1. CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR'S CHILDHOOD.
PLACE OF BIRTH—CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT—TUCKAHOE—ORIGIN OF
THE NAME—CHOPTANK RIVER—TIME OF BIRTH—GENEALOGICAL TREES—MODE
OF COUNTING TIME—NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS—THEIR POSITION—GRAND-MOTHER ESPECIALLY ESTEEMED—"BORN TO GOOD LUCK"—SWEET
POTATOES—SUPERSTITION—THE LOG CABIN—ITS CHARMS—SEPARATING CHILDREN—MY
AUNTS—THEIR NAMES—FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A SLAVE—OLD MASTER—GRIEFS AND JOYS OF CHILDHOOD—COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF THE
SLAVE-BOY AND THE SON OF A SLAVEHOLDER.
In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton,
the county town of that county, there is a small district of
country, thinly populated, and remarkable for nothing that I know
of more than for the worn-out, sandy, desert-like appearance of
its soil, the general dilapidation of its farms and fences, the
indigent and spiritless character of its inhabitants, and the
prevalence of ague and fever.
The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine
stricken district is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black and white. It was given to this section of
country probably, at the first, merely in derision; or it may
possibly have been
applied to it, as I have heard, because some
one of its earlier inhabitants had been guilty of the petty
meanness of stealing a hoe—or taking a hoe that did not belong
to him. Eastern Shore men usually pronounce the word
took, as
tuck; Took-a-hoe, therefore, is, in
Maryland parlance,
Tuckahoe. But, whatever may have been
its origin—and about this I will not be
positive—that name
has stuck to the district in question; and it is seldom mentioned
but with contempt and derision, on account of the barrenness of
its soil, and the ignorance, indolence, and poverty of its
people. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin
population of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for
the Choptank river, which runs through it, from which they take
abundance of shad and herring, and plenty of ague and fever.
It was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or
neighborhood, surrounded by a white population of the lowest
order, indolent and drunken to a proverb, and among slaves, who
seemed to ask, "Oh! what's the use?" every time they
lifted a hoe, that I—without any fault of mine was born, and
spent the first years of my childhood.
The reader will pardon so much about the place of my
birth, on the score that it is always a fact of some importance
to know where a man is born, if, indeed, it be important to know
anything about him. In regard to the time of my birth, I
cannot be as definite as I have been respecting the place.
Nor, indeed, can I impart much knowledge concerning my parents.
Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves. A person of
some consequence here in the north, sometimes
designated
father, is literally abolished in slave law and slave
practice. It is only once in a while that an exception is found
to this statement. I never met with a slave who could tell me
how old he was. Few slave-mothers know anything of the months of
the year, nor of the days of the month. They keep no family
records, with marriages, births, and deaths. They measure the
ages of their children by spring time, winter time, harvest time,
planting time, and the like; but these soon become
undistinguishable and forgotten. Like other slaves, I cannot
tell how old I am. This destitution was among my earliest
troubles. I learned when I grew up, that my master—and this is
the case with masters generally—allowed no questions to be put
to him, by which a slave might learn his
age.
Such questions deemed evidence of impatience, and even of
impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of
which I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born
about the year 1817.
The first experience of life with me that I now remember—and I remember it but hazily—began in the family of my
grandmother and grandfather. Betsey and Isaac Baily. They were quite
advanced in life, and had long lived on the spot where they then
resided. They were considered old settlers in the neighborhood,
and, from certain circumstances, I infer that my grandmother,
especially, was held in high esteem, far higher than is the lot
of most colored persons in the slave states. She was a good
nurse, and a capital hand at making nets for catching shad and
herring; and these nets were in great demand, not
only in
Tuckahoe, but at Denton and Hillsboro, neighboring villages. She
was not only good at making the nets, but was also somewhat
famous for her good fortune in taking the fishes referred to. I
have known her to be in the water half the day. Grandmother was
likewise more provident than most of her neighbors in the
preservation of seedling sweet potatoes, and it happened to her—as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person residing in
an ignorant and improvident community—to enjoy the reputation of
having been born to "good luck." Her "good luck" was owing to
the exceeding care which she took in preventing the succulent
root from getting bruised in the digging, and in placing it
beyond the reach of frost, by actually burying it under the
hearth of her cabin during the winter months. In the time of
planting sweet potatoes, "Grandmother Betty," as she was
familiarly called, was sent for in all directions, simply to
place the seedling potatoes in the hills; for superstition had
it, that if "Grandmamma Betty but touches them at planting, they
will be sure to grow and flourish." This high reputation was
full of advantage to her, and to the children around her. Though
Tuckahoe had but few of the good things of
life, yet of such
as it did possess grandmother got a full share, in the way of
presents. If good potato crops came after her planting, she was
not forgotten by those for whom she planted; and as she was
remembered by others, so she remembered the hungry little ones
around her.
