READ STUDY GUIDE: Chapters VII–VIII |
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Chapter 8
 In a very short time after I went to live at Balti- |
| more, my old master's youngest son Richard died; |
| and in about three years and six months after his |
| death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leav- |
| only his son, Andrew, and daughter, Lucretia, to |
| share his estate. He died while on a visit to see his |
| daughter at Hillsborough. Cut off thus unexpectedly, |
| he left no will as to the disposal of his property. It |
| was therefore necessary to have a valuation of the |
| property, that it might be equally divided between |
| Mrs. Lucretia and Master Andrew. I was immedi- |
| ately sent for, to be valued with the other property. |
| Here again my feelings rose up in detestation of |
| slavery. I had now a new conception of my degraded |
| condition. Prior to this, I had become, if not in- |
| sensible to my lot, at least partly so. I left Baltimore |
| with a young heart overborne with sadness, and a |
| soul full of apprehension. I took passage with Cap- |
| tain Rowe, in the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a |
| sail of about twenty-four hours, I found myself near |
| the place of my birth. I had now been absent from |
| it almost, if not quite, five years. I, however, re- |
| membered the place very well. I was only about |
| five years old when I left it, to go and live with my |
| old master on Colonel Lloyd's plantation; so that |
| I was now between ten and eleven years old. |
| We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men |
| and women, old and young, married and single, were |
| ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were |
| horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and chil- |
| dren, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, |
| and were all subjected to the same narrow examina- |
| tion. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids |
| and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate |
| inspection. At this moment, I saw more clearly than |
| ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both |
| slave and slaveholder. |
| After the valuation, then came the division. I have |
| no language to express the high excitement and deep |
| anxiety which were felt among us poor slaves during |
| this time. Our fate for life was now to be decided. |
| we had no more voice in that decision than the |
| brutes among whom we were ranked. A single word |
| from the white men was enough—against all our |
| wishes, prayers, and entreaties—to sunder forever the |
| dearest friends, dearest kindred, and strongest ties |
| known to human beings. In addition to the pain of |
| separation, there was the horrid dread of falling into |
| the hands of Master Andrew. He was known to us |
| all as being a most cruel wretch,—a common drunk- |
| ard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and |
| profligate dissipation, already wasted a large por- |
| tion of his father's property. We all felt that we |
| might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders, |
| as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that |
| would be our inevitable condition,—a condition held |
| by us all in the utmost horror and dread. |
| I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow- |
| slaves. I had known what it was to be kindly treated; |
| they had known nothing of the kind. They had seen |
| little or nothing of the world. They were in very |
| deed men and women of sorrow, and acquainted with |
| grief. Their backs had been made familiar with the |
| bloody lash, so that they had become callous; mine |
| was yet tender; for while at Baltimore I got few whip- |
| pings, and few slaves could boast of a kinder master |
| and mistress than myself; and the thought of pass- |
| ing out of their hands into those of Master Andrew— |
| a man who, but a few days before, to give me a |
| sample of his bloody disposition, took my little |
| brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and |
| with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head |
| till the blood gushed from his nose and ears—was |
| well calculated to make me anxious as to my fate. |
| After he had committed this savage outrage upon |
| my brother, he turned to me, and said that was the |
| way he meant to serve me one of these days,—mean- |
| ing, I suppose, when I came into his possession. |
| Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion |
| of Mrs. Lucretia, and was sent immediately back |
| to Baltimore, to live again in the family of Master |
| Hugh. Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow |
| at my departure. It was a glad day to me. I had |
| escaped a worse than lion's jaws. I was absent from |
| Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and division, |
| just about one month, and it seemed to have been |
| six. |
| Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mis- |
| tress, Lucretia, died, leaving her husband and one |
| child, Amanda; and in a very short time after her |
| death, Master Andrew died. Now all the property |
| of my old master, slaves included, was in the hands |
| of strangers,—strangers who had had nothing to do |
| with accumulating it. Not a slave was left free. All |
| remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest. If |
| any one thing in my experience, more than another, |
| served to deepen my conviction of the infernal char- |
| acter of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable |
| loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingrati- |
| tude to my poor old grandmother. She had served |
| my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She |
| had been the source of all his wealth; she had peo- |
| pled his plantation with slaves; she had become a |
| great grandmother in his service. She had rocked |
| him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served |
| him through life, and at his death wiped from his |
| icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes |
| forever. She was nevertheless left a slave—a slave for |
| life—a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their |
| hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and |
| her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, |
| without being gratified with the small privilege of a |
| single word, as to their or her own destiny. And, to |
| cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish |
| barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, |
| having outlived my old master and all his children, |
| having seen the beginning and end of all of them, |
| and her present owners finding she was of but little |
| value, her frame already racked with the pains of old |
| age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her |
| once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built |
| her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and |
| then made her welcome to the privilege of support- |
| ing herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually |
| turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother |
| now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she |
| lives to remember and mourn over the loss of chil- |
| dren, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great- |
| grandchildren. They are, in the language of the |
| slave's poet, Whittier,— |
"Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever-demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air:—
Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia hills and waters—
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!"
| The hearth is desolate. The children, the uncon- |
| scious children, who once sang and danced in her |
| presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the dark- |
| ness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices |
| of her children, she hears by day the moans of the |
| dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. |
| All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, |
| when weighed down by the pains and aches of old |
| age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the |
| beginning and ending of human existence meet, and |
| helpless infancy and painful old age combine to- |
| gether—at this time, this most needful time, the time |
| for the exercise of that tenderness and affection |
| which children only can exercise towards a declining |
| parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted |
| mother of twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder |
| little hut, before a few dim embers. She stands— |
| she sits—she staggers—she falls—she groans—she dies |
| —and there are none of her children or grandchildren |
| present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold |
| sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her |
| fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for |
| these things? |
| In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lu- |
| cretia, Master Thomas married his second wife. Her |
| name was Rowena Hamilton. She was the eldest |
| daughter of Mr. William Hamilton. Master now |
| lived in St. Michael's. Not long after his marriage, |
| a misunderstanding took place between himself and |
| Master Hugh; and as a means of punishing his |
| brother, he took me from him to live with himself |
| at St. Michael's. Here I underwent another most |
| painful separation. It, however, was not so severe |
| as the one I dreaded at the division of property; for, |
| during this interval, a great change had taken place |
| in Master Hugh and his once kind and affectionate |
| wife. The influence of brandy upon him, and of |
| slavery upon her, had effected a disastrous change |
| in the characters of both; so that, as far as they |
| were concerned, I thought I had little to lose by the |
| change. But it was not to them that I was attached. |
| It was to those little Baltimore boys that I felt the |
| strongest attachment. I had received many good |
| lessons from them, and was still receiving them, and |
| the thought of leaving them was painful indeed. I |
| was leaving, too, without the hope of ever being |
| allowed to return. Master Thomas had said he would |
| never let me return again. The barrier betwixt him- |
| self and brother he considered impassable. |
| I then had to regret that I did not at least make |
| the attempt to carry out my resolution to run away; |
| for the chances of success are tenfold greater from |
| the city than from the country. |
| I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael's in the |
| sloop Amanda, Captain Edward Dodson. On my |
| passage, I paid particular attention to the direction |
| which the steamboats took to go to Philadelphia. I |
| found, instead of going down, on reaching North |
| Point they went up the bay, in a north-easterly direc- |
| tion. I deemed this knowledge of the utmost im- |
| portance. My determination to run away was again |
| revived. I resolved to wait only so long as the offering |
| of a favorable opportunity. When that came, I was |
| determined to be off. |
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