8. CHAPTER VIII.
A CHAPTER OF HORRORS.
AUSTIN GORE—A SKETCH OF HIS CHARACTER—OVERSEERS AS A CLASS—THEIR PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS—THE MARKED INDIVIDUALITY OF
AUSTIN GORE—HIS SENSE OF DUTY—HOW HE WHIPPED—MURDER OF POOR
DENBY—HOW IT OCCURRED—SENSATION—HOW GORE MADE PEACE WITH COL.
LLOYD—THE MURDER UNPUNISHED—ANOTHER DREADFUL MURDER NARRATED—NO LAWS FOR THE PROTECTION OF SLAVES CAN BE ENFORCED IN THE
SOUTHERN STATES.
As I have already intimated elsewhere, the slaves on Col.
Lloyd's plantation, whose hard lot, under Mr. Sevier, the reader
has already noticed and deplored, were not permitted to enjoy the
comparatively moderate rule of Mr. Hopkins. The latter was
succeeded by a very different man. The name of the new overseer
was Austin Gore. Upon this individual I would fix particular
attention; for under his rule there was more suffering from
violence and bloodshed than had—according to the older slaves
ever been experienced before on this plantation. I confess, I
hardly know how to bring this man fitly before the reader. He
was, it is true, an overseer, and possessed, to a large extent,
the peculiar characteristics of his class; yet, to call him
merely an overseer, would not give the reader a fair notion of
the man. I speak of overseers as a class. They are such. They
are as distinct from the slaveholding gentry of the south, as are
the fishwomen of Paris, and the coal-heavers of London,
distinct
from other members of society. They constitute a separate
fraternity at the south, not less marked than is the fraternity
of Park Lane bullies in New York. They have been arranged and
classified
by that great law of attraction, which determines
the spheres and affinities of men; which ordains, that men, whose
malign and brutal propensities predominate over their moral and
intellectual endowments, shall, naturally, fall into those
employments which promise the largest gratification to those
predominating instincts or propensities. The office of overseer
takes this raw material of vulgarity and brutality, and stamps it
as a distinct class of southern society. But, in this class, as
in all other classes, there are characters of marked
individuality, even while they bear a general resemblance to the
mass. Mr. Gore was one of those, to whom a general
characterization would do no manner of justice. He was an
overseer; but he was something more. With the malign and
tyrannical qualities of an overseer, he combined something of the
lawful master. He had the artfulness and the mean ambition of
his class; but he was wholly free from the disgusting swagger and
noisy bravado of his fraternity. There was an easy air of
independence about him; a calm self-possession, and a sternness
of glance, which might well daunt hearts less timid than those of
poor slaves, accustomed from childhood and through life to cower
before a driver's lash. The home plantation of Col. Lloyd
afforded an ample field for the exercise of the qualifications
for overseership, which he possessed in such an eminent degree.
Mr. Gore was one of those overseers, who could
torture the
slightest word or look into impudence; he had the nerve, not only
to resent, but to punish, promptly and severely. He never
allowed himself to be answered back, by a slave. In this, he was
as lordly and as imperious as Col. Edward Lloyd, himself; acting
always up to the maxim, practically maintained by slaveholders,
that it is better that a dozen slaves suffer under the lash,
without fault, than that the master or the overseer should
seem to have been wrong in the presence of the slave.
