C. CHILDREN IN SLAVERY

1. A classic account of a childhood and youth spent in slavery

Benjamin Quarles, ed., Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 23-27, 51-53; first published in 1845.

Douglass (1817?-1895 ), following his escape from slavery in Maryland in 1838 carved a notable career as a champion of the rights of Negro citizens.

I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their age as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring¨time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835,1 was about seventeen years old.

My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.

My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant — before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.

I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to the contrary — a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.

Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation of who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father.

I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.

As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel Lloyd's plantation, it was very similar to that of the other slave children. I was not old enough to work in the field, and there being little else than field work to do, I had a great deal of leisure time. The most I had to do was to drive up the cows at evening, keep the fowls out of the garden, keep the front yard clean, and run of errands for my old master's daughter, Mrs. Lucretia Auld. The most of my leisure time I spent in helping Master Daniel Lloyd in finding his birds, after he had shot them. My connection with Master Daniel was of some advantage to me. He became quite attached to me, and was a sort of protector of me. He would not allow the older boys to impose upon me, and would divide his cakes with me.

I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suffered little from any thing else than hunger and cold. I suffered much from hunger, but much more from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost naked — no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow linen shirt, reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must have perished with cold, but that, the coldest nights, I used to steal a bag which was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out. My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.

We were not regularly allowanced. Our food was coarse corn meal boiled. This was called mush. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was strongest secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied.

I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel Lloyd's plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the ecstasy with which I received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony) had determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, brother to my old master's son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld. I received this information about three days before my departure. They were three of the happiest days I ever enjoyed. I spent the most part of all these three days in the creek, washing off the plantation scurf, and preparing myself for my departure.

The pride of appearance which this would indicate was not my own. I spent the time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because Mrs. Lucretia had told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and knees before I could go to Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty. Besides, she was going to give me a pair of trousers, which I should not put on unless I got all the dirt off me. The thought of owning a pair of trousers was great indeed! It was almost a sufficient motive, not only to make me take off what would be called by pig-drovers the mange, but the skin itself. I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time with the hope of reward.

The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all suspended in my case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home was charmless; it was not home to me; on parting from it, I could not feel that I was leaving any thing which I could have enjoyed by staying. My mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off, so that I seldom saw her. I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories. I looked for home elsewhere, and was confident of finding none which I should relish less than the one which I was leaving. If, however, I found in my new home hardship, hunger, whipping, and nakedness, I had the consolation that I should not have escaped any one of them by staying. Having already had more than a taste of them in the house of my old master, and having endured them there, I very naturally inferred my ability to endure them elsewhere, and especially at Baltimore . . .

2. A slave family broken up and partially reunited

Life of Josiah Henson, as Narrated by Himself (Boston, 1849), pp. 1-5.

Henson (1789-1883), reputedly the original of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom, escaped from slavery in 1830 and spent the remainder of his life in Canada.

I was born, June 15, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis N., about a mile from Port Tobacco. My mother was the property of Dr. Josiah McP., but was hired by Mr. N., to whom my father belonged. The only incident I can remember, which occurred while my mother continued on N.'s farm, was the appearance of my father one day, with his head bloody and his back lacerated. He was in a state of great excitement, and though it was all a mystery to me at the age of three or four years, it was explained at a later period, and I understood that he had been suffering the cruel penalty of the Maryland law for beating a white man. His right ear had been cut off close to his head, and he had received a hundred lashes on his back. He had beaten the overseer for a brutal assault on my mother, and this was his punishment. Furious at such treatment, my father became a different man, and was so morose, disobedient, and intractable, that Mr. N. determined to sell him. He accordingly parted with him, not long after, to his son, who lived in Alabama; and neither my mother nor I, ever heard of him again. He was naturally, as I understood afterwards from my mother and other persons, a man of amiable temper, and of considerable energy of character; but it is not strange that he should be essentially changed by such cruelty and injustice under the sanction of law.

In consequence of [the decease of my master, it became necessary to sell the estate and the slaves, in order to divide the property among the heirs; and we were all put up at auction and sold to the highest bidder, and scattered over various parts of the country. My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind, with dreadful clearness, as the sale proceeded. My mother was then separated from me, and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac R., residing in Montgomery county, and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother, half distracted with the parting forever from all her children, pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his feet, and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little ones at least. Will it, can it be believed that this man, thus appealed to, was capable not merely of turning a deaf ear to her supplication, but of disengaging himself from her with such violent blows and kicks, as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach, and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a breaking heart? Yet this was one of my earliest observations of men; an experience which has been common to me with thousands of my race, the bitterness of which its frequency cannot diminish to any individual who suffers it, while it is dark enough to overshadow the whole after-life with something blacker than a funeral pall. — I was bought by a stranger.—Almost immediately, however, whether my childish strength, at five or six years of age, was overmastered by such scenes and experiences, or from some accidental cause, I fell sick, and seemed to my new master so little likely to recover, that he proposed to R., the purchaser of my mother, to take me too at such a trifling rate that it could not be refused. I was thus providentially restored to my mother; and under her care, destitute as she was of the proper means of nursing me, I recovered my health, and grew up to be an uncommonly vigorous and healthy boy and man.

