menu_book Chapter 11

Chapter 10 of Fifty Years in Chains, or The Life of an American Slave. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Guy Letterfine I have before observed that the Negroes of the cotton plantations are exceedingly superstitious, and they are indeed prone, beyond all other people that I have ever known, to believe

in ghosts and the existence of an infinite number of supernatural agents. No story of a miraculous character can be too absurd to obtain credit with them, and the narrative is not the less eagerly listened to, nor the more cautiously received, because it is impossible in the circumstances. Within a few weeks after the deaths of the two malefactors, to whose horrible crimes were awarded equally horrible punishments, the forest that had been the scene of these bloody deeds was reported and believed to be visited at night by beings of an unearthly make,

whose groans and death-struggles were heard in the darkest recesses of the woods, amidst the flapping of the wings of vultures, the fluttering of carrion crows, and the dismal croaking of ravens. In the midst of this nocturnal din, the noise caused by the tearing of the flesh from the bones was heard, and the panting breath of the agonized sufferer, quivering under the beaks of his tormentors as they consumed his vitals, floated audibly upon the evening breeze. The murdered lady was also

seen walking by moonlight, near the spot where she had been dragged from her horse, wrapped in a blood-stained mantle, overhung with gory and disheveled locks. The little island in the swamp was said to present spectacles too horrid for human eyes to look upon, and sounds were heard to issue from it which no human ear could bear. Terrific and ghastly fires were seen to burst up at midnight amongst the evergreens that clad this lonely spot, emitting scents too

suffocating and sickly to be endured, whilst demoniac yells, shouts of despair, and groans of agony mingled their echoes in the solitude of the woods. Whilst I remain in this neighborhood, no colored person ever traveled this road alone after nightfall, and many white men would have ridden ten miles round the country to avoid the passage of the ridge road after dark. Generations must pass away before the tradition of this place will be forgotten, and many a year will open and

clothes before the last face will be pale or the last heart beat as the twilight traveler skirts the borders of the murderer's swamp. We had allowances of meat distributed to all the people twice this fall, once when we had finished the saving the fodder and again soon after the murder of the young lady. The first time we had beef, such as I had driven from the woods when I went to the alligator pond, but now we had two hogs given to us, which weighed 130 and the

other 156 pounds. This was very good pork, and I received a pound and a quarter as my share of it. This was the first pork that I had tasted in Carolina, and it afforded a real feast. We had in our family full seven pounds of good fat meat, and as we now had plenty of sweet potatoes, both in our gardens and in our weekly allowance, we had on the Sunday following the funeral as good a dinner of stewed pork and potatoes as could have

been found in all Carolina. We did not eat all our meat on Sunday, but kept a part of it until Tuesday, when we warmed it in a pot with an addition of parsley and other herbs, and had another very comfortable meal. I had by this time become in some measure acquainted with the country, and began to lay and execute plans to procure supplies of such things as were not allowed me by my master.

I understood various methods of entrapping raccoons and other wild animals that unbounded in the large swamps of this country, and besides the skins, which were worth something for their furs, I generally procured as many raccoons, opossums, and rabbits as afforded us two or three meals in a week. The woman with whom I lived understood the way of dressing an opossum, and I was careful to provide one for our Sunday dinner every week so as these animals continued fat and in good condition.

All the people on the plantation did not live as well as our family did, for many of the men did not understand trapping game, and others were too indolent to go far enough from home to find good places for setting their traps. My principal trapping ground was three miles from home, and I went three times a week, always after night, to bring home my game and keep my traps in good order.

Many of the families in the quarter caught no game and had no meat except that which we received from the overseer, which averaged about six or seven meals in the year. Linda, the woman whom I have mentioned heretofore, was one of the women whose husbands procured little or nothing for the sustenance of their families, and I often gave her a quarter of a raccoon or a small opossum for which she appeared very thankful.

