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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I do not remember to have seen my mother after this occurrence.
Death soon ended the little communication that had <44>existed
between us; and with it, I believe, a life judging from her
weary, sad, down-cast countenance and mute demeanor--full of
heartfelt sorrow. I was not allowed to visit her during any part
of her long illness; nor did I see her for a long time before she
was taken ill and died. The heartless and ghastly form of
_slavery_ rises between mother and child, even at the bed of
death. The mother, at the verge of the grave, may not gather her
children, to impart to them her holy admonitions, and invoke for
them her dying benediction. The bond-woman lives as a slave, and
is left to die as a beast; often with fewer attentions than are
paid to a favorite horse. Scenes of sacred tenderness, around
the death-bed, never forgotten, and which often arrest the
vicious and confirm the virtuous during life, must be looked for
among the free, though they sometimes occur among the slaves. It
has been a life-long, standing grief to me, that I knew so little
of my mother; and that I was so early separated from her. The
counsels of her love must have been beneficial to me. The side
view of her face is imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in
life, without feeling her presence; but the image is mute, and I
have no striking words of her's treasured up.

I learned, after my mother's death, that she could read, and that
she was the _only_ one of all the slaves and colored people in
Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How she acquired this
knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place in the
world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. I
can, therefore, fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love
of knowledge. That a "field hand" should learn to read, in any
slave state, is remarkable; but the achievement of my mother,
considering the place, was very extraordinary; and, in view of
that fact, I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any
love of letters I possess, and for which I have got--despite of
prejudices only too much credit, _not_ to my admitted Anglo-Saxon
paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and
uncultivated _mother_--a woman, who belonged to a race <45
PENALTY FOR HAVING A WHITE FATHER>whose mental endowments it is,
at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and contempt.

Summoned away to her account, with the impassable gulf of slavery
between us during her entire illness, my mother died without
leaving me a single intimation of _who_ my father was. There was
a whisper, that my master was my father; yet it was only a
whisper, and I cannot say that I ever gave it credence. Indeed,
I now have reason to think he was not; nevertheless, the fact
remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that, by the laws of
slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to the condition of
their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest license
to brutal slaveholders, and their profligate sons, brothers,
relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the
additional attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written
on this single feature of slavery, as I have observed it.

One might imagine, that the children of such connections, would
fare better, in the hands of their masters, than other slaves.
The rule is quite the other way; and a very little reflection
will satisfy the reader that such is the case. A man who will
enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for
magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins
unless they have a mind to repent--and the mulatto child's face
is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to
the child. What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is a
constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence, and
when a slaveholding woman hates, she wants not means to give that
hate telling effect. Women--white women, I mean--are IDOLS at
the south, not WIVES, for the slave women are preferred in many
instances; and if these _idols_ but nod, or lift a finger, woe to
the poor victim: kicks, cuffs and stripes are sure to follow.
Masters are frequently compelled to sell this class of their
slaves, out of deference to the feelings of their white wives;
and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man to sell his
own blood to the traffickers in human flesh, it is often an act
of humanity <46>toward the slave-child to be thus removed from
his merciless tormentors.

It is not within the scope of the design of my simple story, to
comment upon every phase of slavery not within my experience as a
slave.

But, I may remark, that, if the lineal descendants of Ham are
only to be enslaved, according to the scriptures, slavery in this
country will soon become an unscriptural institution; for
thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who--like
myself--owe their existence to white fathers, and, most
frequently, to their masters, and master's sons. The slave-woman
is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her master.
The thoughtful know the rest.

After what I have now said of the circumstances of my mother, and
my relations to her, the reader will not be surprised, nor be
disposed to censure me, when I tell but the simple truth, viz:
that I received the tidings of her death with no strong emotions
of sorrow for her, and with very little regret for myself on
account of her loss. I had to learn the value of my mother long
after her death, and by witnessing the devotion of other mothers
to their children.

There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so
destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters
strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a
myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an
intelligible beginning in the world.

My mother died when I could not have been more than eight or nine
years old, on one of old master's farms in Tuckahoe, in the
neighborhood of Hillsborough. Her grave is, as the grave of the
dead at sea, unmarked, and without stone or stake.