3. A purchase of slave children in order to prevent separation from their mother. Virginia, 1834

Tabb's Curator v. Cabell, 17 Grattan 160 (1834).

The will of Landon Cabell deceased was admitted to probate in the County court of Amherst in January, 1834. By his will, after giving to his wife Judith S. Cabell a number of slaves in absolute property, he gave her for her life three men and three women [Burgess, Jordan, Cyrus, Margaret, Lucinda, and Charity] and he directed that after the death of ill Mrs. Cabell, the slaves given her for life and their increase should be sold, and the proceeds equally divided among his three children, Robert H. and Landon R. Cabell and Elizabeth Preston . . . And he directed all his property, not specifically disposed of by his will, to be sold by his executor, and the proceeds to be divided among his wife and children.

In March, 1834, the executor sold the property.

At the sale . . . the girl Lucinda was sold, and in her stead this defendant purchased two small negroes, Edward and Matilda, the children of the above named woman Margaret. This was done by consent of parties, to prevent a separation of families.

4. A runaway slave woman suspected of rejoining her children, 1836

Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 5, 1836.

$50 REWARD — I will give the above reward to anyone who will apprehend my Negro woman, FANNY, if she is taken out of the State of Virginia, and secured in jail, so that I get her again; or $15, if taken in the said State, and delivered to me, near Tappahannock in Essex county. Fanny left me about the 1st of July; is of a brown color, a little above the middle size, very intelligent, and when in the act of speaking, contracts her forehead into wrinkles, and shews the whites of her eyes more than at other times. I know of no scars or other peculiarities by which she can be distinguished. I purchased her of Dr. A. Brockenbrough, of Tappahannock, and think it is probable she may be at or near the farm of his son, John, in the county of King William, where several of her children are living, but have some reasons to think she has left this state.

RICHARD T. HUNDLEY

5. The effects of slavery on the domestic affections of slaves

Martineau, Society in America, II, 154-155.

It is true that slaves will often leave their infants to perish, rather than take any trouble about them; that they will utterly neglect a sick parent or husband; while they will nurse a white mistress with much ostentation. The reason is obvious. Such beings are degraded so far below humanity that they will take trouble, for the sake of praise or more solid reward, after they have become dead to all but grossly selfish inducements. Circumstances will fully account for a great number of cases of this sort: but to set against these, there are perhaps yet more instances of domestic devotion, not to be surpassed in the annals of humanity. Of these I know more than I can here set down; partly from their number, and partly from the fear of exposing to injury the individuals alluded to.

A friend of mine was well acquainted at Washington with a woman who had been a slave; and who, after gaining her liberty, worked incessantly for many years, denying herself all but absolute necessaries, in order to redeem her husband and children. She was a sick-nurse, when my friend knew her; and, by her merits, obtained good pay. She had first bought herself; having earned, by extra toil, three or four hundred dollars. She then earned the same sum, and redeemed her husband; and had bought three, out of her five, children when my friend last saw her. She made no boast of her industry and self-denial. Her story was extracted from her by questions; and she obviously felt that she was doing what was merely unavoidable. It is impossible to help instituting a comparison between this woman and the gentlemen who, by their own licentiousness, increase the number of slave children whom they sell in the market. My friend formerly carried an annual present from a distant part of the country to this poor woman: but it is not known what has become of her, and whether she died before she had completed her object, of freeing all her family.

6. Fanny Kemble on the increase of slave population, 1838

Frances A. Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, ed. John A. Scott (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), pp. 94-96; first published in 1863.

Miss Kemble (1809-1893) married Pierce Butler, heir to a large Georgia plantation, in 1834 after a sparkling stage career in England and America. Already opposed to slavery, she was appalled by conditions on his plantation where they lived in 1838-1839. She left her husband in 1846 but refused to publish the journal of her stay on the plantation until the Civil War broke out, when she hoped it would influence British opinion in behalf of the Union.

