My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

F >> Frederick Douglass >> My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

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You may perhaps want to know how I like my present condition. I
am free to say, I greatly prefer it to that which I occupied in
Maryland. I am, however, by no means prejudiced against the
state as such. Its geography, climate, fertility, and products,
are such as to make it a very <333>desirable abode for any man;
and but for the existence of slavery there, it is not impossible
that I might again take up my abode in that state. It is not
that I love Maryland less, but freedom more. You will be
surprised to learn that people at the north labor under the
strange delusion that if the slaves were emancipated at the
south, they would flock to the north. So far from this being the
case, in that event, you would see many old and familiar faces
back again to the south. The fact is, there are few here who
would not return to the south in the event of emancipation. We
want to live in the land of our birth, and to lay our bones by
the side of our fathers; and nothing short of an intense love of
personal freedom keeps us from the south. For the sake of this,
most of us would live on a crust of bread and a cup of cold
water.

Since I left you, I have had a rich experience. I have occupied
stations which I never dreamed of when a slave. Three out of the
ten years since I left you, I spent as a common laborer on the
wharves of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was there I earned my
first free dollar. It was mine. I could spend it as I pleased.
I could buy hams or herring with it, without asking any odds of
anybody. That was a precious dollar to me. You remember when I
used to make seven, or eight, or even nine dollars a week in
Baltimore, you would take every cent of it from me every Saturday
night, saying that I belonged to you, and my earnings also. I
never liked this conduct on your part--to say the best, I thought
it a little mean. I would not have served you so. But let that
pass. I was a little awkward about counting money in New England
fashion when I first landed in New Bedford. I came near
betraying myself several times. I caught myself saying phip, for
fourpence; and at one time a man actually charged me with being a
runaway, whereupon I was silly enough to become one by running
away from him, for I was greatly afraid he might adopt measures
to get me again into slavery, a condition I then dreaded more
than death.

I soon learned, however, to count money, as well as to make it,
and got on swimmingly. I married soon after leaving you; in
fact, I was engaged to be married before I left you; and instead
of finding my companion a burden, she was truly a helpmate. She
went to live at service, and I to work on the wharf, and though
we toiled hard the first winter, we never lived more happily.
After remaining in New Bedford for three years, I met with
William Lloyd Garrison, a person of whom you have _possibly_
heard, as he is pretty generally known among slaveholders. He
put it into my head that I might make myself serviceable to the
cause of the slave, by devoting a portion of my time to telling
my own sorrows, and those of other slaves, which had come under
my observation. This <334>was the commencement of a higher state
of existence than any to which I had ever aspired. I was thrown
into society the most pure, enlightened, and benevolent, that the
country affords. Among these I have never forgotten you, but
have invariably made you the topic of conversation--thus giving
you all the notoriety I could do. I need not tell you that the
opinion formed of you in these circles is far from being
favorable. They have little respect for your honesty, and less
for your religion.