CHAPTER IV
_A General Survey of the Slave Plantation_

ISOLATION OF LLOYD S PLANTATION--PUBLIC OPINION THERE NO
PROTECTION TO THE SLAVE--ABSOLUTE POWER OF THE OVERSEER--NATURAL
AND ARTIFICIAL CHARMS OF THE PLACE--ITS BUSINESS-LIKE
APPEARANCE--SUPERSTITION ABOUT THE BURIAL GROUND--GREAT IDEAS OF
COL. LLOYD--ETIQUETTE AMONG SLAVES--THE COMIC SLAVE DOCTOR--
PRAYING AND FLOGGING--OLD MASTER LOSING ITS TERRORS--HIS
BUSINESS--CHARACTER OF AUNT KATY--SUFFERINGS FROM HUNGER--OLD
MASTER'S HOME--JARGON OF THE PLANTATION--GUINEA SLAVES--MASTER
DANIEL--FAMILY OF COL. LLOYD--FAMILY OF CAPT. ANTHONY--HIS SOCIAL
POSITION--NOTIONS OF RANK AND STATION.

It is generally supposed that slavery, in the state of Maryland,
exists in its mildest form, and that it is totally divested of
those harsh and terrible peculiarities, which mark and
characterize the slave system, in the southern and south-western
states of the American union. The argument in favor of this
opinion, is the contiguity of the free states, and the exposed
condition of slavery in Maryland to the moral, religious and
humane sentiment of the free states.

I am not about to refute this argument, so far as it relates to
slavery in that state, generally; on the contrary, I am willing
to admit that, to this general point, the arguments is well
grounded. Public opinion is, indeed, an unfailing restraint upon
the cruelty and barbarity of masters, overseers, and slave-
drivers, whenever and wherever it can reach them; but there are
certain secluded and out-of-the-way places, even in the state of
Maryland, seldom visited by a single ray of healthy public
sentiment--<48>where slavery, wrapt in its own congenial,
midnight darkness, _can_, and _does_, develop all its malign and
shocking characteristics; where it can be indecent without shame,
cruel without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or
fear of exposure.

Just such a secluded, dark, and out-of-the-way place, is the
"home plantation" of Col. Edward Lloyd, on the Eastern Shore,
Maryland. It is far away from all the great thoroughfares, and
is proximate to no town or village. There is neither school-
house, nor town-house in its neighborhood. The school-house is
unnecessary, for there are no children to go to school. The
children and grand-children of Col. Lloyd were taught in the
house, by a private tutor--a Mr. Page a tall, gaunt sapling of a
man, who did not speak a dozen words to a slave in a whole year.
The overseers' children go off somewhere to school; and they,
therefore, bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad,
to embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the
place. Not even the mechanics--through whom there is an
occasional out-burst of honest and telling indignation, at
cruelty and wrong on other plantations--are white men, on this
plantation. Its whole public is made up of, and divided into,
three classes--SLAVEHOLDERS, SLAVES and OVERSEERS. Its
blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and coopers, are
slaves. Not even commerce, selfish and iron-hearted at it is,
and ready, as it ever is, to side with the strong against the
weak--the rich against the poor--is trusted or 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, the
every leaf and grain of the produce of this plantation, and those
of the neighboring farms belonging to Col. Lloyd, are transported
to Baltimore in Col. Lloyd's own vessels; every man and boy on
board of which--except the captain--are owned by him. In return,
everything brought to the plantation, comes through the same
channel. Thus, even the glimmering and unsteady light of trade,
which sometimes exerts a civilizing influence, is excluded from
this "tabooed" spot.
<49 SLAVES UNPROTECTED BY PUBLIC OPINION>

Nearly all the plantations or farms in the vicinity of the "home
plantation" of Col. Lloyd, belong to him; and those which do not,
are owned by personal friends of his, as deeply interested in
maintaining the slave system, in all its rigor, as Col. Lloyd
himself. Some of his neighbors are said to be even more
stringent than he. The Skinners, the Peakers, the Tilgmans, the
Lockermans, and the Gipsons, are in the same boat; being
slaveholding neighbors, they may have strengthened each other in
their iron rule. They are on intimate terms, and their interests
and tastes are identical.