[I]t has occurred to me that whereas the increase of this ill-fated race is frequently adduced as a proof of their good treatment and well-being, it really and truly is no such thing, and springs from quite other causes than the peace and plenty which a rapidly increasing population are supposed to indicate. If you will reflect for a moment upon the overgrown families of the half-starved Irish peasantry and English manufacturers, you will agree with me that these prolific shoots by no means necessarily spring from a rich or healthy soil. Peace and plenty are certainly causes of human increase, and so is recklessness; and this, I take it, is the impulse in the instance of the English manufacturer, the Irish peasant, and the Negro slave. Indeed here it is more than recklessness, for there are certain indirect premiums held out to obey the early commandment of replenishing the earth which do not fail to have their full effect. In the first place, none of the cares, those noble cares, that holy thoughtfulness which lifts the human above the brute parent, are ever incurred here by either father or mother. The relation indeed resembles, as far as circumstances can possibly make it do so, the short-lived connection between the animal and its young. The father, having neither authority, power, responsibility, or charge in his children, is of course, as among brutes, the least attached to his offspring; the mother, by the natural law which renders the infant dependent on her for its first year's nourishment, is more so; but as neither of them is bound to educate or to support their children, all the unspeakable tenderness and solemnity, all the rational, and all the spiritual grace and glory of the connection, is lost, and it becomes mere breeding, bearing, suckling, and there an end. But it is not only the absence of the conditions which God has affixed to the relation which tends to encourage the reckless increase of the race; they enjoy, by means of numerous children, certain positive advantages. In the first place, every woman who is pregnant, as soon as she chooses to make the fact known to the overseer, is relieved of a certain portion of her work in the field, which lightening of labor continues, of course, as long as she is so burdened. On the birth of a child certain additions of clothing and an additional weekly ration are bestowed on the family; and these matters, small as they may seem, act as powerful inducements to creatures who have none of the restraining influences actuating them which belong to the parental relation among all other people, whether civilized or savage. Moreover, they have all of them a most distinct and perfect knowledge of their value to their owners as property; and a woman thinks, and not much amiss, that the more frequently she adds to the number of her master's livestock by bringing new slaves into the world, the more claims she will have upon his consideration and good will. This was perfectly evident to me from the meritorious air with which the women always made haste to inform me of the number of children they had borne, and the frequent occasions on which the older slaves would direct my attention to their children, exclaiming: "Look, missis! little niggers for you and massa; plenty little niggers for you and little missis!"

7. William Wells Brown, a slave assistant to a slavetrader, recounts the separation of a mother from her baby by the trader

William W. Brown, Narrative of the Life of William W. Brown (Boston, 1847), pp.48-51.

Brown (ca. 1816-1884), hired out to several employers by his master, was a fugitive from slavery in 1834. Later he became a prominent abolitionist and pioneer historian of black people in America.

He soon commenced purchasing to make up the third gang. We took steamboat, and went to Jefferson City, a town on the Missouri river. Here we landed, and took stage for the interior of the State. He bought a number of slaves as he passed the different farms and IS villages. After getting twenty-two or twenty-three men and women, we arrived at St. Charles, a village on the banks of the Missouri. Here he purchased a woman who had a child in her arms, appearing to be four or five weeks old.

We had been travelling by land for some days, and were in hopes to have found a boat at this place for St. Louis, but were disappointed. As no boat was expected for some days, we started for St. Louis by land. Mr. Walker had purchased two horses. He rode one, and I the other. The slaves were chained together, and we took up our line of march, Mr. Walker taking the lead, and I bringing up the rear. Though the distance was not more than twenty miles, we did not reach it the first day. The road was worse than any that I have ever travelled.

Soon after we left St. Charles, the young child grew very cross, and kept up a noise during the greater part of the day. Mr. Walker complained of its crying several times, and told the mother to stop the child's d———d noise, or he would. The woman tried to keep the child from crying, but could not. We put up at night with an acquaintance of Mr. Walker, and in the morning, just as we were about to start, the child again commenced crying. Walker stepped up to her, and told her to give the child to him. The mother tremblingly obeyed. He took the child by one arm, as you would a cat by the leg, walked into the house, and said to the lady,

"Madam, I will make you a present of this little nigger; it keeps such a noise that I can't bear it."

"Thank you, sir," said the lady.

The mother, as soon as she saw that her child was to be left, ran up to Mr. Walker, and falling upon her knees begged him to let her have her child; she clung around his legs, and cried, "Oh, my child! my child! master, do let me have my child! oh, do, do, do. I will stop its crying, if you will only let me have it again." When I saw this woman crying for her child so piteously, a shudder, — a feeling akin to horror, shot through my frame.

