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THE 
 
 Slave 
 
 W H I T E 
 
 ANOTHER PICTURE 
 
 OF 
 
 SLAVE LIFE IN AMERICA. 
 
 BY 
 
 R. HILDRETH, 
 
 AUTHOR OF “THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.” 
 
 “ All men are by virtue equally free ancl independent, and have certain 
 inherent rights, of which, when they enter into society, they cannot by any 
 compact deprive or divest their posterity ; namely, the enjoyment of life and 
 liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing 
 happiness and safety .’’—Virginia Bill of Ritjhts, Art. I. 
 
 LONDON':-'- 
 
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 WALTER SCOTT r LTD.. ? 4 WARWICK LA.NE, 
 
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 THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
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 CHAPTER I. 
 
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 Y E who would know what evils man can inflict upon his 
 fellow without reluctance, hesitation, or regret ; ye who 
 would learn the limit of human endurance, and with 
 what bitter anguish and indignant hate the heart may swell, 
 and yet not burst — peruse these Memoirs ! 
 
 Mine are no silken sorrows, nor sentimental sufferings ; but 
 that stern reality of actual woe, the story of which may perhaps 
 touch even some of those who are every day themselves the 
 authors of misery the same that I endured. For however the 
 practice of tyranny may have deadened every bitter emotion, 
 and the prejudices of education and interest may have 
 hardened the heart, humanity will still extort an involuntary 
 tribute ; and men will grow uneasy at hearing of those 
 deeds, of which the doing does not cost them a moment’s 
 inquietude. 
 
 Should I accomplish no more than this ; should I be able, 
 through the triple steel with which the love of money and the 
 lust of domination has encircled it, to reach one bosom — let 
 the story of my wrongs summon up, in the mind of a single 
 oppressor, the dark and dreaded images of his own misdeeds, 
 and teach his conscience how to torture him with the picture 
 of himself, and I shall be content. Next to the tears and the 
 exultations of the emancipated, the remorse of tyrants is the 
 choicest offering upon the altar of liberty ! 
 
 But perhaps something more may be possible ; not likely, 
 but to be imagined ; and it may be, even faintly to be hoped. 
 Perhaps within some youthful breast, in which the evil spirits 
 of avarice and tyranny have as yet failed to gain unlimited 
 control, I may be able to rekindle the smothered and expiring 
 embers of humanity. Spite of habits and prejudices inculcated 
 

 * - THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 r> r *' *~ *'*' * r ^ % 
 
 and fostered: from his earliest childhood, spite of the entice- 
 ments of' vve'alfh and political distinction, and the still stronger 
 enticements joT indolence and ease, spite of the pratings of 
 hollow-heaTted 1 'priests, spite of the arguments of time-serving 
 sophists, spite of the hesitation and terrors of the weak-spirited 
 and wavering ; in spite of evil precept and evil example, he 
 dares — that generous and heroic youth ! — to cherish and avow 
 the feelings of a many 
 
 Another Saul among the prophets, he prophesies terrible 
 things in the ear of insolent and luxurious tyranny ; in the 
 midst of tyrants he dares to preach the good tidings of liberty ; 
 in the very school of oppression, he stands boldly forth the 
 advocate of human rights ! , 
 
 He breaks down the ramparts of prejudice ; he dissipates 
 the illusions of avarice and pride ; he repeals the enact- 
 ments which, though wanting every feature of justice, have 
 sacrilegiously usurped the sacred form of law 1 He snatches 
 the whip from the hand of the master ; he breaks for ever the 
 fetter of the slave ! 
 
 In place of reluctant toil, drudging for another, he brings in 
 smiling industry to labour for herself! All nature seems to 
 exult in the change ! The earth, no longer made barren by 
 the tears and the blood of her children, pours forth her 
 treasures with redoubled liberality. Existence ceases to be 
 torture ; and to live is no longer, to millions, the certainty of 
 being miserable. 
 
 Chosen Instrument of Mercy ! Illustrious Deliverer ! Come ! 
 come quickly ! 
 
 Come ! — lest, if thy coming be delayed, there come in thy 
 place, he who will be at once Deliverer and Avenger 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The county in which I was born was then, and for aught I 
 know, may still be, one of the richest and most populous in 
 eastern Virginia. My father, Colonel Charles Moore, was the 
 head of one of the most considerable and influential families 
 in that part of the country ; and family, however little weight 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 5 
 
 it. may have in other parts of America, at the time I was born, 
 was a thing of no slight consequence in lower Virginia. 
 Nature and education had combined to qualify Colonel Moore 
 to fill with credit the station in which his birth had placed 
 him. He was a finished aristocrat; and such he showed 
 himself in every word, look, and action. There was in his 
 bearing a conscious superiority which few could resist, softened 
 . and rendered even agreeable by a gentleness and suavity, 
 which flattered, pleased, and captivated. In fact, he was 
 familiarly spoken of among his friends and neighbours as the 
 faultless pattern of a true Virginian gentleman— an encomium 
 by which they supposed themselves to convey, in the most 
 emphatic manner, the highest possible praise. 
 
 When the war of the American Revolution broke out, Colonel 
 Moore was a very young man. By birth and education he 
 belonged, as I have said, to the aristocratic party, which being 
 aristocratic, was, of course, conservative. But the impulses of 
 youth and patriotism were too strong to be resisted. He 
 espoused with zeal the cause of liberty, and by his political 
 activity and influence contributed not a little to its success. 
 
 Of liberty, indeed, he was always a warm and energetic 
 admirer. Among my earliest recollections of him is the 
 earnestness with which, among his friends and guests, he used 
 to vindicate the cause of the French Revolution, then going 
 on. Of that revolution, throughout its whole progress, he was 
 a most eloquent advocate and apologist ; and though I under- 
 stood little or nothing of what he said, the spirit and eloquence 
 with which he spoke could not fail to affect me. The rights of 
 man and the rights of human nature were phrases which, 
 although at that time I was quite unconscious of their mean- 
 ing, I heard so often repeated, that they made an indelible 
 impression upon my memory, and in after years frequently 
 recurred to my recollection. 
 
 But Colonel Moore was not a mere talker ; he 'had the 
 credit of acting up to his principles, and was universally 
 regarded as a man of the greatest good nature, honour, and 
 uprightness. Several promising young men, who afterwards 
 rose to eminence, were indebted for their first start in life to 
 his patronage and assistance. He settled half the differences 
 in the county, and never seemed so well pleased as when by 
 preventing a lawsuit or a duel, he hindered an accidental and 
 perhaps trifling dispute from degenerating into a bitter, if not a 
 
6 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 fatal, quarrel. The tenderness of his heart, his ready, active 
 benevolence, and his sympathy with misfortune, were traits in 
 his character spoken of by everybody. _ 
 
 Had I been allowed to choose my own paternity, could 1 
 possibly have selected a more desirable father ? But by the 
 laws and customs of Virginia, it is not the father, but the 
 mother, whose rank and condition determine that of the child ; 
 and, alas ! my mother was a concubine, and a slave ! 
 
 Yet those who beheld her for the first time would haidly 
 have imagined, or would willingly have forgotten, that she was 
 connected with an ignoble and degraded race. Humble as 
 her station might be, she could at least boast possession of the 
 most brilliant beauty. The trace of African blood, by which 
 her veins were contaminated, was distinctly visible \ but the 
 tint which it imparted to her complexion only served to give a 
 peculiar richness to the blush that mantled over her cheek. 
 Her long black hair, which she understood how to arrange 
 with an artful simplicity, and the flashing of her dark eyes, 
 which changed their expression with every change of feeling, 
 corresponded exactly to her complexion, and completed a 
 picture which might perhaps be matched in Spain or Italy, but 
 for which it would be in vain to seek a rival among the pale- 
 faced and languid beauties of eastern Virginia. 
 
 I describe her more like a lover than a son. But, in truth, 
 her beauty was so uncommon as to draw my attention while I 
 was yet a child \ and many an hour have I watched her, almost 
 with a lover’s earnestness, while she fondled me on her lap, and 
 tears and smiles chased each other alternately over a face, the 
 expression of which was ever changing, yet always beautiful. 
 She was the most affectionate of mothers ; the mixture of 
 tenderness, grief, and pleasure, with which she always seemed 
 to regard me, gave a new vivacity to her beauty ; and it was 
 probably this which so early and so strongly fixed my attention. 
 
 But I was very far from being her only admirer. Her 
 beauty was notorious through all that part of the country ] and 
 Colonel Moore had been frequently tempted to sell her by the 
 offer of very high prices. All such offers, however, he had 
 steadily rejected ) forjjie especially prided himself upon own- 
 > | ing the swiftest horse, the handsomest wench, and the finest 
 ipack of hounds in the “Ancient Dominion.” \ 
 
 • Now, it may seem odd to some people, in some parts of the 
 world, that Colonel Moore, being such a man as I have 
 
§ 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 1 
 
 described him, should keep a mistress and be the father of 
 illegitimate children. Such persons, however, must be totally 
 ignorant of the state of things in the slave-holding states of 
 America. 
 
 Colonel Moore was married to an amiable woman, whom I 
 dare say he loved and respected ; and in the course of time she 
 made him the happy father of two sons and as many daughters. 
 This circumstance, however, did not hinder him, any more 
 than it does any other American planter, from giving, in the 
 meantime, a very free indulgence to his amorous temperament 
 among his numerous slaves at Spring-Meadow — for so his 
 estate was called. Many of the young women occasionally 
 boasted of his attentions ; though generally, at any one time, 
 he did not have more than one or two acknowledged 
 favourites. 
 
 My mother was for several years distinguished by Colonel 
 Moore’s very particular regard, and she brought him no less 
 than six children, all of whom, except myself, who was the 
 eldest, were lucky enough to die in infancy. 
 
 From my mother I inherited some imperceptible portion of 
 African blood, and with it, the base and cursed condition of e. 
 slave. But though born a slave, I inherited all my father’s 
 proud spirit, sensitive feelings, and ardent temperament; anc 
 as regards natural endowments, whether of mind or body, I am 
 bold to assert that he had more reason to be proud of me than 
 of either of his legitimate and acknowledged sons. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 That education is the most effectual which commences earliest 
 —a maxim well understood in that part of the world in which 
 it was my misfortune to be born. As it sometimes happens 
 there that one-half of a man’s children are born masters and 
 the other half slaves, it has. become sufficiently obvious how 
 necessary it is to begin by times the course of discipline proper 
 to train them up for these very different situations. It is, 
 accordingly, the general custom, that young master, almost 
 from the hour of his birth, has allotted to him some little slave 
 
8 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 near his own age, upon whom he begins, from the time he can 
 go alone, to practise his apprenticeship of tyranny. It so 
 happened that within less than a year after my birth, Colonel 
 Moore’s wife presented him with her second son, James ; and 
 while we both slept unconscious in our cradles, I was duly 
 assigned over and appointed to be the body-servant of my 
 younger brother. It is in this capacity, of Master James’s boy, 
 that, following back the traces of memory, I first discover 
 myself. 
 
 The natural and usual consequences of giving one child 
 absolute authority over another may be easily imagined. The 
 love of domination is perhaps the strongest of our passions, and 
 it is surprising how soon the veriest child will become perfect 
 in the practice of tyranny. Of this, Colonel Moore’s eldest 
 son, William, or Master William, as he was called at Spring- 
 Meadow, was a striking instance. He was the terror and 
 bugbear, not only of Joe, his own boy, but of all the children 
 on the place. That unthinking and irrational delight in the 
 exercise of cruelty, which is sometimes displayed by a wayward 
 child, seemed in him almost a passion ; and this passion, by 
 perpetual indulgence, was soon fostered into a habit. When 
 any delinquent slave was to be punished, he contrived if 
 possible to find it out, and to be present at the infliction ; so 
 that he soon became an adept in all the horrible practices and 
 disgusting slang of an overseer. He always went armed with a 
 whip, twice as long as himself, and upon the least opposition 
 to his whims and caprices, was ready to show his skill in the 
 use of it. All this he took some little pains to conceal from his 
 father ; who, however, was pretty careful not to see what he 
 could by no means approve, but what, at the same time — 
 indulgent father as he was — he would have found it very 
 difficult to prevent or cure. 
 
 Master James, to whose service I was particularly appointed, 
 was a very different boy. Sickly and weak from his birth, his 
 temper was gentle and his mind effeminate. He had an 
 affectionate disposition, and soon conceived a fondness for me, 
 which I very thankfully returned. He protected me from the 
 tyranny of Master William by his entreaties, his tears, and what 
 had much more weight with that amiable youth, by threats of 
 complaining to his father, and making a complete exposure of 
 his brutal and cruel behaviour. 
 
 I soon learned to put up with and to pardon an occasional 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 9 
 
 pettishness _ and ill-humour, for which Master James’s bad 
 health furnished a ready excuse ; and by flattery and apparent 
 obsequiousness, for a child learns and practises such arts as 
 readily as a man, I presently came to have a great influence 
 over him. He was the master and I the slave; but while we 
 were both children, this artificial distinction had less potency, 
 and I found little difficulty in maintaining that actual pre- 
 minence to which my superior vigour both of body and mind 
 so justly entitled me. 
 
 When Master James had reached the age of five years, it 
 was judged expedient by his father that he should be initiated 
 into the rudiments of learning. To learn the letters was a 
 laborious undertaking enough— but for putting them into 
 v ords, my young master seemed to have no genius whatever. 
 He was not destitute of ambition ; he was indeed very 
 desirous to learn ; it was the ability — not the inclination— that 
 was wanting. In this difficulty he had recourse to me, who 
 was on all occasions his chief counsellor. By putting our 
 heads together we soon hit upon a plan. My memory was 
 lemarkably good, while that of my poor little master was very 
 miserable. We arranged, therefore, that the family tutor 
 should first teach me the letters and the abs, which my strong 
 memory, we thought, would enable me easily to retain, and 
 which I was gradually, and between plays, as opportunity served, 
 to instil into the mind of Master James. This plan we found 
 to answer admirably. Neither the tutor nor Colonel Moore 
 made any objection to it ; for all that Colonel Moore desired 
 was, that his son should learn to read ; and the tutor was very 
 willing to shift off the most laborious part of his task upon 
 my shoulders. 
 
 As yet, no one had dreamed of those barbarous and detest- j 
 able laws — unparalleled in any other codes, and destined to be 
 the everlasting disgrace of America— by which it has been 
 made a crime, punishable with fine and imprisonment, to teach 
 a slave to read. 
 
 It is not enough that custom and the proud scorn of unfeel- 
 ing tyranny unite to keep the slave in hopeless and helpless 
 ignorance, but the laws too have openly become a party to 
 this accursed conspiracy ! Yes, I believe they would tear out 
 our very eyes — and that too by virtue of a regularly enacted 
 statute — had they ingenuity enough to invent a way of enabling 
 us to drudge and delve without them ! 
 
so 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 I soon learned to read, and before long I made Mastet 
 James almost as good a reader as myself. As he was subject 
 to frequent fits of illness, which confined him to the house, 
 and disabled him from indulging in those active sports to 
 which boys are chiefly devoted, his father obtained for him a 
 large collection of books adapted to his age, which he 
 and I used to read over together, and in which we took great 
 delight. 
 
 In the further progress of my young master’s studies I was 
 still his associate ; for though the plan of teaching me first, in 
 order that I might afterwards teach him, was pursued no 
 longer, yet as I had a desire to learn, as well as a quick 
 apprehension, I found no difficulty in extracting every day 
 from Master James the substance of his lessons. Indeed, if 
 there was any difficulty in them, he was in the constant habit 
 of appealing to me for assistance. In this way I acquired 
 some elementary knowledge of arithmetic and geography, and 
 even a smattering of Latin. 
 
 These acquisitions, however, I took great pains to conceal, 
 since even the fact that I could read, though it increased my 
 consequence among the servants, exposed me to a good deal 
 of ridicule, to which I was very sensitive. I was- not looked 
 upon, as I suppose they now look upon a slave who knows 
 how to read, and who exhibits some marks of sense and 
 ability, as a dreadful monster breathing war and rebellion, and 
 . plotting to cut the throats of all the good people in America ; 
 I was regarded rather as a sort of prodigy — like a three-legged 
 hen, or a sheep with four eyes ; a thing to be produced and 
 exhibited for the entertainment of strangers. Frequently at a 
 dinner-party, after the Madeira had circulated pretty freely, I 
 was set to read paragraphs in the newspapers, to amuse my 
 master’s tipsy guests, and was puzzled, perplexed, and tor- 
 mented, by all sorts of absurd, ridiculous, and impertinent 
 questions, which I was obliged to answer under the penalty of 
 having a wine-glass, a bottle, or a plate flung at my head. 
 Master William especially, as he was prevented from using 
 his whip upon me as freely as he wished, strove to indemnify 
 himself by making me the butt of his wit. He took great 
 pride in the nick-name of the “learned nigger,” which he had 
 invented, and always applied to me — though, God knows that 
 my cheek was little less fair than his, and I cannot help hoping 
 that, at least, my soul was whiter. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 These, it may be thought, were trifling vexations. In truth, 
 they were so ; but it cost me many a struggle before I could 
 learn to endure them with any tolerable patience. I was com- 
 pensated in some measure by the pleasure I took in listening, 
 as I stood behind my master’s chair, to the conversation of the 
 company — I mean their conversation before they set regularly 
 to drinking ; for every dinner-party was sure to wind up with 
 a general frolic. 
 
 Colonel Moore kept an open house, and almost every day 
 he had some of his friends, relatives, or neighbours, at his 
 table. He was himself an eloquent and most agreeable talker ; 
 his voice was soft and musical, and he always expressed him- 
 self with a great deal of point and vivacity. Many of his 
 guests were well-informed men ; and though politics was 
 always the leading topic of conversation, a great variety of 
 other subjects were occasionally discussed. Colonel Moore\ 
 as I have already observed, was himself a warm democrat — 
 republican was then the phrase — for democrat, however fond 
 the Americans have since become of the name, was at that 
 time regarded as an epithet of reproach. The greater part ot 
 those who frequented Colonel Moore’s house entertained the 
 same liberal opinions on political subjects. I listened to their 
 conversation with eagerness and pleasure ; and when I heard 
 them talk of equal rights, and declaim against tyranny and 
 oppression, my heart would swell with emotions of which I 
 scarcely understood the meaning. All this time, I made no 
 personal application of what I heard and felt. It was only the 
 abstract beauty of liberty and equality of which I had learned 
 to be enamoured. It was the French republicans with whom 
 I sympathised ; it was the Austrian and English tyrants against 
 whom my indignation was roused; it was John Adams and his 
 atrocious gag-law. I had not yet learned to think about 
 myself. What I saw around me I had always been accustomed 
 to see, and it appeared, as it were, the fixed order of nature. 
 Though born a slave, I had, as yet, experienced scarcely any 
 thing of the miseries of that wretched condition. I was 
 singularly fortunate in my young master, to whom I was, in 
 many respects, as much a companion as a servant. By his 
 favour, and through means of my mother, who still continued 
 a favourite with Colonel Moore, I enjoyed more indulgences 
 than any other servant on the place. Comparing my situa- 
 tion with that of the field-hands, I might pronounce myself 
 
12 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 fortunate indeed ; and though exposed to occasional morti- 
 fications, enough to give me already a foretaste of the bitter 
 cup which every one who lives a slave must swallow, my youth 
 and the buoyant vivacity of my temper as yet sustained me. 
 
 At this time I did not know that Colonel Moore was my 
 father. That gentleman was indebted for no inconsiderable 
 part of his high reputation to a very strict attention to those 
 conventional observances which so often usurp the place of 
 morals. Some observances of this sort, which prevail in 
 America, are sufficiently remarkable. It is considered, for 
 v instance, no crime whatever for a master to be, if he chooses, 
 the father of every infant slave born upon his plantation. Yet 
 it is esteemed a very grave breach of propriety, indeed almost 
 an unpardonable crime, for such a father ever, in any way, to 
 acknowledge or take any notice of any of his unfortunate 
 children. Imperious custom demands that he should treat 
 them, in every respect, like his other slaves. If he drive them 
 into the field to labour, if he sell them at auction to the 
 highest bidder, it is all well. But if he audaciously undertake 
 to exhibit towards them, in any way, the slightest indication of 
 paternal tenderness, he may be sure that his character will be 
 assailed by the tongue of universal slander ; that his every 
 weak point and unjustifiable action will be carefully sought 
 out, malignantly magnified, and ostentatiously exposed ; that 
 he will be compelled to run a sort of moral gauntlet, and will 
 be represented among all the better sort of people as everything 
 that is infamous, base, and contemptible. 
 
 Colonel Moore was far too wise a man to entertain the 
 slightest idea of exposing himself to anything of that sort. He 
 had always kept the best society, — and though he might be a 
 democrat in politics, he was certainly very much of an 
 aristocrat and an exclusive in his feelings, Of course, he had 
 the same sort of indescribable horror at the thought of violating 
 any of the settled proprieties of the society in which he moved 
 that a modern belle has of cotton lace, or a modern dandy of 
 an iron fork. This being the case, nobody will wonder — so 
 far at least as Colonel Moore had any control over the matter 
 — that I w r as still ignorant who my father was. 
 
 But though a secret to me, it certainly was not so to Colonel 
 Moore’s friends and visitors. If nothing else had betrayed it, 
 the striking resemblance between us would certainly have 
 done so ; and although that same regard to propriety , which 
 
 * 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 *3 
 
 prevented Colonel Moore from ever noticing the relationship, 
 also tied up the tongues of his guests, yet, after I had learned 
 the secret, there immediately occurred to my mind the true 
 explanation of certain sly jests and distant allusions, which had 
 sometimes been dropped towards the end of a dinner, by some 
 of those guests whom deep potations had inspired at once with 
 wit and veracity. These brilliancies, of which I had never 
 been able to understand the meaning, were always ill received 
 by Colonel Moore, and by all the soberer part of the company, 
 and were frequently followed by a command to me and the 
 other servants to quit the room ; but why or wherefore, till I 
 became possessed of the key above mentioned, I was always at 
 a great loss to determine. 
 
 The secret which my father did not choose, and which my 
 mother did not dare to communicate, I might easily have 
 obtained from my fellow-servants. But at this time, like most l 
 of the lighter-complexioned slaves, I felt a sort of contempl ! 
 for my duskier brothers in misfortune. I kept myself as much 
 as possible at a distance from them, and scorned to associate 
 with men a little darker than myself. So ready are slaves to 
 imbibe all the ridiculous prejudices of their oppressors, and 
 themselves to add new links to the chain which deprives them 
 of their liberty ! 
 
 But let me do my father justice ; for I do not believe that 
 he was totally destitute of a father’s feelings. Though he 
 never made the slightest acknowledgment of the claims which 
 I had upon him, yet I am sure, in his own heart, he did not 
 totally deny their validity. There was a tone of good-natured 
 indulgence whenever he spoke to me — an air of kindness, 
 which, though he always had it, seemed toward me to have in 
 it something peculiar. At any rate, he succeeded in cap- 
 tivating my affections ; for though I regarded him only as my 
 master, I loved him very sincerely. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I was about seventeen years old when my mother was 
 attacked by a fever, which proved fatal to her. She early had 
 a presentiment of her fate ; and before the disorder had made 
 
14 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 any great progress, she sent me word that she desired to see 
 me. I found her in bed. She begged the woman who 
 nursed her to leave us together, and bade me sit down by her 
 bed-side. Having told me that she feared she was going to 
 die, she could not think it kind to me, she said, to leave the 
 world without first telling me a secret, which possibly I might 
 find hereafter of some consequence. I begged her to go on, 
 and waited with impatience for the promised information. 
 She began with a short account of her own life. Her mother 
 was a slave ; her father was a certain Colonel Randolph — a 
 scion of one of the great Virginian families. She had been 
 raised as a lady’s maid, and on the marriage of Colonel Moore, 
 had been purchased by him and presented to his wife. She 
 was then quite a girl. As she grew older and her beauty 
 became more noticeable, she found much favour in the eyes of 
 her master. She had a neat little house, with a double set of 
 rooms — an arrangement as much for Colonel Moore’s con- 
 venience as her own ; and though some light tasks of needle- 
 work were sometimes required of her, yet as nobody chose 
 to quarrel with master’s favourite, she lived, henceforward, 
 a very careless, indolent, but as she told me, a very unhappy 
 life. 
 
 For a part of this unhappiness she was indebted to herself. 
 The air of superiority she assumed in her intercourse with the 
 other servants made them all hate her, and induced them to 
 improve every opportunity of vexing and mortifying her ; and 
 to all sorts of feminine mortifications she was as sensitive as 
 any belle that ever existed. But though vain of her beauty 
 and her master’s favour, she was not ill-tempered; and the 
 foolish pride from which she suffered, sprung in her, as a 
 similar feeling did in me, from a groundless, though common 
 prejudice. Indeed, our situation was so superior to that of 
 most of the other slaves, that we naturally imagined ourselves, 
 in some sort, a superior race. It was doubtless under the 
 influence of this feeling that my mother, having told me who 
 my father was, observed with a smile and a self-complacent 
 air, which even the tremors of her fever did not prevent from 
 being apparent, that both on the father’s and the mother’s 
 side, I had running in my veins the best blood of Virginia — 
 the blood, she added, of the Moores and the Randolphs ! 
 
 Alas ! she did not seem to recollect that' though I might 
 count all the nobles of Virginia among my ancestors, one drop 
 
THE WHITE. SLAVE. 
 
 15 
 
 of blood imported from Africa — though that, too, might be 
 the blood of kings and chieftains — would be enough to taint 
 the whole pedigree, and to condemn me to perpetual slavery, 
 even in the house of my own father ! 
 
 The information which my mother communicated made 
 little impression upon me at the moment. My principal 
 anxiety was for her; for she had always been the tenderest 
 and most affectionate of parents. The progress of her dis- 
 order was rapid, and on the third day she ceased to live. 
 
 I lamented her with the sincerest grief. The sharpness of 
 my sorrow was soon over ; but my spirits did not seem to 
 regain their former tone. The thoughtless gaiety, which 
 till now had shed a sort of sunshine over my life, seemed 
 to desert me. My thoughts began to recur very frequently 
 to the information which my mother had communicated. I 
 hardly know how to describe the effect which it seemed to 
 have upon me. Nor is it easy to tell what were its actual 
 effects, or what ought to be ascribed to other and more 
 general causes. Perhaps that revolution of feeling, which I 
 now experienced, should be attributed in a great measure to 
 the change from boyhood to manhood, through which I was 
 passing. Hitherto things had seemed to happen like the 
 events of a dream, without touching me deeply or affecting 
 me permanently. I was sometimes vexed and dissatisfied; 
 I had my occasional sorrows and complaints. But those 
 sorrows were soon over, and as after summer showers the 
 sun shines out the brighter, so my transient sadness was 
 soon succeeded by a more lively gaiety, which, as soon as 
 immediate grievances were forgotten, burst forth, unsubdued 
 either by reflections on the past, or anxieties for the future. 
 In that gaiety there was indeed scarcely anything of sub- 
 stantial pleasure ; it originated rather in a careless insensibility. 
 It was like the glare of the moonbeams, bright, but cold. 
 Such as it was, however, it was far more comfortable than 
 the state of feeling by which it now began to be succeeded. 
 My mind seemed to be filled with indefinite anxieties, of 
 which I could divine neither the causes nor the cure. There 
 was, as it were, a heavy weight upon my bosom, an unsatisfied 
 craving for something, I knew not what, a longing which I 
 could do nothing to satisfy, because I could not tell its 
 object. I would be often lost in thought, but my mind 
 did not seem to fix itself to any certain aim, and after hours 
 
16 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 of apparently the deepest meditation, I should have been 
 very much at a loss to tell about what I had been thinking. 
 
 But sometimes my reflections would take a more definite 
 shape. I would begin to consider what I was and what I 
 had to anticipate. The son of a freeman, yet born a slave ! 
 Endowed by nature with abilities which I should never be 
 permitted to exercise j possessed of knowledge which already 
 I found it expedient to conceal 1 The slave of my own 
 father, the servant of my own brother, a bounded, limited, 
 confined, and captive creature, who did not dare to go out 
 of sight of his master’s house without a written permission 
 to do so ! Destined to be the sport of I knew not whose 
 caprices ; forbidden in anything to act for myself, or to con- 
 sult my own happiness ; compelled to labour all my life 
 at another’s bidding ; and liable every hour and instant to 
 oppressions the most outrageous, and degradations the most 
 humiliating ! 
 
 These reflections soon grew so bitter that I struggled hard 
 to suppress them. But that was not alwavs in my power. 
 Again and again, in spite of all my efforts, these hateful 
 ideas would start up and sting me into anguish. 
 
 My young master still continued kind as ever. I was 
 changing to a man, but he still remained a boy. His pro- 
 tracted ill-health, which had checked his growth, appeared 
 also to retard his mental maturity. He seemed every day 
 to fall more and more under mv influence ; and every day 
 my attachment to him grew stronger. He was, in fact, my 
 sole hope. While I remained with him I might reasonably 
 expect to escape the utter bitterness of slavery. In his eyes 
 I was not a mere servant. He regarded me rather as a loved 
 and trusted companion. Indeed, though he had the name 
 and prerogatives of master, I was much less under his control 
 than he was under mine. There was between us something 
 of a brotherly affection, at least of that kind which may 
 exist between foster brothers, though neither of us ever 
 alluded to our actual relationship, and he, probably, was 
 ignorant of it. 
 
 I loved Master James as well as ever ; but towards Colonel 
 Moore, my feelings underwent a rapid and a radical change. 
 While I considered myself merely as his slave, his apparent 
 kindness had gained my affections, and there was nothing 
 I would not have done or suffered for so good-natured and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. I? 
 
 condescending a master. But after I had learned to look 
 upon myself as his son, I began to feel that I might justly 
 clairn as a right what I had till now regarded as a pure 
 gratuity. I began to feel that I might claim much more — 
 even an equal birth-right with my brethren. Occasionally I 
 had read the Bible, and I now turned with new interest to 
 the story of Hagar, the bond-woman, and Ishmael, her son ; 
 and as I read how an angel came to their relief, when the 
 hard-hearted Abraham had driven them into the wilderness, 
 there seemed to grow up within me a wild, strange, uncertain 
 hope, that in some accident, I knew not what, I too might 
 find succour and relief. At the same time, with this irrational 
 hope, a new spirit of bitterness burst in upon my soul. Un- 
 consciously I clenched my hands, and set my teeth, and 
 fancied myself, as it were, another Ishmael, wandering in 
 the wilderness, every man’s hand against me, and my hand 
 against every man. The injustice of my unnatural parent 
 stung me deeper and deeper, and all my love for him was 
 turned into hate. The atrocity of those laws which made 
 me a slave a slave in the house of my own father — seemed 
 to glare before my too prophetic eyes in letters of blood. 
 Young as I was, and as yet untouched, I trembled for the 
 future, and cursed the country and the hour that gave me 
 birth ! 
 
 I endeavoured as much as possible to conceal these new 
 feelings with which I was tormented; and as deceit is one 
 of those defences against tyranny of which a slave early 
 learns to avail himself, I was not unsuccessful. My young 
 master would sometimes find me m tears ; and sometimes, 
 when I would be lost in thought, he complained of my in- 
 attention. But I put him off with plausible excuses ; and 
 though he suspected there was something which I did not 
 tell him, and would frequently say to me, “Come, Archy, 
 boy, let me know what it is that troubles you,” I made 
 light of the matter, and laughed off h.s suspicions. 
 
 I was now about to lose this kind master, in whose tender- 
 ness and affection I found the sole palliative that could make 
 slavery tolerable. His health, which had always been bad, 
 grew rapidly worse, and confined him first to his chamber 
 and then to his bed. I nursed him during his whole illness 
 with a mother’s tenderness and assiduity. Never was master 
 more faithfully served;— but it was the friend, not the slave. 
 
i8 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 who rendered these attentions. He was not insensible to 
 my services ; he did not seem to like that anyone but I 
 should be about him, and it was only from my hand that 
 he would take his physic or his food. But it was not in 
 the power of physician or of nurse to save him. He wasted 
 daily, and grew weaker every hour. The fatal crisis soon 
 came. His weeping friends were collected about his bed, 
 but the tears they shed were not as bitter as mine. Almost 
 with his last breath he recommended me to the good graces 
 of his father ; but the man who had closed his heart to 
 the promptings of paternal tenderness was not likely to give 
 much weight to the request of a dying son. He bade his 
 friends farewell — he pressed my hand in his ; and, with a 
 gentle sigh, he expired in my arms. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The family of Colonel Moore knew well how truly I had loved, 
 and how faithfully I had served my young master. They 
 respected the profound depth of my grief, and for a week or two 
 I was suffered to weep on unmolested. My feelings were no 
 longer of that acute and piercing kind which I have described 
 in the preceding chapter. The temperament of the mind is 
 for ever changing. That state of preternatural sensibility, of 
 which I have attempted to give an idea, had disappeared when 
 my attention became wholly occupied in the care of my dying 
 master. It was succeeded by a dull and stupid sorrow. 
 Apparently I now had increased cause for agitation and alarm. 
 That which I then dreaded had happened. My young master, 
 upon whom all my hopes were suspended, lived no longer, and 
 I knew not what was to become of me. But the fit of fear 
 and anxious anticipation was over ; and I now waited my fate 
 with a sort of stupid and careless indifference. 
 
 Though not called upon to do it, I continued as usual to 
 wait upon my master’s table. For several days I took my 
 place instinctively near where Master James’s chair ought to 
 have stood ; till the sight of the vacant place drove me in 
 tears to the opposite corner. In the meantime, nobody 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE, 
 
 19 
 
 called upon me to do anything, or seemed to notice that 
 I was present. Even Master William made an effort to 
 suppress his habitual insolence. 
 
 but this could not last long. Indeed it was a stretch of 
 indulgence, which no one but a favourite servant could have 
 expected ; since slaves, in general, are thought to have no 
 business to be sorry — if it makes them unable to work. 
 
 One morning, after breakfast, Master William, having 
 discussed his toast and coffee, began by telling his father that, 
 in his opinion, the servants at Spring-Meadow were a great 
 deal too indulgently treated. He was by this time a smart, 
 dashing, elegant young man, having returned upwards of a 
 year before from college, and quite lately, from Charleston, in 
 South Carolina, whither he had been to spend a winter, and, 
 as his father expressed it, to wear off the rusticity of the 
 school-room. It was there, perhaps, that he had learned the 
 new precepts of humanity which he was now preaching. He 
 declared that any tenderness towards a servant only tended to 
 make him insolent and discontented, and was quite thrown 
 away on the ungrateful rascals. Then looking about, as if 
 in search of some victim upon whom to practise a doctrine so 
 consonant to his own disposition, his eye lighted upon me. 
 “ There’s that boy Archy — I’ll bet a hundred to one I could 
 make him one of the best servants in the world. He’s a bright 
 fellow naturally, and nothing has spoiled him but poor 
 James’s over indulgence. Come, father, just be good enough 
 to give him to me ; I want another servant most devilishly.” 
 
 Without stopping for an answer, he hastened out of the 
 room, having, as he said, two jockey races to attend that morn- 
 ing ; and what was more, a cock-fight into the bargain. There 
 was nobody else at the table. Colonel Moore turned towards 
 me. He began with commending very highly my faithful 
 attachment to his poor son James. As he mentioned his son’s 
 name the tears stood in his eyes, and for a moment or two he 
 was unable to speak. He recovered himself presently, and 
 added — “ I hope now you will transfer all this same zeal and 
 affection to Master William.” 
 
 These words roused me in a moment. I knew Master 
 William to be a tyrant, from whose soul custom had long since 
 obliterated what little humanity nature had bestowed upon 
 him ; and to judge from what he he had let drop that morning, 
 he had of late improved upon his natural inclination for cruelty, 
 
20 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 and had proceeded to the final length of reducing tyranny into 
 a system and a science. I knew, too, that from childhood he 
 had entertained a particular spite against me ; and I dreaded 
 lest he was already devising the means of inflicting upon me 
 with interest all those insults and injuries from which the 
 protection of his younger brother had hitherto shielded me. 
 
 It was with horror and alarm that I found myself in danger 
 of falling into such hands. I threw myself at my master’s feet, 
 and besought him, with all the eloquence of grief and fear, not 
 to give me to Master William. The terms in which I spoke of 
 bis son, though I chose the mildest I could think of, and the 
 horror I expressed at the thoughts of becoming his servant, 
 though I endeavoured as much as possible to save the father’s 
 feelings, seemed to make him angry. The smile left his lip, 
 and his brow grew dark and contracted. I began to despair of 
 escaping the wretched fate that awaited me ; and my despair 
 drove me to a very rash and foolish action. For, emboldened 
 by' the danger of becoming the slave of Master William, I 
 dared to hint — though distantly and obscurely — at the 
 information which my mother had communicated on her 
 death-bed ; and I even ventured something like a half appeal 
 to Colonel Moore’s paternal tenderness. At first he did not 
 seem to understand me ; but the moment he began to compre- 
 hend my meaning, his face grew black as a thunder-cloud, then 
 became pale, and immediately was suffused with a burning 
 blush, in which shame and rage were equally commingled. I 
 now gave myself up for lost, and expected an instant outbreak 
 of fury; — but, after a momentary struggle, Colonel Moore 
 seemed to regain his composure; even the habitual smile 
 returned to his lips ; and without taking any notice of my last 
 appeal, or giving any further signs of having understood it, he 
 merely remarked that he did not know how to refuse Master 
 William’s request, nor could he comprehend the meaning of 
 my reluctance. It was mighty foolish ; still he was willing to 
 indulge me so far as to allow me the choice of entering into 
 Master William’s service, or going into the field. This 
 alternative was proposed with an air and a manner which was 
 intended to stop my mouth, and allow me nothing but the 
 bare liberty of choosing. It was indeed no very agreeable 
 alternative. But anything, even the hard labour, scanty fare, 
 and harsh treatment, to which I knew the field hands were 
 subjected, seemed preferable to becoming the sport of Master 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 21 
 
 William s tyranny. I was piqued, too, at the cavalier manner 
 in which my request had been treated, and I did not hesitate. 
 I thanked Colonel Moore for his great goodness, and at once 
 made choice of the field. He seemed rather surprised at my 
 selection, and with a smile which bordered close upon a sneer, 
 bade me report myself to Mr. Stubbs. 
 
 An overseer is regarded, in all those parts of slave- 
 holding America with which I ever became acquainted, very 
 much in the same light in which people, in countries uncursed 
 with slavery, look upon a hangman ; and as this latter employ- 
 ment, however useful and necessary, has never succeeded 
 in becoming respectable, so the business of an overseer is 
 likely, from its nature, always to continue contemptible and 
 degraded. The young lady who dines heartily on lamb has a 
 sentimental horror of the butcher who killed it ; and the slave- 
 owner who lives luxuriously on the forced labour of his slaves 
 has a like sentimental abhorrence of the man who holds the 
 whip and compels the labour. He is like a receiver of stolen 
 goods, who cannot bear the thoughts of stealing himself, but 
 who has no objection to live upon the proceeds of stolen 
 property. A thief is but a thief ; an overseer but an overseer. 
 The slave-owner prides himself upon the honourable appella- 
 tion of a planter ; and the receiver of stolen goods assumes 
 the character of a respectable shopkeeper. By such con- 
 temptible juggle do men deceive not themselves only, but 
 oft-times the world also. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Stubbs was overseer at Spring-Meadow — a 
 person with whose name, appearance, and character I was 
 perfectly familiar, though hitherto I had been so fortunate as 
 to have had very little communication with him. 
 
 He was a thick-set, clumsy man, about fifty, with a little 
 bullet head, covered with short, tangled hair, and stuck close 
 upon his shoulders. His face was curiously mottled and 
 spotted, for, what with sunshine, what with whiskey, and what 
 with ague and fever, brown, red, and sallow seemed to have 
 put in a joint claim to the possession of it, without having yet 
 been able to arrive at an amicable partition. He was generally 
 to be seen on horseback, leaning forward over his saddle, and 
 brandishing a long thick whip of twisted cow-hide, which, 
 from time to time, he applied over the head and shoulders of 
 some unfortunate slave. If you were within hearing, his 
 conversation, or rather his commands and observations, 
 
22 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 would have appeared a string of oaths, from the midst of 
 which it was not very easy to disentangle his meaning. 
 Some such exclamations were pretty sure to begin every 
 sentence, and others to end it. It was, however, only when 
 Mr. Stubbs had sole possession of the field that he sprinkled 
 his orders with his strong spice of brutality ; — for when 
 Colonel Moore or any other gentleman happened to be riding 
 by, he could assume quite an air of gentleness and moderation, 
 and what appears very surprising, was actually able to express 
 himself with not more than one oath to every other sentence. 
 
 Mr. Stubbs, in his management of the plantation, did not 
 confine himself to hard words. He used his whip as freely 
 as his tongue. Colonel Moore had received a European 
 education; and like every man educated anywhere — except on 
 a slave estate — he had a great dislike to all unnecessary cruelty 
 He was usually made very angry, about once a week, by some 
 brutal act on the part of his overseer. But having satisfied 
 his outraged feelings by declaring himself very much offended, 
 and Mr. Stubbs’s proceedings to be quite intolerable, he ended 
 with suffering things to go on just as before. The truth was, 
 Mr. Stubbs understood making crops ; and such a man was 
 too valuable to be given up, for the mere sentimental satisfac- 
 tion of protecting the slaves from his tyranny. 
 
 It was a great change to me, after having been accustomed 
 to the elegance and propriety of Colonel Moore’s house and 
 the gentle rule and light service of Master James, to pass under 
 the "despotic control of a vulgar, ignorant, and brutal black- 
 guard. Besides, I had never been accustomed to severe and 
 regular labour ; and it was trying indeed to submit at once to 
 the hard work of the field. However, I resolved to make the 
 best of it. I was strong, and use would soon make my tasks 
 more tolerable. I knew well enough that Mr. Stubbs was 
 totally destitute of all humane feelings, but I had no reason to 
 suppose that he entertained towards me any of that malignity 
 which I had so much dreaded in Master William. From 
 what I had known of him, I did not judge him to be a very 
 bad-tempered man; and I took it for granted that he cursed 
 and whipped, not so much out of spite and ill-feeling, but as a 
 mere matter of business. He seemed to imagine, like every 
 other overseer, that it was impossible to manage a plantation in 
 any other way. My diligence, I hoped, might enable me to 
 escape the lash; and Mr. Stubbs’s vulgar abuse, however 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 23 
 
 provoking the other servants might esteem it, I thought I 
 might easily despise. 
 
 Mr. Stubbs listened to my account of myself very graciously, 
 all the time rolling his tobacco from one cheek to the other, 
 and squinting at me with one of his little twinkling grey eyes. 
 Having cursed me to his satisfaction for a “blunder-head,’ he 
 bade me follow him to the field. A large clumsy hoe, with a 
 handle six feet long, was put into my hands, and I was kept 
 hard at work all day. 
 
 At dark, I was suffered to quit the field, and the overseer 
 pointed out to me a miserable little hovel, about ten feet 
 square, and half as many high, with a leaky roof, and without 
 either floor or window. This was to be my house, or rather I 
 was share it with Billy, a young slave about my own age. 
 
 To this wretched hut I removed a chest, containing my 
 clothes and a few other things, such as a slave is permitted to 
 possess. By way of bed and bedding, I received a single 
 blanket, about as big as a large pocket-handkerchief; and a 
 basket of corn and a pound or two of damaged bacon were 
 given me as my week’s allowance of provisions. But as I was 
 totally destitute of pot, kettle, knife, plate, or dish of any kind 
 — for these are conveniences which slaves must procure as 
 they can — I was in some danger of being obliged to make my 
 supper on raw bacon. Billy saw my distress, and took pity on 
 me. He helped me to beat my corn into hominy, and lent me 
 his own little kettle to cook it in ; so that about midnight I 
 was able to break a fast of some sixteen or twenty hours. My 
 chest, being both broad and long, served tolerably well for 
 bed, chair, and table. I sold a part of my clothes, which were 
 indeed much too fine for a field-hand; and having bought 
 myself a knife, a spoon, and kettle, I was able to put my 
 house-keeping into tolerable order. 
 
 My accommodations were as good as a field-hand had a 
 right to expect; but they were not such as to make me 
 particularly happy ; especially as I had been used to some- 
 thing better. My hands were blistered with the hoe; and 
 coming in at night completely exhausted by a sort of labour to 
 which I was not accustomed, it was no very agreeable recrea- 
 tion to be obliged to beat hominy, and to be* up till after 
 midnight preparing food for the next day, with the recollection, 
 too, that I was obliged to turn into the field with the first dawn 
 of the morning. But this labour, severe as it was, had been in 
 
24 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 a manner, my own choice. In choosing it, I had escaped a 
 worse tyranny and a more bitter servitude. I had avoided 
 falling into the hands of Master William. 
 
 As I shall not have occasion to mention that amiable youth 
 again, I may as well finish his history here. Some six or eight 
 months after the death of his younger brother, he became 
 involved in a drunken quarrel, at a cock-fight. This quarrel 
 ended in a duel, and Master William fell dead at the first fire. 
 His death was a great stroke to Colonel Moore, who seemed 
 for a long time almost inconsolable. I did not lament him, 
 either for his own sake or his father’s. I knew well that in his 
 death I had escaped a cruel and vindictive master ; and I felt 
 a stern and bitter pleasure in seeing the bereavements of 
 a man who had dared to trample upon the sacred ties of 
 nature. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I had the same task with those who had been field-hands all 
 their lives ; but I was too proud to flinch or complain. I 
 exerted myself to the utmost, so that even Mr. Stubbs had no 
 fault to find, but, on the contrary, pronounced me, more than 
 once, a “ right likely hand.” 
 
 The cabin which I shared with Billy had a very leaky roof, 
 and as the weather was rainy, we found it by no means com- 
 fortable. At length, we determined one day to repair it ; and 
 to get time to do so, we exerted ourselves to get through our 
 tasks at an early hour. 
 
 We had finished about four o’clock in the afternoon, and 
 were returning together to the town— for so we called the 
 collection of cabins in which the servants lived. Mr. Stubbs 
 met us, and having inquired if we had finished our tasks, he 
 muttered something about our not having half enough to do, 
 and ordered us to go and weed his garden. Billy submitted . 
 in silence, for he had been too long under Mr. Stubbs’s juris- 
 diction to think of questioning his commands. But I ventured 
 to say, in as respectful a manner as I could, that as we had 
 finished our regular tasks, it seemed very hard to give us this 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 25 
 
 additional work. This put Mr. Stubbs into a furious passion, 
 and he swore twenty oaths that I should both weed the 
 garden and be whipped into the bargain. He sprang from his 
 horse, and catching me by the collar of my shirt, the only 
 dress I had on, he began to lay upon me with his whip. It 
 was the first time, since I had ceased to be a child, that I had 
 been exposed to this degrading torture. The pain was great 
 enough; the idea of being whipped was sufficiently bitter; 
 but these were nothing in comparison with the sharp and 
 burning sense of the insolent injustice that was done me. It 
 was with the utmost difficulty that I restrained myself from 
 springing upon my brutal tormentor, and dashing him to the 
 ground. But, alas ! I was a slave. What in a freeman is a 
 most justifiable act of self-defence, becomes in a slave unpar- 
 donable insolence and rebellion. I griped my hands, set my 
 teeth firmly together, and bore the injury the best I could. I 
 was then turned into the garden, and the moon happening to 
 be full, I was kept there weeding till near midnight. 
 
 The next day was Sunday. The Sunday’s rest is the sole 
 and single boon for which the American slave is indebted to 
 the religion of his master. That master tramples under foot 
 every other precept of the Gospel without the slightest hesita- 
 tion, but so long as he does not compel his slaves to work on 
 Sundays, he thinks himself well entitled to the name of a 
 Chiistian. Perhaps he is so ; but if he is, a title so easily 
 purchased can be worth but little. 
 
 I resolved to avail myself of the Sunday’s leisure to com- 
 plain to my master of the barbarous treatment I had experi- 
 enced the day before at the hands of Mr. Stubbs. Colonel 
 Moore received me with a coolness and distance quite unusual 
 in him, for generally he had a smile for everybody, especially 
 for his slaves. However, he heard my story, and even conde- 
 scended to declare that nothing gave him so much pain as to 
 have his servants unnecessarily or unreasonably punished, and 
 that he never would suffer such things to take place upon his 
 plantation. He then bade me go about my business, having 
 first assured me that in the course of the day he would see 
 Mr. Stubbs, and inquire into the matter. This was the last I 
 heard from Colonel Moore. That same evening Mr. Stubbs 
 sent for me to his house, and having tied me to a tree before 
 his door, gave me forty lashes, and bade me complain at the 
 house again if I dared. “ It’s a hard case, indeed,” he added, 
 
26 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 “ if I can’t lick a cursed nigger’s insolence out of him without 
 being obliged to give an account of it.” 
 
 Insolence 1 — the tyrant’s ready plea ! 
 
 If a poor slave has been whipped and miserably abused, and 
 no other apology for it can be thought of, the rascal s inso- 
 lence” can be always pleaded — and when pleaded, is enough 
 in every slaveholder’s estimation to excuse and justify any 
 brutality. The slightest word, or look, or action that seems to 
 indicate the slave’s sense of any injustice that is done him, is 
 denounced as insolence , and is punished with the most 
 
 unrelenting severity. . . r 
 
 This was the second time I had experienced the discipline 
 of the lash ; but I did not find the second dose any more 
 agreeable than the first. A blow is esteemed among freemen 
 the very highest of indignities ; and low as their oppressors 
 have sunk them, it is esteemed an indignity among slaves. 
 Besides — as strange as some people may think it a twisted 
 cowhide, laid on by the hand of a strong man, does actually 
 inflict a good deal of pain, especially if every blow brings 
 
 blood. . , 
 
 I will leave it to the reader’s own feelings to imagine, what 
 no words can sufficiently describe, the bitterness. of that man’s 
 misery who is every hour in danger of experiencing this indig- 
 nity and this torture. When he has wrought up his fancy 
 and let him thank God, from the very bottom of his heait, 
 that in his case it is only fancy— to a lively idea of that 
 misery, he will have taken the first step towards gaining some 
 notion, however faint and inadequate, of what it is to be a slave ! 
 
 I had now learned a lesson, which every slave early learns— 
 I found that I did not enjoy even the privilege of complaining ; 
 and that the only way to escape a reiteration of injustice was 
 to submit in silence to the first infliction. I did my best to 
 swallow this bitter lesson, and to acquire a portion of that 
 hypocritical humility so necessary to a person in my unhappy 
 condition. Humility, and whether it be real or pretended, 
 they care but little, is esteemed by masters the great and 
 crowning virtue of a slave ; for they understand by it a dis- 
 position to submit, without resistance or complaint, to every 
 possible wrong or indignity ; to reply to the most opprobrious 
 and unjust accusations with a soft voice and a smiling face ; to 
 take kicks, cuffs, and blows as though they were favours ; to 
 kiss the foot that treads you to the dust ! 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 27 
 
 This sort of humility was a virtue with which, I must con- 
 fess, nature had but scantily endowed me ; nor did I find it so 
 easy as I might have desired to strip myself of all the feelings 
 of a man. It was like quitting the erect carriage which I had 
 received at God’s hand, and learning to crawl on the earth 
 like a base reptile. This was, indeed, a hard lesson ; but an 
 American overseer is a stern teacher, and if I learned but 
 slowly, it was not the fault of Mr. Stubbs. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 It would be irksome to myself, and tedious to the reader, to 
 enter into a minute detail of all the miserable and monotonous 
 incidents that made up my life at this time. The last chapter 
 is a specimen, from which it may be judged what sort of 
 pleasures I enjoyed. They may be summed up in a few 
 words ; and the single sentence which embraces this part of 
 my history might suffice to describe the whole lives of many 
 thousand Americans. I was hard-worked, ill-fed, and well- 
 whipped. Mr. Stubbs, having once begun with me, did not 
 suffer me to get over the effects of one flogging before he 
 inflicted another ; and I have some marks of his about me 
 which I expect to carry to the grave. All this time he assured 
 me that what he did was only for my own good ; and he swore 
 that he would never give over till he had lashed my cursed 
 insolence out of me. 
 
 The present began to grow intolerable ; and what hope for 
 the future has the slave ? I wished for death ; nor do I know 
 to what desperate counsels I might have been driven, when 
 one of those changes to which a slave is ever exposed, but 
 over which he can exercise no control, afforded me some 
 temporary relief from my distresses. 
 
 Colonel Moore, by the sudden death of a relation, became 
 heir to a large property in South Carolina. But the person 
 deceased had left a will, about which there was some dispute, 
 which had every appearance of ending in a lawsuit. The 
 matter required Colonel Moore’s personal attention ; and lie 
 had lately set out for Charleston, and had taken with him 
 
28 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 several of the servants. One or two also had recently died ; 
 and Mrs. Moore, soon after her husband’s departure, sent for 
 me to assist in filling up the gap which had been made in her 
 domestic establishment. 
 
 I was truly happy at the change. I knew Mrs. Moore to be 
 a lady who would never insult or trample on a servant, even 
 though he were a slave, unless she happened to be very much 
 out of humour, an unfortunate occurrence, which in her case 
 did not happen oftener than once or twice a week — except, 
 indeed, in the very warm weather, when the fit sometimes' 
 lasted the whole week through. 
 
 Besides, I hoped that the recollection of my fond and 
 faithful attachment to her younger son, who had always been 
 her favourite, would secure me some kindness at her hands. 
 Nor was I mistaken. The contrast of my new situation with 
 the tyranny of Mr. Stubbs gave it almost the colour of happi- 
 ness. I regained my cheerfulness and my buoyant spirits^, I 
 was too wise, or rather this new influx of cheerfulness matfe 
 me too thoughtless, to trouble myself about the future ; and, 
 satisfied with the temporary relief I experienced, I ceased to 
 brood over the miseries of my condition. 
 
 About this time Miss Caroline, Colonel Moore’s eldest 
 daughter, returned from Baltimore, where she had been living 
 for several years with an aunt, who superintended her educa- 
 tion. She was but an ordinary girl, without much grace or 
 beauty; but her maid Cassy,* who had formerly been my 
 playfellow, and who returned a woman, though she had left us 
 a child, possessed a high degree of both. 
 
 I learned from one of my fellow-servants that she was the 
 daughter of Colonel Moore, by a female slave, who for a year 
 or two had shared her master’s favour jointly with my mother, 
 but who had died many years since, leaving Cassy an infant. 
 Her mother was said to have been a great beauty, and a very 
 dangerous rival to mine. 
 
 So far as regarded personal charms, Cassy was not unworthy 
 of her parentage, either on the father’s or the mother’s side. 
 She was not tall, but the grace and elegance of her figure 
 could not be surpassed; and the elastic vivacity of all her 
 movements afforded a model which her indolent and languid 
 mistress, who did nothing but loll all day upon a sofa, might 
 have imitated with advantage. The clear soft olive of her 
 
 * Cassandra. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 29 
 
 complexion, brightening in either cheek to a rich red, was 
 certainly more pleasing than the sickly, sallow hue so com- 
 mon, or rather so universal, among the patrician beauties of 
 lower Virginia ; and she could boast a pair of eyes which, for 
 brilliancy and expression, I have never seen surpassed. 
 
 At this time, I prided myself upon my colour as much as 
 any Virginian of them all ; and although I had found by a 
 bitter experience that a slave, whether white or black, is still a 
 slave, and that the master, heedless of his victim’s complexion, 
 handles the whip with perfect impartiality, still, like my poor 
 mother, I thought myself of a superior caste, and would have 
 felt it a degradation to put myself on a level with those a few 
 shades darker than myself. This silly pride had kept me from 
 forming intimacies with the other servants, either male or 
 female ; for I was decidedly whiter.than any of them. It had, 
 too, justly enough, exposed me to an ill-will, of which I had 
 qaore than once felt the consequences, but which had not yet 
 wholly cured me of my folly. 
 
 Cassy had perhaps more African blood than I ; but this was 
 a point, however weighty and important I had at first esteemed 
 it, which, as I became more acquainted with her, seemed con- 
 tinually of less consequence, and soon disappeared entirely 
 from my thoughts. We were much together, and her beauty, 
 vivacity, and good humour made every day a stronger impres- 
 sion upon me. I found myself in love before I had thought 
 of it ; and presently I discovered that my affection was not 
 unrequited. 
 
 Cassy was one of nature’s children, and she had never 
 learned those arts of coquetry, often as skilfully practised by 
 the maid as the mistress, by which courtships are protracted. 
 We loved, and before long we talked of marriage. Cassy con- 
 sulted her mistress, and the answer was favourable. Mrs. 
 Moore listened with equal readiness to me. Women are never 
 happier than when they have an opportunity to dabble in 
 match-making; nor does even the humble condition of the 
 parties quite deprive the business of its fascination. 
 
 It was determined that our marriage should be a little 
 festival among the servants. The coming Sunday was fixed 
 on as the day ; and a Methodist clergyman, who happened to 
 have wandered into the neighbourhood, readily undertook to 
 perform the ceremony. This part of his office, I suppose, he 
 would have performed for anybody ; but he undertook it the 
 
30 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 more readily for us because Cassy, while at Baltimore, had 
 become a member of the Methodist society. 
 
 I was well pleased with all this, for it seemed to give to oui 
 union something of that solemnity which properly belonged to 
 it. In general, marriage among American slaves is treated as 
 a matter of very little moment. It is a mere temporary union, 
 contracted without ceremony, not recognised by the laws, little 
 or not at all regarded by the masters, and, of course, often but 
 lightly esteemed by the parties. The recollection that the 
 husband may, any day, be sold into Louisiana, and the wife 
 into Georgia, holds out but a slight inducement to draw tight 
 the bonds of connubial intercourse ; and the certainty that the 
 fruits of their marriage, the children of their love, are to be 
 born slaves, and reared to all the privations and calamities of 
 hopeless servitude, is enough to strike a damp into , the hearts 
 of the fondest couple. Slaves yield to the impulses of nature, 
 and propagate a race of slaves; but, save in a few rare 
 instances, servitude is as fatal to domestic love as to all the 
 other virtues. Some few choice spirits, indeed, will still rise 
 superior to their condition, and when cut off from every other 
 support, will find within their own hearts the means of resisting 
 the deadly and demoralising influences of servitude. In the 
 same manner the baleful poison of the plague or yellow fever 
 — innocent, indeed, and powerless in comparison ! — while it 
 rages through an infected city, and sweeps its thousands and 
 tens of thousands to the grave, finds, here and there, an iron 
 constitution which defies its total malignity, and sustains itself 
 by the sole aid of nature’s health-preserving power. 
 
 On the Friday before the Sunday which had been fixed 
 upon for our marriage, Colonel Moore returned to Spring- 
 Meadow. His arrival was unexpected ; and by me, at least, 
 very much unwished for. To the other servants who hastened 
 to welcome him home he spoke with his usual kindness and 
 good nature ; but though I had come forward with the rest, all 
 the notice he took of me was a single stare of dissatisfaction. 
 He appeared to be surprised, and that too not agreeably, to 
 see me again in the house. 
 
 The next day I was discharged from my duties of house- 
 servant, and put again under the control of Mr. Stubbs. This 
 touched me to the quick ; but it was nothing to what I felt the 
 day following, when I went to the house to claim my bride. I 
 was told that she was gone in the carriage with Colonel Moore 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3i 
 
 and his daughter, who had ridden out to call upon some of the 
 neighbours ; and that I need not take the trouble of coming 
 again to see her, for Miss Caroline did not choose that her 
 maid should marry a field-hand. 
 
 It is impossible for me to describe the paroxysm of grief and 
 passion which I now experienced. Those of the same ardent 
 temperament with myself will easily conceive my feelings ; and 
 to persons of cooler temper, no description can convey an 
 adequate idea. My promised wife snatched from me, and 
 myself exposed to the hateful tyranny of a brutal overseer — 
 and all so sudden, too — and with such studied marks of insult 
 and oppression ! 
 
 I now felt afresh the ill effects of my foolish pride in keeping 
 myself separate and aloof from my fellow-servants. Instead of 
 sympathising with me, many of them openly rejoiced at my 
 misfortune ; and as I had never made a confidant or associate 
 among them, I had no friend whose advice to ask, or whose 
 sympathy to seek. At length I bethought myself of the 
 Methodist minister, who was to come that evening to marry 
 us, and who had appeared to take a good deal of interest in 
 the welfare of Cassy and myself. I was desirous not only of 
 seeking such advice and consolation as he could afford me, but 
 I wished to save the good man from a useless journey, and 
 possibly from insult at Spring-Meadow; for Colonel Moore 
 looked on all sorts of preachers, and the Methodists especially, 
 with an eye of very little favour. 
 
 I knew that the clergyman in question held a meeting about 
 five miles off ; and I resolved, if I could get leave, to go and 
 hear him. I applied to Mr. Stubbs for a pass, that is, a 
 written permission, without which no slave can go off the 
 plantation to which he belongs, except at the risk of being 
 stopped by the first man he meets, horsewhipped, and sent 
 home again. But Mr. Stubbs swore that he was tired of such 
 gadding ; and he told me that he had made up his mind to 
 grant no more passes for the next fortnight. 
 
 To some sentimental persons it may seem hard, after the slave 
 has laboured six days for his master, and the blessed seventh 
 at length gladdens him with its beams, that he cannot be 
 allowed a little change of scene, but must still be confined to 
 the hated fields, the daily witnesses of his toils and his 
 sufferings. Yet many thrifty managers and good disciplina- 
 rians are, like Mr. Stubbs, very much opposed to all gadding; 
 
32 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 and they pen up their slaves, when not at work, as they pen up 
 their cattle, to keep them, as they say, out of mischief. 
 
 At another time this new piece of petty tyranny might have 
 provoked me ; but now I scarcely regarded it, for my whole 
 heart was absorbed by a greater passion. I was slowly 
 returning towards the servants’ quarter, when a little girl, one 
 of the house-servants, came running to me, almost out of 
 breath. I knew her to be one of Cassy’s favourites, and I 
 caught her in my arms. As soon as she had recovered her 
 breath, she said she had been looking for me all the morning, 
 for she had a message from Cassy; that Cassy had been 
 obliged, much against her inclination, to go out that morning 
 with her mistress, but that I must not be alarmed or down- 
 hearted, for she loved me as well as ever. 
 
 I kissed the little messenger, and thanked her a thousand 
 times for her news. I then hastened to my house. It was 
 quite a comfortable little cottage, which Mrs. Moore had 
 ordered to be built for Cassy and myself, but of which I 
 expected every moment to be deprived. The news I had 
 heard excited new commotions in my bosom. I had no sooner 
 sat down than I found it impossible to keep quiet. My heart 
 beat violently ; the fever in my blood grew high. I left the 
 house, and walked about within the limits of my gaol-yard, for so 
 I might justly esteem the plantation ; I used the most violent 
 - exercise, and tried every means I could think of to subdue the 
 powerful emotions of mixed hope and fear with which I was 
 agitated, and which I found more oppressive than even the 
 certainty of misery. 
 
 As evening drew on I watched for the return of the carriage; 
 and at length its distant rumbling caught my ear. I hastened 
 towards the house, in the hope of seeing Cassy, and perhaps of 
 speaking with her. The carriage stopped at the door, and I 
 was fast approaching it ; but, at the instant, it occurred to me 
 that it would be better not to risk being seen by Colonel 
 Moore, who, I was now well satisfied, entertained a decided 
 hostility towards me, and whom I believed to be the author of 
 the cruel repulse I had that morning met with. This thought 
 stopped me, and I drew back and returned home, without 
 catching a glimpse or exchanging a word. 
 
 _ I threw myself upon my bed ; but I turned continually from 
 side to side, and found it impossible to compose myself to rest. 
 Hour after hour dragged on ; but I could not sleep. It was 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 33 
 
 past midnight when I heard a slight tap at the door, and a 
 soft whisper, which thrilled through every nerve. I sprung up • 
 I opened the door ; I clasped her to my bosom. It was Cassy • 
 it was my betrothed wife. 
 
 She told me that since Colonel Mioore’s return everythin^ 
 seemed changed at the house. Miss Caroline had told her 
 that Colonel Moore had a very bad opinion of me, and was 
 very much displeased to find that during his absence I had 
 been again employed as one of the house-servants. She added 
 that, when he was told of our intended marriage, he had 
 declared that Cassy was too pretty a girl to be thrown away 
 upon such a scoundrel, and that he would undertake to 
 provide her with a much better husband. So her mistress had 
 bidden her to think no more of me ; but, at the same time, 
 had told her not to cry, for she would never leave off teasin^ 
 her father till he had fulfilled his promise ; “and if you get a 
 husband,” the young lady added, “that, you know, is all that 
 any of us want.” So thought the mistress; the maid, I have 
 reason to suppose, was rather more refined in her- notions of 
 matrimony. 
 
