industrious. She was therefore greatly favored by him--and as one mark of his favor she was the only mother who was permitted to retain her children around her, and even to these, her own children, she was often fiendish in her brutality.

Cruel, however, as she sometimes was to her own children, she was not destitute of maternal feeling, and in her instinct to satisfy their demands for food she was often guilty of starving me and the other children. Want of food was my chief trouble during my first summer here. Captain Anthony, instead of allowing a given quantity of food to each slave, Page 35 put option dividend strategy the allowance for all to Aunt Katy, to be divided by her, after cooking, amongst us.

The allowance consisted of coarse corn-meal, not very abundant, and which, by passing through Aunt Katy's hands, became more slender still for some of us. I have often been so pinched with hunger as to dispute with old "Nep," the dog, for the crumbs which fell from the kitchen table.

Many times have I followed, with eager step, the waiting-girl when she shook the table-cloth, to get the crumbs and small bones flung out for the dogs and cats. It was a great thing to have the privilege of dipping a piece of bread into the water in which meat had been boiled, and the skin taken from the rusty bacon was a positive luxury.

With this description of the domestic arrangements of my new home, I may here recount a circumstance which is deeply impressed on my memory, as affording a bright gleam of a slave-mother's love, and the earnestness of a mother's care. I had offended Aunt Katy. I do not remember in what way, for my offences were numerous in that quarter, greatly depending upon her moods as to their heinousness, and she had adopted her usual mode of punishing me: For the first hour or two after dinner time, I succeeded pretty well in keeping up my spirits; but as the day wore away, I found it quite impossible to do so any longer.

Sundown came, but no bread; and in its stead came the threat from Aunt Katy, with a scowl well-suited to its terrible import, that she would starve the life out of me. Brandishing her knife, she chopped off the heavy slices of bread for the other children, and put the loaf away, muttering all the while her savage designs upon myself.

Against this disappointment, for I was expecting that her heart would relent at last, I made an extra effort to maintain my dignity, but when I saw the other children around me with satisfied faces, Using option in forex trading could stand it Page 36 no longer.

I went out behind the kitchen wall and cried like a fine fellow. When wearied with this, I returned to the kitchen, sat by the fire and brooded over my hard lot. I was too hungry to sleep. While I sat in the corner, I caught sight of an ear of Indian corn upon an upper shelf. I watched my chance and got it; and shelling off a few grains, I put it back again. These grains I quickly put into the hot ashes to roast. I did this at the risk of getting a brutal thumping, for Aunt Katy could beat as well as starve me.

My corn was not long in roasting, and I eagerly pulled it from the ashes, and placed it upon a stool in a clever little pile. I began to help myself, when who but my own dear mother should come in. The scene which followed is beyond my power to describe. The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong, protecting arms of his mother.

I have before spoken of my mother's dignified and impressive manner. I shall never forget the indescribable expression of her countenance when I told her that Aunt Katy had said she would starve make money scalping concert tickets life out of me.

There was deep and tender pity in her glance at me, and, at the same moment, a fiery work from home jobs sandy utah at Aunt Katy, and while she took the corn from me, and gave in its stead a large ginger-cake, she read Aunt Katy a lecture which was never forgotten.

That night I learned as I had never learned before, that I was not only a child, but somebody's child. I was grander upon my mother's knee than a king upon his throne. But my triumph was short.

I dropped off to sleep, and waked in the morning to find my mother gone and myself at the mercy again of the virago in my master's kitchen, whose fiery wrath iforex online trading review my constant dread. My mother had walked twelve miles to see me, and had the same distance to travel over again before the morning sunrise.

I do not remember ever seeing her again. Her Page 37 THE LAST TIME HE SAW HIS MOTHER. To me it has ever been a grief that I knew my mother so little, and have so few of her words treasured in my remembrance. I have since learned that she was the only one of all the colored people of Tuckahoe who could read. How she acquired this knowledge I know not, for Tuckahoe was the last place in the world where she would have been likely to find facilities for learning. I can therefore fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love of knowledge.

That in any slave State a field-hand should learn to read is remarkable, but the achievement of my mother, considering the place and circumstances, was very extraordinary. In view of this fact, I am happy to attribute any love of letters I may have, not to my presumed Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother--a woman who belonged to a race whose mental endowments are still disparaged and despised.

Home Plantation of Colonel Lloyd--Its Isolation--Its Industries--The Slave Rule--Power of Overseers--Author Finds Some Enjoyment--Natural Scenery--Sloop "Sally Lloyd"--Wind Mill--Slave Quarter--"Old Master's" House--Stables, Store Houses, etc. IT was generally supposed that slavery in the State of Maryland existed in its mildest form, non employee stock options ifrs that it was totally divested of those harsh and terrible peculiarities which characterized the slave system in the Southern and South-Western States of the American Union.

The ground of this opinion was the contiguity of the free States, and the influence of their moral, religious, and humane sentiments. Public opinion was, indeed, a measurable restraint upon the cruelty and barbarity of masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it could reach them; but there were certain secluded and out-of-the-way places, even in the state of Maryland, fifty years ago, seldom visited by a single ray of healthy public sentiment, where slavery, wrapt in its own congenial darkness, could and did develop all its malign and shocking characteristics, where it could be indecent without shame, cruel without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or fear of exposure or punishment.

Just such a secluded, dark, and out-of-the-way place was the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd, in Talbot county, eastern shore of Maryland. It was far away Page 41 from all the great thoroughfares of travel and commerce, and proximate to no town or village.

There was neither school-house nor town-house in its neighborhood. The school-house was unnecessary, for there were no children to go to school.

The children and grandchildren of Col. Lloyd were taught in the house by a private tutor a Mr. Page from Greenfield, Massachusetts, a tall, gaunt sapling of a man, remarkably dignified, thoughtful, and reticent, and who did not speak a dozen words to a slave in a whole year. The overseer's children went off somewhere in the State to school, and therefore could bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad to embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the place.

Here, not even the commonest mechanics, from whom there might have been an occasional outburst of honest cara cepat dapat profit forex telling indignation at cruelty and wrong on other plantations, were white men.

Its whole public was made up of and divided into three classes, slaveholders, slaves, and overseers. Its blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and coopers were slaves.

Not even commerce, selfish and indifferent to moral considerations as it usually is, was permitted within its secluded precincts. Whether with a view of guarding against the escape of its secrets, I know not, but it is a fact, that every leaf and grain of the products of this plantation and those of the neighboring farms belonging to Col.

Lloyd were transported to Baltimore in his own vessels, every man and boy on board of which, except the captain, were owned by him as his property. In return, everything brought to the plantation came through the same channel. To make this isolation more apparent, it may be stated that the estates adjoining Col.

Lloyd's were owned and occupied by friends of his, who were as deeply interested as himself in maintaining the slave system in all its rigor. These were the Tilgmans, the Page 42 Goldboroughs, the Lockermans, the Pacas, the Skinners, Gibsons, and others of lesser affluence and standing. Public opinion in such a quarter, the reader must see, was not likely to be very efficient in protecting the slave from cruelty. To be a restraint upon abuses of this nature, opinion must emanate from humane and virtuous communities, and full service stock broker vs discount broker no such opinion or influence was Col.

It was a little nation by itself, having its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs. The troubles and controversies arising here were not settled by the civil power of the State.

The overseer was the important dignitary. He was generally accuser, judge, jury, advocate, and executioner. The criminal was always dumb, and no slave was allowed to testify other than against his brother slave. There were, of course, no conflicting rights of property, for all the people were the property of one man, and they could themselves own forex training course in london property. Religion and politics were largely excluded.