Mr. Walker commanded her to return into the ranks with the other slaves. Women who had children were not chained, but those that had none were. As soon as her child was disposed of, she was chained in the gang.

8. A slave father fails in an attempt to purchase two of his children, South Carolina, 1846

Gist v. Toohey, 2 Richardson 424 (1846).

The plaintiff, Elizabeth P. Gist, sued to recover $100 which her slave, William, who hired out his time, had paid to the defendant toward the purchase of his children.

It appeared that in April, 1841, William, a slave of the plaintiff, who had earned one hundred dollars over and above his wages, placed that sum in the hands of the defendant, under an agreement that the defendant should purchase, for William, two of his children, for three hundred and fifty dollars; and that when William should repay to the defendant the balance of the purchase money, with an additional sum of fifty dollars for each year that the balance should remain unpaid, he, the defendant, would execute a bill of sale to William, of the children. In pursuance of this agreement, the defendant bought the negroes for three hundred and fifty dollars.

The Recorder charged the jury, that if the defendant acted in good faith, the plaintiff was not entitled to recover the one hundred dollars advanced by William, unless the balance of the money paid by the defendant to accomplish the purchase, had been tendered to him, and a conveyance of the children required to be made, either to William or the plaintiff. The jury found for the plaintiff one hundred dollars, with interest from April, 1841.

The defendant appealed, and now moved for a new trial.

Curia, per Wardlaw, J. This verdict may have been found upon the conclusion of the jury, formed from the evidence, that the defendant had not acted in good faith; but even upon a contrary supposition, this court thinks it must stand. The promises of a master to a slave, are binding only in conscience and honor; at law, notwithstanding any such promise, that the slave shall have certain acquisitions, all the acquisitions of the slave in possession, are the property of the master. A dealing or trafficking with the slave concerning such acquisitions, without the license of the master, is as much contrary to our statutory regulations, as other unlicensed dealings with a slave. Sometimes an executed contract with a slave might transfer a title to a third person, upon the ground of the master's implied consent; but an executory agreement with a slave (not the agent of the master therein) can give no right of action, either to the slave or master. . . Then the $100 in William's possession, belonged to the plaintiff; the defendant violated the law in receiving it from him under a bargain; or, to say the least, acted with great imprudence in resting his justification for dealing with the slave to such an amount, when the owner was near, upon the implied permission of the owner, and not obtaining express license. Such assent of the plaintiff as would make William her agent, cannot be presumed against the verdict; and the defendant must refund the $100, as money received in an unlawful transaction, wherein the plaintiff did not participate — or as money received upon consideration of an agreement which the law regards as worthless.

9. The causes of loose family ties among slaves

Nehemiah Adams, A South Side View of Slavery (Boston, 1854), pp. 82-85.

Adams (1806-1878), a New England Congregationalist minister, traveled through the South in 1854. Although he concluded that southern slaveowners had been unfairly criticized by their abolitionist detractors, he was not unaware of the devastating effects of slavery on family relations.

Husbands and wives, in a large proportion of cases, belong to different masters, and reside on separate plantations, the husband sometimes walking several miles, night and morning, to and from his family, and many of them returning home only on Saturday afternoon. In cities, also, husbands and wives most commonly belong to different families. Laboring apart, and having their meals apart, the bonds of domestic life are few and weak. A slave, his wife, and their children, around that charmed centre, a family table, with its influences of love, instruction, discipline, humble as they necessarily would be, yet such as God had given them, are too seldom seen. To encourage and protect their homes generally would be in effect to put an end to slavery as it is.

It was remarked to me by an eminent and venerable physician at the south, that maternal attachments in slave mothers are singularly shortlived. Their pain and grief at the sale of their children, their jealousy, their self-sacrificing efforts for them, are peculiar; but they are easily supplanted. The hen, and even the timid partridge, is roused when her young are in danger, and her demonstrations of affection then are unsurpassed. Yet in a few weeks she will treat her offspring as strangers. Maternal instincts in slave mothers (my friend observed) were more like this than the ordinary parental feelings of white people.

I told him that this disclosed to me one of the most affecting illustrations of slavery, and that I needed not to ask him for his explanation of it. Every one can see, not only the probability, but the cause, of this limited parental affection. From the first moment of maternal solicitude, the idea of property on the part of the owner in the offspring is connected with the maternal instinct. It grows side by side with it, becomes a neutralizing element, prevents the inviolable links of natural affection from reaching deep into the heart. We need no slave auctions or separations of families to make us feel the inherent, awful nature of the present system of slavery, in view of this illustration.