Her health was no good, she had a bad cough, and often told me she was feverish and restless at night. It appeared clear to me that this woman's constitution was broken by hardships and sufferings, and that she could not live long in her present mode of existence. Her husband, a native of a country far in the interior of Africa, said he had been a priest in his own nation, and had never been taught to do any kind of labor, being supported by

the contributions of the public, and he now maintained as far as he could the same kind of lazy dignity that he had enjoyed at home. He was compelled by the overseer to work with other hands in the field, but as soon as he had come into his cabin, he took his seat and refused to give his wife the least assistance in doing anything. She was consequently obliged to do the little work that it was necessary to perform in the cabin, and also to bear all the labor of

weeding and cultivating the family patch or garden. The husband was a morose, sullen man, and said he formerly had ten wives in his own country, who all had to work for and wait upon him, and he thought himself badly off here,

and having but one woman to do anything for him. This man was very irritable, and often beat and otherwise maltreated his wife on the slightest provocation, and the overseer refused to protect her on the ground that he never interfered in the family quarrels of the black people. I pitied this woman greatly, but as it was not in my power to remove her from the presence and authority of her husband,

I thought it prudent not to say nor do anything to provoke him further against her. As the winter approached and the autumnal rains set in, she was frequently exposed in the field and was wet for several hours together. This, joint to the want of warm and comfortable woolen clothes, caused her to contract colds and hoarseness which increased the severity of her cough. A few days before Christmas, her child died, after an illness of only three days. I assisted her and her husband to enter the infant, which was a little boy, and its father buried with it a small bow and several arrows, a little bag of parched meal, a canoe about a foot long and a little paddle, with which he said it would cross the ocean to his own country,

a small stick with an iron nail sharpened and fastened into one end of it, and a piece of white muslin with several curious and strange figures painted on it in blue and red, by which he said his relations and countrymen would know the infant to be his son, and would receive it accordingly on its arrival amongst them. Cruel as this man was to his wife, I could not but respect the sentiments which inspired his affection for his child, though it was the affection of a barbarian.

He cut a lock of hair from his head, threw it upon the dead infant, and closed the grave with his own hands. He then told us the god of his country was looking at him, and was pleased with what he had done. Thus ended the funeral service. As we returned home, Lydia told me she was rejoiced that her child was dead, and out of a world in which slavery and wretchedness must have been its only portion. I am now, said she, ready to follow my child, and the sooner I go the better for me.

She went with us to the field until the month of January, when, as we were returning from our work one stormy and wet evening, she told me she should never pick any more cotton, that her strength was gone, and that she could work no more. When we assembled at the blowing of the horn on the following morning, Lydia did not appear. The overseer, who had always appeared to dislike this woman, when he missed her, swore very angrily, and said he supposed she was pretending to be sick, but if she was, he would soon cure her. He then stepped into his house and took some copperas from a little bag and mixed it with water.

I followed him to Lydia's cabin, where he compelled her to drink the solution of copperas. It caused her to vomit violently and made her exceedingly sick. I think to this day that this act of the overseer was the most inhumane of all those that I have seen perpetuated upon defenseless slaves. Lydia was removed that same day to the sick room in a state of extreme debility and exhaustion. When she left this room again, she was a corpse.

Her disease was a consumption of the lungs, which terminated her life early in March. I assisted in carrying her to the grave, which I closed upon her, and covered with green turf. She sleeps by the side of her infant, in a corner of the negro graveyard of this plantation. was to her a welcome messenger, who came to remove her from toil that she could not support,

and from misery that she could not sustain. Christmas approached, and we all expected two or three holidays, but we were disappointed, as only one was all that was allotted to us. I went to the field, and picked cotton all day, for which I was paid by the overseer, and at night I had a good dinner of stewed pork and sweet potatoes. Such were the beginning and end of my first Christmas on a cotton plantation.

We went to work as usual the next morning, and continued our labor through the week, as if Christmas had been stricken from the calendar. I had already saved and laid by a little more than ten dollars in money, but part of it had been given to me at the funeral. I was now much in want of clothes, none having been given me since I came here.

I had, at the commencement of the cold weather, cut up my old blanket, and, with the aid of Lydia, was a very good seamstress, converted it into a pair of trousers and a long roundabout jacket. But this deprived me of my bed, which was imperfectly supplied by mats which I made of rushes. The mats were very comfortable things to lie upon, but they were by no means equal to blankets for covering.

Our report had been current among us for some time that there would be a distribution of clothes to the people at New Year's Day. But how much or what kind of clothes we were to get, no one pretended to know except that we were to get shoes in conformity to a long-established rule on this plantation.

From Christmas to New Year appeared a long week to me, and I have no doubt that it appeared yet longer to some of my fellow slaves, most of whom were entirely barefoot. I had made moccasins for myself of the skins of squirrels that had caught in my traps, and by this means protected my feet from the frost which was sometimes very heavy and sharp in the morning. On the first day of January, when we met at the blowing of the morning horn, the overseer told us we must all proceed to the great house, where we are to receive our winter clothes.