The dwelling of my grandmother and grandfather had few
pretensions. It was a log hut, or cabin,
built of clay, wood,
and straw. At a distance it resembled—though it was smaller,
less commodious and less substantial—the cabins erected in the
western states by the first settlers. To my child's eye,
however, it was a noble structure, admirably adapted to promote
the comforts and conveniences of its inmates. A few rough,
Virginia fence-rails, flung loosely over the rafters above,
answered the triple purpose of floors, ceilings, and bedsteads.
To be sure, this upper apartment was reached only by a ladder—but what in the world for climbing could be better than a ladder?
To me, this ladder was really a high invention, and possessed a
sort of charm as I played with delight upon the rounds of it. In
this little hut there was a large family of children: I dare not
say how many. My grandmother—whether because too old for field
service, or because she had so faithfully discharged the duties
of her station in early life, I know not—enjoyed the high
privilege of living in a cabin, separate from the quarter, with
no other burden than her own support, and the necessary care of
the little children, imposed. She evidently esteemed it a great
fortune to live so. The children were not her own, but her
grandchildren—the children of her daughters. She took delight
in having them around her, and in attending to their few wants.
The practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring
the latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting,
except at long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and
barbarity of the slave system. But it is in harmony with the
grand aim of slavery, which, always and everywhere, is to
reduce
man to a level with the brute. It is a successful method of
obliterating from the mind and heart of the
slave, all just ideas of the sacredness of
the family, as
an institution.
Most of the children, however, in this instance, being the
children of my grandmother's daughters, the notions of family,
and the reciprocal duties and benefits of the relation, had a
better chance of being understood than where children are
placed—as they often are in the hands of strangers, who have no
care for them, apart from the wishes of their masters. The
daughters of my grandmother were five in number. Their names
were JENNY, ESTHER, MILLY, PRISCILLA, and HARRIET. The daughter
last named was my mother, of whom the reader shall learn more by-and-by.
Living here, with my dear old grandmother and grandfather,
it was a long time before I knew myself to be a slave. I
knew many other things before I knew that. Grandmother and
grandfather were the greatest people in the world to me; and
being with them so snugly in their own little cabin—I supposed
it be their own—knowing no higher authority over me or the other
children than the authority of grandmamma, for a time there was
nothing to disturb me; but, as I grew larger and older, I learned
by degrees the sad fact, that the "little hut," and the lot on
which it stood, belonged not to my dear old grandparents, but to
some person who lived a great distance off, and who was called,
by grandmother, "OLD MASTER." I further learned the sadder fact,
that not only the house and lot, but that grandmother herself,
(grandfather was free,) and all the little children around her,
belonged to this mysterious personage, called by grandmother,
with every mark of reverence, "Old Master." Thus early did
clouds and shadows begin to fall upon my path. Once on the
track—troubles never come singly—I was not long in finding out
another fact, still more grievous to my childish heart. I was
told that this "old master," whose name seemed ever to be mentioned with fear and shuddering, only allowed the children to
live with grandmother for a limited time, and that in fact as
soon as they were big enough, they were promptly taken away,
to live with the said "old master." These were distressing
revelations indeed; and though I was quite too young to
comprehend the full import of the intelligence, and mostly spent
my childhood days in gleesome sports with the other children, a
shade of disquiet rested upon me.