 I was not quite certain how to interpret this conduct of 
 Colonel Moore. I was strongly inclined to consider it only 
 as a new outbreak of that spite and hostility which I had been 
 experiencing ever since my useless and foolish appeal to his 
 fatherly feelings. It occurred to me, however, as possible 
 that, his opposition to our marriage might spring from other 
 motives. . Whatever I might imagine, I kept my own counsel. 
 One motive which occurred to me I could not think of myself 
 with the slightest patience ; and still less could I bear to shock 
 and distress poor Cassy by the mention of it. Another 
 motive, which I thought might possibly have influenced 
 Colonel Moore, was less discreditable to him, and would have 
 been flattering to the. pride of both Cassy and myself. But 
 this I could not mention without leading to disclosures, which 
 I did not see fit to make. 
 
 Cassy knew herself to be Colonel Moore’s daughter; but 
 early in our acquaintance I had discovered that she had no 
 idea that I was his son. I have every reason to believe that 
 Mrs. Moore was perfectly well informed as to both these 
 particulars ; for they were of that sort which seldom or never 
 escape the eagerness of female curiosity, and more especially 
 the curiosity of a wife. 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Whatever she might know, she discovered in it no impedi- 
 ment to my marriage with Cassy. Nor did I ; for how could 
 that same regard for the decencies of life — such is the soft 
 phrase which justifies the most unnatural cruelty — that refused 
 to acknowledge our paternity, or to recognise any relationship 
 between us, pretend at the same time, and on the sole ground 
 of relationship, to forbid our union ? 
 
 But I knew that Cassy felt rather than reasoned; and, 
 though born and bred a slave, she possessed great delicacy of 
 feeling. Besides, she was a Methodist, and though as cheerful 
 and gay-hearted a girl as I ever knew, she was very devout in 
 all the observances of her religion. I feared to put our 
 mutual happiness in jeopardy ; I was unwilling to harass Cassy 
 with what I esteemed unnecessary scruples. I had never told 
 her the story of my parentage, and every day I grew less 
 inclined to tell it. Accordingly, I made no other answer to 
 what she told me, except to say that however little Colonel 
 Moore might like me, his dislike was not my fault. 
 
 A momentary pause followed ; I pressed Cassy’s hand in 
 mine, and in a faltering voice I asked what she intended to 
 do. 
 
 “ I am your wife ; I will never be anybody’s but yours,” was 
 the answer. I clasped the dear girl to my heart. We knelt 
 together, and with upraised hands invoked the Deity to 
 witness and confirm our union. It was the only sanction in 
 our power ; and if twenty priests had said a benediction over 
 us, would that have made our vows more binding, or our 
 marriage more complete ? 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 It was impossible for my wife to visit me except by stealth. 
 She slept every night upon the carpet in her mistress’s room ; 
 for a floor is esteemed in America a good enough bed for a 
 slave, even for a favourite and a woman. She was liable to be 
 called upon in the night, at the caprice of a mistress, who was, 
 in fact, a mere spoiled child ; and she could only visit me at 
 the risk of a discovery, which might have been attended with 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 35 
 
 very unpleasant consequences ; for if these clandestine visits 
 had been detected, I fear that not all Cassy’s charm — whatever 
 poets may have fabled of the power of beauty — could have 
 saved her from the lash. 
 
 Yet short and uncertain as these visits were, they sufficed to 
 create and sustain a new and singular state of feeling. My 
 wife was seldom with me, but her image was ever before my 
 eyes, and appeared to make me regardless of all beside. 
 Things seemed to pass as in a happy dream. The labour of 
 the field was nothing; the lash of the overseer was scarcely 
 felt. My mind became so occupied, and, as it were, filled up 
 with the pleasure which I found in our mutual affection, and 
 by the anticipated delights of each successive interview, that it 
 seemed to have no room for disagreeable emotions. Strong as 
 was my passion, there was nothing in it uneasy or unsatisfied. 
 When I clasped the dear girl to my bosom, I seemed to have 
 reached the height of human fruition. I was happy; greater 
 happiness I could not imagine, and did not desire. 
 
 The intoxication of passion is the same in the slave and in 
 the master ; it is exquisite, and, while it lasts, all-sufficient in 
 itself. I found it so. With almost everything to make me 
 miserable, still was I happy — for the excess of my passion 
 rendered me insensible to anything save its own indulgence. 
 
 But such ecstasies are unsuited to the human constitution. 
 They are soon over, and perhaps are ever purchased at too 
 dear a price ; for they are but too apt to be succeeded by all 
 the anguish of disappointed hope and all the bitterness of 
 deep despair. Still I look back with pleasure to that time. 
 It is one of the bright spots of my existence, which eager 
 memory discovers in her retrospections, scattered and scarcely 
 visible — tiny islets of delight, surrounded on all sides by a 
 gloomy and tempestuous ocean. 
 
 We had been married about St fortnight. It was near mid- 
 night, and I was sitting before my door, waiting for my wife to 
 come. The moon was full and bright ; the sky was cloudless. 
 
 I was still at the height and flood of my intoxication ; and as 
 I watched the planet, and admired her brightness, I gave 
 thanks to heaven that the base tendencies of a servile condi- 
 tion had not yet totally extinguished within me all the higher 
 and nobler emotions of man’s nature. 
 
 Presently, I observed a figure approaching. I should have 
 known her at any distance, and I sprang forward and caught 
 
36 
 
 THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 my wife in my arms. But as I pressed her to my heart, I felt 
 her bosom to be strangely agitated ; and when I brought her 
 face to mine, my cheek was moistened with her tears. 
 
 Alarmed at these unusual indications, I hurried her into the 
 house, and hastily inquired the cause of her agitation. My 
 inquiries appeared to increase it. She sunk her head upon 
 my breast, burst into sobs, and seemed wholly incapable of 
 speaking. I knew not what to think, or what to do. . I exerted 
 myself to compose her ; I kissed off the tears that trickled fast 
 down her cheeks ; I pressed my hand against her beating 
 heart, as if, in that way, I could have checked its palpitations. 
 At length she grew more calm ; but it was by slow degrees, 
 and in broken sentences, that I learned the origin of her 
 terror. 
 
 It seemed that Colonel Moore, ever since his return, had 
 distinguished her by particular kindness. He had made her 
 several little presents ; had sought frequent occasions to talk 
 with her, and was ever, half-jocosely, complimenting her beauty. 
 He had even dropped certain hints, which Cassy could not help 
 understanding, but of which she thought it best to take no 
 notice. He was not to be repelled in that ivay ; but proceeded 
 to words and actions, of which it was not possible tor her to 
 affect to misunderstand the meaning. Her native modesty, her 
 love for me, her religious feelings, were all alarmed ; and the 
 poor girl began to tremble at the fate that seemed to await 
 her ; but, as yet, she kept her terrors to herself. She was 
 reluctant to torture me with the story of insults, which, 
 however they might pierce my heart, I had no power to 
 
 repel. . . 
 
 That day Mrs. Moore and her daughter had gone to visit 
 
 one of the neighbours, and Cassy was left at home. She was 
 employed on some needlework in her mistress’s room, when 
 Colonel Moore entered. She rose up hastily, and would have 
 gone away ; but he bade her stop, and listen to what he had 
 to say to her. He did not seem to notice her agitation, and 
 appeared perfectly self-possessed himself. He told her that he 
 had promised her mistress to provide her with a husband, in 
 place of that scoundrel Archy ; that he had looked about, and 
 did not see anybody who was worthy of her; and, on the 
 whole, he had concluded to take her himself. 
 
 This he said with a tone of tenderness which, no doubt, he 
 meant to be irresistible. To many women in Cassy’s situation 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3 7 
 
 it would have been so. They would have esteemed themselves 
 highly honoured by their master’s notice, and would have felt 
 not a little flattered by the delicate terms under which he 
 concealed the real character of his proposal. But she, poor 
 child, heard him with shame and dread ; and was ready, she 
 told me, to sink into the earth with terror and dismay. In 
 relating it, she blushed — she hesitated— she shuddered — her 
 breathing became short and quick — she clung to me, as if 
 some visible image of horror were present before her, and 
 bringing her lips close to my ear, she exclaimed in a trembling 
 and scarcely audible whisper — “ Oh, Archy ! — and he my 
 father ! ” 
 
 Colonel Moore, she believed, could not have misunderstood 
 the feelings with which she listened to his offer. But if so, he 
 disregarded them ; for he proceeded to enumerate all the 
 advantages she would derive from this connexion, and strove 
 to tempt her by promises of idleness and finery. She stood 
 with her eyes upon the floor, and only answered him by sobs 
 and tears, which she strove in vain to suppress. Upon this, 
 Colonel Moore, in a tone of pique and displeasure, told her 
 “ not to be a fool ” ; and catching one of her hands in his, he 
 threw his arm about her waist, and bade her not provoke him 
 by a useless resistance ; she uttered a scream of surprise and 
 terror, and sunk at his feet. At that moment, the sound of the 
 carriage wheels fell, she said, like heavenly music on her ear. 
 Her master heard it too, for he let go his grasp, and muttering 
 something about another time, hastily left the room. She 
 remained almost senseless on the floor till the sound of her 
 mistress’s footsteps in the passage recalled her to herself. The 
 rest of the afternoon and evening she had passed she hardly 
 knew how. Her head, she told me, was dizzy ; a cloud 
 swam before her eyes ; and she had hardly been sensible of 
 anything but a painful feeling of languor and oppression. She 
 had not dared to leave her mistress’s room, and had waited 
 with impatience for the hour that would permit her to throw 
 herself into the arms of her husband, her natural protector. 
 
 Her natural protector ! — alas, of what avail is the natural 
 right of a husband to protect his wife against the assaults of a 
 villain, who is at once her owner and his ? 
 
 Such was Cass/s story ; and strange as it may seem, I heard 
 it quite unmoved. Although I held the panting, trembling, 
 weeping narrator in my arms, I listened to her story with far 
 
38 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 less emotion than I have since experienced in recounting 
 it. In truth, I was prepared for it ; I had anticipated it ; I 
 expected it. 
 
 I knew well that Cassy’s charms were too alluring not 
 to . excite a voluptuary, in whom a long indulgence had 
 extinguished all the better feelings and rendered incapable of 
 controlling himself ; and to whom neither the fear of punish- 
 ment nor the dread of public indignation supplied the place 
 of conscience. What else could be reasonably expected of a 
 man who knew well, let him proceed to what extremities he 
 might, not only that the law would justify him, but that 
 anybody who might think of calling him to account before 
 the bar of public opinion would be denounced by the public 
 voice as an impertinent intermeddler in the affairs of other 
 people ? 
 
 Little of paternal tenderness as Colonel Moore ever showed 
 to me, at least from the moment that he found I knew him to 
 be my father, I have too much of filial respect to entertain the 
 wish of misrepresenting him. Though he was of a warm and 
 voluptuous temperament, he was naturally a good-natured 
 man ; and his honour was, as I have said, unquestioned. But 
 honour is of a very diverse character. There is honour among 
 gentlemen, and honour among thieves ; and though both these 
 codes contain several excellent enactments, neither can fairly 
 claim to be regarded as a perfect system of morality. Of that 
 code in which he had been educated, Colonel Moore was a 
 strict observer. To have made an attempt on the chastity of a 
 neighbour’s wife or daughter, he would have esteemed, and so 
 the honorary code of Virginia esteems it, an offence of the 
 blackest dye ; an offence, he well knew, to be expiated only by 
 the offender’s life. But beyond this he did not dream of 
 prohibition or restraint. Hardened and emboldened by 
 certain impunity, provided the sufferer were a slave, he 
 regarded the most atrocious outrage that could be perpetrated 
 upon the person and feelings of a woman rather as a matter of 
 jest, a thing to be laughed at over the fourth bottle, than a 
 subject of serious and sober reprehension. 
 
 Of all this I was well aware. I had from the first fore- 
 seen that Cassy would be devoted by her master to the 
 same purposes which had been fulfilled by my mother and 
 her own. It was from these intentions, as I had all along 
 believed, that his opposition to our marriage had originated 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 39 
 
 In imagining that it might spring from another cause I had 
 done him an honour to which, as was now too evident, he had 
 not the slightest title. What I had just now heard, I had 
 daily expected to hear. I had expected it ; yet such had been 
 my intoxication that even anticipations terrible as this had not 
 been able to alarm or distress me ; and now that anticipation 
 was changed into reality, still I remained unmoved. The 
 ecstasy of passion still sustained me ; and as I pressed my 
 wretched, trembling wife to my bosom, I still rose superior to 
 the calamity that assailed me ; even yet I was happy. 
 
 This seems incredible ! 
 
 Love, then, as I did ; or if that suit your temperament 
 better, hate with the same intensity with which I loved. Be 
 absorbed in any passion, and while the fit continues, you 
 will find yourself endowed with a surprising and almost 
 superhuman energy. 
 
 My mind was already made up. The unhappy slave has 
 but one way of escaping any threatening infliction ; a poor and 
 wretched resource, to which he recurs always at the imminent 
 risk of redoubling his miseries. That remedy is flight. 
 
 Our preparations were soon made. My wife returned to the 
 house, and gathered up a little bundle of clothing. In the 
 meantime I employed myself in collecting such provisions as I 
 could readiest lay my hands on : a couple of blankets, a 
 hatchet, a little kettle, and a few other small articles, 
 completed my equipments ; and by the time my wife returned, 
 I was ready for a start. We set out, with no other companion 
 but a faithful dog. I did not wish to take him, for fear that 
 somehow or other he might lead to our detection ; but he 
 would not be driven back, and I was afraid to tie him, lest his 
 howlings might give an alarm, and lead to an immediate 
 pursuit. 
 
 Lower Virginia had already begun to feel the effects of that 
 blight, which has since lighted so heavily upon her, and which, 
 in truth, she has so well deserved. Already her fields were 
 beginning to be deserted ; already impenetrable thickets had 
 commenced to cover plantations, which, had the soil been 
 cultivated by freemen, might still have produced a rich and 
 abundant harvest. There was a deserted plantation about ten 
 miles from Spring-Meadow. I had formerly visited it several 
 times, in company with my young master James, who, when 
 he was well enough to ride about, had a strange taste for 
 
40 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 wandering into out-of-the-way places. It was thither that, in 
 the hurry of the moment, I resolved to go. 
 
 The by-road which had formerly led to this estate, and the 
 fields on both sides, were grown over with small scrubby pines, 
 so close and tangled as to render the thicket almost impene- 
 trable. I contrived, however, to keep on in the right direction. 
 But the difficulties of the way were so great that the morning 
 had dawned before we reached the plantation buildings. 
 They were still standing, but in a most dilapidated condition. 
 The great house had been a structure of large size and con- 
 siderable pretensions. But the windows were gone, the doors 
 had dropped from their hinges, and the roof was partly fallen 
 in. The court-yard was completely grown up with young trees. 
 Wild vines were creeping over the house ; and all was silent, 
 desolate, and deserted. The stables, and what had been the 
 servants’ quarter, were mere heaps of ruins, overgrown with 
 weeds and grass. 
 
 At some distance behind the house there was a rapid 
 descent, which formed one side of a deep ravine; and near 
 the bottom of this hollow a fine bubbling spring burst from 
 under the hill. It was now half-choked with leaves and sand, 
 but its waters were pure and cool as ever. Near the spring 
 was a little low building of brick, which perhaps had been 
 intended for a dairy, or some such purpose. The door was 
 gone, and half the roof had tumbled in. The other half still 
 kept its position, and the vacancy occasioned by the part that 
 had fallen served well enough to admit the light and air, and 
 to supply the place of windows, which had formed no part of 
 the original construction. This ruinous little building was 
 shaded by several large and ancient trees ; and was so com- 
 pletely hidden by a more recent growth as to be invisible at 
 the distance of a few paces. It was by mere accident that we 
 stumbled upon it, as we were searching for the spring, of which 
 I had drank upon my former visits, but the situation of which 
 I did not exactly recollect. It struck us at once that this was 
 the place for our temporary habitation ; and we resolved 
 forthwith to clear it of all the rubbish it contained, and to turn 
 it into a dwelling. 
 
THE ' WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 41 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 I knew that the place where we now were was very seldom 
 visited by anybody. The deserted house had the reputation 
 of being haunted ; and this, as well as its seclusion from the 
 road, and the almost impenetrable thickets by which it was 
 surrounded, would serve to protect us against intruders. 
 There were several plantations about it; for it occupied the 
 highest ground between two rivers, which flowed at no great 
 distance apart, and of which the low grounds were still in 
 cultivation. But there were no cultivated fields nearer than 
 four or five miles ; and no houses nearer than Spring-Meadow, 
 which, I have said, was some ten or twelve miles distant. I 
 judged that for the present we might remain secure in this 
 retreat ; and it seemed our best policy to suffer the search for 
 us t'o be pretty well over before we attempted to continue our 
 flight. 
 
 In the meantime we exerted ourselves to make things as 
 comfortable as possible. It was the height of summer, and we 
 anticipated but little inconvenience from the openness of our 
 habitation. A heap of pine straw, in one corner of our 
 ruinous hovel, formed our bed; and sweeter slumbers not 
 down itself could have ensured. Out of such materials as the 
 wainscoting of the deserted house supplied I made two rude 
 stools, and something that served as a table. The spring 
 furnished us with water ; our principal concern was to provide 
 ourselves with food. The woods and thickets produced some 
 wild fruits; and the peach-orchard near the house, though 
 choked and shaded by a more recent growth, still continued to 
 bear. I was an adept in the art of snaring rabbits, and such 
 other small game as the woods supplied. The spring which 
 furnished us with water was one of the heads of a little branch 
 or brook which discharged, at a short distance, into a larger 
 stream. In that stream there were fish. But our chief 
 resource was in the neighbouring corn-fields, which already 
 furnished roasting ears, and from which I did not scruple to 
 draw a plentiful supply. 
 
 On the whole— though we were both quite unaccustomed to 
 so wild a livelihood — we passed our time very agreeably. 
 Those who are always idle can never know the true luxury of 
 idleness, the real pleasure with which he who has been pushed 
 
42 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 to work against his will relaxes his strained muscles, and 
 delivers himself up to the delight of doing nothing. I used to 
 lie for hours, in a dreamy sort of indolence, outstretched upon 
 the shady slope, enjoying the sweet consciousness of being my 
 own master, and luxuriating in the idea that I need come or 
 go at no one’s bidding, but might work or be idle as suited my 
 own good will. No wonder that emancipated slaves are 
 inclined to indolence. It is to them a new pleasure. . Labour, 
 in their minds, is indissolubly associated with servitude and 
 the whip ; and not to work they have ever being taught to 
 look upon as the badge and peculiar distinction of freedom. 
 
 The present was passing pleasantly enough; but it was 
 necessary to be thinking about the future. We had always 
 regarded our present place of refuge as temporary only ; and it 
 was now time to think of leaving it. I should have esteemed it 
 delightful indeed to pass a whole life of solitude and seclusion 
 with Cassy, where, if we had lacked the pleasures of society, 
 we might have escaped its ten-fold greater ills. But this was 
 not possible. The American climate was never meant for 
 hermits. Our present station would answer well enough for a 
 summer retreat, but the winter would render it untenable , 
 and before long winter would be approaching. Our hope 
 was to escape into the free states — for I knew that north of 
 Virginia there was a country where there were no slaves. If 
 we could once get away from the neighbourhood of Spring- 
 Meadow, where I was well known, we should enjoy one great 
 advantage during the remainder of our flight. Our com- 
 plexions would not betray our servile condition; and we 
 should find no great difficulty, we thought, in passing ourselves 
 as free citizens of Virginia. Colonel Moore had, no doubt, 
 filled the country round with advertisements, in which our 
 persons were accurately described, and every peculiarity of 
 each of us carefully noted. It was, therefore, necessary to use 
 great caution ; and I considered it essential to our escape that 
 Cassy should adopt some disguise. What this should be, or 
 where we should get it, was now the question. 
 
 We finally determined to assume the character of persons 
 travelling to the north to seek our fortunes ; and we arranged 
 that Cassy should adopt a man’s dress, and accompany me in 
 the character of a younger brother. The night on which we 
 had left Spring-Meadow I had brought away my best suit, one 
 of the last gifts of poor Master James, and such as would well 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 43 
 
 enough enable me to play the part of a travelling Virginian. 
 But I had neither hat nor shoes, nor any clothes whatever, 
 that could properly serve as a disguise for Cassy. 
 
 Luckily, I had a small sum, the accumulated savings of 
 Master James’s liberality, which I had always kept in reserve, 
 in the hope and expectation that I should some time have a 
 use for it. This money I had been careful to take with me ; 
 and it was now our sole reliance, not only for the expenses of 
 the road, but for procuring the means, without which we could 
 not start at all. 
 
 But though we had the money, how could we make any use 
 of it, without running a very serious risk of detection ? 
 
 There lived, about five or six miles from Spring-Meadow, 
 and near the same distance from us, one Mr. James Gordon. 
 He kept a little store, and his principal customers were the 
 slaves of the neighbouring plantations. Mr. James Gordon, 
 or Jemmy Gordon, as he was familiarly called, was one of 
 those poor white men of whom the number in Lower Virginia 
 is or was very considerable, and who are spoken of even by 
 the slaves themselves with a sort of contempt. He had 
 neither lands nor servants, for his father before him had been 
 a poor white man. He had been educated to no trade, for 
 where every planter has his own mechanics on his own 
 plantation a free workman can expect no encouragement. 
 The only resource for a man in Jemmy Gordon’s situation is 
 to find employment as an overseer for some of his richer 
 neighbours. But in Virginia there are more persons who 
 desire to be overseers than there are plantations to oversee; 
 besides, Mr. Gordon was one of those careless, easy, good- 
 natured, indolent sort of men who are generally pronounced 
 good for nothing. He never could bring himself to that eyer- 
 watchful scrutiny and assiduous oversight which is so necessary 
 among slaves, whose maxim it is to work as little as possible, 
 and to plunder all they can. He was apt enough to get into 
 a passion, and cut and slash right and left without discrimina- 
 tion, but he was incapable of that regular severity and / 
 systematic cruelty by which other overseers gained the reputa- 
 tion of excellent disciplinarians. Moreover, on a certain 
 plantation of which he had been the manager some large 
 vacancies had occurred in the corn-crib, which were never 
 very clearly accounted for. How far this was occasioned by 
 negligence, or how far by dishonesty* was never, so far as I 
 
44 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 know, satisfactorily determined; all I can say is, that Mr. 
 Gordon was dismissed from his employment, and found it so 
 difficult to get a new situation that he gave up the search in 
 despair, and resolved to turn trader. He had nothing to begin 
 upon, and, of course, traded in a very small way. He dealt 
 principally in whiskey, but in addition kept shoes and such 
 articles of clothing as slaves are in the habit of purchasing to 
 eke out the miserable and insufficient supply which they 
 receive from their masters. He took money in payment, but 
 likewise corn and other produce, without any strict inquiry 
 how his customers came into possession of it. 
 
 It is this class of men against whom the legislators of 
 Virginia have exercised all their ingenuity in the construction 
 of penal statutes, and against whom they have exerted all the 
 severity which they have dared to use towards men who might 
 still claim the title and demand the rights of “free white 
 citizens.” But these penal enactments have failed in a great 
 measure of their object. Though the trade with slaves is 
 dangerous and disgraceful, and the traders in consequence are 
 desperate and reckless, their number is still so great as to 
 furnish the planters with an inexhaustible topic of declamation 
 and complaint, and to supply the slaves with numerous little 
 comforts and luxuries which they might in vain have expected 
 from the indulgence or humanity of their masters. 
 
 These traders are no doubt the receivers of plunder, and 
 no small proportion of what they sell is paid for in that way. 
 It is in vain that tyranny fences itself about with the terrors of 
 the law ; it is in vain that the slaveholder flatters himself with 
 the hope of appropriating to his own sole use the entire fruits 
 of the forced labours of his fellow-men. The slave cannot 
 resist the compulsion with which the law has armed the hand 
 of his master. The lash is an ensign of authority and of 
 torture, to which the stoutest heart and the most stubborn will 
 is soon compelled to yield. But fraud is the natural counter- 
 part to tyranny, and cunning is ever the defence of the weak 
 against the oppressions of the strong. Can the unhappy slave, 
 who has been compelled to plant in the daytime for his 
 master’s benefit, be blamed if he strives in the night to gather 
 some gleaning of the crop for his own use ? 
 
 Blame him you who can ! Join, if you will, in the clamour 
 of the master against the cursed knavery of his slaves ! That 
 same master who thinks it no wrong to rob those slaves ot 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 45 
 
 their labour, their sole possession, their only property ! he to 
 talk about theft ! he — the slaveholder — who has carried the art 
 of pillage to a perfection of which robbers and pirates never 
 dreamed ! They are content to snatch such casual spoils as 
 chance may offer ; but the slaveholder, whip in hand, extorts 
 from his victims a large, a regular, an annual plunder ! Nay, 
 more, he sells for money; he has inherited from his father, and 
 he hopes to transmit to his children, the privilege of con- 
 tinuing this systematic pillage ! 
 
 I had once saved Mr. Gordon’s life, and for this piece of 
 service he had always expressed the greatest gratitude. This 
 had happened several years before. He was fishing on the 
 river not far from Spring-Meadow, when a sudden squall upset 
 his boat. It was no great distance from the shore, but Mr. 
 Gordon was no swimmer, and was in the greatest danger. 
 Master James and myself happened to be walking along the 
 bank ; we saw a man struggling in the water, and I plunged 
 in after him, and caught him as he was sinking the third time. 
 This service Mr. Gordon was in the habit of acknowledging by 
 occasional little presents, and I flattered myself with the hope 
 that he would not refuse his aid in my present circumstances. 
 My plan was to get from Mr. Gordon a hat and shoes for 
 myself, a man’s dress for Cassy, and such information as he 
 could give us about the route we ought to follow. A great 
 many difficulties presented themselves to my mind in the 
 prosecution of the journey. I resolved, however, not to afflict 
 myself with borrowed trouble, but to leave the future to take 
 care of itself. 
 
 The first thing was to see Mr. Gordon, and find out how 
 far he was disposed to assist me. His house and store, both 
 under the same roof, were in a lonely part of the country, near 
 the crossing of two roads, and out of sight of any other 
 buildings. I did not think it safe to trust myself upon the 
 highway earlier than midnight, and it was considerably past 
 that hour before I approached Mr. Gordon’s house. When I 
 came within sight of it I hesitated, and more than once came 
 to a halt ; I did not like to trust my liberty and all my hopes of 
 happiness to the unsure guardianship of any man’s gratitude, 
 and least of all such a man as Mr. Gordon. The risk seemed 
 too great, and my heart sunk within me when I called to mind 
 how frail was the prop on which depended, if not my life, 
 everything certainly that made life desirable. 
 
46 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE, 
 
 I was on the point of turning back, but I recollected that 
 this was my only resource. Mr. Gordon must help us to 
 escape, or our chance was worth nothing. This thought 
 pushed me on. I plucked up courage and approached the 
 door. Three or four dogs which kept watch about the house 
 immediately opened in full chorus, but though they barked 
 loud enough, they gave no signs of any intention to attack me. 
 I knocked again, and pretty soon Mr. Gordon thrust his head 
 from the window, bade his dogs be quiet, and inquired who I 
 was, and what I wanted. I begged him to open the door and 
 let me in, for I had business with him. Expecting, perhaps, 
 to drive a profitable trade with some midnight customer, he 
 hastened to do as I had requested. He opened the door ; the 
 moonlight, as I entered, fell upon my face, and he recognised 
 me at once. 
 
 “What ! Archy, is it you ?” and he spoke it with an air of 
 the greatest surprise ; “ where, in the devil’s name, did you 
 spring from ? I hoped you were clear out of the neighbour- 
 hood a month ago.” And with these words he drew me into 
 the house and shut the door. 
 
 I told him that I had a place of concealment near by, and 
 that I had come to get a little assistance from him in making 
 my escape. 
 
 “ Anything in reason, Archy ; but if I were caught helping 
 off a runaway, it would ruin me for ever. There’s Colonel 
 Moore, your master, and Major Pringle, and Captain Knight, 
 and a half-dozen more, were over here — it’s only yesterday — 
 and they swore, if I did not leave off trading with the hands, 
 they’d pull my house down about my ears, and ride me on a 
 rail out of the county ; and now, if I were caught helping you 
 — fact, Archy — ’twould do my business for me with a witness. 
 I’m not quite such a fool as all that.” 
 
 I used tears, and flatteries, and entreaties. I reminded Mr. 
 Gordon how often he had wished for an opportunity to serve 
 me. I told him that all I wanted was a few articles of dress, 
 and some directions about the road I ought to follow. 
 
 “ True, Archy, true. You saved my life, boy — I can’t deny 
 it ; and one good turn deserves another. But this business of 
 yours is an ugly, bad business at the best. What the devil 
 must you and that wench be running away for ? I never knew 
 any mischief in my life that a woman wasn’t at the bottom of 
 it. It’s that tattling babbler widow Hinkley, that brought 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 4 7 
 
 Colonel Moore and the rest of ’em over here yesterday. 
 Curse the envious old jade ; she wants to drive me out of the 
 neighbourhood, and get all the custom for herself.” . 
 
 I knew that Mr. Gordon had no turn for sentiment, and 
 that it would be casting pearls before swine’s feet to waste any 
 upon him. So I told him it was too late to talk about our 
 reasons for running away — run away we had — and the only 
 thing now was to avoid being taken. 
 
 “ Ay, ay, boy ; I understand you. It’s a damned silly busi- 
 ness, and you begin to be ashamed of it already. You had 
 better make up your minds now to go in, take your whippings, 
 and make the best of it. It’s the loss of the wench that 
 Colonel Moore is most angry about ; and I dare say, if you 
 were to go in, Archy, and make a merit of telling where he 
 could find her, you might get off mighty easy, and shift all the 
 blame upon her shoulders.” 
 
 I concealed the indignation which this base proposal 
 excited. Such treachery to one another is too common 
 among slaves, and is always promoted and rewarded by the 
 masters. I could not expect Mr. Gordon to rise very far 
 above the level of current morals. So I passed by his pro- 
 posal in silence. I only said that I had made up my mind to 
 undergo anything rather than return to Spring-Meadow. If 
 he was resolved not to assist me, I would be off as soon as 
 possible, trusting to his honour to say nothing about this visit. 
 As a last resource, I hinted that I had the money to pay for 
 all I wanted, and that I should not dispute about the price. 
 
 Whether it was this last hint, or some more generous 
 motive, or the combined effect of both, I shall not undertake 
 to determine ; but certain it is that Mr. Gordon began to 
 exhibit a more favourable disposition. 
 
 “ As to money, Archy, between friends like us there is no 
 need of speaking about that. And if you will have your own 
 way, considering what has happened between us, ’twould be 
 mighty unkind in me not to let you have the things you’re 
 wanting. But you’ll never get off— mind, now, what I tell 
 you. — you’ll never get off. Why, boy, the Colonel swears he’ll 
 spend five thousand dollars but what he’ll catch you. He’s 
 got printed handbills stuck up all through the country, with 
 ‘ Five Hundred Dollars Reward ’ at the head of ’em. Come 
 into the store here, and I’ll show you one. Five hundred 
 dollars !— somebody is to pocket that money, I reckon.” 
 
48 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 I did not like the tone in which this was spoken. The 
 emphasis with which Mr. Gordon dwelt on the five hundred 
 dollars was rather alarming. The idea of this reward was 
 evidently taking strong hold upon his imagination. 
 
 Mr. Gordon’s establishment consisted of but two rooms, of 
 which one was his parlour, bed-room, and kitchen, and tire 
 other his store. All this time we had been in the bed-room, 
 with no light but that of the moon. I now followed him into 
 the store. He struck a light, kindled a piece of light wood, 
 and holding it up to a large handbill posted opposite the door, 
 I read, to the best of my recollection, pretty much as follows : 
 
 “ FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. 
 
 “ Ran away from the subscriber, at Spring-Meadow, on 
 Saturday evening last, two servants, Archy and Cassy, for 
 whose apprehension the above reward will be paid. 
 
 “ They are both very light coloured. Of the two, Cassy is 
 a shade the darker. Archy is about twenty-one years of age, 
 five feet eleven inches high, and a stout, muscular frame. He 
 has a firm, erect walk, and is a very likely fellow. Smiles 
 when spoken to. His hair is a light brown, and curls over his 
 head ; he has blue eyes and a high forehead. Said boy was 
 raised in my family, and has always been kindly treated. It is 
 not known what clothes he wore away. 
 
 “ Cassy is about eighteen, five feet three inches, or there- 
 abouts, and a handsome face and figure. She has long dark 
 hair, and a bright black eye. When she smiles there is a 
 dimple in her left cheek. She has a good voice, and can sing 
 several songs. No other marks particularly recollected, except 
 a mole on her right breast. She has been raised a lady’s maid, 
 and she took a variety of good clothing with her. Said slaves 
 have gone off in company, as is supposed. 
 
 “Whoever will return them to me, or lodge them in any 
 gaol, so that I can get them, shall be paid the above reward ; 
 or one-half for either separately. “ Charles Moore. 
 
 “ N.B. I suspect they have taken the road to Baltimore, as 
 Cassy formerly lived in that city. No doubt they will attempt 
 to pass for white people.” 
 
 While I was reading this advertisement, Mr. Gordon looked 
 over my shoulder, and added his comments upon each sen- 
 tence of it. Neither his remarks, nor the advertisement itself, 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 49 
 
 were calculated to make me feel very comfortable. Perhaps 
 Mr. Gordon observed it ; for he handed me a glass of whiskey, 
 and bade me keep up my spirits. He swallowed one himself, 
 and drank to my escape. This reassured me a little— for, to 
 tell the truth, I was a good deal startled at Mr. Gordon’s very 
 evident hankering after the five hundred dollars. The whiskey 
 he drank — and he was not content with a single glass — seemed 
 to rekindle his gratitude. He swore he would run any risk to 
 serve me, and told me to pick out such articles as I wanted. 
 
 I fitted myself with hat and shoes, and selected the same for 
 Cassy. But it was necessary to have a man’s dress for her. 
 Mr. Gordon did not deal in ready-made clothing, but he had 
 some cloth, which I thought would answer our purpose ; and 
 he undertook to get the suit made up for me. I gave him the 
 measure by guess, and was to return in three days, by which 
 time he promised to have the clothes finished. I had much 
 rather have completed the business at once, and have started 
 directly on our journey ; but that was impossible. A disguise 
 for Cassy was absolutely necessary ; it would have been foolish 
 to have attempted an escape without it. I pressed him to be 
 sure and have the clothes finished at the time appointed, for a 
 reward of five hundred dollars, and the chance of making 
 friends with Colonel Moore, and rising in the world by his 
 assistance, was a temptation to which I wished to keep Mr. 
 Gordon exposed for as short a time as possible. I now 
 inquired what I had to pay for my various purchases. Mr. 
 Gordon took his slate and began to figure it up. He proceeded 
 very diligently for a few minutes, and then suddenly came to a 
 full stop. He looked at the goods I had selected and then at 
 the slate. For a moment he hesitated ; then looking at me, 
 “ Archy,” he said, “ you saved my life — you are welcome to 
 them ’ere things.” 
 
 I knew well how to value this instance of generosity. 
 Whatever money Mr. Gordon got was pretty sure to go in 
 gambling and dissipation. Of course he was not only poor, 
 but often distressed and tormented to get the means of indulg- 
 ing his propensities. Money was to him what whiskey is to 
 the lips of the drunkard. For such a person to be generous is 
 hard indeed ; and I ceased at once to distrust a man who gave 
 so substantial a proof of his inclination to assist me. I bade 
 him good night, and set out on my return home, with a heart 
 much lightened. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Mr. Gordon put me some questions about the place of my 
 retreat, to which, however, I thought it best to return a some- 
 what equivocal reply. Though greatly reassured, I still could 
 see no good purpose to be answered by too great confidence ] 
 and at setting out from Mr. Gordon’s, I was careful to take a 
 direction quite wide of the true one. Once or twice I thought 
 I was followed. The moon was now setting, and her light was 
 scanty and uncertain. My path led through a scattered 
 growth of stunted trees and bushes. A pursuer might easily 
 have concealed himself ; but when I stopped to listen all was 
 silent, and I soon dismissed my fanciful fears. 
 
 Taking a considerable circuit, I struck into the direction of 
 the deserted plantation, and arrived there about daybreak. 
 Cassy came out to meet me. It was the first time we had 
 been so long separated since our escape from Spring-Meadow. 
 
 I felt as overjoyed to see her as if I had returned after a years 
 absence ; and the eagerness with which she flew into my arms 
 and pressed me again and again to her bosom satisfied me that 
 I was not alone in the feeling. We spent the three days in 
 making preparations, starting and answering difficulties, and 
 sometimes in pleasing ourselves with anticipations of future 
 happiness. 
 
 At the appointed time I set oil for Mr. Gordon’s. I 
 approached the house, not trembling and hesitating as before, 
 but with the confident step with which one hastens to the 
 dwelling of a tried friend. I knocked. In a moment Mr. 
 Gordon opened the door ; he caught me by the arm, and 
 would have drawn me into the house ; but the door half 
 opened enabled me to discover that there were others there 
 beside himself. 
 
 I snatched myself from his grasp, and starting back, I said 
 in a whisper, “ Heavens ! Mr. Gordon, who have you in the 
 house ? ” 
 
 He returned me no answer) but almost while I spoke I 
 heard Stubbs’s grum voice growling, “ Seize him — seize him ! ” 
 — and that moment I knew I was betrayed. I ran ; but very 
 soon I felt somebody grasping at my shoulder. Luckily I had 
 a thick stout stick in my hand, and turning short about, with 
 one blow I struck my pursuer to the ground. It was the 
 traitor Gordon. I was tempted to stop and renew the blow, 
 but that moment a pistol ball whizzed by my head, and looking 
 round I saw Stubbs and another man, with pistols in their 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 5i 
 
 hands, close upon me. There was no time to lose. I sprang 
 forward, and ran for my life. Two or three shots were fired in 
 quick succession, but without effect ; and presently I reached 
 a thicket, where I felt myself more safe. It was soon evident 
 that I was much the fleetest of the party : for before long I was 
 out of sight and hearing of my pursuers. I kept on for near 
 half-an-hour ; when, almost exhausted, I sunk upon the 
 ground, and strove to recover my breath, and to collect my 
 thoughts. There was no moon ; the starlight was obscured by 
 a thin mist ; and I did not well know where I was. Having 
 determined, as well as I was able, the probable direction of the 
 deserted plantation, I again set forward. In the race I had 
 sprained one of my ankles. This I had scarcely observed at 
 the moment; but it now became painful, and I moved with 
 difficulty. However, I kept on the best I could, and flattered 
 myself with the hope of getting back before daylight. I passed 
 for a considerable distance through fields and thickets, with 
 which I was not acquainted ; but presently I reached a brook 
 which I knew. I quenched my thirst, and pushed forward 
 with greater alacrity. I was still five or six miles from the 
 deserted plantation, and was obliged to take a very circuitous 
 route. I kept on as fast as I was able ; but the sun was up 
 some hours before I arrived at the spring. Cassy was anxiously 
 watching for me. She had become exceedingly alarmed at my 
 delay ; nor did the disorder of my dress and my appearance of 
 hurry and fatigue tend to reassure her. 
 
 I hastened towards the spring, and was stooping to drink, 
 when Cassy gave a loud shriek. I looked up, and saw two or 
 three men rushing down the side of the hollow. I sprang upon 
 my feet; but immediately felt myself seized from behind. Two 
 other men had rushed down the hollow, upon the other side, 
 and while I was preparing to give battle to those I had first 
 seen, before I was aware of my danger, I found myself in the 
 grasp of their confederates. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 I learned afterwards that when Mr. Stubbs and his com- 
 panions, who were waiting for me at Gordon’s, had failed to 
 bring me down with their pistols, discovering that I ran too 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 52 
 
 fast for them, they soon gave over the chase and returned to 
 the store. They sent off immediately for assistance ; and were 
 presently joined by two men, and what was of more impoit- 
 ance, by a dog, named Jowler, and celebrated throughout the 
 county for his skill in tracking out runaways. . 
 
 Jowler had no sooner arrived than they tied a string about 
 his neck, the other end of which one of the party held in his 
 hand. The dog was then put upon my trail, and trotted 
 slowly forward with his nose to the ground, followed by 
 Mr. Stubbs and the rest of the party. All the latter part 
 of the way I had walked quite slowly, and Jowler and his 
 company had gained so fast upon me that they reached 
 the spring almost as soon as I did. Having discovered, my 
 retreat, they resolved to make everything certain ; and divid- 
 ing into two parties, they rushed down both sides of the 
 hollow at the same time, and secured me in the manner I 
 h av e rd8.tG(i 
 
 Poor Cassy was seized at the same instant ; and almost 
 before we knew what had happened we found our hands tied, 
 and ourselves connected by a stout chain, the ends of which 
 were made fast about our necks. This was sad business for 
 Cassy ; and the poor girl, when she felt the iron around her 
 neck, wept bitterly. I do not believe the chain was drawn 
 much tighter than was necessary ; yet when I saw the tears of 
 my poor wife, I could not help feeling a choking sensation 
 about my throat. What aggravated my distress and my 
 indignation was the brutal jests of our captors. It was well 
 my hands were fast, for had they been free, I verily believe I 
 should have found the means to finish one or another of the 
 scoundrels. Mr. Gordon was one of the party. . His head 
 was bound up in a bloody handkerchief;, but instead of 
 joining in the jests of his companions, he tried to keep them 
 from vexing and insulting us. 
 
 “ I’ll tell you what, Stubbs, you nasty, infernal blackguard, 
 let that gal Cassy be. Ain’t it I who’ve taken them ? Ain’t it 
 I who am to have the reward ? Let them be, I say ; I tell 
 you they are under my protection.” _ 
 
 “ Indeed 1 a fine sort of protector they’ve found , in you, 
 answered Stubbs, with a loud laugh, in which he was joined by 
 his companions,— “ No question, they’re mightily obliged to 
 you. The deuce take your nonsense and yourself into the 
 bargain ; I’ll say what I please to the gal, do what I 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 53 
 
 please too. Ain’t I the overseer ? ” — and here he broke out 
 with a fresh string of ribaldry, addressed to poor Cassy. 
 
 It was only by a promise to treat his companions to a quart 
 of whiskey that Mr. Gordon could prevail on them to let us 
 alone. The word « whiskey ” worked like a charm, and by the 
 influence of it, he persuaded the others to drop a little behind, 
 and to give him a chance, as he expressed it, to have some 
 private conversation with me. He had no objection to their 
 hearing what he said to me, but he did not want to be 
 
 interrupted. . , 
 
 I was a good deal surprised at all this. Mr. Gordon had 
 betrayed me ; — and after doing me so base and irreparable an 
 injury, what could he mean by these little marks of good-will? 
 Mr. Gordon was, as I have described him, a good-natured 
 fellow. He had not been able to resist the temptation of five 
 hundred dollars, and all the other advantages, which he 
 expected to gain by betraying me ; — but for all that, he had 
 not forgotten that I had saved his life. He walked up beside 
 me, and stammering and hesitating, he attempted to enter into 
 
 conversation. „ . 
 
 “ That was a deuced hard blow you struck me, Archy, he 
 
 began. 
 
 “ I am sorry it was not harder,” was my answer. 
 
 “Come, come now, don’t be in such a devilish savage 
 humour. Why, boy, I thought I might as well get the five 
 hundred dollars, as to let it slip through my fingers, and all for 
 nothing too. I knew right well you were sure to be taken— 
 and for all you pout so about it, I’ve made better terms for 
 you than anybody else would have done. Come, boy, cheer 
 rip, and I’ll tell you how it all was. You see, when you left me 
 t’other night, I could not sleep a wink for thinking. Says I 
 to myself," that’s a damned foolish project of Archy’s. He is 
 sure to be caught ; and then it will be coming out as how I 
 helped him, and then there will be the devil and all to pay. 
 He’ll be whipped, and 1 11 be fined and sent to gaol, and for 
 anything I know, ridden on a rail out of the county, as Colonel 
 Moore and them others threatened me ; and then— to make a 
 bad matter worse — somebody else will get the rewaid. Now 
 that boy Archy, said I, saved my life — there s no denying that, 
 anyhow— and if I can save him a whipping, and at the same 
 time put five hundred dollars into my pocket, it will be a 
 mighty pretty business for both of us. 
 
54 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 “ So the next morning I got up early and started off for 
 Colonel Moore’s ; and a mighty fluster I found the Colonel in, 
 to be sure — for he could hear no news of you nowhere. So 
 says I, ‘ Colonel,’ says I, ‘ I hear as how you’ve offered five 
 hundred dollars reward to anybody that’ll catch them ’ere 
 runaways of yours.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Colonel, ‘cash down’; — 
 and he looked me in the face, as though he thought I knew 
 where to find you. 
 
 “ ‘Just so, Colonel,’ says I ; ‘and perhaps I might, if you’ll 
 promise me something, in the first place.’ 
 
 “‘Promise you something,’ said the Colonel; ‘haven’t I 
 promised five hundred dollars already ? what is it you mean ? ’ 
 
 “Says I, ‘Colonel, it isn’t the reward I was thinking about 
 — the reward is handsome, a very pretty reward, surely. Pay 
 me four hundred and fifty dollars, Colonel, and promise me 
 not to whip Archy, when you get him, and I’ll not ask for the 
 other fifty.’ 
 
 “ ‘ Pshaw, nonsense,’ says the Colonel. ‘ Pray, Mr. Gordon, 
 what is it to you how much I whip the scoundrel, provided 
 you get your money ? ’ 
 
 “Says I, ‘Colonel, Jemmy Gordon isn’t the chap f o forget 
 a favour. That boy, Archy, saved my life, it’s three years ago 
 this very month ; and if you’ll promise me, upon your honour, 
 not to punish him for running away, I will undertake to ‘hunt 
 him up for you ; and not otherwise.’ 
 
 “ The Colonel higgled and haggled a good deal ; but he 
 found he couldn’t get round me no how — he promised all I 
 had asked him. So I told him how you had been at my 
 house, and how you were coming again ; and he sent Stubbs 
 and them other fellows to help me to take you — and that’s the 
 long and the short of the whole matter. So don’t be sulky, 
 Archy, but cheer up and take it kindly. You see, I meant to 
 do what was best for us both.” 
 
 “ I wish you much joy, Mr. Gordon, of your part of the 
 bargain ; and may you lose your five hundred dollars the next 
 time you play cards, and that will be before you are twelve 
 hours olders.” 
 
 “You’re in a passion, Archy, or you wouldn’t talk in 
 that way. Well, boy, to tell the truth, I don’t much wonder 
 at it. But, by-and-bye, you’ll think better of it. I should 
 think you might be content with having broken my head ; my 
 eyes, Archy, but it aches, as though it would split.” So 
 

 THE WHITE SLAVE, 55 
 
 saying, Mr. Gordon broke off the conversation and joined his 
 companions. 
 
 Little reason as I have to speak well of him, 1 am bold to 
 say there are a great many men in the world not much better 
 than Jemmy Gordon. Five hundred dollars was a great 
 temptation to him. Besides, he hoped to secure the good 
 graces of Colonel Moore, and expected by his assistance to get 
 into the way of gaining a living respectably — at least, as 
 respectably as any poor man can in that country. He not 
 only quieted his conscience with the idea that, if he did not 
 betray me, somebody else would, but he had made terms with 
 Colonel Moore for my benefit, and actually seemed to have 
 flattered himself into the notion that he was doing me a favour 
 
 by betraying me. . 
 
 There is many a gentleman in slave-holding America- for, 
 anti-republican as it may seem, in no part of the world is the 
 distinction between gentlemen and the common people more 
 distinctly marked— who would consider it an insult to be com- 
 pared with Jemmy Gordon, but whose whole life is a continued 
 practice of the very principles upon which that man acted, 
 when he made up his mind to play the traitor. Many is the 
 gentleman in slave-holding America who knows full well and 
 in the secret recesses of his own soul, most unequivocally 
 acknowledges— that to keep his fellow-men in bondage is a 
 gross, flagrant, high-handed violation of the first and clearest 
 principles of justice and equity^ — a practice, abstractly con- 
 sidered, fully more criminal than piracy or highway robbery. 
 Slavery, in the abstract, he acknowledges to himself and to 
 others to be totally indefensible. But then his slaves are his 
 estate — and he cannot live like a gentleman without them. 
 Besides, he treats his servants particularly well— so very well, 
 that he does not hesitate to argue that they are much happier 
 as slaves, than freedom, under any form, could possibly make 
 
 them! . . , . 
 
 When men of sense and education can satisfy themselves 
 
 with such wretched sophistry as this, let us learn to have some 
 charity for poor Jemmy Gordon. 
 
56 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 It was past noon before we arrived at Spring-Meadow, where 
 Colonel Moore had been for some time impatiently expecting 
 us. But as he happened to have a large party to dine with 
 him, he was too busy in entertaining his company to pay any 
 immediate attention to us. Yet, no sooner had he received 
 notice of our arrival, than he sent out Mr. Gordon’s five 
 hundred dollars. It was a large roll of bank notes ; the 
 fellow’s eye kindled up at the sight of it, and he snatched it 
 eagerly. I was looking steadily at him, and his eyes met 
 mine. The change was sudden. He blushed and grew pale 
 by turns ; — shame, remorse, and self-contempt were painted in 
 his face. He thrust the money hastily into his pocket, and 
 walked away without speaking a word. 
 
 Cassy and myself were driven to the stables, and locked up 
 in a close, narrow, dark room, which served sometimes as a 
 corn-crib, and sometimes as a sort of dungeon for refractory 
 slaves. We sat down upon the floor— for there was nothing 
 else to sit upon — and poor Cassy sunk into my arms. Her 
 grief and terror seemed to burst out afresh, and she wept 
 bitterly. I kissed away her tears, and tried to console her. 
 But she would not be comforted ; and little, indeed, was the 
 comfort I had to offer. The more I said to her, the more 
 she wept; and she clung to me closer and closer, till her 
 embrace became almost convulsive. “ He will kill us : he will 
 separate us for ever,” she murmured, in a low, inarticulate 
 voice ; and it was the only reply she made to all I could say 
 to her. 
 
 Our situation was, indeed, pitiable. Had we fallen into the 
 hands of an ordinary pirate or robber, there might have been 
 some room for hope. The consciousness of his own violence 
 might, perhaps, alarm him ; the fear of avenging justice might 
 stay his hand. At the worst, death, and that, too, a speedy 
 and an easy one, would be the farthest limit of his malice. 
 But we, unhappy creatures, could flatter ourselves with no such 
 prospect. We were runaway slaves who had fallen again into 
 the hands of their master — a master, whom the very recol- 
 lection that he owned us inspired with rage at our insolence, in 
 daring to run away from him ; and who knew well that both 
 the law and public opinion would amply justify him in the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 57 
 
 infliction of any tortures not likely to result in immediate 
 death. 
 
 It is. true that we had fled from the greatest outrage that 
 can be inflicted upon a wife and a husband. But that was no 
 excuse, not even the slightest palliation. Slaves are not 
 peimitted to fly at all. It is their duty — alas! that such a 
 "°rd should be so prostituted! — to submit without a murmur 
 to all the insults, outrages, and oppression of their masters. 
 
 I clasped my w r ife to my bosom, with almost the same 
 trembling earnestness with which she clung to me. I felt, as 
 she did, that it was the last time— and this idea sunk into my 
 heart with a bitterness which all my late ecstasies served only 
 
 aggravate. I almost stifled her with eager kisses ; but the 
 fever that glowed in her cheek was not the flush of pleasure ; 
 and those deep sighs she heaved, they could not be mistaken 
 for the pantings of delight. The speedy separation that 
 threatened us was not only terrible in anticipation, but it 
 seemed to destroy all our capacity for present enjoyment. 
 But for that, with Cassy in my arms, what should I have 
 cared for chains and a dungeon ! Dreading that, her lips lost 
 all their sweetness, her bosom was an uneasy pillow, and 
 though I could not leave her, every embrace seemed to 
 increase both her distress and mine. 
 
 We passed several hours in this way without any inter- 
 ruption. We had not tasted food that day, and nobody 
 brought us even a cup of cold water. The heat and closeness 
 of the room, into which the air had no admission, aggravated 
 the fever in our blood, and made our thirst almost intolerable. 
 How I longed for the cool spring, the balmy air, the freedom 
 we had lost ! 
 
 Towards evening we heard somebody approaching, and I 
 soon recognised the voices of Colonel Moore and his overseer. 
 They opened the door, and bade us come out. At first the 
 light dazzled my eyes so that I could scarcely distinguish one 
 object from another; but in a little while I was enabled to see 
 that our visitors were accompanied by Peter, a tall fellow, with 
 a very suspicious smile, the spy and tell-tale of the place, the 
 detestation of all the servants, but the especial favourite of Mr. 
 Stubbs, and his regular assistant on all occasions. 
 
 Colonel Moore’s face was a good deal flushed, and I judged 
 that he had been drinking. I his was a practice very unusual 
 with him. For though every dinner at his house was pretty 
 
58 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 sure to end by putting the greater part of the guests upon the 
 floor, Colonel Moore generally passed the bottle, under the 
 plea that his physician had forbidden its use, and commonly 
 rose up the only sober man from his own table. It was too 
 plain that, on the present occasion, he had forgotten his 
 accustomed sobriety. He spoke not a word to me, and I 
 found it impossible to catch his eye ; but turning to his 
 overseer, he said, in an under tone, and with the air of being a 
 good deal irritated, ce It was a damned blunder, Mr. Stubbs, to 
 shut them up together. I thought you understood my orders 
 better.” 
 
 The overseer mumbled out some unintelligible apology, of 
 which Colonel Moore took no notice; and without further 
 preface or explanation, he ordered Mr. Stubbs to tie me up. 
 
 The padlock by which the chain was fastened about my 
 neck was undone. They stripped me almost naked. Mr. 
 Stubbs produced a piece of rope, with one end of which he 
 bound my hands, and the other end he made fast, with 
 Peter’s assistance, to a beam over my head ; not, however, till 
 he had drawn it so tight as almost to lift me from the floor. 
 
 Colonel Moore then ordered them to free Cassy from the 
 chain. He put a heavy whip into her hand, and pointing to 
 me, “ Take care, my girl,” he said, “ that you lay it on to some 
 purpose.” 
 
 Poor Cassy looked about in utter amazement. She did not 
 understand him ; she had no idea of such refined cruelty, such 
 ferocious revenge. 
 
 He repeated his commands, with a tone and a look that 
 were frightful. “ If you wish to save your own carcass, see 
 that you bring blood at every blow. I’ll teach you — both of 
 you — to trifle with me.” 
 
 She now comprehended his brutal purpose ; and giving one 
 look of mingled horror and despair, sunk senseless to the 
 ground. Peter was sent for water. He dashed it in her face, 
 and she soon revived. They placed her on her feet, and 
 Colonel Moore again put the whip into her hand and repeated 
 his orders. 
 
 She threw it down, as if the touch had stung her ; and look- 
 ing him full in the face, the tears, all the while, streaming from 
 eyes, she said in a tone firm, but full of entreaty, “ Master, he 
 is my husband ! ” 
 
 That word husband seemed to kindle Colonel Moore into a 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 59 
 
 new fury, which totally destroyed his self-command. He 
 struck Cassy to the ground with his fists, trampled on her with 
 his feet, and snatching up the whip which she had thrown 
 down, he laid it upon me with such violence that the lash 
 penetrated my flesh at every blow, and the blood ran trickling 
 down my legs and stood in little puddles at my feet. The 
 torture was too great for human endurance ; I screamed with 
 agony. “ Pshaw,” said my executioner, “his noise will disturb 
 the house ; and drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he 
 thrust it into my mouth, and rammed it down my throat with 
 the butt-end of his whip handle. Having thus effectually 
 gagged me, he renewed his lashes. How long they were 
 continued I do not know ; a cloud began to swim before my 
 eyes ; my head grew dizzy and confused ; and a fortunate 
 fainting-fit soon put me beyond the reach of torture. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 When I recovered my senses, I found myself stretched upon a 
 wretched pallet, which lay upon the floor, in one corner of a 
 little, old, and ruinous hovel. I was very weak and hardly 
 able to move ; and I afterwards learned that I had just passed 
 through the paroxysm of a fever. A deaf old woman, too 
 much superannuated to be fit for anything but a nurse, was my 
 only companion. I recognised the old lady, and forgetting 
 that she could not hear me, I put her a thousand questions in 
 a breath. I dreaded, yet I wished to learn the fate of poor 
 Cassy ; and it was to her that most of my questions related. 
 But to all my inquiries the old woman returned no answer. I 
 might scream myself deaf, she said, and she could not hear 
 a word. Besides, she told me, I was too sick and weak to 
 talk. 
 
 I was not to be silenced in that way, and only bawled the 
 louder, and added signs and gestures to enable the old woman 
 to understand me. But it was plain that Aunt Judy had no 
 intention to gratify my curiosity; for when she found she could 
 not quiet me, she went out, and locking the door after her, left 
 me to my own meditations. These were not very agreeable. 
 
6o 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 
 As yet, however, my thoughts were so confused, and my head 
 so dizzy, that I could scarcely be said to reflect at all. 
 
 I learned afterwards that it was more than a week that 
 I had remained delirious— the effect of the violent fever into 
 which I had been thrown, and which threatened a speedy 
 termination to my miserable existence. But the crisis was 
 now past. My youth and the vigour of my constitution had 
 carried me through it, and had preserved me for new 
 
 sufferings. ^ 
 
 I recovered rapidly, and was soon able to walk about. Lest 
 I should make an undue use of my returning strength, and 
 attempt another escape, I was presently accommodated with 
 fetters and handcuffs. My fetters were taken off once a day 
 for about an hour, and under Peter’s supervision I was allowed 
 to breathe the fresh air, and to take a short walk about the 
 plantation. It was in vain that I attempted to get from Peter 
 any information concerning my wife. He could not, or he 
 would not, tell me anything about her. 
 
 I thought that perhaps he might sell the information which 
 he refused to give ; and I promised to make him a present of 
 some clothes if he would allow me to visit my former house. 
 
 We went together. This house I had been enabled, in 
 anticipation of my marriage, and through the bounty of Mrs. 
 
 Moore and her daughter, to fit up quite comfortably. It was 
 furnished with a variety of things seldom seen in a slave’s 
 cabin. But I found it stripped and plundered ; every article 
 of furniture was gone, and my chest was broken open and all 
 my clothes taken away. For this I was no doubt indebted to 
 my fellow-servants. The strongest, or almost the. strongest, 
 impulse of the human mind is the desire of acquisition. This 
 passion the slave can only gratify by plunder. Besides, such 
 is the baneful effect of slavery, that it almost destroys the very 
 germ of virtue. If oppression makes the wise man mad, it too 
 often makes the honest man a villain. It embitters the feel- 
 ings and hardens and brutifies the heart. Pie who finds 
 himself plundered from his birth of his liberty and his labour 
 — his only inheritance — becomes selfish, reckless, and regard- 
 less of everything save the immediate gratification . of the 
 present moment. Plundered of everything himself, he is ready 
 to plunder in his turn even his brothers in misfortune. 
 
 Finding my house stripped, and my clothes stolen, it put 
 me in mind to feel in my pockets for my money That was 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 61 
 
 gone too. Indeed I soon recollected that, when surprised 
 and seized by Mr. Gordon and his assistants, Mr. Stubbs 
 had searched my pockets, and transferred their contents to 
 his own. This, of course, was the last that I expected to 
 see of my money. According to the Virginian code of morals, 
 Mr. Stubbs was a very respectable man, who did what was 
 perfectly proper. Certainly, it was highly dangerous to trust a 
 rogue and a runaway with the possession of a considerable 
 sum of money. But, according to the same code, the servants 
 who had stolen my clothes were a set of outrageous thieves, 
 who richly deserved a whipping. So Mr. Stubbs declared, 
 whom we happened to meet, as we were returning, and to 
 whom I complained that my house had been plundered. 
 That honest gentleman worked himself quite into a passion, 
 and swore roundly that if he could catch the thieves he 
 would make them smart for it. Notwithstanding this out- 
 burst of virtuous indignation, Mr. Stubbs said nothing about 
 returning my money, and I judged it safest not to introduce 
 the subject myself. 
 
 In two or three weeks I had nearly recovered my strength, 
 and the gashes with which my back had been scored were 
 quite healed over. I was beginning to wonder what Colonel 
 Moore intended to do with me ; when, one evening, I received 
 a message from Mr. Stubbs to be up by sunrise the next 
 morning, and ready for a journey. Where we were going, 
 or what was to be the object of our travels, he did not 
 condescend to inform me; nor did I feel much curiosity to 
 know. I had now one great consolation. Do what they 
 pleased, it was impossible to render me any more miserable, 
 It was this idea which sustained me and enabled me to 
 regard the future with a sort of careless and stupid indifference, 
 at which, when I reflect upon it, I am myself surprised. 
 
 In the morning Mr. Stubbs came for me. He was on , 
 horseback, whip in hand, as usual. He undid my fetters, 
 but allowed me to retain my handcuffs. He tied a piece 
 of rope about my neck, and fastened the other end of if 
 to his own waist. Thus guarded against escapes, he mounted 
 his horse, and bade me walk beside him. I was still rather 
 weak, and sometimes my pace flagged a little ; but a stroke 
 from Mr. Stubb’s whip soon quickened me into vigour. I 
 inquired where we were going. “ You’ll know when you get 
 there,” was the answer. 
 
62 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 That night we lodged at a sort of tavern. We both occu- 
 pied one room — he the bed, and I the floor. He took the 
 cord from my neck and bound my legs with it. It was 
 drawn so tight, and caused me so much pain, that I could 
 not sleep. Several times I complained to Mr. Stubbs ; but 
 he ordered me to go to sleep quietly, and not be troubling 
 him with foolish complaints. The next morning when he 
 came to untie me, he found my ankles a good deal swollen. 
 He seemed sorry that he had paid no more attention to 
 my appeals, but excused himself by saying that we were 
 all such a devilish pack of liars, there was no telling when 
 to believe us ; and he did not want to be at the trouble of 
 getting up for nothing. 
 
 The next day we continued our journey ; but I was so 
 broken down by the fatigues of the day previous, and by 
 the want of sleep, that nothing but the frequent application 
 of Mr. Stubb’s whip could stimulate me into the necessary 
 exertion. My spirits and that stubbornness of soul, which 
 hitherto had sustained me, seemed to fail at the same time 
 with my strength, and I wept like a child. At last we 
 reached our journey’s end. Late that evening we entered 
 the city of Richmond. I am not able to describe the town ; 
 for I was hurried off to gaol, and there locked up for safe 
 keeping. 
 
 I was now told why we had come. Colonel Moore, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Stubb’s account, was sick of such' an unruly fellow, 
 and had determined to sell me. I had not seen him since 
 the day I had fainted under the energy of his paternal discip- 
 line. Nor did I ever see him afterwards. A strange parting 
 that between a son and a father ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The next day I was to be sold. There was to be a public 
 sale of slaves, and several besides myself were to be disposed 
 of. I was fettered and handcuffed, and taken to market. 
 The rest of the merchandise was already collected; but it 
 was some time before the sale began, and I occupied the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 63 
 
 interval in looking about me. Several of the groups attracted 
 my particular attention. 
 
 The first that caught my eye was an old man, whose 
 head was completely white, and a pretty little girl, his 
 granddaughter, as he told me, about ten or twelve years 
 old. Both the old man and the little girl had iron collars 
 about their necks, which were connected by a heavy chain. 
 One would have imagined that the old age of the man, 
 and the youth of the girl, would have made such savage 
 precautions unnecessary. But their master, so far as I could 
 learn, had resolved to sell them in a fit of passion, and the 
 chains, perhaps, were intended more for punishment than 
 security. 
 
 A man and his wife, with an infant in her arms, stood 
 next to the old man and his granddaughter. The man and 
 wife were quite young, and apparently fond of each other; 
 at least they seemed very much distressed at the idea of 
 falling into the hands of different purchasers. The woman 
 now and then would address some one or other of the com- 
 pany who seemed to indicate an intention of buying. She 
 would beg them to purchase herself and her husband; and 
 she ran over, with great volubility, the good qualities of 
 both. The man looked on the ground, and preserved a 
 moody and sullen silence. 
 
 There was another group of eight or ten men and women, 
 who seemed to regard the sale with as much unconcern as 
 if they were merely spectators. They laughed, and talked, 
 and jested with one another with as much gaiety as any of 
 the company. An apologist for tyranny would, no doubt, 
 rejoice in such a spectacle, and would be emboldened to 
 argue that, after all, being sold at public auction is not so 
 terrible a thing as some weak people are apt to imagine. 
 The argument would be quite as sound as any that the 
 slave-holder ever uses ; and for ingenuity and conclusiveness 
 deserves to be compared with that of the philosopher who, 
 having seen through the grates of a prison a parcel of con- 
 demned criminals laughing and jesting together, concluded 
 that the expectation of being hung must have something 
 in it very exhilarating. 
 