One class of the population was too high to be reached by the common preacher, and the other class was too low in condition and ignorance to be much cared for by religious teachers, and yet some religious ideas did enter this dark corner.

This, however, is not the only view which the place presented. Though civilization was, in many respects, shut out, nature could not the generic strategic options for competing in foreign markets include. Though separated from the rest of the world, though public opinion, as I have said, could seldom penetrate its dark domain, though the whole place was stamped with its own peculiar iron-like individuality, and though crimes, high-handed and atrocious, could be committed there with strange and shocking impunity, it was, to outward seeming, a most strikingly interesting place, full of life, activity, and spirit, and presented a very favorable contrast to the 247 how does a binary options broker make money Page 43 monotony and languor of Tuckahoe.

It resembled, in some respects, descriptions I have since read of the old baronial domains of Europe. Keen as was my regret and great as was my sorrow at leaving my old home, I was not long in adapting myself to this my new one. A man's troubles are always half paint the tape stock market of when he finds endurance the only alternative.

I found myself here, there was no getting away, and naught remained for me but to make the best of it. Here were plenty of children to play with and plenty of pleasant resorts for boys of my age and older. The little tendrils of affection, so rudely broken from the darling objects in and around my grandmother's home, gradually began to extend and twine themselves around the new surroundings.

Here, for the first time, I saw a large windmill, with its wide-sweeping white wings, a commanding object to a child's eye. This was situated on what was called Long Point--a tract of land dividing Miles river from the Wye. I spent many hours here watching the wings of this wondrous mill. In the river, or what was called the "Swash," at a short what are the causes of the stock market crash 1929 from the shore, quietly lying at anchor, with her small row boat dancing at her stern, was a large sloop, the Sally Lloyd, called by that name in honor of the favorite daughter of the Colonel.

These two objects, the sloop and mill, awakened as I remember, thoughts, ideas, and wondering. Then here were a great many houses, human habitations full of the mysteries of life at every stage of it. There was the little red house up the road, occupied by Mr. A little nearer to my old master's stood a long, low, rough building literally alive with slaves of all ages, sexes, conditions, sizes, and colors.

This was called the long quarter. Perched upon a hill east of our house, was a tall, dilapidated old brick building, the architectural dimensions of which proclaimed its creation Page 44 for a different purpose, now occupied by slaves, in a similar manner to the long quarters.

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Besides these, there were numerous other slave houses and huts scattered around in the neighborhood, every nook and corner of which were completely occupied. Old master's house, a long brick building, plain but substantial, was centrally located, and was an independent establishment. Besides these houses there were barns, stables, store-houses, tobacco-houses, blacksmith shops, wheelwright shops, cooper shops; but above all there stood the grandest building my young eyes had ever beheld, called by every one on the plantation the great house.

This was occupied by Col. Lloyd and his family. It was surrounded by numerous and variously-shaped out-buildings. There were kitchens, wash-houses, dairies, summer-houses, green-houses, hen-houses, turkey-houses, pigeon-houses, and arbors of many sizes and devices, all neatly painted or whitewashed, 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, extending the entire length of the building and supported by a long range of columns, was a broad portico, which gave to the Colonel's home an air of great dignity and grandeur.

It was a treat to my young and gradually opening mind to behold this elaborate exhibition of wealth, power and beauty. The carriage entrance to the house was by a large gate, more than a quarter of a mile distant. The intermediate space was a beautiful lawn, very neatly kept and tended. It was dotted thickly over with trees 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 lawn. Outside Page 45 this select enclosure were parks, as about the residences of the English nobility, where rabbits, deer, and other wild game might be seen peering and playing about, with "none to molest them or make them afraid.

These all belonged to me as well as to Col. Edward Lloyd, and, whether they did or not, I greatly enjoyed them. Not far from the great house were the stately mansions of the dead Lloyds--a place of somber aspect. Vast tombs, embowered beneath the weeping willow and the fir tree, told of the generations of the 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, and I was often compelled to hear stories of shrouded ghosts, riding on great black horses, and of balls of fire which had been seen to fly there at midnight, and of startling and dreadful sounds that had been repeatedly heard. Slaves knew enough of the Orthodox theology of the time, to consign all bad slaveholders to hell, and they often fancied 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 great security to the grounds about them, for few of the slaves had the courage to approach them during 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. At Lloyd's, was transacted the business of twenty or thirty different farms, which, with the slaves upon them, numbering, in all, not less than a thousand, all belonged to Col.

Each farm was under the management of an overseer, whose word an investor purchases a call option with an exercise price of $55 for $2.60 law. Lloyd was, at this time, very rich. His slaves alone, numbering as I have said not less than a thousand, were an immense fortune, and though scarcely a month passed without the sale to the Georgia traders, of one or more lots, there was no apparent diminution in the number of his human stock.

The selling of any to the State of Georgia was a sore and mournful event to those left behind, as well as to the victims themselves.

The reader has already been informed of the handicrafts carried on here by the slaves. 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 put option s&p 500. 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 is maintained among them.

I set this down as partly constitutional with the colored race and partly conventional. There is no better material in the world for making a gentleman than is furnished in the African. Among other slave notabilities, I found here one called by everybody, white and colored, "Uncle" Isaac Copper. It was seldom that a slave, however venerable, was honored with a surname in Maryland, and so completely has the south shaped the manners of the north in this respect that their right to such honor is tardily admitted even now.

It goes sadly against the grain to address and treat a negro as one would address and treat a white man. But once in a while, even in a slave state, a negro had a surname fastened to him by common consent. This was the Page 47 case with "Uncle" Isaac Copper. When the "Uncle" was dropped, he was called Doctor Copper.

He was both our Doctor of Medicine and our Doctor of Divinity. Where he took his degree I am unable to say, but he was too well established in his profession christmas trading hours south australia permit question as to his native skill or attainments.

One qualification he certainly had. He was a confirmed cripple, wholly unable to work, and was worth nothing for sale in the market. Though lame, purchase liquidation stock was no sluggard. He made his crutches do him good service, and was always on the alert looking up the sick, and such as were supposed to need his option binaire forex gci trading and 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 a few stout hickory switches. I was, with twenty or thirty other children, early sent to Doctor Isaac Copper, to learn the Lord's prayer. The old man was seated on a huge three-legged oaken stool, armed with several large hickory switches, and from the point where he sat, lame as he was, he could reach every boy in the room.

After our standing a while to learn what was expected of us, he commanded us to kneel down. This done, he told us to say everything he said. Everybody in the South seemed to want the privilege of whipping somebody else. Uncle Isaac, though a good old man, shared the common passion of his forex fixed odds and country.

I cannot say I was much edified by attendance upon his ministry. There was in my mind, even at that time, something a little inconsistent and laughable in the blending of prayer with punishment.

I was not long in my new home before I found that the dread I had conceived of Captain Anthony was in a measure groundless. Instead of leaping out from some hiding-place and destroying me, he hardly seemed to notice my presence. He probably thought as little of my arrival there as of an additional pig to his stock. He was the chief agent of his employer. The overseers of all the farms composing the Lloyd estate were in some sort under him. The Colonel himself seldom addressed an overseer, or allowed himself to be addressed by one.

To Captain Anthony, therefore, was committed the headship of all the farms. He carried the keys of all the store-houses, weighed and measured the allowances of each slave, at the end of each month; superintended the storing of all goods brought to the store-house; dealt out the raw material to the different handicraftsmen; shipped the grain, tobacco, and all other saleable produce of the numerous farms to Baltimore, and had a general oversight of all the workshops of the place.