Some use it in mitigation of the alleged wrongfulness of separating mothers and young children. Human nature refuses to hear one who is capable of using such an argument.

The same day that my friend made his remark to me, I had an accidental confirmation of it in the conversation of an intelligent landlord, who was telling me of the recent lamentable death of an old slave mother who had nursed him and all his brothers and sisters. His mother said to the dying woman, "How do you feel about leaving your children?" for she had several, who were still young. "0 missis," she said, "you will take care of them; I don't mind them. I don't want to leave you, missis, and your Charley and Ann. What will they do without me, little dears?" The gentleman mentioned it as affecting illustration, as it certainly is, of the disinterested affection in these colored servants; but I felt that there was something back of all this. Slavery had loosened the natural attachments of this woman to her offspring, and those attachments had sought and found objects to grow upon in the children of another. There must be something essentially wrong in a system which thus interferes with the nature which God has made.

The drapery of words is hardly sufficient, perhaps, to clothe an idea which a slave mother in one of the best of Christian families expressed; but she was deprecating the possibility of being a mother again. She said, “You feel or when your child is born that you can't have the bringing of it up.”

One evening, in a prayer meeting of slaves, the white brother who presided read the chapter in Matthew containing the Lord's Prayer, and asked me to make some remarks. I alluded to the Lord's Prayer, which had just been read, and was proceeding to remark upon portions of it. I found myself embarrassed, however, at once, in speaking about that overwhelming name of love — Our Father, who art in heaven; for it flashed upon me, these slaves, although they have the spirit of sons, although they cry, "Abba, Father," as I seldom ever heard other Christians use the name, can not appreciate any illustrations of it which I may draw from earthly parentage; they know the thing; the illustration they cannot fully appreciate, for in effect the slave has no father. He more frequently remembers his mother; but who was his father? His knowledge of him is far less frequent. The annihilation by slavery, to a great extent, of the father in the domestic relations of the slaves, is inseparable from it, as it exists at present.

Take a further illustration. I was in a large colored Sabbath school. The superintendent at the close gave the scholars a kind word of exhortation to this effect: "Now, children, I want to repeat what I have said to you so often; you must all try to be good children, wherever you are, remembering that you are never out of God's sight. If you love and obey him, if you are good children at home, what a comfort you will be to your" (I expected the words fathers and mothers) "masters and mistresses." I felt as when I have heard the earth fall upon a stranger's coffin; it was all correct, all kind; but the inability to use those names, the perfect naturalness with which other names came in to fill the place of father and mother, brought to my heart the truth, the slaves generally have no homes.

10. A slave woman and her children in the Richmond slave market

Charles R. Weld, A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada (London, 1855), pp.302-304.

Charles Weld (1813-1869), author of many travel books, was an English historian and scientist.

As all the slaves present were now sold, I thought business was over in this establishment; but just as the last woman was led away, a mulatto entered the room with another woman followed by two little children about three and four years old, and carrying a third still younger in her arms. These were the children announced for sale. The circumstance of this woman, or lot, as she and the children were called, being brought in alone, led me to suppose there was some distinction between her and the preceding slaves. In slavery none, — she and her children were slaves like those just sold; but in appearance the difference was great. She was a remarkably handsome mulatto, and her children were nearly, if not fully, as white as the fairest Americans. If any doubt existed in my mind respecting the revolting nature of this human traffic, the case of this woman would have determined my judgment. Her story was brief: she was not married, and the man whose passions had made her his mistress as well as slave, willed that she should be sold with his children. More she would not divulge; nor would she answer questions relative to her occupation. All attempts at extracting further information were met by a scornful refusal to divulge aught of her past life, and when her small soft hands and bosom were examined, on which her infant was reposing, her eyes flashed fire, and I sincerely believe, had a knife been within her grasp she would have plunged it in the hearts of her tormentors. Followed by her two little children, who clung to her dress like scared lambs, shrinking from the gaze of the rough men who pressed round them, she ascended the platform, and the auctioneer recommenced his business. Whether he dreaded a scene, or that he deemed it unnecessary, I am unable to say; but he limited his prefatorial harangue to the simple announcement that he had a fine young woman to offer, with her children, who would not be sold separate, adding that in a few years the boys would be fit for work. What could he say of her, whose heart's finest affections were perhaps at the moment lacerated to satisfy the greed of a man? He set a high price on the woman and her children, declaring he expected at least 2500 dollars for the lot. The first bid was 800; languid biddings succeeded, until the amount reached 900 dollars. The woman was then ordered down, and followed by her little children, was made to walk up and down the room. On resuming her place on the platform, the biddings became a little brisker; but as no eloquency on the part of the auctioneer could raise them above 1100 dollars, the lot was withdrawn. I was informed the woman alone would have realised more than this amount, but there is a strong aversion against purchasing white children.