 The truth is, that the human mind, in its eager, though 
 too often unavailing struggle after happiness, will still make 
 the most of its means; and even in the valley of despaii 
 
64 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 or under the ribs of death itself, still strives to create some 
 matter of enjoyment. Even the slave will sing at his task ; 
 he can laugh too, though he find himself sold like an ox 
 in the market. The tyrant discovers that all his wrongs 
 and oppressions have not been able to extinguish in the 
 soul of his victim the capability of enjoyment; and he points 
 you to these outbursts of a nature not yet totally subdued, 
 and dares to boast of the happiness he causes ! 
 
 But to be sold is not always a laughing matter. The first 
 bargain which the auctioneer offered to the company was a man 
 apparently about thirty, with a fine, open, prepossessing counte- 
 nance. He had no expectation of being sold till the moment 
 he was placed upon the table ; for it appeared that his master, 
 who lived near the city, had lured him to town under the 
 delusive pretext of an intention to hire him out to some one of 
 the citizens. When the poor fellow found that he was actually 
 to be sold, he was seized with such a trembling that he could 
 scarcely support himself. He shook from head to foot ; and 
 his face indicated the greatest terror and distress. The two 
 principal bidders — and they seemed to enter into a pretty warm 
 competition — were a gentleman of the neighbourhood, who 
 appeared to know the poor fellow on sale, and a dashing, 
 buckish young man, who, it was said, was a slave-trader from 
 South Carolina, who had come to purchase slaves for that market. 
 
 As the sale proceeded, it was curious, but at the same time 
 most distressing, to observe the anxiety of the unhappy slave. 
 When the slave-trader took the lead, his jaw fell, his eyes rolled 
 wildly, and he seemed the very picture of despair ; but when 
 the Virginian bid higher, a gleam of pleasure shot across his 
 face, the tears ran down his Cheeks, and his earnest “ God 
 bless you, master ! ” was enough to touch the hardest heart. 
 He interrupted the sale by his cries and vociferations, and not 
 even the whip could keep him still. He called upon his 
 favourite bidder by name, and entreated him to persevere, by 
 every motive he could think of. He promised to serve him 
 faithfully to the last minute of his life, and work himself to 
 death in his service, if he would only buy him, only save him 
 from being wholly separated from his wife and children, and 
 sent away — he knew not whither — from the place where he 
 was born and" raised, and where, as he said, he had always 
 behaved well, and borne a good character. Not that he had 
 any particular objections to the other gentleman either — for 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 65 
 
 the poor fellow began to see the danger of offending a man 
 who was likely to become his master; no doubt he was a very fine 
 gentleman too ; but he was a stranger, and would take him out 
 of the country, and carry him far away from his wife and 
 children ; and as he mentioned them, his voice sunk, choked 
 and interrupted, to inarticulate sobbing. 
 
 The bidders kept up the contest with much spirit. The 
 man was evidently a first-rate hand. Aside from this, the 
 Virginian seemed touched by the poor fellow’s entreaties, and 
 dropped some hints about slave-traders, which put his opponent 
 into a violent passion, and came near ending in a quarrel. 
 The interposition of the by-standers kept the competitors 
 apart ; but the slave-trader, whose passions were roused, swore 
 that he would have the “ boy,” cost what he might, if it were 
 only to teach him a little good manners. One or two of the 
 company cried shame, and called upon the sl^ve-trader to 
 leave off bidding, and suffer the poor fellow to remain in the 
 country. He replied, with an oath and a sneer, that he was 
 not fool enough to be bamboozled by any such nonsense, and 
 immediately rose fifty dollars on the last bid. This was more 
 than the Virginian could afford to sacrifice to a fit of good 
 nature, and piqued and chagrined, he yielded up the contest. 
 The auctioneer knocked off the purchase ; and the man, more 
 dead than alive, was delivered into the hands of the slave- 
 trader’s attendants, who received orders to give him twenty 
 lashes on the spot, for his “cursed ill-mannerly Virginian 
 insolence.” 
 
 The sneering emphasis with which this was spoken created 
 no little sensation among the by-standers; but as the slave- 
 trader strutted about with his hand on his dirk-handle, and as 
 two pistols might plainly be seen sticking out of his pockets, 
 nobody saw fit to question this provoking exercise of “his 
 sacred right of property,” and the sale proceeded as before. 
 
 At length came my turn. I was stripped half naked, the 
 better to show my joints and muscles, and placed upon the 
 table or platform, on which the subject of the sale was exposed 
 to the examination of the purchasers. I was whirled about, 
 my limbs were felt, and my capabilities' discussed, in a slang 
 much like that of a company of horse-jockeys. Various were 
 the remarks that were made upon me. One fellow declared 
 that I had “ a savage, sullen look ” ; another swore that my eye 
 was “ devilish malicious a third remarked that these light- 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 coloured fellows were all rascals — to which the auctioneer 
 replied that he never knew a slave of any smartness who was 
 not a rogue. 
 
 Abundance of questions were put to me, as to where I was 
 raised, why I was sold, and what I was fit for. To all these 
 inquiries I made the shortest and most indefinite answers. I 
 was not in a humour to gratify this curiosity ; and I had none 
 of that ambition to bring a high price, so common among 
 slaves, the last and lowest form in which is displayed that love 
 of superiority which exercises so principal an influence over 
 the feelings and the actions of men. 
 
 Mr. Stubbs kept in the background, and said nothing. He 
 had his own reasons, I suppose, for this reserve. The 
 auctioneer did his best. According to his account, there was 
 not a stronger, more laborious, docile, and obedient servant to be 
 bought in all the States. Notwithstanding all these praises, a 
 suspicion seemed to spread itself that my master had some 
 reasons for selling me, which he did not think fit to avow. 
 One suggested that I must be consumptive ; another thought 
 it likely I was subject to fits; while a third expressed the 
 opinion that I was an unruly fellow, and “mighty hard to 
 manage.” The scars on my back tended to confirm these 
 suspicions ; and I was knocked off, at last, at a very low price, 
 to a portly, smiling old gentleman, by name, Major Thornton. 
 
 No sooner had the auctioneer’s hammer struck upon the 
 table, than my new master spoke kindly to me, and ordered 
 my irons to be taken off. Against this Mr. Stubbs and the 
 auctioneer remonstrated very earnestly, and assured the pur- 
 chaser that if he unchained me, he did it at his own risk. “ I 
 know it,” replied my new master, “ the risk is mine ; but I will 
 never own a servant who wants to run away from me.” 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 When my new master learned that I had but just recovered 
 from a fever, and that my strength was not yet entirely 
 restored, he procured a horse for me, and we set out together 
 for his plantation. He lived a considerable distance west of 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 67 
 
 Richmond, in that part of the state known as Middle Virginia. 
 During the ride he entered into conversation with me, and I 
 found him a very different person from anyone I had ever met 
 with before. 
 
 He told me that I might consider myself lucky in falling 
 into his hands, for he made it a point to treat his servants 
 better than anybody in the neighbourhood. “If they are 
 discontented, or unruly, or apt to run away,” he added, “ I 
 sell them at once, and so get rid of them. I don’t want any 
 such fellows about me. But as my servants know very well 
 that they stand no chance to better themselves by changing 
 their master, they are very cautious how they offend me. Be 
 obedient, my boy, and do your task, and I will ensure you 
 plenty to eat, enough clothes, and more indulgence than you 
 will be likely to get from any other master.” Such was the 
 amount of Major Thornton’s lecture, which it took him, 
 however, some five or six hours to get through with. 
 
 It was late in the evening before we arrived at Oakland — 
 for that was the name of Major Thornton’s property. The 
 house was of brick, with wooden porticoes. It was not large, 
 but neat, and very handsome, and presented many more 
 appearances of substantial comfort than are to be found about 
 most of the houses of Virginia. The grounds around it were 
 prettily laid out, and ornamented with flowers and shrubbery 
 — a thing quite uncommon, and which I had seldom seen 
 before. At a distance, on a fine swell, were the servants’ 
 cabins, built of brick, neat and substantial ; not placed in a 
 straight line, but clustered together in a manner that had 
 something picturesque about it. They were shaded by fine 
 large oaks ; no underbrush nor weeds were suffered to grow 
 about them ; and altogether, they presented an appearance of 
 neatness and comfort as new and singular as it was pleasing. 
 The servants’ cabins, on all the plantations I had ever seen 
 before, were a set of miserable, ruinous hovels, with leaky 
 roofs and clay floors, almost buried in a rank growth of weeds, 
 and as dirty and ill-kept as they were uncomfortable. 
 
 The children, who were playing about the cabins, furnished 
 a new occasion of surprise. I had been accustomed to see the 
 children of a plantation running about stark naked, or dressed 
 • — if dressed at all — in a shirt of dirty osnaburgs, hanging in 
 tatters about their legs, and never washed after it was once put 
 on. But the children at Oakland were neatly and comfortably 
 
68 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 clothed, and presented nothing of that squalid, pinched, 
 neglected, and half-starved appearance to which my eye was 
 so well accustomed. Their merry faces and boisterous sports 
 called up no idea of juvenile wretchedness. I observed, too, 
 that the hands, who were just coming in from their work, were 
 all well clothed. I saw none of those patched, tattered, 
 ragged, and filthy garments so common on other plantations. 
 
 Major Thornton was not a planter ; that is to say, he did 
 not make tobacco, and he chose to call himself a farmer. His 
 principal crop was wheat ; and he was a great advocate for the 
 clover system of cultivation, which he had adopted and 
 pursued with much success. He owned some thirty or forty 
 working hands; the children and superannuated made his 
 entire stock of slaves upwards of eighty. He kept no over- 
 seer, but managed for himself. Indeed, it was a maxim with 
 him, that an overseer was enough to ruin any man. He was 
 naturally stirring and industrious, and agriculture was his 
 h 0 bby — a hobby which he rode to some purpose. 
 
 In all these things, and many others, he was the perfect 
 contrast of all his neighbours ; and for that reason very 
 little liked by any of them. He carefully avoided horse- 
 racing, cock-fights, political meetings, drinking, gambling, and 
 frolicing of every sort. His money, he used to say, cost 
 him too much to make it to be thrown away upon a bet ; and 
 as to frolics, he had neither time nor taste for any such 
 nonsense. His neighbours revenged themselves for. this 
 contempt of their favourite sports, by pronouncing him a 
 mean-spirited, money-making fellow. They went further, and 
 accused him of being a bad citizen and a dangerous neighbour. 
 They complained most bitterly that his excessive indulgence 
 to his servants made all the slaves . in the neighbourhood 
 uneasy and discontented ; and at one time some of them went 
 so far as to talk about giving him warning to move out of the 
 county. 
 
 But Major Thornton was a man of spirit. He understood 
 his own rights— he knew well the people among whom he 
 lived, and what sort of reasoning would influence them most. 
 He contrived to get hold of an offensive remark of one of the 
 busiest of his ill-disposed neighbours, and sent him a 
 challenge. It was accepted; and his antagonist was shot 
 through the heart at the first fire. Henceforward— though his 
 neighbours liked him no better than before— they took very 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE 69 
 
 good care how they talked about him, and allowed him to go 
 on in his own way without any interference. 
 
 Major Thornton had not been bred a planter, and this 
 perhaps was the reason why he departed so much from the 
 ordinary routine, and managed things so very differently from 
 all his neighbours. He was born of a good family, as they 
 say in Virginia, but his father died when he was a mere boy, 
 and left but a very scanty property. He began life, in a small 
 way, in a country store. His shrewdness, economy, and atten- 
 tion to his business enabled him, in the course of a few years, 
 to lay up a considerable sum of money. In Virginia, trade is 
 hardly looked upon as respectable, at least such was the case 
 at the time of which I am speaking, and every one who desires 
 to be anybody aims at becoming a landed proprietor. About 
 the time that Major Thornton had made enough to think of 
 changing his store for a plantation, the proprietor of Oakland, 
 having already wasted two good estates on dogs, horses, and 
 wild debauchery, became so pressed for money as to be 
 obliged to bring his remaining property under the hammer. 
 Major Thornton became the purchaser; but the place he 
 bought was very different from Oakland as I saw it. The 
 buildings, which were old and ugly, were all out of repair, and 
 just tumbling to the ground ; and the land was nearly ruined 
 by that miserable, thriftless system of cultivation, so universal 
 throughout the slave-holding states of America. 
 
 In a few years after the property had passed into the hands 
 of Major Thornton everything was changed. The old houses 
 were torn down and new ones built. The grounds about the 
 house were enclosed and ornamented; and the land, under 
 skilful management, was fast regaining its original fertility. 
 Those who had been born and bred . planters, and whose 
 estates were very much in the same way in which Oakland had 
 been before it fell into the hands of Major Thornton, looked 
 at what was going on there with astonishment and envy, and 
 wondered how it could possibly happen. Major Thornton 
 was always ready to tell them ; for he was extremely fond of 
 talking, particularly about himself and his system of farming. 
 But though he had explained the whole matter at least ten 
 times to every one of his neighbours, he never could make a 
 single convert. He had three favourite topics ; but he was 
 equally unsuccessful upon all of them. He never could 
 persuade any one of his neighbours that a clover lay was the 
 
yo 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 true cure for sterile fields ; that the only way to have a planta- 
 tion well managed was to manage it one’s self ; or that to give 
 servants enough to eat was a sure method to prevent them 
 from plundering the corn-fields and stealing sheep. 
 
 But though Major Thornton could gain no imitators, he still 
 persevered in farming according to his own notions. In no 
 respect was he more an innovator than in the management of 
 his slaves. A merciful man, he used to say, is merciful to his 
 beast ; and not having been raised on a plantation, he could 
 not bear the idea of treating his servants worse than his horses. 
 “ It may do very well for you, Colonel,” he said, one day, to 
 one of his neighbours, “ to tie a fellow up and give him forty 
 lashes with your own hand ; you were born and bred to it, and 
 I dare say you find it very easy. But as odd as you may 
 think it, I had much rather be flogged myself than to flog one 
 of my servants ; and though sometimes I am obliged to do it, 
 it is a great point with me to get along with as little whipping 
 as possible. That’s a principal reason why I keep no overseer, 
 for a cowhide and a pair of irons are the only two things those 
 fellows have any notion of. They have no wish, and if they 
 had, they have not the sense to get along in any other way ; 
 — the devil take the whole generation of them. Everybody, 
 you know, have their oddities. For my part, I hate to hear 
 the crack of a whip on my plantation, even though it be 
 nothing more than a cart-whip.” 
 
 The above speech of Major Thornton’s contained a brief 
 summary of his system. He was, what every other slaveholder 
 is, and from the very necessity of his condition must be, a 
 tyrant. He felt no scruple in compelling his fellow-men to 
 labour in order that he might appropriate the fruits of that 
 labour to his own benefit, and in this certainly, if in anything, 
 the very essence of tyranny consists. But though a tyrant, as 
 every slaveholder is and must be, he was a reasonable and, as 
 far as possible, a humane one — which very few slaveholders 
 either are or can be. He had no more thought of relin- 
 quishing what he and the laws called his property in his slaves 
 than he had of leaving his land to be occupied by the first 
 comer. He would have been as ready as any of his neighbours 
 to have denounced the idea of emancipation, or the notion of 
 limiting his power over his servants, as a ridiculous absurdity, 
 and an impertinent interference with his “ most sacred rights.” 
 But though in theory he claimed all the authority and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 7 1 
 
 prerogatives of the most unlimited despotism, he displayed, in 
 his practice, a certain share of common sense and common 
 humanity — two things which, so far as relates to the manage- 
 ment of his slaves, it is extremely uncommon for a slaveholder 
 to have, or, if he has them, very difficult for him to exercise. 
 
 These unusual gifts led him to a discovery which, at the time, 
 was entirely new in his neighbourhood; though I hope before 
 now it has become general. He discovered that men cannot 
 work without eating; and that so far as the capability of 
 labour is concerned, there is the same policy in attending to 
 the food, shelter, and comfort of one’s slaves, as in spending 
 something on corn and stabling for one’s horses. “ Feed well 
 and work hard ” was Major Thornton’s motto and practice — a 
 motto and a practice which, in any other country than 
 America, would never have subjected him to the charge of 
 unreasonable and superfluous humanity. 
 
 As to whipping, Major Thornton, to use his own phrase, could 
 not bear it. Whether he felt some qualms of conscience at 
 the barefaced, open tyranny of the lash — which I do not think 
 very probable, for I once heard him tell a Methodist parson, 
 who ventured to say something to him on that delicate subject, 
 that he had as much right to flog his slaves as to eat hisK"' 
 dinner— or whether it was the influence of that instinctive 
 humanity which is wanting only brutal tempers, and which, 
 till evil custom has worn it out, will not permit us to inflict 
 pain without feeling ourselves a sympathetic suffering ; or 
 whatever might be the reason, unless Major 'Ihornton was put 
 into a passion — to which he was but seldom liable— he 
 certainly had a great horror of using the whip. 
 
 But this was not all. Another man might have detested it 
 as much as he did; but the practice of a year or two in 
 planting, and the apparent impossibility of dispensing with its 
 use, would have taught him to get rid of so inconvenient a 
 squeamishness. There are very few men indeed — and of all 
 men in the world, very few planters — whose good sense and 
 knowledge of human nature would enable them to manage 
 their slaves by any other means. Major Thornton, however, 
 contrived to get on wonderfully well ; and in all the time that I 
 lived with him, which was nearly two years, there were not more 
 than half-a-dozen whippings on the place. If one of his servants 
 was guilty of anything which, in a slave, is esteemed especially 
 enormous — such as running away, repeated theft) idleness, 
 
72 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 insolence or insubordination — Major Thornton sent him off to 
 be sold. By a strange but common inconsistency, this man of 
 feeling, who could not bear to whip a slave, or to see him 
 whipped, or even to have him whipped on his own plantation, 
 felt no scruples at all at tearing him from the arms of his 
 wife and children, and setting him up at public sale, to fall 
 into the hands of any ferocious master who might chance to 
 purchase him ! 
 
 This dread of being sold was ever before our eyes, and was 
 as efficacious as the lash is on other plantations in forcing us 
 to labour and submission. We knew very well that there 
 were few masters like Major Thornton ; and the thought of 
 exchanging our nice, neat cottages, our plentiful allowance, our 
 regular supply of clothing, and the general comfort and 
 indulgence of Oakland for the fare and the treatment to be 
 expected from the common run of masters, was more terrible 
 than a dozen whippings. Major Thornton understood this 
 well ; and he took care to keep up the terrors of it by making 
 an example of some delinquent once in a year or two. 
 
 Then he had the art of exciting our emulation by little prizes 
 and presents. He was very scrupulous never to exact anything 
 beyond the appointed task ; and he kept us in good humour 
 by allowing us, when not at work, to be very much our own 
 masters, and to go where and do what we pleased. We were 
 rather cautious, though, how we visited the neighbouring 
 plantations ; for, with a magnanimity worthy of slaveholders, 
 some of Major Thornton’s neighbours were in the habit of 
 gratifying their spite against him by improving every oppor- 
 tunity that offered to abuse his servants. And here I may as 
 well relate an incident that happened to myself, which will 
 serve at once as a curious illustration of Virginian manners, 
 and a proof of what I believe will be found to be true all the 
 world over — that where the laws aim at the oppression of one 
 half the people of a country they are seldom treated with 
 much respect by the other half. 
 
 Captain Robinson was one of Major Thornton’s nearest 
 neighbours, and a person with whom he had frequent alterca- 
 tions. I was passing along on the public road one Sunday, at 
 a little distance from Oakland, when I met Captain Robinson 
 on horseback, followed by a servant. He bade me stop, and 
 inquired if I was the fellow whom that “damned scoundrel 
 Thornton ” sent to his house yesterday with an insolent 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 73 
 
 message about his lower-field fences. I answered that I had 
 been sent yesterday with a message about the fence, which I 
 had delivered to his overseer. 
 
 “ A mighty pretty message it was — mighty ! I’ll tell you 
 what, boy, if my overseer had known his business, he would 
 have tucked you up on the spot and given you forty lashes.” 
 
 I told him that I had only delivered the message which my 
 master had sent me with, and it seemed hard to blame me for 
 that. 
 
 “ Don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me, you infernal scoundrel 
 — I’ll teach both you and your master what it is to insult a 
 gentleman. Lay hold of him, Tom, while I dust that new 
 jacket of his a little.” 
 
 Having received these orders from his master, Captain 
 Robinson’s man Tom jumped off his horse, and laid hold of 
 me ; but as I struggled hard, and was the stronger of the 
 two, I should soon have got away, if the master had not 
 dismounted, and come to the aid of his servant. Both 
 together, they were too strong for me ; and having succeeded 
 in getting me down, they stripped off my coat and bound my 
 hands. Captain Robinson then mounted his horse, and beat 
 me with his whip till it was quite worn out. Having thus 
 satisfied his rage, he rode off, followed by Tom, without taking 
 the trouble to loose my hands. They had no sooner left 
 me than I' began to look about for my hat and coat. Both 
 were missing ; and whether it was the captain or his servant 
 that carried them off I never could discover. I suppose, 
 though, it was the servant — for I recollect very well seeing 
 Tom, a few Sundays after, strutting about at a Methodist 
 meeting with a blue coat on, which I could almost have sworn 
 to be mine. 
 
 When I got home, and told my master what had happened, 
 he was in a towering passion. At first he was for riding at 
 once to Captain Robinson’s, and calling for an explanation. 
 But presently he recollected that the county court was to meet 
 the next day, at which he had business. This would give him 
 an opportunity to consult his lawyer ; and after a little reflec- 
 tion, he thought it best not to move in the affair till he had 
 legal advice upon it. 
 
 The next day he took me with him. We called upon the 
 lawyer; I told what had happened to me; and Major Thornton 
 inquired what satisfaction the law would afford him. 
 
74 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 The lawyer answered that the law in this case was very 
 clear, and the remedy it provided all-sufficient. “ Some 
 people,” he said, “ who know nothing about the matter, have 
 asserted that the law in the slave-holding States does not 
 protect the person of the slave against the violence of the free, 
 and that any white man may flog any slave at his own good 
 pleasure. This is a very great mistake, if not a wilful false- 
 hood. The law permits no such thing. It extends the mantle 
 of its protection impartially over bond and free. In this 
 respect, the law knows no distinction. If a freeman is 
 assaulted, he has his action for damages against the assailant ; 
 and if a slave is assaulted, the master of that slave, who is his 
 legal guardian and protector, can bring his action for damages. 
 Now, in this case, Major Thornton, it is quite plain that you 
 have good ground of action against Captain Robinson ; and 
 the jury, I dare say, will give you a swinging verdict. I 
 suppose you are able to prove all these facts ? ” 
 
 “Prove them — to be sure,” answered my master; “here is 
 Archy himself, who has told you the whole story.” 
 
 cc Yes, my good, sir 5 but you do not seem to remember 
 that a slave cannot be admitted to testify against a white 
 
 man.” . 
 
 “ And pray tell me, then,” said Major Thornton, . what 
 good the law you speak of is going to do me ? Did not 
 Robinson catch Archy alone, and abuse him, as he has told 
 you ! You don’t suppose he was fool enough to call in a 
 white man, on purpose to be a witness against him. Why, 
 sir, notwithstanding the protection of the law, which you 
 commend so highly, every servant I have may be beaten by 
 this Robinson every day in the week, and I not be able to get 
 the slightest satisfaction. The devil take such law, I say.” 
 “But, my dear sir,” answered the lawyer, “you must 
 consider the great danger and inconvenience of allowing slaves 
 to be witnesses.” 
 
 “ Why yes,” said my master, with a half smile, “ I fancy it 
 would be rather dangerous for some of my acquaintances ; 
 quite inconvenient, no doubt. Well, sir, since you say the law 
 can’t help me in this matter, I must take care of myself. ,1 
 cannot allow my servants to be abused in this way. I’ll 
 horsewhip that scoundrel Robinson at sight.” 
 
 With these words my master left the office, and I followed 
 behind him. We had gone but a little way down the street 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 75 
 
 when he had an unexpected opportunity of carrying his threat 
 into execution — for as it chanced, we met Captain Robinson, 
 who had business, it seemed, at the county court as well as 
 Major Thornton. My master did not waste many words upon 
 him, but began striking him over the shoulders with his riding- 
 whip. Captain Robinson drew a pistol ; my master threw 
 down his whip and drew a pistol also. The captain fired, but 
 without effect ; Major Thornton then levelled his weapon, but 
 Robinson called out that he was unarmed, and begged him 
 not to fire. Major Thornton hesitated a moment, and then 
 dropped his hand. By this time quite a crowd had collected 
 about us, and some friend of Captain Robinson’s handed him 
 a loaded pistol. The combatants renewed their aim, and fired 
 together. Captain Robinson fell desperately wounded. His 
 ball missed my master, but passed through the body of a free 
 coloured man, who was the only person of all the company 
 who made any attempt to separate the parties. The poor 
 fellow fell dead ; and the people about declared that it was 
 good enough for him, for what right had “a cursed free 
 fellow ” like him to be interfering between gentlemen ? 
 
 Captain Robinson’s friends lifted him up and carried him 
 home. Major Thornton and myself walked off the field in 
 triumph, and so the affair ended. Such affrays are much 
 talked about, but the grand jury very seldom hears anything 
 of them ; and the conqueror is pretty sure to rise in the public 
 estimation. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Some persons perhaps may think that having fallen into the 
 hands of such a master as Major Thornton I had now nothing 
 to do but to eat, to work, and to be happy. 
 
 Had I been a horse or an ox there would be good ground 
 lor this idea ; but, unfortunately, I was a man ; and the animal 
 appetites are by no means the only motive of human action, 
 nor the sole sources of human happiness or misery. 
 
 It is certainly true that several of Major Thornton’s servants, 
 born perhaps with but little sensibility, and brutalised by a life 
 of servitude, seemed very well content with their lot. This 
 
7 6 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 was the sort of servant which Major Thornton especially 
 admired. In this particular he did not differ much from his 
 neighbours. The more stupid a field-hand is, the more he is 
 esteemed ; and a slave who shows any signs of capacity is 
 generally set down as certain to be a rogue and a rascal. 
 
 I soon discovered my master’s fondness for stupid fellows ; 
 and I took care to play the fool to his entire satisfaction. In a 
 short time I made myself quite a favourite ; and my master 
 having taken a fancy to me, I was more indulged, perhaps, 
 than any servant on the place. But this could not make me 
 happy. 
 
 Human happiness — with some very limited exceptions— is 
 never in fruition, but always in prospect and pursuit. It is not 
 this, that, or the other situation that can give happiness. 
 Riches, power, or glory are nothing when possessed. It is the 
 pleasure of the pursuit and the struggle ; it is the very labour o f 
 their attainment in which consists the happiness they bring. 
 
 Those moralists who have composed so many homilies upon 
 the duty of contentment betray an extreme ignorance of 
 human nature. No situation, however splendid, in which one 
 is compelled to remain fixed and stationary, can long afford 
 pleasure \ and on the other hand, no condition, however 
 destitute or degraded, out of which one has a fair prospect, or 
 anything like a sufficient hope of rising, can justly be con- 
 sidered as utterly miserable. This is the constitution of the 
 human mind ; and in it we find the explanation of a thousand 
 things which, without this key to their meaning, seem full of 
 mystery and contradiction. 
 
 Though all men have not the same objects of pursuit, all are 
 impelled and sustained by the same hope of success. Nothing 
 can satisfy the lofty desires of one man but influence, fame, or 
 power, the myrtle wreath or laurel crown ; another aims no 
 higher than to rise from abject poverty to a little competency, 
 or, if his ambition is of another sort, to be the chief person in 
 his native village, or the oracle of a country neighbourhood. 
 How different are these aims ! — and yet the impulse that 
 prompts them is the same. It is the desire of social superiority. 
 He whom circumstances permit to yield to this impulse of his 
 nature, and to pursue — successfully or not, it matters little- 
 but to pursue, with, some tolerable prospect of success, the 
 objects which have captivated his fancy, may be regarded as 
 having all the chance for happiness which the lot of humanity 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 17 
 
 allows ; while he whom fate or fortune, or whatever malignant 
 cause, compels to suppress and forego the instinctive impulses 
 and wishes of his heart — whatever in other respects may be his 
 situation — is a wretch condemned to sorrow, and deserving 
 pity. To the one toil is itself a pleasure. He is a hunter 
 whom the sight of his game fills with delight, and makes 
 insensible to fatigue. Desire sustains him and hope cheers 
 him on. These are delights the other never knows ; for him 
 life has lost its relish ; rest is irksome to him, and labour is 
 intolerable. 
 
 This is no digression. He who has taken the pains to read 
 the preceding paragraph will be able to understand how it 
 happened that even with such a master as Major Thornton I 
 was neither happy nor content. 
 
 It is true I was well fed, well clothed, and not severely 
 worked ; and in these particulars — as my master was fond of 
 boasting, and as I have since found to be the case — my 
 situation was far superior to that of very many freemen. But I 
 lacked one thing which every freeman has ; and that one want 
 was enough to make me miserable. I wanted liberty — the 
 liberty of labouring for myself, not for a master ; of pursuing 
 my own happiness, instead of toiling at his pleasure, and for his 
 gain. This liberty can lighten the hardest lot. He knows but 
 little of human nature who has not discovered that to all who 
 rise one step above the brutes it is far pleasanter to starve and 
 freeze after their own fashion than to be fed and clothed and 
 worked upon compulsion. 
 
 I was wretched, for I had no object of hope or rational 
 desire. I was a slave ; and the laws held out no prospect of 
 emancipation. All the efforts in the world could not better my 
 condition ; all the efforts in the world could not prevent me 
 from falling — perhaps to-morrow — into the hands of another 
 master, as cruel and unreasonable as evil passions and hard- 
 heartedness could make him. The future offered only the 
 chance of evils. I might starve with cold and hunger as well 
 as another; I might perish by gun-shot wounds, or the torture 
 of the lash ; or be hung up, perhaps, without judge or jury. 
 But of bettering my condition I had neither chance nor hopes. 
 I was a prisoner for life ; at the present moment not suffering 
 for food or clothing, but without the slightest prospect of 
 liberation ; and likely enough at any moment to change my 
 keeper, and under the discipline of a new gaoler, to feel the 
 
78 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 •+ 
 
 pinchings of cold and hunger, and to tremble daily beneath the 
 whip. I was cut off and excluded from all those hopes and 
 wishes which are the chief impulses of human action. I could 
 not aim to become the master of a little cottage which how- 
 ever humble, I might call my own ; to be the lord of one poor 
 acre which, however small or barren, might still be mine. I 
 could not marry — alas, poor Cassy ! — and become the father of 
 a family, with the fond hope that when age should overtake 
 me, I might still find pleasure and support in the kindness of r* 
 
 children and the sympathy of a wife. My children might be 
 snatched from the arms of their mother, and sold to the slave- 
 trader ; the mother might be sent to keep them company — and 
 I be left old, desolate, uncomforted. Motives such as these, 
 motives which strengthen the freeman’s arm and cheer his 
 heart, were unfelt by me. I laboured ; but it was only 
 because I feared the lash. The want of willingness unnerved 
 me, and every stroke cost a new effort. 
 
 It is even true that Major Thornton’s humanity, or, to 
 speak more correctly, his sense of his own interest, while it 
 preserved his servants from the miseries of hunger and naked- 
 ness, at the same time exposed those among them, whom 
 slavery and ignorance had not completely brutalised, to other 
 and more excruciating miseries. Had we been but half fed 
 and half clothed, like the servants on several of the neighbour- 
 ing plantations, we should, like them, have enjoyed the excite- 
 ment of plunder. We should have found some exercise for 
 our ingenuity, and some object about which to interest 
 ourselves in plans and stratagems for eking out our short 
 allowance by the aid of theft. 
 
 As it was, stealing was but little practised at Oakland. The 
 inducement was too small, and the risk too great ; for detection 
 was certain to result in being sold. Money was no object to 
 us ; we could only spend it on food and clothes, and of these 
 we had enough already. Whiskey was the only luxury we 
 wanted ; and we could make enough to purchase that without 
 the necessity of theft. Mr. Thornton allowed each of us a 
 little piece of ground. That was customary ; but, what C! 
 
 was quite contrary to custom, he allowed us time to 
 cultivate it. He endeavoured to stimulate our industry by 
 the promise of buying all we could produce, not at a mere 
 nominal price, as was the fashion on other plantations, but at 
 its full value. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 79 
 
 I am sorry to say it, but it is not the less true, that Major 
 Thornton’s people, like all slaves who have the means and 
 the opportunity, were generally drunkards. Our master took 
 good care that whiskey did not interfere with our work. To 
 be drunk before the task was finished was a high misde- 
 meanour. But after the day’s labour was over we were at 
 liberty to drink as much as we pleased, provided always that 
 it did not prevent us turning out at daylight the next morning. 
 Sunday was generally a grand Saturnalia. 
 
 Hitherto I had scarcely been in the habit of drinking, but 
 now I began to be eager for anything which promised to 
 sustain my sinking spirits and to excite my stagnant soul. 
 I soon found in whiskey a something that seemed to answer 
 the purpose. In that elevation of heart which drunkenness 
 inspires, that forgetfulness of the past and the present, that 
 momentary halo with which it crowns the future, I found a 
 delight which I hastened to repeat, and knew not how to fore- 
 go. Reality was to me a blank, dark and dreary. Action was 
 forbidden ; desire was chained ; and hope shut out. I was 
 obliged to find relief in dreams and illusions. Drunkenness, 
 which degrades the freeman to a level with the brutes, raises, 
 or seems to raise, the slave to the dignity of a man. It soon 
 became my only pleasure, and I indulged it to excess. Every 
 day, as soon as my task was finished, I hastened to shut 
 myself up with my bottle. I drank in solitude — for, much 
 as I loved the excitement of drunkenness, I could not for- 
 get its beastliness and insanity, and I hated to expose my 
 folly to the sight of my fellow-servants. But my precautions 
 were not always successful. In the frenzy of excitement I 
 sometimes forgot all my sober precautions, undid the bolts 
 I had carefully fastened, and sought the company I most 
 desired to shun. 
 
 One Sunday I had been drinking till I was no longer the 
 master of my own actions. I had left my house, and gone to 
 seek some boon companions with whom to protract the revel 
 and increase its zest. But I was unable to distinguish one 
 object from another; and after straggling off for some distance, 
 I sunk down, almost insensible, upon the carriage-way which 
 led towards Major Thornton’s house. 
 
 I had grown a little more sober, and was endeavouring to 
 rally my thoughts and to recollect where I was, and what had 
 brought me there, when I saw my master riding up the road 
 
8o 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 with two other gentlemen. They were all on horseback ; and 
 as drunk as I was, I saw at a glance that my master’s two 
 companions were very much in the same predicament. The 
 manner in which they reeled backward and forward in their 
 saddles was truly laughable ; and I expected every moment to 
 see them fall. I made these observations as I lay upon the 
 road, without once thinking where I was, or recollecting the 
 danger I was in of being ridden over. They had come quite 
 near before they noticed me. By this time I was sitting up, 
 and my master’s drunken companions took it into their heads 
 to jump their horses over me. Major Thornton did his best 
 to prevent them ; one he succeeded in stopping, but the other 
 evaded his attempt to seize the bridle, swore that the sport was 
 too pretty to be lost, put spurs to his horse, and brought him 
 up to the leap. 
 
 But the horse had no fancy for this sort of sport. When he 
 saw me before him, he started back, and his drunken rider 
 came tumbling to the ground. The others dismounted, and 
 went to his assistance. Before he was well upon his feet, he 
 begged Major Thornton’s attention, and forthwith commenced 
 a very grave lecture on the indecency of allowing servants 
 to get drunk, and to lie about the plantation — particularly 
 across the roads, frightening gentlemen’s horses, and putting 
 the necks of their riders into jeopardy. “ Especially you, 
 Major Thornton, who pretend to be a pattern for all of us. 
 Yes, sir, yes, if you did as you ought to do, every time one of 
 the rascal fellows had the insolence to get drunk, you would 
 tie him up and give him forty lashes. That’s the way I do on 
 my plantation.” 
 
 My master was so very fond of setting forth his method of 
 farming, and his plan of plantation discipline, that he did not 
 always stop to consider whether his auditors were drunk or 
 sober. The present opportunity was too good to be lost, and, 
 rubbing his hands together, he answered, with a half smile, 
 and a very sagacious look, “ But, my dear sir, you must 
 know it is a part of my plan to let my servants drink as much 
 as they please, so that it does not interfere with their tasks. 
 Poor fellows ! it serves to keep them out of mischief, and 
 soon makes them so stupid they are the easiest creatures in 
 the world to manage.” Here he paused a minute, and 
 assuming the look which a man puts on who thinks he is 
 going to urge an unanswerable argument, “Besides,” he 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE 
 
 81 
 
 added, “if one of these drinking fellows happens to take 
 a huff, and runs away, the very first thing he does is to get 
 drunk, so that you seldom have any difficulty in catching 
 him.” 
 
 Though I was still too much under the influence of whiskey 
 to be capable of much muscular motion, I had so far recovered 
 my senses as to comprehend perfectly all that my master was 
 saying ; and no sooner had he finished, than, drunk as I was, 
 I made a resolution to drink no more. I was not yet so far 
 lost as to be able to endure the idea of being myself the 
 instrument of my own degradation. My resolution was well 
 kept, for I have seldom tasted spirits since that day. 
 
 CHAPTER XVT. 
 
 It is the lot of the slave to be exposed, in common with other 
 men, to all the calamities of chance and all the caprices of 
 fortune. But, unlike other men, he is denied the consolation 
 of struggling against them. He is bound hand and foot ; and 
 his sufferings are aggravated tenfold by the bitter idea that he 
 is not allowed to help himself, or to make any attempt to 
 escape the blow which he sees impending over him. This 
 idea of utter helplessness is one of the most distressing in 
 nature ; it is twin-sister to Despair. 
 
 Major Thornton, by over-exertion and imprudent exposure, 
 brought on a fever, which in a short time assumed a very 
 unfavourable aspect. It was the first time he had been sick 
 for many years. The alarm, and even terror, which the news 
 of his danger excited at Oakland was very great. Every 
 morning and evening we collected about the house to learn 
 how our master did ; and mournful were the faces, and sad 
 the hearts, with which we heard the bitter words, “ no better.” 
 The women at Oakland had always been treated with peculiar 
 indulgence, such as their sex and weakness demands — but 
 demands so often without obtaining it. Major Thornton’s 
 illness gave an instance how full of gratitude is the female 
 heart, and at what a trifling expense one may purchase its 
 most zealous affection. All the women on the place were 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 anxious to be employed in some way in ministering to the 
 comfort of their suffering master. The most disagreeable 
 duties were eagerly performed ; and if ever man was tenderly 
 and assiduously nursed, it was Major Thornton. But all this 
 care, all our sympathy, our sorrow, and our terrors, were of 
 no effect. The fever raged with unabated fury, and seemed to 
 find new fuel in the strength of the patient’s constitution. But 
 that fuel was soon exhausted, and in ten days our master was 
 no more. 
 
 When his decease became known, we looked upon each 
 other in silent consternation. A family of helpless orphans, 
 from whom death had just snatched their last surviving parent, 
 could not have felt a greater destitution. Tears rolled down 
 the cheeks of the men ; and the lamentations of the women 
 were violent and wild. His old nurse, in particular, wept, and 
 would not listen to any consolation. She had good reason. 
 At his father’s death she had been sold, with the other 
 property, to satisfy the creditors. But Major Thornton had 
 repurchased her, out of his very first earnings; he had made her 
 t-he servant head of his household, and had always treated her 
 with great tenderness. The old woman loved him like her own 
 child, and lamented her “ dear son Charley,” as she called 
 him, with all the pathetic energy of a widowed and childless 
 mother. 
 
 We all attended the funeral, and followed our dead master 
 to the grave. The hollow sound of the earth as it fell upon 
 the coffin was echoed back from every bosom ; and when this 
 last sad office was finished, we stood over the spot, and wept ‘ 
 together. Doubt not the sincerity of our sorrow ! It was for 
 ourselves we were lamenting. 
 
 Major Thornton was never married, and he left no children 
 whose rights the laws acknowledged. If he had intended 
 to make a will, his sudden death prevented him ; and his 
 property passed to a troop of cousins, for whom, I suspect, 
 he did not entertain any great affection. At all events, I had 
 never seen any of them at Oakland, nor could I learn from 
 the other servants that either of them had ever made a visit 
 there. It was thus that we became the property of strangers, 
 who had never seen us, and whom we had never seen. 
 
 These heirs-at-law were poor as well as numerous, and 
 seemed very eager to turn all the property into money so 
 as to get their several shares with the least possible delay. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 * 83 
 
 An order of court, or whatever the legal process might be 
 called, _ was soon obtained, and the sale of the slaves was 
 advertised to take place at the county court-house. The 
 agent to whom the care of the estate was intrusted made 
 the necessary preparations. Of course, it was not thought 
 expedient that we should know what was going on, or what 
 our new owners intended to do with us. The secret was 
 carefully kept, least some of us should run away. 
 
 The day before that which had been appointed for the sale 
 we were collected together. The able-bodied men and women 
 were handcuffed and chained in a string. A few old grey- 
 headed people and the younger children were carried in a cart. • 
 The rest of us were driven along like cattle — men, women, 
 and children together. Three fellows on horse-back, with the 
 usual equipment of long whips, served at once as guards and 
 drivers. 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe our affliction. It would be 
 but the repetition of an oft-told tale. ^Vho has not read 
 of slave-traders on the coast of Africa ? Whose heart has not 
 ached at picturing the terrors and despair of the kidnapped 
 victims? Our case was much the same. Many of us had 
 been born and reared at Oakland, and all looked upon it 
 as a home j nay, more, as a city of refuge, where we had always 
 been safe from gratuitous insults and aggressions. From this 
 home we were now snatched away, without a moment’s 
 warning ; and were driven chained to the slave-market to be 
 sold to the highest bidder. 
 
 Is it strange that we were reluctant to go ? Had we been 
 setting out of our own accord to seek our fortunes, we could 
 not have broken, all at once, all the ties that bound us to 
 Oakland without some throbs of natural grief. What, then, 
 must have been our anguish to leave it as we did ? 
 
 But the tears of the men, the sobs of the women, and 
 the cries and errors of the poor children, availed us nothing. 
 Our conductors cracked their whips, and made a jest of our 
 lamentations. Our sorrowful procession moved slowly on ; 
 and many a sad, lingering look we cast behind us. We said 
 nothing ; and our melancholy reflections were only interrupted 
 by the curses, shouts, and loud laughter of our drivers. 
 
 We lodged that night by the road-side ; our drivers sleeping 
 and keeping watch by turns. The next day we reached the 
 county court-house, and at the appointed hour the sale began. 
 
8 4 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 The company was not very numerous, and the bidders seemed 
 extremely shy. Many of our late master's neighbours were 
 present. One of them remarked that several of us were fine 
 stout fellows, but, for his part, he should be afraid to buy any 
 of the Thornton hands, for we had been so spoiled by our 
 late master’s foolish indulgence that one of us would be 
 enough to spread discontent through a whole neighbourhood. 
 This speech was received with evident applause, and it had its 
 intended effect. The auctioneer did his best, and harangued 
 most eloquently upon our healthy, sound, and plump condition. 
 “As to the over-indulgence that gentleman speaks about, he 
 added, “ a good cow-hide and strict discipline will soon bring 
 them into proper subordination ; and from what I have heard 
 of that gentleman’s own management, he is the very person 
 who ought to buy them.” A slight titter ran through the 
 company at this sally of the auctioneer’s, but it did not seem 
 to make the bidding much brisker. We went off at very 
 moderate prices. Most of the younger men and women and a 
 large proportion of the children were bought by a slave-trader, 
 who had come on purpose to attend the sale. It was very 
 difficult to get a bid for several of the old people. Mr. 
 Thornton’s nurse, who, as I have mentioned, had been his 
 housekeeper, and a person of no little consequence at Oak- 
 land, was knocked off for twenty dollars. She was bought by 
 an old fellow well-known in the neighbourhood for his cruelty 
 to his servants. He shook his head as the auctioneer s 
 hammer struck the table, grinned a significant smile, and said 
 he believed the girl was yet able to handle a hoe ; anyhow, 
 he would get one summer’s work out of her. The old lady 
 had scarcely held up her head since the death of her master ; 
 but she forgot all her sorrows, she forgot even to deplore the 
 lot that 'seemed to await her, in her anger at being sold at so 
 small a price. She turned to her purchaser, and with an 
 indignant air told him that she was both younger and stronger 
 than folks thought, and assured him that he had made the 
 best bargain of any of the company. The old fellow chuckled, 
 but said nothing. It was easy to read his thoughts. He was 
 evidently resolving to hold the old woman to her word. 
 
 Some of the old and decrepit slaves could not be sold at all. 
 They were not worth purchasing, and nobody would make an 
 offer. I do not know what became of them. 
 
 The slave-dealer who had purchased most of the children 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 85 
 
 declined buying such of the mothers as were past the age of 
 child-bearing. The parting of these mothers from their 
 children was a new scene of misery and lamentation. The 
 poor things, snatched a little while before from the home of 
 their birth and their infancy, and now, torn from the mothers 
 that bore and nursed them, clasped their little hands, and 
 shrieked with all the unrestrained vehemence of infant agony. 
 The mothers wept too; but their grief was more subdued. 
 There was one old woman, the mother, she said, of fifteen 
 children. One little girl, about ten or twelve years old, was all 
 that remained to her. The others had been sold and scattered 
 she knew not whither. She was now to part from her youngest 
 and only remaining child. The little girl clung to her mother’s 
 dress with all the terror of one who was about to be kidnapped, 
 and her screams and cries might have touched a heart of 
 stone. Her new master snatched the child away, gave her a cut 
 with his whip, and bade her hold her “ cursed clatter.” A 
 slave-trader, however he may have the exterior of a gentleman, 
 is, in fact, the same ferocious barbarian whether on the coast 
 of Guinea or in the heart of the “ Ancient Dominion.” 
 
 When our new master had completed his purchases he 
 prepared to set out with his drove. He was one of a 
 slave-dealing firm, whose head-quarters were at the city of 
 Washington, the seat of the federal government, and the 
 capital of the United States of America. It was to this place 
 that he intended to carry us. The whole purchase was about 
 forty head, consisting in nearly equal proportions of men, 
 women, and children. We were joined in couples by iron 
 collars about our necks, which were connected by a link of 
 iron. To these connecting-links a heavy chain was .fastened, 
 extending from one end of the drove to the other. Besides 
 all this the right and left hands of every couple were fastened 
 together by hand-cuffs, and another chain passed along these 
 fastenings. The collars about our necks, with their con- 
 necting-chain, might have been thought, perhaps, under 
 ordinary circumstances, a sufficient security ; but as our new 
 master had heard from Major Thornton’s neighbours, who 
 were present at the sale, that we were “ a set of very dan- 
 gerous fellows,” he thought it best, as he said, to omit no 
 reasonable means of security. 
 
 The drove was presently put in motion. Our purchasers, 
 with two or three assistants, rode beside us on horseback, 
 
86 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 armed with whips, as usual. The journey was slow, sad, and 
 wearisome. We travelled without any goodwill; the poor 
 children harassed with the weight of their chains, and 
 unaccustomed to fatigue ; and all of us faint for want of food 
 — for our new master was an economist, who spent as little on 
 the road as possible. 
 
 I will not dwell upon the tedious monotony of our sufferings 
 and our journey. Suffice it to say that, after travelling for 
 several days, we crossed the noble and wide-spreading 
 Potomac, and late at night began to enter the federal city. 
 Perhaps I ought to say the place where the federal city was to 
 be, for Washington at that time seemed only a straggling 
 village, scattered over a wide extent of ground, and interspersed 
 with deserted fields overgrown with bushes. There were 
 some indications, however, of the future metropolis. The 
 Capitol, though unfinished, was rearing its spacious walls in 
 the moonlight, and gave promise of a magnificent edifice. 
 Lights gleamed from the windows. The Congress perhaps was 
 in session. I gazed at the building with no little emotion. 
 “This,” said I to myself, “is the head-quarters of a great 
 nation, the spot in which its concentrated wisdom is collected 
 to devise laws for the benefit of the whole community — the 
 just and equal laws of a free people and a great democracy ! ” 
 I was going on with this mental soliloquy, when the iron collar 
 about my neck touched a place from which it had rubbed the 
 skin, and as I started with the pain, the rattling of the chains 
 reminded me that “ these just and equal laws of a free people 
 and a great democracy” did not avail to rescue a million* of 
 bondmen from hopeless servitude; and the cracking of our 
 drivers’ whips told too plainly that within a stone’s throw of. 
 the Temple of Liberty — nay, under its very porticoes — the 
 most brutal, odious, and detestable tyranny found none to 
 rebuke or to forbid it. What sort of liberty is it whose 
 
 * The slaves in the United States are now near three millions and a half. 
 It ought perhaps to be added that by the federal constitution the general 
 government has no right to interfere with the question of slavery in the 
 States. The legislature of each State is the sole judge of that question 
 within its own limits. Slavery, however, is still tolerated within the 
 district of Columbia, which includes the city of Washington, over which 
 Congress has an exclusive right of legislation. It is to be hoped that the 
 people of the free States will not be deterred by the insolent and ferocious 
 spirit of the slave-holders from doing themselves the justice to abolish 
 slavery wherever it is within their power. — 1 li> 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 87 
 
 chosen city is a, slave-market ? and what that freedom which 
 permits the bravado insolence of a slave-trading aristocracy to 
 lord it in. the very halls of her legislature ? 
 
 We passed up the street which led by the Capitol, and 
 presently arrived at the establishment of Savage, Bi others, & 
 Co., our new masters. Half an acre of ground, more or less, 
 was enclosed with a wall some twelve feet high, well armed at 
 the top with iron spikes and pieces of broken bottles. In the 
 centre of the enclosure was a low brick building of no great 
 size, with a few narrow grated windows, and a stout door, well 
 secured with bars and padlocks. T. his was the establishment 
 used by Messrs. Savage, Brothers, & Co. as a warehouse, in 
 which they stowed away such slaves as they purchased from 
 lime to time in the neighbouring country, to be kept till they 
 were ready to send them off in droves, or to ship them to the 
 south. In common with all the slave-hunting gentry, Messrs. 
 Savage, Brothers, & Co. had the free use of the city prison ; 
 but this was not large enough for the scale on which they 
 carried on operations, so they had built a prison of their own. 
 It was under the management of a regular gaoler, and was 
 very much like any other gaol. The slaves were allowed the 
 liberty of the yard during the day-time; but at sunset they 
 were all locked up promiscuously in the prison. This was 
 small and ill-ventilated, and the number that was forced into 
 it was sometimes very great. While I was confined there the 
 heat and stench were often intolerable, and many a morning I 
 came out of it with a burning thirst and a high fever. 
 
 The states of Maryland and Virginia claim the honour of 
 having exerted themselves for the abolition of the African 
 slave-trade. It is true they were favourable to that measure— 
 and they had good reasons of their own for being so. They 
 gained the credit of humanity by the same vote that secured 
 them the monopoly of a domestic trade in slaves which bids 
 fair to rival any traffic ever prosecuted on the coast of Africa. 
 The African traffic they have declared to be piracy, while the 
 domestic slave-trade flourishes in the heart of their own 
 territories, a just, legal, and honourable commerce ! _ 
 
 The district of Columbia, which includes the city ot 
 Washington, and which is situated between the two states 
 above-mentioned, has become, from the convenience of its 
 situation, and other circumstances, the centre of these slave- 
 trading operations— an honour which it shares, however with 
 
88 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Richmond and Baltimore, the chief towns of Virginia and 
 Maryland. The lands of these two states have been exhausted 
 by a miserable and inefficient system of cultivation, such as 
 ever prevails where farms are large and the labourers enslaved. 
 Their produce is the same with the productions of several 
 of the free states north and west of them ; and they are every 
 day sinking faster and faster under the competition of free 
 labour, to which they are exposed. 
 
 Many a Virginian planter can only bring his revenue even 
 with his expenditure, by selling every year a slave or two. 
 This practice, jocularly, but at the same time significantly 
 known as “ eating a negro ” — a phrase worthy of slave-holding 
 humanity — is becoming every day more and more common. 
 A very large number of planters have ceased to raise crops 
 with the expectation of profit. They endeavour to make the 
 produce of their lands pay their current expenses ; but all their 
 hopes of gain are confined to the business of raising slaves for 
 the southern market ; and that market is as regularly supplied 
 with slaves from Virginia as with mules and horses from 
 Kentucky. 
 
 But the slave-trade in America, as well as in Africa, carries 
 with it the curse of depopulation ; and, together with the 
 emigration which is constantly going on, has already un- 
 peopled great tracts of country in the lower part of Virginia, 
 and is fast restoring the first seats of Anglo-American 
 population to all their original wildness and solitude. Whole 
 counties almost are grown up in useless and impenetrable 
 thickets, already retenanted by deer and other wild game, their 
 original inhabitants. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 We were driven into the prison-yard, through a stout gate 
 well studded with iron nails. The heavy padlocks of the prison- 
 door were unfastened, and we were thrust in, without further 
 ceremony. A faint glimmer of moonlight stole in at the 
 narrow and grated windows of the prison ; but it was some 
 time before I was able to distingush one object from another. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 89 
 
 When at length my eyes had accommodated themselves to the 
 faintness of the light, I found myself crowded into the midst 
 of perhaps a hundred human beings — most of them young men 
 and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five — 
 closely packed on the bare floor. 
 
 A considerable number started up at our entrance, and 
 began to crowd about us, and to inquire who we were, and 
 whence we came. They seemed glad of anything to break the 
 monotony of their confinement. But wearied and fatigued, 
 we were in no humour for talking ; and sinking down upon the 
 floor of our prison, notwithstanding the poisonous stench, and 
 the confined and impure atmosphere, we were soon buried in 
 profound slumbers. Sleep is the dearest solace of the 
 wretched ; and there is this sweet touch of mercy in it, that 
 it ever closes the eyes of the oppressed more willingly than 
 those of the oppressor. I hardly think that any member of 
 the firm of Savage, Brothers, & Co. slept so soundly that night 
 as did the most unquiet of their newly-purchased victims. 
 
 Day came — the prison-door was unlocked, and we were let 
 out into the inclosure about it. The scanty allowance of corn- 
 bread which the penuriousness of our wealthy but economical 
 masters allowed us was doled out to each. My meal finished, 
 I sat down upon the ground, and observed the scene about 
 me. With a few exceptions, the prisoners were collected in 
 groups, some containing two or three, and others a much 
 larger number. The men were more numerous than the 
 women, though the females had received a considerable 
 addition from our party. The acquaintance of these new 
 comers was eagerly sought for, and they were constantly 
 receiving solicitations to enter into temporary unions, to last 
 while the parties remained together. Most of the women 
 whom we found in the prison had already formed connections 
 of this sort. 
 
 These courtships, if so they should be called, were still 
 going on, when a tall young fellow, with a very quizzical face, 
 produced a three-stringed fiddle, and after preluding for a few 
 moments, struck up a lively tune. The sound of the music 
 soon drew a large group about him, who provided themselves 
 with partners and began a dance. As the fiddler warmed to 
 his _ business, he played faster and faster; and the dancers, 
 amidst laughs and shouts and boisterous merriment, did their 
 best to keep up with the tune. 
 
9 © 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE> 
 
 It is thus that men, whenever their natural sources of enjoy- 
 ment fail them, betake themselves to artificial excitements. 
 Too often, we sing and dance, not because we are merry, but 
 in the hope to become so ; and merriment itself is seWomer 
 the expression and the evidence of pleasure, than the disguise 
 of weariness and pain, the hollow echo of an aching heart. 
 
 But the entire company did not join the dancers. As it 
 happened, it was Sunday ; and a part of them seemed to 
 entertain conscientious scruples about dancing on that, and for 
 aught I know, upon any other day. The more sober part of 
 the company gradually collected together in the opposite 
 corner of the prison-yard ; and a sedate young man, with a 
 handsome and intelligent face, mounted upon the head of an 
 empty barrel which happened to be standing there, and taking 
 a hymn-book from his pocket, struck up a Methodist psalm. 
 His voice was sweet and clear, and his singing far from 
 disagreeable. He was soon joined by several others ; and as 
 the chorus swelled, the sound of the psalmody almost drowned 
 the scraping of the fiddle and the laughter of the dancers. I 
 observed, too, that several of the dancing party cast their eyes 
 from time to time wistfully towards the singers ; and before 
 the psalm was half finished several of the females had stolen 
 softly away, and mingled in the group collected about the 
 preacher. The singing being ended, he began to pray. His 
 hands were clasped and raised, an( he spoke with a ready 
 fluency and a natural earnestness £>.-d unction not always 
 heard from a regular clergyman in a cushioned pulpit. 1 ears 
 ran down many a face, and sighs and groans almost drowned 
 the voice of the speaker. These perhaps were mere practised 
 responses, as artificial and as little sincere as the drawl of the 
 parish clerk in the English church service. And yet in some 
 cases they had every appearance of being genuine bursts of 
 natural feeling — an involuntary tribute to the eloquence and 
 fervour of the speaker. 
 
 Next followed the exhortation. The text was from Job j 
 and the preacher began upon the trite subject of patience. 
 But like all ignorant and illiterate speakers, he soon deserted 
 his original topic, and ran on from one thing to another with 
 very little of method or connection. Now and then some 
 sparks of sense were struck out; but they were speedily 
 quenched in a flood of absurdity. It was a strange farrago ; 
 but it was delivered with a volubility, an earnestness, and a 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 gi 
 
 force which produced a strong effect upon the hearers. It 
 was not long before he had worked them up to a pitch oi 
 excitement which far surpassed that of the dancers in the 
 opposite corner. Indeed, the dancing group grew thinner and 
 thinner, and the squeak of the fiddle sounded weaker and 
 weaker, till at last the fiddler threw down his instrument, 
 and with his remaining adherents hastened to swell the 
 audience of a performer whose powers so much outmatched 
 his own. 
 
 As the sermon proceeded, the groans and cries of mercy and 
 amen grew louder and more frequent, and several, overcome 
 by their feelings, or wishing, or affecting to be so, fell flat upon 
 the ground, and screamed and shouted as if they were 
 possessed by evil spirits. So strong was the contagion, and 
 so powerful the sympathetic infectiousness of this spiritual 
 intoxication, that I, a mere looker-on, felt a strong impulse 
 to rush among the crowd, and to shriek and shout with the 
 rest. The paroxysm was now at its height, and the speaker 
 was almost exhausted by his vehement gesticulation, when 
 stamping his foot with more than common energy, he burst 
 in the head of the barrel and tumbled headlong among his 
 auditors. 
 
 This unlucky accident instantly converted the cries and 
 groans of his hearers into shouts of irrepressible laughter, 
 and they seemed to pass all at once from a state of the 
 utmost terror and solemnity into outrageous and uncon- 
 trollable merriment. The fiddler crept out from amidst the 
 hurly-burly, caught up his fiddle, and struck up a lively 
 air— I forget the name of it, but I recollect very well that 
 it contained some allusion to the disaster of his rival. The 
 dance was renewed, while the preacher, with a few of his 
 more attached hearers, slunk away mortified and disheartened. 
 The dancers grew more boisterous, and the fiddler played 
 his best, till at last the party had fairly tired themselves 
 out, and were too much exhausted to keep it up any longer. 
 
 Men born and bred in slavery are not men, but children ; 
 their faculties are never permitted to unfold themselves, and 
 it is the aim of their masters, and the necessary effect of 
 their condition, to keep them in a state of perpetual im- 
 becility. Tyranny is ever hostile to every species of mental 
 development, for a state of ignorance involves of necessity 
 a state of degradation and of helplessness. 
 
9 2 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 I soon made myself acquainted with a number of my 
 fellow-prisoners, and entered into conversation with them. 
 Some of them had been in the jail a fortnight, and others 
 longer. I presently discovered that they considered their 
 confinement as a sort of holiday. They had nothing to 
 do ; and not to be compelled to work seemed foi them, the 
 supreme idea of happiness. As to being confined within 
 the walls of a prison, they had the liberty of the yard, and 
 it was just as agreeable being shut up within four biick 
 walls as to be prisoner on a plantation, forbidden to go 
 beyond the line of its zig-zag fences. Then they had no 
 overseer to harass them, and nothing to do but to dance 
 and sleep; nothing was wanted but a little whiskey, and 
 even that was not always wanting. They seemed anxious 
 to drown all memory of the past and all dread of the future, 
 and to bask without concern in the sunshine of their present 
 felicity. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 I had been in the jail ten days or a fortnight, when Messrs. 
 Savage, Brothers, & Co. selected from among their chattels 
 a cargo of slaves for the Charleston market. I was one of 
 the number, and with some fifty others was loaded on board 
 a small vessel bound for that port. The captain’s name 
 was Jonathan Osborne; he was a citizen of Boston, and the 
 vessel, the brig Two Sa/lys, belonged to that port, and was 
 the property of a rich and respectable merchant. 
 
 The people of the northern states of the American Union 
 talk finely upon the subject of slavery, and express a very 
 proper indignation at its horrors; yet while the African 
 slave-trade was permitted their merchants carried it on, and 
 these same merchants do not always refuse to employ their 
 vessels in the domestic slave-trade, a traffic not one iota 
 less base and detestable. 
 
 Northern statesmen have permitted slavery where no consti- 
 tutional objections prevented them from abolishing it ; the 
 courts and lawyers of the north scrupulously fulfil to the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 93 
 
 utmost letter the constitutions! obligation to restore to the 
 southern master the victim who has escaped his grasp, and 
 fled to the “free states,” in the vain hope of protection; 
 whilst the whole north looks calmly on, and tamely suffers 
 the southern slave-holders to violate all the provisions of 
 that same constitution, and to imprison, torture, and put 
 to death the citizens of the north without judge or jury, 
 whenever they imagine that such severities can contribute 
 in the slightest degree to the security of their slave-holding 
 tyranny. Nay, more ; many of the northern aristocrats, in 
 the energy of their hatred of democratical equality, seem 
 almost ready to envy, while they affect to deplore, the con- 
 dition of their southern brethren. And yet the northern states 
 of the union dare to assert that they are undefiled by the 
 stain of slavery. It is a vain, false boast. They are partners 
 in the wrong. The blood of the slave is on their hands, 
 and is dripping in red and gory drops from the skirts of their 
 
 garments. . 
 
 Before leaving the prison, we were supplied with handcuffs, 
 those usual badges and emblems of servitude, and having 
 reached the wharf, we were crammed together into the hold 
 of the vessel, so close that we had hardly room to move, 
 and not room enough either to lie or sit with comfort. 
 The vessel got under way soon after we came on board, 
 and proceeded down the river. Once or twice a-day we were 
 suffered to come on deck, and to breathe the fresh air foi 
 a few minutes ; but we were soon remanded to our dungeon 
 in the hold. The mate of the vessel seemed to be a good- 
 natured young man, and disposed to render our condition 
 as comfortable as possible ; but the captain was a savage 
 tyrant, worthy of the business in which he was engaged. 
 
 We had been on our voyage a day or two, and had already 
 cleared the river, and were standing down the bay, when I 
 became excessively sick. A burning fever seemed raging in 
 my veins. It was after sunset; the hatches were closed 
 down ; and the heat of the narrow hold in which we were 
 confined, and which was more than half filled up with boxes 
 and barrels, became intolerable. I knocked against the deck, 
 and called aloud for air and water. It was the mate’s watch. 
 He came forward to ascertain what was the matter, and bade 
 the men unfasten the hatches and lift me upon deck. I 
 snatched the basin of water which he gave me, and though 
 
94 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 brackish and warm, it seemed to my feverish taste the most 
 delicious of drinks. I drained it to the bottom and called 
 for more; but the mate, who feared perhaps that excessive 
 drinking might aggravate my disorder, refused this request. 
 I wanted air as much as water. This he did not refuse me ; 
 and I was lying on the deck imbibing at every pore the 
 cool breeze of the evening, when the captain came up the 
 companion-way. 
 
 He no sooner saw the batches off, and me lying on the 
 deck, than he stepped up to his mate, with a clenched fist, 
 and a face distorted with passion, and addressed him with 
 “ How dare you, sir, take off the hatches after sundown 
 without my orders ? ” 
 
 The mate attempted an apology, and began with saying 
 that I was taken suddenly sick, and had called for assistance ; 
 but without waiting to hear him out, the brutal captain 
 rushed by, and hitting me a kick, precipitated me headlong 
 into the hold upon the heads of my companions. Without 
 stopping to inquire whether or not my neck was broken, he 
 bade his men replace and secure the hatches. Luckily I sus- 
 tained but little injury; though I came within an inch of having 
 my skull broken against one of the beams. The water I had 
 drank, and the cool air I had breathed, abated my fever, 
 and I soon began to grow better. 
 