In addition to all this he was frequently called abroad to Easton and elsewhere in the discharge of his numerous duties as chief agent of the estate. The the japanese stock market and the macroeconomy an empirical investigation of Captain Anthony consisted of two sons--Andrew and Richard, and his daughter Lucretia and her newly-married husband.

In the kitchen were Aunt Katy, Aunt Esther, and ten or a dozen children, most of them older than myself. Captain Anthony was not considered a rich slave-holder, though he was pretty well off in the world.

He owned about thirty slaves and three farms in the Tuckahoe district. The more valuable part of his property was in slaves, of whom he sold one every year, which brought him in seven or eight hundred dollars, besides his yearly salary and other revenue from his lands.

I have been often asked, during the earlier part of my free life at the North, how I happened to have so little of the slave accent in my speech. The mystery is in some measure explained by my association with Daniel Lloyd, the youngest son of Col. The law of compensation holds here as well as elsewhere. While this lad could not associate with ignorance without sharing its shade, he could not give his black playmates his company without giving them his superior intelligence as well.

Without knowing this, or caring about it at the time, I, for some cause or other, was attracted to him, and was much his companion. I had little to do with the older brothers of Daniel--Edward and Murray. They were grown up and were fine-looking men. Edward was especially esteemed by the slave children, and by me among the rest--not that he ever said anything to us or for us which could be called particularly kind.

It was enough for us that he never looked or acted scornfully toward us. The idea of rank and station was rigidly maintained on this estate. The family of Captain Anthony never visited the great house, and the Lloyds never came to our house. Equal non-intercourse was observed between Captain Stock traders almanac daily probabilities family and the family of Mr. Such, kind readers, was the community and such the place in which my earliest and most lasting impressions of the workings of slavery were received, of which impressions you will learn more in the after coming chapters of this book.

Page 50 CHAPTER V. Increasing acquaintance with old Master--Evils of unresisted passion--Apparent tenderness--A man of trouble--Custom of muttering to himself--Brutal outrage--A drunken overseer--Slaveholder's impatience--Wisdom of appeal--A base and selfish attempt to break up a courtship.

ALTHOUGH my old master, Captain Anthony, gave me, at the first of my coming to him from my grandmother's, very little attention, and although that little was of a remarkably mild and gentle description, a few months only were sufficient to convince me that mildness and gentleness were not the prevailing or governing traits of his character.

These excellent qualities were displayed only occasionally. He could, when it suited him, appear to be ways to earn farmville cash insensible to the claims of humanity. He could not only be deaf to the appeals of the helpless against the aggressor, but he could himself commit outrages deep, dark, and nameless. Yet he was not by nature worse than other men.

Had saudi arabia stock market index chart been brought up in a free state, surrounded by the full restraints of civilized society--restraints which are necessary to the freedom of all its members, alike and equally, Capt. Anthony might have been as humane a man as are members of such society generally.

A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him. The slaveholder, as well as the slave, was the victim of the slave system.

Under the whole can you make money on metacafe there could be no relation more unfavorable to the development of honorable character than Page 51 that sustained by the slaveholder to the slave.

Reason is imprisoned here, and passions run wild. Could the reader have seen Captain Anthony gently leading me by the hand, as he sometimes did, patting me on the head, speaking to me in soft, caressing tones, and calling me his little Indian boy, he would have deemed him a kind-hearted old man, and really almost fatherly to the slave boy. But the pleasant moods of a slaveholder are transient and fitful.

They neither come often nor remain long. The temper of the old man was subject to special trials; but since these trials were never borne patiently, they added little to his natural stock of patience.

Aside from his troubles with his slaves and those of Mr. Lloyd, he made the impression upon me of being an unhappy man. Even to my child's eye he wore a troubled and at times a haggard aspect. His strange movements excited my curiosity and awakened my compassion. He seldom walked alone without muttering to himself, and he occasionally stormed about as if defying an army of invisible foes. Most of his leisure was spent in walking around, cursing and gesticulating as if possessed by a demon.

He was evidently a wretched man, at war with his own soul and all the world around him. To be overheard by the children disturbed him very little. He made no more of our presence than that of the ducks and geese he met on the green.

But when his gestures were most violent, ending with a threatening shake of the head and a sharp snap of his middle finger and thumb, I deemed it wise to keep at a safe distance from him. One of the first circumstances that opened my forex demo contest june 2016 to the cruelties and wickedness of slavery and its hardening influences upon my old master, was his refusal to interpose his authority to protect and shield a young woman, a cousin of mine, who had been most cruelly abused and beaten by his overseer in Tuckahoe.

This overseer, a Page 52 Mr. Plummer, was, like most of his class, little less than a human brute; and, in addition to his general profligacy and repulsive coarseness, he was a miserable drunkard, a man not fit to have the management of a drove of mules. In one of his moments of drunken madness he committed the outrage which brought the young woman in question down to my old master's for protection.

The poor girl, on her arrival at our house, presented a most pitiable appearance. She had left in haste and without preparation, and probably without the knowledge of Mr.

She had traveled twelve miles, barefooted, bare-necked, and bare-headed. Her neck and shoulders were covered with scars, newly made; and, not content with marring her neck and shoulders with the cowhide, the cowardly wretch had dealt her a blow on the head with a hickory club, which cut a horrible gash, and left her face literally covered with blood.

In this condition the poor young woman came down to implore protection at the hands of my old master. I expected to see him boil over with rage at the revolting deed, and to hear him fill the air with curses upon the brutal Plummer; but I was disappointed. He sternly told her in an angry tone, "She deserved every bit of it, and if she did not go home instantly he would himself take the remaining skin from her neck and back. I did not at that time understand the philosophy of this treatment of my cousin.

I think I now understand it. This treatment was a part of the system, rather than a part of the man. To have encouraged appeals of this kind would have occasioned much loss of time and would have left the overseer powerless to enforce obedience.

Nevertheless, when a slave had nerve enough to go Page 53 straight to his master with a well-founded complaint against an overseer, though he might be repelled and have even that of which he at the time complained repeated, and though he might be beaten by his master, as well as by the overseer, for his temerity, the policy of complaining was, in the end, generally vindicated by the relaxed rigor of the overseer's treatment.

The latter became more careful and 1884 stock market crash disposed to use the lash upon such slaves thereafter. The overseer very naturally disliked to have the ear of the master disturbed by complaints; and, either for this reason or because of advice privately given him by his employer, he generally modified the rigor of his rule after complaints of this kind had been made against him.

For some cause or other, the slaves, no matter how often they were repulsed by their masters, were ever disposed to regard them with less abhorrence than the overseer.

And yet these masters would often go beyond their overseers in wanton cruelty. They wielded the lash without any sense of responsibility. They could cripple or kill without fear of consequences.

I have seen my old master when in a tempest of wrath, and full of pride, hatred, jealousy and revenge, seem a very fiend. The circumstances which I am about to narrate and which gave rise to this fearful tempest of passion, were not singular, but very common in our slave-holding community. The reader will have noticed that, among the names of slaves, that of Esther is mentioned.

This was the name of a young woman who possessed that which was ever a curse to the slave girl--namely, personal beauty. She was tall, light-colored, well formed, and made a fine appearance. Esther was courted by "Ned Roberts," the son of a favorite slave of Col. Lloyd, and who was as fine-looking a young man as Esther was a woman.