Public opinion in such a quarter, the reader will see, is not
likely to very efficient in protecting the slave from cruelty.
On the contrary, it must increase and intensify his wrongs.
Public opinion seldom differs very widely from public practice.
To be a restraint upon cruelty and vice, public opinion must
emanate from a humane and virtuous community. To no such humane
and virtuous community, is Col. Lloyd's plantation exposed. That
plantation is a little nation of its own, having its own
language, its own rules, regulations and customs. The laws and
institutions of the state, apparently touch it nowhere. The
troubles arising here, are not settled by the civil power of the
state. The overseer is generally accuser, judge, jury, advocate
and executioner. The criminal is always dumb. The overseer
attends to all sides of a case.

There are no conflicting rights of property, for all the people
are owned by one man; and they can themselves own no property.
Religion and politics are alike excluded. One class of the
population is too high to be reached by the preacher; and the
other class is too low to be cared for by the preacher. The poor
have the gospel preached to them, in this neighborhood, only when
they are able to pay for it. The slaves, having no money, get no
gospel. The politician keeps away, because the people have no
votes, and the preacher keeps away, because the people have no
money. The rich planter can afford to learn politics in the
parlor, and to dispense with religion altogether.
<50>

In its isolation, seclusion, and self-reliant independence, Col.
Lloyd's plantation resembles what the baronial domains were
during the middle ages in Europe. Grim, cold, and unapproachable
by all genial influences from communities without, _there it
stands;_ full three hundred years behind the age, in all that
relates to humanity and morals.

This, however, is not the only view that the place presents.
Civilization is shut out, but nature cannot be. Though separated
from the rest of the world; though public opinion, as I have
said, seldom gets a chance to penetrate its dark domain; though
the whole place is stamped with its own peculiar, ironlike
individuality; and though crimes, high-handed and atrocious, may
there be committed, with almost as much impunity as upon the deck
of a pirate ship--it is, nevertheless, altogether, to outward
seeming, a most strikingly interesting place, full of life,
activity, and spirit; and presents a very favorable contrast to
the indolent monotony and languor of Tuckahoe. Keen as was my
regret and great as was my sorrow at leaving the latter, I was
not long in adapting myself to this, my new home. A man's
troubles are always half disposed of, when he finds endurance his
only remedy. I found myself here; there was no getting away; and
what remained for me, but to make the best of it? Here were
plenty of children to play with, and plenty of places of pleasant
resort for boys of my age, and boys older. The little tendrils
of affection, so rudely and treacherously broken from around the
darling objects of my grandmother's hut, gradually began to
extend, and to entwine about the new objects by which I now found
myself surrounded.

There was a windmill (always a commanding object to a child's
eye) on Long Point--a tract of land dividing Miles river from the
Wye a mile or more from my old master's house. There was a creek
to swim in, at the bottom of an open flat space, of twenty acres
or more, called "the Long Green"--a very beautiful play-ground
for the children.
<51 CHARMS OF THE PLACE>

In the river, a short distance from the shore, lying quietly at
anchor, with her small boat dancing at her stern, was a large
sloop--the Sally Lloyd; called by that name in honor of a
favorite daughter of the colonel. The sloop and the mill were
wondrous things, full of thoughts and ideas. A child cannot well
look at such objects without _thinking_.

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. Sevier, the overseer. A
little nearer to my old master's, stood a very long, rough, low
building, literally alive with slaves, of all ages, conditions
and sizes. This was called "the Longe Quarter." Perched upon a
hill, across the Long Green, was a very tall, dilapidated, old
brick building--the architectural dimensions of which proclaimed
its erection for a different purpose--now occupied by slaves, in
a similar manner to the Long Quarter. Besides these, there were
numerous other slave houses and huts, scattered around in the
neighborhood, every nook and corner of which was completely
occupied. Old master's house, a long, brick building, plain, but
substantial, stood in the center of the plantation life, and
constituted one independent establishment on the premises of Col.
Lloyd.