 In the course of the next day we passed the capes of the 
 Chesapeake, and entered the great Atlantic. We stood to the 
 southward and eastward, and were making rapid way, when it 
 came on to blow a furious gale. The tossing and pitching 
 of the ship was terrible indeed to us poor prisoners confined 
 in the dark hold, and expecting, at every burst of thunder, 
 that the vessel was breaking in pieces. The storm continued 
 to increase. The noise and tumult on deck, the creaking of 
 the rigging, the cries of the seamen, and the sound of cracking 
 spars and splitting canvas, added to our terror. Pretty soon 
 we found that the hold was filling with water, and an alarm 
 was given that the vessel had sprunk a leak. The hatches 
 were opened, and we were called on deck. Our handcuffs 
 were knocked off, and we were set to work at the pumps. 
 
 I could not tell whether it were night or morning ; for the 
 gale had now lasted a good while, and since it began we had 
 not been suffered to come on deck. However, it was not 
 totally dark. A dim and horrid glimmer, just sufficient to 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 95 
 
 betray our situation, and more terrible perhaps than total 
 darkness, was hovering over the ocean. At a distance the 
 huge black waves, crested with pale blue foam, seemed to 
 move on like monsters of the deep ; nor when nearer did they 
 lose any of their terrors. Now we sunk into a horrid gulf, 
 between two watery precipices, which swelled on either side, 
 black and frowning, and ready to devour us ; and now, lifted 
 on the top of a lofty wave, we viewed all around, a wild and 
 fearful waste of dark and stormy waters. It was a terrible 
 sight for one who had never seen the sea before; and as I 
 gazed upon it, half stupefied with terror, little did I think that 
 this same fierce and raging element was to prove hereafter my 
 best and surest friend. 
 
 The brig was almost a total wreck. Her foremast was gone 
 by the board, and she was lying-to on the starboard tack, 
 under a close-reefed main-top-sail. These are terms which at 
 that time I had never heard. It was long afterwards that I 
 learned to use them. But the whole scene remains as distinct 
 upon my memory as if it had been painted there. 
 
 Notwithstanding all our efforts, the leak gained upon us ; 
 and the captain soon made up his mind that it would be 
 impossible to keep the vessel afloat. Accordingly, he made 
 his preparations for quitting her. He and his mates were 
 armed with swords and pistols ; and cutlasses were put into 
 the hands of two or three of the crew. The long boat had 
 been washed overboard; but they had succeeded in securing the 
 jolly boat, which they now lowered away and dropped into the 
 water, under the vessel’s lee. The crew were already embark- 
 ing, before we well understood what they were about ; but as 
 soon as we comprehended that they were going to desert the 
 ship, we rushed frantically forward, and demanded to be 
 taken on board. This they had expected, and they were 
 prepared for it. Three or four pistol shots were fired among 
 us, and several of us were severely wounded by the sailors’ 
 cutlasses. At the same time they cried to us to stand back, 
 and they would take us on board as soon as all things were 
 ready. Terrified and confused, we stood a moment doubting 
 what to do. The sailors improved this interval to jump on 
 board. “ Cast off,” shouted the captain. The seamen bent to 
 their oars, and the boat was fast quitting the vessel before we 
 had recovered from our momentary hesitation. 
 
 We raised a shout, or rather a scream of terror, at finding 
 
9 6 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ourselves thus deserted ; and three or four poor wretches, on 
 the impulse of the moment, sprang into the water, in the hope 
 of reaching the boat. All but one sunk instantly in the boiling 
 surge ; he, a man of herculean frame, springing with all the 
 effort of a death-struggle, was carried far beyond the rest, and 
 rising through the billows, found himself just behind the boat. 
 He stretched out his hand and caught the rudder. The 
 captain was steering. He drew a pistol and fired it at the 
 head of the swimmer. We heard a scream above all the noise 
 of the tempest. It was only for a moment ; he sunk, and we 
 saw him no more. 
 
 It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the terror 
 and confusion which now prevailed on board. The women, 
 now screaming, now praying, were frantic with fear. Four or 
 five poor fellows lay about the deck bleeding and desperately 
 wounded. Death seemed to ride upon the storm, and to 
 summon his victims. The vessel still lay with her head to 
 windward; but the spray dashed over her continually, and 
 every now and then she shipped a sea, which set the decks 
 afloat, and drenched us in salt water. It occurred to me that 
 unless the pumps were kept going the vessel would soon fill 
 and carry us to the bottom. I called about me such of the 
 men as seemed to be most in their senses, and endeavoured to 
 explain to them our situation ; but they were stupefied with 
 terror, and would not, or could not, understand me. As a 
 last resource, I rushed forward, crying — “ Pump, my hearties, 
 pump, for your lives ! ” This was the phrase which the 
 captain and his mates had continually repeated, as they stood 
 over us and directed our labour. The poor creatures seemed 
 to obey, as if instinctively, this voice of command. They 
 collected about me and began to work the pumps. If it had 
 no other good effect, at least it served to call off our attention 
 from the horrors with which we were surrounded. We plied 
 our work till one of the pumps was broken, and the other 
 choked and rendered useless. By this time the storm had 
 abated, and the vessel, notwithstanding all our fears to the 
 contrary, still rode the waves. 
 
 It grew lighter by degrees. Presently, the clouds began to 
 break away, and to drive in huge, misty masses along the sky. 
 Occasionally the sun broke out ; and, after a considerable 
 dispute whether it were rising or setting, we concluded it must 
 be some four or five hours past sunrise. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 97 
 
 As soon as the women had recovered from the first paroxysm 
 of their terror, they gave such care as they could to the poor 
 sufferers who had been wounded. They had bound up their 
 wounds, and had collected them together on the quarter-deck. 
 One poor fellow, who had been shot through the body with a 
 pistol-ball, was much worse hurt than the others. His wife 
 was supporting his head on her lap, and was trying to prevent 
 the pitching of the vessel from aggravating his sufferings. She 
 had been standing by him, or rather clinging to him, at the 
 moment he was wounded. She had caught him in her arms 
 as he fell, had dragged him from the press, and from that 
 moment seemed to forget all the horrors of our situation, in 
 her incessant efforts to soothe his pains. Her affectionate 
 care had proved of little avail. The struggle was now almost 
 over. In a little while he expired in her arms. When she 
 found that he was dead, her grief, which she had controlled 
 and suppressed so long, burst forth in all its energy. Her 
 female companions gathered about her ; but the poor woman 
 was beyond the reach of consolation. 
 
 Some of us now ventured below, and took the liberty of 
 overhauling the steward’s stores. Everything was more or less 
 damaged with salt water ; but we lighted upon a cask or two 
 of bread, which was tolerably dry, and which sufficed to 
 furnish us a sumptuous repast. 
 
 We had not finished it before we discovered a vessel stand- 
 ing towards us. As she approached we waved fragments of 
 the tattered sails, and shouted for assistance. Having run 
 down pretty near us, she hove to, and sent a boat on board. 
 When the boat’s crew had mounted over the brig’s side, they 
 seemed utterly amazed at the scene which her decks presented. 
 I stepped forward, and explained to the officer the nature of 
 our situation ; that w y e were a cargo of slaves bound from 
 Washington to Charleston, and that the vessel and her lading 
 had been deserted by the crew ; that, contrary to every expecta- 
 tion, we had succeeded in keeping her afloat, but that the 
 pumps were out of order, and she was again filling. 
 
 The mate hastened back to his own ship, and soon returned 
 with the captain and the carpenter. After examining and con- 
 sulting together, they determined to put a part of their own 
 crew on board the brig, and to navigate her into Norfolk, to 
 which port they were bound, and which was the nearest har- 
 bour. The carpenter was put to work stopping her leaks and 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 repairing her pumps. Her new crew set up a jury foremast 
 out of such materials as they found on board. She was soon 
 in sailing order, and they shook the reefs out of her maintopsail 
 and put her before the wind. 
 
 The vessel which had rescued us was the A?-ethusa , of New 
 York, Charles Parker, master ; and lest we might need assist- 
 ance, she slackened sail and kept us company. Before night 
 we made the land, and a pilot came on board. The next 
 morning we entered the harbour of Norfolk. The vessel had 
 scarcely touched the wharf before we were hurried away, and 
 locked up in the city gaol for safe keeping. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 We remained in gaol some three weeks before anybody conde- 
 scended to inform us why we were kept there, or what was to 
 become of us. We now learned that Captain Parker and his 
 crew had libelled the Two Sallys and her cargo for salvage, 
 and that the court had ordered the libelled property to be sold 
 at auction, for the joint benefit of the owners and salvors. 
 This was all Greek to us. I had not the most distant idea 
 what was meant by “ libelling for salvage,” and I hardly think 
 that any of the others understood it better than I. Nobody 
 took the trouble to explain it to us ; it was enough for us to 
 understand that we were to be sold ; the why and the wherefore 
 it was thought of no consequence for slaves to know. 
 
 As I had already been twice sold at public auction, the thing 
 had lost its interest and its novelty. I was tired of the con- 
 finement of the prison ; and as I knew that I must be sold at 
 last, I was as ready to take my chance now as ever. 
 
 The sale was much like other sales of slaves. There was 
 only one circumstance about it that seemed worthy of par- 
 ticular notice. The wounded men, though they were not yet 
 cured — indeed, two of the four were hardly thought out of 
 danger — were to be sold among the rest. “ Damaged 
 articles,” the auctioneer observed, “which he was willing to 
 dispose of at a great discount.” The four were offered in one 
 lot — “ Like so many broken frying-pans,” said one of the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 99 
 
 spectators ; “ but for my part I have no fancy for speculating 
 either in broken frying-pans, wounded slaves, or sick horses.” 
 A physician who was present was advised to purchase. “ If 
 they should happen to die,” said his adviser, “ they would be 
 quite useless to anybody else, but you might find some use for 
 their dead bodies.” Various other jests, equally brilliant and 
 pointed, were thrown out by others of the company, and were 
 received with shouts of laughter that contrasted a little 
 harshly with the sad, woe-begone faces and low moans of the 
 wounded men, who were brought to the place of sale on little 
 pallets, and who lay upon the ground the very pictures of 
 sickness and distress. 
 
 This jocular humour had reached a high pitch, when it was 
 rather suddenly checked by a tall, fine-looking man, who had 
 more the air and manners of a gentleman than the greater 
 part of the company. He observed, with a tone and a look of 
 some severity, that, in his opinion, selling men upon their 
 deathbeds was no laughing matter. He immediately made a 
 bid quite beyond anything that had been offered, and the 
 auctioneer pronounced him to be the purchaser. I hoped 
 this same gentleman might have purchased me also ; but as 
 soon as he had given some directions about the removal of 
 the wounded men, he left the place of sale. Perhaps I had no 
 reason to regret it. This gentleman, for aught I could tell, 
 had acted as a hundred other slave-buyers might have done, 
 from a momentary impulse of humanity, which disgusted him, 
 it is true, with the brutality of the rest of the company, but 
 which in all likelihood was neither strong nor steady enough 
 to render his treatment of his servants much different from 
 that of his neighbours. Such temporary fits of humanity and 
 good nature are occasionally felt by everybody ; but they are 
 no guarantee whatever against an habitual disregard of the 
 rights and feelings of those who are not allowed to protect 
 themselves, and who are protected neither by the laws nor bj 
 public opinion. 
 
 i I was purchased by an agent of Mr. James Carleton, of 
 Carleton Hall, in one of the northern counties of North Caro- 
 lina, and was presently sent off, with two or three of my 
 companions, for the plantation of our new master. 
 
 After a journey of four or five days we arrived at Carleton 
 Hall. It was like the residences of so many other American 
 planters, a mean house, with no great signs about it either of 
 
IOO 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ornament or comfort. At a short distance from the house was 
 the servants’ quarter, a miserable collection of ruinous cabins, 
 crowded together without any order, and almost concealed in 
 the vigorous growth of weeds that sprung up around and 
 
 among them. ... f 
 
 Soon after our arrival we were carried into the presence ot 
 our new master, who examined us one by one, and inquired 
 into our several capabilities. Having learned that I had been 
 raised a house-servant, and being pleased, as he said, with my 
 manners and appearance, he told me. he would take me into 
 the house to supply the place of his man John, who had 
 become so confirmed a drunkard that he had been obliged to 
 
 turn him into the field. _ . 
 
 I was well enough pleased with this arrangement ; tor, in 
 general, those slaves who are house-servants are infinitely 
 better off than those who are employed in field labour. They 
 are better fed and better clothed, and their work is much 
 lighter. They are sure of the crumbs that fall from then- 
 master’s table; and as the master’s eyes and those of his 
 guests would be offended by a display of dirt and rags in the 
 dining-room, house-servants are comfortably clothed, not so 
 much, it is true, on their own account as for the gratification 
 of their owmer’s vanity. As it is a matter of ostentation to 
 have a house full of servants, the labour becomes light when 
 divided among so many. Sufficient food, comfortable clothing, 
 and light work, are not to be despised ; but the circumstance 
 which principally contributes to make the condition of t e 
 house-servant more tolerable than that of the field-hand is of 
 a different description. Men, and especially women and 
 children, cannot have anything much about them, be it a dog, 
 a cat, or even a slave, without insensibly contracting some 
 interest in it and regard for it; and it thus happens that a 
 family servant often becomes quite a favourite, and is at 
 length regarded with a feeling that bears some faint and 
 distant resemblance to family affection. 
 
 This is the most tolerable — in fact, the only tolerable point 
 of view in which slavery can be made to present itself ; and 
 it has been, by steadily fixing their eyes on a few cases of this 
 ’.sort, and as steadily closing them to all its intrinsic horrors 
 and enormities, that some bold sophists have mustered courage 
 
 to make the eulogium of slavery. 
 
 Yet this best condition of a slave — that, I mean, of a 
 
* 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. ioi 
 
 f 
 
 household servant— is often almost too miserable for endur- 
 ance. If there are kind masters and good-natured mistresses, it 
 happens too frequently that the master is a capricious ty rant and 
 the mistress a fretful scold. The poor servant is exposed, every 
 hour of his life, to a course of harsh rebukes and peevish 
 chidings, which are always threatening to end in the torture of 
 the lash, and which to a person of any spirit or sensibility are 
 more annoying than even the lash itself. And all this is 
 without hope "or chance of remedy. The master and the 
 mistress indulge their bad humour without restraint. . No fear 
 of “warning” puts any curb upon them. The slave is theirs; 
 and they can treat him as they please. He cannot help 
 himself, and there is no one to help him. 
 
 Mr. Carleton, while he entertained most of the notions of 
 his brother-planters, differed from the greater part of them in 
 one striking particular. He was a zealous Presbyterian, and 
 very warm and earnest in the cause of religion. Had any one 
 told him that to hold men in slavery was a high-handed 
 offence against religion and morality, what would ^ have been 
 his answer? Would his heart have responded to tne truth of 
 a sentiment so congenial to every more generous emotion and 
 better feeling? I am much afraid it would not. I fear he 
 would have answered much like those of his brother-slave- 
 holders, who made no pretensions whatever to peculiar piety. 
 With a secret consciousness of his criminality, but with a fixed 
 determination never to admit it, he would have worked himself 
 4 into a violent passion ; talked of the “ sacred rights of 
 property ” — more sacred in a slaveholder’s estimation than 
 either liberty or justice; and declaimed against impertinent 
 interference in the affairs of other people — a topic, by the way, 
 which is very seldom much insisted upon, except by those 
 whose affairs will hardly bear examination. 
 
 Mr. Carleton, though a zealous Presbyterian, had, as I have 
 said, most of the feelings and notions of his brother-planters. 
 It thus happened that his character, his conversation, and his 
 conduct were full of strange contrasts, and were for ever 
 
 rj presenting an odd, incongruous mixture of the bully and the 
 
 puritan. I use the word bully for want of a better, not exactly 
 in its most vulgar sense, but intending to signify by it a certain 
 spirit of bravado and violence, a disposition _ to settle every 
 disputed point by the pistol, so common, I might almost say 
 universal, in the southern States of America. Mr. Carleton, 
 
 Si 
 
102 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 with all his piety, talked as familiarly of shooting people as if 
 he had been a professed assassin. 
 
 As I had the honour of waiting upon Mr. Carleton’s table, 
 and the pleasure and advantage of listening every day to his 
 conversation, I soon came to understand his character perfectly 
 — as perfectly, at least, as it was possible for anybody to 
 understand so very inconsistent a character. He had family 
 prayers, night and morning, with the most punctilious regu- 
 larity. He prayed long and fervently, and on his bended 
 knees. He was particularly earnest in his petitions for the 
 universal spread of the gospel ) he asked most devoutly that 
 as all men were creatures of the same God they might speedily 
 become children of the same faith. Yet not only were 
 the plantation slaves never invited to join in this family 
 worship, but even the house-servants were excluded. The 
 door was shut, and at the very moment when the devout Mr. 
 Carleton professed to prostrate himself in the dust before his 
 Creator he felt too strongly the sense of his own superiority to 
 permit even his household servants to participate in his 
 devotions ! 
 
 But for all this Mr. Carleton evidently had the cause of 
 religion very much at heart, and seemed ready to spend and 
 be spent in the service. There were very few clergymen in 
 
 the part of the country in which he resided, and his zeal 
 frequently led him to supply the gap, by acting as an exhorter. 
 Indeed, there was scarcely a Sunday that he did not hold forth 
 somewhere in the neighbourhood. Within ten miles of 
 Carleton Hall, in different directions, there were as many as 
 three churches — wretched, ruinous, little buildings, that looked 
 more like deserted barns than places of public worship. All 
 of these Mr. Carleton had caused to be repaired, principally at 
 his own expense, and in each of them he preached occasionally. 
 But he did not consider a church as indispensable to an 
 exhortation. During the summer he frequently held meetings 
 in some shady grove, or by the side of some cool spring, and 
 in the winter sometimes in his own house, and sometimes in 
 the houses of his neighbours ; he was generally pretty sure of 
 a considerable audience. That part of the country was thinly 
 inhabited, and the people had but few amusements ; they were 
 glad of any occasion of assembling together, and seemed to 
 care very little whether it were a preaching or a frolic. 
 Besides, Mr. Carleton was really an agreeable speaker ; and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 103 
 
 the earnestness and vehemence of his manner were well 
 calculated to attract an audience. 
 
 A very considerable proportion of his hearers were slaves ; 
 for though he did not judge it expedient to allow them to 
 become partakers in his private devotions, he had no objection 
 to their swelling his audience, and giving a sort of kclat to his 
 public performances. Indeed, towards the end of his dis- 
 courses he would often condescend to introduce a few 
 sentences for their particular benefit. The change which took 
 place in his manner when he came to that part of his sermon 
 was sufficiently obvious. The phrase “dear brethren,” which 
 in the earlier part of it he was for ever repeating, was now 
 suddenly dropped ; the preacher assumed a condescending, 
 patronising air, and briefly and dryly informed those of his 
 hearers, “ whom God had appointed to be servants,” that their 
 only hope of salvation was in patience, obedience, submission, 
 diligence, and subordination. He warned them earnestly 
 against thieving and lying, their “ easily besetting sins ; ” and 
 enforced at some length the great wickedness and folly of 
 being discontented with their condition. All this was applauded 
 by the masters as very orthodox doctrine, and very proper to 
 be preached to servants ; the servants themselves received it 
 with an outward submission, to which their hearts gave the lie. 
 
 Nor is it very strange, considering the doctrines which he 
 preached to them, that the greater part of Mr. Carleton’s 
 converts among the slaves were hypocritical fellows, who made 
 their religion a cloak for their roguery. There was, in fact, 
 much truth in the observation of one of Mr. Carleton’s 
 neighbours— that most of the slaves in that part of the country 
 had no religion at all, and that those who pretended to have 
 any were worse than the others. And how could it be other- 
 wise, when in the venerable name of religion they had preached 
 to them a doctrine of double-distilled tyranny — a doctrine which, y 
 
 not content with now and then a human victim, demanded the 
 perpetual sacrifice of one-half the entire community ? 
 
 Alas, Christianity ! What does it avail— thy concern for the 
 poor, thy tenderness for the oppressed, thy system of fraternal 
 love and affection ? The serpent knows hovr to suck poison 
 from the harmless nature of the dove. The tyrants of every 
 age and country have succeeded in prostituting Christianity into 
 an instrument of their crimes, a terror to their victims, and an 
 apology for their oppressions ! Nor have they ever wanted 
 
 
104 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 time-serving priests and lying prophets to applaud, encourage, 
 and sustain ihqm ! 
 
 However little the slaves might relish Mr. Carleton’s 
 doctrines — of which, indeed, their own hearts instinctively 
 made the refutation — they were very fond of attending upon 
 his performances. It was some relief to the eternal monotony 
 of their lives ; and it gave them an opportunity of getting 
 together after the meeting was over, and having a frolic among 
 themselves. This recreation which it afforded to the servants 
 was, in my opinion, the best effect of Mr. Carleton’s labours ; 
 though certain gentlemen, who dreaded every assembly of 
 slaves as a source of discontent and conspiracy, were very 
 earnest in the condemnation of his meetings, under the 
 hypocritical pretence of being shocked at the violations of the 
 Sabbath, of which they furnished the occasion ! 
 
 Mr. Carleton was president of a Bible Society, and was very 
 anxious and earnest about the universal diffusion of the Bible. 
 I soon found out, however, that besides myself there was not 
 a single slave on his plantation, nor, indeed, in all the neigh- 
 bourhood, who knew how to read; and what was more, I 
 learned that Mr. Carleton was extremely unwilling to have any 
 of them taught. 
 
 There is connected with this subject a point of view in 
 which the system of domestic slavery that prevails in America 
 exhibits itself as out-braving all other tyrannies, and betraying 
 a demoniac spirit- almost too horrid to be thought of. Mr. 
 Carleton believed, and the immense majority of his fellow- 
 countrymen believe also, that the Bible contains a revelation 
 from God of things essential to man’s eternal welfare. In 
 this belief, and animated by a lofty spirit of philanthropy, they 
 have formed societies — and of one of these Mr. Carleton was 
 president — and contribute their money (as Mr. Carleton did very 
 liberally) to disseminate the Bible through the world, and to put 
 this divine and unerring guide into the possession of every 
 family. But while they are so zealous to confer this inestim- 
 able treasure upon all the world beside, they sternly withhold 
 it from those of whom the law has made them the sole 
 guardians. They withhold it from their slaves, of whom, to use 
 their own favourite phrase, God has appointed them the 
 natural protectors ; and in so doing, by their own confession, 
 they voluntarily and knowingly expose those slaves to the 
 danger of eternal punishment 1 To this awful danger they 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 105 
 
 voluntarily and knowingly expose them, lest, should they learn 
 to read, they might learn, at the same time, their own rights 
 and the means of enforcing them. 
 
 What outrage upon humanity was ever equal to this ? Other 
 tyrannies have proceeded all lengths against man’s temporal 
 happiness, and in support of their evil dominion have hazarded 
 every extreme of temporal cruelty; but what other tyrants 
 are recorded in all the world’s history who have openly and 
 publicly confessed that they prefer to expose their victims to 
 the imminent danger of eternal misery, rather than impart 
 a degree of instruction which might, by possibility, endanger 
 their own unjust and usurped authority ? Can any one calmly 
 consider the cool diabolism of this avowal, and believe it is 
 men who make it ? Men, too, who seem in other matters not 
 destitute of the common feelings of good-will ; men who talk 
 about liberty, virtue, and religion, and who speak even of 
 justice and humanity ! 
 
 Were I inclined to superstition, I should believe they 
 were not men, but rather demons incarnate — evil spirits who 
 had assumed the human shape, and who falsely put on 
 a semblance of human feelings, in order the more secretly and 
 securely to prosecute their grand conspiracy against mankind. 
 I should believe so, did I not know that the love of social 
 superiority, that very impulse of the human heart which is the 
 main-spring of civilisation and the chief source of all human 
 improvement, is able, when suffered to work on, uncontrolled 
 by other more generous emotions, to corrupt man’s whole 
 nature, and to drive him to acts the most horrid and detest- 
 able. When to the corruptest form of this fierce passion is 
 joined a base fear, at once cowardly and cruel, what wonder 
 that man becomes a creature to be scorned and hated ? To 
 be pitied rather ; the maniac can hardly be held accountable 
 for the enormities to which his madness prompts him, even 
 though that madness be self-created. 
 
 However diabolical the tyranny may be esteemed which, to 
 secure its usurped authority, is ready to sacrifice both the 
 temporal and eternal happiness of its victims, it is no doubt 
 well adapted to accomplish the end at which it aims ; namely, 
 its own perpetuation. But it is necessary to go one step 
 further. The slaveholders ought to recollect that all know- 
 ledge is dangerous, and that it is impossible to give the slaves 
 any instruction in Christianity without imparting to them some 
 
IO 6 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 dangerous ideas. It matters not that the law prohibits the 
 teaching them to read. Oral instruction is as dangerous, as 
 written ; and the catechism is nothing but a Bible in disguise. 
 Let them go on then, and bring their work to a glorious 
 completion. Let them prohibit at once all religious instruc- 
 tion. They must come to this at last. Let me tell them that 
 the time is past, in which Mr. Carleton’s doctrine of passive 
 obedience is all that a religious teacher has to utter. There is 
 another spirit abroad ; and that spirit will penetrate wherever 
 religious instruction opens the way for it. Nowaday, it is 
 impossible to hail the slave as a Christian brother without 
 first acknowledging his rights as a fellow-man. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 I had not been long in Mr. Carleton’s service before I 
 discovered that a pretty sure way of getting into his good 
 graces was to be a great admirer of his religious performances, 
 and a devout attendant upon such of them as his servants 
 might attend. There never was a person less inclined by 
 nature to hypocrisy than myself. But craft and cunning are 
 the sole resource of a slave ; and I had long ago learned 
 to practise a thousand arts, which, at the same time that I 
 despised them, I often found extremely useful. 
 
 For these arts I now had occasion ; and I plied my flattery 
 to such purpose, that I soon gained the good-will of my master, 
 and before long was duly established in the situation of con- 
 fidential servant. This was a station of very considerable 
 respectability ; and next to the overseer, I was decidedly the 
 most consequential person on the place. It was my duty to 
 attend specially upon my master, to ride about with him to 
 meetings, carry his cloak and Bible, and take care of his horse ; 
 for among other matters Mr. Carleton was a connoisseur in 
 horses, and he did not like to trust his to the usual blundering 
 negligence of his neighbour’s grooms. 
 
 Pretty soon my master found out my accomplishments of 
 reading and writing; for I inadvertently betrayed a secret 
 which I had determined to keep to myself. At first he did 
 
 / 
 
 \ 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 107 
 
 not seem to like it ; but as he could not unlearn me, he soon 
 determined to turn these acquirements of mine to some 
 account. He had a good deal of writing of one sort or 
 another ; and he set me to work as copier. In my character 
 of secretary, I was often called upon, when my master was 
 busy, to write passes for the people. This raised my con- 
 sequence extremely, and my fellow-servants soon began to 
 look upon me as second only to “ master ” himself. 
 
 Mr. Carleton was naturally humane and kind-hearted ; and 
 though his sudden outbreaks of impatience and fretfulness 
 were often vexatious enough, still if one humoured him they 
 were generally soon over ; and as if he reproached himself for 
 not keeping a better guard upon his temper, they were often 
 followed by an affability and indulgence greater than usual. 
 I soon learned the art of managing him to the best advantage, 
 and every day I rose in his favour. 
 
 I had a good deal of leisure ; and I found means to employ 
 it both innocently and agreeably. Mr. Carleton had a col- 
 lection of books very unusual for a North Carolina planter. 
 This library must have contained between two and three 
 hundred volumes. It was the admiration of all the country 
 round, and contributed not a little to give its owner the 
 character of a great scholar, and a very learned man. My 
 situation of confidential servant gave me free access to it. 
 1 he greater part of the volumes treated of divinity, but there 
 were some of a more attractive description ; and I was able to 
 gratify occasionally and by stealth — for I did not like to be 
 seen reading anything but the Bible— that taste for knowledge 
 which I had imbibed when a child, and which all the degrada- 
 tions of servitude had not utterly extinguished. All things 
 considered, I found myself much more agreeably situated than 
 I had ever been at any time since the death of my first master. 
 
 I wish, both for their sakes and his own, that all the rest of 
 Mr. Carleton’s slaves had been as well off and as kindly 
 treated as myself. The house servants, it is true, had nothing 
 to complain of, except, indeed, those grievous evils which are 
 inseparable from a state of servitude, and which no tenderness 
 or indulgence on the part of the master can ever do away. 
 
 ^e plantation hands — some fifty in number — were very 
 differently situated. Mr. Carleton, like a large proportion of 
 merican planters, had no knowledge of agriculture, and not 
 he slightest taste for it. He had never given any attention to 
 
io8 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 the business of his plantation; his youth had been spent in a 
 course of boisterous dissipation, and since his conversion lie 
 had been entirely devoted to the cause ol religion. Of course 
 his planting alfairs and all that related to them were wholly in 
 the hands of his overseer, who was shrewd, plausible, Intel 
 gent, and well acquainted with his business, but a severe 
 taskmaster, bad-tempered, and, if all reports were true, not 
 very much overburdened with honesty. Mr. Warner for this 
 was the overseer’s name, was engaged on terms which, however 
 ruinous to the planter and his plantation, were very common 
 in Virginia and the Carolinas. Instead of receiving a regu ar 
 salary in money, he took a certain proportion of the crop. Ot 
 course it was his interest to make the largest crop possible 
 without any regard whatever to the means used to make it 
 What was it to him though the lands were exhausted, and 
 slaves worn out with heavy tasks and unreasonable labours? 
 He owned neither the lands nor the slaves, and if m ten or 
 twelve years— and for something like that time he had been 
 established at Carleton Hall-he could scourge all their value 
 out of them, the gain was his, and the loss would be his 
 emnlover’s. This desirable consummation he seemed pretty 
 nearlv arrived at. The lands at Carleton Hall were never 
 cultivated, it is likely, with any tolerable skill ; but Mr. Warner 
 had carried the process of exhaustion to its last extremity. 
 Field after field had been “ turned out, as they call it that 
 is, left uncultivated and unfenced to grow up with broom- 
 sedge and persimmon bushes, and be grazed by all the cattle 
 of the neighbourhood. Year after year new land had been 
 opened, and exposed to the same exhausting process which 
 had worn out the fields that had been already abandoned, 
 till at last there was no new land left upon the plantation. 
 
 Mr Warner now began to talk about throwing up his 
 employment, and it was only, by urgent solicitations and a 
 greater proportion of the diminished produce that Mr. Carleton 
 had prevailed upon him to remain another year. 
 
 But it was not the land only that suffered. The slaves were 
 subjected to a like process of exhaustion ; and, what with hard 
 work, insufficient food, and an irregular and capricious severity, 
 they had become discontented, sickly, and inefficient. There 
 never was a time that two or three of them, and sometimes 
 many more, were not runaways, wandering in the woods ; and 
 hence originated further troubles and fresh severity. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 109 
 
 Mr. Carleton had expressly directed that his servants should 
 receive an allowance of corn, and especially of meat, which in 
 that part of the world was thought extremely liberal ; and I 
 believe, if the allowance had been faithfully distributed, the 
 heartiest man upon the place would have received about half 
 as much meat as was consumed by Mr. Carleton’s youngest 
 daughter, a little girl some ten or twelve years old. But if the 
 slaves were worthy of belief, neither Mr. Warner’s scales nor 
 his measure were very authentic; and, according to their story, so 
 much as he could plunder out of their weekly allowance went 
 to increase his share in the yearly produce of the plantation. 
 
 Once or twice complaints of this sort had been carried to 
 Mr. Carleton, but, without deigning to examine into them, he 
 had dismissed them as unworthy of notice. Mr. Warner, he 
 said, was an honest man and a Christian — indeed, it was his 
 Christian character that had first recommended him to his 
 employer; and these scandalous stories were only invented 
 out of that spite which slaves always feel against an overseer 
 who compels them to do their duty. It might be so ; I 
 cannot undertake positively to contradict it. Yet I know that 
 these imputations upon Mr. Warner’s honesty were not con- 
 fined to the plantation, but circulated pretty freely through the 
 neighbourhood; and if he was not a rogue, Mr. Carleton, by 
 an unlimited, unsuspicious, and unwise confidence, did his 
 best to make him so. 
 
 Whether the slaves were cheated or not of their allowance, 
 there is no dispute that they were worked hard and harshly 
 treated. Mr. Carleton always took sides with his overseer, 
 and was in the habit of maintaining that it was impossible to 
 get along on a plantation without frequent whipping and a. 
 good deal of severity; and yet, as he was naturally good- 
 natured, it gave him pain to hear of any very flagrant instance 
 of it. But he was much from home, and that kept him 
 ignorant, to a great degree, of what was going on there ; and 
 for the rest, the overseer was anxious to save his feelings, and 
 had issued very strict orders, which he enforced with merciless 
 severity, that nobody should run to the house with tales of 
 what was done upon the plantation. By this ingenious device, 
 though a very common one, Mr. Warner had everything in his 
 own way. In fact, Mr. Carleton had as little control over his 
 plantation as over any other in the county; and he knew 
 just as little about it. 
 
no 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 When my master was a young man, he had betted at horse- 
 races and gambling-tables, and spent money very freely in a 
 thousand foolish ways. Since he had grown religious he had 
 dropped these expenses, but he had fallen into others. It was 
 no small sum that he spent every year upon Bibles, church 
 repairs, and other pious objects. For several years his income 
 had been diminishing ; but without any corresponding diminu- 
 tion of his expenses. As a natural consequence, he had 
 become deeply involved in debt. His overseer had grown 
 rich while he had been growing poor. His lands and slaves 
 were mortgaged, and he began to be plagued by the sheriff’s 
 officer. But these perplexities did not cause him to forego his 
 spiritual labours, which he prosecuted, if possible, more 
 diligently than before. 
 
 I had now been living with him some six or seven months, 
 and was completely established in his favour, when one 
 Sunday morning we set off together for a place about eight 
 miles distant, where he had not preached before, since I had 
 been in his service. The place appointed for the meeting was 
 in the open air. It was a pretty place though, and well 
 adapted to the purpose, being a gentle swell of ground over 
 which were thinly scattered a number of ancient and wide- 
 spreading oaks. Their outstretched limbs formed a thick 
 shade, under which there were neither weeds nor undergrowth, 
 but something more like a grassy lawn than is often to be seen 
 in that country. Near the top of the swell somebody had 
 fixed up some rude benches ; and partly supported against one 
 of the largest trees was a misshapen little platform, with a chair 
 or two upon it, which seemed intended for the pulpit. 
 
 Quite a troop of horses, and as many as ten or twelve 
 carriages, were collected at the foot of the swell ; and the 
 benches were already occupied by a considerable number of 
 people. The white hearers, however, were far outnumbered 
 by the slaves, who were scattered about in groups, most of 
 them in their Sunday dresses, and many of them very decent- 
 looking people. A few, however, were miserably ragged and 
 dirty; and there was quite a number of half-grown children 
 from the adjoining plantations, without a rag to hide their 
 nakedness. 
 
 My master seemed well pleased with the prospect of so 
 large an audience. He dismounted at the foot of the hill, if a 
 rise so gentle deserved the name, and delivered his horse into 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 iii 
 
 my charge. I sought out a convenient place in which to tie 
 the horses ; and as I knew the services would not begin 
 immediately, I sauntered about, looking at the equipages and 
 the company. While I was occupied in this way, a smart 
 carriage drove up. It stopped. A servant jumped from 
 behind, opened the door and let down the steps. An elderly 
 lady, and another about eighteen or twenty, occupied the back 
 seat. On the front seat was a woman whom I took to be their 
 maid, though I could not see her distinctly. Something 
 called off my attention, and I turned another way. When I 
 looked again, the two ladies were walking up the hill and the 
 maid was on the ground, with her back towards me, taking 
 something from the carriage. A moment after, she turned 
 round, and I knew her. It was Cassy — it was my wife. 
 
 I sprang forward and caught her in my arms. She 
 recognised me at the same moment; and uttering a cry of 
 surprise and pleasure, she would have fallen had I not 
 supported her. She recovered herself directly, and bade me 
 let her go, for she had been sent back for her mistress’s fan, 
 and she must make haste and carry it to her. She told me to 
 wait, though, for if she could get leave she would come back 
 again immediately. She tripped up the hill and overtook her 
 mistress. I could see, by her gestures, the eagerness with 
 which she urged her request. It was granted, and in a 
 moment she was again at my side. Again 1 pressed her to my 
 bosom, and again she returned my embrace. Once more I 
 felt what it was to be happy. I took her by the hand and led 
 her to a little wood on the opposite side of the road. Here 
 was a thick young growth, where we could sit screened from 
 observation. We sat down upon a fallen tree, and while I 
 held her hands fast locked in mine, we asked and answered a 
 thousand questions. 
 
 The first emotions and agitation of our meeting over, Cassy 
 required of me a detailed narrative of my adventures since our 
 separation. With what a kindling eye and heaving bosom did 
 she listen to my story ; at every painful incident of it the fast- 
 flowing tears chasing each other down her cheeks, now pale, 
 now flushed ; at every gleam of ease or comfort, a tender, 
 joyous, sympathising smile beaming upon me, breathing new 
 life into my soul ! You who have loved as we loved — you 
 who have parted as we parted, with no hope ever to meet 
 again — you who have met as we met, brought together by 
 
1 12 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 accident or by Providence — you, and only you, may imagine 
 the emotions that swelled my heart as I pressed the hand, and 
 felt the presence, and basked in the sympathy of a woman, and 
 a wife, as dear to me, slave though I was, slave though she was 
 —as dear to me as the wife of his bosom is to the proudest 
 freeman of you all. 
 
 My story finished, again Cassy clasped me in her arms, and 
 claimed me as her husband ; tears, but tears of joy, again fast- 
 flowing down her cheeks. There for a short while she sat, 
 silent, seeming as if lost in a sort of reverie, or indeed almost 
 as if doubting whether all she had just heard — whether the 
 very husband whom she saw before her — whether our whole 
 unexpected meeting was anything more than a treacherous 
 dream. But with a kiss or two I recalled her attention, and 
 made her understand that I was no less anxious to hear her 
 story than she had been to hear mine. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 It seemed to be with the greatest reluctance that the poor girl 
 carried back her recollection to that terrible day which had 
 separated us, as we then thought, for ever. She hesitated, and 
 seemed half ashamed, and almost unwilling to speak of what 
 had followed after that separation. I pitied her ; and great as 
 was my curiosity, if my feelings on that occasion deserve so 
 trifling a name, I could almost have wished her to pass over 
 the interval in silence. Distressing doubts and dreadful 
 apprehensions crowded upon me, and I almost dreaded to hear 
 her speak. But she hid her face in my bosom, and murmuring 
 in a voice half choked with sobs, “ My husband must know 
 it,” she began her story. 
 
 She was already, she told me, more than half-dead with 
 fright and horror, and the first blow that Colonel Moore 
 struck beat her senseless to the ground. When she came 
 to her senses, she found herself lying on a bed in a room 
 which she did not recollect ever to have seen before. She 
 rose from the bed as well as her bruises would allow her; 
 for she did not move without difficulty. The room was 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 113 
 
 prettily furnished ; the bed was hung with curtains, neat and 
 comfortable ; a dressing-table stood in one corner ; and there 
 was all the usual furniture of a lady’s bedchamber; but it 
 was not like any room in the house at Spring-Meadow. 
 
 She tried to open the doors, of which there were two, 
 but both were fastened. She endeavoured to get a peep 
 from the windows, in the hope that she might know some 
 part of the prospect. But she could only discover that the 
 house seemed to be surrounded by trees ; for the windows 
 were guarded on the outside by close blinds, which were 
 fastened in some way she did not understand, so that she 
 could not open them. This fastening of the doors and 
 windows satisfied her that she was held a prisoner, and con- 
 firmed all her worst suspicions. 
 
 As she passed by the dressing-table she caught a look 
 at the glass. Her face was deadly pale; her hair fell in 
 loose disorder over her shoulders, and looking down she 
 saw stains of blood upon her dress, but whether her own 
 or her husband’s she could not tell. She sat down on the 
 bedside ; her head was dizzy and confused, and she scarcely 
 knew whether she were awake or dreaming. 
 
 Presently one of the doors opened and a woman entered. 
 It was Miss Ritty,* as she was called among the servants 
 at Spring-Meadow, a pretty, dark-complexioned damsel, who 
 enjoyed at that time the station and dignity of Colonel 
 Moore’s favourite. Cassy’s heart beat hard while she heard 
 someone fumbling at the lock. When the door opened 
 she was glad to see that it was only a woman, and one 
 whom she knew. She ran towards her, caught her by the 
 . hand > and begged her protection. The girl laughed, and 
 asked what she was afraid of. Cassy hardly knew what 
 answer to make. After hesitating a moment, she begged 
 Miss Ritty to tell her where she was, and what they intended 
 to do with her. 
 
 “ It is a fine place you’re in,” was the answer, “and when 
 master comes, you can ask him what is to be done with 
 you.” This was said with a significant titter, which Cassy 
 knew too well how to interpret. 
 
 . Though Miss Ritty had evaded a direct answer to her 
 inquiry, it now occurred to her where she must be. This 
 woman, she recollected, occupied a small house, the same 
 
 * Henrietta. 
 
 8 
 
n 4 THE WHITE SLAVE . 
 
 that once had been inhabited by Cassy’s mother and by mine, 
 at a considerable distance from any other on the plantation. 
 It was surrounded by a little grove which almost hid it from 
 view, and was very seldom visited by any of the servants. 
 Miss Kitty looked upon herself, and was in fact regarded 
 by the rest of us, as a person of no little consequence ; and 
 though she sometimes condescended to make visits, she was 
 not often anxious to have them returned. Cassy, however, 
 had been once or twice at her house. There were two little 
 rooms in front, into which she was freely admitted ; but the 
 apartment behind was locked ; and it was whispered among 
 the servants that Colonel Moore kept the key, so that even 
 Miss Ritty herself did not enter it except in his company. 
 This perhaps was mere scandal ; but Cassy recollected to 
 have noticed that the windows of this room were protected 
 against impertinent curiosity by close blinds on the outside, 
 and she no longer doubted where she was. 
 
 She told Miss Ritty as much, and inquired if her mistress 
 
 knew of her return. 
 
 Miss Ritty could not tell. 
 
 She asked if her mistress had got another maid in her place. 
 
 Miss Ritty did not know. 
 
 She begged for permission to go and see her mistress ; but 
 that, Miss Ritty said, was impossible. 
 
 She requested that her mistress might be told where she 
 was, and that she wished very much to see her. 
 
 Miss Ritty said that she would be glad to oblige her, but 
 she was not much in the habit of going to the house, and 
 the last time she was there Mrs. Moore had spoken to her 
 so spitefully that she was determined never to go again, unless 
 she were absolutely obliged to. 
 
 Having thus exhausted every resource, poor Cassy threw 
 herself upon the bed, hid her face in the bedclothes, and 
 sought relief in tears. 
 
 It was now Miss Ritty’s turn. She patted the poor girl 
 on the shoulder, bade her not to be down-hearted, and unlock- 
 ing a bureau which stood in the room, she took out a dress 
 which she pronounced to be “ mighty handsome.” She bade 
 Cassy get up and put it on, for her master would be coming 
 presently. This was what Cassy feared; but she hoped, if 
 she could not escape the visit, at least to defer it. So she told 
 Miss Ritty that she was too sick to see anybody ; she absolutely 
 
 I 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 
 ii5 
 
 refused to look at her dresses, and begged to be allowed 
 to die in peace. Miss Ritty laughed when she spoke of 
 dying ; yet she seemed a little alarmed at the idea of it, and 
 inquired what was the matter. 
 
 Cassy told her that she had seen and suffered enough that 
 day to kill anybody, that her head was sick, and her heart 
 was broken, and the sooner death came to her relief the 
 better. She then mustered courage to mention my name, and 
 endeavoured to discover what had become of me. Miss 
 Ritty again shook her head, and declared she could give no 
 information. 
 
 At that moment the door opened, and Colonel Moore came 
 in. He had a haggard and guilty look. The flush which 
 overspread his face, when she had last seen him, was wholly 
 gone ; his countenance was pale and ghastly. She had never \ 
 seen him look so before, and she trembled at the sight of him. ) 3 " c /e 7 -^ 
 He bade Ritty begone ; but told her to wait in the front room, ' h 
 as, perhaps, he might need her assistance. He bolted the 
 door, and sat down on the bed by Cassy’s side. She started 
 up in terror, and retired to the farthest corner of the room. 
 
 He. smiled scornfully, and bade her come back and sit down 
 beside him. She obeyed ; for, however reluctant, she could do 
 no. better. He took her hand and threw one arm about her 
 waist. Again she shrank from him, and would have fled ; but 
 he stamped his foot impatiently, and in a harsh tone bade 
 her be quiet. 
 
 For a moment he was silent ; then, changing his manner, he 
 summoned up his habitual smile, and began in that mild, gentle, 
 insinuating tone, in which he was quite unsurpassed. He 
 plied her with flattery, soft words, and generous promises. 
 
 He reproached her, but without any harshness, for her 
 attempts to evade the kindness he intended her. He then 
 spoke of me ; but no sooner had he entered on that subject 
 than his voice rose, his face became flushed again, and he 
 seemed in manifest danger of losing his temper. / 
 
 She interrupted him, and besought him to tell her how I 
 did, and what had become of me. He answered that I was 
 well enough; much better than I deserved to be; but she 
 need give herself no further thought or trouble on that score, 
 for he intended to send me out of the country as soon as 
 I was able to travel ; and she need not hope nor expect ever 
 to see me again. 
 
u6 THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 She most earnestly besought and begged that she might be 
 sent off and sold with me. He affected to be greatly surprised 
 at this request, and inquired why she made it. She told Him 
 that, after all that had happened, it were better that she shou d 
 not live any longer in his family ; beside, if she were sold at 
 the same time, the same person might buy her that boug t 
 her husband. That word husband put him into a violent 
 passion. He told her that she had no husband, and wanted 
 none ; for he would be better than a husband to her. He 
 said that he was tired of her folly, and, with a significant look, 
 he bade her not be a fool, but to leave off whining and crying, 
 be a good girl, and do as her master desired ; was it not a 
 
 servant’s duty to obey her master ? . . 
 
 She told him that she was sick and wretched, and begged him 
 to leave her. Instead of doing so, he threw his arms about her 
 neck, and declared that her being sick was all imagination, tor 
 he had never seen her look half so handsome. 
 
 She started up, but he caught her in his arms, and dragged 
 her towards the bed. Even at that terrible moment her 
 presence of mind did not forsake her. She exerted her 
 strength, and succeeded in breaking away from his hateful 
 embraces. Then summoning up all her energies, she looked 
 him in the face, as well as her tears would allow her, and 
 ' striving to command her voice, “ Master — Father . „ she cried, 
 “what is it you would have of your own daughter ? 
 
 Colonel Moore staggered as if a bullet had struck him. A 
 7 burning blush overspread his face ; he would have spoken, but 
 the words seemed to stick in his throat. This confusion was 
 only for a moment. In an instant he recovered his sel - 
 possession, and without taking any notice of her last appeal, 
 he merely said that if she were really sick he did not wish to 
 trouble her. With these words he unbolted the door, and 
 
 walked out of the room. , , , , , , „ 
 
 She heard him talking with Miss Fatty ; and he had been 
 gone but a few moments before she entered. She began wit r 
 a long string of questions about what Colonel Moore had said 
 and done : but when Cassy did not seem inclined to give her 
 any answer, she laughed, and thanked her, and told her she 
 need not trouble herself, for she had been peeping and 
 listening at the keyhole the whole time. She said she could 
 not imagine why Cassy made such a fuss. In a very youn 
 girl it might be excusable ; but in one as old as she was, and 
 
 sa C/Q 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 117 
 
 married woman too, she could not understand it. Such is the 
 morality, and such the modesty to be expected in a slave ! 
 
 1 he poor girl was in no humour for controversy, so she 
 listened to this ribaldry without making any answer to it. Yet 
 even at that moment a faint ray of hope began to display 
 itself. It occurred to her that if Miss Kitty could be made 
 sensible of the risk she ran in aiding to create herself a rival, 
 she would not be pleased at the prospect of being perhaps 
 supplanted in a situation which she seemed to find so very 
 agreeable. This idea appeared to offer some chance of 
 gaining over Miss Kitty to aid her in escaping from Spring- 
 Meadow, and at once she resolved to act upon it. It was 
 necessary to be cautious and to feel her way, lest by piquing 
 the girl’s pride she might deprive herself of all the advantage 
 to be gained from working upon her fears. 
 
 She approached the subject gradually, and soon placed it in 
 a light in which it was plain her companion had never viewed 
 it. When it was first suggested to her, she expressed a deal of 
 confidence in her own beauty, and affected to have no fears ; 
 yet it soon became obvious that, notwithstanding all her boast- 
 ing, she was a good deal alarmed. Indeed, it was quite 
 impossible for her to look her anticipated rival in the face 
 and not to perceive the danger. Cassy was well pleased to 
 see the effect of her suggestions ; and began to entertain some 
 serious hopes of once more making her escape. 
 
 It was, to be sure, a miserable and, most probably, an 
 ineffectual resource, this running away. But what else could 
 she do ? What other hope was there of escaping a fate which 
 all her womanly and all her religious feelings taught her to 
 regard with the utmost horror and detestation ? This was her 
 only chance ; she would try it, and trust in God’s aid to give 
 her endeavours a happy issue. 
 
 She now told Miss Ritty distinctly how she felt, what she 
 intended, and what assistance she wanted. Her new con- 
 federate applauded her resolution. “Certainly, if Colonel 
 Moore was really her father, that did make a difference ; and 
 her being a Methodist might help to account for her feelings, 
 for she knew that sort of folks were mighty strict in all their 
 notions.” 
 
 But though Miss Ritty was ready enough to encourage and 
 applaud, she seemed very reluctant to take any active part in 
 aiding and abetting an escape which, though apparently it 
 
Ii8 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 tended to promote her interests, might end, if her agency in it 
 were discovered, in bringing her into danger and disgrace. 
 
 Several plans were talked over, but Miss Ritty had some 
 objection to all of them. She preferred anything to the risk 
 of being suspected by her master of plotting to defeat his 
 wishes. As they found great difficulty in fixing upon any 
 feasible plan, it was agreed at last, in order to. gain time, to 
 give out that Cassy was extremely sick. This indeed was 
 hardly a fiction — for nothing but the very critical nature of her 
 situation had enabled the poor girl to sustain herself against 
 the shocks and miseries of the last four and twenty hours. 
 Ritty undertook to persuade her master, that the best thing he 
 could do was to let her alone till she got better. She would 
 promise to take her into training in the meantime, and was to 
 assure Colonel Moore that she did not doubt of being soon 
 able to convince her that it was both her interest and her duty 
 to comply with her master’s wishes. 
 
 So far things went extremely well. They had hardly 
 arranged their plan before they heard Colonel Moore’s step in 
 the outer room. Ritty ran to him, and succeeded in persuad- 
 ing him to go away without any attempt to see Cassy. He 
 commended her zeal, and promised to be governed by her 
 advice. The next day a circumstance happened which neither 
 Cassy nor Ritty had anticipated, but which proved very 
 favourable to their design. Colonel Moore was obliged to 
 set off for Baltimore without delay. Some pressing call of 
 business made his immediate departure indispensable. Before 
 setting out, however, he found time to visit Ritty, and to 
 enjoin her to keep a watchful eye upon Cassy, and to take care 
 and bring her to her senses before his return. 
 
 If Cassy was to escape at all, now was the time. She soon 
 hit upon a scheme. Her object was to screen Ritty from 
 suspicion as much as to favour her own flight. Luckily the 
 same arrangement might be made to accomplish both 
 purposes. Cassy could only escape through the door or out 
 of the windows. Escaping through the door was out of the 
 question, because Ritty had the key of it, and was supposed 
 to be sleeping, or watching, or both together, in the front 
 room. The escape then must be by the windows. These did 
 not lift up, as is commonly the case, but opened upon hinges 
 on the inside. The blinds by which they were guarded on the 
 outside were slats nailed across the window-frames, and not 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 119 
 
 intended to be opened. These must be cut or broken, and as 
 they were of pine, this was a task of no great difficulty. Ritty 
 brought a couple of table-knives, and assisted in cutting them 
 away, though, according to the story she was to tell her master, 
 she was sleeping all the time, most soundly and unsuspiciously, 
 and Cassy must have secretly cut away the slats with a pocket- 
 knife. 
 
 Early in the evening of Colonel Moore’s departure, every- 
 thing was ready, and Cassy was to sally forth as soon as she 
 dared to venture. Ritty agreed not to give any notice of her 4 
 escape till late the next day. This delay she could account 
 for by the plea of not being able to find the overseer, and by 
 a pretended uncertainty as to whether it would be Colonel 
 Moore’s wish that the overseer should be informed at all about 
 the matter. At all events, they hoped that no very vigorous 
 pursuit would be made until Colonel Moore’s return. 
 
 Cassy now made ready for her departure. She felt a pang 
 at the idea of leaving me ; but as Ritty could not or would 
 not tell her what had become of me, and as she knew, that 
 separated and helpless as we were, it was impossible for us to 
 render each other any assistance, she rightly judged that she 
 would best serve me, and best comply with my wishes, by 
 adopting the only plan that seemed to carry with it any 
 likelihood of preserving herself from the violence she dreaded. 
 
 Cassy had supplied herself from Ritty’s allowance with food 
 enough to last for several days. It was now quite dark, and 
 time for her to go. She kissed her hostess and confederate, 
 who seemed much affected at dismissing her on so lonely and 
 hopeless an adventure, and who freely gave her what little 
 money she had. Cassy was a good deal touched at this unex- 
 pected generosity. She let herself down from the window, 
 bade Ritty farewell, and summoning up all her resolution and 
 self-command, she took the nearest way across the fields 
 towards the high road. This road was little travelled except 
 by the people of Spring-Meadow and one or two other neigh- 
 bouring plantations, and at this hour of the evening there was 
 little danger of meeting anybody, except, perhaps, a night- 
 walking slave, who would be as anxious as herself to avoid 
 being seen. There was no moon, but the glimmer of the star- 
 light served to guide her steps. She felt no apprehension of 
 losing her way, for she had frequently been in the carriage 
 with her mistress, as far as the little village at the court-house 
 
120 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 of the county and it was hither that, in the first instance, 
 she determined to go. 
 
 She arrived there, without having met a single soul. As 
 yet there were no signs of morning. All was still .save the 
 monotonous chirpings of the summer insects, interrupted now 
 and then by the crowing of a cock, or the barking of a watch- 
 dog. The village consisted of a dilapidated court-house, a 
 blacksmith’s shop, a tavern, two or three stores, and half-a- 
 dozen scattered houses. It was situated at the meeting of two 
 roads. One of these she knew led into the road that ran 
 towards Baltimore. She had flattered herself with the idea of 
 reaching that city, where she had many acquaintances, and 
 where she hoped she might find protection and employment. 
 Her chance of ever getting there was very small. Baltimore 
 was some two or three hundred miles distant \ and she did 
 not even know which of the roads that met at the court-house 
 she ought to take. She could not inquire the way, beg a cup 
 of cold water, or even be seen upon the road, without the risk 
 of being taken up as a runaway, and carried back to the 
 master from whom she was flying. 
 
 After hesitating for some time, she took one of the roads 
 that offered themselves to her choice, and walked on with 
 vigour. The excitement of the last day or two seemed to give 
 her an unnatural strength ; for, after a walk of some twenty 
 miles, she felt fresher than at first. But the light of the morn- 
 ing dawn, which began to show itself, reminded her that it was 
 no longer safe to pursue her journey. Close by the roadside 
 was a friendly thicket, the shrubs and weeds all dripping with 
 the dew. She had gone but a little way among them, when 
 she found them so high and close as to furnish a sufficient 
 hiding-place. She knelt down, and destitute as she was of 
 human assistance, she besought the aid and guardian care of 
 Heaven. After eating a scanty meal — for it was necessary to 
 husband her provisions — she scraped the leaves together into 
 a rude bed, and composed herself to sleep. The three preced- 
 ing nights she had scarcely slept at all ; but she made it up 
 now, for she did not wake till late in the afternoon. 
 
 As soon as evening closed in, she started again, and walked 
 as vigorously as before. The road forked frequently ; but she 
 had no means of determining which of the various courses she 
 ought to follow. She took one or the other, as her judgment, 
 or rather as her fancy decided ; and she comforted herself with 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 121 
 
 the notion, that whether right or wrong in her selections, at all 
 events she was getting further from Spring-Meadow. 
 
 In the course of the night she met several travellers. Some 
 of them passed without seeming to notice her. She discovered 
 some at a distance, and concealed herself in the bushes till 
 they had gone by. But she did not always escape so easily. 
 More than once she was stopped and questioned, but luckily 
 she succeeded in giving satisfactory answers. Indeed, there 
 was nothing in her complexion, especially in the uncertain 
 light of the evening, that would clearly indicate her to be a 
 slave ; and in answering the questions that were put to her, 
 she took care to say nothing that would betray her condition. 
 One of the men who questioned her shook his head, and did not 
 seem satisfied ; another sat on his horse and watched her till 
 she was fairly out of sight; a third told her that she was a very 
 suspicious character ; but all three suffered her to pass. She 
 was the less liable to interruption, because in Virginia the 
 houses of the inhabitants are not generally situated along the 
 public roads. The planters usually prefer to build at some 
 distance from the highway ; and the roads, passing along the 
 highest and most barren tracts, wind their weary length 
 through a desolate, and what seems almost an uninhabited 
 country. When morning approached again, she concealed 
 herself as before, and waited for the return of night to pursue 
 her journey. 
 
 She proceeded in this way for four days, or rather nights, at 
 the end of which time her provisions were entirely exhausted. 
 She had wandered she knew not whither ; and the hope of 
 reaching Baltimore, which at first had lightened her fatigue, 
 was now quite gone. She knew not what to do. To go 
 much farther without assistance was scarcely possible. Yet 
 should she ask anywhere for food or guidance, though she 
 stood some chance, perhaps, of passing for a free white 
 woman, still her complexion, and the circumstance of her 
 travelling alone, might cause her to be suspected as a run- 
 away, and very probably she would be stopped, put into 
 some gaol, and detained there till suspicion was changed 
 into certainty. 
 
 She was travelling slowly along, the fifth night, exhausted 
 with hunger and fatigue, and reflecting upon her unhappy 
 situation, when descending a hill, the road came suddenly 
 upon the banks of a broad river. There was no bridge ; 
 
122 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 but a ferry-boat was fastened to the shore, and close by 
 was the ferry-house, which seemed also to be a tavern. 
 Here was a new perplexity. She could not cross the river 
 without calling up the ferry people or waiting till they made 
 their appearance, and this would be exposing herself at once 
 to that risk of detection which she had resolved to defer to the 
 very last moment. Yet to turn back and seek another road 
 seemed to be an expedient equally desperate. Any other 
 road which did not lead in a direction opposite to that which 
 she wished to follow would be likely to bring her again upon 
 the banks of the same river ; and as she could not live without 
 food, she would be soon compelled to apply somewhere for assist- 
 ance, and to face the detection she was so anxious to avoid. 
 
 She sat down by the roadside, resolved to wait for the 
 morning, and to take her chance. There was a field of corn 
 near the house, and the stalks were covered with roasting ears. 
 She had no fire, nor the means of kindling one ; but the sweet, 
 milky taste of the unripe kernels served to satisfy the cravings 
 of hunger. 
 
 She had chosen a place where she could observe the first 
 movements about the ferry-house. The morning had but just 
 dawned when she saw a man open the door and come out of 
 it. He was black, and she walked boldly up to him, and told 
 him that she was in great haste, and wished to be taken across 
 the ferry immediately. The fellow seemed rather surprised at 
 seeing a woman, a traveller, alone, and at that hour of the 
 morning ; but after staring at her a minute or two, he appeared 
 to recollect that here was an opportunity of turning an honest 
 penny, and muttering something about the earliness of the 
 hour, and the ferry-boat not starting till after sunrise, he 
 offered to take her across in a canoe for half-a-dollar. This 
 price she did not hesitate to pay ; and the fellow, no doubt, 
 put it into his own pocket without ever recollecting to hand it 
 over to his master, or to mention a word to him about this 
 early passenger. 
 
 They entered the boat, and he paddled her across. She did 
 not dare to ask any questions lest she should betray herself ; 
 and she did her best to quiet the curiosity of the boatman, 
 who, however, was very civil and easily satisfied. Having 
 landed on the opposite shore, she travelled on a mile or two 
 further. By this time it was broad daylight, and she concealed 
 herself as usual. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 123 
 
 At night she set out again. But she was faint with hunger, 
 her shoes were almost worn out, her feet were swollen and 
 very painful, and altogether her situation was anything but 
 comfortable. She seemed to have got off the highway, and to 
 be travelling some cross-road, which wound along through 
 dreary and deserted fields, and appeared to be very little fre- 
 quented. All that night she did not meet a single person or 
 pass a single house. Painful as was the effort, she still 
 struggled to drag along her weary steps ; but her spirits were 
 broken, her heart was sinking, and her strength was almost 
 gone. At length the morning dawned, but the wretched 
 Cassy did not seek her customary hiding-place. She still 
 kept on in hopes of reaching some house. She was now 
 quite subdued, and chose to risk her liberty, and even to 
 hazard being carried back to Spring-Meadow, and subjected 
 to the fearful fate from which she was flying, rather than 
 perish with hunger and fatigue. Sad, indeed, it is that the 
 noblest resolution and the loftiest stubbornness of soul is 
 compelled so often to yield to the base necessities of animal 
 nature, and from a paltry and irrational fear of death, of which 
 tyrants have ever known so well to take advantage, to sink 
 down from the lofty height of heroic virtue to the dastard 
 submissiveness of a craven and obedient slave ! 
 
 She had not gone far before she saw a low, mean-looking 
 house by the roadside. It was a small building of logs, 
 blackened with age, and not a little dilapidated. Half the 
 panes or more were wanting in the two or three little windows 
 with which it was provided, and their places were supplied by 
 old hats, old coats, and pieces of plank. The door seemed 
 dropping from its hinges ; and there was no enclosure of any 
 kind about the house, unless that name might properly be 
 given to the tall weeds with which it was surrounded. Alto- 
 gether, it showed most manifest signs of thriftless and 
 comfortless indolence. 
 
 She knocked softly at the door, and a female voice, but a 
 rough and harsh one, bade her come in. There was no hall 
 or entry; the out-door opened directly into the only room; 
 and, on entering, she found it occupied by a middle-aged 
 woman, barefooted, and in a slovenly dress, with her uncombed 
 hair hanging about a haggard and sunburnt face. She was 
 setting a ricketty table, and seemed to be making preparations 
 for breakfast. One side of the room was almost wholly taken 
 
124 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 up by an enormous fire-place. A fire was burning in it, 
 and the corn-eakes were baking in the ashes. In the 
 opposite corner was a low bed, on which a man, the 
 master of the family most likely, lay still asleep, undis- 
 turbed by the cries and clamours of half-a-dozen brats, who 
 had been tumbling and bawling about the house, unwashed, 
 uncombed, and half-naked, but who were seized with sudden 
 silence, and slunk behind their mother, at the sight of a 
 stranger. 
 
 The woman pointed to a rude sort of stool or bench, which 
 seemed the only piece of furniture in the nature of a chair 
 which the house contained, and asked Cassy to sit down. 
 She did so ; and her hostess eyed her sharply, and seemed to 
 wait with a good deal of curiosity to hear who she was, and 
 what she wanted. As soon as Cassy could collect her 
 thoughts, she told her hostess that she was travelling from 
 Richmond to Baltimore to see a sick sister. She was poor 
 and friendless, and was obliged to go on foot. She had lost 
 her way, and had wandered about all night, without knowing 
 where she was, or whither she was going. She was half-dead, 
 she added, with hunger and fatigue, and wanted food and rest, 
 and such directions about the road as might enable her to 
 pursue her journey. At the same time she took out her purse, 
 in order to show that she was able to pay for what she wanted. 
 
 Her hostess, notwithstanding her rude and poverty-stricken 
 appearance, seemed touched with this pitiful story. She told 
 her to put up her money ; she said she did not keep a tavern, 
 and that she was able to give a poor woman a breakfast, 
 without being paid for it. 
 
 Cassy was too faint and weak to be much in a humour for 
 talking ; besides, she trembled at every word, lest she might 
 drop some unguarded expression that would serve to betray 
 her. But now that the ice was broken, the curiosity of her 
 hostess could not be kept under. She overwhelmed her with 
 a torrent of questions ; and every time Cassy hesitated, or gave 
 any sign of confusion, she turned her keen grey eyes upon her, 
 with a sharp and penetrating expression that increased her 
 disorder. 
 
 Pretty soon the ash-cakes were baked, and the other pre- 
 parations for breakfast were finished, when the woman shook 
 her good man roughly by the shoulder, and bade him bestir 
 himself. This connubial salutation roused the sleeper. He 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 125 
 
 sat up on the bed, and stared about the room with a vacant 
 gaze ; but the redness of his eyes, and the sallow paleness of 
 his face, seemed to show that he had not quite slept off the 
 effects of the last night’s frolic. The wife appeared to know 
 what was wanting; for she forthwith produced the whiskey- 
 jug, and poured out a large dose of the raw spirit. Her 
 husband drank it off with a relish, and with a trembling hand, 
 returned the broken glass to his wife, who filled it half full, 
 and emptied it herself. Then, turning to Cassy, and remark- 
 ing that “ a body was fit for nothing till they had got their 
 morning bitters,” she offered her a dram, and seemed not a little 
 astonished at its being declined. 
 