Some slave Page 54 holders would have been glad to have promoted the marriage of two such persons, but for some reason Captain Anthony disapproved of their courtship. He strictly ordered her to quit the society of young Roberts, telling her that he would punish her severely if he ever found her again in his company.

But it was impossible to keep this couple apart. Meet they would and meet they did. Anthony himself been a man of honor, his motives in this matter might have appeared more favorably. As it was, they appeared as abhorrent as they were contemptible.

It was one of the damning characteristics of slavery that it robbed its victims of every earthly incentive to a holy life. The fear of God and the hope of heaven were sufficient to sustain many slave women amidst the snares and dangers of their strange lot; but they were ever at the mercy of the power, passion and caprice of their owners.

Slavery provided no means for the honorable perpetuation of the race. Yet, despite of this destitution, there were many men and women among the slaves who were true and faithful to each other through life. But to the case in hand. Abhorred and circumvented as he was, Captain Anthony, having the power, was determined on revenge.

I happened to see its shocking execution, and shall never ferget the scene. It was early in the morning, when all was still, and before any of the family in the house or kitchen had risen. I was, in fact, awakened by the heart-rending shrieks and piteous cries of poor Esther. My sleeping-place was on the dirt floor of a little rough closet which opened into the kitchen, and through the cracks in its unplaned boards I could distinctly see and hear what was going on, without being seen.

Esther's wrists were firmly tied, and the twisted rope was fastened to a strong iron staple in a heavy wooden beam above, near the fire-place. Here she stood on a bench, her arms tightly drawn above her head. Her Page 55 back and shoulders were perfectly bare. Behind her stood old master, cowhide in hand, pursuing his barbarous work with all manner of harsh, coarse, and tantalizing epithets.

He was cruelly deliberate, and protracted the torture as one who was delighted with the agony of his victim.

Again and again he drew the hateful scourge through his hand, adjusting it with a view of dealing the most pain-giving blow his forex trading clearing houses and skill could inflict. Poor Esther had never before been severely whipped. Her shoulders were plump and tender. Each blow, vigorously laid on, brought screams from her as well as blood.

The whole scene, with all its attendant circumstances, was revolting and shocking to the last degree, and when the motives for the brutal castigation are known, language has no power to convey a just sense of its dreadful criminality. After laying on I dare not say how many stripes, old master untied his suffering victim.

When let down she could scarcely stand. From my heart I pitied her, and child as I was, and new to such scenes, the shock was tremendous. I was terrified, hushed, stunned and bewildered. The scene here described was often repeated, for Edward and Esther continued to meet, notwithstanding all efforts to prevent their meeting.

Page 56 CHAPTER VI. The author's early reflections on Slavery--Aunt Jennie and Uncle Noah--Presentment of one day becoming a freeman--Conflict between an overseer and a slave woman--Advantage of resistance--Death of an overseer--Col. Lloyd's plantation home--Monthly distribution of food--Singing of Slaves--An explanation--The slaves' food and best futures trading software mac children--Life in the quarter--Sleeping places--not beds--Deprivation of sleep--Care of nursing babies--Ash cake--Contrast.

THE incidents related in the foregoing chapter led me thus early to inquire into the origin and nature of slavery. Why am I a slave? Why are some people slaves and others masters?

These were perplexing questions and very troublesome to my childhood. I was very early told by some one that "God up in the sky" had made all things, and had made black people to be slaves and white people to be masters. I was told too that God was good, and that He knew what was best for everybody.

This was, however, less satisfactory than the first statement. Forex thor ii free download came point blank against all my notions of goodness.

The case of Aunt Esther was in my mind. Besides, I could not tell how anybody could know that God made black people to be slaves.

Then I found, too, that there were puzzling exceptions to this theory of slavery, in the fact that all black people were not slaves, and all white people were not masters. An incident occurred about this time that made a deep impression on my mind.

My Aunt Jennie and one of the men slaves of Captain Anthony ran away. A great noise was made about it. Old master was furious. He Page 57 said he would follow them and catch them and bring them back, but he never did, and somebody told me that Uncle Noah and Aunt Jennie had gone to the free states and were free. Besides this occurrence, which brought much how to make money fast in deer hunter 2016 to my mind on the subject, there were several slaves on Mr.

Lloyd's place who remembered being brought from Africa. There were others who told me that their fathers and mothers were stolen from Africa. This to me was important knowledge, but not such as to make me feel very easy in my slave condition.

The success of Aunt Jennie and Uncle Noah in getting away from slavery was, I think, the first fact that made me seriously think of escape for myself.

I could not have been more than seven or eight years old at the time of this occurrence, but young as I was I was already, in spirit and purpose, a fugitive from slavery. Up to the time of the brutal treatment of my Aunt Esther, already narrated, and the shocking plight in which I had seen my cousin from Tuckahoe, my attention had not been especially directed to the grosser and more revolting features of slavery.

I had, of course, heard of whippings and savage mutilations of slaves by brutal overseers, but happily for me I had always been out of the way of such occurrences. My play time was spent outside of the corn and tobacco fields, where the overseers and slaves were brought together and in conflict.

But after the case of my Aunt Esther I saw others of the same disgusting exchange rate dollar to british pound sterling shocking nature. The one of these which agitated and distressed me most was the whipping of a woman, not belonging to my old master, but to Col.

The charge against her was very common and very indefinite, namely, "impudence. He could create the Page 58 offense whenever it pleased him. A look, a word, a gesture, accidental or intentional, never failed to be taken as impudence when he was in the right mood for such an offense. In this case there were all the necessary conditions for the commission of the crime charged.

The offender was nearly white, to begin with; she was the wife of a favorite hand on board of Mr. Lloyd's sloop, and was besides, the mother of five sprightly children. Vigorous and spirited woman that she was, a wife and a mother, with a predominating share of the blood of the master running in her veins, Nellie for that was her name had all the qualities essential to impudence to a slave overseer. My attention was called to the scene of the castigation by the loud screams and curses that proceeded from the direction of it.

When I came near the parties engaged in the struggle the overseer had hold of Nellie, endeavoring with his whole strength to drag her to a tree against her resistance. Both his and her faces were bleeding, for the woman was doing her best. Three of her children were present, and though quite small, from seven to ten years old, I should thinkthey gallantly took the side of their mother against the overseer, and pelted him well with stones and epithets.

Amid the screams of the children, "Let my mammy go! Let my mammy go! His purpose was to tie her up to a tree and give her, in slave-holding parlance, a "genteel flogging," and he evidently had not expected the stern and protracted resistance he was meeting, or the strength and skill needed to its execution. There were times when she seemed likely to get the better of the brute, but he finally overpowered her and succeeded Page 59 in getting her arms firmly tied to the tree towards which he had been dragging her.

The victim was now at the mercy of his merciless lash. What followed I need not here describe. The cries of the now helpless woman, while undergoing the terrible infliction, were mingled with the hoarse curses of the overseer and the wild cries of her distracted children.

When the poor woman was untied her back was covered with blood. She was whipped, terribly whipped, but she was not subdued, and continued to denounce the overseer and to pour upon him every vile epithet of which she could think. Such floggings are seldom repeated on the same persons by overseers. They prefer to whip those who are the most easily whipped.

The doctrine that submission to violence is the best cure for violence did not hold good as between slaves and overseers.

He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest. That slave who had the courage to stand up for himself against the overseer, although he might have many hard stripes at first, became while legally a slave virtually a freeman. I do not know that Mr. Sevier ever attempted to whip Nellie again. He probably never did, for he was taken sick not long after and died. It was commonly said that his death-bed was a wretched one, and that, the ruling passion being strong in death, he died flourishing the slave whip and with horrid oaths upon his lips.