The absolute power of this distant "old master" had
touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel
iron, and left me something to brood over after the play and in
moments of repose. Grandmammy was, indeed, at that time, all the
world to me; and the thought of being separated from her, in any
considerable time, was more than an unwelcome intruder. It was
intolerable.
Children have their sorrows as well as men and women; and
it would be well to remember this in our dealings with them.
SLAVE-children are children, and prove no exceptions to
the general rule. The liability to be separated from my
grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me. I
dreaded
the thought of going to live with that mysterious "old
master," whose name I never heard mentioned with affection, but
always with fear. I look back to this as among the heaviest of
my childhood's sorrows. My grandmother! my grandmother! and the
little hut, and the joyous circle under her care, but especially
she, who made us sorry when she left us but for an hour,
and glad on her return,—how could I leave her and the good old
home?
But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after
life, are transient. It is not even within the power of slavery
to write indelible sorrow, at a single dash, over the
heart of a child.
"The tear down childhood's cheek that flows,
Is like the dew-drop on the rose—
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And waves the bush—the flower is dry."
There is, after all, but little difference in the measure
of contentment felt by the slave-child neglected and the
slaveholder's
child cared for and
petted. The spirit of the All Just mercifully holds the balance
for the young.
The slaveholder, having nothing to fear from impotent
childhood, easily affords to refrain from cruel inflictions; and
if cold and hunger do not pierce the tender frame, the first
seven or eight years of the slave-boy's life are about as full of
sweet content as those of the most favored and petted
white children of the slaveholder. The slave-boy escapes
many troubles which befall and vex his white brother. He seldom
has to listen to lectures on propriety of behavior,
or on
anything else. He is never chided for handling his little knife
and fork improperly or awkwardly, for he uses none. He is never
reprimanded for soiling the table-cloth, for he takes his meals
on the clay floor. He never has the misfortune, in his games or
sports, of soiling or tearing his clothes, for he has almost none
to soil or tear. He is never expected to act like a nice little
gentleman, for he is only a rude little slave. Thus, freed from
all restraint, the slave-boy can be, in his life and conduct, a
genuine boy, doing whatever his boyish nature suggests; enacting,
by turns, all the strange antics and freaks of horses, dogs,
pigs, and barn-door fowls, without in any manner compromising his
dignity, or incurring reproach of any sort. He literally runs
wild; has no pretty little verses to learn in the nursery; no
nice little speeches to make for aunts, uncles, or cousins, to
show how smart he is; and, if he can only manage to keep out of
the way of the heavy feet and fists of the older slave boys, he
may trot on, in his joyous and roguish tricks, as happy as any
little heathen under the palm trees of Africa. To be sure, he is
occasionally reminded, when he stumbles in the path of his
master—and this he early learns to avoid—that he is eating his
"white bread," and that he will be made to
"see
sights" by-and-by. The threat is soon forgotten; the shadow
soon passes, and our sable boy continues to roll in the dust, or
play in the mud, as bests suits him, and in the veriest freedom.
If he feels uncomfortable, from mud or from dust, the coast is
clear; he can plunge into
the river or the pond, without the
ceremony of undressing, or the fear
of wetting his clothes; his
little tow-linen shirt—for that is all he has on—is easily
dried; and it needed ablution as much as did his skin. His food
is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most part of cornmeal
mush, which often finds it way from the wooden tray to his mouth
in an oyster shell. His days, when the weather is warm, are
spent in the pure, open air, and in the bright sunshine. He
always sleeps in airy apartments; he seldom has to take powders,
or to be paid to swallow pretty little sugar-coated pills, to
cleanse his blood, or to quicken his appetite. He eats no
candies; gets no lumps of loaf sugar; always relishes his food;
cries but little, for nobody cares for his crying; learns to
esteem his bruises but slight, because others so esteem them. In
a word, he is, for the most part of the first eight years of his
life, a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy, upon whom
troubles fall only like water on a duck's back. And such a boy,
so far as I can now remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I
am now narrating.