 The good man then began leisurely to dress himself ; and 
 had half finished his toilet before he seemed to notice that 
 there was company in the house. He now came forward and 
 bade the stranger good morning. His wife immediately drew 
 him aside, and they began an earnest whispering. Now and 
 then they would both look Cassy in the face, and as she was 
 conscious that she must be the subject of their conversation, 
 she began to feel a good deal of embarrassment, which she was 
 too little practised in deceit to be able to conceal. This 
 matrimonial conference over, the good woman bade Cassy 
 draw up her stool and sit down at the breakfast table. The 
 breakfast consisted of hot corn-cakes and cold bacon, a 
 palatable meal enough in any case, but which Cassy’s long 
 starvation made her look upon as the most delicious she had 
 ever eaten. Sweet indeed ought to be that mess of pottage 
 for which one sells the birthright of freedom ! 
 
 She ate with an appetite which she could not restrain ; and 
 her hostess seemed a good deal surprised and a little alarmed 
 at the rapidity with which the table was cleared. Breakfast 
 being finished, the man of the house began to question her. 
 He asked her about Richmond, and whether she knew such 
 and such persons who, as he said, were living there. Cassy 
 had never been in Richmond, and knew the town only by 
 name. Of course, her answers were very little to the purpose. 
 She blushed and stammered, and held down her head, and the 
 man completed her confusion by telling her that it was very 
 plain she had not come from Richmond as she pretended, for he 
 was well acquainted with the place, and it was clear enough, 
 from her answers, that she knew nothing about it. * He told 
 her that it was no use to deny it — her face betrayed her ; and 
 
126 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 he “ reckoned,” if the truth was told, she was no better than a 
 runaway. At the sound of this word the blood rushed into 
 her face, and her heart sunk within her. It was in vain that 
 she denied, protested, and entreated. Her terror, confusion, 
 and alarm only served to give new assurance to her captors, 
 who seemed to chuckle over their prize, and to amuse them- 
 selves with her fright and misery very much as a cat plays with 
 the mouse it has caught. 
 
 He told her that if she were in fact a free woman, 
 there was not the slightest ground for alarm. If she had 
 
 S free papers with her, she would only have to lie in 
 till she could send to Richmond and get them. That 
 was all ! 
 
 But that was more than enough for poor Cassy. No proofs 
 of freedom could she produce j and her going to gaol would be 
 v o A t almost certain to end in her being restored to Colonel Moore, 
 I and becoming the wretched victim of his rage and lust. That 
 ^ V fate must be deferred as long as possible, and there seemed 
 °v*A ybut one way of escaping it. 
 
 y'V She confessed that she was a slave, and a runaway ; but she 
 positively refused to tell the name of her master. He lived, 
 she said, a great way off ; and she had run away from him, not 
 out of any spirit of discontent or disobedience, but because his 
 cruelty and injustice were too great to be endured. There was 
 nothing she would not choose rather than fall into his hands 
 again ; if they would only save her from that — if they would 
 only let her live with them, she would be their faithful and 
 obedient servant as long as she lived. 
 
 The man and his wife looked at each other, and seemed 
 pleased with the idea. They walked aside and talked it over. 
 Nothing appeared to deter them from accepting her proposal 
 at once but the fear of being detected in harbouring and 
 detaining a runaway. Cassy did her best to quiet these appre- 
 hensions ; and, after a short struggle, avarice and the dear 
 delight of power triumphed over their fears, and Cassy became 
 the property of Mr. Proctor — for so the man was named. His 
 property, as he might speciously argue, by her own consent ; a 
 ten times better title than the vast majority of his countrymen 
 could boast. 
 
 To prevent suspicions among the neighbours, it was agreed 
 that Cassy should pass for a free woman, whom Mr. Proctor 
 had hired ; and as that gentleman had been so fortunate as to 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 127 
 
 have been initiated into the art and mystery of penmanship — 
 an accomplishment somewhat rare among the “poor white 
 folks ” of Virginia — in order that Cassy might be prepared to 
 answer impertinent questions, he gave her free-papers, which 
 he forged for the occasion. 
 
 It was a great thing to have escaped returning to Spring- 
 Meadow. But for all that Cassy soon discovered that her pres- 
 ent situation would not prove very agreeable. Mr. Proctor was 
 the descendant and representative of what, at no distant period, 
 had been a rich and very respectable family. The frequent 
 division of a large estate, which nobody took any pains to 
 increase, while all diminished it by idleness, dissipation, and 
 bad management, had left Mr. Proctor’s father in possession of 
 a few slaves and a considerable tract of worn-out land. At his 
 death the slaves had been sold to pay his debts, and the land, 
 being divided among his numerous children, had made Mr. 
 Proctor the possessor of only a few barren acres. But though 
 left with this miserable pittance, he had been brought up in the j 
 dissipated and indolent habits of a Virginian gentleman ; the] 
 land he owned, which was so poor and worthless that none of 
 his numerous creditors thought it worth their while to disturb 
 him in the possession of it, still entitled him to the dignity 
 of a freeholder and a voter; and he felt himself as much 
 above what is esteemed in that country the base and 
 degraded condition of a labourer as the richest aristocrat in 
 the whole state. He was as proud, as lazy, and as dissipated 
 as any of the nabobs, his neighbours; and, like them, he 
 devoted the principal part of his time to gambling, politics, 
 and drink. 
 
 Luckily for Mr. Proctor, his wife was a very notable woman. \ 
 She boasted no patrician blood ; and when her husband began / 
 to talk, as he often did, about the antiquity and respectability 
 of his family, she would cut him short by observing that she 
 thought herself full as good as he was ; but for all that, her 
 ancestors had been “ poor folks ” as far back as anybody knew 
 anything about them. If the question between aristocracy and 
 democracy were to be settled by the experience of the 
 Proctors, the plebeians, most undoubtedly, would carry the day ; 
 for while her husband did little or nothing but frolic, drink, 
 and ride about the country, Mrs. Proctor ploughed, planted, 
 and gathered in the crop. But for her energy and industry it 
 is much to be feared that Mr. Proctor’s aristocraitc habits 
 
128 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 would have soon made himself and his family a burden upon 
 the county. 
 
 Cassy’s services were a great accession to this establishment. 
 Her new mistress seemed resolved to make the most of them ; 
 and the poor girl before long was almost completely broken 
 down by a degree and a kind of labour to which she was 
 totally unaccustomed. Two or three times a week at least Mr. 
 Proctor came home drunk ; and on these occasions he blus- 
 tered about, threatened his wife, and beat and abused his 
 children without any sort of mercy. Cassy could hardly expect 
 to come off better than they did ; indeed his drunken abuse 
 would have become quite intolerable if the energetic Mrs. 
 Proctor had not known how to quell it. At first she used mild 
 measures, and coaxed and flattered him into quiet ; but when 
 these means failed, she would tumble him into bed by main 
 strength, and compel him to lie still by the terror of the broom- 
 stick. 
 
 It was nothing but the wholesome authority which Mrs. 
 Proctor exercised over her husband that protected Cassy 
 against what she dreaded even more than Mr. Proctors 
 drunken rudeness. Whenever he could find her . alone he 
 tormented her with solicitations of a most distressing kind ; 
 and nothing could rid her of his importunities except the 
 threat of complaining to Mrs. Proctor. But her troubles did 
 not end even here. Mrs. Proctor listened to her complaints, 
 thanked her for the information, and said she would speak to 
 Mr. Proctor about it. But she could not imagine that a slave 
 could possibly be endowed with the slightest particle of that 
 virtue of which the free women of Virginia boast the exclusive 
 possession. Full of this notion, she judged it highly improb- 
 able, whatever merit Cassy might pretend to claim, that she 
 had actually resisted the importunities and solicitations of 
 so' very seducing a fellow as Mr. Proctor ; and filled with all 
 the spite and fury of female jealousy, she delighted herself with 
 tormenting the object of her suspicions. Mrs. Proctor, with 
 all her merit, had one little foible, which most likely she had 
 adopted out of compliment to her husband — she thought a 
 daily dram of whiskey necessary to keep off the fever and 
 ague ; and when through inadvertance, as sometimes would 
 happen, she doubled the dose, it seemed to give a new. edge to 
 the natural keenness of her temper. On these occasions she 
 plied both words and blows with a fearful energy ; and though 
 

 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 129 
 
 perhaps it were difficult to say which of the two was most to 
 be dreaded, both together they were enough to exhaust the 
 patience of a saint 
 
 Poor Cassy could discover no means of delivering herself 
 from this complication of miseries, under which she was ready 
 to sink, when she was most uuexpectedly relieved by the 
 unsolicited interference of a couple of Mr. Proctor’s 
 neighbours. They were men of leisure, like him — like him, 
 too, they were of good families, and one of them had received 
 an excellent education, and was more or less distantly 
 connected with several of the most distinguished people in the 
 state. But a course of reckless dissipation had long ago 
 stripped them of such property as they had inherited, and 
 reduced them to live by their wits, which they exercised in 
 a sort of partnership, principally on the race-course and at the 
 gaming-table. 
 
 These two speculating gentlemen were on terms of intimacy 
 with Mr. Proctor, and they knew that he had a free woman, 
 for such they supposed Cassy to be, living at his house. In 
 common with most Virginians, they considered the existence of 
 a class of freed people as a great social annoyance, and likely 
 enough in the end seriously to endanger those “ sacred rights 1 
 of property ” in defence of which there is nothing which a 1 
 true-born son of liberty ought not to be proud to undertake. 
 Instigated, doubtless, by such patriotic notions, these public- 
 spirited persons judged that they would be rendering the state 
 a service, to say nothing of the money they might put into 
 their own pockets, by applying to this great political evil, 
 so far at least as Cassy was a party to it, a remedy which the 
 doctrines of more than one of the Virginian statesmen, and 
 the spirit of more than one of the Virginian statutes, would 
 seem fully to sanction. In plain English, they resolved to seize 
 Cassy and sell her for a slave ! 
 
 The business of kidnapping is one of the natural fruits of 
 the American system of slavery, and is as common and as well 
 organised in several parts of the United States as the business 
 of horse-stealing is in many other countries. When they take, 
 to stealing slaves, the operations of these adventurers become 
 very hazardous, but while they confine themselves to stealing 
 only free people, they can pursue their vocation with compara- 
 tively little danger ; they may perhaps inflict some trifling 
 personal wrong, but, according to the doctrines of some of the 
 
 
 p h-j 
 
 r 
 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 most popular among the American politicians, they are doing 
 the public no inconsiderable service, since, in their opinion, 
 nothing seems to be wanting to render the slave-holding states 
 of America a perfect paradise, except the extermination of the 
 j emancipated class. It was no doubt by some such lofty 
 ( notions of the public _gQod that Cassy’s friends were actuated. 
 At all events, thoselsophistries which t yrann y has invented to 
 justify oppression are as much an apology^for them as for any- 
 one else. 
 
 As far as Cassy could learn, their scheme was pretty much 
 as follows : — They invited Mr. Proctor to a drinking frolic, and 
 as soon as the whiskey had reduced him to a state of 
 insensibility, a message was sent to his wife that her husband 
 was taken dangerously ill, and that she must instantly come to 
 his assistance. Nothwithstanding a few domestic jars, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Proctor were a most loving couple, and the good 
 woman, greatly alarmed at this unexpected news, immediately 
 set out to visit her husband. The conspirators had followed 
 their own messenger, and were concealed in a thicket close to 
 the house watching for her departure. She was hardly out of 
 sight before they rushed into the field where Cassy was at 
 work, bound her hand and foot, put her into a sort of covered 
 wagon or carry-all, which they had povided for the occasion, 
 and drove off as fast as possible. They travelled all that day 
 and the following night. Early the next morning they reached 
 a small village, where they met a slave-trader with a gang of slaves 
 on his way to Richmond. The gentlemen-thieves soon struck 
 up a bargain with the gentleman slave-trader ; and having 
 received their money, they delivered Cassy into his possession. 
 
 He seemed touched with her beauty and her distress, and 
 treated her with a kindness which she hardly expected from 
 one of his profession. Her shoes and clothes were nearly worn 
 out. He bought her new ones ; and as she was half-dead with 
 fatigue, terror, and want of sleep, he even went so far as to wait 
 a day at the village, in order that she might recover a little 
 before setting out on the journey to Richmond. 
 
 But she soon found that she was expected to make a return 
 for these favours. When they stopped for the night, at the 
 end of the first day’s journey, she received an intimation that 
 she was to share the bed of her master ; and directions were 
 given to her how and when to come there. These directions 
 she saw fit to disregard. In the morning her master called 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 131 
 
 her to account. He laughed in her face when she spoke of 
 the wickedness of what he had commanded, and told her he 
 did not want her to be preaching any of her sermons to him. 
 He would excuse her disobedience this time; but she must 
 take very good care not to repeat it. 
 
 The next evening she received directions similar to those 
 which had been given the day before; and again she disobeyed 
 them. Her master, who had been drinking and gambling 
 half the night with some boon companions whom he found at 
 the tavern, enraged at not finding her in his room as he had 
 expected, sallied forth in pursuit of her. Luckily he was too 
 drunk to know very well where he was going. He had gone 
 but a few steps from the tavern door before he stumbled over 
 a pile of wood and injured himself very seriously. His cries 
 soon brought some of the tavern people to his assistance. 
 They carried him to his room, bound up his bruises, and put 
 him to bed. 
 
 It was late the next morning before he was able to rise ; but 
 he was no sooner up than he resolved to take ample vengeance 
 for his disappointment and his bruises. He came hobbling to 
 the tavern door, with a crutch in one hand and a whip in the 
 other. He had all his slaves paraded before the house, and 
 made two of the stoutest fellows among them hold Cassy by 
 the arms while he plied the whip. Her cries soon collected 
 the idlers and loungers, who seem to constitute the principal 
 population of a Virginian village. Some inquired the cause of 
 the whipping, but without seeming to think the question of 
 consequence enough to wait for an answer. It seemed to be 
 the general opinion that the master was tipsy, and had chosen 
 this way to vent his drunken humours; but whether drunk or 
 sober, nobody thought of interfering with his “sacred and 
 unquestionable rights.” On the contrary, all looked on with 
 unconcern, if not with approbation ; and the greater number 
 seemed as much pleased with the sport as so many boys would 
 have been with the baiting of an unlucky cat. 
 
 Just in the midst of this proceeding a handsome travelling 
 carriage drove up to the door. There were two ladies in it, 
 and they no sooner saw what was going on than, with that 
 humanity so natural to the female heart that not even the 
 horrid customs and detestable usages of slave-holding tyranny 
 can totally extinguish it, they begged the brutal savage to leave 
 beating the poor girl, and tell them what was the matter. 
 
132 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 The fellow reluctantly dropped the lash, and answered in a 
 surly tone that she was an insolent, disobedient baggage, not 
 fit to be noticed by two such ladies, and that he was only 
 giving her a little wholesome correction. 
 
 However, this did not seem to satisfy them; and in the 
 meantime the carriage steps were let down and they got out. 
 Poor Cassy was sobbing and crying, and scarcely able to utter 
 a word ; her hair had fallen down over her face and shoulders, 
 and her cheeks were all stained with tears. Yet, even in this 
 situation, the two ladies seemed struck with her appearance. 
 They entered into conversation with her, and soon found that 
 she had been bred a lady’s maid, and that her present master 
 was a slave-trader. These ladies, it seemed, had been travel- 
 ling at the north, and while on their journey had lost a female 
 servant by a sudden and violent attack of fever. They were 
 now on their return to Carolina ; and the younger of the two 
 suggested to her mother — for such their relation proved to be 
 — to buy Cassy to supply the place of the maid they had lost. 
 The mother started some objections to purchasing a stranger, 
 about whom they knew nothing, and who had been sold by her 
 former owner, they knew not for what reasons. But when 
 Cassy’s tears, prayers, and supplications were added to the 
 entreaties of her daughter, she found herself quite unable to 
 resist ; and she sent to ask the man his price. He named it. 
 It was a high one. But Mrs. Montgomery — for that was the 
 lady’s name — was one of those people who, when they have 
 made up their minds to do a generous action, are not easily to 
 be shaken from their purpose. She took Cassy into the house 
 with her, ordered the trunks to be brought in, and told the 
 man to make out his bill of sale. The purchase was no sooner 
 completed than her new mistress took Cassy upstairs, and soon 
 fitted her with a dress better becoming her new situation than 
 did the coarse gown and heavy shoes for which she was 
 indebted to the disinterested generosity of her late master. 
 
 Cassy was dressed, the bill of sale was delivered, and the 
 money paid, when Mrs. Montgomery’s brother and travelling 
 companion rode up. He rallied his sister not a little on what 
 he called her foolish propensity to interfere between other 
 people and their servants ; he took her to task rather severely 
 for the imprudence of her purchase and the high price she had 
 paid ; and he told her, with a smile and a shake of the head, 
 that one time or other her foolish confidence and generosity 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 133 
 
 would be her ruin. Mrs. Montgomery took her brother’s 
 raillery all in good part; the carriage was ordered, and they 
 proceeded together on their journey. 
 
 The ladies with whom Cassy had come to the meeting were 
 Mrs. Montgomery and her daughter. They lived some ten 
 miles from Carleton Hall. So near had Cassy and myself been 
 to each other for six long months or more without knowing it. 
 Cassy spoke of her mistress with the greatest affection. Her 
 gratitude was unbounded ; and she seemed to find a real 
 pleasure and enjoyment in serving a benefactress who treated 
 her with a gentle and uniform kindness not often exerted 
 even by those who are capable of momentary acts of the 
 greatest generosity. 
 
 As Cassy finished her story, she threw her arms about my 
 neck, leaned her head upon my bosom, and looking me in the 
 face, while the tears were streaming from her eyes, she heaved 
 a sigh, and whispered that she was too, too happy ! With such 
 a mistress, and restored so unexpectedly to the arms of a hus- 
 band whom, fondly as she loved him, she feared to have lost 
 for ever, what more could she desire ? • 
 
 Alas, poor girl ! she forgot that we were slaves, and that the 
 very next day might again separate us, subject us to other 
 masters, and renew her sufferings and my miseries ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Before we had half-finished what we had to say to each other, 
 the movement of the people on the hill-side informed us that 
 the morning’s religious services were over. Never before had 
 one of my master’s sermons seemed so short to me. We 
 hastened towards the spot— I to receive my master’s orders, 
 and Cassy to attend upon her mistress. As we came near the 
 rural pulpit I observed Mr. Carleton in conversation with two 
 ladies, who proved to be Mrs. Montgomery and her daughter. 
 We stopped at a little distance from them. Miss Montgomery 
 looked around, and seeing us standing together, she beckoned 
 to Cassy, and pointing to me, she inquired if that was. the 
 husband who had put her into such a flutter that morning? 
 
134 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 This question drew the notice of the other two; and my 
 master seemed a little surprised at seeing me in this new 
 character. “ What’s this, Archy,” he said ; “ what is the mean- 
 ing of all this ? It is the first I ever heard of your being 
 married. You don’t pretend to claim that pretty girl there for 
 your wife ? ” 
 
 I replied that she was indeed my wife, though it was now 
 some two years or more since we had seen or known anything 
 of each other. I added that I had never mentioned my 
 marriage to him because I had despaired of ever seeing my 
 wife again ; and now it was nothing but the merest accident 
 that had brought us together. 
 
 “ Well, Archy, if she is your wife, I don’t know how I can 
 help it, though I suppose I shall have you spending half your 
 time at Poplar Grove. Is not that what your place is called, 
 Mrs. Montgomery?” 
 
 She said it was ; and after a moment’s pause observed that 
 too little respect, she feared, was often paid to the matrimonial 
 connections of servants. For her part she could not but 
 regard them as sacred ; and if Cassy and myself were really 
 married, and I was a decent, civil fellow, she had no objection 
 to my visiting Poplar Grove as often as Mr. Carleton would 
 permit. 
 
 My master undertook to answer for my good behaviour ; 
 and turning to me, he bade me bring up the horses. I made 
 all the haste I could ; but before I returned Mrs. Montgomery 
 was gone, and Cassy with her. We mounted, and had already 
 taken the road to Carleton Hall, when my master seemed to 
 recollect that I had just found a wife from whom I had been 
 long separated ; and it began to occur to him that possibly we 
 might take some pleasure in being indulged with a little of one 
 another’s company. He gave me joy of my discovery with an 
 air half serious, half jocose, as if in doubt whether a slave 
 were properly entitled to a master’s serious sympathy ; and 
 remarked, in a careless tone, that perhaps I would like to 
 spend the remainder of the day at Poplar Grove. 
 
 As I knew that Mr. Carleton had much real goodness of 
 heart, I had long since learned to put up with his cavalier 
 manner ; and however little I might be pleased with the style 
 in which he made the offer, the matter of his present proposal 
 was so much to my fancy that I eagerly caught at it. He 
 took his pencil from his pocket and wrote me a pass ; I asked 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 135 
 
 and received such directions as he could give me about the 
 way, and putting spurs to my horse I soon overtook Mrs. 
 Montgomery’s carriage, which I followed to Poplar Grove. 
 
 This was one of those pretty and even elegant country seats 
 which are sometimes seen, though very seldom, in Virginia 
 and the Carolinas ; and which may serve to prove that the 
 inhabitants of those states, notwithstanding their almost 
 universal negligence of such matters, are not totally destitute 
 of all ideas of architectural beauty and domestic comfort. 
 The approach to the house was through a broad avenue of old 
 and venerable oaks. The buildings had the appearance of 
 considerable antiquity; but they were in perfect repair, and 
 the grounds and fences were neat and well kept. 
 
 As the ladies left the carriage I came up. I told Mrs. 
 Montgomery that my master had given me leave to visit my 
 wife, and I hoped she would have no objection to my spending 
 the afternoon there. 
 
 Mrs. Montgomery answered that Cassy was too good a girl 
 to be denied any reasonable indulgence ; and as _ long as I 
 behaved well she would never make any objection to my 
 coming to see her. She put me several questions about our 
 marriage and separation ; and the softness of her voice and the 
 unassuming gentleness of her manner satisfied me that she was 
 an amiable and kind-hearted woman. 
 
 No doubt, through the broad extent of slave-holding 
 America, there are many amiable women and kind-hearted 
 mistresses. Yet how little does their kindness avail ! It 
 reaches only here and there. It has no power to alleviate the 
 wretchedness or to diminish the sufferings of myriads of 
 wretches who never hear a voice softer than the overseer’s, and 
 who know no discipline milder than the lash. 
 
 The house-servants at Poplar Grove were treated with 
 kindness and even with indulgence, and were much attached 
 to the family; but as happens in so many other cases, the 
 situation of the field-hands was extremely different. Some 
 three years before Mrs. Montgomery, by her husband’s death 
 and the will which he left, became the owner and sole mistress 
 of the estate. Upon this occasion her good nature and her 
 sense of justice prompted her to extend the same humane 
 system to the management of the plantation, which she had 
 always acted upon in the government of her own household. 
 During her husband’s life the servants’ quarter had been three 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 136 
 
 miles or more from the house ; and as the slaves were 
 never allowed to come there, unless they were sent for, Mrs 
 Montgomery saw scarcely anything of them, and knew very 
 little of their wants and grievances, and next to nothing of the 
 general management of the estate. Indeed, she spent the 
 greater portion of every year in visiting her relations in 
 Virginia or in trips to the northern cities ) and when at home, 
 her husband s manifest disinclination to her having anything to 
 do with those matters had always prevented her from meddling 
 in any way with the plantation affairs. 
 
 But when her husband was dead, and the plantation and 
 slaves had become her own property, she could not reconcile 
 herself to the idea of taking no thought, concern, or care for 
 the welfare and well-being of more than a hundred human 
 creatures, who toiled from morning to night for her sole 
 benefit. She resolved upon a total change of system ; and 
 ordered the servants’ quarter to be removed near the house, 
 so that she might be able to go there daily, and have an 
 opportunity of inspecting and relieving the wants and 
 grievances of her servants. 
 
 She was shocked at the miserable pittance of food and 
 clothing which her husband had allowed them, and at the 
 amount of labour which he had exacted. She ordered their 
 allowances to be increased and their tasks to be diminished. 
 Several instances of outrageous severity having reached her 
 ears, she dismissed her overseer, and procured a new one. 
 The servants no sooner discovered that their mistress had 
 interested herself in their welfare, than she was overwhelmed 
 with petitions, appeals, and complaints. One wanted a 
 blanket, another a kettle, and a third a pair of shoes. Each 
 asked for some trifling gift, which it seemed very hard to 
 refuse ; and every request that was granted was followed by 
 half-a-dozen others equally trifling and equally reasonable. 
 But before the end of the year these small items amounted to 
 a sum sufficient to swallow up half the usual profits of the 
 plantation. Scarcely a day passed that Mrs. Montgomery was 
 not pestered with complaints about the severity of her new 
 overseer ; and the servants were constantly coming to her to 
 beg off from some threatened punishment. Two or three 
 instances in which the overseer was checked for the tyrannical 
 manner in which he exercised his authority only served to 
 increase this annoyance. She was perplexed with continual 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 137 
 
 appeals, as to which she found it next to impossible to get at 
 the truth — since the overseer always told one story and the 
 servants another. The second overseer was dismissed ; a 
 third threw up his place in disgust; and a fourth, who 
 resolved to humour the indulgent disposition of his employer, 
 suffered the hands to take their own course, and to do pretty 
 much as they pleased. Of course, they did not care to work 
 while they had the choice of being idle. Every season since 
 Mrs. Montgomery had commenced her experiments the crop 
 had fallen lamentably short ; but that year there was scarcely 
 any crop at all. 
 
 Her friends now thought it time to interfere. Her brother, 
 whom she loved, and for whose opinion and advice she 
 entertained a high regard, had all along remonstrated against 
 the course she was pursuing. He now spoke in a more 
 decided tone. He told her that the silly notions she had 
 taken up about the happiness of her slaves would certainly 
 ruin her. Where was the need of being more humane than 
 her neighbours ? — and what folly could be greater than to 
 reduce herself and her children to beggary in the vain .pursuit 
 of a sentimental and impracticable scheme ? 
 
 Mrs. Montgomery defended herself and her conduct with 
 great earnestness. She pleaded her duty towards those un- 
 happy beings whom God had placed in her power and under 
 her protection. She even went so far as to hint at the injustice 
 of living in luxury upon the fruits of forced labour ; and she 
 spoke with much feeling of the savage brutality of overseers, 
 and the torture of the lash. Her brother replied that such 
 talk was very pretty, and generous, and philanthropic, and all 
 that ; and while it went no further than talk, he had not the 
 least objection to it. But pretty and philanthropic as it was, 
 it would not make either corn or tobacco. She might talk as 
 she pleased ; but if she expected to live by her plantation, she 
 must manage it like other people. Everybody who knew 
 anything about the matter would tell her that if she wished to 
 make a crop she must keep a smart overseer, put a whip into 
 his hands, and give him unlimited authority to use it. If she 
 would do this, she might justly call herself the mistress of the 
 plantation ; but as long as she followed her present plan, she 
 would be no better than the slave of her own servants ; and her 
 philanthropy would end in their being sold for debt, and in her 
 being left a beggar. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 138 
 
 These warm remonstrances made a deep impression upon 
 Mrs. Montgomery. She could not deny that the plantation 
 had produced scarcely anything since she had come into 
 possession of it; and she was conscious that after all her 
 labours in their behalf her servants were discontented, idle, 
 and insubordinate. However, she did not feel inclined to 
 yield the point. She still maintained that her ideas on the 
 mutual relation of master and servant were the obvious dictates 
 of justice and humanity, which no one could despise or 
 overlook who made any pretensions to virtue or to conscience. 
 She argued that the system which she was attempting _ to 
 introduce was a good one, and that nothing was wanting 
 except an overseer who had sense enough to carry it into 
 judicious operation. Possibly there was something of truth in 
 this. If she could have found a man like Major Thornton, 
 and made an overseer of him, she might perhaps have 
 succeeded. But such men are seldom found anywhere, and 
 in slave-holding America very seldom indeed. Take the 
 American overseers together, and they are the most ignorant, 
 intractable, stupid, obstinate, and self-willed race that ever 
 existed. What could a woman do who could only act through 
 assistance of this sort, and who had the prejudices of the whole 
 neighbourhood actively excited against her ? Things went on 
 from bad to worse. The ready money which her husband had 
 left was all spent, and her affairs soon became so entangled 
 and embarrassed that she was obliged to call upon her brother 
 for assistance. He refused in the most positive manner to 
 have anything to do with the business, unless she would 
 surrender to him the sole and exclusive management of her 
 affairs. To these hard terms, after a short and ineffectual 
 struggle, she was obliged to consent. 
 
 He immediately took the plantation into his own hands. 
 He removed the cabins to their former situation ; revived the 
 old rule that no servant should ever go to the house unless 
 especially sent for ; reduced them to their former allowance of 
 food and clothing; and engaged an overseer on the express 
 condition that Mrs. Montgomery should never listen to any 
 complaints against him, or intermeddle in any way with his 
 management of the plantation. 
 
 Within the first month after this return to the old system 
 near one-third of the working hands were runaways. Mrs. 
 Montgomery’s brother told her that this was no more than 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 139 
 
 might be expected, for the rascals had been so spoiled and 
 indulged as to render them quite impatient of the necessary 
 and wholesome severity of plantation discipline. After long 
 searching, and a good deal of trouble and expense, the 
 runaways, except one or two, were finally recovered ; and 
 Poplar Grove, under its new administration, passed by degrees 
 to its ancient routine of whipping and hard labour. Once in a 
 while, notwithstanding all the pains that were taken to prevent 
 it, some instance of severity would reach the ear of Mrs. 
 Montgomery ; and, in the first burst of indignant feeling, she 
 would sometimes declare that the narrowest poverty would 
 be far better than the wealth and luxury for which she was 
 indebted to the whip of the slave-driver. But these exclama- 
 tions of generous passion were scarcely uttered before she 
 acknowledged to herself that to think of giving up the luxury 
 to which she had been accustomed from her infancy was out of 
 the question. She strove to escape from the knowledge and to 
 banish the recollection of injustice and cruelty which her heart 
 condemned, but which she lacked the power, or rather the 
 spirit, to remedy. She fled from a home where she was for 
 ever haunted by the spectre of that delegated tyranny for 
 which, however she might attempt to deny or disguise it, she 
 could not but feel herself responsible ; and while her slaves 
 toiled beneath the burning sun of a Carolina summer, and 
 smarted under the lash of a stern and relentless overseer, she 
 attempted to drown the remembrance of their wrongs in the 
 dissipations and gaieties of Saratoga or New York. 
 
 But she was obliged to spend a part of the year at Poplar 
 Grove ; and with all her care she could not always save her 
 feelings from some rude brushes. Of this I had a striking 
 instance on my first visit. One of her plantation hands had 
 been so far indulged by the overseer, who, by the way, was a 
 very rigid Presbyterian, as to receive a pass to attend Mr. 
 Carleton’s meeting. After the meeting was over, his mistress 
 happened to see him there, and as she wished to send a 
 message to one of her neighbours, she called him to her and 
 sent him with it. It so happened that Mrs. Montgomery’s 
 overseer was at this neighbour’s when the servant arrived there 
 with his mistress’s message. The overseer no sooner saw him 
 than he inquired what business he had to come there when his 
 pass only allowed him to go to the meeting and back again. 
 It was in vain that he pleaded his mistress’s orders. The 
 
14 © 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 overseer said that made no difference whatever, for Mrs. 
 Montgomery had nothing at all to do with the plantation 
 hands ; and to impress this fact upon his memory he gave him 
 a dozen lashes on the spot. 
 
 The poor fellow was bold enough to come to the house and 
 make his complaint to Mrs. Montgomery. Nothing, could 
 exceed her anger and vexation. But her agreement with her 
 brother left her without a remedy. She made the servant a 
 handsome present, told him that he had been very unjustly 
 punished, and begged him to go home and say nothing about 
 it to anybody. She submitted to the mortification of making 
 this request in hopes of saving the poor fellow from a second 
 punishment. But by some means or other, as I learned 
 afterwards, the overseer found out what had been going on, 
 and, to vindicate his supreme authority, and keep up the 
 discipline of the plantation, he inflicted a second whipping 
 more severe than the first. 
 
 Such is the malignant nature and disastrous operation of the 
 slave-holding system that, in too many instances, the sincerest 
 good-will and best intended efforts in the slave’s behalf end 
 only in plunging him into deeper miseries. It is impossible to 
 build any edifice of good upon so evil a foundation. 1 he 
 whole system is totally and radically wrong. The benevolence, 
 the good-nature, the humanity of a slave-holder, avail as little 
 as the benevolence of the bandit, who generously clothes the 
 stripped and naked traveller in a garment plundered from his 
 own portmanteau. What grosser absurdity than the attempt 
 to be humanely cruel and generously unjust 1 The very first 
 act in the slave’s behalf, without which all else is useless, and 
 worse than useless, is — to make him free 1 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 I have before observed that Sunday is the slave’s holiday. 
 Where intermarriages are allowed between the slaves of different 
 plantations, this is generally the only occasion on which the 
 scattered branches of the same family are indulged with an 
 opportunity of visiting each other. Many planters, who pride 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 141 
 
 themselves upon the excellence of their discipline, forbid these 
 intermarriages altogether ; and if they happen to have a 
 superabundance of men-servants, they prefer that one woman 
 should have half-a-dozen husbands rather than suffer their 
 slaves to be corrupted by gadding about among other people’s 
 plantations. . 
 
 Other managers, just as good disciplinarians, and a little 
 more shrewd than their neighbours, forbid the men only to 
 marry away from home. They are very willing to let their 
 women get husbands where they can. They reason in this 
 way. When a husband goes to see his wife who lives upon 
 another plantation, he will not be apt to go empty-handed. 
 He will carry something with him, probably something eatable, 
 plundered from his master’s fields, that may serve to make him 
 welcome, and render his coming a sort of festival. Now, 
 everything that is brought upon a plantation in this way is so 
 much clear gain, and, so far as it goes, it amounts to feeding 
 one’s people at the expense of one’s neighbours ! 
 
 Sunday, as I have said, is the day upon which are paid the 
 matrimonial visits of the slave. But Sunday was no holiday to 
 me; for I was generally obliged on that day to attend my 
 master upon his ecclesiastical excursions. To make up for 
 this, Mr. Carleton allowed me Thursday afternoons, so that I 
 was able to visit Cassy at least once a week. 
 
 The year that followed was the happiest of my life; and 
 with all the inevitable mortifications and miseries which slavery, 
 even under its least repulsive form, ever carries with it, I still 
 look back to that year with pleasure — a pleasure that yet has 
 power to warm a heart saddened and embittered by a thousand 
 painful recollections. 
 
 Before the end of the year Cassy made me a father. The 
 infant boy had all his mother’s beauty ; and only he who is a 
 father, and as fond a husband, too, as I was, can know the 
 feelings with which I pressed the little darling to my heart. 
 
 No ! — no one can know my feelings — no one, alas, but he 
 who is, as I was, the father of a slave. The father of a slave ! 
 And is it true, then, that this child of my hopes and wishes, 
 this pledge of mutual love, this dear, dear infant, of whom I 
 am the father, is it true he is not mine ? 
 
 Is it not my duty and my right, a right and duty dearer 
 than life, to watch over his helpless infancy, and to rear him 
 with all a father’s tenderness and love to a manhood that will, 
 
142 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 perhaps, repay my care, and in turn sustain and cherish me, a 
 tottering, weak old man ? 
 
 My duty it may be, but it is not my right. A slave can 
 have no rights. His wife, his child, his toil, his blood, his life, 
 and everything that gives his life a value, they are not his ; he 
 holds them all but at his master’s pleasure. He can possess 
 nothing ; and if there is anything he seems to have, it is only 
 by a sufferance which exists but in his owner’s will. 
 
 This very child, this very tender babe, may be torn from my 
 arms, and sold to-morrow into the hands of a stranger, and I 
 shall have no right to interfere. Or if not so ; if some com- 
 passion be yielded to his infancy, and if he be not snatched 
 from his father’s embraces and his mother’s bosom while he is 
 yet all unconscious of his misery, yet what a sad, wretched, 
 desolate fate awaits him ! Shut out from every chance or hope 
 of anything which it is worth one’s while to live for — bred up 
 a slave ! 
 
 A slave ! That single word, what volumes it does speak ! 
 It speaks of chains, of whips and tortures, compulsive labours, 
 hunger, and fatigues, and all the miseries our wretched bodies 
 suffer. It speaks of haughty power and insolent commands ; 
 of insatiate avarice, of pampered pride and purse-proud luxury ; 
 and of the cold indifference and scornful unconcern with which 
 the oppressor looks down upon his victims. It speaks of 
 crouching fear and base servility ; of low, mean, cunning, and 
 treacherous revenge. It speaks of humanity outraged, man- 
 hood degraded, the social charities of life, the sacred ties of 
 father, wife, and child trampled underfoot ; of aspirations 
 crushed ; of hope extinguished ; and the light of knowledge 
 sacrilegiously put out. It speaks of man deprived of all that 
 makes him amiable or makes him noble ; stripped of his soul, 
 and sunk into a beast. 
 
 And thou, my child, to this fate thou art born ! ' May 
 heaven have mercy on thee, for man has none ! 
 
 The first burst of instinctive and thoughtless pleasure with 
 which I had looked upon my infant boy was dissipated for 
 ever the moment I had recovered myself enough to recollect 
 what he was born to. Various and ever changing, but always 
 wretched and distressing, were the feelings with which I gazed 
 at him as he slept upon his mother’s bosom, or waking, smiled 
 at her caresses. He was indeed a pretty baby — a dear, dear 
 child ; and for his mother’s sake I loved him, how- 1 loved 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 143 
 
 him | Yet, struggle as I might, I could not for a moment 
 escape the bitter thought of what his fate must be. Full well 
 I knew that did he live to be a man he would repay my love, 
 and justly, with curses — curves on the father who had bestowed 
 upon him nothing but a life incumbered and made worse than 
 worthless by the inheritance of slavery. 
 
 I found no longer the same pleasure in Cassy’s society 
 which it used to afford me; or rather the pleasure which I 
 could not but take in it was intermingled with much new misery. 
 I did not love her less, but the birth of that boy had infused 
 fresh bitterness into the cup of servitude. Whenever I looked 
 upon him my mind was filled with horrid images. The whole 
 future seemed to come visibly before me. I saw him naked, 
 chained, and bleeding under the lash ; I saw him a wretched, 
 trembling creature, cringing to escape it ; I saw him utterly 
 debased, and the spirit of manhood extinguished within him ; 
 already he appeared that worthless thing — a slave contented 
 with his fate ! 
 
 I could not bear it. I started up in a frenzy of passion ; I 
 snatched the child from the arms of his mother, and, while I 
 loaded him with caresses, I looked about for the means of 
 extinguishing a life which, as it was an emanation from my 
 existence, seemed destined to be only a prolongation of my 
 misery. 
 
 My eyes rolled wildly, I doubt not, and the stern spirit of 
 my determination must have been visibly marked upon my 
 face, for, gentle and unsuspicious as she was, and wholly 
 incapable of that wild passion which tore my heart, my wife, 
 with a mother’s instinctive watchfulness, seemed to catch some 
 glimpse of my intention. She rose up hastily, and without 
 speaking a word, she caught the baby from my feeble and 
 trembling grasp, and as she pressed it to her bosom, she gave 
 a look that told me all that she feared, and told me, too, that 
 the mother’s life was bound up in that of the child. 
 
 That look subdued me — my arms dropped powerless, and I 
 sunk down in a sort of sullen stupor. I had been prevented 
 from accomplishing my purpose, but I was not satisfied that in 
 foregoing it I did a father’s duty to the child. The more I 
 thought upon it — and it so engrossed me that I could scarcely 
 draw my thoughts away — the more was I convinced that it were 
 better for the boy to die. And if the deed did peril my own 
 soul, I loved the child so well I did not shrink even at that ! 
 
144 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 But then his mother ? 
 
 I would have reasoned with her, but I knew how vain would 
 be the labour to array a woman’s judgment against a mother’s 
 feelings ; and I felt that one tear stealing down her cheek, one 
 look of hers like that she gave me when she snatched the 
 child away, would, even in my own mind, far outbalance the 
 weightiest of my arguments. 
 
 The idea of rescuing the boy by one bold act from all the 
 bitter miseries that impended over him had shot upon my 
 mind like some faint, struggling star across the darkness of a 
 midnight storm. But that glimmer of comfort was now 
 extinguished. The child must live — the life I gave him I 
 must not take away.. No ! not though every day of it would 
 draw new curses on my devoted head, and those, too, the 
 curses of my child. This, this, alas ! is the barbed arrow that 
 still is sticking in my heart — the fatal, fatal wound that nought 
 can heal. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 One Sunday morning, when the boy was about three months 
 old, two strangers unexpectedly arrived at Carleton Hall. In 
 consequence of their coming some urgent business occupied 
 my master’s attention, so that he found himself obliged to give 
 up the meeting which he had appointed for that day. I was 
 not sorry for it, for it left me at liberty to visit my wife and 
 child. 
 
 It was the autumn. The heat of summer had abated, and 
 the morning was bright and balmy ; there was a soothing 
 softness in the air, and the woods were clothed in a gay 
 variety of colours that almost outvied the foliage of the spring. 
 As I rode along towards Poplar Grove, the serenity of the sky 
 and the beauty of the prospect seemed to breathe a peaceful 
 pleasure to my heart. It was the more needed, for I had been 
 a good deal irritated by some occurrences during the week, and 
 every new indignity to which my situation exposed me I now 
 seemed to suffer twice over — once in my own person, and a 
 second time in anticipation for my child. I had set out in no 
 very agreeable frame of mind ; but the ride, the prospect, and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 145 
 
 the fine autumnal air had soothed me into a cheerful alacrity 
 of spirit, such as I had hardly felt for some weeks before. 
 
 Cassy welcomed me with a ready smile and those caresses 
 which a fond wife bestows so freely on the husband whom she 
 loves. Her mistress the day before had given her some new 
 clothes for the child, and she had just been dressing him out 
 to make the little fellow fit, she said, to see his father. She 
 brought the boy and placed him on my knee. She praised his 
 beauty ; and with her arm about my neck she tried to trace his 
 father’s features in the baby’s face. In the full flow of a 
 mother’s fond affection she seemed unconscious and forgetful 
 of the future, and by a thousand tender caresses and all the 
 little artifices of a woman’s love, she sought to make me forget 
 it too. She had but little success. The sight of that poor,, 
 smiling, helpless, and unconscious child brought back all my 
 melancholy feelings. Yet I could not bear to disappoint 
 my wife’s hopes and efforts, and to make her think herself 
 successful I strove to affect a cheerfulness I did not feel. 
 
 The beauty of the day tempted us abroad. We walked 
 among the fields and woods, carrying the child by turns. 
 Cassy had a hundred little things to tell me of the first slight 
 indications of intelligence which the boy was giving. She 
 spoke with all a mother’s fluency and fervour. I said but 
 little ; indeed I hardly dared to speak at all. Had I once 
 begun I could not have restrained myself from going on ; and 
 I did not wish to poison her pleasure by an outpouring of 
 that bitterness which I felt bubbling up at the bottom of my 
 heart. 
 
 The hours stole away insensibly, and the sun was already 
 declining. I had my master’s orders to be back that night, 
 and it was time for me to go. I clasped the infant to my 
 heart. I kissed Cassy’s cheek and pressed her hand. She 
 seemed not satisfied with so cold a parting, for she threw her 
 arms about my neck and loaded me with embraces. This was 
 so different from her usual coy and timid manner that I was at 
 a loss to understand it. Is it possible that she felt some 
 instinctive presentiment of what was going to happen ? Did 
 the thought dart across her mind that this might be our last, 
 our final parting ? 
 
 IP 
 
146 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE, 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 When I got back to Carleton Hall I found everything in the 
 greatest confusion. It was not long before I was made 
 acquainted with the cause. It seemed that some twelve 
 months previous Mr. Carleton had found himself very much 
 pressed for money. This had obliged him to look a little into 
 his affairs. He found himself burdened with a load of debt of 
 which before he had no definite idea ; and as his numerous 
 creditors, who had been too long put off with promises, weie 
 beginning to be very clamorous, he saw that some vigorous 
 remedy was necessary. To borrow seemed the. most certain 
 means of relief from the immediate pressure of his debts ; and 
 he succeeded in obtaining a large loan from some Baltimore 
 money-lenders, of which he secured the repayment by a 
 mortgage upon his slaves, including even the house-servants, 
 and myself among the number. I his money he expended in 
 satisfying several executions which had already issued against 
 him, and in stopping the mouths of the most clamorous, of his 
 creditors. The money was borrowed for a year, not with any 
 expectation on Mr. Carleton’s part of being able, to repay it 
 in that time out of any funds of his own, but in the hope 
 that before the year’s end he might succeed in obtaining a 
 permanent loan, and so be enabled to cancel the mortgage. 
 
 In this expectation he had been hitherto disappointed ; and 
 he was yet negotiating with the persons from whom he 
 expected to borrow, when the time of repayment, mentioned 
 in the mortgage, expired. This happened about a month 
 previous ; and when I got back to Carleton Hall I found that 
 the strangers who had arrived that morning were the agents of 
 the Baltimore money-lenders, who had been sent to take 
 possession of the mortgaged property. They had already 
 caught as many of the slaves as they could find ; and I no 
 sooner entered the house than I was seized and put under 
 a guard. These precautions were thought necessary to prevent 
 the slaves from running away or concealing themselves from 
 the agents of their new owners. 
 
 My poor master was in the greatest distress and embarrass- 
 ment that could be imagined. It was in vain that he begged 
 for delay, and proposed various terms of accommodation. 
 The agents declared that they had no discretion in the matter; 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 147 
 
 they were instructed to get either the money or the slaves ; 
 and in case the money was not forthcoming, to proceed with 
 the slaves to Charleston, in South Carolina, which, at that 
 time, was esteemed the best market for disposing of that 
 commodity. 
 
 As to paying the money at once, that was out of the 
 question ; but Mr. Carleton hoped that he might be able, in 
 the course of a few days, if not to obtain the loan for which 
 he was negotiating, at least to get such temporary assistance 
 as would enable him to discharge the mortgage. The agents 
 agreed to give him twenty-four hours, but refused to wait any 
 longer. Mr. Carleton despaired of doing anything in so short 
 a time, and did not think it worth his while to attempt it. 
 The plantation hands must go ; there did not seem to be any 
 remedy for that ; but he was very desirous to save his house- 
 servants from the slave-market, and he begged the agents not 
 to leave him without a servant to make his bed or cook his 
 dinner. 
 
 The agents replied that they were truly sorry for the 
 disagreeable situation in which he found himself ; but that, 
 since the mortgage was made, several of the slaves included in 
 the schedule were dead ; that some of the others seemed 
 hardly worth the sum at which they had been valued ; that 
 the price of slaves had fallen considerably since the mortgage 
 was made, and seemed likely to fall more ; and that, every- 
 thing considered, they thought it more than doubtful whether 
 the mortgaged property would be sufficient to satisfy the debt. 
 However, they were desirous to indulge him as far as their 
 duty to their principals would allow ; and if he would pay 
 the value of such of the slaves as he wished to retain, 
 they had no objections to receive the money instead of the 
 servants. 
 
 Mr. Carleton had not fifty dollars in the house ; but he 
 immediately started off to see what he could borrow in the 
 neighbourhood. Wherever he went he found that the news of 
 what had happened had preceded him. Besides this 
 Baltimore mortgage, he was known to owe many other debts ; 
 and his neighbours generally looked upon him as a ruined 
 man. Of course, the greater part of them felt no inclination 
 to lend him their money ; and, in fact, very many of them 
 were not so much better off than Mr. Carleton as to have much 
 money to lend. After riding about the greater part of the 
 
148 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 day, he succeeded in borrowing a few hundred dollars, on 
 condition, however, that he should secure the repayment by a 
 mortgage of such slaves as he should redeem. He had 
 returned to the house a little before I did, and was already 
 considering with himself which of his slaves he should retain. 
 He told me that I had been a good and trustworthy servant ; 
 and that he was very unwilling to part with me. But he had 
 not money enough to redeem us all j and his old nurse and 
 her family were entitled to be retained in preference to any 
 of the rest of us. Not only were their services the most 
 essential to him, but the mother had long been a favourite 
 servant, her children were born and bred in his family, and he 
 considered it a matter of conscience to keep them, at all events. 
 The agents released those of the servants whom he selected. 
 The rest of us were kept confined, and received notice to be 
 ready for a start early the next morning. 
 
 I had yet one hope. I thought if Mrs. Montgomery could 
 be informed of my situation she would certainly buy me. I 
 mentioned it to my master. He told me not to flatter myself 
 too much with that idea, for Mrs. Montgomery already had 
 more servants about her house than she had any kind of use 
 for. However, he readily undertook to write her a note 
 explaining my situation. It was despatched by a servant, and 
 I waited with impatient hope for the answer. 
 
 At last the messenger returned. Mrs. Montgomery and her 
 daughter had gone that morning to visit her brother, who 
 lived some ten miles from Poplar Grove, and they were 
 expected to be absent three or four days. I believe I had 
 heard something of this in the morning ; but in my hurry, 
 confusion, and excitement, it had escaped my memory. 
 
 My last hope was now gone, and as it went the shock 
 I felt was dreadful. Till that moment I had concealed from 
 myself the misery of my situation. I had been familiar with 
 calamity, but this exceeded anything I had ever suffered. It 
 is true I had once before been separated from my wife ; but 
 my bodily pains, my delirium, and fever had helped to blunt 
 the agony of that separation. Now I was torn from both 
 wife and child ! — and that, too, without anything to call off my 
 attention, or to deaden the torture of conscious agony. My 
 heart swelled with impotent passion, and beat as though it 
 would leap from my bosom. My forehead glowed with a 
 burning heat. I would have wept ; but even that relief was 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 HO 
 
 denied me. The tears refused to flow ; the fever in my brain 
 had parched them up. 
 
 My first impulse was to attempt making my escape. But 
 my new masters were too well acquainted with the business of 
 legal kidnapping to give me an opportunity. We were all 
 collected in one of the out-houses, and carefully secured. 
 With m&ny of the plantation hands this was quite an 
 unnecessary precaution. A large proportion of them were 
 so sick and weary of the tyranny of Mr. Carleton’s overseer 
 that they were glad of any change, and when their master 
 made them a farewell visit, and began to condole with them 
 upon their misfortune, several of them were bold enough to 
 tell him that they thought it no misfortune at all; for whatever 
 might happen they could not be worse treated than they had 
 been by his overseer. Mr. Carleton seemed not well pleased 
 at this bold disclosure, and took his leave of us rather abruptly; 
 and certainly this piece of information could not have been 
 very soothing to his feelings. 
 
 At early dawn we were put into travelling order. A wagon 
 carried the provisions and the younger children. The rest of 
 us were chained together, and proceeded in the usual fashion. 
 
 It was a long journey, and we were two or three weeks 
 upon the road. Considering that we were slaves driven to 
 market, we were treated, on the whole, with unexpected 
 humanity. At the end of the third or fourth day’s journey 
 the women and children were released from their chains ; and 
 two or three days later a part of the men received the same 
 indulgence. Those of us of whom they were more suspicious 
 were still kept in irons. Our drivers seemed desirous to 
 enhance our value by putting us into good condition. Our 
 .daily journey was quite moderate; we were all furnished with 
 shoes, and were allowed plenty to eat. At night we encamped 
 by the road-side, kindled a large fire, cooked our hominy, and 
 made a hut of branches to sleep under. Several of the 
 company declared that they were never so well treated in all 
 their lives ; and they went along laughing and singing more 
 like men travelling for pleasure than like slaves going to be 
 sold. So little accustomed is the slave to kindness or 
 indulgence of any sort that the merest trifle is enough to put 
 him into ecstasy. The gift of a single extra meal is sufficient 
 to make him fall in love even with a slave-driver. 
 
 The songs and laughter of my companions only served to 
 
iso 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 aggravate my melancholy. They observed it, and did their 
 best to cheer me. There never was a kinder-hearted company, 
 and I found some relief even in their rude efforts at con- 
 solation; for there is more power in the sympathy of the 
 humblest human creature than the haughty children of luxury 
 are apt to believe. I was a favourite among the servants at 
 Carleton Hall, because I had taken some little pains to be so ; 
 for I had long since renounced that silly prejudice and foolish 
 pride which,, at an earlier period, had kept me aloof from my 
 fellow-servants, and had justly earned me their hatred and 
 dislike. Experience had made me wiser, and I no longer took 
 sides with our oppressors by joining them in the false notion of 
 their own natural superiority — a notion founded only in the 
 arrogant prejudice of conceited ignorance, and long since dis- 
 carded by the liberal and enlightened ; but a notion which is 
 still the orthodox creed of all America, and the principal, I 
 might almost say the sole, foundation which sustains the 
 iniquitous superstructure of American slavery. I had made it 
 a point to gain the good-will and affection of my fellow- 
 servants by mixing among them, taking an interest in all their 
 concerns, and rendering them such little services as my favour 
 with Mr. Carleton put in my power. Once or twice, indeed, I 
 had overstepped the mark, and got myself into very serious 
 trouble by letting my master know what severities his overseer 
 inflicted. But though my attempts at serving them were not 
 always successful, their gratitude was not the less on that 
 account. 
 
 When my companions observed my melancholy, they 
 stopped their songs, and having run through their few topics 
 of condolence, they continued their conversation in a subdued 
 and moderated tone, as if unwilling to irritate my feeling by 
 what might seem to me unseasonable merriment. I saw, and 
 in my heart acknowledged, the kindness of their intention ; 
 but I did not wish that my sadness should cast a shade over 
 what they enjoyed as a holiday — the only holiday, perhaps, 
 which their miserable fate would ever allow them. I told 
 them that nothing would be so likely to cheer me as to see 
 them merry; and, though my heart was aching and ready 
 almost to burst, I forced a laugh, and started a song. The 
 rest joined in it ; the chorus rose again loud as ever ; the 
 laugh went round; and the turbulence of their merriment 
 soon allowed me to sink again into a moody silence. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VR. 
 
 i$t 
 
 I had the natural feelings of a man ; I loved my wife and 
 child. Had they been snatched from me by death, or had I 
 been separated from them by some fixed, inevitable, natural 
 necessity, I should have wept, no doubt, but my feelings would 
 have been those of simple grief, unmixed with any more bitter 
 emotion. But that the dear ties of husband and father, ties so 
 twined about my inmost heart, should be thus violently 
 severed, without a moment’s warning, and at a creditor’s 
 caprice — and he, too, the creditor of another — to be thus 
 chained up, torn from my home and driven to market, there to 
 be sold to pay the debts of a man who called himself my 
 master ; the thoughts of this stirred up within my soul a bitter 
 hatred and a burning indignation against the laws and the 
 people that tolerate such things; fierce and deadly passions 
 which tore my heart distracted and tormented me even more 
 than my grief at the sudden separation. 
 
 But the more violent emotions ever tend to cure themselves. 
 If the patient survive the first paroxysm, his mind speedily 
 begins to verge towards its natural equilibrium. I found it so. 
 The torture of furious but impotent emotions at first almost 
 overpowered me. But my feelings softened by degrees, till 
 at length they subsided into a dull but fixed and settled 
 misery — a misery which the impulse of temporary excitement 
 may sometimes make me forget, but which, like the guilty man’s 
 remorse, is too deeply rooted to be ever eradicated. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 At length we arrived at Charleston, the capital of South 
 Carolina. We spent several days in recruiting ourselves after 
 our long journey. As soon as we had recovered from our 
 lameness and fatigues, we were dressed up in new clothes, and 
 fitted out to show off to the best advantage. We were then 
 exposed for the inspection of purchasers. The women and 
 children, pleased with their new finery, seemed to enjoy the 
 novelty of their situation, and appeared as anxious to find 
 a master and to bring a high price as though the bargain 
 were actually for their own benefit. The greater part of our 
 
152 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 company were bought up by a single purchaser, and I among the 
 rest. We were purchased by General Carter, a man of princely 
 fortune, indeed one of the richest planters in South Carolina ; 
 and were immediately sent off to one of his plantations at some 
 distance from the city. 
 
 The lower country of South Carolina, from the Atlantic for 
 eighty or a hundred miles inward, including more than half the 
 state, is, with the exception I shall presently mention, one of 
 the most barren, miserable, uninviting countries in the uni- 
 verse. In general, the soil is nothing but a thirsty sand, 
 covered for miles and miles with forests of the long-leaved 
 pine. These tracts are called, in the expressive phrase of the 
 country, Pine Barrens . For a great distance inland these 
 Barrens preserve almost a perfect level, raised but a few feet 
 above the surface of the sea. The tall, straight, branchless 
 trunks of the scattered pines rise like slender columns, and are 
 crowned with a tuft of gnarly limbs and long, bristly leaves, 
 through which the breezes murmur with a monotonous sound, 
 much like that of falling waters, or waves breaking on a beach. 
 There is rarely any undergrowth, and the surface is either 
 matted with the saw-palmetto, a low evergreen, or covered with 
 a coarse and scattered grass, on which herds of half-wild cattle 
 feed in summer and starve in winter. The trunks of the pines 
 scarcely interrupt a prospect whose tedious sameness is only 
 varied by tracts, here and there, of almost impenetrable 
 swamp, thickly grown up with bays, water oaks, cypresses, and 
 other large trees, adown whose spreading branches and 
 whitened trunks a long dusky moss hangs in melancholy fes- 
 toons, drooping to the ground, the very drapery of disease and 
 death. The rivers, which are wide and shallow, swollen with 
 the heavy rains of spring and winter, frequently overflow their 
 low and marshy banks, and help to increase the extent of 
 swampy ground, the copious source of poisonous vapours and 
 febrile exhalations. Even where the country begins to rise 
 into hills it preserves, for a long distance, its sterile character. 
 It is a collection of sandy hillocks, thrown together in the 
 strangest confusion. In several places not even the pine will 
 grow; and the barren and thirsty soil is clothed only with 
 stunted bushes of the black jack, or dwarf oak. In some 
 spots even these are wanting, and the bare sand is drifted by 
 the winds. 
 
 Throughout this extent of country, of which, with all its 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 153 
 
 barrenness, a great part might be, and by the enterprising 
 spirit of free labour doubtless would be, brought into profitable 
 cultivation, there are only some small tracts, principally along 
 the water-courses, which the costly and thriftless system of 
 slave labour has found capable of improvement. All the rest 
 still remains a primitive wilderness, with scarcely anything to 
 interrupt its desolate and dreary monotony. 
 
 This description does not include the tract stretching along 
 the sea-shore, from the mouth of the Santee to that of the 
 Savannah, and extending in some places twenty or thirty miles 
 up the country. The coast between these rivers is a series of 
 islands — the famous sea-islands of the cotton-markets; and the 
 mainland, which is separated from these islands by innumer- 
 able narrow and winding channels, is penetrated, for some 
 distance inland, by a vast number of creeks and inlets. The 
 islands present a bluff shore and a fine beach towards the 
 ocean, but the opposite sides are often low and marshy. They 
 were originally covered with a magnificent growth of the live 
 or ever-green oak, one of the finest trees anywhere to be seen. 
 The soil is light ; but it possesses a fertility never yet attained 
 in the dead and barren sands of the interior. These lands are 
 protected by embankments from the tides and floods, and the 
 fields are divided and drained by frequent dykes and ditches. 
 Such of them as can be most conveniently irrigated with fresh 
 water are cultivated as rice-fields ; the remainder are employed 
 in the production of the long staple or sea-island cotton — a 
 species of vegetable wool, which excels every other in the 
 length of its fibre, and almost rivals silk in strength and 
 softness. 
 
 These beautiful districts present a strong contrast to the rest 
 of the lower country of South Carolina. As far as the eye can 
 stretch nothing is to be seen but a smooth, level, highly- 
 cultivated country, penetrated in every direction by creeks and 
 rivers. The residences of the planters are often handsome 
 buildings, placed on some fine swell, and shaded by a choice 
 variety of trees and shrubbery. These houses are inhabited 
 by their owners only in the winter. They are driven from 
 home in the summer, partly by the tiresomeness of a listless 
 and monotonous indolence, and partly by the unhealthiness of 
 the climate, which is much aggravated by the rice cultivation. 
 This absentee aristocracy congregates in Charleston, or dazzles 
 and astonishes the cities and watering places of the North by 
 
154 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 its profuse extravagance and reckless dissipation. The planta- 
 tions are left to the sole management of overseers, who, with 
 their families, form almost the only permanent free population 
 of these districts. The slaves are ten times as numerous as 
 the free. The whole of this rich and beautiful country is 
 devoted to the support of a few hundred families in a lordly, 
 luxurious, dissipated indolence, which renders them useless to 
 the world and a burden to themselves ; and to contribute 
 towards this same great end more than a hundred thousand 
 human beings are sunk into the very lowest depths of degrada- 
 tion and misery. 
 
 General Carter, our new master, was one of the richest of 
 these American grandees. The plantation to which we were 
 sent was called Loosahachee ; and though very extensive, was 
 but one out of several which he owned. Coming as I did from 
 Virginia, there were many things in the appearance of the 
 country, and in the way in which things were managed, that 
 were entirely new to me. 
 
 I and my companions, who had always been accustomed to 
 some small quantity of meat as a relish to our corn diet, found 
 our mere unseasoned hominy neither so palatable nor so 
 nourishing as we could wish. Being strangers and new-comers, 
 we had not yet learned the customs of the country, and were 
 quite unacquainted with many of the arts by which the 
 Carolina slaves are enabled to eke out their scanty and 
 insufficient allowance. Our only resource was an appeal to 
 our master’s generosity ; and it happened that, about a fort- 
 night after we were put upon the plantation, General Carter, 
 with several of his friends, made a flying visit from Charleston 
 to Loosahachee, to see how the crops were coming on. This 
 we thought to be a good opportunity to get some improvement 
 of our fare. We did not like to ask too much, lest our request 
 should be rejected without ceremony. Indeed we determined 
 to be as moderate as possible ; and, after due consultation, it 
 was resolved to petition our master for a little salt to season 
 our hominy — a luxury to which we had always been accus- 
 tomed, but which was not included in the Loosahachee 
 allowance, which consisted simply of corn, a peck a week to 
 each working hand. My companions requested me to act as 
 spokesman, and I readily undertook to do so. 
 
 When General Carter and his friends came near my task, I 
 walked towards him. He asked me what I meant by leaving 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ns 
 
 my work in that fashion, and inquired what I wanted ? I told 
 him that I was one of the servants whom he had lately 
 purchased ; that some of us were born and raised in Virginia 
 and the rest in North Carolina ; that we were not used to 
 living upon bare hominy without anything to give it a relish ; 
 and that we should take it as a very great favour if he would 
 be kind enough to allow us a little salt. 
 
 He seemed to be rather surprised at the boldness of this 
 request, and inquired my name. 
 
 “ Archy Moore,” I answered. 
 
 “ Archy Moore ! ” he cried with a sneer — “and pray tell me 
 how long it has been the fashion among you fellows to have 
 double names? You are the first fellow I ever owned who 
 was guilty of such a piece of impertinence; and a damned 
 impertinent fellow you are. I see it in your eye. Let me 
 beg leave to request of you, Mr. Archy Moore, to be satisfied 
 with calling yourself Archy the next time I inquire your 
 name.” 
 
 I had taken the name of Moore since leaving Spring- 
 Meadow — an assumption not uncommon in Virginia, and 
 which is there thought harmless enough. But the South 
 Carolinians, who of all the Americans seem to have carried 
 the theory and practice of tyranny to the highest perfection, 
 are jealous of everything that may seem in any respect to raise 
 their slaves above the level of their dogs and horses. 
 
 The words and manner of my master were sufficiently irri- 
 tating, but I was not to be shuffled off in that way. I passed 
 over his rebuke in silence, but ventured again, in the most 
 respectful terms I could command, to renew the request, that 
 he would be pleased to allow us a little salt to season oui 
 hominy. 
 
 “You are a damned unreasonable, dissatisfied set of fellows 
 as ever I met with ! ” was the answer. “ Why, boy, you eat 
 me out of house and home already. It is as much as I can 
 do to buy corn for you. If you want salt, isn’t there plenty of 
 sea-water within five miles? If you want it, you have nothing 
 to do but to make it ! ” 
 
 So he said ; and as they wheeled their horses and rode 
 away, he and his companions joined in a loud laugh at the 
 wit and point of his answer. 
 