This death-bed scene may only be the imagining of the slaves. One thing is certain, that when he was in health his profanity was enough to chill the blood of an ordinary man. Nature, or habit, had given to his face an expression of uncommon savageness. Tobacco and rage had ground his teeth short, and nearly every sentence that he uttered was commenced or completed with an oath. Hated for his cruelty, despised for his Page 60 cowardice, he went to his grave lamented by nobody on the place outside of his own house, if, indeed, he was even lamented there.

James Hopkins, the succeeding overseer, we had a different and a better man; as good perhaps as any man could be in the position of a slave overseer. Though he sometimes wielded the lash, it was evident that he took no pleasure in it and did it with much reluctance. He stayed but a short time here, and his removal from the position was much regretted by the slaves generally.

Of the successor of Mr. Hopkins I shall have something to say at another time and in another place. For the present we will attend to a further description of the business-like aspect of Col. Lloyd's "Great House" farm. There was always much bustle and noise here on the two days at the end of each month, for then the slaves belonging to the different branches of this great estate assembled here by their representatives, to obtain their monthly allowances of corn-meal and pork.

These were gala days for the slaves of the outlying farms, and there was much rivalry among them as to who should be elected to go up to the Great House farm for the "Allowances," and indeed to attend to any other business at this great place, to them the capital of a little nation. Its beauty and grandeur, its immense wealth, its numerous population, and the fact that uncles Harry, Peter, and Jake, the sailors on board the sloop, usually kept on sale trinkets which they bought in Baltimore to sell to their less fortunate fellow-servants, made a visit to the Great House farm a high privilege, and eagerly sought.

It was valued, too, as a mark of distinction and confidence; but probably the chief motive among the competitors for the office was the opportunity it afforded to shake off the monotony of the field and to get beyond the overseer's eye and lash.

Once on the road with an ox-team, and seated on the Page 61 tongue of the cart, with no overseer to look after him, one felt comparatively free. Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers. Make a noise there! This, and the natural disposition of the negro to make a noise in the world, may account for the almost constant singing among them when at their work.

There was generally more or less singing among the teamsters, at all times. It was a means of telling the overseer, in the distance, where they were and what they were about. But on the allowance days those commissioned to the Great House farm were peculiarly vocal. While on the way they would make the grand old woods for miles around reverberate with their wild and plaintive notes.

They were indeed both merry and sad. Child as I was, these wild songs greatly depressed my spirits. Nowhere outside of dear old Ireland, in the days of want and famine, have I heard sounds so mournful. In all these slave songs there was ever some expression of praise of the Great House farm--something that would please the pride of the Lloyds. These words would be sung over and over again, with others, improvised as they went along-jargon, perhaps, to the reader, but full of meaning to the singers.

I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of these songs would have done more to impress the good people of the north with the soul-crushing character of slavery than whole volumes exposing the physical cruelties of the Page 62 slave system; for the heart has no language like song. Many years ago, when recollecting my experience in this respect, I wrote of these slave songs in the following strain:.

I was, myself, within the circle, so that I could then neither hear nor see as those without might see and hear. They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls over-flowing with the bitterest anguish.

They depressed my spirits and filled my heart with ineffable sadness. The remark in the olden time was not unfrequently made, that slaves were the most contented and happy laborers in the world, and their dancing and singing were referred to in proof of this alleged fact; but it was a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sometimes made those joyful noises.

The songs of the slaves represented their sorrows, rather than their joys. Like tears, they were a relief to aching hearts. It is not inconsistent with the constitution of the human mind that it avails itself of one and the same method for expressing opposite emotions.

Sorrow and desolation have their songs, as well as joy and peace. It was the boast of slaveholders that their slaves enjoyed more of the physical comforts of life than the peasantry of any country in the world. My experience contradicts this. The men and the women slaves on Col. Lloyd's farm received as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pickled pork, or its equivalent in fish. The pork was often tainted, and the fish were of the poorest quality.

With their pork or fish, they had given them one bushel of Indian meal, unbolted, of which quite fifteen per cent. With this one pint of salt was given, and this was the entire monthly allowance of a full-grown slave, working constantly Page 63 in the open field from morning till night every day in the month except Sunday. There is no kind of work which really requires a better supply of food to prevent physical exhaustion than the field work of a slave.

The yearly allowance of clothing was not more ample than the supply of food. It consisted of two tow-linen shirts, one pair of trowsers of the same coarse material, for summer, and a woolen pair of trowsers and a woolen jacket for winter, with one pair of yarn stockings and a pair of shoes of the coarsest description. Children under ten years old had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trowsers. They had two coarse tow-linen shirts per year, and when these were worn out they went naked till the next allowance day--and this was the condition of the little girls as well as of the boys.

As to beds, they had none. One coarse blanket was given them, and this only to the men and women. The children stuck themselves in holes and corners about the quarters, often in the corners of huge chimneys, with their feet in the ashes to keep them warm. The want of beds, however, was not considered a great privation by the field hands. Time to sleep was of far greater importance. For when the day's work was done most of these had their washing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or no facilities for doing such things, very many of their needed sleeping hours were consumed in necessary preparations for the labors of the coming day.

The sleeping apartments, if they could have been properly called such, had little regard to comfort or decency. Old and young, male and female, married and single, dropped down upon the common clay floor, each covering up with his or her blanket, their only protection from cold or exposure. The night, however, was shortened at both ends. The slaves worked often as long as they could see, and were late in cooking and mending for the coming day, and at the first gray streak of the morning Page 64 they were summoned to the field by the overseer's horn.

They were whipped for over-sleeping more than for any other fault. Neither age nor sex found any favor. The overseer stood at the quarter door, armed with stick and whip, ready to deal heavy blows upon any who might be a little behind time. When the horn was blown there was a rush for the door, for the hindermost one was sure to get a blow from the overseer.

Young mothers who worked in the field were allowed an hour about ten o'clock in the morning to go home to nurse their children. This was when they were not required to take them to the field with them, and leave them upon "turning row," or in the corner of the fences.

As a general rule the slaves did not come to their quarters to take their meals, but took their ash-cake called thus because baked in the ashes and piece of pork, or their salt herrings, where they were at work. But let us now leave the rough usage of the field, where vulgar coarseness and brutal cruelty flourished as rank as weeds in the tropics and where a vile wretch, in the shape of a man, rides, walks and struts about, with whip in hand, dealing heavy blows and leaving deep gashes on the flesh of men and women, and turn our attention to the less repulsive slave life as it existed in the home of my childhood.

Some idea of the splendor of that place sixty years ago has already been given. The contrast between the condition of the slaves and that of their masters was marvelously sharp and striking. There were pride, pomp, and luxury on the one hand, servility, dejection, and misery on the other. Page 65 CHAPTER VII.

THE close-fisted stinginess that fed the poor slave on coarse corn-meal and tainted meat, that clothed him in crashy tow-linen and hurried him on to toil through the field in all weathers, with wind and rain beating through his tattered garments, and that scarcely gave even the young slave-mother time to nurse her infant in the fence-corner, wholly vanished on approaching the sacred precincts of the "Great House" itself.

There the scriptural phrase descriptive of the wealthy found exact illustration. The highly-favored inmates of this mansion were literally arrayed in "purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.

Fields, forests, rivers, and seas were made tributary. Immense wealth and its lavish expenditures filled the Great House with all that could please the eye or tempt the taste.