1. The slave "settlement" and the infirmary, Georgia, 1838-1839

Kemble, Journal, pp. 67-70, 72-73, 98-99,169-170,229-230.

[January 1839] I walked down the settlement toward the infirmary or hospital, calling in at one or two of the houses along the row. These cabins consist of one room, about twelve feet by fifteen, with a couple of closets smaller and closer than the staterooms of a ship, divided off from the main room and each other by rough wooden partitions, in which the inhabitants sleep. They have almost all of them a rude bedstead, with the gray moss of the forests for mattress, and filthy, pestilential-looking blankets for covering. Two families (sometimes eight and ten in number) reside in one of these huts, which are mere wooden frames pinned, as it were, to the earth by a brick chimney outside, whose enormous aperture within pours down a flood of air, but little counteracted by the miserable spark of fire, which hardly sends an attenuated thread

of lingering smoke up its huge throat. A wide ditch runs immediately at the back of these dwellings, which is filled and emptied daily by the tide. Attached to each hovel is a small scrap of ground for a garden, which, however, is for the most part untended and uncultivated.

Such of these dwellings as I visited today were filthy and wretched in the extreme, and exhibited that most deplorable consequence of ignorance and an abject condition, the inability of the inhabitants to secure and improve even such pitiful comfort as might yet be achieved by them. Instead of the order, neatness, and ingenuity which might convert even these miserable hovels into tolerable residences, there was the careless, reckless, filthy indolence which even the brutes do not exhibit in their lairs and nests, and which seemed incapable of applying to the uses of existence the few miserable means of comfort yet within their reach. Firewood and shavings lay littered about the floors, while the half-naked children were cowering round two or three smouldering cinders. The moss with which the chinks and crannies of their ill-protecting dwellings might have been stuffed was trailing in dirt and dust about the ground, while the back door of the huts, opening upon a most unsightly ditch, was left wide open for the fowls and ducks, which they are allowed to raise, to travel in and out, increasing the filth of the cabin by what they brought and left in every direction.

In the midst of the floor, or squatting round the cold hearth, would be four or five little children from four to ten years old, the latter all with babies in their arms, the care of the infants being taken from the mothers (who are driven afield as soon as they recover from child labor), and devolved upon these poor little nurses, as they are called, whose business it is to watch the infant, and carry it to its mother whenever it may require nourishment. To these hardly human little beings I addressed my remonstrances about the filth, cold, and unnecessary wretchedness of their room, bidding the older boys and girls kindle up the fire, sweep the floor, and expel the poultry. For a long time my very words seemed unintelligible to them, till, when I began to sweep and make up the fire, etc., they first fell to laughing, and then imitating me. The incrustations of dirt on their hands, feet, and faces were my next object of attack, and the stupid Negro practice (by-the-by, but a short time since nearly universal in enlightened Europe) of keeping the babies with their feet bare, and their heads, already well capped by nature with their woolly hair wrapped in half a dozen hot, filthy coverings.

The infirmary is a large two-story building terminating the broad orange-planted space between the two rows of houses which form the first settlement; it is built of whitewashed wood, and contains four large-sized rooms. But how shall I describe to you the spectacle which was presented to me on entering the first of these? But half the casements, of which there were six, were glazed, and these were obscured with dirt, almost as much as the other windowless ones were darkened by the dingy shutters, which the shivering inmates had fastened to in order to protect themselves from the cold. In the enormous chimney glimmered the powerless embers of a few sticks of wood, round which, however, as many of the sick women as could approach were cowering, some on wooden settles, most of them on the ground, excluding those who were too ill to rise; and these last poor wretches lay prostrate on the floor, without bed, mattress, or pillow, buried in tattered and filthy blankets, which, huddled round them as they lay strewed about, left hardly space to move upon the floor Here lay women expecting every hour the terrors and agonies of childbirth, others who had just brought their doomed offspring into the world, others who were groaning over the anguish and bitter disappointment of miscarriages—here lay some burning with fever, others chilled with cold and aching with rheumatism, upon the hard cold ground, the draughts and dampness of the atmosphere increasing their sufferings, and dirt, noise, and stench, and every aggravation of which sickness is capable, combined in their condition—here they lay like brute beasts, absorbed in physical suffering; unvisited by any of those Divine influences which may ennoble the dispensations of pain and illness, forsaken, as it seemed to me, of all good; and yet, 0 God, Thou surely hadst not forsaken them! Now pray take notice that this is the hospital of an estate where the owners are supposed to be humane, the overseer efficient and kind, and the Negroes remarkably well cared for and comfortable.