156 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Among Mr. Carleton’s servants, or rather the servants that had 
 been Mr. Carleton’s, but who had now become the property of 
 General Carter, was one named Thomas. While we had lived 
 together at Carleton Hall, I had contracted an intimacy with 
 him, which we still kept up. He was of unmixed African 
 blood, with good features, a stout, muscular frame, and on 
 several accounts a very remarkable man. 
 
 His bodily strength, and his capacity for enduring privation 
 and fatigue, were very uncommon ; but the character of his 
 mind was still more so. His passions were strong and even 
 violent 3 but what is very rare among slaves, he had them com- 
 pletely under his control, and in all his words and actions he 
 was as gentle as a lamb. The truth was, that when quite 
 young he had been taken in hand by certain Methodists who 
 lived and laboured in his neighbourhood 3 and so strong and 
 lasting were the impressions which their teaching made upon 
 him, and so completely had he imbibed their doctrines, that it 
 seemed as if several of the most powerful principles of human 
 nature had been eradicated from his bosom. 
 
 His religious teachers had thoroughly inculcated into a soul, 
 naturally proud and high-spirited, that creed of passive obe- 
 dience and patient long-suffering, which, under the sacred 
 name of religion, has been often found more potent than 
 whips or fetters in upholding tyranny and subduing the 
 resistance of the superstitious and trembling slave. They had 
 taught him, and he believed, that God had made him a 
 servant, and that it was his duty to obey his master and be 
 contented with his lot. Whatever cruelties or indignities the 
 unprovoked insolence of unlimited authority might inflict 
 upon him, it was his duty to submit in humble silence 3 and if 
 his master smote him on one cheek, he was to turn to him the 
 other also. This, with Thomas, was not a mere form of words 
 run through with and then forgotten. In all my experience I 
 have never known a man over whom his creed appeared to 
 hold so powerful a control. 
 
 Nature had intended him for one of those lofty spirits who 
 are the terror of tyrants and the bold assertors of liberty. But 
 under the influence of his religion he had become a passive, 
 humble, and obedient slave. He made it a point of duty to 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 15 7 
 
 be faithful to his master in all things. He never tasted 
 whiskey ; he would sooner starve than steal ; and he preferred 
 being whipped to telling a lie. These qualities, so very 
 uncommon in a slave, as well as his cheerful obedience and 
 laborious industry, had gained him the goodwill even of Mr. 
 Carleton’s overseer. He was treated as a sort of confidential 
 servant ; was often trusted to keep the keys, and give out the 
 allowance ; and so scrupulously did he fulfil all that was 
 required of him, that even the fretful caprice of an overseer 
 had no fault to find. He had lived at Carleton Hall more 
 than ten years, and in all that time had never once been 
 whipped. What was most remarkable and uncommon of all, 
 at the same time that he obtained the confidence of the over- 
 seer, Thomas had succeeded in gaining the goodwill of his 
 fellow-servants. There never lived a kinder-hearted, better- 
 tempered man. There was nothing he was not ready to do 
 for a fellow-creature in distress ; he was ever willing to share 
 his provisions with the hungry, and to help the weak and tired 
 to finish their tasks. Besides, he was the spiritual guide of the 
 plantation, and could preach and pray almost as well as his 
 master. I had no sympathy for his religious enthusiasm, but 
 I loved and admired the man ; and we had long been on 
 terms of close intimacy. 
 
 Thomas had a wife, Ann by name, a pretty, sprightly, good- 
 natured girl, whom he loved exceedingly. It was a great 
 comfort to him — indeed, he regarded it as a special interpo- 
 sition of Providence in his behalf — that when carried away 
 from Carleton Hall they had not been separated. Never was 
 a man more grateful or more delighted than Thomas was 
 when he found that both he and Ann had been purchased by 
 General Carter. That they should fall into the hands of the 
 same owner was all he desired ; and he readily transferred to 
 the service of his purchaser all that zeal and devotion which, 
 as he had been taught to believe, a slave owes to his master. 
 While all the rest of us, upon our first arrival at Loosahachee, 
 had been complaining and lamenting over the hardness of our 
 tasks, and the poor and insufficient food which our new master 
 allowed us, Thomas said not a word, but had worked away 
 with such zeal and vigour that he soon gained the reputation 
 of being one of the best hands on the place. 
 
 Thomas’s wife had an infant child but a few weeks old, who, 
 according to the Carolina fashion, was brought to her in the 
 
i 5 8 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 field to be nursed ; for the Carolina planters, spendthrifts in 
 everything else, in all that regards their servants are wonderful 
 economists. One hot afternoon Ann sat down beneath a tree, 
 and took the infant from the hands of the little child, herself 
 scarcely able to walk, who had the care of it during the day. 
 She had finished the maternal office, and was returning slowly, 
 and perhaps rather unwillingly, to her task, when the overseer 
 rode into that part of the field. The name of our overseer 
 was Mr. Martin. He was one of those who are denominated 
 smart fellows and good disciplinarians. He had established a 
 rule that there was to be no loitering at Loosahachee. Walk- 
 ing was too lazy a pace for him ; if there was any occasion to 
 go from one part of the field to another, it was to be in a run. 
 Ann had perhaps forgotten, at all events she was not complying 
 with this ridiculous piece of plantation discipline. This was no 
 sooner observed by the overseer than he rode up to her, 
 cursed her for a lazy vagabond, and commenced beating her 
 over the head with his whip. Thomas happened to be 
 working close by. He felt every stroke ten times as keenly 
 as though it had lighted upon his own shoulders. Here was a 
 trial too strong for the artificial principles of any creed. He 
 moved forward as though he would go to his wife’s assistance. 
 We who were by begged him to stop, and told him he would 
 only get himself into trouble. But the cries and shrieks of his 
 wife made him deaf to our entreaties ; he rushed forward, and 
 before the overseer was aware he seized his whip, snatched it 
 from his hand, and demanded what he meant by beating a 
 woman in that way for no offence whatever ? 
 
 To judge from Mr. Martin’s looks, this was a display of 
 spirit, or, as he would call it, of insolence and insubordination, 
 for which he was not at all prepared. He reined back his 
 horse for a rod or two ; when, seeming to recollect himself, 
 he put his hand into his coat-pocket and drew out a pistol. 
 He cocked it and pointed it at Thomas, who dropped the 
 whip and turned to run. Mr. Martin fired ; but his hand 
 shook too much to enable him to take a very effectual aim ; 
 and Thomas continued his flight, leaped the fence, and 
 disappeared in the thicket by which it was bordered. 
 
 Having put the husband to flight, the overseer turned to the 
 wife, who stood by trembling and crying. He was boiling 
 over with rage and passion, and seemed determined to spend 
 his fury on this helpless and unhappy woman. He called the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 159 
 
 driver of the gang and two or three other men to his 
 assistance, and bade them strip off her clothes. 
 
 The preparations being complete, Mr. Martin commenced 
 the torture. The lash buried itself in her flesh at every blow ; 
 and as the poor wretch threw up her gashed and gory arms, 
 the blood ran down in streams. Her cries were dreadful. 
 Used as I had been to similar scenes, my heart sickened and 
 my head grew dizzy. I longed to seize the monster by the 
 throat and dash him to the ground. How I restrained myself 
 I do not know. Most sure I am that nothing but the base 
 and dastard spirit of a slave could have endured that scene of 
 female torture and distress, and not have interfered. 
 
 Before Mr. Martin had finished poor Ann sunk to the 
 ground in a state of total insensibility. He ordered us to 
 make a litter of sticks and hoe-handles, and to carry her to his 
 house. We laid her down in the passage. The overseer 
 brought a heavy chain, one end of which he put around her 
 neck, and the other he fastened to one of the beams. He 
 said her fainting was all pretence, and that if he did not chain 
 her she would be running away and joining her husband. 
 
 We were now all ordered into the woods to hunt for 
 Thomas. We separated and pretended to examine every 
 place that seemed likely to conceal him 3 but with the excep- 
 tion of the drivers, and one or two base fellows who sought to 
 curry favour with the overseer, I do not believe that any of us 
 felt any great anxiety, or took much pains to find him. Not 
 far from the fence was a low swampy place, thickly grown up 
 with cane and gum-trees. As I was making my way through 
 it, I came suddenly upon Thomas, who was leaning against 
 the trunk of a large tree. He laid his hand upon my shoulder, 
 and asked what the overseer had done to his wife. I con- 
 cealed from him, as well as I could, the miserable torture 
 which had been inflicted upon her 3 but I told him that Mr. 
 Martin was all fire and fury, and that it would be best for him 
 to keep out of the way till the passion could subside a little. 
 I promised to return in the evening and to bring him food. 
 In the meantime, if he would lie close, there would be little 
 danger that any one would find him. 
 
 We were presently called back from our ineffectual search, 
 and ordered to resume our tasks. I finished mine as quickly 
 as I could, hastened home, got some food ready, and went to 
 see poor Ann. I found her lying in the passage chained as 
 
i6o 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 we had left her. Her low moans showed that she had so far 
 recovered herself as to be once more sensitive to pain. She 
 complained that the chain about her neck hurt her and made 
 it difficult to breathe. I stooped down and was attempting to 
 loosen it, when Mrs. Martin made her appearance at the door. 
 She asked what right I had to meddle with the girl, and bade 
 me go about my business. I would have left the food I had 
 brought, but Mrs. Martin told me to take it away again ; it 
 would learn the wench better manners, she said, to starve her 
 for a day or two. 
 
 I took up my little basket and went away with a heavy 
 heart. As soon as it grew dark I set off to meet Thomas; but 
 lest my steps might be dogged by the overseer or some of his 
 spies, I took a very roundabout course. I found him near the 
 place where I had met him before. His earnest entreaties to 
 know the whole drew from me the story of his poor wife’s 
 sufferings and her present situation. It moved him deeply. 
 At intervals he wept like a child ; then he strove to restrain 
 himself, repeating half aloud some texts of scripture, and what 
 seemed a sort of prayer. But all would not do ; and carried 
 away at last by a sudden gust of passion, forgetful of his 
 religious scruples, he cursed the brutal overseer with all the 
 energy of a husband’s vengeance. Presently he recovered 
 his self-command, and began to take fault to himself, ascribing 
 all the blame to his own foolish interference. The thought 
 that what his affection for his wife had prompted him to do 
 had only served to aggravate her sufferings seemed to agitate 
 him almost to distraction. Again, the tide of passion swept 
 all before it. His countenance grew convulsed, his bosom 
 heaved, and he only found relief in half-uttered threats and 
 muttered execrations. 
 
 He consulted with me as to what he had better do. I knew 
 that the overseer was terribly incensed against him. I had 
 heard him say that if such a daring act of insolence was not 
 most signally punished it would be enough to corrupt and dis- 
 order the whole neighbourhood. I was aware that Mr. Martin 
 would not dare absolutely to put him to death. But this pro- 
 hibition to commit murder is the sole and single limit to an 
 overseer’s authority; and I knew that he had both the right 
 and the will to inflict a torture compared to which the agonies 
 of an ordinary death-struggle would be but trifling. I there- 
 fore advised Thomas to fly, since even if he were caught at 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 161 
 
 last no severer punishment could be inflicted upon him than 
 he would be certain of upon a voluntary surrender. 
 
 h or a moment this advice seemed to please him j and an 
 expression of daring determination appeared in his face, such 
 as I had never seen there before. But it disappeared in an 
 instant. “ There is Ann,” he said ; “ I cannot leave her, and 
 she, poor, timid thing, even if she were well, I could never 
 persuade her to fly with me. It will not do, Archy ; I cannot 
 leave m-y wife ! ” 
 
 What could I answer? 
 
 I understood him well, and knew how to sympathise with 
 him. I could not but admit the force of his objection. Such 
 feelings I knew it would be in vain to combat with argu- 
 ments ; indeed, I could not make up my mind to attempt it ; 
 and as I had no other advice to give I remained silent. 
 
 Thomas seemed lost in thought, and continued for some 
 minutes with his eyes fixed upon the ground. Presently he 
 told me that he had made up his mind — he was determined, 
 he said, to go to Charleston and appeal to his master. 
 
 The little I had known of General Carter did not incline me 
 to put much dependence on his justice or generosity ; but as 
 Thomas seemed pleased with this plan, and as it was his only 
 chance, I applauded it. He ate the food I had brought, and 
 determined to set off immediately. He had only been once to 
 Charleston during all the time we had been at Loosahachee ; 
 but as he was one of those people who, if they have been once 
 to a place, find little difficulty in going a second time, I had 
 no doubt of his finding his way to town. 
 
 I returned to my cabin ; but I was so anxious and uncertain 
 about the success of Thomas, in the scheme he had adopted, 
 that I could not sleep. At daylight I went to my task. My 
 anxiety acted as a stimulus upon me, and I had finished long 
 before any of my companions. As I was passing from the 
 field to my cabin I saw General Carter’s carriage driving up 
 the road, and as it passed me I observed poor Thomas behind, 
 chained to the footman’s stand. 
 
 1 he carriage drove up to the house \ General Carter got out 
 of it, and sent off in great haste for Mr. Martin, who had taken 
 his gun and dog early that morning, and had been beating 
 about the woods all day in search of Thomas. In the mean- 
 time General Carter ordered all the hands on the plantation to 
 be collected. 
 
 XI 
 
162 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 At last Mr. Martin arrived. The moment General Carter 
 saw him he cried out, “Well, sir, here is a runaway I have 
 brought back for you. Would you believe it, the fellow had 
 the impertinence to come to Charleston with the story of his 
 grievances ! Even from his own account of the matter he was 
 guilty of the greatest insolence I ever heard of — snatching the 
 whip from the hand of an overseer ! Things are coming to a 
 pretty pass indeed when these fellows undertake to justify 
 such insubordination. The next thing we shall hear of 
 they will be cutting our throats. However, I stopped the 
 scoundrel’s mouth before he had said five words. 1 told him I 
 would pardon anything sooner than insolence to my overseer 
 — I would much sooner excuse impertinence towards myself. 
 And to let him know what I thought of his conduct, here you 
 see I have brought him back to you, and I have done it even 
 at the risk of being obliged to sleep here to night and catching 
 the country fever. Whip the rascal well, Mr. Martin ! whip 
 him well ! I have had all the hands collected, that they may 
 see the punishment, and take warning by it.” 
 
 Mr. Martin, thus invited, sprung upon his prey with a tiger’s 
 ferocity. But I have no inclination to disgust myself with 
 another description of the horrid torment of which, in America, 
 the whip is the active and continual instrument. He who is 
 curious in these matters will do well to spend six months upon 
 an American plantation. He will soon discover that the rack was 
 a superfluous invention, and that the whip, by those well skilled 
 in the use of it, can be made to answer any purposes of torture. 
 
 Though Thomas was quite cut up with the lash, and 
 whipped by two drivers till he fainted from pain and loss of 
 blood, such was the nerve and vigour of his constitution, and 
 the noble firmness of his mind, that he stood it like a hero, 
 and disdained to utter any of those piercing screams and 
 piteous cries for mercy which are commonly heard upon the 
 like occasions. He soon got over the effects of this dicipline, 
 and in a few days was at work again as usual. 
 
 Not so with his wife. She was naturally of a slender con- 
 stitution, and perhaps had not entirely recovered from the 
 weakness incident upon childbirth. Either the whipping she 
 had suffered, or her chains and starvation afterwards, or both 
 together, had brought on a violent disorder, of which at first 
 she seemed to get better, but which left her suffering under a 
 dull, nervous fever, without strength or appetite, or even the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 163 
 
 desire of recovery. Her poor baby seemed to sympathise 
 with its mother, and pined from day to day. At length it died. 
 The mother did not long survive it ; she lingered for a week 
 or two. Sick as she was, she had no attendant except a 
 superannuated old woman, who could neither see nor hear. 
 Thomas, of course, was obliged to go to his tasks as usual. He 
 returned one night and found her dead. 
 
 One of the drivers, a mean-spirited fellow, and Mr. Martin’s 
 principal spy and informer, was the only person allowed to 
 preach at Loosahachee, and to act as the leader in those 
 mummeries to which the ignorant and superstitious slaves give 
 the name of religion. He paid a visit to the afflicted husband, 
 and offered his services for the funeral. Thomas had so much 
 natural good sense that he was not, like many'persons of his 
 way of thinking, imposed upon and taken in by every one who 
 chose to make use of the cant of sanctity. He had long ago 
 seen through this hypocritical fellow, and learned to despise 
 him. He therefore declined his assistance ; and pointing to 
 me, “Himself and his friend,” he said, “ would be sufficient 
 to bury the poor girl.” He seemed about to add something 
 more \ but the mention of his wife had overpowered him, his 
 voice choked, his eyes filled with tears, and he was constrained 
 to be silent. 
 
 It was a Sunday. The preacher soon left us ; and poor 
 'Ihomas sat the whole day watching his wife’s body. I 
 remained with him ; but I knew how useless any attempt 
 at consolation would be, and I said but little. 
 
 1 owards sunset several of our fellow-servants came in ; and 
 they were presently followed by most of the plantation people. 
 We took up the body and carried it to the place of burial. 
 This was a fine, smooth slope covered with tall trees. It 
 seemed to have been long used for its present purpose. 
 Numerous little ridges, some of them new, and others just 
 discernible, indicated the places of the graves. 
 
 The husband leaned over the body, while we busied our- 
 selves in the sad office of digging its last resting-place. The 
 shallow grave was soon finished. We all remained silent, in 
 expectation of a prayer, a hymn, or some similar ceremony. 
 I homas attempted once or twice to begin, but his voice 
 rattled in his throat, and died away in an inarticulate murmur. 
 He shook his head, and bade us place the body in the grave. 
 We did so ; and the earth was soon heaped upon it. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 164 
 
 It was already growing dark ; and the burial being finished, 
 those who had attended at it hastened homeward. The 
 husband still remained standing by the side of the grave. _ I 
 took his arm, and with a gentle force would have drawn him 
 away. He shook me off, and raising his hand and head, he 
 muttered in a low whisper, “ Murdered, murdered ! ” As he 
 spoke these words he turned his eyes on me. There gleamed 
 in them a spirit of passionate and indignant grief. It was 
 plain that natural feeling was fast gaining the mastery over 
 that system of artificial constraint in which he had been 
 educated. I sympathised with him, and I pressed his hand to 
 let him know I did so. He returned the pressure ; and, after 
 a short pause, he added, “ Blood for blood \ is it not so, 
 Archy ? ” There was something terrible in the slow but firm 
 and steady tone in which he spoke. I knew not what to 
 answer ; nor did he appear to expect a reply. T. hough he 
 addressed me, the question seemed intended only for himself. 
 I took his arm, and we walked off in silence. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 It is customary in South Carolina to allow the slaves the week 
 from Christmas to the new year as a sort of holiday. 1 his 
 indulgence is extended so far that during that week they are, 
 for the most part, allowed to leave the plantations, the scenes 
 of their daily labours and sufferings, and to wander about in 
 the neighbourhood pretty much at their own will and pleasure. 
 The highways present at that season a singular appearance. 
 The slaves of every age and sex, collected from the populous 
 plantations of the tide-waters, and dressed in the best attire 
 they have been able to muster, assemble in great numbers, 
 swarming along the road, and clustering about the little 
 whiskey-shops, producing a scene of bustle and confusior; 
 witnessed only at the Christmas holidays. 
 
 Those shops are principally supported by a traffic with the 
 slaves for stolen rice and cotton — a traffic which all the 
 vindictive fury of the planters, backed by an abundant legisla- 
 tion, has not been able to eradicate. They are the chief 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 165 
 
 support, in fact, the only means of livelihood open to a 
 considerable portion of the lower order of the white aristocracy 
 of the country. It is the same in Carolina as in Lower 
 Virginia. The poor whites are extremely rude and ignorant, 
 and acquainted with but few of the comforts of civilised life. 
 They are idle, dissipated, and vicious, with all that vulgar 
 brutality of vice which poverty and ignorance render so 
 conspicuous and disgusting. Without land, or, at best, 
 possessing some little tract of barren and exhausted soil, 
 which they have neither skill nor industry to render pro- 
 ductive ; without any trade or handicraft art ; and looking 
 upon all manual labour as degrading to free men, and fit only 
 for a state of servitude, these poor white men have become 
 the jest of the slaves, and are at once feared and hated by the 
 select aristocracy of rich planters. It is only the right of 
 suffrage which they possess that preserves them the show of 
 consideration and respect with which they are yet treated. 
 This right of suffrage, of which the select aristocracy are 
 extremely anxious to deprive them, is the only safeguard of 
 the poor whites. But for this they would be trampled under 
 foot without mercy, and by force of law and legislation 
 would soon be reduced to a condition little superior to that of 
 the very slaves themselves. 
 
 On the Christmas holidays which succeeded my becoming 
 an inhabitant of Loosahachee, a great number of slaves, of 
 whom I was one, were assembled about a little store on the 
 neighbouring high-road, laughing, talking, drinking whiskey, 
 and making merry after our several fashions. While we 
 were thus employed I observed, riding along the road, a 
 mean-looking fellow, shabbily dressed, with a face of that 
 disagreeable, cadaverous hue that makes the inferior order of 
 whites in Lower Carolina look so much like walking corpses. 
 He was mounted on a lean, scraggy horse, whose hips seemed 
 just bursting through the skin, and he carried in his hand an 
 enormous whip, which he handled with a familiar grace seldom 
 acquired except by an American slave-driver. As he passed 
 us I noticed that all the slaves who had hats pulled them off 
 to him ; but as I did not see anything in the fellow’s appear- 
 ance that demanded any particular respect, and as I was 
 ignorant of the Carolina etiquette, which requires from every 
 slave an obsequious bearing towards every freeman, seldom 
 expected in Virginia, I let my hat remain upon my head. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 1 66 
 
 The fellow noticed it, reined up his jaded beast, and eyed me 
 sharply. My complexion made him doubt whether I might 
 not be a freeman ; my dress,, and the company I was in, gave 
 him equal grounds for supposing me a slave. He inquired 
 who I was, and being told that I was one of General Carter’s 
 people, he rode towards me with his upraised whip, demanding 
 why I did not take off my hat to him, and, without waiting for 
 an answer, he began to lay the lash over my shoulders. The 
 fellow was evidently drunk, and my first impulse was to take 
 the whip away from him. Luckily, I did not yield to this 
 impulse, for any attempt to resist even a drunken white 
 man, though that resistance was only in repelling the most 
 unprovoked attack, according to the just and equal laws of 
 Carolina, might have cost me my life. 
 
 I learned upon inquiry that this fellow had been an 
 overseer ; but some time previous had been discharged by his 
 employer for suspected dishonesty. Not long after, he had set 
 up a whiskey shop about h'alf-a-mile distant. From what he 
 said to the owner of the store where we were assembled, it 
 would seem that his shop had not been so much frequented 
 during the holidays as he had expected, and in beating me he 
 had vented his drunken spite and ill-humour on the first 
 object that gave him anything like a pretence to exercise it. I 
 learned, too, that this fellow, whose name was Christie, was a 
 cousin of Mr. Martin, our overseer. They had been close 
 friends, but had lately had a violent quarrel. Christie had 
 stabbed Martin, and Martin had shot at Christie with his 
 double-barrelled gun. Fie had taken a still more effectual 
 revenge by doing his best to stop the trade from Loosahachee 
 to Christie’s shop, which he had formerly winked at, and 
 which had been carried on, much to Christie’s benefit, by the 
 exchange of well-watered whiskey for General Carter’s rice and 
 cotton. 
 
 I no sooner heard this account of Mr. Christie than it 
 occurred to me that I had him in my power, and at once I 
 resolved to make him smart in his turn for the lashes he had 
 inflicted upon me. It is true I was obliged to play the part 
 of a spy and an informer ; but such low means are the only 
 resource which the condition of servitude allows. As soon as 
 I got home I hastened to the overseer, and with an abundance 
 of hypocritical pretences and professions of zeal for my 
 master’s service, I communicated to him, as a great secret, the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 1 67 
 
 fact that Mr. Christie was in the habit of trading with the 
 hands, and buying whatever they brought him, without asking 
 any questions. 
 
 Mr. Martin said that he was well aware of it, and he would 
 give me five dollars if I would help him to detect Christie in 
 the fact. 
 
 We quickly struck up a bargain. The overseer furnished 
 me with a quantity of cotton, and I set off one moonlight 
 night to pay a visit to Mr. Christie’s shop. 
 
 He recognised me at once, and jested a good deal about 
 the whipping he had given me. He thought it an excellent 
 joke; and it best answered my purpose to appear very much 
 of the same opinion. I found him not at all disinclined to 
 trade, provided I would exchange my cotton for his whiskey, at 
 the nominal price of a dollar a quart. It was not long before 
 I paid him a second visit. That time Mr. Martin and one of 
 his friends were posted outside the shop, at a place where they 
 could peep between the logs, and see and overhear the whole 
 transaction. 
 
 To buy rice, cotton, or in fact anything else, of a slave, 
 unless he produces a written permit from his master to sell 
 it, according to the Carolina statute-book, is one of the most 
 enormous crimes a man can commit. Mr. Christie was 
 indicted at the next court. He was found guilty on the 
 express testimony of Mr. Martin and his companion, and was 
 fined a thousand dollars and sentenced to a year’s imprison- 
 ment. The fine swept away what little property he had, and 
 how his imprisonment ended I never heard. More than one 
 of the jurymen who convicted him were grievously suspected 
 of the very same practices ; but the dread of incurring fresh 
 suspicion, or perhaps the jealous rivalry of trade, made those 
 very fellows the most clamorous for his condemnation. 
 
 Mr. Martin was so well pleased with my services in this 
 a ff a i r _in which he fancied I had put myself forward merely 
 to be used as his cat’s paw— that he took me quite into favour, 
 and began to employ me as one of his regular spies and 
 informers. Tyranny, whether on the great scale or the little, 
 can only be sustained through a system of espionage and 
 betrayal, in which the most mean-spirited of the oppressed are 
 turned into the tools and instruments of oppression. There 
 afe many alleviations of the wretchedness of servitude to be 
 expected from the favour and indulgence of an overseer. Let 
 
i68 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 it be remembered also, that so strong are the allurements 
 which power holds out, that even among freemen there are 
 hundreds of thousands always to be found who are ready to 
 assist in sacrificing the dearest rights of their neighbours by 
 volunteering to be the instruments of superior tyrants. What, 
 then, can be reasonably expected from those who have been 
 studiously and systematically degraded ? What wonder if 
 among the oppressed are found the readiest and most relentless 
 instruments of oppression ? 
 
 As I knew I could turn Mr. Martin’s favour to good account, 
 I took care not to let him suspect with what scorn and 
 loathing I regarded the office in which he sought to employ 
 me. But while he imagined that I was engaged heart and 
 hand in his service, I counterworked him more than once by 
 communicating his plans and stratagems to those whom he 
 sought to entrap. This same Mr. Martin, though he was 
 absolute viceroy over more than three hundred people, was a 
 very ignorant and a very stupid fellow. Several circumstances 
 occurred which, with a shrewd person, would have betrayed 
 me ; but I succeeded so completely in blinding Mr. Martin’s 
 eyes that he still continued to place an unlimited confidence 
 in my fidelity. Of this he soon gave me a new proof, for, 
 riding one day into the field where I was at work, and not 
 finding matters going on just to suit him, he called out the 
 driver of the gang, and took from him the whip, which he 
 carried as the badge and principal instrument of his office. 
 He then called for me ; and having given me twenty or thirty 
 lashes, according to the custom in such cases, he put the whip 
 into my hand, appointed me driver of the gang, and bade me 
 do the first duty of my new office upon the fellow to whose 
 place I had succeeded. 
 
 It is under the inspection of drivers, who are appointed from 
 among the slaves, at the will of the overseer, that the culture 
 of a Carolina plantation is carried on. The overseers have 
 learned too much of the airs and the luxurious indolence of 
 their employers to be willing to be riding about all day in the 
 hot sun looking after the labourers. The slaves are divided 
 into gangs, and each gang is put under the charge of a driver, 
 who is generally selected for his cowardly and mean-spirited 
 subserviency, and his readiness to tyrannise over and to betray 
 his companions. The driver is entrusted with all the unlimited 
 apd absolute authority of the master himself. He receives a, 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 1 69 
 
 double allowance; he has no task; his sole business is to look 
 after his gang, and see that they perform the work assigned 
 them; and for this purpose he takes his station in the midst of 
 them, whip in hand. When the overseer makes his appearance 
 in the field, all the drivers collect about him to receive his 
 orders. . For the performance of the work assigned to his gano- 
 each driver is himself responsible; and that he may perfectly 
 understand by what means he is to enforce its performance 
 the overseer usually inducts him into office by giving him a 
 severe castigation with the very whip which he afterwards puts 
 into his hand to be used upon his companions. 
 
 The absolute power of an overseer is often, I ought rather 
 to say always, shockingly abused ; but the absolute power of 
 drivers is yet one step higher towards the perfection of 
 tyranny. The driver faithfully copies all the arrogance and 
 insolence of the overseer from whom he receives his com- 
 mission ; and as he is always among his gang, the aggravating 
 weight of his authority is so much the heavier. He is but one 
 of themselves, and the slaves are naturally more impatient of 
 his rule than they would be of the same dominion exercised 
 by one belonging to what they have been taught to regard as a 
 superior race, and whom, being a freeman, they are ready to 
 acknowledge as actually their superior. Besides, the drivers 
 are far from limiting their demands, as the overseer himself 
 generally would do, to the performance of the field labour 
 I hey have a thousand little spites to gratify, a thousand 
 purposes of their own to accomplish. They are, in fact, the 
 absolute masters of everything which any of their gang may 
 happen to possess ; and the persons of the women are as 
 much at their disposal as at that of the overseer or the master. 
 Fven if by chance a driver should happen not to be disposed 
 to abuse his authority, the dread of losing his situation and the 
 knowledge that all the deficiencies of any of his subordinates 
 will be visited upon his head, makes him of necessity hasty, 
 harsh, and cruel. J 
 
 Heaven is my witness that while I held the office of driver 
 my great object was to use the authority which it gave me to 
 alleviate, as far as I could, the misery of my companions. My 
 gang consisted of the Carleton hands, with whom I had long 
 been connected, and whom I looked upon as friends and 
 fellow-sufferers. Many is the time when I have seen one and 
 gnother fainting under his task, and unable to finish it, that J 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 170 
 
 have dropped the whip, seized the hoe, and instead of the 
 stimulus of the lash have used the encouragement of aid and 
 assistance. This I did repeatedly, though Mr. Martin, more 
 than once, when he found me so employed, expressed his 
 disapprobation, and told me it was no way, and would only 
 bring the station of driver into contempt. 
 
 But it is no part of my purpose to write an eulogium on 
 myself, and I shall not hesitate to confess the whole truth. 
 There were times that I abused my office; and I verily believe 
 that no man ever exercised an unlimited authority who did not 
 abuse it. The consciousness of my power made me insolent 
 and impatient ; and with all my hatred, my hearty, experimental 
 hatred of tyranny, the whip had not long been placed in my 
 hands before I caught myself in the act of playing the tyrant. 
 
 Power is ever dangerous and intoxicating. Human nature 
 cannot bear it. It must be constantly checked, controlled, 
 and limited, or it declines inevitably into tyranny. Even all 
 the endearments of the family connection, the tenderness of 
 connubial love, and the heart-binding ties of paternity, 
 seconded, as they always are, by the strong influence of habit 
 and opinion, have not made it safe to entrust the head of a 
 family with absolute power even over his own household. What 
 terms, then, are strong enough iri which to denounce the vain, 
 ridiculous, and wanton folly of expecting anything but abuse 
 where power is totally unchecked by either moral or legal 
 control ? 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Since the death of his wife a remarkable change had taken 
 place in my friend Thomas. He had lost his former air of 
 contentment and good-nature, and had grown morose and 
 sullen. Instead of being the most willing and industrious- 
 labourer in the field, as he used to be, he seemed to have 
 imbibed a strong distaste for work, and he slighted and 
 neglected his task as much as possible. Had he been under 
 any other driver than myself his, idleness and neglect would 
 have frequently brought him into trouble. But I loved and 
 pitied him, and I screened him all I could. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 171 
 
 The wrongs and injuries that had been inflicted upon him 
 since his arrival at Loosahachee seemed to have subverted all 
 the principles upon which he had so long acted. It was a 
 subject on which he did not seem inclined to converse, and 
 upon which I was unwilling to press him ; but I had abundant 
 reason to suspect that he had*totally renounced the religion in 
 which he had been so carefully instructed, and which, for so 
 long a time, had exercised so powerful an influence over him. 
 He had secretly returned to the practice of certain wild rites, 
 which in his early youth he had learned from his mother, who 
 had herself been kidnapped from the coast of Africa, and who 
 had been, as he had often told me, zealously devoted to 
 her country’s superstitions. He would sometimes talk wildy 
 and incoherently about having seen the spirit of his departed 
 wife, and of some promise he had made to the apparition; 
 and I was led to believe that he suffered under occasional fits 
 of part : al insanity. 
 
 At all events, he was in most respects an altered man. He 
 had ceased to be the humble and obedient slave, contented 
 with his lot, and zealously devoted to his master’s service. 
 Instead of promoting his master’s interest, it seemed now to 
 be his study and his aim to do as much mischief as possible. 
 There were two or three artful, daring, unquiet spirits on the 
 plantation, from whom, till lately, he had kept aloof, but whose 
 acquaintance he now sought, and whose confidence he soon 
 obtained. They found him bold and prudent, and what was 
 more, trusty and magnanimous ; and they soon gave place to 
 his superiority of intellect, and acknowledged him as their 
 leader. They were joined by some others, whose only motive 
 was the desire of plunder, and they extended their depredations 
 to every part of the plantation. 
 
 In this new character Thomas still gave evidence that he 
 was no ordinary man. He conducted his enterprises with 
 singular address ; and when all other stratagems by which to 
 save his companions from detection proved unavailing, he had 
 still one resource that showed the native nobleness of his 
 soul. Such was the steady firmness of his mind, and the 
 masculine vigour bf his constitution, that he was enabled to do 
 what few men could. He could brave even the torture of the 
 lash — a torture, as I have said already, not less terrible than 
 that of the rack itself. When every other resource failed 
 him, he was ready to shield his companions by a voluntary 
 
 1 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 172 
 
 confession, and to concentrate upon himself a punishment 
 which he knew that some among them were too feeble and 
 faint-hearted to endure. Magnanimity such as this is esteemed 
 even in a freeman the highest pitch of virtue ; how, then, shall 
 we sufficiently admire it in a slave ? 
 
 Thank God, tyrrany is not omnipotent ! 
 
 Though it crush its victims to the earth, and tread them 
 into the dust, and brutify them by every possible . invention, 
 it cannot totally extinguish the spirit of manhood within them. 
 Here it glimmers, and there it secretly burns, sooner or later 
 to burst forth in a flame that will not be quenched and cannot 
 be kept under ! 
 
 So long as I was in the confidence of Mr. Martin, I was 
 able to render Thomas essential service by informing him of 
 the suspicions, plans, and stratagems of the overseer. It was 
 not long, however, before I forfeited that confidence ; not 
 because Mr. Martin entertained any suspicions of my playing 
 him false — for it was very easy to throw dust into the eyes of 
 so stupid a fellow — but because I did not come up to his 
 notions of the spirit and the duty of a driver. The season 
 was sickly ; and as the hands who composed my gang were 
 from a more northern climate, and not yet seasoned to the 
 pestiferous atmosphere of a rice-plantation, they suffered a 
 good deal from sickness, and several of them were often 
 unable to work. I had explaned this to Mr. Martin, and he 
 seemed to be satisfied with my explanation ; but riding into 
 the field one day, in a particularly bad humour, and I believe 
 a little excited with liquor, he got into a towering rage, at 
 finding not half my gang in the field, and more than half the 
 tasks untouched. 
 
 He demanded the reason. 
 
 I told him that the hands were sick. 
 
 He swore they had no business to be sick; he was tired, 
 he said, of this talk about sickness ; he knew very well it was 
 all sham, and he was determined to be imposed upon no 
 longer. “ If any more complaints are made of sickness, 
 Archy, you have nothing to do but whip the scoundrels and 
 set them to work.” 
 
 “ What,” said I, “ if they are really sick ? ” 
 
 “Sick or not sick, I tell you. If they are not sick a 
 whipping is no more than they deserve ; and if they are, why 
 ;o likely to do them good as a little blood-letting.” 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 173 
 
 “In that case,” said I, “you had better appoint another 
 driver ; I should make a poor hand at whipping sick people.” 
 
 “ Hold your tongue, you damned insolent blackguard. Who 
 gave you leave to advise me or dispute my orders? Hand 
 me your whip, you rascal.” 
 
 I did so ; and Mr. Martin thereupon administered upon me 
 a fresh infliction of that same discipline he had bestowed 
 when he first put the whip into my hand. So ended my 
 drivership ; and though I now lost my double allowance, and 
 was obliged to turn into the field again and perform my task 
 like the other hands, I cannot say that I much regretted it. 
 It was a pitiful and sorry office, which no one but a scoundrel 
 ever ought to undertake. 
 
 I now united myself more closely to the party of Thomas, 
 and joined heart and hand in all their enterprises. Our 
 depredations became at last so considerable that Mr. Martin 
 was obliged to establish a regular watch, consisting of his 
 drivers and a few of their subordinates, who kept prowling 
 about the plantation all night, and made it unsafe to venture 
 into the fields. This arrangement was hastened by a circum- 
 stance that happened upon the plantation, about which a very 
 strict inquiry was instituted, but which led to no definite result. 
 On one and the same night General Carter’s splendid planta- 
 tion-seat and his expensive rice mills were discovered to be on 
 fire, and, notwithstanding all efforts to save them, both were 
 totally consumed. Several of the slaves, and Thomas among 
 the rest, were put to a sort of torture to make them acknow- 
 ledge some participation in this house-burning. That cruelty 
 availed nothing. They all stoutly denied knowing anything 
 about it. I was, as I have said, very much in Thomas’s con- 
 fidence, yet he never spoke to me about that fire. As he was 
 one of those men who know how to keep their own secrets, I 
 always suspected that he knew much more about the matter 
 than he chose to divulge. 
 
 At all events, it was evidently a much more potent feeling 
 than the mere love of plunder by which Thomas was actuated. 
 Since his wife’s death he sometimes drank to excess ; but this 
 was seldom, and there never was a man more temperate in his 
 meats and drinks or less fastidious than Thomas generally 
 was. He had formerly dressed with much neatness ; now he 
 neglected his dress altogether. He did not love society; he had 
 little intercourse with anybody except with me ; and it was not 
 
174 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 always that he seemed to wish even for my company. Thomas 
 had little use for his share of the plunder; and, in fact, he 
 generally distributed it among his companions. 
 
 When the thing was first proposed, he seemed to have little 
 inclination to extend our depredations beyond the limits of 
 Loosahachee. But as it was no longer safe to continue them 
 there, and as his companions had rioted too long in plunder to 
 be willing to relinquish it, Thomas yielded at last to their 
 urgent solicitations, and led us night after night to the neigh- 
 bouring plantations. We soon pushed our proceedings so far 
 as to attract the notice of the overseers whose domains we had 
 invaded. At first they supposed that the thieves were to be 
 looked for at home ; and numberless were the severities they 
 exercised upon those whom they suspected. But, in spite of 
 all their cruelties, the depredations were still continued ; and 
 such was the singular art and cunning which Thomas displayed 
 in varying the scene and manner of our visits, that for a long 
 time we escaped all the traps and ambushes that were planned 
 against us. 
 
 We were one night in a rice-field, and had almost filled our 
 bags, when the watchful ear of Thomas detected a sound, as if 
 of some one cautiously approaching. He supposed it might be 
 the patrol, which, of late, instead of whiling away their time by 
 the help of a fiddle and a bottle of whiskey, had grown more 
 active, and actually performed some of the duties of a night- 
 watch. Under this impression he gave a signal for m to steal 
 off quietly, in a certain order which he had arranged before- 
 hand. The field was bordered on one side by a deep and 
 wide river, from which it was protected by a high embankment. 
 We had come by water, and our canoe lay in the river, under 
 the shade of a clump of bushes and small trees which grew 
 upon the dike. One by one we cautiously stole over the bank, 
 carefully keeping in the shade of the bushes, and all but 
 Thomas were already in the boat. We were waiting for our 
 leader, who, as usual, was the last man in the retreat, when we 
 heard several shouts and cries, which seemed to indicate that 
 he was discovered, if not taken. The sound of two musket 
 shots, fired in rapid succession, increased our terror. We 
 hastily shoved the boat from the shore, and pushing her into 
 the current of the flood-tide, which was setting up the river, we 
 were carried rapidly and silently out of sight of our landing- 
 place. The shouts were still continued, but they grew fainter 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 175 
 
 and fainter, and seemed to take a direction from the river. 
 We now put out our paddles, and, plying with all our strength, 
 we pretty soon reached a small cove or creek, the place where 
 we kept our boat, and at which we were accustomed to 
 embark. We drew the canoe on shore, and carefully concealed 
 it among the high grass. Then, without taking out our rice- 
 bags, and leaving our shoes in the boat, we ran towards 
 Loosahachee, which we reached without further adventure. 
 
 I was very anxious about Thomas; but I had scarcely 
 thrown myself upon my bed before I heard a light tap at the 
 door of my cabin, which I knew to be his. I sprang up and 
 let him in. He was panting for breath, and covered with mud. 
 Thomas said that just as he was going to climb the embank- 
 ment, he looked behind him and saw two men rapidly 
 approaching. They seemed to observe him just at the same 
 moment, and called to him to stop. If he had attempted to 
 reach the boat it would have drawn them that way, and 
 perhaps led to the detection of the whole company. The 
 moment they called to him he dropped his rice-bag, and 
 stooping as low as he could, he pushed rapidly through the 
 rice in a direction from the river. His pursuers raised a loud 
 shout, and fired their muskets at him, but without effect. He 
 jumped several cross ditches, made for the high ground at a 
 distance from the river, and drew off the patrol in that 
 direction. They pursued him closely; but as he was very 
 strong and active, and well acquainted with the place, he 
 succeeded in escaping from among the ditches and embank- 
 ments of the rice-field, gained the high grounds, and took a 
 direction towards Loosahachee. But though he had distanced 
 his pursuers, they had still kept upon his track, and he 
 had expected that they would follow him up, and would 
 shortly be arriving. 
 
 While Thomas was telling his adventures, he had stripped 
 off his wet clothes, and washed off the mud with which he was 
 covered. I furnished him with a dry suit, which he took with 
 him to his own cabin, which was close by mine. I hastened 
 round to the cabins of our companions, and told them what 
 visitors to expect. The barking of all the plantation dogs 
 pretty soon informed us that the patrol ‘was coming. They 
 had roused up the overseer, and, with torches in their hands, 
 they entered and searched every cabin in the quarter. But we 
 were prepared for their visit ; we were roused with difficulty 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 1 76 
 
 out of a deep sleep, and seemed to be very much astonished 
 at this unseasonable disturbance. 
 
 The search proved to be a very useless one ; but as the patrol 
 were certain that they had traced the fugitive to Loosahachee, 
 the overseer of the plantation upon which we had been depre- 
 dating came over the next morning to search out and punish 
 the culprit. He was accompanied by several other men, who it 
 seems were freeholders of the district, selected with such forms, 
 or rather such neglect of all form, as the laws of Carolina 
 prescibe in such cases. Five Carolina freeholders, selected at 
 hap-hazard, constitute such a court as in most other countries 
 would hardly be trusted with the final adjudication of any matter 
 above the value of forty shillings at the utmost. But in that 
 part of the world they not only have the power of judging all 
 charges against slaves, and sentencing the accused to death, but 
 what the Carolinians doubtless consider a much graver matter 
 — the right of saddling the state treasury with the estimated 
 value of the culprit. This law for refunding to the masters 
 nominally a part, but what by over-valuation usually amounts 
 to the entire value of condemned slaves, deprives the poor 
 wretches of that protection against an unjust sentence which 
 otherwise they might find in the pecuniary interest of their 
 masters, and leaves them without any sort of shield against the 
 prejudice, carelessness, or stupidity of their judges. But why 
 should we expect anything like equity or fairness in the 
 execution of laws which themselves are founded upon the 
 grossest wrong? It must be confessed that in this matter the 
 Americans preserve throughout an admirable consistency. 
 
 A table was set out before the door of the overseer’s house ; 
 some glasses and a bottle of whiskey were placed upon it, and 
 the court proceeded to business. We were all brought up and 
 examined one after the other. The only witnesses were the 
 patrol who had pursued Thomas, and they were ordered by the 
 court to pick out the culprits. That was rather a difficult 
 matter. There were between sixty and seventy men of us ; 
 the night had been cloudy and without a moon, and the patrol 
 had only caught some hasty and uncertain glimpses of the 
 person whom they had followed. The court seemed rather 
 vexed at their hesitation. Yet perhaps it was not very un- 
 reasonable, since they were quite unable to agree together as 
 to what sort of a man it was. One thought him short; the 
 other was certain that he was quite tall. The first pronounced 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. t?) 
 
 him a stout, well-set fellow ; the other had taken him to be very 
 slender. 3 
 
 By this time the first bottle of whiskey was emptied, and a 
 second was put upon the table. The court now told the 
 witnesses that it would not do— they did not come up to the 
 mark at all , and if they went on at that rate the fellow would 
 escape altogether. Just at this moment the overseer of the 
 plantation which had been plundered rode up, and, as soon as 
 he had dismounted, he stepped forward to the relief of the 
 witnesses. He said that while the court was organising he had 
 taken the opportunity to ride over and examine the rice-field 
 in which the rogue had been started up. It was much trampled 
 in places, and there were a great many foot-prints, but they 
 were all just alike, and seemed to have been made by the same 
 person. He took a little stick from his pocket, on which, he 
 said, he had carefully marked the exact length and breadth. 
 
 Now, this was a trick for detecting people which Thomas 
 understood very well, and he had taken good care to be 
 prepared for it. Our whole company were provided with 
 shoes of the largest size we could get, and all exactly the 
 same pattern, so that our tracks had the appearance of being 
 made by a single person, and he a fellow with a very large 
 foot. 
 
 This speech of the overseer seemed to revive the drooping 
 hopes of the judges, and they made us all sit down upon the 
 ground and have our feet measured. There was a man on the 
 plantation named Billy, a harmless, stupid fellow, wholly un- 
 connected with us, but, unluckily for him, the only one of all the 
 slaves whose foot corresponded at all with the measure. The 
 length of this poor fellow’s foot was fatal to him. The judges 
 shouted with one voice, and in the style of condemnation to be 
 expected from such a court, that “they would be damned if he 
 was not the thief.” It was in vain that the poor fellow denied 
 the charge and pleaded for mercy. His terror, confusion, and 
 surprise only served to confirm the opinion of his guilt ; and 
 the more he denied and the louder he pleaded the more 
 positively his judges were determined against him. Without 
 fuither ceremony they pronounced him guilty, and sentenced 
 him to be hungj 
 
 I he sentence was no sooner pronounced than preparations 
 wcie made for its execution. An empty barrel was brought 
 out and placed under a tree that stood before the door. The 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 poor fellow was mounted upon it, the halter was put about Ins 
 neck, and fastened to a limb over his head, lhe judges had 
 already become so drunk as to have lost all sense of juchcia 
 decorum. One of them kicked away the barrel, and the 
 unhappy victim of Carolina justice dropped struggling into 
 
 The^execution over, the slaves were sent into the field, while 
 Mr. Martin, with the judges and witnesses, and several others 
 whom the fame of the trial had drawn to Loosahachee, com- 
 ' menced a regular drunken debauch, which they kept up al 
 that day and the night following. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 The authority of masters over their slaves is in general a 
 continual reign of terror. A base and dastard fear is the sole 
 principle of human nature to which the slave-holder appeals. 
 When it was determined to hang the poor fellow, whose fate I 
 have described in the last chapter, his judges could not know, 
 nor do I suppose they much cared, whether he were innocent 
 or guilty. Their great object was to terrify the survivors, and, 
 by an example of what they would denominate wholesome and 
 necessary severity, to deter from any further trespasses upon 
 the neighbouring plantations. In this they succeeded; for 
 though Thomas endeavoured to keep up our spirits, we were 
 thoroughly scared, and felt little inclination to second his 
 boldness, which seemed to grow more determined the more 
 obstacles it encountered. 
 
 One of our confederates in particular was so alarmed at the 
 fate of poor Billy that he seemed to have lost all self-control, 
 and we were in constant fear lest he should betray us. When 
 the first paroxysm of his terror was at its height, the evening 
 after he had witnessed the execution, I believe he would 
 gladly have confessed the whole if he could have found a 
 white man sober enough to listen to him. After a while he 
 grew more calm, but in the course of the day he had dropped 
 some hints, which were carefully treasured up by one of the 
 drivers. He reported them, as I discovered, to the overseer ; 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 1 79 
 
 but Mr. Martin had not yet recovered from the effects of the 
 frolic, and he was too drunk and stupid to understand a word 
 that the driver said to him. 
 
 We had begun to get the better of our fears, when a new 
 incident happened which determined us to seek our safety in 
 flight. Some persons in passing along the river bank had 
 discovered our canoe, which, in the hurry of our retreat, we 
 had taken too little care to conceal. It contained not only 
 our bags full of rice — for we had not yet recovered courage 
 enough to go after them — but our shoes also, all exactly of the 
 same size, and corresponding with the measure which had been 
 produced upon the trial. Here was ample proof that quite a 
 number had been engaged in the scheme of depredation, and 
 as one of the company had been traced to Loosahachee, it 
 would be reasonable to look for the others upon the same 
 plantation. Luckily, I obtained an early intimation of this 
 discovery by means of one of the overseer’s house-servants, 
 with whom I had the policy to keep up a pretty intimate 
 connection. A man had arrived at the overseer’s house, his 
 horse dripping with foam, and with an appearance of great 
 haste and impatience, he had asked to see the overseer. The 
 moment he came in the stranger requested to speak with him 
 alone, and Mr. Martin took his guest into another room, and 
 locked the door. The girl, who was my spy and informant, 
 under an appearance of the greatest simplicity, was artful 
 and intelligent ; and she was prompted to overhear this secret 
 conversation, as much by her own curiosity, as by the suspicion 
 that it might possibly be something in which I would take an 
 interest. She contrived to conceal herself in a closet, which 
 was separated from the room in which the overseer and his 
 visitor were conversing only by a thin partition, and having 
 overheard his story, the substance of which I have already 
 mentioned — and learned, besides, that the court would hold 
 a new session at Loosahachee the day following — she hastened 
 to inform me of what she had heard. She knew nothing in 
 particular of our affairs ; but she had reason to believe that 
 this piece of news would not be entirely uninteresting to me. 
 
 I informed Thomas of what she had told me. We agreed 
 at once that our best chance of safety was in flight, and we 
 immediately communicated our intention, and the cause of it, 
 to the rest of our confederates. They were anxious to accom- 
 pany us, and we all resolved to be off that very night. 
 
i8o 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 As soon as evening came on we stole away from the plan- 
 tation, and gained the woods in company. As we anticipated 
 that a very diligent search would be made for us, we thought 
 it best to separate. Thomas and myself resolved to keep 
 together ; the others scattered and took various directions. 
 As long as the darkness lasted we travelled on as rapidly 
 as we could \ when the morning began to appear we plunged 
 into a thick, swampy piece of woods, and having broken 
 down some branches and young trees, we made as dry a 
 bed as we were able, and lay down to sleep. We were much 
 fatigued with our long and rapid journey, and slept soundly. 
 It was past noon when we waked. Our appetites were sharp, 
 but we had no provisions. Just as we were beginning to con- 
 sider what course it would be best for us to pursue, we heard 
 the distant baying of a hound. Thomas listened for a moment, 
 and then exclaimed that he knew that cry. It was a famous 
 dog, a cross of the bloodhound, which Mr. Martin had long 
 had in training, and upon whose performances in tracking out 
 runaways he very much prided himself. 1 he place where we 
 were was a thick swamp, in which it was difficult to move, and 
 not easy to stand ; to cross it would be impossible, and we 
 resolved to get into the edge of it, where the ground was 
 harder and the undergrowth thinner, and to continue our 
 flight. We did so, but the hound gained rapidly upon us, 
 and his baying sounded louder and louder. Thomas drew a 
 stout sharp knife which he carried in his pocket. We were 
 now just at the border where the dry ground came down upon 
 the swamp, and, looking behind us, across the level, and open 
 woods we could see the hound coming on with his nose to 
 the ground, and uttering at intervals a deep and savage cry ; 
 farther behind, but still in full view, we saw a man on horse- 
 back, whom we took to be Mr. Martin himself. 
 
 The dog was evidently upon our track, and following it 
 to the place where we had first plunged into the swamp, 
 he disappeared from our view ; but we could still hear his 
 clamour, which grew louder and almost constant, and we soon 
 perceived by the rustling and cracking of the underwood that 
 he was close upon us. At this moment we faced about and 
 stood at bay — Thomas in front, with his knife in hand, and I 
 just behind, with a sharp and heavy lightwood knot, the best, 
 indeed the only weapon of which I could avail myself. 
 Presently the dog emerged from the swamp. The moment 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 181 
 
 he saw us he redoubled his cry, and dashed forward foaming 
 and open-mouthed ; he made a great leap directly at Thomas’s 
 throat, but only succeeded in seizing his left arm, which 
 Thomas raised as a shield against the dog’s attack. At the same 
 instant he dealt a stroke with his knife which penetrated to the 
 hilt, and dog and man came struggling to the ground. How 
 the contest would have ended had Thomas been alone is very 
 doubtful, for though the hound soon received several wounds, 
 they only seemed to increase his ferocity, and he still struggled 
 to get at the throat of his antagonist. My lightwood knot & now 
 did good service; two or three heavy blows upon the dog’s 
 head laid him senseless and sprawling on the ground. 
 
 While we had been awaiting the dog’s attack, and during 
 the contest, we had scarcely thought of his master, but looking 
 up, after it was over, we discovered that Mr. Martin was 
 already very near us. When the dog took to the swamp his 
 master had followed along upon its edge, and came suddenly 
 upon us before we had expected him. He pointed his gun 
 and called upon us to surrender. Thomas no sooner saw the 
 overseer than he seemed to lose all his self-control, and grasp- 
 ing his knife he rushed directly upon him. Mr. Martin fired, 
 but the buckshot rattled harmlessly among the trees, and as he 
 was attempting to wheel his horse, Thomas dashed upon him, 
 seized him by the arm, and dragged him to the ground. The 
 horse ran frightened through the wood, and it was in vain that 
 I attempted to stop him. We looked round in expectation of 
 seeing some others of the huntsmen coming up ; none were in 
 sight, and we seized the opportunity to retreat, and to carry our 
 prisoner into the covert of the swamp. 
 
 We learned from him that by the time the court and their 
 attendants arrived at Loosahachee our flight had been dis- 
 covered, and that it was immediately resolved to raise the neigh- 
 bourhood, and to commence a general search for the runaways. 
 All the horses, dogs, and men that could be come at were put 
 into . requisition. They were divided into parties, and im- 
 mediately commenced beating through the woods and swamps 
 in the neighbourhood. 
 
 A party of five or six men, with Mr. Martin and his blood- 
 hound, had traced three of our companions into a thick swamp 
 just on the bank of a river. The pursuers dismounted, and 
 with their guns in their hands, they followed the dog into the 
 thicket. Our poor fellows were so overcome with fatigue that 
 
182 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 they slept till the very moment that the hound sprang in upon 
 them. He seized one of them by the throat, and held him to 
 the ground. The others ran ; and as they ran, the pursuers 
 fired. One of the fugitives fell dead, horribly mangled and 
 cut to pieces with buck-shot ; the other still continued his 
 flight. As soon as the dog could be compelled to quit his 
 hold of the man he had seized, which was not without difficulty 
 and delay, he was put upon the track of the surviving fugitive. 
 He followed it to the river, where he stood at fault The man 
 had probably plunged in, and swam to the other side ; but as 
 the dog could not be made to take the water, and as the 
 swamp on the opposite bank was reputed to be very soft and 
 dangerous, no further pursuit was made ; the chase in that 
 direction was given up, and the poor fellow was suffered to 
 escape for the present. 
 
 The pursuers now separated. Two of them undertook to 
 carry back to Loosahachee the captive they had taken, and 
 the other three, with Mr. Martin and his hound, were to 
 continue the hunt in search of the rest of us. They learned 
 from their captive the place at which we had parted company, 
 and the directions which the several parties had taken. After 
 beating about for some time the hound struck upon our trail, 
 and opened in full cry ; but the horses of Mr. Martin’s com- 
 panions were so broken down that when he began to spur on, 
 to keep up with the hound, he soon left them far behind. Mr. 
 Martin ended his story by advising us to go in and surrender 
 ourselves, giving us his word and honour as a gentleman and 
 an overseer that if we would offer him no further violence or 
 injury he would protect us from punishment, and reward us 
 most handsomely. 
 
 The sun was now setting. The short twilight which follows 
 a Carolina sunset would soon be succeeded by the darkness 
 of a cloudy and moonless night ; and we felt but little appre- 
 hension of being immediately troubled by our pursuers. I 
 looked at Thomas, as if to inquire what we had better do. 
 He drew me aside, having first examined the fastenings of our 
 prisoner, whom we had bound to a tree by some cords found 
 in his own pocket, and which were doubtless intended for a 
 very different purpose. 
 
 Thomas paused for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts ; 
 then, pointing to Mr. Martin, “ Archy,” he said, “that man 
 dies to-night.” 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 183 
 
 There was a wild energy, and at the same time a steady 
 coolness, in the tone in which he spoke. It startled me. At 
 first I made no answer ; and as meanwhile I looked Thomas 
 m the face, I saw there an expression of stern exultation and 
 a fixedness of purpose not to be shaken. His eyes flashed 
 fire as he repeated, but in a low and quiet tone that con- 
 trasted strangely with the matter of his speech, “ I tell you, 
 Archy, that man dies to-night She commands it; I have 
 promised it ; and now the time is come.” 
 
 “Who commands it?” I hastily inquired. 
 
 “ Do you ask who ? Archy, that man was the murderer of 
 my wife ! ” 
 
 Though Thomas and I had lived in great, intimacy, this was 
 almost the first time, since the death of his wife, that he had 
 mentioned her to me in such plain terms. He had, it is true, 
 now and then made some distant allusions to her ; and I 
 recollected that on several occasions before , he had dropped 
 some strange and incoherent hints about an intercourse which 
 he still kept up with her. 
 
 The mention of his wife brought tears into his eyes ; but 
 with his hand he wiped them hastily away, and soon recovering 
 his former air of calm and steady determination, he again 
 repeated, in the same low but resolute tone, “ Archy, I tell you, 
 that man dies to-night.” 
 
 When I called to mind all the circumstances that had 
 attended the death of Thomas’s wife, I could not but 
 acknowledge that Mr. Martin had been her murderer. I had 
 sympathised with Thomas then, and I sympathised with him 
 now. The murderer was in his power ; he believed himself 
 called upon to execute justice upon him ; and I could not 
 but acknowledge that his death would be an act of righteous 
 
 retribution. . 
 
 Still I felt a sort of instinctive horror at the idea of shedding 
 blood; and, perhaps, too, there still crept about my heart 
 some remains of that slavish fear and servile timidity which 
 the bolder spirit of Thomas had wholly shaken off. . I 
 acknowledged that the life of the overseer was justly forfeit ; 
 but, at the same time, I reminded flhomas that Mr. Mai tin 
 had promised, if we would carry him home in safety, to 
 procure our pardon, and protect us from punishment. 
 
 A scornful smile played about the lip of my comrade while 
 I was speaking. “Yes, Archy,” he answered, “pardon and 
 
184 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 protection ! — and a hundred lashes, and a hanging the next 
 day, perhaps. No ! boy, I want no such pardon ; I want no 
 pardon such as they will give. I have been a slave too long 
 already. I am now free ; and when they take me they are 
 welcome to take my life. Besides, we cannot trust him ; if we 
 wished it, we cannot trust him. You know we cannot. They 
 do not think themselves obliged to keep any promises they 
 make us. They will promise anything to get us in their 
 power, and then their promises are worthless as rotten straw. 
 My promises are not like theirs ; and have I not told you that 
 I have promised it ? Yes, I have sworn it ; and I now say, 
 once for all, that man must die to-night.” 
 
 There was a strength and a determination in his tone and 
 manner which overpowered me. I could resist it no longer, 
 and I bade him do his pleasure. He loaded the gun which he 
 had taken from Mr. Martin, and which he had held in his 
 hand all the time we had been talking. This done, we 
 returned to the overseer, who was sitting at the foot of the 
 tree to which we had bound him. He looked up anxiously at 
 us as we approached, and inquired if we had determined to go 
 in ? 
 
 “We have determined,” answered Thomas. “We allow you 
 half-an-hour to prepare for death. Make the most of it. You 
 have many sins to repent of, and the time is short.” 
 
 It is impossible to describe the look of mingled terror, 
 amazement, and incredulity with which the overseer heard 
 these words. One moment, with a voice of authority, he bade 
 us untie him ; the next he forced a laugh, and affected to 
 treat what Thomas had said as a mere jest ; then, yielding to 
 his fears, he wept like a child, and cried and begged for 
 mercy. 
 
 “Have you shown it?” answered Thomas. “Did you 
 show it to my poor wife ? You murdered her ; and for her 
 life you must answer with your own.” 
 
 Mr. Martin called God to witness that he was not guilty of 
 this charge. He had punished Thomas’s wife, he confessed ; 
 but he did only what his duty as an overseer demanded ; and 
 it was impossible, he said, that the few cuts he gave her could 
 have caused her death. 
 
 “The few cuts!” cried Thomas. “Thank God, Mr. 
 Martin, that we do not torture you as you tortured her! 
 Speak no more, or you will but aggravate your sufferings. 
 
1 85 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Confess your crimes ! Say your prayers ! Do not spend your 
 last moments in adding falsehood to murder ! ” 
 
 The overseer cowered beneath this energetic reproof. He 
 covered his face with his hands, bent down his head, and 
 passed a few moments in a silence which was only interrupted 
 by an inarticulate sobbing. Perhaps he was trying to prepare 
 himself to die. But life was too sweet to be surrendered 
 without another effort to save it. He saw that it was useless 
 to appeal to Thomas ; but rousing himself once more, he 
 turned to me. He begged me to remember the confidence he 
 had once placed in me, and the favours which, as he said, he 
 had shown me. He promised to purchase us both, and give 
 
 us our liberty anything, everything, if we would only spare his 
 life ! 
 
 His tears and piteous lamentations moved me. My head 
 grew dizzy, and I felt such a faintness and heart-sinking that I 
 was obliged to support myself against a tree. Thomas stood 
 by, with his arms folded and resting on the gun. He made 
 no answer to the reiterated prayers and promises of the 
 overseer. Indeed, he did not appear to notice them. His 
 eyes were fixed, and he seemed lost in thought. 
 
 After a considerable interval, during which the unhappy 
 overseer continued to repeat his prayers and lamentations, 
 Thomas loused himself. He stepped back a few paces, and 
 raised the gun. “ The half-hour is out,” he said ; “ Mr. 
 Martin, are you ready ? ” 
 
 “No! oh, no! Spare me, oh, spare me !— one half-hour 
 longer — I have much ” 
 
 He did not live to finish the sentence. The gun flashed ; 
 the ball penetrated his brain, and he fell dead without a 
 struggle. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 We scraped a shallow grave, in which we placed the body of 
 the oveiseer. We dragged the dead hound to the same spot, 
 and laid him with his master. They were fit companions. 
 
 We now resumed our flight — not, as some perhaps may 
 suppose, with the frightened and conscience-stricken haste of 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 1 86 
 
 murderers, but with that lofty feeling of manhood vindicated 
 and tyranny visited with a just retribution which animated the 
 soul of the Israelitish hero whilst he fled for refuge into the 
 country of the Midianites, and which burned in the bosoms of 
 Wallace and of Tell as they pursued their midnight flight 
 among the friendly cliffs and freedom-breathing summits ot 
 their native mountains. 
 
 There were no mountains to receive and shelter us. But 
 still we fled through the swamps and barrens of Carolina, 
 resolved to put, as soon as possible, some good miles between 
 us and the neighbourhood of Loosahachee. It was more than 
 twenty-four hours since we had tasted food, yet such was the 
 excitement of our minds that we did not faint, and were hardly 
 sensible of weakness or fatigue. 
 
 We kept a north-westerly direction, steering our course by 
 the stars, and we must have made a good distance, for we did 
 not once stop to rest, but pushed forward at a very rapid pace 
 all night. Our way lay through the open “piney woods,” 
 through which we could travel almost as fast as on a road. 
 Sometimes a swamp or the appearances of a plantation would 
 compel us to deviate from our track, but as soon as we could 
 we resumed our original direction. 
 