Everything must be absolute here. Guilty or not guilty,
it is enough to be accused, to be sure of a flogging. The very
presence of this man Gore was
painful, and I
shunned him as I would have shunned a rattlesnake. His piercing,
black eyes, and sharp, shrill voice, ever awakened sensations of
terror among the slaves. For so young a man (I describe him as
he was, twenty-five or thirty years ago) Mr. Gore was singularly
reserved and grave in the presence of slaves. He indulged in no
jokes, said no funny things, and kept his own counsels. Other
overseers, how brutal soever they might be, were, at times,
inclined to gain favor with the slaves, by indulging a little
pleasantry; but Gore was never known to be guilty of any such
weakness. He was always the cold, distant, unapproachable
overseer of Col. Edward Lloyd's plantation, and needed no
higher pleasure than was involved in a faithful discharge of the
duties of his office. When he whipped, he seemed to do so from a
sense of duty, and feared no consequences. What Hopkins did
reluctantly, Gore did with alacrity. There was a stern will, an
iron-like reality, about this Gore, which would have easily made
him the chief of a band of pirates, had his environments been
favorable to such a course of life. All the coolness, savage
barbarity and freedom from moral restraint, which are necessary
in the character of a pirate-chief, centered, I think, in this
man Gore. Among many other deeds of shocking cruelty which he
perpetrated, while I was at Mr. Lloyd's, was the murder of a
young colored man, named Denby. He was sometimes called Bill
Denby, or Demby; (I write from sound, and the sounds on Lloyd's
plantation are not very certain.) I knew him well. He was a
powerful young man, full of animal spirits, and, so far as I
know, he was among the most valuable of Col. Lloyd's slaves. In
something—I know not what—he offended this Mr. Austin Gore,
and, in accordance with the custom of the latter, he under took
to flog him. He gave Denby but few stripes; the latter broke
away from him and plunged into the creek, and, standing there to
the depth of his neck in water, he refused to come out at the
order of the overseer; whereupon, for this refusal,
Gore shot
him dead! It is said that Gore gave Denby three calls,
telling him that
if he did not obey the last call, he would
shoot him. When the third call was given, Denby stood his ground
firmly; and this raised the question, in the minds of the by-standing slaves—"Will he dare to shoot?" Mr. Gore, without
further parley, and without making any further effort to induce
Denby to come out of the water, raised his gun deliberately to
his face, took deadly aim at his standing victim, and, in an
instant, poor Denby was numbered with the dead. His mangled body
sank out of sight, and only his warm, red blood marked the place
where he had stood.
This devilish outrage, this fiendish murder, produced, as
it was well calculated to do, a tremendous sensation. A thrill
of horror flashed through every soul on the plantation, if I may
except the guilty wretch who had committed the hell-black deed.
While the slaves generally were panic-struck, and howling with
alarm, the murderer himself was calm and collected, and appeared
as though nothing unusual had happened. The atrocity roused my
old master, and he spoke out, in reprobation of it; but the whole
thing proved to be less than a nine days' wonder. Both Col.
Lloyd and my old master arraigned Gore for his cruelty in the
matter, but this amounted to nothing. His reply, or
explanation—as I remember to have heard it at the time was, that
the extraordinary expedient was demanded by necessity; that Denby
had become unmanageable; that he had set a dangerous example to
the other slaves; and that, without some such prompt measure as
that to which he had resorted, were adopted, there would be an
end to all rule and order on the plantation. That very
convenient covert for all manner of cruelty and outrage that
cowardly alarm-cry, that the slaves would "take the
place," was pleaded, in extenuation of this revolting crime,
just as it had been cited in defense of a thousand similar ones.
He argued, that if one slave refused to be corrected, and was
allowed to escape with his life, when he had been told that he
should lose it if he persisted in his course, the other slaves
would soon copy his example; the result of which would be, the
freedom of the slaves, and the enslavement of the
whites. I have every reason to
believe that Mr. Gore's defense, or explanation, was deemed
satisfactory—at least to Col. Lloyd. He was continued in his
office on the plantation. His fame as an overseer went abroad,
and his horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial
investigation. The murder was committed in the presence of
slaves, and they, of course, could neither institute a suit, nor
testify against the murderer. His bare word would go further in
a court of law, than the united testimony of ten thousand black
witnesses.
All that Mr. Gore had to do, was to make his peace with
Col. Lloyd. This done, and the guilty perpetrator of one of the
most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, and uncensured by
the community in which he lives. Mr. Gore lived in St.
Michael's, Talbot county, when I left Maryland; if he is still
alive he probably yet resides there; and I have no reason to
doubt that he is now as highly esteemed, and as greatly
respected, as though his guilty soul had never been stained with
innocent blood. I am well aware that what I have now written
will by some be branded as false and malicious. It will be
denied, not only that such a thing ever did transpire, as I have
now narrated, but that such a thing could happen in
Maryland. I can only say—believe it or not—that I have
said nothing but the literal truth, gainsay it who may.
I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave,
or any colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated
as a crime, either by the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas
Lanman, ship carpenter,
of St. Michael's, killed two slaves, one
of whom he butchered with a hatchet, by knocking his brains out.