In the hospital were several sick babies, whose mothers were permitted to suspend their field labor in order to nurse them. Upon addressing some remonstrances to one of these, who, besides having a sick child, was ill herself, about the horribly dirty condition of her baby, she assured me that it was impossible for them to keep their children clean; that they went out to work at daybreak, and did not get their tasks done till evening, and that then they were too tired and worn out to do anything but throw themselves down and sleep. This statement of hers I mentioned on my return from the hospital, and the overseer appeared extremely annoyed by it, and assured me repeatedly that it was not true.

My next agreeable office in the infirmary this morning was superintending the washing of two little babies, whose mothers were nursing them with quite as much ignorance as zeal. Having ordered a large tub of water, I desired Rose to undress the little creatures and give ill them a warm bath; the mothers looked on in unutterable dismay; and one of them, just as her child was going to be put into the tub, threw into it all the clothes she had just taken off it, as she said, to break the unusual shock of the warm water. I immediately rescued them; not but what they were quite as much in want of washing as the baby, but it appeared, upon inquiry, that the woman had none others to dress the child in when it should have taken its bath; they were immediately wrung and hung by the fire to dry; and the poor little patients, having undergone this novel operation, were taken out and given to their mothers. Anything, however, much more helpless and inefficient than these poor ignorant creatures you cannot conceive; they actually seemed incapable of drying or dressing their own babies, and I had to finish their toilet myself. As it is only a very few years since the most absurd and disgusting customs have become exploded among ourselves, you will not, of course, wonder that these poor people pin up the lower part of their infants, bodies, legs, and all, in red flannel as soon as they are born, and keep them in the selfsame envelope till it literally falls off.

[February 1839] I was assailed by a small gang of children, clamoring for the indulgence of some meat, which they besought me to give them. Animal food is only allowed to certain of the harder working men, hedgers and ditchers, and to them only occasionally, and in very moderate rations. My small cannibals loss clamored round me for flesh, as if I had had a butcher's cart in my pocket, till I began to the laugh, and then to run, and away they came, like a pack of little black wolves, at my heels, shrieking: "Missis, you gib me piece meat —missis, you gib me meat," till I got home. At the door I found another petitioner, a young woman named Maria, who brought a fine child in her arms, and demanded a present of a piece of flannel. Upon my asking her who her husband was, she replied, without much hesitation, that she did not possess any such appendage. I gave another look at her bonny baby, and went into the house to get the flannel for her. I afterward heard from Mr. [Butler] that she and two other girls of her age, about seventeen, were the only instances on the island of women with illegitimate children.

After I had been in the house a little while, I was summoned out again to receive the petition of certain poor women in the family way to have their work lightened. I was, of course, obliged to tell them that I could not interfere in the matter; that their master was away, and that, when he came back, they must present their request to him: they said they had already begged "massa," and he had refused, and they thought, perhaps, if "missis" begged "massa" for them, he would lighten their task. Poor "missis," poor "massa," poor woman, that I am to have such prayers addressed to me! I had to tell them that, if they had already spoken to their master, I was afraid my doing so would be of no use, but that when he came back I would try; so, choking with crying, I turned away from them, and re-entered the house, to the chorus of "Oh, thank you, missis! God bless you, missis!"

[February 28-March 2, 1839] You will see how miserable the physical condition of many of these poor creatures is; and their physical condition, it is insisted by those who uphold this evil system, is the only part of it which is prosperous, happy, and compares well with that of Northern laborers. Judge from the details I now send you; and never forget, while reading them, that the people on this plantation are well off, and consider themselves well off, in comparison with the slaves on some of the neighboring estates.

Fanny has had six children; all dead but one. She came to beg to have her work in the field lightened.

Nanny has had three children; two of them are dead. She came to implore that the rule of sending them into the field three weeks after their confinement might be altered.

Leah, Caesar's wife, has had six children; three are dead.

Sophy, Lewis's wife, came to beg for some old linen. She is suffering fearfully; has had ten children; five of them are dead. The principal favor she asked was a piece of meat, which I gave her.

Sally, Scipio's wife, has had two miscarriages and three children born, one of whom is dead. She came complaining of incessant pain and weakness in her back. This woman was a mulatto daughter of a slave called Sophy, by a white man of the name of Walker, who visited the plantation.

Charlotte, Renty's wife, had had two miscarriages, and was with child again. She was almost crippled with rheumatism, and showed me a pair of poor swollen knees that made my heart ache. I have promised her a pair of flannel trousers, which I must forthwith set about making.