And surely, no order was ever more willingly obeyed. When we arrived at the house, our master was up, and we were all called into the great courtyard in front of the dwelling. The overseer now told us that shoes would be given to all those who were able to go to the field to pick cotton.

This deprived of shoes the children and several old persons whose eyesight was not sufficiently clear to enable them to pick cotton. A new blanket was then given to everyone above seven years of age. children under seven receive no blanket, being left to be provided by their parents. Children of this age and under go entirely naked in the daytime, and sleep with their

mothers at night, or are wrapped up together in such bedding as the mother may possess. It may well be supposed that in our society, although we were all slaves and all nominally in a condition of the most perfect equality, yet there was in fact a very great difference in the manner of living in the several families. Indeed, I doubt if there is as great a diversity in the modes of life in the several families

of any white village in New York or Pennsylvania, containing a population of three hundred persons, as there was in the several households of our quarter. This may be illustrated by the following circumstance. Before I came to reside in the family with whom I lived at this time, they seldom tasted animal food or even fish except on meat days, as they were called, that is, when meat was

given to the people by the overseer under the orders of our master. The head of the family was a very quiet, worthy man, but slothful and inactive in his habits. When he had come from the field at night, he seldom thought of leaving the cabin again before morning. He would and did make baskets and mats, and earned some money by these means.

He also did his regular day's work on Sunday, but all his acquirements were not sufficient to enable him to provide any kind of meat for his family. All his wife and children could do was to provide him with work at his baskets and mats, they lived even then better than some of their neighbors. After I came among them and had acquired some knowledge of the surrounding country, I made as many baskets and mats as

he did, and took time to go twice a week to look at all my traps. As the winter passed away and spring approached, the proceedings of my hunting began to diminish. The game became scarce, and both raccoons and opossums grew poor and worthless. It was necessary for me to discover some new mode of improving the allowance allotted to me by the overseer. I had all my life been accustomed to fishing in Maryland, and I now resolved to resort to the water for a living,

the land having failed to furnish me a comfortable substance. With these views I set out one Sunday morning, early in February, and went to the river at a distance of three miles from home. From the appearance of the stream I felt confident that it must contain many fish, and I went immediately to work to make a weir. With the help of an axe that I had with me, I had finished before night the framework of a weir of pine sticks, lashed together with white

oak splits. I had no canoe, but made a raft of dry logs, upon which I went to a suitable place in the river and set my weir. I afterwards made a small net of twine that I bought at the store, and on next Thursday night I took as many fish from my weir as filled a half-bushel measure. This was a real treasure. It was the most fortunate circumstance that had happened with me since I came to the country. I was enabled to show my generosity, but like all mankind,

even in my liberty, I kept myself in mind. I gave a large fish to the overseer and took three more to the great house. These were the first fresh fish that had been in the family this season, and I was much praised by my master and young mistress for my skill and success in fishing. But this was all the advantage I received from this effort to court the favor of the great. I did not even get a dram. The part I had performed in the detection of the murderers

of the young lady was forgotten, or at least not mentioned now. I went away from the house not only disappointed, but chagrined, and thought with myself that if my master and young mistress had nothing but words to give me for my fish, we should not carry on a very large traffic. On Sunday morning, a black boy came from the house and told me that our master wished to see me. This summons was not to be disobeyed. When I returned to the mansion, I went round to the

kitchen and sent word by one of the house slaves that I had come. The servant returned and told me that I was to stay in the kitchen and get my breakfast, and after that to come into the house. A very good breakfast was sent to me from my master's table, and the family had finished their morning meal, and when I had done with my repast, I went into the parlor. I was received with great affability by my master, who told me he had sent for me to know if I had been accustomed

to fish in the place I had come from. I informed him that I had been employed at a fishery on the Patuxent every spring for several years, and that I thought I understood fishing with a seine as well as most people. He then asked me if I could knit a seine, to which I replied in the affirmative. After some other questions, he told me that as the picking of cotton was nearly over for this season, and the fields must soon be plowed up for a new crop,

he had a thought of having a seine made, and of placing me at the head of a fishing party, for the purpose of trying to take a supply of fish for his hands. No communication could have been more unexpected than this was, and it was almost as pleasing to me as it was unexpected by me. I now began to hope that there would be some respite from the labors of the cotton field,

that I should not be doomed to drag out a dull and monotonous existence within the confines of the enclosures of the plantation. In Maryland, the fishing season was almost one of hard labor, it is true, but also a time of joy and hilarity. We then had, throughout the time of fishing, plenty of bread, and at least bacon enough to fry our fish with.