But I was going on to relate to you something of my interesting
experience. I had not long enjoyed the excellent society to
which I have referred, before the light of its excellence exerted
a beneficial influence on my mind and heart. Much of my early
dislike of white persons was removed, and their manners, habits,
and customs, so entirely unlike what I had been used to in the
kitchen-quarters on the plantations of the south, fairly charmed
me, and gave me a strong disrelish for the coarse and degrading
customs of my former condition. I therefore made an effort so to
improve my mind and deportment, as to be somewhat fitted to the
station to which I seemed almost providentially called. The
transition from degradation to respectability was indeed great,
and to get from one to the other without carrying some marks of
one's former condition, is truly a difficult matter. I would not
have you think that I am now entirely clear of all plantation
peculiarities, but my friends here, while they entertain the
strongest dislike to them, regard me with that charity to which
my past life somewhat entitles me, so that my condition in this
respect is exceedingly pleasant. So far as my domestic affairs
are concerned, I can boast of as comfortable a dwelling as your
own. I have an industrious and neat companion, and four dear
children--the oldest a girl of nine years, and three fine boys,
the oldest eight, the next six, and the youngest four years old.
The three oldest are now going regularly to school--two can read
and write, and the other can spell, with tolerable correctness,
words of two syllables. Dear fellows! they are all in
comfortable beds, and are sound asleep, perfectly secure under my
own roof. There are no slaveholders here to rend my heart by
snatching them from my arms, or blast a mother's dearest hopes by
tearing them from her bosom. These dear children are ours--not
to work up into rice, sugar, and tobacco, but to watch over,
regard, and protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and
admonition of the gospel--to train them up in the paths of wisdom
and virtue, and, as far as we can, to make them useful to the
world and to themselves. Oh! sir, a slaveholder never appears to
me so completely an agent of hell, as when I think of and look
upon my dear children. It is then that my feelings rise above my
control. I meant to have said more with respect to my own
prosperity and happiness, but thoughts and feel<335>ings which
this recital has quickened, unfit me to proceed further in that
direction. The grim horrors of slavery rise in all their ghastly
terror before me; the wails of millions pierce my heart and chill
my blood. I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the
death-like gloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered
bondman; the appalling liability of his being torn away from wife
and children, and sold like a beast in the market. Say not that
this is a picture of fancy. You well know that I wear stripes on
my back, inflicted by your direction; and that you, while we were
brothers in the same church, caused this right hand, with which I
am now penning this letter, to be closely tied to my left, and my
person dragged, at the pistol's mouth, fifteen miles, from the
Bay Side to Easton, to be sold like a beast in the market, for
the alleged crime of intending to escape from your possession.
All this, and more, you remember, and know to be perfectly true,
not only of yourself, but of nearly all of the slaveholders
around you.

At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least
three of my own dear sisters, and my only brother, in bondage.
These you regard as your property. They are recorded on your
ledger, or perhaps have been sold to human flesh-mongers, with a
view to filling our own ever-hungry purse. Sir, I desire to know
how and where these dear sisters are. Have you sold them? or are
they still in your possession? What has become of them? are they
living or dead? And my dear old grandmother, whom you turned out
like an old horse to die in the woods--is she still alive? Write
and let me know all about them. If my grandmother be still
alive, she is of no service to you, for by this time she must be
nearly eighty years old--too old to be cared for by one to whom
she has ceased to be of service; send her to me at Rochester, or
bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness
of my life to take care of her in her old age. Oh! she was to me
a mother and a father, so far as hard toil for my comfort could
make her such. Send me my grandmother! that I may watch over and
take care of her in her old age. And my sisters--let me know all
about them. I would write to them, and learn all I want to know
of them, without disturbing you in any way, but that, through
your unrighteous conduct, they have been entirely deprived of the
power to read and write. You have kept them in utter ignorance,
and have therefore robbed them of the sweet enjoyments of writing
or receiving letters from absent friends and relatives. Your
wickedness and cruelty, committed in this respect on your fellow-
creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon my
back or theirs. It is an outrage upon the soul, a war upon the
immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the
bar of our common Father and Creator.
<336>

The responsibility which you have assumed in this regard is truly
awful, and how you could stagger under it these many years is
marvelous. Your mind must have become darkened, your heart
hardened, your conscience seared and petrified, or you would have
long since thrown off the accursed load, and sought relief at the
hands of a sin-forgiving God. How, let me ask, would you look
upon me, were I, some dark night, in company with a band of
hardened villains, to enter the precincts of your elegant
dwelling, and seize the person of your own lovely daughter,
Amanda, and carry her off from your family, friends, and all the
loved ones of her youth--make her my slave--compel her to work,
and I take her wages--place her name on my ledger as property--
disregard her personal rights--fetter the powers of her immortal
soul by denying her the right and privilege of learning to read
and write--feed her coarsely--clothe her scantily, and whip her
on the naked back occasionally; more, and still more horrible,
leave her unprotected--a degraded victim to the brutal lust of
fiendish overseers, who would pollute, blight, and blast her fair
soul--rob her of all dignity--destroy her virtue, and annihilate
in her person all the graces that adorn the character of virtuous
womanhood? I ask, how would you regard me, if such were my
conduct? Oh! the vocabulary of the damned would not afford a
word sufficiently infernal to express your idea of my God-
provoking wickedness. Yet, sir, your treatment of my beloved
sisters is in all essential points precisely like the case I have
now supposed. Damning as would be such a deed on my part, it
would be no more so than that which you have committed against me
and my sisters.