Sarah, Stephen's wife; this woman's case and history were alike deplorable. She had had four miscarriages, had brought seven children into the world, five of whom were dead, and was again with child. She complained of dreadful pains in the back, and an internal tumor which swells with the exertion of working in the fields; probably, I think, she is ruptured. She told me she had once been mad and had run into the woods, where she contrived to elude discovery for some time, but was at last tracked and brought back, when she was tied up by the arms, and heavy logs fastened to her feet, and was severely flogged. After this she contrived to escape again, and lived for some time skulking in the woods, and she supposes mad, for when she was taken again she was entirely naked. She subsequently recovered from this derangement, and seems now just like all the other poor creatures who come to me for help and pity. I suppose her constant childbearing and hard labor in the fields at the same time may have produced the temporary insanity.

Sukey, Bush's wife, only came to pay her respects. She had had four miscarriages; had brought eleven children into the world, five of whom are dead.

Molly, Quambo's wife, also only came to see me. Hers was the best account I have yet received; she had had nine children, and six of them were still alive.

This is only the entry for today, in my diary, of the people's complaints and visits. Can you conceive a more wretched picture than that which it exhibits of the conditions under which these women live?

2. A plantation nursery on the "Rice Coast" of South Carolina, ca. 1853

Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, with Remarks on Their Economy (New York, 1856),pp.423-425.

The cabin nearest the overseer's house was used as a nursery. Having driven up to this, Mr. X inquired first how the children were; whether there had been any births since his last visit; spoke to two convalescent young mothers, that were lounging on the floor of the portico, with the children, and then asked if there were any sick people.

"Nobody, oney dat boy, Sam, sar."

"What Sam is that?"

"Dat little Sam, sar; Tom's Sue's Sam, sar."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Don' 'spec dere's noting much de matter wid him now, sar. He came in Sa'dy, complainin' he had de stomach-ache, an' I gin him some ile, sar; 'spec he mus' be well, dis time, but he din go out dis mornin'."

"Well, I'll see to him."

Mr. X went to Tom's Sue's cabin, looked at the boy, and, concluding that he was well, though he lay abed, and pretended to cry with pain, ordered him to go out to work. Then, meeting the overseer, who was just riding away, on some business off the plantation, he remained some time in conversation with him, while I occupied myself in making a sketch of the nursery and the street of the settlement in my note-book. On the verandah and the steps of the nursery, there were twenty-seven children, most of them infants, that had been left there by their mothers, while they were working their tasks in the fields. They probably make a visit to them once or twice during the day, to nurse them, and receive them to take to their cabins, or where they like, when they have finished their tasks — generally in the middle of the afternoon. The older children were fed with porridge, by the general nurse. A number of girls, eight or ten years old, were occupied in holding and tending the youngest infants. Those a little older — the crawlers — were in the pen, and those big enough to toddle were playing on the steps, or before the house. Some of these, with two or three bigger ones, were singing and dancing about a fire that they had made on the ground. They were not at all disturbed or interrupted in their amusement by the presence of their owner and myself. At twelve years of age, the children are first put to regular field-work; until then no labor is required of them, except, perhaps, occasionally, they are charged with some light kind of duty, such as frightening birds from corn. When first sent to the field, one quarter of an able-bodied hand's day's work is ordinarily allotted to them, as their task.

But very few of the babies were in arms; such as were not, generally lay on the floor, rolling about, or sat still, sucking their thumbs. The nurse was a kind-looking old negro woman, with, no doubt, philoprogenitiveness well developed; but she paid very little attention to them, only sometimes chiding the older ones for laughing or singing too loud. I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not a baby of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three other plantation-nurseries which I have visited ... I make a note of it, as indicating how young the little twig is bent, how early the formation of habits commences, and that, even in babyhood, the "product of happiness is to be found, not so much in increasing your numerator, as in lessening your denominator."

1. Slave boys hired out, 1825

Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 13, 1825.

HIRELINGS—BOYS WANTED

The subscriber wishes to hire fifty boys from 12 to 18 years of age, to be employed in a tobacco factory, under a contract that he may retain them in his service for six years, paying hire for them annually.

The labour of boys so engaged is considerably more productive to their owners than if employed in any other business, and the yearly increase in their value enhanced in a much higher degree, while the service performed is easy and wholesome.

2. Slave boys hired out as blacksmith's apprentices, 1832

Richmond Enquirer, Dec. 28, 1832.

TO OWNERS OF SLAVES—The subscribers are in want of four or five boys as apprentices, to learn the blacksmith's business. Application may be made to James Bosher, or to