 The darkness of the night, which for the last hour or two 
 that it lasted had been increased by a foggy mist, was just 
 beginning to yield to the first indistinct grey dawn of the 
 morning. We were passing along a little depression in the 
 level of the pine barrens, now dry, but in the wet season 
 probably the bed of a temporary stream, looking for a place in 
 which to conceal ourselves, when we suddenly came upon a 
 man lying, as it seemed, asleep in the midst of a clump of 
 bushes, with his head resting on a bag of corn. We recognised 
 him at once. He was a slave belonging to a plantation next 
 adjoining Loosahachee, with whom we had had some slight 
 acquaintance, but who, as we were informed, had been a 
 runaway for some two or three months past. Thomas shook 
 him by the shoulder, and he wakened in a terrible fright. We 
 told him not to be alarmed, for we were runaways like himself, 
 and very much in need of his assistance, being half dead with 
 hunger, and in a country with which we were totally un- 
 acquainted. At first the man appeared very reserved and 
 suspicious. He feared, it seemed, lest we might be decoys, 
 sent out on purpose to entrap him. At last, however, we 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 187 
 
 succeeded in dissipating his doubts j and no sooner was he 
 satisfied with the account we gave of ourselves than he bade us 
 follow him, and we should presently have food. 
 
 With his bag of corn upon his shoulder he pursued the 
 shallow ravine in which we had found him for a mile or more, 
 till at length it widened into what seemed a large swamp, or 
 rather a pond grown up with trees. We now left the ravine, 
 and followed along on the edge of the pond for some distance, 
 when presently our guide began wading in the water, and 
 called to us to follow him. We plunged in ; but before going 
 far he laid down his bag of corn upon a fallen tree, and going 
 back he carefully effaced the marks which our footsteps had 
 made upon the muddy edge of the pond. He now led us 
 forward through mud and water up to our waists for near half- 
 a-mile. The gigantic trees among which we were wading 
 sprung up like columns from the surface of the water, with 
 round, straight, whitish-coloured, branchless trunks, their leafy 
 tops forming a thick canopy overhead. There was scarcely 
 any undergrowth, except a species of enormous vines, which 
 ran twining like great cables about the bodies of the trees, 
 and reaching to the very tops, helped with their foliage to 
 thicken the canopy above us. So effectually was the light 
 excluded, and so close did the trunks of the trees stand 
 together, that one could see but a very little way into this 
 watery forest. 
 
 The water began to grow deeper and the wood more 
 gloomy, and we were wondering whither our guide was leading 
 us, when presently we came to a little island which rose a few 
 feet from the surface of the water, so regular and mound-like 
 that it had quite the appearance of an artificial structure. 
 Perhaps it was the work of the ancient inhabitants of the 
 country, and the site of one of their forts or fastnesses. It 
 was about an acre in extent, and was covered with a thick 
 growth of trees, quite different, however, from those of the 
 lake by which 'it was surrounded, and much inferior in size 
 and majesty. Its edges were bordered by low shrubs and 
 bushes, whose abundant foliage gave the islet the appearance 
 of a mass of green. Our guide pointed out to us a little 
 opening in the bushes, through which we ascended ; and 
 after having gained the dry land, he led us through the thicket 
 along a narrow and winding path, till presently we came to a 
 rude cabin built of bark and branches. He now gave & 
 
i88 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 peculiar whistle, which was immediately answered, and two or 
 three men presently made their appearance. 
 
 They seemed a good deal surprised at seeing us, and me 
 especially, whom apparently they took for a freeman. But 
 our guide assured them that we were friends and fellow- 
 sufferers, and led the way into the cabin. Our new hosts 
 received us kindly ; and having heard how long we had been 
 without food, before asking us any further questions, they 
 hastened to satisfy our hunger. They produced beef and 
 hominy in abundance, on which we feasted to our hearts 
 content. 
 
 We were then called upon to give an account of our- 
 selves. Accordingly, we made a relation of our adventures, 
 omitting, however, any mention of the fate of the overseer ; 
 and as our guide, who knew us, could confirm a part of 
 our story, our account was pronounced satisfactory, and we 
 were presently admitted to the privilege of joining their 
 fraternity. 
 
 There were five of them besides ourselves j all brave fellows, 
 who, weary of daily task-work and the tyranny of overseers, had 
 taken to the woods, and had succeeded in . regaining a. savage 
 and stealthy freedom, which, with all its hardships and 
 dangers, was a thousand times to be preferred to the forced 
 labour and wretched servitude from which they had escaped. 
 Our guide was the only one of them whom we had ever seen 
 till now. The leader of the band had fled from his master’s 
 plantation in the neighbourhood, with a single companion, 
 some two or three years before. They did not then know of 
 the existence of this retreat ; but being sharply pursued, they 
 had attempted to cross the pond or swamp by which it was 
 surrounded — a thing, I suppose, which had never been tried 
 before. In this attempt they were fortunate enough to light 
 upon the islet, which, being unknown to anyone else,, had 
 ever since served them as a secure retreat. They soon picked 
 up a recruit or two, and had afterwards been joined by their 
 other companions. 
 
 Our guide, it seems, had been to a neighbouring plantation 
 to trade for corn— a traffic which our friends carried on with 
 the slaves of several of the nearest plantations. After the 
 business was concluded, the men with whom he had been 
 dealing had produced a bottle of whiskey, of which our guide 
 had drank so freely that he had not gone far on his way 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE. 189 
 
 home before his legs failed him. He sunk down in the place 
 where we had found him, and fell fast asleep. 
 
 Drinking whiskey away from home, according to the prudent 
 laws of this swamp-encircled commonwealth, was a high mis- 
 demeanour, punishable with thirty-nine lashes, which were 
 forthwith inflicted upon our guide with a good deal of 
 emphasis. He took it in good part though, as being the 
 execution of a law to which he had himself assented, and 
 which he knew was enacted as much for his own benefit 
 as for the benefit of those who had just now carried it into 
 execution. 
 
 The life upon which we now entered had at least the charm 
 of novelty. In the daytime we eat, slept, told stories, and 
 recounted our escapes, or employed ourselves in dressing 
 skins, making clothes, and curing provisions. But the night 
 was our season of adventure and enterprise. As the autumn 
 was coming on we made frequent visits to the neighbouring 
 corn-fields and potato-patches, which we felt no scruples what- 
 ever in laying under severe contribution. This, however, was 
 only for a month or two. Our regular and certain supply was 
 in the herds of half-wild cattle, which wander through the 
 “piney woods” and feed upon the coarse grass which they 
 furnish. We killed as many of these cattle as we needed, and 
 their flesh, cut into long strips, we dried in the sun. Thus 
 cured, it is a palatable food ; and we not only kept a stock on 
 hand for our own consumption, but it furnished the principal 
 article of a constant but cautious traffic which, as I have 
 already mentioned, we carried on with the slaves of several 
 neighbouring plantations. 
 
 This wild life of the woods has its privations and its 
 sufferings ; but it has too its charms and its pleasures ; and in 
 its very worst aspect it is a thousand and ten thousand times 
 to be preferred to that miscalled civilisation which degrades 
 the noble savage into a cringing and broken-spirited slave — a 
 civilisation which purchases the indolence and luxury of a 
 single master with the sighs and tears, the forced and unwilling 
 labour, the degradation, misery, and despair of a hundred of 
 his fellow-men ! Yes, there is more of true manhood in the 
 bold bosom of a single outlaw than in a whole nation of 
 cowardly tyrants and crouching slaves ! 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 190 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 By the end of the winter the herds of cattle which were 
 accustomed to frequent our neighbourhood were a good deal 
 thinned ; and the pasturage had now become so bare and 
 withered that what remained of them were little better than 
 walking skeletons, and, in fact, scarcely worth the trouble of 
 killing. 
 
 Moreover, the overseers of the neighbouring plantations were 
 beginning to be very well aware that they were exposed to 
 some pretty regular and diligent depredators. We learned 
 from the slaves with whom we trafficked that there was a good 
 deal of talk about the rapid disappearance of the cattle, and 
 that preparations were making for a grand hunt in search of 
 the plunderers. 
 
 With the double object of disappointing these preparations, 
 and of getting among some fresh herds of cattle, it was 
 resolved that five of us should make an excursion to a 
 considerable distance, while the other two remained at home 
 and kept close. 
 
 One of our number undertook to lead us into the neigh- 
 bourhood of a plantation beyond the Santee, on which he had 
 been raised. He knew all the country about it perfectly well. 
 There were several good hiding-places, he said, in which we 
 could conceal ourselves in the day-time; and the extensive 
 woods and wastes furnished a good range and abundance of 
 cattle. 
 
 We set off under his guidance, and kept on for several days, 
 or nights rather, in a northwardly direction. On the fifth or 
 sixth evening of our journey we started soon after sunset, and 
 having travelled till a little past midnight, through a country of 
 abrupt and barren sand-hills, our guide told us that we were 
 now in the neighbourhood into whiclpi he intended to carry us. 
 But as the moon had gone down, and it was cloudy and quite 
 dark, he was rather uncertain as to the precise place we were 
 at ; and we should do best, he said, to camp where we were 
 till daylight, when he would lead us to some better place of 
 concealment. 
 
 This advice was very acceptable, for by this time we were 
 way-worn, tired, and sleepy. We kindled a fire, cooked the 
 last of the provisions we had brought with us, and having 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 191 
 
 appointed one of our number to keep watch, the rest of us lay 
 down and were soon fast asleep. 
 
 I, at least, was sleeping soundly, and dreaming of poor Cassy 
 and our infant child, when my dream was interrupted, and I 
 was roused from my slumbers by what seemed a discharge of 
 fire-arms and a galloping of horses. I sprang upon my feet, 
 hardly knowing whether I was awake. At the same moment 
 my eye fell upon Thomas, who had been sleeping beside me, 
 and I perceived that his clothes were all stained with blood. 
 He had already gained his feet, and without stopping to hear 
 or see anything further, we sprung together into the nearest 
 thicket, and fled for some time, we scarcely knew where or 
 why. At last Thomas cried out that he could go no further. 
 The bleeding of his wounds had weakened him much, and 
 they were now growing stiff and painful. The morning was 
 just beginning to dawn. We sat down upon the ground, and 
 endeavoured to bind up his wounds the best way we were able. 
 A ball or buck-shot had passed through the fleshy part of his 
 arm, between the shoulder and elbow. Another shot had 
 struck him in the side — but, as far as we could judge, had 
 glanced on one of his ribs, and so passed off without doing any 
 mortal injury. These wounds had bled profusely, and were 
 now very painful. We bound them up as well as we could, 
 and looking round we found a little stream of water with which 
 to wash away the blood and quench our thirst. 
 
 Thus recruited and refreshed, we began to consider which 
 way we should turn and what we were to do. We did not 
 dare to go back to the camp where we had slept ; indeed, we 
 were very doubtful whether we were able to do so, for the 
 morning had been dark, and we had fled with heedless haste, 
 taking very little note of our direction. Our island retreat was 
 at the distance of some seven or eight days’ journey ; and as 
 we had travelled in the night, and not always in precisely 
 the same direction, it would be no very easy matter to find 
 our way back again. However, Thomas prided himself 
 upon his woodmanship, and though he had not observed the 
 course of our journey quite so closely as he could have 
 wished, he still thought that he might succeed in finding the 
 way back. 
 
 But his wounds were too recent, and he felt too weak, to 
 think of starting off immediately. Besides, it was already 
 broad daylight, and we had the best of reasons for travelling 
 
192 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 only by night. So we sought out a thicket, in which we 
 concealed ourselves till nightfall. 
 
 As the evening came on, Thomas declared that he felt much 
 better and stronger, and we resolved to set out at once on our 
 return. In the first place, however, we determined to make an 
 attempt to find the camp of the preceding night, in hopes that 
 some of our companions might have escaped as well as our- 
 selves, and that by some good-luck we might chance to fall in 
 with them. 
 
 After wandering about for some time, at length we found 
 the camp. Two dead bodies, stiff and bloody, lay by the 
 extinguished embers of the fire. They seemed to have been 
 shot dead as they slept, and scarcely to have moved a limb. 
 The bushes about were stained and spattered with blood ; and 
 by the moonlight we tracked the bloody flight of one of our 
 luckless companions for a considerable distance. This must 
 have been our sentinel, who had probably dropped asleep, and 
 thus exposed us to be surprised. 
 
 Perhaps he might be lurking somewhere in the bushes, 
 wounded and helpless. This thought emboldened us. We 
 shouted and called aloud ; but our voices echoed through the 
 woods, and died away unanswered. We returned again to the 
 camp, and gazed once more upon the distorted faces of our 
 dead companions. We could not bear to leave them 
 unburied. I hastily scraped a shallow trench, and there we 
 placed them. We dropped a tear upon their grave, and sad, 
 dismayed, dejected, we set out upon our long, weary, and 
 uncertain journey. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 We travelled slowly all that night, and soon after the morning 
 dawn we concealed ourselves again, and lay down to sleep. 
 Thomas’s wounds were much better, and seemed disposed to 
 heal. The hurt in his side was far less dangerous than we had 
 at first supposed ] and as the pain had subsided, he was now 
 able to sleep. 
 
 We slept well enough, but awoke weak and faint for want of 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 193 
 
 food ; for it was now some twenty-four hours since we had 
 tasted any. The sun was not yet down ; yet we resolved to 
 set out immediately, in hopes that daylight might point out to 
 us something with which to satisfy our hunger. 
 
 After travelling a considerable distance through the woods, 
 just as the sun was setting, we struck into a road. This road 
 we determined to follow, in hopes that it might presently lead 
 us into the neighbourhood of some farm-house, near which we 
 might light upon something eatable. It was an unlucky 
 resolve ; for we had not gone above half-a-mile, when, just 
 upon the crest of a short hill, we suddenly came upon three 
 travellers on horseback, whom the undulations of the road had 
 concealed from us till we were within a few yards of each 
 other. 
 
 Both parties were mutually surprised. The travellers 
 reined up their horses and eyed us sharply. Our appearance 
 might well attract attention. Our clothes — such as we had — 
 were torn and ragged. Instead of shoes we wore a kind of 
 high moccasins, made of untanned ox-hide ; we had caps of 
 the same material ; and the dresses of both of us, especially of 
 Thomas, were spattered and stained with blood. 
 
 They took me for a freeman, and one of them called out, 
 “ Hallo, stranger, who are you, and where are you going? and 
 whose fellow is that you have along ? ” 
 
 I did my best to take advantage of my colour, and to seem 
 what they took me for. But this I soon found would not 
 avail ; for though apparently at first they did not suspect that 
 I was a slave, yet our appearance was so strange that they 
 questioned me very closely. As I had no definite idea where 
 we were, and was totally unacquainted with the neighbour- 
 hood, I was not at all able to hit upon appropriate answers to 
 the numerous questions they put me ; and my statements 
 soon grew confused and contradictory. This served to excite 
 their suspicions ; and while I was attending to the questions 
 of the one who acted as chief spokesman, another of the com- 
 pany suddenly sprang from his horse, and seizing me by the 
 collar, swore that I was either a runaway or a negro-stealer. 
 The other two jumped down in a moment ; and while one of 
 them caught me by the arm the other attempted to seize 
 Thomas. 
 
 He eluded this attempt and turned to run. He had gone 
 but a little distance when, looking back and seeing me on the 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ground, he forgot at once his wounds, his weakness, and his 
 own danger. He grasped his staff and rushed to my rescue 
 They had throttled me till I was powerless, and almost 
 insensible ; and while one of them still held me to the ground, 
 the other stood up to meet Thomas, who, as he turned short 
 round, had struck his pursuer to the earth, and now came on to 
 my relief, with his staff uplifted. His new antagonist was both 
 strong and active. He succeeded in avoiding the stroke of 
 Thomas’s cudgel, and immediately closed with him. Thomas 
 had but little use of one arm; and his strength was much 
 reduced by loss of blood and long fasting ; but he struggled 
 hard, and was already getting the upper hand, when the fellow 
 whom he had knocked down at the commencement of the 
 fight regained his senses and came to the assistance of his 
 companion. Both together they were too much for him ; and 
 they soon got him down and bound his hands. They did the 
 same with me ; and one of them having produced a piece of 
 rope from his saddle-bags, they made halters of it, which they 
 put about our necks, and by the application of their whips they 
 compelled us to keep up with their horses. 
 
 In about half-an-hour we came to a mean and forlorn- 
 looking cabin by the roadside. It appeared to be a sort of 
 inn or tavern, and here we were to lodge. The only persons 
 about the house seemed to be the landlady herself and her 
 little daughter, some ten or twelve years old. The whole 
 appearance of the place bore evident marks of discomfort and 
 poverty. Our captors had no sooner provided for their 
 horses than they called for chains ; trace-chains, they said, or, 
 in fact, anything in the shape of a chain would answer their 
 purpose. But much to their disappointment the landlady 
 declared that she had nothing of the sort. However, she 
 procured some old rope, and having secured us as effectually 
 as they could, they made us sit down in the passage. 
 
 The landlady told them that in all probability we were run- 
 aways, for the neighbourhood had lately been much troubled 
 by them. A company of five or six men, she said, had gone 
 out two or three nights since on purpose to hunt up the 
 rascals, and had unexpectedly come upon quite a party, asleep 
 in the woods around a fire. 
 
 The gang seemed too large to be easily taken, but it was 
 resolved that the fellows should not escape, especially as the 
 man whose slaves they were supposed to be, and who was one 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 *95 
 
 of the party, openly declared that he had rather they were all 
 shot than to have them wandering about the country, useless 
 to him and mischievous to his neighbours. 
 
 The company separated, and each man approached from a 
 different point. Upon a given signal all fired, and then, 
 putting spurs to their horses, they rode off and returned home 
 each by himself. Nobody had stopped to see what execution 
 was done, but as the men were all good shots, it was supposed 
 that most of the runaways were either killed or desperately 
 wounded ; and as our clothes were bloody and one of us was 
 hurt, she thought it likely, she said, that we belonged to that 
 same gang. 
 
 It appeared in the course of the conversation between the 
 landlady and her guests that the murderous kind of attack to 
 which our companions had fallen victims, but which had been 
 intended for another party of runaways, is an operation 
 occasionally practised in Lower Carolina, when a party of 
 slave-hunters falls in with a gang of fugitive slaves too large 
 to be easily arrested. 
 
 The dispersion of the attacking party, and each one shooting 
 and returning by himself, is only the effect of an ancient and 
 traditionary prejudice. By the law . of Carolina, the killing of 
 a slave is regarded as murder ; and though, probably, this law 
 was never enforced, and would doubtless be treated by a jury 
 of modern slaveholders as an old-fashioned and fanatical 
 absurdity, there still linger in the breasts of the people some 
 remains of horror at the idea of deliberate bloodshed, and a 
 sort of superstitious apprehension of the possible enforcement 
 of this antiquated law. To blindfold their own consciences, 
 and to avoid the possibility of a judicial investigation, each 
 man of an attacking party takes care to see none of the others 
 when they fire ; and no one goes to the place to ascertain how 
 many have been killed or disabled. The poor wretches who 
 are not so fortunate as to be shot dead upon the spot are left 
 to lingering torments of thirst, fever, starvation, and festering 
 wounds ; and when at length they die, their skeletons lie 
 bleaching in the Carolina sun, proud proofs of slave-holding 
 civilisation and humanity. 
 
 While our captors were at supper, the little girl, the land- 
 lady’s daughter, came to look at us, as we lay in the passage. 
 She was a pretty child, and her soft blue eyes filled with tears 
 as she looked upon us. I asked her for water. She ran to get 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 196 
 
 it for us, and inquired if we did not want something to eat. I 
 told her that we were half dead with hunger ; and she no 
 sooner heard it than she hastened away, and soon returned 
 with a large cake of bread. 
 
 Our arms were bound so tight that we were utterly helpless, 
 and the little girl broke the bread, and fed us with her own 
 hand. 
 
 Is not this one instance enough to prove that nature never 
 intended man to be a tyrant ? Avarice, a blind lust of 
 domination, the false but specious suggestions of ignorance 
 and passion, combine to make him so ; and pity at length is 
 banished from his soul. It then seeks refuge in the woman’s 
 heart; and when the progress of oppression drives it even 
 thence, as sad and hesitating, it prepares to wing its way to 
 heaven, still it lurks and lingers in the bosom of the child ! 
 
 By listening closely to the conversation of the travellers — 
 for by this time the landlady had produced a jug of whiskey, 
 and they had become very communicative — we learned that 
 we were within a few miles of the town of Camden, and on 
 the great northern road leading from that town to North 
 Carolina. Our captors, it seemed, were from the upper 
 country. They had not passed through Camden, but had 
 struck into this road very near the place where they met us. 
 They were travelling into Virginia to purchase slaves. 
 
 After discussing the question at considerable length, they 
 concluded to delay their journey for a day or two, and to take 
 us to Camden, in hopes to find our owner, and obtain a 
 reward for apprehending us; or if nobody should claim us 
 immediately, they could lodge us in gaol, advertise us in the 
 newspapers, and give further attention to the business upon 
 their return. 
 
 By this time the whiskey-jug was emptied, and the travellers 
 made preparations for sleeping. There were but two rooms in 
 the house. The landlady and her daughter had one, and 
 some beds were prepared for the guests in the other. We 
 were carried into their room, and after again lamenting that 
 the landlady could not furnish them with chains, they carefully 
 examined and re-tightened the ropes with which we were 
 bound, and then undressed and threw themselves upon their 
 beds. They were probably fatigued with their journey, and the 
 whiskey increased their drowsy inclination, so that before long 
 they all gave evident tokens of being in a sound slumber. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 19; 
 
 I envied them that happiness, for the tightness of my bonds 
 and the uneasy position in which I was obliged to lie prevented 
 me from sleeping. The moonbeams shone in at the window, 
 and made every object distinctly visible. Thomas and myself 
 were lamenting in whispers our wretched condition, and con- 
 sulting hopelessly together, when we saw the door of the room 
 cautiously and silently opening. In a moment the landlady’s 
 little daughter made her appearance. She came towards us 
 with noiseless steps, and one hand raised, as if motioning to us 
 to be silent. In the other she held a knife, and, stooping 
 down, she hastily cut the cords by which we were bound. 
 
 We did not dare to speak, but our hearts beat hard, and I 
 am sure our looks expressed the gratitude we felt. We gained 
 our feet with as little noise as possible, and were stealing 
 towards the door, when a new thought struck Thomas. He 
 laid his hand upon my shoulder to draw my attention, and 
 then began to pick up the coat, shoes, and other clothes of one 
 of our captors. At once I understood his intention, and 
 imitated his example. The little girl seemed astonished and 
 displeased at this proceeding, and motioned to us to desist ; 
 but without seeming to understand her gestures, we gained the 
 door with the clothes in our hands, and passing out 01 the 
 passage, we walked slowly and cautiously for some distance, 
 taking good heed, lest the sound of our footsteps might give 
 an alarm. In the meantime the little girl patted the house-dog 
 on the head and kept him quiet. When we had gained a 
 sufficient distance we started upon a run, which we did not 
 give over till we were fairly out of breath. 
 
 As soon as we had recovered ourselves a little, we stripped 
 off our ragged dresses, and hid them in the bushes. Luckily 
 the clothes which we had brought off in our flight fitted us 
 very tolerably, and gave us a much more respectable and less 
 suspicious appearance. We now went on for two or three 
 miles, till we came to a road that crossed the one upon which 
 we were travelling, and ran off towards the south. 
 
 In all this time Thomas had said nothing; nor did he 
 scarcely seem to notice my remarks, or to hear the questions 
 which from time to time I put to him. When we came to the 
 cross-road he suddenly stopped, and took me by the arm. I 
 supposed that he was going to consult with me as to the course 
 which we should take, and great was my surprise to hear him 
 say, “Archy, here I leave you.” 
 
198 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 I could not imagine what he intended, and I looked at him 
 for an explanation. 
 
 “You are now,” he said, “on the road to the north. You 
 have good clothes, and as much learning as an overseer. You 
 can readily pass for a freeman. It will be very easy for you to 
 get away to those free states of which I have heard you speak 
 so often. If I go with you, we shall both be stopped and 
 questioned. We shall be pursued, and if we keep together, 
 and follow this road, we shall certainly be taken. It is a great 
 way to the free states, and I have little chance and no hope of 
 ever getting there, and if I did, what should I gain by it ? I 
 will try the woods again, and do as I can. I shall be able to 
 get back to our old place ; but you, Archy, you can do better. 
 You are sure of getting away to the north. Go, my boy; go, 
 and God bless you ! ” 
 
 I was deeply moved, and it was some time before I was able 
 to reply. The thoughts of escaping from my present situation 
 of danger and misery, to a land where I could bear the name 
 and enjoy the rights of a freeman, flashed upon my mind with 
 a radiant and dazzling brightness that seemed almost to blot 
 out every other feeling. Yet still my love for Thomas, and the 
 gratitude I owed him, glimmered through these new hopes, 
 and a low voice from the very centre of my heart bade me not 
 to desert my friend. After too long a pause, and too much 
 hesitation, I began to answer him. I spoke of his wounds, of 
 our sworn friendship, and of the risk he had so lately run in 
 my behalf, and insisted that I would stay w r ith him to the 
 last. 
 
 I spoke, I fear, with too little of zeal and earnestness. At 
 least, all that I said only seemed to confirm Thomas in his 
 determination. He replied that his wounds were healing, and 
 that he was already almost as strong as ever. He added that 
 if I stayed with him I might do myself much harm, without 
 the chance of doing him any good. He pointed along the 
 road, and in an energetic and commanding voice he bade 
 me to follow it, while he should take the cross-road towards 
 the south. 
 
 When Thomas had once made up his mind, there was a 
 firmness in the tone with which he spoke sufficient often to 
 overawe the most unwilling. At the present moment I was 
 but too ready to be prevailed upon. He saw his advantage, 
 and pursued it. “Go, Archy,” he repeated, “go — if not for 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. igg 
 
 your own sake, go for mine. If you stay with me, and are 
 taken, I shall never forgive you for it.” 
 
 Little by little, my better feelings yielded, and at last I 
 consented to the separation. I took Thomas by the hand, and 
 pressed him to my heart. A nobler spirit never breathed — I 
 was not worthy to call myself his friend. 
 
 “ God bless you, Archy,” he said, as he left me. I stood 
 watching him as he walked rapidly away, and as I looked I 
 was ready to sink into the earth with shame and mortification. 
 Once or twice I was just starting to follow him, but selfish 
 prudence prevailed, and I held back. I watched him till he 
 was out of sight, and then resumed my journey. It was a base 
 desertion, which not even the love of liberty could excuse. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 I walked on as fast as I was able, till after daylight, without 
 meeting a single individual, or passing more than two or three 
 mean and lonely houses. Just as the sun was rising I gained 
 the top of a considerable hill. Here there was a small house 
 by the road-side, and a horse saddled and bridled was tied to a 
 tree near by. The animal was sleek, and in good condition, 
 and from the cut of the saddle-bags, I took him to belong to 
 some doctor, who had come thus early to visit a patient. It 
 was a tempting opportunity. I looked cautiously this way and 
 that, and seeing nobody, I unfastened the horse, and jumped 
 into the saddle. I walked him a little distance, but presently 
 put him into a gallop, that soon carried me out of sight of the 
 house. 
 
 This was a very lucky acquisition ; for as I was upon the 
 same road which the travellers from whom I had escaped 
 would follow, as soon as they resumed their journey, I was in 
 manifest danger of being overtaken and recognised. As I 
 found that my horse had both spirit and bottom, I put him to 
 his speed, and went forward at a rapid rate. My good-luck 
 did not end here ; for happening to put my hand into the 
 pocket of my new coat, I drew out a pocket-book, which, 
 beside a parcel of musty papers, I found on examining a little 
 
200 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 to contain quite a pretty sum of money in bank-notes. This 
 discovery gave a new impulse to my spirits, which were high 
 enough before, and I pushed on all day without stopping, 
 except now and then to rest my horse in the shade of a tree. 
 
 Towards evening I got a supper, and corn for my horse, at 
 a little hedge tavern ; and waiting till the moon rose, I set out 
 again. By morning my horse was completely broken down, 
 and gave out entirely. Thankful for his services thus far — for, 
 according to my reckoning, he had carried me upwards of a 
 hundred miles in the twenty-four hours — I stripped off his 
 saddle and bridle, and turned him into a wheat-field to refresh 
 himself. I now pursued my journey on foot ; for I feared if I 
 kept the horse, the possession of him might perhaps get me 
 into difficulty; and, in fact, he was so jaded and worn out that 
 he would be of very little use to me. I had got a good start 
 upon the travellers, and I did not doubt that I could get on as 
 fast upon foot as they would on horseback. 
 
 Before sunset I arrived at a considerable village. Here I 
 indulged myself in a hearty meal and a good night’s sleep. 
 Both were needed; for, what with watching, fasting, and 
 fatigue, I was quite worn out. I slept some ten hours, and 
 awoke with new vigour. I now resumed my journey, which I 
 pursued without much fear of interruption ; though I judged it 
 prudent to stop but seldom, and to push forward as rapidly 
 as possible. I kept on through North Carolina and Virginia ; 
 crossed the Potomac into Maryland ; and avoiding Baltimore, 
 I passed on into Pennsylvania, and congratulated myself that 
 at last I trod a soil cultivated by freemen. 
 
 I had gone but a few miles before I perceived the difference. 
 In fact, I had scarcely passed the slave-holding border before 
 the change became apparent. The spring was just opening, 
 and everything was beginning to look fresh, green, and beauti- 
 ful. The nicely cultivated fields, the numerous small 
 enclosures, the neat and substantial farm-houses, thickly 
 scattered along the way, the pretty villages and busy towns, the 
 very roads themselves, which were covered with waggons and 
 travellers — all these signs of universal thrift and comfort gave 
 abundant evidence that at length I saw a country where labour 
 was honourable, and where everyone laboured for himself. It 
 was an exhilarating and delightful prospect, and in strong 
 contrast with all I had seen in the former part of my journey, 
 in which a wretched and lonely road had led me on through a 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 201 
 
 vast monotonous extent of unprofitable woods, deserted fields 
 grown over with broomsedge and mullen, or fields just ready 
 to be deserted, gullied, barren, and with all the evidences upon 
 them of a negligent, unwilling, and unthrifty cultivation. Here 
 and there I had passed a mean and comfortless house ; and 
 once in fifty miles a decaying, poverty-stricken village, with a 
 court-house, and a store or two, and a great crowd of idlers 
 collected about a tavern-door, but without one single sign of 
 industry or improvement. 
 
 I was desirous of seeing Philadelphia ; but that city, so near 
 the slave-holding border, I feared might be infected with 
 something of the slave-holding spirit; for the worst plagues 
 are the most apt to be contagious. I passed by without 
 passing through it, and hastened on to New York. I crossed 
 the noble Hudson, and entered the town. It was the first city 
 I had ever seen ; at least, the first one worthy to be called a 
 city ; and when I beheld the spacious harbour crowded with 
 shipping, the long lines of warehouses, the numerous streets, 
 the splendid shops, and the swarming crowds of busy people, 
 
 I was astonished and delighted with the new idea which all 
 this gave to me of the resources of human art and industry. 
 I had heard of such things before, but to feel one ought to see. 
 
 I did nothing for several days but wander up and down the 
 streets, looking, gazing, and examining with an almost 
 insatiable curiosity. New York then was far inferior to what 
 it must by this time have become ; and the commercial 
 restrictions which then prevailed must have tended to diminish 
 its business and its bustle. Yet, to my rustic inexperience, 
 the city seemed almost interminable ; and the rattling of the 
 drays and carriages over the pavements, and the crowds of 
 people in the streets, far exceeded all my previous notions of 
 the busy confusion of a city. 
 
 I had now been in New York about a week, and was 
 standing one forenoon by a triangular grass-plot, near the 
 centre of the town, gazing at a fine building of white marble, 
 which one of the passers-by told me was the City Hall, when 
 suddenly I felt my arm rudely seized. I looked round, and 
 with horror and dismay I found myself in the gripe of 
 General Carter — the man who in South Carolina had called 
 himself my master— but who, in a country that prided itself in 
 the. title of a “ free state,” ought no longer to have had any 
 claim upon me. 
 
262 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Let no one be deceived by the false and boastful title which 
 ' the northern states of the American Union have thought fit to 
 assume. With what justice can they pretend to call themselves 
 free states, after having made a bargain with the slave-holders, 
 by which they are bound to deliver back again into the hands 
 of the oppressors every miserable fugitive who takes refuge 
 within their territory ? The good people of the free states 
 have no slaves themselves. Oh, no ! Slave-holding, they 
 confess, is a horrible enormity. They hold no slaves them- 
 selves ; they only act as bum-bailiffs and tipstaves to the 
 slave-holders ! 
 
 My master — for so even in the free city of New York I must 
 continue to call him — had seized me by one arm, and a friend 
 of his held me by the other. He called me by name ; and in 
 the hurry and confusion of this sudden surprise I forgot for a 
 moment how impolitic it was for me to appear to know him. 
 
 A crowd began to collect about us. When they heard that I 
 was seized as a fugitive slave some of them appeared not a 
 little outraged at the idea that a white man should be subject 
 to such an indignity. They seemed to think that it was only 
 the black whom it was lawful to kidnap in that way. . Such 
 indeed is the untiring artfulness of tyranny that it is ever f 
 nestling even in the bosoms of the free ; and there is not one 
 prejudice, the offspring, as all prejudices are, of ignorance and 
 self-conceit, of which it has not well learned how to avail itself. 
 
 Though several of the crowd did not scruple to use very 
 strong expressions, they made no attempt to rescue me ; and I 
 was dragged along towards that very City Hall which I had 
 just been admiring. I was carried before the sitting magistrate; 
 some questions were put and answered ; some oaths were 
 sworn, and papers written. I had not yet recovered from the 
 first confusion of my seizure; and this array of courts and 
 constables was a horrid sort of danger to which I was totally 
 unaccustomed, so that I scarcely know what was said or done. 
 But, to the best of my recollection, the magistrate declined 
 acting on the question ; though he consented to grant a 
 warrant for detaining me in prison till I could be taken before 
 some other tribunal. 
 
 The warrant was made out, and I was delivered ov.er to an 
 officer. The court-room was filled with the crowd, who had 
 followed us from the street. They collected close about us as 
 we left the court-room ; and I could see by the expression of 
 
 \ 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. io$ 
 
 their faces, and the words which some of them dropped, that 
 they were very well inclined to favour my escape. At first I 
 seemed all submission to the officer^ we had gone, however, but 
 a veiy few steps when, with a sudden spring, I tore myself from 
 his grasp, and darted among the crowd, which opened to give 
 me a passage. I heard noise, confusion, and shouts behind 
 me ; but in a moment I had cleared the inclosure in which 
 the City Hall stood, and crossing one of the streets by which 
 it was bounded, I dashed down a narrow and crooked lane. 
 The people stared at me as I ran, and some shouted, “ Stop, 
 thief ! ” One or two seemed half inclined to seize me, but I 
 turned one short corner, and then another, and finding that 
 I was not pursued, I soon dropped into a walk. 
 
 For this escape I return my thanks, not to the laws of New 
 York, but to the good-will of her citizens. The secret bias 
 and selfish interest of the law-makers often leads them wrong j 
 the unprompted and disinterested impulses of the people are 
 almost always right. It is true that the artful practice and 
 cunning instigation of the purchased friends and bribed 
 advocates of oppression, joined to the interest which the 
 thieves and pickpockets of a great city always have in civil 
 tumult and confusion, may now and then succeed in exciting 
 the young, the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the depraved to 
 acts of violence in favour of tyranny. But so congenial to the 
 human heart is the love of freedom, that it burns not brighter 
 in the souls of sages and of heroes than in the bosoms even of 
 the most, ignorant and thoughtless, when not quenched by 
 some excited prejudice, base passion, or sinister influence. 
 
 In my previous wanderings about the town I had discovered 
 the road that led northwardly out of it j and I soon turned in 
 that direction, determined to shake off from my feet the very 
 dust of a city where I had been so near falling back again into 
 the wretched condition of servitude. 
 
 I travelled all that day, and at night the innkeeper at whose 
 house I lodged told me that I was in the state of Connecticut. 
 
 I now pursued my flight for several days through a fine hilly 
 and mountainous country, such as I had never seen before. 
 
 1 he nobleness of the prospect, the craggy rocks and rugged 
 hills, contrasted finely with the excellent cultivation of the 
 valleys and the universal thrift a'nd industry of the inhabi- 
 tants. Where freedom nerves the arm, it is in vain that 
 rocks and hills of granite oppose the labours of the cultivator. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 204 
 
 Industrious liberty teaches him the art to extract, comfort, 
 competence, and wealth from a soil the most unwilling and 
 ungrateful. 
 
 I knew that Boston was the great sea-port of New England ; 
 and thither I directed my steps, resolved to leave a land, 
 however otherwise inviting, whose laws would not acknowledge 
 me a freeman. As I approached the town, the country lost 
 much of its picturesque and hilly grandeur ; but this was made 
 up for by the greater beauty of its smoother and better 
 cultivated fields ; and by the pretty dwellings scattered so 
 numerously along the road, that the environs of the town 
 seemed almost a continued village. The city itself, seated on 
 hills, and seen for a considerable distance, gave a noble 
 termination to the prospect. 
 
 I crossed a broad river, by a long bridge, and soon entered 
 the town ; but I did not stop to examine it. Liberty was too 
 precious to be sacrificed to the gratification of an idle 
 curiosity; a New York mob had set me free; a Boston mob 
 might perhaps delight in the opportunity of restoring me to 
 servitude. I found my way, as soon as the crooked and 
 irregular streets would allow me, to the wharves. Many of the 
 ships were stripped and rotting in the docks ; but after some 
 search and inquiry, I found a vessel about to sail for Bordeaux. 
 I offered myself as a sailor. The captain questioned me, and 
 laughed heartily at my land-lubberly air and rustic ignorance ; 
 but, finally, he agreed to take me at half wages. He advanced 
 me a month’s pay ; and the second mate, who was a fine young 
 fellow, and who seemed to feel for my lonely and helpless 
 ignorance, assisted me in buying such clothes as would be 
 necessary for the voyage. 
 
 In a few days our cargo was completed, and the ship was 
 ready for sea. We dropped off from the wharf, threaded our 
 course among the numerous islets and headlands of Boston 
 harbour, passed the castle and the lighthouse, sent off our 
 pilot, and with all sail set and a smacking breeze we left the 
 town behind. 
 
 As I stood upon the forecastle, and looked towards the land, 
 which soon seemed but a little streak in the horizon, and was 
 fast sinking from our sight, I seemed to feel a heavy weight 
 drop off me. The chains were gone. I felt myself a freeman ; 
 and as I watched the fast-receding shore, my bosom heaved 
 with a proud scorn — a mingled feeling of safety and disdain. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 205 
 
 “ Farewell, my country ! ” such were the thoughts that 
 rose upon my mind, and pressed to find an utterance from 
 my lips. “ And such a country ! A land boasting to be 
 the chosen seat of liberty and equal rights, yet holding such a 
 portion of her people in hopeless, helpless, miserable bondage ! 
 
 “ Farewell, my country ! Much is the gratitude and thanks 
 I owe thee ! Land of the tyrant and the slave, farewell ! 
 
 “ And welcome, welcome, ye bounding billows and foamy 
 surges of the ocean ! Ye are the emblems and the children of 
 liberty — I hail ye as my brothers ! for, at last, I, too, am free ! 
 — free ! — free ! ” 
 
 CHAPTER XXXY. 
 
 The favourable breezes with which we had set out did not 
 last long. The weather soon became tempestuous, and we 
 were involved in fogs, and driven about by contrary winds. 
 Our labours and hardships were very great ; but still I found 
 a sort of pleasure in them. It was for myself that I toiled 
 and suffered ; and that thought gave me strength and vigour. 
 
 I applied myself with the greatest zeal and good-will to learn 
 the business of my profession. At first my companions 
 laughed at my ignorance and awkwardness, and were full of 
 their jokes and tricks upon me. But though rude and 
 thoughtless, they were generous and good-natured. In the 
 very first week of our voyage I had a fair fight with the bully 
 of the ship. I whipped him soundly ; and the crew all agreed 
 that there was something in me. 
 
 I was strong and active ; and as I made it a point to imitate 
 whatever I saw done by any of the crew, I was surprised to 
 find in how short a time I was able to run over the rigging and 
 venture upon the yards. The maze of ropes and sea-terms 
 that at first perplexed me soon grew clear. Before we were 
 across the ocean I could hand, reef, and steer with any man 
 on board ; and the crew swore with one consent that I was 
 born to be a sailor. 
 
 But I was not satisfied with setting sails and handling ropes. 
 I wished to understand the art of navigation. One of our 
 crew was a young man of good education, who served before 
 
20 6 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 the mast, as is common with New Englanders, in expectation 
 of presently commanding a ship himself. He had his books 
 and his instruments ; and as he had already been one or two 
 voyages, he understood pretty well how to apply them, and 
 used to keep a reckoning of the /Ship’s course. This same 
 young sailor, Tom Turner by name, was a fine, free-hearted 
 fellow as ever lived ; but he was of slight make, and his 
 strength was not equal to his spirit. I had gained his good- 
 will by standing by him in some of our forecastle frolics ; and 
 seeing how anxious I was to learn, he undertook to be my 
 instructor. He put his Navigator into my hand, and whenever 
 it was my watch below, I was constantly poring over it. At 
 first the whole matter seemed mighty mysterious. It was 
 some time before I could see into it. But Tom, who had a 
 fluent tongue, lectured and explained ; and I listened and 
 studied ; and presently I began to understand it. 
 
 All this time we were beating about in the neighbourhood of 
 the banks of Newfoundland ; and as we experienced a constant 
 succession of storms and contrary winds, we made but little 
 progress. We lost a couple of topsails and several of our 
 spars, and had been out some seventy days in very rough 
 weather. 
 
 I took it all kindly, though; I was in no hurry to get ashore. 
 I had chosen the ocean for my country ; and when the winds 
 roared, the rigging rattled, and the timbers creaked, I only 
 wrapped my monkey-jacket a little closer, braced myself against 
 my sea-chest, and studied my Navigator — that is, if it 
 happened to be my watch below ; for when upon deck, I was 
 always ready at the first call, and was the first to spring into the 
 rigging. 
 
 At last the weather moderated, and 'we made sail for the 
 coast of France. We had made the land, and were within 
 a few leagues of our harbour, when an armed brig, with the 
 British colours flying, bore down upon us, fired a shot ahead, 
 and sent a boat’s crew on board. 
 
 In those days American vessels were quite accustomed 
 to such sort of visitations ; and our captain did not seem to be 
 much alarmed. But no sooner had the boat’s officer reached 
 our deck than, laying his hand upon his sword, he told the 
 captain that he was a prisoner. 
 
 It seemed that while we were beating about on the Grand 
 Bank, America, at last, had screwed up her courage, and had 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 20 ; 
 
 declared war. against England. The armed brig was a British 
 privateer, and we were her prize. At first we were all ordered 
 below ; but presently we were called up again, and offered the 
 choice of enlisting on board the privateer, or being carried 
 prisoners into England. Near half our crew were what the 
 sailors call Dutchmen, that is, people from the North Sea, or 
 the coasts of the Baltic. These adventurers readily enlisted. 
 Tom Turner was spokesman for the Americans ; and when 
 called upon to follow this example, he answered the lieutenant, 
 in a tone so gruff as to be little better than a growl, “ We’ll 
 see you hanged first ! ” 
 
 For myself, I felt no patriotic scruples. I had renounced 
 my country ; if indeed that place can be fitly called one’s 
 country which, while it gives him birth, cuts him off, by its 
 wicked and unjust laws, from everything that makes life worth 
 having. Despite the murmurs and hisses of my companions, 
 I stepped forward, and put my name to the shipping paper. 
 Had they known my history they would not have blamed me. 
 
 After cruising for some time, without success, we returned 
 to Liverpool to refit. Our crew was recruited, and \ye soon 
 put to sea again. Cruising off the coast of France, we took 
 several prizes, but none of very great value. We now made 
 sail for the West Indies, and in the neighbourhood of the 
 Bermudas, while close hauled to the wind and under easy sail, 
 we discovered a vessel ahead, and gave chase. 
 
 The chase slackened sail, and waited for us to come up. 
 This made us suppose that it might be a man-of-war ; and as 
 we were more anxious for plunder than for fighting, we put up 
 the helm and bore away. 
 
 The chase now made sail in pursuit; and as she proved to 
 be much the better sailor, she gained rapidly upon us. 
 
 When we saw that there was no chance of escaping, we took 
 in our light canvas, brought the .vessel to, ran up the British 
 flag, and cleared for action. 
 
 The enemy was an armed and fast-sailing schooner — an 
 American privateer, as it proved, about a fair match for the 
 brig, in point of size and armament, but in much finer trim, 
 and most beautifully worked. She ran down upon us ; her 
 crew gave three cheers, and shooting across our bows, she 
 gave us a broadside that did much execution. She tacked and 
 manoeuvred till she gained a favourable position, and then 
 poured in her fire with such steadiness that she seemed all 
 

 208 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ablaze. Her guns were well shotted, and well aimed, and did 
 serious damage. Our captain and first lieutenant were soon 
 wounded and disabled. We paid back the enemy as well as 
 we could ; but our men dropped fast, and our fire began to 
 slacken. The schooner’s bowsprit got fast in our main 
 rigging, and directly we heard the cry for the boarders. We 
 seized our pikes, and prepared to receive them ; but a party of 
 the enemy soon got a footing on board the brig, wounded the 
 only officer on deck, and drove our men, frightened and 
 confused, towards the forecastle. 
 
 I saw our danger, and the idea of falling again into the 
 hands of the tyrants from whom I had escaped summoned 
 back my ebbing courage. I seemed to feel a more than 
 human energy spring up within me. I put myself at the head 
 of our yielding and dispirited crew, and fought with all the 
 frantic valour of a mad hero of romance. I struck down two 
 or three of the foremost of the enemy ; and as they quailed 
 and shrunk before me, I cheered and encouraged my 
 companions, and called on them to charge. My example 
 seemed to inspire them. They rallied at once, and rushed 
 forward with new courage. They drove the enemy before 
 them • tumbled some into the sea, and pressed the others back 
 into their own vessel. 
 
 Nor did our success stop here. We boarded in our turn ; 
 and the decks of the schooner saw as bloody a battle as had 
 been fought on those of the brig. The fortune of the fight 
 still ran in our favour, and we soon drove the enemy to take 
 refuge on the quarter-deck. We called to them to surrender, 
 but their captain, waving his bloody sword, sternly refused. 
 He encouraged his men to charge once more, and rushed 
 furiously upon us. His cutlass clashed against my pike and 
 flew from his hand. He slipped, and fell upon the deck, and 
 in a moment my weapon was at his breast. 
 
 He cried for quarter. I thought I knew his face. 
 
 “ Your name?” 
 
 “ Osborne ! ” 
 
 « Jonathan Osborne, late commander of the Two Sallys ? ” 
 
 “ The same ! ” 
 
 « Then die — a wretch like you deserves no mercy ! ” and as 
 I spoke I plunged the weapon to his heart, and felt thrilling to 
 the very elbow-joint the pleasurable sense of doing justice on 
 a tyrant 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 2og 
 
 But justice ought never to be sullied by passion, and, if 
 possible, should be unstained with blood. If in my feelings, 
 at that moment, there was something noble, there was far too 
 much of savage fury and passionate revenge. Yet, from what 
 I then felt, I can well understand the fierce spirit and ferocious 
 energy of the slave who vindicates his liberty at the sword’s 
 point, and who looks upon the slaughter of his oppressors 
 almost as a debt due to humanity. 
 
 The crew no sooner saw their captain slain than they threw 
 down their arms and cried for quarter. The schooner was 
 ours, and a finer vessel never sailed the seas. 
 
 Every officer on board the brig was wounded. All con- 
 fessed that the capture of the prize was, in a great measure, 
 due to me ; and, with the approbation of all the crew, I 
 was put on board as prize-master. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 We had a short passage to Liverpool. The schooner was 
 condemned as a prize, and was bought in by the owners of the 
 brig. They fitted her out as a privateer ; and as they had been 
 informed how large a share I had in her capture, they offered 
 me the command of her. I readily accepted it ; and having 
 selected an experienced old sailor for my first lieutenant, I 
 soon collected a crew and set sail. 
 
 The cruising ground which I preferred was the coast of 
 America. Off the harbour of Boston we were so lucky as to 
 fall in with and make prize of a homeward-bound East- 
 Indiaman, with a very valuable cargo of teas and silks. We 
 put a prize-crew on board and sent her off for Liverpool, where 
 she arrived safely, and produced us a very handsome sum in 
 prize-money. We now stood to the southward, and for a 
 month or two we cruised off the capes of Virginia. As we 
 kept well in to the coast we often made the land ; and I never 
 saw it without feeling a strong inclination to send a boat’s crew 
 ashore and to kidnap from their beds such of the nearest 
 planters as I could lay my hands upon. But I did not think 
 it prudent to attempt to carry into execution this piece of 
 
 i4 
 
210 THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 experimental instruction, of which the Virginians stand so 
 much in need. 
 
 My cruising adventures, chases, and escapes would nil a 
 volume ; but they are little to my present purpose. Suffice it 
 to say that while the war lasted I kept the seas, and when it 
 ended, most reluctantly I left them. My share in the prizes 
 we had taken rendered me wealthy — at least, what the modera- 
 tion of my wishes made me esteem so. But what was to 
 supply the ever-varying stimulus and excitement which till now 
 had sustained me and prevented my mind from preying on 
 itself, and poisoning my peace with bitter recollections ? 1 he 
 
 images of my wife, my child, and of the friend to whom I owed 
 so much, often, on my voyages, flitted mournfully across my 
 mind ; but the cry of “ Sail ahead ” would call off my thoughts 
 and dissipate my incipient melancholy in the bustle of action. 
 But now that I was on shore homeless, alone, a stranger, with 
 nothing to occupy my mind, the thoughts of those dear 
 sufferers haunted me continually. The very first thing I did 
 was to look up a trusty agent whom I might send in search of 
 them. Such a one I found. I gave him all the information 
 which might promote the object of his mission, I allowed him 
 an unlimited credit on my banker, and stimulated his zeal by a 
 handsome advance, and the promise of a still larger reward if 
 he succeeded in the object of his mission. 
 
 He sailed for America by the first opportunity, and I 
 consoled myself with the hope that his search would be 
 successful. In the meantime, to have some occupation that 
 might keep off anxious doubts and troublesome anxieties, I 
 applied myself to study. When a child I had a fondness for 
 reading and an ardent love of knowledge. This . love of 
 knowledge the accursed discipline of servitude had stifled and 
 kept under, but had not totally extinguished. I was astonished 
 to find it still so strong. Having once turned my attention 
 that way, my mind drank in all sorts of information, as the 
 thirsty earth imbibes the rain. I might rather be said to 
 devour books than to read them. I scarcely gave myself time 
 to sleep. No sooner had I finished one than I hurried to 
 another with restless inquietude. I read on without selection 
 or discrimination. It was a long time before I learned to 
 compare, to weigh, and to judge. It happened to me as it has 
 happened to mankind in general. In my anxiety to know,. I 
 was ready to take everything on trust ; and I did not stop to 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 21 1 
 
 distinguish between what was fact and what was fiction. But 
 while I allowed an abundance of folly and falsehood to be 
 palmed upon me under the sober disguise of truth, I had but 
 little taste for writers professedly imaginative. I could not 
 understand why they wrote, or what they aimed at. I despised 
 the poets ; but voyages, travels, histories, and narratives of 
 every sort, I devoured with undistinguishing voracity. Time 
 and reflection have since enabled me to extract something of 
 truth and philosophy from these chaotic acquisitions. 
 
 For a while my studies had much the same stimulating and 
 exciting effect with my former activity. They raised my 
 spirits, and enabled me to bear up under the discouraging 
 advices which I received from America. But they palled at 
 last ; and when my agent returned with the disastrous informa- 
 tion that all his searches had been unavailing, I found no 
 support under the load of grief that overwhelmed me. 
 
 From such information as my agent had been able to obtain, 
 it appeared that Mrs. Montgomery, Cassy’s mistress, had 
 become security to a large amount to that brother of hers, by 
 whose advice and agency she managed her affairs. That 
 brother was a planter, and among the American planters the 
 passion for gambling is next to universal, for it is one of the 
 few excitements by which they are able to relieve the listless 
 and wearisome indolence of their useless lives. Mrs. Mont- 
 gomery’s brother was a gambler, and an unsuccessful one. 
 Having ruined himself, he began to prey upon his sister. 
 Besides embezzling all such money of hers as he could lay his 
 hands upon — and as he had the entire management of her 
 affairs, her income was much at his disposal — he induced her, 
 under various pretences, to put her name to bonds and notes 
 to a large amount. On these notes and bonds suits were 
 commenced ; but this her brother, who strove to defer the 
 disclosure of his villainies as long as possible, took care to 
 conceal from her ; and the first thing she knew of the matter 
 her entire property was seized on execution. 
 
 Among her other chattels my wife and child were sold ; for 
 it is the law and practice of America to sell women and 
 children to pay the debts of a gambler ! 
 
 Cassy and her infant had fallen into the hands of a gentle- 
 man — such is the American phrase — who followed the lucra- 
 tive and respectable business of a slave-trader. My agent no 
 sooner learnt his name than he set out in pursuit of him. But 
 
212 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 he found that the man had been dead for a year or two, and 
 that he had left no papers behind him from which might be 
 traced the history of his slave-trading expeditions. Not yet 
 discouraged, my agent travelled over the entire route which he 
 was told the deceased slave-trader had usually followed. He 
 even succeeded in getting some trace of the very gang of slaves 
 which had been purchased at the sale of Mrs. Montgomery’s 
 property. He tracked them from village to village till he 
 arrived at Augusta, in the state of Georgia ; but here he lost 
 sight of them altogether. That town is, or was,, one of the 
 great marts of the American slave trade, and here, in all proba- 
 bility, the slaves were sold ; but to whom it was impossible to 
 discover. 
 
 Thus baffled in his search, my agent had recourse to adver- 
 tisements in the newspapers, in which the person of my wife 
 was particularly described, mention was made of the name of 
 her late owner, and a very generous reward was offered to any 
 one who would give information where she or her child was to 
 be found. These advertisements brought him an abundance 
 of communications, but none to the purpose, and after having 
 spent near two years in the search, he gave it up at last as 
 unavailing. 
 
 Of Thomas he could learn nothing, except that General 
 Carter had never retaken him. A man of his figure and 
 appearance had been occasionally seen traversing the woods of 
 that neighbourhood and lurking about the plantations, and it 
 seemed not unlikely that he was still alive, and the leader of 
 some band of runaways. Such was the information which my 
 agent brought me. 
 
 While he remained in America, however little encouragement 
 his letters gave, still I could hope ; but now the last staff of 
 consolation was plucked from under me. What availed it that 
 I had myself shaken off the chains, which were still hanging, 
 and perhaps with a weight so much the heavier, to the friend 
 of my heart, to the wife of my bosom, to the dear, dear infant, 
 the child of my love? The curse of tyranny, indeed, is multi- 
 fold — nay, infinite ! It blasted me across the broad Atlantic ; 
 and when I thought of Cassy and my boy I shrunk and 
 trembled as if again the irons were upon me and the bloody 
 lash cracking about my head ! Almighty God ! why hast thou 
 created beings capable of so much misery ! 
 
 I recovered slowly from the shock, which at first had quite 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 213 
 
 unmanned me ; but though I regained some degree of compo- 
 sure, it was in vain that I courted anything like enjoyment — a 
 worm was gnawing at my heart which would not be appeased. 
 Never was there a bosom more inclined than mine to the 
 gentle pleasures of domestic life ; but I found only torture in 
 the recollection that I was a husband and a father. Oh, had 
 my wife and my dear boy been with me, in what a sweet 
 retirement I could have spent my days, ever finding a new 
 relish for present bliss in the recollection of ills endured and 
 miseries escaped ! 
 
 The sense of loneliness which oppressed me, and the bitter 
 thoughts and hateful images that were ever crowding on my 
 mind, made my life an irksome burden, and drove me to seek 
 relief in the excitements of travel. I visited every country in 
 Europe, and sought occupation and amusement in examining 
 their scheme of society and studying their laws and manners. 
 
 I traversed Turkey and the regions of the East, once the seats 
 of art and opulence, but long since ruined by the heavy hand 
 of tyranny and the ever-renewed extortions of military pillage. 
 
 I crossed the Persian deserts, and saw in India a new and 
 better civilisation slowly rising upon the ruins of the old. 
 
 The interest I felt in the oppressed and unfortunate race 
 with which, upon my mother’s side, I am connected carried me 
 again across the ocean. I have climbed the lofty crests of the 
 Andes, and wandered among the flowery forests of Brazil. 
 
 Everywhere I have seen the hateful empire of aristocratic 
 usurpation lording it with a high hand over the lives, the 
 liberty, and the happiness of men ; but everywhere, or almost 
 everywhere, I have seen the bondsmen beginning to forget the 
 base lore of traditionary subserviency, and already feeling the 
 impulses and lisping in the language of freedom. I have seen 
 it everywhere — everywhere except in my native America. 
 
 There are slaves in many other countries, but nowhere else 
 is oppression so heartless and unrelenting ; nowhere else has 
 tyranny ever assumed a shape so fiendish ; nowhere else is it, 
 of all the world beside, the open aim of the laws and the 
 professed purpose of the masters to blot out the intellects of 
 half the population, and to extinguish at once and for ever both 
 the capacity and the hope of freedom. 
 
 In Catholic Brazil, in the Spanish islands, where one might 
 expect to find tyranny aggravated by ignorance and supersti • 
 tion, the slave is still regarded as a man, and as entitled to 
 
214 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 something of human sympathies. He may kneel at the altar 
 by his master’s side, and he may hear the Catholic priest 
 proclaiming boldly from his pulpit the sacred truth that all 
 men are equal. He may find consolation and support in the 
 hope of one day becoming a freeman. He may purchase his 
 liberty with money ; if barbarously and unreasonably punished, 
 he may demand it as his legal right ; he may expect it from 
 the gratitude or the generosity of his master, or from the 
 conscience-stricken dictates of his priest-attended deathbed. 
 When he becomes a freeman he has a freeman’s rights, and 
 enjoys a real and practical equality, at the mere mention of 
 which the prating and prejudiced Americans are filled with 
 creeping horror and passionate indignation. 
 
 Slavery in those countries, by the force of causes now in 
 operation, is fast approaching to its end ; and let the African 
 slave trade be once totally abolished, and before the expiration 
 of half-a-century there will not a slave be found in either 
 Spanish or Portuguese America. 
 
 It is in the United States alone— that country so apt to 
 claim a monopoly of freedom — that the spirit of tyranny still 
 soars boldly triumphant, and disdains even the most distant 
 thought of limitation — here alone, of all the world beside, 
 oppression riots unchecked by fear of God and sympathy for 
 man. 
 
 To add the last security to despotism, the American slave- 
 holders, while they fiercely refuse to relinquish the least tittle 
 of their whip-wielding authority, have deprived themselves, by 
 special statute, of the power of emancipation, and have thus 
 artfully and industriously closed up the last loop-hole through 
 which Hope might look in upon their victims j 
 
 And thou, my child ! these are the mercies to which thy 
 youth is delivered over 1 Perhaps already the spirit of man- 
 hood is extinguished within thee, already perhaps the frost of 
 servitude has nipped thy budding soul, and left it blasted, 
 worthless ! 
 
 No ! oh, no ! it ought not, must not, cannot, shall not be so ! 
 Child ! thou hast yet a father — one who has not forgotten, 
 and who will not forsake thee. Thy need is great and great 
 shall be his efforts. That love is little worth which disappoint- 
 ment tires or danger daunts. 
 
 Yes, I have resolved it. I will revisit America, and through 
 the length and the breadth of the land I will search out my 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 215 
 
 child. I will snatch him from the oppressor’s grasp, or perish 
 in the attempt. Should I be recognised and seized ! It is not 
 in vain that I have read the history of the Romans. I know a 
 way to disappoint the tyrants — the guilt be on their heads ! I 
 cannot be a slave the second time. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 Having formed the resolve recorded at the close of the last 
 chapter, I began immediately to make preparations to carry it 
 into execution, and now once more I resume my pen to 
 recount my further adventures. 
 
 I had lived for years past a life of constant uneasiness and 
 anxiety ; haunted, as it were, by the spectres of wife and child, 
 pale, weeping, holding out imploring hands, as if calling to me 
 for aid and deliverance. From the moment that I began to 
 prepare for my new journey and search, I felt a lightness, an 
 exhilaration, a relief, as if a great stone had been plucked out 
 of my heart. Now, at last, I had again something to live and 
 to strive for — a shadow, perhaps, one so vain and unsubstantial 
 that ever since the failure of my former searches it had seemed 
 idle to attempt to pursue it. Yet how much better to pursue 
 even a shadow, if one can but prevail upon himself for the 
 moment to think it real, than to sit still in hopeless and idle 
 vacuity ! Man was made to hope and to act. 
 
 Before leaving England, I took care to provide myself with 
 passports as a British subject, under the name of Captain 
 Archer Moore, by which I was known to my English 
 acquaintances, and with letters also of introduction to the 
 mercantile correspondents of those acquaintances in the 
 principal commercial towns of America. It was in the 
 character of a traveller, curious to investigate American 
 society, that I revisited the country of my birth. 
 
 As it was from Boston that I had taken my departure, so I 
 resolved to reland there, and thence to retrace my steps to the 
 scenes of my youth, as the first means towards obtaining, if 
 possible, some clue to the object of my search. 
 
 It was now more than twenty years since I had hastily fled 
 
21 6 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 from Boston a panting fugitive, eager to find on the boisterous 
 ocean, or somewhere beyond it, that freedom which the laws 
 of America denied me there. How different from the stern 
 and desperate spirit of defiance with which I had seen those 
 shores fade from my sight was the tender sentiment, rising 
 almost to hope, with which I again saw spreading out before 
 me that same land emerging from the waters ; cruel land of 
 bondage as it had been to me, but where yet I might — O, kind 
 Heaven, that I might ! — regain a long-lost wife and child ! 
 
 As we landed at the wharf and made our way into the town, 
 we found it in a state of great confusion. A vast crowd, 
 mostly of well-dressed people, was collected about a building, 
 which I afterwards understood to be the City Hall ; and just as 
 we approached it, an unfortunate person, with a rope about his 
 neck, was dragged apparently from some neighbouring house 
 or by-way, into the middle of the street. The shout was raised, 
 “Hang him! hang him!” and the gentlemen in fine broad-cloth, 
 in whose hands he was, seemed quite ready to do the bidding 
 of the mob, and to be looking round, as if for some lamp-post 
 or other convenience for that purpose. Making our way with 
 great difficulty to an adjoining street, we found it completely 
 choked up. with a well-dressed crowd, through which, amid 
 jeers and insults, a few women, holding each other’s hands, 
 slowly made their way, retreating apparently from a neigh- 
 bouring building, and for some reason or other evidently 
 objects of very great indignation. 
 
 On reaching my hotel, called, I think, the Tremont House, 
 
 I anxiously inquired into the occasion of all this tumult. The 
 landlord informed me that it had all been caused by the 
 obstinacy of the women whom I had seen in the streets. In 
 spite of the remonstrances of the citizens, as expressed at a 
 great public meeting lately held, in which all the leading 
 merchants and lawyers had participated, these obstinate 
 females had persisted in meeting to pray for and to plot the 
 abolition of slavery \ and what was still more provoking, .to 
 listen to the exhortations on that subject of an emissary lately 
 sent over from England. It was the object of the gentlemanly 
 mob I had seen, composed, as he assured me, of men of 
 property and standing, to catch this emissary if they could, 
 and to punish him in some fitting way for his insolence. 
 
 “ And pray,” said I, “ as you have no slaves in Boston, nor, 
 
 I believe, in this part of the country, why all this zeal against 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 217 
 
 these good women? Being an Englishman myself, I must 
 confess to some little interest in this unfortunate countryman 
 of mine, whom your Boston gentry are so anxious to hang. 
 Why need your lawyers and merchants play the dog in the 
 manger — neither themselves do anything to abolish slavery, 
 nor even allow the women to pray for it?” “As a stranger 
 and an Englishman,” said the landlord, who, though in a great 
 state of excitement against the offending females, was evidently 
 a person not without good feelings, “ these things may seem a 
 little strange to you. Yet allow me to suggest a word of' 
 caution. It would be an unpleasant thing for me to have one 
 of my guests seized as a British emissary, and made to 
 undergo the scrutiny and perhaps insults of a party of 
 volunteer police. Suffice it to say that just at this moment 
 the price of cotton is very high, and southern trade a great 
 object. New York and Philadelphia have set the example of 
 mobbing the abolitionists, and we should be in danger of 
 losing all our southern customers if we did not follow the 
 example. Besides, at a public meeting held here in Boston, 
 we have just nominated a candidate for president ; and should 
 we fail in zeal for southern interests, how are we to expect to 
 get any southern votes ? ” 
 
 After this specimen of Boston, I saw nothing to detain me 
 there, and so hastened on to New York. It was not without 
 strong emotions that I stood again in the park, on the very 
 spot where General Carter had seized and claimed me as a 
 slave. The whole scene, with all its incidents, came back to. 
 my mind as fresh as at the moment of the seizure, and I 
 walked straight to the court-room to which I had been carried 
 with as little doubt, hesitation, or uncertainty as if it had all 
 happened the day before. There were a number of prisoners 
 at the bar, the room was crowded with spectators, and a trial 
 or examination of evident interest was going on. It soon 
 appeared that the prisoners were charged with having sacked 
 and plundered a number of houses, whose occupants were 
 suspected to be tainted with abolitionism, and having, in the 
 same spirit, burnt down an African church. The feeling in 
 the court-room seemed, however, altogether in favour of the 
 prisoners, and such, as far as I could judge by the newspapers, 
 and the conversations which I heard, was the current opinion 
 of the city. The prevailing idea seemed to be that the 
 persons really guilty of the riots were those who had suffered 
 
218 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 by them, since it was their pestilent, unpopular opinions which 
 had stirred up the mob to sack and plunder their houses. 
 