I will now bring this letter to a close; you shall hear from me
again unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of
you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery--as a
means of concentrating public attention on the system, and
deepening the horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of
men. I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the
character of the American church and clergy--and as a means of
bringing this guilty nation, with yourself, to repentance. In
doing this, I entertain no malice toward you personally. There
is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and
there is nothing in my house which you might need for your
comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should
esteem it a privilege to set you an example as to how mankind
ought to treat each other.

_I am your fellow-man, but not your slave_.

THE NATURE OF SLAVERY
_Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,
December 1, 1850_

More than twenty years of my life were consumed in a state of
slavery. My childhood was environed by the baneful peculiarities
of the slave system. I grew up to manhood in the presence of
this hydra headed monster--not as a master--not as an idle
spectator--not as the guest of the slaveholder--but as A SLAVE,
eating the bread and drinking the cup of slavery with the most
degraded of my brother-bondmen, and sharing with them all the
painful conditions of their wretched lot. In consideration of
these facts, I feel that I have a right to speak, and to speak
_strongly_. Yet, my friends, I feel bound to speak truly.

Goading as have been the cruelties to which I have been
subjected--bitter as have been the trials through which I have
passed--exasperating as have been, and still are, the indignities
offered to my manhood--I find in them no excuse for the slightest
departure from truth in dealing with any branch of this subject.

First of all, I will state, as well as I can, the legal and
social relation of master and slave. A master is one--to speak
in the vocabulary of the southern states--who claims and
exercises a right of property in the person of a fellow-man.
This he does with the force of the law and the sanction of
southern religion. The law gives the master absolute power over
the slave. He may work him, flog him, hire him out, sell him,
and, in certain contingencies, _kill_ him, with perfect impunity.
The slave is a human being, divested of all rights--reduced to
the level of a brute--a mere "chattel" in the eye of the law--
placed beyond the circle of human brotherhood--cut off from his
kind--his name, which the "recording angel" may have enrolled in
heaven, among the blest, is impiously inserted in a _master's
ledger_, with horses, sheep, and swine. In law, the slave has no
wife, no children, no country, and no home. He can own nothing,
possess nothing, acquire nothing, but what must belong to
another. To <338>eat the fruit of his own toil, to clothe his
person with the work of his own hands, is considered stealing.
He toils that another may reap the fruit; he is industrious that
another may live in idleness; he eats unbolted meal that another
may eat the bread of fine flour; he labors in chains at home,
under a burning sun and biting lash, that another may ride in
ease and splendor abroad; he lives in ignorance that another may
be educated; he is abused that another may be exalted; he rests
his toil-worn limbs on the cold, damp ground that another may
repose on the softest pillow; he is clad in coarse and tattered
raiment that another may be arrayed in purple and fine linen; he
is sheltered only by the wretched hovel that a master may dwell
in a magnificent mansion; and to this condition he is bound down
as by an arm of iron.

From this monstrous relation there springs an unceasing stream of
most revolting cruelties. The very accompaniments of the slave
system stamp it as the offspring of hell itself. To ensure good
behavior, the slaveholder relies on the whip; to induce proper
humility, he relies on the whip; to rebuke what he is pleased to
term insolence, he relies on the whip; to supply the place of
wages as an incentive to toil, he relies on the whip; to bind
down the spirit of the slave, to imbrute and destroy his manhood,
he relies on the whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, the
pillory, the bowie knife the pistol, and the blood-hound. These
are the necessary and unvarying accompaniments of the system.
Wherever slavery is found, these horrid instruments are also
found. Whether on the coast of Africa, among the savage tribes,
or in South Carolina, among the refined and civilized, slavery is
the same, and its accompaniments one and the same. It makes no
difference whether the slaveholder worships the God of the
Christians, or is a follower of Mahomet, he is the minister of
the same cruelty, and the author of the same misery. _Slavery_
is always _slavery;_ always the same foul, haggard, and damning
scourge, whether found in the eastern or in the western
hemisphere.