Besides these dwellings, there were barns, stables, store-houses,
and tobacco-houses; blacksmiths' shops, wheelwrights' shops,
coopers' shops--all objects of interest; but, above all, there
stood the grandest building my eyes had then ever beheld, called,
by every one on the plantation, the "Great House." This was
occupied by Col. Lloyd and his family. They occupied it; _I_
enjoyed it. The great house was surrounded by numerous and
variously shaped out-buildings. There were kitchens, wash-
houses, dairies, summer-house, green-houses, hen-houses, turkey-
houses, pigeon-houses, and arbors, of many sizes and devices, all
neatly painted, and altogether interspersed with grand old trees,
ornamental and primitive, which afforded delightful shade in
<52>summer, and imparted to the scene a high degree of stately
beauty. The great house itself was a large, white, wooden
building, with wings on three sides of it. In front, a large
portico, extending the entire length of the building, and
supported by a long range of columns, gave to the whole
establishment an air of solemn grandeur. It was a treat to my
young and gradually opening mind, to behold this elaborate
exhibition of wealth, power, and vanity. The carriage entrance
to the house was a large gate, more than a quarter of a mile
distant from it; the intermediate space was a beautiful lawn,
very neatly trimmed, and watched with the greatest care. It was
dotted thickly over with delightful trees, shrubbery, and
flowers. The road, or lane, from the gate to the great house,
was richly paved with white pebbles from the beach, and, in its
course, formed a complete circle around the beautiful lawn.
Carriages going in and retiring from the great house, made the
circuit of the lawn, and their passengers were permitted to
behold a scene of almost Eden-like beauty. Outside this select
inclosure, were parks, where as about the residences of the
English nobility--rabbits, deer, and other wild game, might be
seen, peering and playing about, with none to molest them or make
them afraid. The tops of the stately poplars were often covered
with the red-winged black-birds, making all nature vocal with the
joyous life and beauty of their wild, warbling notes. These all
belonged to me, as well as to Col. Edward Lloyd, and for a time I
greatly enjoyed them.

A short distance from the great house, were the stately mansions
of the dead, a place of somber aspect. Vast tombs, embowered
beneath the weeping willow and the fir tree, told of the
antiquities of the Lloyd family, as well as of their wealth.
Superstition was rife among the slaves about this family burying
ground. Strange sights had been seen there by some of the older
slaves. Shrouded ghosts, riding on great black horses, had been
seen to enter; balls of fire had been seen to fly there at
midnight, and horrid sounds had been repeatedly heard. Slaves
know <53 WEALTH OF COLONEL LLOYD>enough of the rudiments of
theology to believe that those go to hell who die slaveholders;
and they often fancy such persons wishing themselves back again,
to wield the lash. Tales of sights and sounds, strange and
terrible, connected with the huge black tombs, were a very great
security to the grounds about them, for few of the slaves felt
like approaching them even in the day time. It was a dark,
gloomy and forbidding place, and it was difficult to feel that
the spirits of the sleeping dust there deposited, reigned with
the blest in the realms of eternal peace.

The business of twenty or thirty farms was transacted at this,
called, by way of eminence, "great house farm." These farms all
belonged to Col. Lloyd, as did, also, the slaves upon them. Each
farm was under the management of an overseer. As I have said of
the overseer of the home plantation, so I may say of the
overseers on the smaller ones; they stand between the slave and
all civil constitutions--their word is law, and is implicitly
obeyed.

The colonel, at this time, was reputed to be, and he apparently
was, very rich. His slaves, alone, were an immense fortune.
These, small and great, could not have been fewer than one
thousand in number, and though scarcely a month passed without
the sale of one or more lots to the Georgia traders, there was no
apparent diminution in the number of his human stock: the home
plantation merely groaned at a removal of the young increase, or
human crop, then proceeded as lively as ever. Horse-shoeing,
cart-mending, plow-repairing, coopering, grinding, and weaving,
for all the neighboring farms, were performed here, and slaves
were employed in all these branches. "Uncle Tony" was the
blacksmith; "Uncle Harry" was the cartwright; "Uncle Abel" was
the shoemaker; and all these had hands to assist them in their
several departments.

