menu_book Chapter 12

CHAPTER XI. Part 1. Early in March, my seine being now completed, my master told me I must take with me three other black men and go to the river to clear out a fishery. This task was a disagreeable job, for it was nothing less than dragging out of the river all the old trees and brush that had sunk to the bottom within the limits of our intended fishing ground. My master's eldest son

had been down the river and had purchased two boats to be used at the fishery. But when I saw them I declared them to be totally unfit for that purpose. They were old bateau, and so leaky that they would not have supported the weight of a seine and the men necessary to lay it out. I advised the building of two good canoes from some of the large yellow pines in the woods. My advice was accepted, and together with five other hands I went to work at the canoes which we completed in less than a

week. So far things went pretty well, and I flattered myself that I should become the headman at this new fishery and have the command of the other hands. I also expected that I should be able to gain some advantage to myself by disposing of a small part of the fish that might be taken at the fishery. I reckoned without my host. My master had only purchased this place a short time before he bought me. Before that time he did not own any place on the river fit for the

establishment of a fishery. His lands adjoined the river for more than a mile in extant along its margin, but an impassable morass separated the channel of the river from the firm ground all along his lines. He had cleared the highest parts of this morass, or swamp, and had here made his rice fields, but he was as entirely cut off from the river as if an ocean had separated it from him. On the day that we launched the canoes into the river, and while we were engaged in

removing some snags and old trees that had stuck in the mud near the shore, an ill-looking stranger came to us and told us that our master had sent him to take charge of the fishery and superintend all the work that was to be done at it. This man, by his contract with my master, was to receive a part of all the fish caught in lieu of wages, and was invested with the same authority over us that was exercised by the overseer in the cotton field. I found that I had cause to regret my removal from

the plantation. It was found quite impossible to remove the old logs and other rubbish from the bottom of the river without going into the water and wrenching them from their places with long handpikes. In performing this work, we were obliged to wade up to our shoulders and often to dip our very heads underwater in raising the sunken timber. However, within less than a week, we had cleared the ground and now began to haul our seine. At first, we caught nothing but common

river fish, but after two or three days we began to take shad. Of the common fish, such as pike, perch, suckers, and others, we had the liberty of keeping as many as we could eat. But the misfortune was that we had no pork or fat of any kind to fry them with, and for several days we contented ourselves with boiling them on the coals and eating them with our cornbread and sweet potatoes.

We could have lived well if we had been permitted to boil the shad on the coals and eat them, for a fat shad will dress itself in being broiled, and is very good without any oily substance added to it. All the shad that we caught were carefully taken away by a black man who came three times every day to the fishery with a cart. The master of the fishery had a family that lived several miles up the river. In the summertime, he fished with hooks and small nets when not engaged

in running turpentine in the pine woods. In the winter, he went back into the pine forest and made tar of the dead pine trees, but returned to the river at the opening of the spring to take advantage of the shad fishery. He was supposed to be one of the most skillful fishermen on the Congress River, and my master employed him to superintend his new fishery under an expectation, I presume, that as he was to get a tenth part of all the fish that might be caught, he would make the most of

his situation. My master had not calculated with accuracy the force of habit nor the difficulty which men experience in conducting very simple affairs of which they have no practical knowledge. The fishmaster did very well for the interest of his employer for a few days, compelling us to work in hauling the seine day and night and scarcely permitting us to take rest enough to obtain necessary sleep.

We were compelled to work full sixteen hours every day, including Sunday, for in the fishing season no respect is paid to Sunday by fishermen anywhere. We had our usual quantity of bread and potatoes with plenty of common fish, but no shad came to our lot, nor had we anything to fry our fish with. A broiled freshwater fish is not very good at best without salt or oil,

and after we had eaten them every day for a week, we cared very little for them. By this time our fishmaster began to relax in his discipline. Not that he became more kind to us or required us to do less work, but to compel us to work all night, it was necessary for him to sit up all night and watch us. This was a degree of toil and privation to which he could not long submit,

and one evening soon after dark he called me to him and told me that he intended to make me overseer of the fishery that night, and he had no doubt I would keep the hands at work and attend to the business as well without him as with him. He then went into his cabin and went to bed, whilst I went and laid out the seine and made a very good haul. We took more than two hundred shad at this draft and followed up our work with great industry all night, only taking time to eat

our accustomed meal at midnight. Every fisherman knows that the night is the best time for taking shad, and the little rest that had been allowed us since we began to fish had always been from eight o'clock in the morning until four in the afternoon, unless within that period there was an appearance of a school of fish in the river, when we had to rise and lay out the seine no matter at what hour of the day. The fishmaster had been very severe with the hands since he came amongst

us, and had made very free use of a long hickory gad that he sometimes carried about with him, though at times he would relax his austerity and talk quite familiarly with us, especially with me, whom he perceived to have some knowledge of the business in which we were engaged. The truth was that this man knew nothing of fishing with the same, and I had been obliged from the beginning to direct the operations of laying out and drawing in the seine, though the

master was always very loud and boisterous in giving his commands and directing us in what part of the river we should let down the seine. Having never been accustomed to regular work or to the pursuit of any constant course of personal application, the master was incapable of long continued exertion, and I feel certain that he could not have been prevailed upon to labor twelve hours each day for a year, if in return he had been certain of receiving $10,000.