Fish, flesh, and fowl were here in profusion. Chickens of all breeds; ducks of all kinds, wild and tame, the common and the huge Muscovite; Guinea fowls, turkeys, geese and pea-fowls; all were fat and fattening for the destined vortex.

Here the graceful swan, the mongrel, the black-necked wild goose, partridges, quails, pheasants, pigeons and choice waterfowl, with all their strange varieties, were caught in this Page 66 huge net. Beef, veal, mutton, and venison, of the most select kinds and quality, rolled in bounteous profusion to this grand consumer. The teeming riches of the Chesapeake Bay, its rock perch, drums, crocus, trout, oysters, crabs, and terrapin were drawn hither to adorn the glittering table.

The dairy, too, the finest then on the eastern shore of Maryland, supplied by cattle of the best English stock, imported for the express purpose, poured its rich donations of fragrant cheese, golden butter, and delicious cream to heighten the attractions of the gorgeous, unending round of feasting. Nor were the fruits of the earth overlooked. The fertile garden, many acres in size, constituting a separate establishment distinct from the common farm, with its scientific gardener direct from Scotland, a Mr.

McDermott, and four men under his direction, was not behind, either in the abundance or in the delicacy of its contributions. The tender asparagus, the crispy celery, and the delicate cauliflower, egg plants, beets, lettuce, parsnips, peas, and French beans, early and late; radishes, cantelopes, melons of all kinds; and the fruits of all climes and of every description, from the hardy apples of the north to the lemon and orange of the south, culminated at this point.

Here were gathered figs, raisins, almonds, and grapes from Spain, wines and brandies from France, teas of various flavor from China, and rich, aromatic coffee from Java, all conspiring to swell the tide of high life, where pride and indolence lounged in magnificence and satiety. Behind the tall-backed and elaborately wrought chairs stood the servants, fifteen in number, carefully selected.

Some of these servants, armed with fans, wafted reviving breezes to the over-heated brows of the alabaster ladies, whilst others Page 67 watched with eager eye and fawn-like step, anticipating and supplying wants before they were sufficiently formed to be announced by word or sign.

These servants constituted a sort of black aristocracy. They resembled the field hands in nothing except their color, and in this they held the advantage of a velvet-like glossiness, rich and beautiful. The hair, too, showed the same advantage. The delicately-formed colored maid rustled in the scarcely-worn silk of her young mistress, while the servant men were equally well attired from the overflowing wardrobe of their young masters, so that in dress, as well as in form and feature, in manner and speech, in tastes and habits, the distance between these favored few and the sorrow and hunger-smitten multitudes of the quarter and the field was immense.

In the stables and carriage-houses were to be found the same evidences of pride and luxurious extravagance. Here were three splendid coaches, soft within and lustrous without. Here, too, were gigs, phaetons, barouches, sulkeys, and sleighs. Here were saddles and harnesses, beautifully wrought and richly mounted.

Not less than thirty-five horses of the best approved blood, both for speed and beauty, were kept only for pleasure. The care of these horses constituted the entire occupation of two men, one or the other of them being always in the stable to answer any call which might be made from the Great House. Over the way from the stable was a house built expressly for the hounds, a pack of twenty-five or thirty, the fare for which would have made glad the hearts of a dozen slaves.

Horses and hounds, however, were not the only consumers of the slave's toil. The hospitality practiced at the Lloyd's would have astonished and charmed many a health-seeking divine or merchant from the north. Viewed from his table, and not from the field, Colonel Lloyd was, indeed, a model of generous hospitality.

His Page 68 house was literally a hotel for weeks, during the summer months. At these times, especially, the air was freighted with the rich fumes of baking, boiling, roasting, and broiling. It was something to me that I could share these odors with the winds, even if the meats themselves were under a more stringent monopoly. In master Daniel I had a friend at court, who would sometimes give me a cake, and who kept me well informed as to their guests and their entertainments.

Lloyd's table, who could have said that his slaves were not well clad and well cared for? Who would have said they did not glory in being the slaves of such a master? Who but a fanatic could have seen any cause for sympathy for either master or slave? Alas, this immense wealth, this gilded splendor, this profusion of luxury, this exemption from toil.

The poor slave, on his hard pine plank, scantily covered with his thin blanket, slept more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclined upon his downy pillow.

Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath the rich and tempting viands were invisible spirits of evil, which filled the self-deluded gormandizer with aches and pains, passions uncontrollable, fierce tempers, dyspepsia, rheumatism, lumbago, and gout, and of these the Lloyds had a full share. I had many opportunities of witnessing the restless discontent and capricious irritation of the Lloyds. My fondness for horses attracted me to the stable much of the time.

The two men in charge of this establishment were old and young Barney--father and son. Old Barney was a fine-looking, portly old man of a brownish complexion, and a respectful and dignified bearing.

He was much devoted to his profession, and held his office as an honorable one. He was a farrier as well as an ostler, and Page 69 could bleed horses, remove lampers from their months and administer medicine to them. No one on the farm knew so well as old Barney what to do with a sick horse; but his office was not an enviable one, and his gifts and acquirements were of little advantage to him.

In nothing was Col. Lloyd more unreasonable and exacting than in respect to the management of his horses. Any supposed inattention to these animals was sure to be visited with degrading punishment. His horses and dogs fared better than his men. Their beds were far softer and cleaner than those of his human cattle. No excuse could shield old Barney if the Colonel only suspected something wrong about his horses, and consequently he was often punished when faultless.

It was painful to hear the unreasonable and fretful scoldings administered by Col. Lloyd, his son Murray, and his sons-in-law, to this poor man. Three of the daughters of Col.

Lloyd were married, and they with their husbands remained at the great house a portion of the year, and enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased. A horse was seldom brought out of the stable to which no objection could be raised. However groundless the complaint, Barney must stand, hat in hand, lips sealed, never answering a word in explanation or excuse. In a free State, a master thus complaining without cause, might be told by his ostler: One of the most heart-suddening and humiliating scenes I ever witnessed was the whipping of old Barney by Col.

These two men were both advanced in years; there were the silver Page 70 locks of the master, and the bald and toil-worn brow of the slave--superior and inferior here, powerful and weak here, but equals before God.

In this humble and debasing attitude, that master, to whom he had devoted the best years and the best strength of his life, came forward and laid on thirty lashes with his horsewhip. The old man made no resistance, but bore it patiently, answering each blow with only a shrug of the shoulders and a groan.

I do not think that the physical suffering from this infliction was severe, for the whip was a light riding-whip; but the spectacle of an aged man--a husband and a father--humbly kneeling before his fellowman, shocked me at the time; and since I have grown older, few of the features of slavery have impressed me with a deeper sense of its injustice and barbarity than did this existing scene.

I owe it to the truth, however, to say that this was the first and last time I ever saw a slave compelled to kneel to receive a whipping. Another incident, illustrating a phase of slavery to which I have referred in another connection, I may here mention. Besides two other coachmen, Col. Lloyd owned one named William Wilks, and his was one of the exceptionable cases where a slave possessed a surname, and was recognized by it, by both colored and white people.

Wilks was a very fine-looking man. He was about as white as any one on the plantation, and in form and feature bore a very striking resemblance to Murray Lloyd. It was whispered and generally believed that William Wilks was a son of Col. Lloyd, by a highly favored slavewoman, who was still on the plantation. There were many reasons for believing this whisper, not only from his Page 71 WHIPPING OF OLD BARNEY.

It was notorious too that William had a deadly enemy in Murray Lloyd, whom he so much resembled, and that the latter greatly worried his father with importunities to sell William.