There is a still deeper shade to be given to this picture. The
physical cruelties are indeed sufficiently harassing and
revolting; but they are as a few grains of sand on the sea shore,
or a few drops of water in the great ocean, compared with the
stupendous wrongs which it inflicts upon the mental, moral, and
religious nature of its hapless victims. It is only when we
contemplate the slave as a moral and intellectual being, that we
can adequately comprehend the unparalleled enormity of slavery,
and the intense criminality of the slaveholder. I have said that
the slave was a man. "What a piece of work is man! How noble in
reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how
express and admirable! In action <339>how like an angel! In
apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world! The
paragon of animals!"

The slave is a man, "the image of God," but "a little lower than
the angels;" possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible;
capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of
hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows,
and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars
above the things of time and sense, and grasps, with undying
tenacity, the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of a God. It
is _such_ a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of
slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims
which distinguish _men_ from _things_, and _persons_ from
_property_. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral
and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine.
It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of
God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the
dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail,
depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India
is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey
before he is able to handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder
must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain
the entire mastery over his victim.

It is, then, the first business of the enslaver of men to blunt,
deaden, and destroy the central principle of human
responsibility. Conscience is, to the individual soul, and to
society, what the law of gravitation is to the universe. It
holds society together; it is the basis of all trust and
confidence; it is the pillar of all moral rectitude. Without it,
suspicion would take the place of trust; vice would be more than
a match for virtue; men would prey upon each other, like the wild
beasts of the desert; and earth would become a _hell_.

Nor is slavery more adverse to the conscience than it is to the
mind. This is shown by the fact, that in every state of the
American Union, where slavery exists, except the state of
Kentucky, there are laws absolutely prohibitory of education
among the slaves. The crime of teaching a slave to read is
punishable with severe fines and imprisonment, and, in some
instances, with _death itself_.

Nor are the laws respecting this matter a dead letter. Cases may
occur in which they are disregarded, and a few instances may be
found where slaves may have learned to read; but such are
isolated cases, and only prove the rule. The great mass of
slaveholders look upon education among the slaves as utterly
subversive of the slave system. I well remember when my mistress
first announced to my master that she had dis<340>covered that I
could read. His face colored at once with surprise and chagrin.
He said that "I was ruined, and my value as a slave destroyed;
that a slave should know nothing but to obey his master; that to
give a negro an inch would lead him to take an ell; that having
learned how to read, I would soon want to know how to write; and
that by-and-by I would be running away." I think my audience
will bear witness to the correctness of this philosophy, and to
the literal fulfillment of this prophecy.

It is perfectly well understood at the south, that to educate a
slave is to make him discontened{sic} with slavery, and to invest
him with a power which shall open to him the treasures of
freedom; and since the object of the slaveholder is to maintain
complete authority over his slave, his constant vigilance is
exercised to prevent everything which militates against, or
endangers, the stability of his authority. Education being among
the menacing influences, and, perhaps, the most dangerous, is,
therefore, the most cautiously guarded against.

It is true that we do not often hear of the enforcement of the
law, punishing as a crime the teaching of slaves to read, but
this is not because of a want of disposition to enforce it. The
true reason or explanation of the matter is this: there is the
greatest unanimity of opinion among the white population in the
south in favor of the policy of keeping the slave in ignorance.
There is, perhaps, another reason why the law against education
is so seldom violated. The slave is too poor to be able to offer
a temptation sufficiently strong to induce a white man to violate
it; and it is not to be supposed that in a community where the
moral and religious sentiment is in favor of slavery, many
martyrs will be found sacrificing their liberty and lives by
violating those prohibitory enactments.