Notwithstanding this, he was capable of rousing himself and of undergoing any degree of fatigue or privation for a short time, even for a few days. He had not been trained to habits of industry and could not bear the restraints of uniform labor. We worked hard all night, the first night of my superintendents, and when the sun rose the next morning the master had not risen from his bed. As it was now the usual time of dividing the fish, I called to him to come and see this

business fairly done. But as he did not come down immediately to the landing, I proceeded to make the division myself in as equitable a manner as I could, giving, however, a full share of large fish to the master. When he came down to us and overlooked both the piles of fish, his own and that of my master, he was so well satisfied with what I had done that he said, if he had known that I would do so well for him, he would not have risen. I was glad to hear this, as it led me to

hope that I should be able to induce him to stay in his cabin during the greater part of the time, to do which, I was well assured, he felt disposed. When the night came, the master again told me he should go to bed, not being well, and desired me to do as I had done the night before. This night we cooked as many shad as we could all eat, but were careful to carry, far out into the river, the scales and entrails of the stolen fish. In the morning I made a division of the fish

before I called the master, and then went and asked him to come and see what I had done. He was again well pleased, and now proposed to us all that if we would not let the affair be known to our master, he would leave us to manage the fishery at night according to our discretion. To this proposal we all readily agreed, and I received authority to keep the other hands at work until the master would go and get his breakfast. I had now accomplished the object

that I had held very near my heart ever since we began to fish at this place. From this time to the end of the fishing season we all lived well and did not perform more work than we were able to bear. I was in no fear of being punished by the fishmaster, for he was now at least as much in my power as I was in his. For if my master had known the agreement that he had made with us for the purpose of enabling himself to sleep all night in his cabin, he would have been deprived of his situation and all the profits of his share of the fishery.

There can never be any affinity of feeling between master and slave, except in some few isolated cases, where the master has treated his slave in such a manner as to have excited in him strong feelings of gratitude, or where the slave entertains apprehensions that, by the death of his master or by being separated from him in any other way, he may fall under the power of a more tyrannical ruler, or may in some shape be worsted by the change. I was never acquainted with a slave who believed that he violated any rule of morality by appropriating to himself anything that belonged to his master, if it was necessary to his comfort. The master might call it theft, and brand it with the name of crime. But the slave reasoned differently when he took a portion of his master's goods to satisfy his hunger, keep himself warm, or to gratify his passion for luxurious enjoyment. The slave sees his master residing in a spacious mansion, riding in a fine carriage and dressed in costly clothes, and attributes the possession of all these enjoyments to his own labor, whilst he who is the cause of so much gratification and pleasure to another is himself deprived of even the necessary accommodations of human life.

Ignorant men do not and cannot reason logically. And in tracing things from cause to effect, the slave attributes all that he sees in possession of his master to his own toil without taking the trouble to examine how far the skill, judgment, and economy of his master may have contributed to the accumulation of the wealth by which his residence is surrounded.

There is, in fact, a mutual dependence between the master and his slave. The former could not acquire anything without the labor of the latter, and the latter would always remain in poverty without the judgment of the former in directing labor to a definite and profitable result. After I had obtained the virtual command of the fishery,

I was careful to awaken the master every morning at sunrise, that he might be present when the division of the fish was made, and when the morning cart arrived, that the carter might not report to my master that the fishmaster was in bed. I had now become interested in preserving the good opinion of my master in favor of his agent.

Since my arrival in Carolina, I had never enjoyed a full meal of bacon, and now determined, if possible, to procure such a supply of that luxury as would enable me and all my fellow slaves at the fishery to regale ourselves at pleasure. At this season of the year, boats frequently passed up the river, laden with merchandise and goods of various kinds, among which were generally large quantities of

salt intended for curing fish and for other purposes on the plantations. These boats also carried bacon and salted pork up the river for sale. But as they never moved at night, confining their navigation to daylight, and as none of them had hitherto stopped near our landing, we had not met with an opportunity of entering into a traffic with any of the boatmasters. We were not always to be so unfortunate.