We had also a daily allowance of whiskey or brandy, and we always considered ourselves fortunate when we left the farm to go to the fishery. A few days after this I was again sent for by my master, who told me that he had bought twine and ropes for a seine, and that I must set to work and knit it as quickly as possible, that as he did not wish the twine to be taken to the quarter, I must remain with the servants in the kitchen and live with them while employed in constructing the seine.

I was assisted in making the Seine by a black boy whom I had taught to work with me, and by the end of two weeks we had finished our job. Whilst at work on this Seine, I lived rather better than I had formerly done when residing at the quarter. We received among us, twelve in number, including the people who worked in the garden, the refuse

of our master's table. In this way we procured a little cold meat every day, and when there were many strangers visiting the family, we sometimes procured considerable quantities of cold and broken meats. My new employment afforded me a better opportunity than I had hitherto possessed of making correct

observations upon the domestic economy of my master's household, and of learning the habits and modes of life of the persons who composed it. On a great cotton plantation such as this of my masters, the field hands who live in the quarter are removed so far from the domestic circle of the masters' family, by their servile condition and the nature of their employment, that they know but little more of the transactions

within the walls of the great house than if they lived ten miles off. Only a slave has been born, lived to old age, and died on a plantation, without ever having been within the walls of his master's domicile. My master was a widower, and his house was in charge of his sister, a maiden lady, apparently of fifty-five or sixty.

He had six children, three sons and three daughters, and all unmarried. only one of the sons was at home at the time I came upon the estate. The other two were in some of the northern cities, the one studying medicine and the other at college. At the time of knitting the twine, these young gentlemen had returned on a visit to their relations, and all the brothers and sisters were now on the place. The young ladies were all grown

up and marriageable. Their father was known to be a man of great wealth, and the girls were reputed very pretty in Carolina. One of them, the second of the three, was esteemed a great beauty. The reader might deem my young mistress's pretty face and graceful person altogether impertinent to the narrative of my own life, but they had a most material influence upon my fortunes, and changed the whole tenor of my existence. Had she been less beautiful, or of a temper less

romantic and adventurous, I should still have been a slave in South Carolina, if yet alive, and the world would have been saved the labor of pursuing these pages. Anyone at all acquainted with Southern manners will at once see that my master's house possessed attractions which would not fail to draw within it numerous visitors, and that the head of such a family, as dwelt under its roof, was not likely to be without friends. I had not been at work upon

the Seine a week before I discovered, by listening to the conversation of my master and the other members of the family, that they prided themselves not a little upon the antiquity of their house and the long practice of a generous hospitality to strangers, and to all respectable people who chose to visit their homestead. All circumstances seemed to conspire to render this house

one of the chief seats of the fashion, the beauty, the wit, and the gallantry of South Carolina. Scarcely an evening came, but it brought a carriage and ladies and gentlemen and their servants, and even they brought dashing young planters mounted on horseback to dine with the family. But Sunday was the day of the week on which the house received the greatest accession of company. My master and family were members of the Episcopal Church and attended service every Sunday,

when the weather was fine, at a church eight miles distant. Each of my young masters and mistresses had a saddle horse, and in pleasant weather, they frequently all went to church on horseback, leaving my old master and mistress to occupy the family carriage alone. I had seen fifteen or twenty young people come to my masters for dinner on Sunday from church, and very often the parson, a young man of handsome appearance, was among them.

I have observed these things long before, but now I have come to live at the house and become more familiar with them. Three Sundays intervened while I was at work upon the same, and on each of these Sundays more than twenty persons besides the family dined at my master's. During these three weeks, my young masters were absent far the greater part of the time, but I observed that they generally came home on Sunday for dinner. My young mistresses were not from home much,

and I believe they never left the plantation unless either their father or someone of their brothers was with them. Dinner parties were frequent in my master's house, and on these occasions of festivity a black man who belonged to a neighboring estate and who played the violin was sent for. I observed that whenever this man was sent for he came, and sometimes even came before night, which appeared a little singular to me,

as I knew the difficulty that colored people had to encounter in leaving the estate to which they were attached. End of chapter 10