Indeed, he gave his father no rest, until he did sell him to Austin Woldfolk, the great slave-trader at that time. Before selling him, however, he tried to make things smooth by giving William a whipping, but it proved a failure.

It was a compromise, and like most such, defeated itself,--for Col. Lloyd soon after atoned to William for the abuse by giving him a gold watch and chain. Another fact somewhat curious was, that though sold to the remorseless Woldfolk, taken in irons to Baltimore, and cast into prison, with a view to being sent to the South, William outbid all his purchasers, paid for himself, and afterwards resided in Baltimore.

How this was accomplished was a great mystery at the time, explained only on the supposition that the hand which had bestowed the gold watch and chain had also supplied the purchase-money, but I have since learned that this was not the true explanation. Wilks had many friends in Baltimore and Annapolis, and they united to save him from a fate which was one of all others most dreaded by the slaves.

Practical amalgamation was however so common at the South, and so many circumstances pointed in that direction, that there was little reason to doubt that William Wilks was the son of Edward Lloyd. The real feelings and opinions of the slaves were not much known or respected by their masters.

The distance between the two was too great to admit of such knowledge, and in this respect Col. Lloyd was no exception to the rule. His slaves were so numerous that he did not know them when he saw them.

Nor, indeed, did all his slaves know him. It is reported of him, that, riding Page 74 along the road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in what was the usual way of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the South: Lloyd," replied the slave.

He thought and said nothing of the matter, until, two or three weeks afterwards, he was informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master, he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader.

He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment's warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered from his family and friends by a hand as unrelenting as that of death. This was the penalty of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.

It was partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired of as to their condition and the character of their masters, would almost invariably say that they were contented and their masters kind.

Slaveholders are known to have sent spies among their slaves to ascertain, if possible, their views and feelings in regard to their condition; hence the maxim established among them, that "a still tongue makes a wise head. I was frequently asked if I had a kind master, and I do not remember ever to have given a negative reply.

I did not consider myself as uttering that which was strictly untrue, for I always measured the kindness of my master by the standard of kindness set up by the slaveholders around us.

Page 75 CHAPTER VIII. Austin Gore--Sketch of his character--Overseers as a class--Their peculiar characteristics--The marked individuality of Austin Gore--His sense of duty--Murder of poor Denby--Sensation--How Gore made his peace with Col. THE comparatively moderate rule of Mr. Hopkins as overseer on Col. Lloyd's plantation was succeeded by that of another, whose name was Austin Gore.

I hardly know how to bring this man fitly before the reader; for under him there was more suffering from violence and bloodshed than had, according to the older slaves, ever been experienced before at this place. He was an overseer, and possessed the peculiar characteristics of his class; yet to call him merely an overseer would not give one a fair conception of the man.

I speak of overseers as a class, for they were such. They were as distinct from the slaveholding gentry of the South as are the fish-women of Paris and the coal-heavers of London distinct from other grades of society. They constituted, at the South, a separate fraternity.

They were arranged and classified by that great law of attraction which determines the sphere and affinities of men and which ordains that men whose malign and brutal propensities preponderate over their moral and intellectual endowments shall naturally fall into the employments which promise the largest gratification to their predominating instincts or propensities.

The office of overseer took this raw material of vulgarity and brutality and Page 76 stamped it as a distinct class in southern life. But in this class, as in all other classes, there were sometimes persons of marked individuality, yet with a general resemblance to the mass. Gore was one of those to whom a general characterization would do no manner of justice.

He was an overseer, but he was something more. With the malign and tyrannical qualities of an overseer he combined something of the lawful master. He had the artfulness and mean ambition of his class, without its disgusting swagger and noisy bravado. There was an easy air of independence about him, a calm self-possession, and at the same time a sternness of glance which well might daunt less timid hearts that those of poor slaves accustomed from childhood to cower before a driver's lash.

He was one of those overseers who could torture the slightest word or look into impudence, and he had the nerve not only to resent, but to punish promptly and severely. There could be no answering back. Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging. His very presence was fearful, and I shunned him as I would have shunned a rattlesnake.

His piercing black eyes and sharp, shrill voice ever awakened sensations of dread. Other overseers, how brutal soever they might be, would sometimes seek to gain favor with the slaves by indulging in a little pleasantry; but Gore never said a funny thing or perpetrated a joke.

He was always cold, distant, and unapproachable--the overseer on Col. Edward Lloyd's plantation--and needed no higher pleasure than the performance of the duties of his office. When he used the lash, it was from a sense of duty, without fear of consequences.

There was a stern will, an iron-like reality about him, which would easily have made him chief of a band of pirates, had his environments been favorable to such a sphere. Among many other deeds of shocking cruelty committed by him was the murder of a Page 77 young colored man named Bill Denby.

He was a powerful fellow, full of animal spirits, and one of the most valuable of Col. In some way, I know not what, he offended this Mr. Austin Gore, and, in accordance with the usual custom, the latter undertook to flog him. He had given him but a few stripes when Denby broke away from him, plunged into the creek, and, standing there with the water up to his neck, refused to come out; whereupon, for this refusal, Gore shot him dead!

It was said that Gore gave Denby three calls to come out, telling him that if he did not obey the last call he should shoot him. When the last call was given Denby still stood his ground, and Gore, without further parley or making any further effort to induce obedience, raised his gun deliberately to his face, took deadly aim at his standing victim, and with one click of the gun the mangled body sank out of sight, and only his warm red blood marked the place where he had stood.

This fiendish murder produced, as it could not help doing, a tremendous sensation. The slaves were panic-stricken, and howled with alarm. The atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out in reprobation of it. Both he and Col. Lloyd arraigned Gore for his cruelty; but the latter, calm and collected as though nothing unusual had happened, declared that Denby had become unmanageable; that he set a dangerous example to the other slaves, and that unless some such prompt measure was resorted to there would be an end of all rule and order on the plantation.

That convenient covert for all manner of villainy and outrage; that cowardly alarm-cry that the slaves would "take the place," was pleaded, just as it had before been in thousands of similar cases. Gore's defense was evidently considered satisfactory, for he was continued in his office without being subjected to a judicial investigation. The murder was committed in the presence of Page 78 slaves only, and they, being slaves, could neither institute a suit nor testify against the murderer.

Gore lived in St. I speak advisedly when I say that in Talbot Co. Thomas Lanman, ship carpenter of St. Michaels, killed two slaves, one of whom he butchered with a hatchet by knocking out his brains.

He used to boast of having committed the awful and bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly, declaring himself a benefactor of his country and that "when others would do as much as he had done, they would be rid of the d--d niggers. Another notorious fact which I may here state was the murder of a young girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age, by her mistress, Mrs.

Giles Hicks, who lived but a short distance from Col. This wicked woman, in the paroxysm of her wrath, not content with killing her victim, literally mangled her face and broke her breastbone. Wild and infuriated as she was, she took the precaution to cause the burial of the girl; but, the facts of the case getting abroad, the remains were disinterred and a coroner's jury assembled, who, after due deliberation, decided that "the girl had come to her death from severe beating.

Hicks' baby, and, having fallen into a sound sleep, the crying of the baby did not wake her, as it did its mother. The tardiness of the girl excited Mrs.

Hicks, who, after calling her several times, seized a piece of fire-wood from the fire-place Page 79 GORE SHOOTING DENBY. I will not say that this murder most foul produced no sensation. It did produce a sensation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mrs. Hicks, but incredible to tell, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served, and she not only escaped condign punishment, but the pain and mortification as well, of being arraigned before a court of justice.