One evening in the second week of the fishing season, a large keelboat was seen working up the river about sundown, and shortly after came to for the night on the opposite side of the river directly against our landing. We had at the fishery a small canoe called a punt about twelve feet long, and when we went to lay out the seine for the first haul after night,

I attached the punt to the side of the canoe, and when we had finished letting down the seine, I left the other hands to work it toward the shore and ran over in the punt to the keelboat. Upon inquiring of the captain if he had any bacon that he would exchange for shad, he said he had a little. But as the risk he would run in dealing with a slave was great, I must expect to pay him more than the usual price. He, at length,

proposed to give me a hundred pounds of bacon for three hundred shad. This was at least twice as much as the bacon was worth, but we did not bargain as men generally do, where half of the bargain is on each side, for here the captain of the keelboat settled the terms of both parties. However, he ran the hazard of being prosecuted for dealing with slaves, which is a very high offense in Carolina, and I was selling that which, in point of law, did not belong to me,

but to which, nevertheless, I felt in my conscience that I had a better right than any other person. In support of the right, which I felt to be on my side in this case, came a keen appetite for the bacon, which settled the controversy upon the question of the morality of this traffic in my favor. It so happened that we made a good haul with our seine this evening, and at the time I returned to the landing, the men were all on shore, engaged in drawing in the seine.

As soon as we had taken out the fish, we placed three hundred of them in one of our canoes, and pushed over to the keelboat, where the fish were counted out, and the bacon was received into our craft with all possible dispatch. One part of this small trade exhibited a trait of human character which I think worthy of being noticed. The captain of the boat was a middle-aged, thin, sallow man with long bushy hair, and he looked like one who valued the opinions of men but little.

I expected that he would not be scrupulous in giving me my full hundred pounds of bacon, But in this I was mistaken, for he weighed the flitches with great exactness in a pair of large steel yards, and gave me good weight. When the business was ended, and the bacon in my canoe, he told me he hoped I was satisfied with him, and assured me that I should find the bacon excellent. When I was about pushing from the boat, he told me in a low voice, though there was no one who could hear us, except his own people, that he should be down the river again in about two weeks

when he should be very glad to buy any produce that I had for sale, adding, I will give you half as much for cotton as it is worth in Charleston and pay you either in money or groceries as you may choose. Take care and do not betray yourself and I shall be honest with you. I was so much rejoiced at being in possession of a hundred pounds of good flitch bacon

that I had no room in either my head or my heart for the consideration of this man's notions of honesty at the present time, but paddled with all strength for our landing, where we took the bacon from the canoe, stowed it away in an old salt barrel, and safely deposited it in a hole dug for the purpose in the floor of my cabin. About this time our allowance of sweet potatoes was withheld from us altogether in consequence of the high

price paid for this article by the captains of the keelboats, for the purpose, as I heard, of sending them to New York and Philadelphia. Ever since Christmas we had been permitted to draw, on each Sunday evening, either a peck of corn as usual, or half a peck of corn and half a bushel of sweet potatoes, at our discretion. The half a peck of corn and the half a bushel of potatoes was worth much more than a peck of corn,

but potatoes were so abundant this year that they were of little value, and the saving of corn was an object worth attending to by a large planter. The boatmen now offered half a dollar a bushel for potatoes, and we were again restricted to our corn ration. Notwithstanding the privation of our potatoes, we at the fishery lived sumptuously, although our master certainly believed that our fare consisted of cornbread and river fish cooked without lard or butter.

It was necessary to be exceedingly cautious in the use of our bacon, and to prevent the suspicions of the master and others who frequented our landing, I enjoined our people never to fry any of the meat, but to boil it all. No one can smell boiled bacon far, but fried flitch can be smelled a mile by a good nose. We had two meals every night, one of bacon and the other of fried shad, which nearly deprived us of all appetite for the

breakfasts and dinners that we prepared in the daytime, consisting of cold cornbread without salt, and broiled freshwater fish without any sort of seasoning. We spent more than two weeks in this happy mode of life, unmolested by our master, his son, or the master of the fishery, except when the latter complained rather than threatened us, because we sometimes suffered our sane to float too far down the river and get entangled among some roots and brush that lay on the bottom

immediately below our fishing ground. We now expected every evening to see the return of the boatman who had sold us the bacon, and the man who was with me in the canoe at the time we received it had not forgotten the invitation of the captain to trade with him in cotton on his return. My fellow slave was a native of Virginia, as he told me, and had been sold and brought to Carolina about ten years before this time. He was a good-natured, kind-hearted man, and did many

acts of benevolence to me, such as one slave is able to perform for another, and I felt a real affection for him. But he had adopted the too common rule of moral action that there is no harm in a slave robbing his master. End of chapter 11, part 1. Recording by James K. White, Chula Vista.