These mechanics were called "uncles" by all the younger slaves,
not because they really sustained that relationship to any, but
according to plantation _etiquette_, as a mark of respect, due
<54>from the younger to the older slaves. Strange, and even
ridiculous as it may seem, among a people so uncultivated, and
with so many stern trials to look in the face, there is not to be
found, among any people, a more rigid enforcement of the law of
respect to elders, than they maintain. I set this down as partly
constitutional with my race, and partly conventional. There is
no better material in the world for making a gentleman, than is
furnished in the African. He shows to others, and exacts for
himself, all the tokens of respect which he is compelled to
manifest toward his master. A young slave must approach the
company of the older with hat in hand, and woe betide him, if he
fails to acknowledge a favor, of any sort, with the accustomed
_"tank'ee,"_ &c. So uniformly are good manners enforced among
slaves, I can easily detect a "bogus" fugitive by his manners.

Among other slave notabilities of the plantation, was one called
by everybody Uncle Isaac Copper. It is seldom that a slave gets
a surname from anybody in Maryland; and so completely has the
south shaped the manners of the north, in this respect, that even
abolitionists make very little of the surname of a Negro. The
only improvement on the "Bills," "Jacks," "Jims," and "Neds" of
the south, observable here is, that "William," "John," "James,"
"Edward," are substituted. It goes against the grain to treat
and address a Negro precisely as they would treat and address a
white man. But, once in a while, in slavery as in the free
states, by some extraordinary circumstance, the Negro has a
surname fastened to him, and holds it against all
conventionalities. This was the case with Uncle Isaac Copper.
When the "uncle" was dropped, he generally had the prefix
"doctor," in its stead. He was our doctor of medicine, and
doctor of divinity as well. Where he took his degree I am unable
to say, for he was not very communicative to inferiors, and I was
emphatically such, being but a boy seven or eight years old. He
was too well established in his profession to permit questions as
to his native skill, or his attainments. One qualification he
undoubtedly had--he <55 PRAYING AND FLOGGING>was a confirmed
_cripple;_ and he could neither work, nor would he bring anything
if offered for sale in the market. The old man, though lame, was
no sluggard. He was a man that made his crutches do him good
service. He was always on the alert, looking up the sick, and
all such as were supposed to need his counsel. His remedial
prescriptions embraced four articles. For diseases of the body,
_Epsom salts and castor oil;_ for those of the soul, _the Lord's
Prayer_, and _hickory switches_!

I was not long at Col. Lloyd's before I was placed under the care
of Doctor Issac Copper. I was sent to him with twenty or thirty
other children, to learn the "Lord's Prayer." I found the old
gentleman seated on a huge three-legged oaken stool, armed with
several large hickory switches; and, from his position, he could
reach--lame as he was--any boy in the room. After standing
awhile to learn what was expected of us, the old gentleman, in
any other than a devotional tone, commanded us to kneel down.
This done, he commenced telling us to say everything he said.
"Our Father"--this was repeated after him with promptness and
uniformity; "Who art in heaven"--was less promptly and uniformly
repeated; and the old gentleman paused in the prayer, to give us
a short lecture upon the consequences of inattention, both
immediate and future, and especially those more immediate. About
these he was absolutely certain, for he held in his right hand
the means of bringing all his predictions and warnings to pass.
On he proceeded with the prayer; and we with our thick tongues
and unskilled ears, followed him to the best of our ability.
This, however, was not sufficient to please the old gentleman.
Everybody, in the south, wants the privilege of whipping somebody
else. Uncle Isaac shared the common passion of his country, and,
therefore, seldom found any means of keeping his disciples in
order short of flogging. "Say everything I say;" and bang would
come the switch on some poor boy's undevotional head. _"What you
looking at there"--"Stop that pushing"_--and down again would
come the lash.
<56>

The whip is all in all. It is supposed to secure obedience to
the slaveholder, and is held as a sovereign remedy among the
slaves themselves, for every form of disobedience, temporal or
spiritual. Slaves, as well as slaveholders, use it with an
unsparing hand. Our devotions at Uncle Isaac's combined too much
of the tragic and comic, to make them very salutary in a
spiritual point of view; and it is due to truth to say, I was
often a truant when the time for attending the praying and
flogging of Doctor Isaac Copper came on.

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