While I am detailing the bloody deeds that took place during my stay on Col. Lloyd's plantation, I will briefly narrate another dark transaction, which occurred about the time of the murder of Denby. On the side of the river Wye opposite from Col. Lloyd's, there lived a Mr. Beal Bondley, a wealthy slaveholder. In the direction of his land, and near the shore, there was an excellent oyster fishing-ground, and to this some of Lloyd's slaves occasionally resorted in their little canoes, at night, with a view to make up the deficiency of their scanty allowance of food by the oysters that they could easily get there.

Bondley took it into his head to regard this as a trespass, and while an old man slave was engaged in catching a few of the many millions of oysters that lined the bottom of the creek, to satisfy his hunger, the rascally Bondley, lying in ambush, without the slightest warning, discharged the contents of his musket into the back of the poor old man.

As good fortune would have it, the shot did not prove fatal, and Mr. Bondley came over the next day to see Col. What happened between them I know not, but there was little said about it and nothing publicly done.

One of the commonest sayings to which my ears early became accustomed, was, that it was "worth but a half a cent to kill a nigger, and half a cent to bury one. The usual pretext for such crimes was that the slave had offered resistance. Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self-defense, the white assaulting party was fully justified by southern law and southern public opinion in shooting the slave down, and for this there was no redress. Page 83 CHAPTER IX. Miss Lucretia--Her kindness--How it was manifested--"Ike"--A battle with him--Miss Lucretia's balsam--Bread--How it was obtained--Gleams of sunlight amidst the general darkness--Suffering from cold--How we took our meal mush--Preparations for going to Baltimore--Delight at the change--Cousin Tom's opinion of Baltimore--Arrival there--Kind reception--Mr.

Hugh Auld--Their son Tommy--My relations to them--My duties--A turning point in my life. I HAVE nothing cruel or shocking to relate of my own personal experience while I remained on Col. Lloyd's plantation, at the home of my old master. An occasional cuff from Aunt Katy, and a regular whipping from old master, such as any heedless and mischievous boy might get from his father, is all that I have to say of this sort.

I was not old enough to work in the field, and there being little else than field-work to perform, I had much leisure. The most I had to do was to drive up the cows in the evening, to keep the front yard clean, and to perform small errands for my young mistress, Lucretia Auld.

I had reasons for thinking this lady was very kindly disposed towards me, and although I was not often the object of her attention, I constantly regarded her as my friend, and was always glad when it was my privilege to do her a service.

In a family where there was so much that was harsh and indifferent, the slightest word or look of kindness was of great value. Miss Lucretia--as we all continued to call her long after her marriage--had bestowed on me such looks and words as taught me that she pitied me, if she did not love me.

She sometimes Page 84 gave me a piece of bread and butter, an article not set down in our bill of fare, but an extra ration aside from both Aunt Katy and old master, and given as I believed solely out of the tender regard she had for me. Then, too, I one day got into the wars with Uncle Abel's son "Ike," and got sadly worsted; the little rascal struck me directly in the forehead with a sharp piece of cinder, fused with iron, from the old blacksmith's forge, which made a cross in my forehead very plainly to be seen even now.

The gash bled very freely, and I roared and betook myself home. The cold-hearted Aunt Katy paid no attention either to my wound or my roaring except to tell me it "served me right; I had no business with Ike; it would do me good; I would now keep away from 'dem Lloyd niggers.

With her own soft hand she washed the blood from my head and face, brought her own bottle of balsam, and with the balsam wetted a nice piece of white linen and bound up my head. The balsam was not more healing to the wound in my head, than her kindness was healing to the wounds in my spirit, induced by the unfeeling words of Aunt Katy.

Miss Lucretia was after this yet more my friend. I felt her to be such and I have no doubt that the simple act of binding up my head did much to awaken in her heart an interest in my welfare.

It is quite true that this interest seldom showed itself in anything more than in giving me a piece of bread and butter, but this was a great favor on a slave plantation, and I was the only one of the children to whom such attention was paid. When very severely pinched with hunger, I had the habit of singing, which the good lady very soon came to understand, Page 85 and when she heard me singing under her window I was very apt to be paid for my music.

Thus I had two friends, both at important points--Mas'r Daniel at the great house, and Miss Lucretia at home. From Mas'r Daniel I got protection from the bigger boys, and from Miss Lucretia I got bread by singing when I was hungry, and sympathy when I was abused by the termagant in the kitchen.

For such friendship I was deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections of slavery, it is a true pleasure to recall any instances of kindness, any sunbeams of humane treatment, which found way to my soul, through the iron grating of my house of bondage.

Such beams seem all the brighter from the general darkness into which they penetrate, and the impression they make there is vividly distinct. As before intimated, I received no severe treatment from the hands of my master, but the insufficiency of both food and clothing was a serious trial to me, especially the lack of clothing. In hottest summer and coldest winter I was kept almost in a state of nudity. My only clothing--a little coarse sack-cloth or tow-linen sort of shirt, scarcely reaching to my knees, was worn night and day and changed once a week.

In the day time I could protect myself by keeping on the sunny side of the house, or, in stormy weather, in the corner of the kitchen chimney. But the great difficulty was to keep warm during the night. The pigs in the pen had leaves, and the horses in the stable had straw, but the children had no beds.

They lodged anywhere in the ample kitchen. I slept generally in a little closet, without even a blanket to cover me. In very cold weather I sometimes got down the bag in which corn was carried to the mill, and crawled into that. Sleeping there with my head in and my feet out, I was partly protected, though never comfortable. My feet have been so cracked with the frost Page 86 that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.

Our corn meal mush, which was our only regular if not all-sufficing diet, was, when sufficiently cooled from the cooking, placed in a large tray or trough. This was set down either on the floor of the kitchen, or out of doors on the ground, and the children were called like so many pigs, and like so many pigs would come, some with oyster-shells, some with pieces of shingles, but none with spoons, and literally devour the mush.

He who could eat fastest got most, and he who was strongest got the best place, but few left the trough really satisfied. I was the most unlucky of all, for Aunt Katy had no good feeling for me, and if I pushed the children, or if they told her anything unfavorable of me, she always believed the worst and was sure to whip me.

As I grew older and more thoughtful, I became more and more filled with a sense of my wretchedness. The unkindness of Aunt Katy, the hunger and cold I suffered, and the terrible reports of wrongs and outrages which came to my ear, together with what I almost daily witnessed, led me to wish I had never been born. I used to contrast my condition with that of the black-birds, in whose wild and sweet songs I fancied them so happy. Their apparent joy only deepened the shades of my sorrow.

There are thoughtful days in the lives of children--at least there were in mine--when they grapple with the great primary subjects of knowledge, and reach in a moment conclusions which no subsequent experience can shake. I was just as well aware of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery, when nine years old, as I am now. Without any appeals to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, to regard God as "Our Father," condemned slavery as a crime.

I was in this unhappy state when I received from Miss Lucretia the joyful intelligence that my old master had Page 87 determined to let me go to Baltimore to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, a brother to Mr.

Thomas Auld, Miss Lucretia's husband. I shall never forget the ecstacy with which I received this information, three days before the time set for my departure. They were the three happiest days I had ever known. I spent the largest part of them in the creek, washing off the plantation scurf, and thus preparing for my new home.

Miss Lucretia took a lively interest in getting me ready. She told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and knees, for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty; and besides she was intending to give me a pair of trowsers, but which I could not put on unless I got off all the dirt. This was a warning which I was bound to heed, for the thought of owning and wearing a pair of trowsers was great indeed.

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