He used to boast of the commission of the awful and bloody deed.
I have heard him do so, laughingly, saying, among other things,
that he was the only benefactor of his country in the company,
and that when "others would do as much as he had done, we should
be relieved of the d—d niggers."
As an evidence of the reckless disregard of human life
where the life is that of a slave I may state the notorious fact,
that the
wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, who lived but a short
distance from Col. Lloyd's, with her own hands murdered my wife's
cousin, a young girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age—mutilating her person in a most shocking manner. The atrocious
woman, in the paroxysm of her wrath, not content with murdering
her victim, literally mangled her face, and broke her breast
bone. Wild, however, and infuriated as she was, she took the
precaution to cause the slave-girl to be buried; but the facts of
the case coming abroad, very speedily led to the disinterment of
the remains of the murdered slave-girl. A coroner's jury was
assembled, who decided that the girl had come to her death by
severe beating. It was ascertained that the offense for which
this girl was thus hurried out of the world, was this: she had
been set that night, and several preceding nights, to mind Mrs.
Hicks's baby, and having fallen into a sound sleep, the baby
cried, waking Mrs. Hicks, but not the slave-girl. Mrs. Hicks,
becoming infuriated at the girl's tardiness, after calling
several times, jumped from her bed and seized a piece of firewood from the fireplace;
and then, as she lay fast asleep, she
deliberately pounded in her skull and breast-bone, and thus ended
her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder produced
no sensation in the community. It
did produce a
sensation; but, incredible to tell, the moral sense of the
community was blunted too entirely by the ordinary nature of
slavery horrors, to bring the murderess to punishment. A warrant
was issued for her arrest, but, for some reason or other, that
warrant was never served. Thus did Mrs. Hicks not only escape
condign punishment, but even the pain and mortification of being
arraigned before a court of justice.
Whilst I am detailing the bloody deeds that took place
during my stay on Col. Lloyd's plantation, I will briefly narrate
another dark transaction, which occurred about the same time as
the murder of Denby by Mr. Gore.
On the side of the river Wye, opposite from Col. Lloyd's,
there lived a Mr. Beal Bondley, a wealthy slaveholder. In the
direction
of his land, and near the
shore, there was an excellent oyster fishing ground, and to this,
some of the slaves of Col. Lloyd occasionally resorted in their
little canoes, at night, with a view to make up the deficiency of
their scanty allowance of food, by the oysters that they could
easily get there. This, Mr. Bondley took it into his head to
regard as a trespass, and while an old man belonging to Col.
Lloyd was engaged in catching a few of the many millions of
oysters that lined the bottom of that creek, to satisfy his
hunger, the villainous Mr. Bondley, lying in ambush, without the
slightest ceremony, discharged
the contents of his musket into
the back and shoulders of the poor old man. As good fortune
would have it, the shot did not prove mortal, and Mr. Bondley
came over, the next day, to see Col. Lloyd—whether to pay him
for his property, or to justify himself for what he had done, I
know not; but this I
can say, the cruel and dastardly
transaction was speedily hushed up; there was very little said
about it at all, and nothing was publicly done which looked like
the application of the principle of justice to the man whom
chance, only, saved from being an actual murderer. One of
the commonest sayings to which my ears early became accustomed,
on Col. Lloyd's plantation and elsewhere in Maryland, was, that
it was
"worth but half a cent to kill a nigger, and a half a
cent to bury him;" and the facts of my experience go far to
justify the practical truth of this strange proverb. Laws for
the protection of the lives of the slaves, are, as they must
needs be, utterly incapable of being enforced, where the very
parties who are nominally protected, are not permitted to give
evidence, in courts of law, against the only class of persons
from whom abuse, outrage and murder might be reasonably
apprehended. While I heard of numerous murders committed by
slaveholders on the Eastern Shores of Maryland, I never knew a
solitary instance in which a slaveholder was either hung or
imprisoned for having murdered a slave. The usual pretext for
killing a slave is, that the slave has offered resistance.
Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self
defense, the white assaulting
party is fully justified by
southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the slave
down. Sometimes this is done, simply because it is alleged that
the slave has been saucy. But here I leave this phase of the
society of my early childhood, and will relieve the kind reader
of these heart-sickening details.