As a general rule, then, darkness reigns over the abodes of the
enslaved, and "how great is that darkness!"

We are sometimes told of the contentment of the slaves, and are
entertained with vivid pictures of their happiness. We are told
that they often dance and sing; that their masters frequently
give them wherewith to make merry; in fine, that they have little
of which to complain. I admit that the slave does sometimes
sing, dance, and appear to be merry. But what does this prove?
It only proves to my mind, that though slavery is armed with a
thousand stings, it is not able entirely to kill the elastic
spirit of the bondman. That spirit will rise and walk abroad,
despite of whips and chains, and extract from the cup of nature
occasional drops of joy and gladness. No thanks to the
slaveholder, nor to slavery, that the <341>vivacious captive may
sometimes dance in his chains; his very mirth in such
circumstances stands before God as an accusing angel against his
enslaver.

It is often said, by the opponents of the anti-slavery cause,
that the condition of the people of Ireland is more deplorable
than that of the American slaves. Far be it from me to underrate
the sufferings of the Irish people. They have been long
oppressed; and the same heart that prompts me to plead the cause
of the American bondman, makes it impossible for me not to
sympathize with the oppressed of all lands. Yet I must say that
there is no analogy between the two cases. The Irishman is poor,
but he is not a slave. He may be in rags, but he is not a slave.
He is still the master of his own body, and can say with the
poet, "The hand of Douglass is his own." "The world is all
before him, where to choose;" and poor as may be my opinion of
the British parliament, I cannot believe that it will ever sink
to such a depth of infamy as to pass a law for the recapture of
fugitive Irishmen! The shame and scandal of kidnapping will long
remain wholly monopolized by the American congress. The Irishman
has not only the liberty to emigrate from his country, but he has
liberty at home. He can write, and speak, and cooperate for the
attainment of his rights and the redress of his wrongs.

The multitude can assemble upon all the green hills and fertile
plains of the Emerald Isle; they can pour out their grievances,
and proclaim their wants without molestation; and the press, that
"swift-winged messenger," can bear the tidings of their doings to
the extreme bounds of the civilized world. They have their
"Conciliation Hall," on the banks of the Liffey, their reform
clubs, and their newspapers; they pass resolutions, send forth
addresses, and enjoy the right of petition. But how is it with
the American slave? Where may he assemble? Where is his
Conciliation Hall? Where are his newspapers? Where is his right
of petition? Where is his freedom of speech? his liberty of the
press? and his right of locomotion? He is said to be happy;
happy men can speak. But ask the slave what is his condition--
what his state of mind--what he thinks of enslavement? and you
had as well address your inquiries to the _silent dead_. There
comes no _voice_ from the enslaved. We are left to gather his
feelings by imagining what ours would be, were our souls in his
soul's stead.

If there were no other fact descriptive of slavery, than that the
slave is dumb, this alone would be sufficient to mark the slave
system as a grand aggregation of human horrors.

Most who are present, will have observed that leading men in this
<342>country have been putting forth their skill to secure quiet
to the nation. A system of measures to promote this object was
adopted a few months ago in congress. The result of those
measures is known. Instead of quiet, they have produced alarm;
instead of peace, they have brought us war; and so it must ever
be.

While this nation is guilty of the enslavement of three millions
of innocent men and women, it is as idle to think of having a
sound and lasting peace, as it is to think there is no God to
take cognizance of the affairs of men. There can be no peace to
the wicked while slavery continues in the land. It will be
condemned; and while it is condemned there will be agitation.
Nature must cease to be nature; men must become monsters;
humanity must be transformed; Christianity must be exterminated;
all ideas of justice and the laws of eternal goodness must be
utterly blotted out from the human soul--ere a system so foul and
infernal can escape condemnation, or this guilty republic can
have a sound, enduring peace.

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