 What I saw in New York and Boston served to cure me of 
 an error, as to America, sufficiently common. I had supposed 
 that in the free states, so called, there was really some freedom. 
 
 I knew, indeed, by my own experience, that no asylum was to 
 be found there by refugee slaves from the southern states ; but 
 I had imagined that the native-born inhabitants did enjoy a 
 certain degree of liberty. My mistake in this respect was now 
 very apparent. No one in New York or Boston was at liberty, 
 at the time of my visit, to entertain, or at least publicly to 
 express, any detestation of the system of slavery, or desire or 
 hope for its speedy abolition, under penalty of being visited 
 with the public indignation. Such persons, indeed, would be 
 lucky if they escaped without insult to their persons and 
 destruction of their property. The leading politicians, lawyers, 
 and merchants of those cities, under whose encouragement and 
 instigation these outrages were inflicted, seemed to stand in 
 no less awe and terror of the anger of the southern planters 
 than the very slaves who delved the plantations. Those slaves 
 were held in check by the whip and superior force ) the 
 northern freemen, so called, by their own pusillanimity and 
 base love of money. In fact, already I began to doubt 
 whether this voluntary slavery of the nominally free— voluntary 
 on the part of an overwhelming majority, however a virtuous 
 and noble minority might struggle against it — was not every 
 way a more wretched and lamentable thing than the forced 
 slavery of the labourers of the south. Hitherto I had hated a 
 country from whose prison-houses I had with such difficulty 
 escaped, and which continued to retain, if, indeed, death had 
 not fortunately delivered them, those nearest and dearest to 
 me. To this hatred I now began to add contempt for a mean- 
 spirited population, in which there were more voluntary slaves 
 than forced ones. 
 
 From New York I passed on to Philadelphia, and thence to 
 Washington. That city had greatly expanded since, as one of 
 a chained gang of slaves, I had been lodged in the slave-prison 
 of Messrs. Savage, Brothers, & Company for shipment to the 
 south. In every village and town on my way I heard the 
 same execrations vented against the abolitionists, with accounts 
 of new riots in which they had suffered, or new attempts to 
 subject them to more legal punishments. There seemed to be a 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 219 
 
 general conspiracy against freedom of speech and freedom of the 
 press. A learned judge of Massachusetts, after severely denoun- 
 cing the abolitionists as incendiaries, proposed to have them 
 indicted at common law as guilty of sedition, if not of treason. 
 The accomplished governor of the same state said ditto to the 
 judge, and added fresh denunciations of his own. Almost the 
 only person in New England of any note, as I understood, 
 who ventured to withstand this popular clamour, or to drop a 
 word of apology for these unfortunate abolitionists, was Dr. 
 Channing, whose writings have made him well known wherever 
 the English language is read ; hut whose refusal on this 
 occasion to become, by silence, a participator in the outrages 
 going on around him had very nearly destroyed, at least for 
 the time, his weight and influence at home. 
 
 Washington I found in the greatest state of excitement. An 
 unfortunate botanist, who had been gathering plants in the 
 neighbourhood, had, from some cause or other, fallen under 
 suspicion as being an abolitionist. His person, room, and 
 trunks had been searched. He was found to have in posses- 
 sion a pile of newspapers, which was made to serve the purpose 
 of an herbarium, in which to dry, press, and preserve his 
 plants. This pile of papers, on being carefully scrutinised, 
 was found to contain some articles bearing strongly to abolition 
 sentiments. The whole district of Columbia was at once in 
 commotion. The unfortunate botanist had been immediately 
 arrested on the charge of having in his possession an incen- 
 diary publication. The alarm had reached a very high pitch ; 
 but when it was known that this botanical incendiary, this 
 fellow who sought to entice the flowers and the herbage into a 
 bloody conspiracy, was safely locked up in gaol, and all bail 
 refused, the city of Washington, especially the southern 
 members of Congress, once more breathed freely, as if 
 delivered from impending destruction. 
 
 The high degree of excitement, alarm, and terror which I 
 found thus prevailing wherever I went, and which, according 
 to all accounts, overspread at this moment the whole United 
 States, was much of a puzzle to me. I doubt very much 
 whether the Stamp Act itself had caused half so much 
 commotion. Even the sacking of Washington by the British 
 could hardly have produced more alarm than I found pre- 
 vailing in that city and neighbourhood. The mere fact that a 
 few women of Boston had formed a society to pray for the 
 
220 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 abolition of slavery, or that a file of abolition newspapers had 
 found its way to the district of Columbia, did not seem 
 sufficient to account for so great an alarm. Even the cir- 
 cumstance that a Miss Prudence Crandall, somewhere in 
 Connecticut, had set up a school, to which she admitted 
 coloured children on terms of equality with her white pupils, 
 would not appear in itself so alarming a matter, since a 
 number of the most pious and distinguished gentlemen of her 
 state and neighbourhood, including a judge of the United 
 States court, had taken an early opportunity to break up her 
 school and to send her out of the town. I was assured, in fact, 
 that this was not all. This Boston female society and Con- 
 necticut school were only small items. I was told of a grand 
 plot formed by the abolitionists, tending to the most alarming 
 results ; no less than the cutting the throats of all the white 
 men throughout the south, horrible indignities upon all the 
 white women, the ruin of northern trade and commerce, the 
 destruction of the south, and the dissolution of the Union. 
 It was admitted by some of the more charitable persons with 
 whom I conversed that possibly the abolitionists themselves 
 did not distinctly contemplate all these ends. But they asked 
 for the immediate abolition of slavery — a thing which could 
 end in nothing but in the above-mentioned disasters and 
 horrors. 
 
 I had a great curiosity to know who these formidable 
 plotters, objects of so much alarm and terror, might be. I 
 was not ignorant of affairs in America, but of these terrible 
 abolitionists I had never heard; indeed, it would seem as if 
 they had all at once started suddenly out of the ground. I 
 learnt, upon inquiry, that within a short time past there had 
 sprung up, in New England and elsewhere, several societies, 
 delegates from which had lately met at New York, to the 
 number of twelve men, where they had formed a national 
 society. It was the fundamental principle of those societies 
 that to hold men in forced bondage was politically a wrong, 
 socially a crime, and theologically a sin; disqualifying those 
 guilty of it to be esteemed either good democrats, good men, 
 or good Christians ; and that, nationally and individually, this 
 wrong, crime, and sin ought to be at once repented of and 
 abandoned. These fanatical persons had rapidly increased in 
 numbers. Several wealthy merchants, several zealous and 
 eloquent divines, had joined them. A good deal of money, as 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 221 
 
 much as forty or fifty thousand dollars, had been contributed 
 and expended in the dissemination of this startling creed, 
 partly by agents and missionaries sent forth for that purpose, 
 partly by the publication of newspapers, of which there were 
 already two or three devoted to the cause, and especially by 
 the printing of tracts, setting forth the cruelties and injustice 
 of slavery, which had been sent by mail into all parts of the 
 country, even into the southern states. 
 
 It was these tracts that had thrown the whole south, planters, 
 politicians, merchants, lawyers, divines, into an agony of terror 
 — a terror with which even the people of the north so far 
 sympathised as to be ready to trample under foot, for the 
 extinction of these horrible innovators, every safeguard of 
 liberty hitherto esteemed the most sacred. Free speaking and 
 free writing were not to be any longer tolerated. Throughout 
 the United States, so far as related to the subject of slavery, 
 they were to be suppressed by mob violence. 
 
 A few hundred men and women, hitherto mostly obscure 
 and unknown, by the holding of a few public meetings and the 
 publication of a few tracts, had thrown a whole country into 
 commotion. Not John the Baptist, when he preached that 
 the kingdom of heaven was at hand, had more terribly alarmed 
 King Herod, the scribes, and the pharisees ; and now, as then, 
 the murder of the innocents seemed to be thought the most 
 feasible way of staving off the apprehended catastrophe. 
 
 As there are glens among the mountains where the faintest 
 spoken words come back in thunder from a thousand echoes, 
 so there are times and seasons when human hearts respond in 
 like manner to the faintest uttered truth, testifying to the force 
 of it, sometimes by loud responses of approbation and applause, 
 sometimes in deafening shouts of indignation, defiance, and 
 conscience-stricken dread. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 Having reached Richmond on my southern journey, I found 
 that city also showing the general alarm. A committee of 
 vigilance for the suppression of incendiary publications was 
 
222 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 vigorously at work, and as we drove into the town, a great 
 bonfire was burning in the main street, consisting of publica- 
 tions lately seized and condemned. One of the books thus 
 burnt at the stake was made up, I was told, entirely of extracts 
 from speeches delivered within a few years past in the Virginia 
 House of Delegates, in which the evils of slavery had been 
 pretty strongly depicted. But whatever liberty of that sort 
 might previously have been allowed, nothing of the kind was 
 to be tolerated for the future. 
 
 At Richmond I procured a horse and servant — for in Lower 
 Virginia there were no public conveyances — and set off on a 
 visit to Spring-Meadow, my birthplace. To satisfy inquirers — 
 since any traveller, a stranger and unknown, was at that time 
 liable to suspicion — I gave out that, on a former visit to the 
 country, many years before, I had become acquainted with the 
 family at Spring-Meadow, to which, indeed, I claimed a distant 
 relationship. As I began to approach that neighbourhood, I 
 found the aspect of desolation and desertion characteristic 
 enough of Virginia as I remembered it, and as I now again 
 saw it, growing more and more marked. As I rode along, 
 absorbed in thought, my eyes at length met an object which I 
 recognised, being no other than the shop and dwelling-house 
 of Mr. Jemmy Gordon, situated at the crotch of the roads, 
 some six or seven miles from Spring-Meadow. It was a fine, 
 warm summer afternoon, and on a rude bench or settle beside 
 the door was sitting, more asleep than awake, an old gentle- 
 man, who, to the best of my recollection, could be no other 
 than Mr. Jemmy himself. I accordingly . addressed him as 
 Mr. Gordon, when he roused himself up, did the honours of 
 the house with a grace, and bade me walk in and refresh 
 myself with a glass of peach brandy. He confessed, however, 
 that I had the advantage of him, as he found it impossible to 
 recollect my name. I endeavoured to remind him of a young 
 Mr. Moore, an Englishman, who, some twenty years before, 
 had passed a week or two at Spring-Meadow, and more than 
 once had ridden by his shop ; and after a good deal of 
 nodding, thinking, and muttering to himself, he declared at 
 last that he recollected me perfectly. When I inquired after 
 Spring-Meadow and its occupants, Mr. Gordon shook his head 
 mournfully. “ Gone, sir ; all gone to rack and ruin. Colonel 
 Moore, in his old age, was obliged to move off somewhere, to 
 Alabama, with such of the hands as he could save from the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 223 
 
 clutch of the sheriff; and that’s the last I’ve heard of him. 
 The old plantation has been abandoned these ten years ; and 
 the last time I was by there, the roof of the mansion-house 
 was all tumbling in.” As I knew there was no house nearer 
 than Gordon’s, I begged of him to entertain me for a day or 
 two, while I took a turn round the old plantation. From my 
 conversation with him, I learned that, with the decrease of the 
 population in the neighbourhood, his trade had fallen off, and 
 that he, too, had serious thoughts, old as he was, of moving off 
 to Alabama, or somewhere else at the south-west. Early the 
 next morning, leaving my servant and horse behind me, I set 
 off on foot. But I was no sooner out of sight of Jemmy 
 Gordon’s house than I directed my steps, not to Spring- 
 Meadow, but to that old deserted plantation on the higher 
 lands above to which I had fled with Cassy, and where, in the 
 hopefulness and thoughtlessness of youth, runaways as we 
 were, we had passed some weeks of happy privacy, ending, 
 indeed, in heavy tribulation. The great house had now com- 
 pletely fallen, and was one undistinguishable heap of ruins ; but 
 the little brick dairy, near the run below, was very much in 
 the same condition as when we had found in it a temporary 
 shelter. As I sat down beneath one of the great trees by 
 which it was shaded, how all the past came rushing up 
 before me 1 
 
 After an hour or two of reverie, I made my way through the 
 woods to Spring-Meadow, where I found another similar scene 
 of desolation. The garden, where I had spent so many 
 thoughtless hours in childish sports with Master James, was 
 now overgrown with persimmons, which choked and over- 
 shadowed the few remaining shrubberies. Yet the old garden 
 walks might be distinctly traced in several places, and there 
 were considerable remnants of an old summer-house, where we 
 had sat hour after hour, hid away from his brother William, 
 and studying Master James’s lessons together. Adjoining the 
 garden was the family burying-ground, and over Master James s 
 grave I dropped a tear. My mother’s grave I had to seek in 
 another part of the plantation. What stranger, lighting on the 
 spot, could have now distinguished, from any difference in the 
 grass and trees that waved above them, or in the wild aspect 
 around of nature regaining her dominion, in which spot the 
 master rested, and in which the slave ? These silent graves, 
 already half obliterated, no less than the fast-mouldering ruins 
 
224 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 of what had once been the seat of opulence and plenty, seemed 
 plainly to testify that not by such means were families to 
 be perpetuated, prosperous communities to be founded, or 
 permanent triumphs over nature secured. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 Returning to Richmond, I found that consequential little 
 town still in a state of the greatest alarm. The whole ordinary 
 course of law had been set aside, and a self-constituted com- 
 mittee of vigilance assuming to dictate to the citizens what 
 newspapers they should be allowed to receive, and what books 
 to read, or to have in their houses. At such a moment it was 
 very easy to fall under suspicion; and, unfortunately, just 
 before setting out on my late excursion, I had drawn attention 
 to myself at the dinner-table by an unlucky jest at the fright 
 into which the great state of Virginia had been thrown by a 
 few picture-books ; for it was the cuts with which some of the 
 abolition tracts were illustrated which seemed to inspire the 
 greatest alarm. My coming back redoubled their suspicions. 
 I had hardly had time to wash and dress myself, when I was 
 waited upon by three grave-looking gentlemen, among the 
 most respectable citizens of the town, as the landlord assured 
 me ; and in terms polite, but very peremptory, they required 
 me to make my immediate appearance before the vigilance 
 committee, then sitting in the Town Hall. 
 
 I had brought letters to a merchant of the place, whom I 
 found, like most of the merchants in the southern towns, to be 
 a northern man by birth, and from whom, on the presentation 
 of my letters on my first arrival, I had received the usual 
 attentions. With some difficulty I obtained leave from the 
 bailiffs of the vigilance committee to send for this gentleman, 
 and also for another, whom I had met at his house at dinner, 
 and whom I understood to be a leading lawyer. The 
 merchant soon sent me an apology for not coming. His wife 
 had suddenly been seized with an alarming sickness, which 
 made it impossible for him to leave her. But when I read 
 this note to the three volunteer bailiffs, who still remained with 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 225 
 
 me, regaling themselves with mint-juleps at my expense, they 
 heard it with an incredulous smile; and one of them exclaimed 
 —“What more could you expect of the sneaking Yankee? 
 He means to keep himself out of harm’s way, at all events.” 
 The lawyer soon made his appearance, and having accepted 
 a fee, entered with great apparent, and I dare say real, zeal 
 into my case. I begged to know whether those who had sum- 
 moned me before them possessed any legal authority, and 
 whether I was bound to pay any attention to their summons. 
 I had supposed, I said, that the state of Virginia was a country 
 of laws, and that I could only be held to answer to some charge 
 sworn against me before some magistrate. Was I obliged to 
 submit to a personal examination before this vigilance com- 
 mittee ? To this my friendly lawyer replied, that in the 
 present state of alarm the law was suspended. The necessity 
 of self-preservation rose above all law; and in the imminent 
 danger to which the whole southern states were exposed — 
 the breaking out of a general slave insurrection — everything 
 must be sacrificed to the safety of the community. The 
 throats of the white inhabitants, the purity of their wives and 
 daughters, were at risk. Two Yankee schoolmasters had been 
 warned out of the town the day before, and nothing but the 
 earnest efforts of himself and a few others, and their own 
 prudence in not attempting the slightest resistance to this 
 mandate, had saved them from the indignity, perhaps, of a 
 public flogging and a coat of tar and feathers. As it was, 
 they had been obliged to fly, because they had not known 
 how to hold their foolish Yankee tongues — this, perhaps, was 
 a sly hit at my own imprudent freedom of speech— the chief 
 witness and informant against them being a fellow whom one 
 of them had sued the day before, to recover payment for 
 several quarters’ schooling for his children, and who, so the 
 lawyer seemed to intimate, had taken this compendious 
 method of squaring the account. It would be safest for me, 
 in the present excited state of the public mind, if I wished to 
 save myself from disagreeable personal indignities, to pay the 
 greatest deference to the committee and their orders ; and he 
 would do his best to get me off as easily as possible. 
 
 Having found, upon inquiry, that the English consul was 
 absent from the city, I hastened with my lawyer to wait upon 
 the vigilance committee, and the more so as a second detach- 
 ment of volunteer bailiffs had already arrived, rather oihinouslj 
 
 15 
 
226 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 backed by a mob, collected before the door of the hotel, with 
 orders to bring me by force if I delayed any longer. 1 hose 
 who had me in charge did their best to protect me, yet I did 
 not entirely escape without insults from the crowd. 
 
 Having arrived in the august presence of the committee, I 
 found myself obliged to submit to a very stringent examination 
 on the part of the chairman, a sharp-nosed, grey-eyed gentle- 
 man, and in spectacles, deacon, I was told, of a Presbyterian 
 church. He inquired as to my name, birthplace, occupation, 
 and object in visiting the country 3 which I stated to be to 
 observe its manners and customs, and, in fact, as I added, I 
 had found them very singular indeed, and well worthy of a 
 traveller’s curiosity. I might, however, as well have kept my 
 observations to myself, for this sally brought a scowl blacker 
 than before across the brows of the very solemn-looking com- 
 mittee, and a reproving shake of the head and glance of the 
 eye from my friendly lawyer, who sat in one corner, but who 
 was not allowed to take any part in the proceedings. 
 
 In the course of my answers, I had referred to my letter of 
 introduction brought to the merchant, to whom a message was 
 immediately sent to come before the committee, and to bring 
 that letter with him. His wife must have recruited very 
 suddenly, for in a surprisingly short time the merchant made 
 his appearance, with the letter in his hand, the sweat running 
 down his face, and the poor man trembling in an agony of 
 terror, that went far to raise grave suspicions against both him 
 and me. The letter happened to be from Tappan, Wentworth, 
 & Co., well-known bankers of Liverpool. No sooner had the 
 chairman read the signature than his face, though quite long 
 and serious enough before, underwent a very sudden elonga- 
 tion ; his eyebrows rising up like those of a man who had just 
 seen a ghost, or something else very terrible — “ Tappan ! 
 Tappan ! ” he repeated to himself several times, in a sharp, 
 quick, and snivelling tone — “Tappan! Tappan! there we 
 have it 3 a bloody emissary, no doubt ! That, you know,” he 
 continued, turning to his colleagues, “ is the name of the New 
 York silk-merchant, who is one of the leaders in this nefarious 
 conspiracy, and who has given I don’t know how many 
 thousand dollars to circulate these horrid incendiary tracts. 
 How I wish I had the rascal here now! I should rejoice to be 
 one to help to put a rope round his neck. Ah, Mr. Doeface,” 
 he added, with an ominous nod to the poor trembling 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 227 
 
 merchant to whom the letter was addressed, and a look in 
 which indignation and commiseration were about equally 
 mingled ; “ ah, Mr. Doeface, I am very sorry to find that you 
 have any such correspondents.” 
 
 Exclamations, threats, and oaths resounded from all sides of 
 the crowded hall, and before either Mr. Doeface, who seemed 
 indeed past speaking, or I could get in a word, messengers 
 were despatched to search the merchant’s house from garret to 
 cellar, and his warehouses also, in hopes of discovering some 
 of the obnoxious tracts, while others were deputed to break 
 open and examine my trunks, which breaking open, however, 
 I prevented by handing out my keys. Meanwhile, with very 
 great difficulty;' I brought • the honourable chairman and his 
 colleagues to perceive that the letter which had produced so 
 great a commotion was dated, not at New York, but at 
 Liverpool ; and as I happened to have in my pocket-book two 
 or three other letters of credit from the same firm to merchants 
 in Charleston and New Orleans, I at length succeeded in 
 making it understood that my letter of introduction was not, 
 after all, such palpable evidence of treason and sedition as had 
 at first been supposed. 
 
 Luckily, my friend, the Yankee merchant, had but very little 
 of a literary turn. After a thorough search of his premises, the 
 committee of inspection were able to discover nothing except 
 a number of picture-books belonging to his children, and 
 some twenty or thirty pamphlets, all of which were brought in 
 for the critical inspection of the vigilance committee. At the 
 sight of the picture-books the committee grew very solemn, 
 and the chairman cast another look over the top of his 
 spectacles, half of pity and half of reproach, at the Yankee 
 merchant, whose teeth began to chatter worse than ever, and 
 who rolled up the whites of his great eyes in as perfect an 
 agony as if he had just been caught in the very act of horse- 
 stealing or forgery. But after a solemn and serious inspection, 
 during which the whole assembled multitude held their breath, 
 clenched their fists, set their teeth, and looked daggers at the 
 suspected offender, nothing worse appeared than Jack the 
 Giant Killer and Little Red Riding Hood. One very fierce- 
 looking old gentleman on the committee, with puffing cheeks 
 and bloodshot eyes, apparently not very familiar with juvenile 
 literature, and a little the worse for liquor, thought there was 
 something rather murderous in these representations, especially 
 
228 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 as the pictures were pretty highly coloured. But his colleagues 
 assured him that these were very ancient books, which had 
 been long in circulation, and though, perhaps, considered in 
 themselves, like the Declaration of Independence, theHistory 
 of Moses, and the Deliverance of the Israelites, as receded in 
 the Bible, or the Virginia Bill of Rights, they might seem to 
 have rather a malign aspect, yet they could not be set down as 
 belonging to that class of incendiary or abolition publications, 
 the having which in one’s possession would be proof of 
 conspiracy. 
 
 With myself it came near going considerably worse. As 
 ill-luck would have it, the only book that I happened to have in 
 my trunk was a volume of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey ; and 
 that unlucky volume happened to have for a frontispiece a 
 prisoner chained in a dungeon, and underneath, by way of 
 motto, Sterne’s celebrated exclamation, “ Disguise thyself as 
 thou wilt, still Slavery, still thou art a bitter draught, and 
 though thousands have been made to drink thee, none the less 
 bitter on that account ! ” 
 
 The production of this book, with this horrible frontispiece 
 to it, and incendiary motto, evidently produced a profound 
 sensation. The great eyes of my friend, the Yankee merchant, 
 dilated almost to saucers at the sight of it. But, fortunately, 
 several of the members of the committee were pretty well read 
 in light literature, and were able to assure the assembled 
 multitude that Lawrence Sterne was no abolitionist. It was 
 not difficult to perceive that two or three of the gentlemen on 
 the committee, though it is by no means easy to rise above the 
 contagion of popular passion, however absurd, were perfectly 
 aware of the ridiculous light in which themselves, and the 
 community to which they belonged, must appear in my eyes. 
 But they did not dare to suggest any such idea, lest they 
 should be suspected of lack of sensibility to the public danger, 
 or a disposition to shield abolitionists. Indeed, it was quite 
 enough to do away any tendency to laugh — the thought that 
 before a less well-read committee of vigilance, as might easily 
 happen in the rural districts, the haying in a man’s trunk a 
 stray volume with an unfortunate frontispiece might subject him 
 to summary punishment as a plotter of rebellion and murder. 
 
 Finally, after a most thorough, searching, and deliberate 
 examination, conducted, as the Richmond newspapers of the 
 next day had it, “with the greatest decorum, and with the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 229 
 
 strictest regard to every principle of equity,” the evidence 
 against me resolved itself into the unlucky witticism about the 
 picture-books in which I had indulged at the hotel dinner- 
 table — a piece of personal disrespect for the commonwealth of 
 Virginia and the institution of slavery, which it was impossible 
 for me to deny, and which was circumstantially testified to by 
 no less than seven witnesses. 
 
 The committee, however, wishing, as they said, to preserve, 
 as far as possible, the ancient reputation of Virginia for 
 hospitality, in consideration that I was a stranger and a 
 foreigner, saw fit to dismiss me unpunished; not, however, 
 without a long exhortation half-way between a scolding and a 
 sermon, delivered in a rasping nasal tone, by the sharp-nosed, 
 grey-eyed chairman, in which he dwelt with great unction, even 
 with tears in his eyes, upon the sin and danger of jesting about 
 sacred things; nor did he wind up without a hint that, all 
 things considered, I might as well leave Richmond at my 
 earliest convenience. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 I lost not a moment in profiting by the kind advice of my 
 sermonising friend, the chairman ; and by the assistance of the 
 lawyer, who seemed really anxious for my safety, I evaded the 
 mob collected in the street, who appeared inclined to put me 
 on trial a second time, and as speedily as possible obtained a 
 conveyance out of town, there to wait the approach of the 
 great southern mail stage-coach, my legal friend promising to 
 see that my baggage was put on at Richmond. Two or three 
 days’ ride in this conveyance, in which I was the only 
 passenger, brought me to the little village, a court-house, gaol, 
 and tavern, in which last was the post-office, the nearest point 
 on the route to Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, which I 
 intended next to visit. As the coach, which was little better 
 than a sort of lumber-waggon, drove up, there were collected 
 about the tavern door a dozen or two of those idlers, several 
 of them rather out at the elbows, and more than half of them 
 decidedly tipsy, commonly to be found on that route about 
 the doois of such places. They were engaged in discussing, 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 230 
 
 with most vehement gesticulations, what then seemed to be 
 the only topic wherever I went — the wicked plot and con- 
 spiracy of the bloodthirsty abolitionists. One of them held in 
 his hands a little tract, which had come directed to him 
 through the post-office, entitled “ Human Rights,” the sight of 
 which seemed to have upon him and his companions much 
 the effect of the bite of a mad dog ; for they were all more or 
 less foaming at the mouth, and all seemed exceedingly anxious, 
 if not to bite, at least to hang somebody. The man with the 
 tract, as I was told, was a candidate for Congress, in that 
 district. He seemed to suspect a little that the sending him 
 this tract on human rights was a contrivance to damage him 
 with the people, on the part of his rival, who had a brother 
 living in New York; but the prevailing opinion appeared to 
 be, that the tract was a bond, fide abolition emissary, a sort of 
 bomb-shell stuffed with sedition and murder, which might at 
 any time explode ; and though some wished to preserve it as a 
 palpable proof of the reality of the abolition conspiracy, the 
 prevailing opinion seemed to be that it would be safest to 
 burn it forthwith. Accordingly, amid oaths and execrations, 
 and wishes that a dozen or two of the abolitionists were tied to 
 it, it was solemnly deposited in the kitchen fire. Their hand 
 thus in, the company, headed by the would-be member of 
 Congress, beset the coach, and insisted upon searching the 
 mail-bags for the detection of like dangerous missives. Nor 
 could the driver protect his charge in any other way than by 
 the most positive asseverations that the mail-bags from the 
 north had undergone a thorough search and purgation at 
 Richmond. I had taken care to secure the good graces of 
 this driver, who was a very shrewd fellow, a Yankee from 
 Maine, and who gave me such an excellent character to the 
 landlord, as, together with a little prudent dissimulation on my 
 part, secured me from the danger of fresh annoyances. The 
 old story of having, during a former tour some twenty years 
 before, enjoyed the hospitality of Carleton Hall and Poplar 
 Grove, served as an excuse for wishing to visit those planta- 
 tions, and for inquiring about their former and present 
 inhabitants. Of their former possessors, Mr. Carleton and 
 Mrs. Montgomery, I was able to learn but little. Mr. Carle- 
 ton had adopted the common resource of emigration to the 
 south-west. The Montgomerys were gone, it was said, to 
 Charleston, but nobody knew anything more of them. Both 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 231 
 
 plantations, I was told, belonged at present to a Mr. Mason, a 
 very odd sort of gentleman, who would, no doubt, be very- 
 glad to see me. 
 
 I slept that night at the tavern, or, rather, tried to sleep, 
 but, disturbed as I was by the stinging of mosquitoes, the 
 barking of dogs, and, what was infinitely worse, the sound of 
 the hand-mills with which the slaves of the establishment were 
 busy all night in preparing their next day’s allowance of meal, 
 with but little success. No sooner did 1 sink into a doze 
 than that well-remembered sound mingled with my dreams, 
 and I began to imagine it was myself who was grinding. 
 
 Rising in the morning unrefreshed, I proceeded on horse- 
 back to Carleton Hall. Having introduced myself as once 
 the guest of the former proprietor, I received, according to the 
 hospitable custom of the south, where the leisure of the 
 planters makes them always eager for company, a very cordial 
 and friendly welcome. Mr. Mason I found to be a gentleman, 
 in manners, education, and sentiment, such as would do 
 honour to any part of the world. In the course of the week 
 that I remained his guest, I learnt from him that his father, 
 a man of natural energy, who had raised himself from a 
 humble position, after acting many years as an overseer, had 
 become the purchaser of Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, 
 when those two plantations had passed out of the hands of 
 their former proprietors. Having enjoyed very small advan- 
 tages himself, being, in fact, hardly able to write his name, he 
 had been the more anxious to educate his son, whom he had 
 sent to a northern college, and afterwards to travel in Europe. 
 Unlike a large number of the young men of the south, sent to 
 the north for their education, the young Mason had made a 
 good use of his opportunities ; and four or five years before 
 he had returned home, just in time to receive, under the will 
 of his dying father, possession of the estates, and the 
 guardianship of two young sisters — and charming little girls 
 they were — joint-heirs with himself of the plantations and the 
 people. 
 
 The plantation at Carleton Hall, instead of being worn out 
 and just ready to be deserted, like too many others in that 
 neighbourhood, I found to be in a much better state of culti- 
 vation than when I had formerly known it. The buildings 
 were all in good repair, and the negro houses were so well 
 clustered, and so neat and tidy, with little gardens about 
 
232 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 them, as, instead of an unsightly nuisance, as is usually the 
 case, to be real ornaments to the landscape. 
 
 Under the profound dissimulation which slaves know so 
 well how to assume in all its varieties, from stupid indifference 
 to appearances of the strongest emotion, whether joyful or 
 sorrowful, it is often extremely difficult to get at their real 
 feelings. Yet there was something hardly to be mistaken 
 in the broad, good-natured smile with which, wherever we 
 went, Mr. Mason’s friendly greeting was looked up for and 
 returned by young and old, man and maiden, and especially 
 in the joyous clamour with which the children of the planta- 
 • tion gathered about him. We went to see them in the 
 school-room, as he called it, where they all assembled every 
 day, not to be taught anything, but to be kept out of mischief, 
 under the care of a venerable, white-haired old woman, bent 
 half double with age, whom they called “Granny;” and. a 
 merry sight of it they were, from infants of three or four 
 , months, in the arms of little nurses just big enough to carry 
 them, to children of twelve or fourteen, all cleanly dressed — a 
 thing I had never seen before on a plantation — the larger ones 
 having the range of an ample play-ground about the nominal 
 school-house, where they amused themselves with sports and 
 monkey tricks innumerable. The only thing that Granny 
 undertook to teach was good manners, upon which subject her 
 lectures, at least during the presence of visitors, were very 
 incessant and sufficiently amusing. The title of “Granny” 
 was not in her case merely nominal, so Mr. Mason told me. 
 She was, in fact, grandmother, or great-grandmother, or great- 
 great-grandmother, of nearly every one of the children about 
 her. Mr. Mason himself addressed her by the title of Aunt 
 Dolly with almost as much kindness and affection as if she 
 had been his own grandmother — treatment on his part to 
 which, he said, she was well entitled, as being, in fact, the 
 founder and source of the fortunes of the family. His father’s 
 first earnings had been invested, some fifty years before, in the 
 purchase of Aunt Dolly, then a young woman with three or 
 four children. She afterwards had others, twelve in all, and 
 all females. The daughters had been scarcely less fruitful 
 than the mother ; and it was from this source that the whole 
 plantation, as well as that at Poplar Grove, had been stocked. 
 In fact, his father, who was a man of some scruples, had never 
 sold a servant in his life, and never bought one except Aunt 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 233 
 
 Dolly, at her own special request, and a number of likely men 
 as husbands for his superabundant females. 
 
 The system of management upon Mr. Mason’s plantation, 
 inherited, as he told me, in part from his father, but improved 
 by himself, I found to be totally different from anything I had 
 ever seen elsewhere, except that it reminded me, in several 
 points, of the discipline of Major Thornton, to whom I had 
 myself formerly belonged. Mr. Mason was, like Major 
 Thornton, his own overseer, though he employed an assistant 
 under him for each of the plantations — men, like himself, of 
 intelligence, education, and humanity, but whom, he said, it 
 had cost him great searching to find, and great labour to train. 
 Everything went on with the regularity of clockwork. The 
 allowances to the people, both of food and clothing, were 
 generous, and the tasks by which everything was done 
 moderate. The whip was only used on very rare occasions, 
 and that rather for the punishment of the misdemeanours which 
 the people committed against each other, than for those 
 against the master ; for, said Mr. Mason, “ I am not only plan- 
 tation manager, but judge and magistrate to settle all our 
 internal disputes, and, in fact, to tell the truth, the very hardest 
 worked slave in the whole establishment. How many planters 
 in North Carolina do you suppose would accept my property 
 on condition of managing it as I do ? ” The great stimulus 
 employed to make the people work was emulation. They were 
 divided into eight or ten classes, according to their capacity 
 and aptitude for labour, individuals being promoted or 
 degraded according to their merits, and each class, according 
 to the amount of labour it performed, being distinguished 
 by certain privileges and badges of honour. The lowest 
 class of all was called the “lazy class,” into which there 
 was a great horror of falling, except on the part of two or 
 three habitual sluggards, who were always in it, and who served 
 as standing butts for all the wit of the plantation. At the 
 close of every harvest there was a grand fancy ball, at which 
 the people were allowed precedence according to their merits. 
 The best of them had the first choice of characters, the range ' 
 of which first choice was, however, rather limited, lying between 
 General Washington, in sword and cocked hat, and old Master 
 Mason, my host’s father, till lately General Jackson, since he 
 was chosen president, had come in as a rival. All the rest 
 had the choice of chaiacters, each according to his place on 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 234 
 
 the list of merit ; and as Mr. Mason allowed a certain moderate 
 compensation for extra labour beyond the regular task, the 
 buying of finery to figure at this fancy ball proved a great 
 stimulus to many, the women especially. Some of the people 
 were excellent mimics. Every doctor, minister, and overseer 
 in the neighbourhood got taken off; and on the whole, Mr. 
 Mason said, the acting was often superior to such as he had 
 seen a good deal applauded on the New York and London 
 boards. The idea itself he had picked up from a West-India 
 planter with whom he had become acquainted in England. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 Two or three days after my arrival at Carleton Hall, Mr. 
 Mason and myself, who had become by this time excellent 
 friends, rode to visit Poplar Grove. Of the old servants’ 
 quarter the only building standing was one quite near the 
 great house, a neat little cottage, which Mrs. Montgomery 
 had caused to be built on purpose for me and Cassy, and 
 in which our child had been born. The honeysuckle which 
 we had planted in commemoration of that event, and which 
 she had twined with so much care over the door, was still 
 growing there, though exhibiting many signs of age — old, 
 bent, and gnarled, and the ends of the twigs beginning to die. 
 The little garden around was still neatly kept, and I thought I 
 recognised some of the very rose bushes which she and I had 
 planted. Little did Mr. Mason imagine my feelings as we 
 rode together by that cottage door ! Oh, how I longed to be 
 alone and unobserved ! It was, indeed, with the greatest 
 difficulty that I prevented myself from springing from my 
 saddle and rushing into the house. It seemed to me almost 
 as if I should find Cassy there and the child ! 
 
 I learnt, from conversation with Mr. Mason, that the pecu- 
 niary results of his system of management were not less 
 satisfactory than the moral ones. Owing to his father’s good- 
 nature in indorsing the paper of a friend, the plantations, as he 
 inherited them, had been burdened by a heavy mortgage, which 
 was now nearly paid off. I did not fail to congratulate this 
 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 235 
 
 worthy gentleman on having approached so near the solution of 
 a problem which all my observation and experience had made 
 me believe insoluble — the making plantation life a tolerable 
 condition of existence, as well for the slaves as for the 
 free. But, though evidently well pleased with my compliments, 
 Mr. Mason shook his head. “ I shan’t deny, sir,” he said, 
 “ that I feel a certain pleasure from the approval, by a man of 
 your experience and discernment, of my poor efforts to do the 
 best I can in the very trying and embarrassing position in which 
 Providence has placed me ; but after all, sir, make the- very 
 best of it, this slavery is a damnable business for whites and 
 blacks, and all of us together.” Though we had talked before 
 with a good deal of freedom, and though I had given Mr. 
 Mason an account of my experiences at Richmond with a 
 pretty free expression of my own feelings and opinions, he had 
 all along observed a certain uneasy reserve, as if doubting if it 
 would be safe to speak out. Willing enough to draw him on, 
 I replied, “Certainly, sir, if all masters were like you, slavery 
 would be a very different thing from what it is, and vastly 
 more tolerable.” “Ay,” said he, with a significant smile, “if 
 all masters were like me, slavery would cease to exist to- 
 morrow ? ” “ What,’’ I asked, “ are you an abolitionist ? ” I 
 
 almost regretted the question the moment I had put it, for I 
 at once perceived that even his sound head and heart were not 
 entirely proof against a word so terrible to every southern ear 
 — a sort of synonyme, in fact, for rape and throat-cutting. He 
 began in a hesitating manner to disavow that character, but 
 soon gave his answer a different turn. “No more an 
 abolitionist,” he said, “than Washington or Patrick Henry. 
 This is an evil, cursed system, beyond the reach of individual 
 effort, and only to be remedied by public action. The worst 
 evils, I am satisfied, that could possibly arise from setting all 
 the slaves free to-morrow would not begin to approach the 
 amount of evil suffered, whether by blacks or whites, in every 
 ten years that slavery continues to exist.” “ What,” I asked, 
 “ would it be safe to set so many ignorant slaves free at once, 
 and without any preparation for it? The general opinion 
 among slaveholders seems to be that, if so freed, the slaves 
 would begin by cutting the throats and taking possession of 
 the wives and daughters of their masters, and end by dying of 
 starvation for want of somebody to provide for them. You 
 must begin, they say, by preparing them for freedom.” “ It is 
 
236 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 hardly worth while,” answered Mr. Mason, “ to speculate upon 
 a contingency so improbable, just now, as the setting free of 
 all the slaves by the spontaneous act of their owners. A deal 
 of preparation, I fear, will be wanting before we can come to 
 that — preparation not so much, however, on the part of the 
 slaves as on that of the masters. The slaves, in my opinion, 
 are quite well enough prepared for freedom already ; about as 
 much so as slaves ever will be or can be. From my observa- 
 tions at home and abroad, they are decidedly more intelligent, 
 and a good deal more kind-hearted and manageably than 
 either the Irish or the English peasantry. The difficulty, and 
 the only difficulty, about their working for wages is precisely 
 the same which has defeated two or three attempts that I have 
 known to carry on plantations by free labourers imported from 
 Europe. While we have so much more land than inhabitants, 
 as we still do in most of the southern states, the negroes 
 would prefer to scatter, and, instead of working for wages, to 
 set up like our present poorer class of free whites, each man a 
 little plantation of his own. That is what has happened in 
 Hayti. The sugar plantations, which require the employment 
 of numerous labourers, have been in a great measure 
 abandoned, while the coffee cultivation, which each cottager 
 can carry on for himself, still flourishes, and forms the staple of 
 the island.” 
 
 “If that is all,” I answered, “the slaves themselves would 
 not seem to be in any great danger of starving, however it 
 might be with some of their late masters. But pray, sir, what 
 do you think of the throat-cutting and other enormities ? ” 
 “ These,” he replied, “ are bugbears inherited from our grand- 
 1 mothers. The wild savages, many of them prisoners of war, 
 formerly imported from Africa, when they rose in insurrection, 
 as they sometimes did, naturally enough began, if they could, 
 by cutting their masters’ throats. An insurrection, even nowa- 
 days, as it is sure to be met by bullets, bowie knives, hangings, 
 and burnings, is likely enough, while it lasts, to be prosecuted 
 by the same methods. The negro is an imitative creature, 
 and easily adopts the example which his master sets. But to 
 suppose that our slaves, if voluntarily set free, would take to 
 robbing and murdering their white neighbours, instead of 
 bestirring themselves, like other poor folks — like the Irish 
 emigrants, for instance, landed on our shores in no respect 
 their superiors, except in freedom — to earn an honest living by 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 23 7 
 
 their labour, for themselves and their children, seems to me 
 quite ridiculous. It is paying a very poor compliment indeed 
 to the courage and superiority of us whites to doubt whether 
 we, superior as well in numbers as in everything else, could not 
 inspire awe enough to maintain our natural position at the 
 head of the community, and to keep these poor people in 
 order without making slaves of them.” 
 
 “But suppose,” said I, “the emancipated slaves should 
 prove as harmless as you imagine. Suppose they should 
 actually labour enough to save themselves from starvation ; 
 yet, scattered upon little patches of ground, would they not 
 live in idleness and poverty, leaving the present productive 
 plantations abandoned, and reducing the whole south to a 
 squalid misery, such as we see in the present villages of free 
 blacks ? ” 
 
 “The present free coloured people in the United States,” 
 said Mr. Mason, “ are a poor, persecuted race, placed, 
 especially in the southern states, under very anomalous 
 circumstances, and yet, even among them, I have known some 
 very deserving persons. It would, however, be more reason- 
 able to deduce the position which our supposed emancipated 
 slaves would be likely to assume from that at present occupied 
 by the mass of our white people who do not own slaves. I 
 must confess there is not much to boast of in the condition of 
 the poor white people throughout the southern states. It 
 is freedom which makes the chief difference between the slaves 
 and those poor whites. Here in North Carolina a very great 
 number of them can neither read nor write, nor tell their own 
 age ; nor are they, in any intellectual or moral respect (except 
 that consciousness of being their own masters, which goes so 
 far towards making a man), superior to the generality of the 
 plantation slaves. Yet, however, there may be some among 
 our rich planters who would think it a very good thing to 
 reduce these poor white men to slavery, he would be a bold 
 fellow indeed who would dare to propose, much more to 
 undertake it. That, indeed, would seem scarcely necessary, 
 for already the operation of our system is terribly depressing 
 to them, as well as to the slaves. It hangs like a millstone 
 about their necks, since it makes almost every kind of manual 
 labour disgraceful; and apart from manual labour, how few other 
 chances have the poor to acquire that capital necessary to give 
 them a start in the world ! And yet, with all these drawbacks 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 238 
 
 and impediments, it is still this class of .the poor free whites 
 which forms the substratum and basis of our southern 
 civilisation, such as it is. My father began life a poor man. 
 He has often told me that he came the first time to Carleton 
 Hall barefooted, not being, in fact, the owner of a pair of 
 shoes. The fathers or grandfathers of almost all my neigh- 
 bours were poor men also. It is a common saying that a 
 plantation seldom remains in the same family beyond the third 
 generation. It is out of this class of the poor that the new 
 proprietors spring up, and it is into this class of the poor that 
 the families of the former proprietors subside. But consider 
 how this class of the poor is sunk, deteriorated, and weighed 
 down by slavery! No wonder that in wealth, industry, 
 intelligence, everything that makes a community respectable, 
 we are so far behind the free states. Not only have our poor 
 free people vastly less chance to rise than the people of the 
 same class at the north, but by. holding the bulk of our 
 labourers in perpetual slavery we cut off the very main source 
 whence fresh energy and strength ought to flow in upon us. 
 Here, in my opinion, is the great evil which this system inflicts 
 upon the community, as well as the greatest wrong which 
 it inflicts on the individuals. It is very easy to say, that 
 compare my slaves with as many families of poor white people 
 within a range of ten miles about, and they are better fed, 
 better clothed, better lodged, and vastly freer from care and 
 
 anxiety. That is true ; but there goes a man, now . Ah, 
 
 Peter, how’dy, my good fellow?” Such were the words with 
 which Mr. Mason nodded to an immense brawny black man, 
 who passed us just at this moment driving a cart. “ There goes 
 a man, now, who, if he was his own master, and in a country 
 where his colour did not deprive him of equal rights, would, 
 before he died, have a plantation of his own, and one worth 
 owning, too. That fellow has a head ; his opinion upon any 
 question of cultivation, or upon any application of plantation 
 labour, is worth more any day than mine and that of my two 
 overseers put together. And do you suppose that slavery 
 under any form can agree with such a man as that ? There is 
 a considerable class who seem to be born to be the mere 
 instruments of others; and if only such persons were born 
 slaves, it might not be of so much consequence.” “But 
 among those born in servitude there are all sorts of characters. 
 Why, Mr. Mason, it might have happened to me or to you to 
 
 V 
 
 
 LL 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 239 
 
 be born a slave. There are slaves here in North Carolina 
 quite as white as either of us ; and do you suppose that under 
 any circumstances we should have rested content under such a 
 fate ? We might have submitted, rather than jump out of the 
 frying-pan into the fire, and yet have found the frying-pan not 
 by any means our natural element.” 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 Returning the next day to Carleton Hall, we found, sitting 
 in the porch, a gentleman whom, from his dress and manner, 
 
 I at once perceived to belong to the clerical profession. My 
 host, who met him with great cordiality, introduced him to me 
 as the Reverend Paul Telfair, rector of the Episcopal church 
 of St. Stephen’s. 
 
 There was something in Mr. Telfair’s presence which 
 strongly impressed me the moment I set my eyes upon him. 
 He was a slight but rather tall young man, not, I should judge, 
 above three or four-and-twenty. His pale but handsome 
 features lightened up, when he spoke, with a radiant smile, 
 which seemed to spread around him a serene halo. His 
 address was perfectly simple and unpretending, and yet it had 
 in it at once such dignity and winning sweetness as to put 
 one in mind of a real minister of grace and messenger from 
 heaven. 
 
 “This,” said Mr. Mason, “is the son of that Miss Mont- 
 gomery, now Mrs. Telfair, whose mother was once the owner 
 of Poplar Grove, and at not finding whom still resident upon 
 it you seemed so much disappointed. I never saw that lady,” 
 he continued; “but knowing the son as I do, I am not 
 surprised that you should so much have missed the presence 
 of the mother.” 
 
 It appeared, in the course of our subsequent conversation, 
 that the Montgomerys, having removed, after the loss of their 
 property, to Charleston, had endeavoured to support them- 
 selves, though much to the scandal of some of their relations, 
 by setting up a female school. It was not long, however, 
 before Miss Montgomery attracted the admiration of a wealthy 
 
240 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 gentleman of that city, a Mr. Telfair, whose wife she became, 
 and by whom she had an only son — the young clergyman who 
 had so favourably impressed me, and in whose face, striking as 
 it was, there had yet appeared something familiar, which I 
 now traced back to my recollection of the mother. 
 
 “ Besides,” added Mr. Mason, “ since you take so much 
 interest in my system of plantation arrangements, let me tell 
 you that Mr. Telfair is a main spoke in the wheel. Not only 
 does he do all the marrying and christening, services thought, 
 both at Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, to be quite indis- 
 pensable, but the keeping those who misbehave at home 
 on Sunday is one of the most effective punishments which I 
 can inflict. It is a great proof,” he added, “of my young 
 friend’s gifts, not only that he has so completely eclipsed the 
 itinerant Methodists, and the vinegar-visaged Presbyterian 
 exhorters, who used formerly to predominate in this neigh- 
 bourhood, but that even black parson Tom himself, tor a long 
 time the admiration not only of my two plantations, but I 
 may say of the whole county, has been content to restrain his 
 gifts, and to subside into the humble position of clerk and 
 catechist.” 
 
 Mr. Telfair, as I afterwards learnt, had, through the influence 
 of his mother, upon whom, during her state of poverty, 
 religious ideas had made a deep impression, been devoted 
 from an early age to the work of the Christian ministry. From 
 a child he had esteemed himself set aside for that service ; and 
 having been admitted to holy orders, had given himself up, 
 without stint, to religious labours, the greater part of the time 
 as rector of St. Stephen’s, a few miles distant. 
 
 One of the old parish churches of colonial times, when the 
 Church of England was the established religion of North 
 Carolina, and, indeed, of all the southern states, St. Stephen’s, 
 since the revolution, had gone into a state of great decay and 
 dilapidation. But, though the roof had fallen, and the doors 
 and windows had disappeared, the solid brick walls of the old 
 church had yet remained standing. Mr. Telfair, having 
 chosen this neighbourhood as a sort of missionary ground, had 
 caused the old church to be repaired, mainly at his own 
 expense, and had with untiring zeal gathered together a 
 congregation, and revived the almost forgotten worship, 
 according to the decent ceremonies of the Church of England. 
 
 As was well befitting the disciple of one who had especially 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 241 
 
 addressed himself to the poor and lowly, the despised and the 
 rejected, the moral and religious condition of the slaves had 
 been from the beginning a subject of very great interest with 
 Mr. Telfair. In Mr. Mason he had found a zealous co- 
 operator and active churchwarden, and the example of .the 
 one, and the bland and persuasive exhortations of the other, 
 had not been without a marked influence in the neighbourhood 
 on the conduct of the masters and the condition of the 
 servants. 
 
 But whatever amelioration the system of slavery might be 
 capable of, it was impossible for Mr. Telfair, or any other man 
 of observation and humanity, to regard it with any patience as 
 a permanent condition of things. The intimate relations into 
 which he was brought, both with the masters and the slaves, 
 made him thoroughly aware of the false position in which both 
 were placed by it, and for want of any other apparent method 
 of getting rid of so great an evil he had entered with very great 
 eagerness into the scheme of colonisation. He was himself 
 the president of a county colonisation society ; his personal 
 exhortation had led to the emancipation of several favourite 
 slaves, with the view of sending them to Liberia ; and his 
 glowing imagination, overleaping, in the eagerness of benevolent 
 hope, all bounds of time and space, seemed to regard as an 
 event almost at hand the removal of the black and coloured 
 population from the United States, and the civilisation and 
 Christianisation of Africa. So thoroughly did he seem himself 
 convinced, and so did he warm and light up with the subject, 
 that, however visionary his hopes might appear, nothing could 
 be more agreeable than to hear him give utterance to them. 
 
 These brilliant hopes, however, we found for the moment 
 obscured by an ominous shadow. Mr. Telfair spoke without 
 bitterness, yet not without indications of the most poignant 
 regret, of the late doings of the northern abolitionists, as having 
 put back the cause of emancipation, he feared, for many, many 
 years. He himself had just been made personally to feel their 
 effects. He had established, in connection with his church, a 
 Sunday school for the slaves, in which, besides oral instruction, 
 some of them had been taught to read. A committee of 
 planters had just waited upon him to require him to discontinue 
 this course of instruction — in fact, during the present state of 
 excitement, and until further notice, to discontinue his slave 
 Sunday school altogether. “ Ah, Captain Moore,” said Mr. 
 
 16 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 242 
 
 Telfair, addressing himself to me, “this is but an unfavourable 
 time for you to visit the southern states. You see what it is to 
 have slavery in a country. In fact, it makes slaves of the 
 whole of us. It now appears that the liberty of the press and 
 the freedom of speech, about which we have made so many 
 boasts, cannot be allowed, consistently with the public safety, 
 in countries where slavery prevails. There is, at this moment, 
 no more liberty of speech or of writing in any slave state — and 
 from the accounts we get of mobs and riots in Boston, New 
 York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, the case does not seem to 
 be much better in the free states — than there is at Rome, 
 Vienna, or Warsaw. I suppose that, in either of those cities, a 
 man is at full liberty to express his opinion, in words or print, 
 of domestic slavery as it exists in America. The only questions 
 forbidden to be discussed there are those relating. to the 
 domestic policy of those cities and countries. So here you 
 may denounce Popery and Russian despotism as loudly as you 
 please ; but pray be very careful what you say about domestic 
 slavery. In any mixed company I should not think it safe, 
 just now, to say what I have said here. In fact, I find myself 
 already a marked man. A printed letter of mine to a friend, 
 on behalf of the colonisation scheme, in which, in proof of the 
 evils of slavery, I had quoted from Washington, Jefferson, 
 Patrick Henry, and other distinguished patriots, when just 
 ready for publication, was seized the other day at Richmond 
 by the committee there, and ordered to be burnt as an 
 incendiary publication.” 
 
 “Indeed,” said I; “then that unfortunate letter of yours was 
 probably part of the bonfire that lighted my entrance into 
 Richmond ; ” and I went on to give him an account of my 
 adventures in that city. “ Not content with burning my 
 letter,” so the good clergyman continued, “ if, in fact, it was 
 not rather Washington and Jefferson for whom the burning was 
 meant, the Richmond committee have reported me to our 
 county committee as a suspected person, on whom an eye is to 
 be kept ; and these good gentlemen, besides putting a stop to 
 my Sunday school, have also taken my newspaper reading 
 under their supervision. For some months past I had received 
 through the post-office a newspaper, printed at New York, 
 called the Emancipator. It is, I understand, the chief organ 
 of the new society of abolitionists there. It had been sent to 
 me gratuitously, and I had read it with a good deal of interest, 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 243 
 
 wishing to discover what its conductors would be at. But this 
 iny good friends, or rather masters, of the committee of 
 vigilance consider altogether too dangerous. They cannot 
 allow the peace of the country to be so perilled. They have 
 forbidden the postmaster to give out the paper any more, and 
 they have forbidden me to take it out or to read it. This is 
 the degree of liberty that exists at present in North Carolina! ” 
 —words spoken with an indignant emphasis, and some little 
 bitterness, in spite of the serene self-control which Mr. Telfair 
 in general exhibited. 
 
 “ And how does it happen, gentlemen/’ said I, “ that the 
 evils of slavery, which it would appear have been not only 
 pretty largely felt, but pretty freely discussed among you, from 
 the time of Jefferson downwards, and nowhere, as I have been 
 told, more fully and freely than in some recent debates in the 
 Virginia legislature, how does it happen that this subject has 
 become all at once prohibited ? Pray, I should like to learn 
 what is the mighty difference, after all, between colonisationists, 
 like our good friend Mr. Telfair here, and these northern 
 abolitionists, whose interference, he seems to think, is likely to 
 prove, so serious a damage to the cause of emancipation ? 
 Isn’t it slavery that you are both alike hostile to ? Isn’t it 
 emancipation that you are both alike aiming at?” “The 
 difference between us,” replied Air. Telfair, “is sufficiently 
 palpable, though I don’t so much wonder at your asking the 
 question, foi I can perceive, especially since the late excite- \ 
 ment broke out, a growing disposition to confound us together, 1 
 and to set down as incendiary and as hostile to the welfare of 
 the south the bare sentiment of dislike to slavery. But with ) 
 respect to us colonisationists, the case is this : we admit the 
 evils of slavery to be very great, so great that duty to our- 
 selves, our children, to the entire population, black and white, / 
 requires from us the greatest efforts to get rid of them. But 
 we do not see how it is possible to get rid of these evils so 
 long as the black population remains among us. It is a very 
 common opinion in America that it is impossible for two 
 distinct races of men to live together, at least two races so 
 distinct as the whites and the negroes, on anything approaching 
 to terms of equality. It seems to be believed that, so long as 
 the blacks remain among us, we must either make slaves of - 
 them, or they will turn about and make slaves of us. The late 
 President Jefferson gave expression to this common opinion by 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 244 
 
 his remark that we hold the slaves like a wolf by the ear, 
 whom it is neither safe to hold nor to let go. I must confess 
 that I, for one, and a considerable number of our colonisation 
 friends would probably concur with me, do not exactly assent 
 to this view of the case. It seems to me that we whites are 
 the wolf, and the unfortunate negroes the lamb whom we have 
 caught by the ear, and whom, if we only had the will, we might 
 let go without any sort of danger. Why can’t we allow freedom 
 to the negroes as well as to the Irish or the Germans ? But 
 with the inveterate prejudices of our people, it seems useless 
 to preach that doctrine. The poorest, meanest, and most 
 degraded of our whites would be all up in arms at the very 
 idea of it. The more low, brutal, and degraded a white man 
 is, the more strenuously does he insist on. the natural 
 superiority of the white men, and the more he is shocked at 
 the idea of allowing freedom to the ‘ niggers.’ . Our colonisa- 
 tion system of emancipation yields to this invincible, feeling. 
 Before emancipating the slaves, or simultaneously with their 
 emancipation, we propose to remove them out of. the country. 
 Regarded by the larger number as completely visionary, and 
 even by us who believe in it expected to operate, at least at 
 first, only by very slow degrees, this scheme has not. been 
 calculated to produce much alarm. Even very vivid pictures 
 of the evils of slavery, and strong declamations against it, have 
 been permitted, so long as they have been regarded only as the 
 expression of speculative opinions and of individual sentiment, 
 accompanied, as they generally are, by the admission, more or 
 less distinct, that, however great these evils may be, there is no 
 hope or means of their removal so long as the two races remain 
 in juxtaposition. 
 
 “ But the new sect of the abolitionists has broken through 
 all these limits. In the first place, they begin with denouncing 
 the holding of slaves as a sin inconsistent with any just pre- 
 tensions to the character of a Christian. Now, there was a 
 time, and that not many years ago, when the great body of the 
 southern slave-holders would have laughed at this denuncia- 
 tion, because only a small portion of them made any pretension 
 to be Christians, while with large numbers the open avowal of 
 infidel opinions was not uncommon. But by the multiplied 
 labours of the various sects within the last twenty-five years, 
 the profession of Christianity, and in some respects, too, I 
 hope, the practice of it, has very greatly increased among us ; 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 245 
 
 and for our good slave-holding people to be told that they are 
 no Christians touches them in a very sensitive point. In fact, 
 from our excessive squirming at the charge, I cannot but 
 suspect myself that we feel a little as though there was some 
 truth in it. 
 
 “ Then again, these abolitionists say your slaves have a right 
 to be free, and it is your duty to set them free at once. You 
 need not trouble yourselves about the consequences of doing 
 your duty ; do it, and leave the consequences to God. 
 
 “ What a difference it makes whether a thing is said in 
 earnest, or only by way of flourish and clap-trap ! What a 
 difference when a maxim is to be applied to our own case, and 
 when to that of others ! Our good southern democrats have 
 been preaching for half-a-century, more or less, that all men 
 are born free and equal — a maxim which they have set forth 
 as the very basis of their political system ; but now, when they 
 are asked, not in flourish, in jest merely, but in real earnest, 
 themselves to carry their own doctrine into practice, you see 
 how the wolf shows his teeth ! 
 
 “You will judge from all this,” added Mr. Telfair, “that I 
 do not share the ferocious prejudices against the abolitionists, 
 of which you have seen already, since you came among us, so 
 many specimens. They have done me the honour to send 
 me, by the mail, quite a number of their publications, besides 
 the newspaper that I spoke of. I have read them all atten- 
 tively, and I can safely say that the vulgar and current charge 
 against them of stimulating the slaves to revolt is totally 
 unfounded. The revolt which they have attempted to 
 stimulate, and the revolt, I am very much inclined to think, 
 of which our committees of vigilance are most afraid, is a 
 revolt of Christian consciences against the evils and enormities 
 of slavery. 
 
 “ But, although I admit the rectitude of their motives, I do 
 not any the less on that account condemn their conduct. You 
 can judge from my own case the awkward position in which 
 they have placed every southern well-wisher of the negroes. 
 The only result, I am afraid, will be to tighten the bonds of 
 the slaves, to check all efforts that have been making for their 
 mental and moral improvement, and to put the most serious 
 obstacles in the way of that scheme of colonisation which is 
 the only remedy for the sore evils of slavery which the south 
 seems in the least to tolerate,” 
 
7 
 
 246 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 Mr. Telfair, perhaps from professional habit, seemed to run 
 upon such subjects as occupied his mind into a sort of 
 lengthened discourse, and I let him go on without interruption. 
 
 Mr. Mason, I had observed during this conversation, had not 
 let drop a single word ; and after Mr. Telfair had left us, I felt 
 some curiosity to draw him out. I accordingly put to him 
 several questions, by way of getting at his opinion of the 
 colonisation scheme. “ I am a member,” he said, “ of the 
 Colonisation Society — secretary, in fact, of the same branch 
 of which Mr. Telfair is president. One of my servants, a 
 superior man, who evinced a disposition to go, I set free, and 
 sent to Liberia; but I am sorry to say he died of the seasoning 
 fever within a month or two after his arrival. I always thought 
 the Colonisation Society a good thing, as a sort of brooding 
 hen, under whose wings the callow humane sentiment of the 
 south might take shelter, and be cherished and kept alive 
 against a time of more efficient action. I never expected 
 anything important from what it might do directly, but a good 
 deal from its keeping the evils of slavery, and the necessity of 
 some remedy for them, constantly before the public mind. 
 
 The best thing it has done yet certainly is, its having hatched 
 out of its northern eggs these same abolition societies which are 
 making so much stir just at this moment.” 
 
 “ Indeed,” I asked, “and is that the fact ? ” 
 
 “So far as I am informed,” said Mr. Mason, “all the most 
 active persons in these abolition societies first had their 
 attention drawn to the subject by the colonisation scheme. Of 
 that scheme several of them were originally warm champions. 
 
 But on further consideration, it seemed too much like carrying 
 coals to Newcastle the transporting some two or three millions 
 of people from their homes, where their labour is greatly 
 needed, and is capable of being productively applied, across 
 the ocean to an uncultivated wilderness, where the native 
 supply of labour already far exceeds the demand. As the * 
 
 slaves must be emancipated before they can be colonised, it 
 seemed quite effort enough to emancipate them here, without 
 being obliged to provide, in addition, for their transportation 
 out of the country, at immense and ruinous expense, depriving 
 the southern states of that productive labour which is the very 
 
 L. 
 
T 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 247 
 
 thing they stand most in need of. It was these ideas, com’ 
 bined with those of the sin and wrong of slavery — a wrong and 
 sin to be abandoned, not gradually, but at once — that no doubt 
 gave rise to the abolition societies.” 
 
 “ But,” I asked, “ in view of such results as those mentioned 
 by Mr. Telfair, how can you speak of the springing up of these 
 societies as a good thing ? ” 
 
 “ I hope,” said Mr. Mason, looking round with an air of 
 some uneasiness, but whether real or assumed I could hardly 
 tell — “ I hope there are no lurking members of the committee 
 of vigilance within ear-shot. Our overseers have a habit of 
 playing the evesdropper among the negro cabins, and how 
 soon the same system may be extended to us masters is more 
 than I can tell. But to answer your question ” — and here he' 
 sunk his voice almost to a whisper — “the first step towards 
 the cure of any serious disorder is to understand the real 
 nature of it, and especially to bring the patient himself to a 
 true sense of his own condition. And that is a result which 
 these abolition societies are already beginning to produce. 
 Even those who have thought most about it have never 
 hitherto been fully aware of the real nature and extent of the 
 evil we had to deal with. We knew, indeed, that our 
 American goddess of liberty lay asleep and dreaming, like 
 Milton’s Eve, with a foul toad at her ear ; yet we thought that, 
 after all, it was but a toad, which, however ugly and venemous, 
 the growing light of day, as the sun was getting towards high 
 noon, would drive to skulk into some hole or other. But 
 these northern abolitionists,- having undertaken to poke the 
 creature a little by way of hastening his progress, choosing for 
 that purpose the famous national declaration of ours that all 
 men are created free, with certain unalienable rights — see how 
 this, as we thought, comparatively harmless thing starts up a 
 horrible and bloodthirsty monster, threatening to swallow 
 down the poor trembling goddess of American liberty at a 
 single gulp ! I do not mean the liberty of black men or 
 coloured men — for here in America they never had any — but 
 the liberty of us white men, us masters. 
 
 “ The pretended danger of slave-insurrection is made 
 occasion for suppressing all liberty of thought, speech, or 
 writing derogatory to the institution of slavery. That danger 
 does very well to frighten fools with ; and it is by frightening 
 fools that knaves generally get themselves entrusted with 
 
248 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 power. But the insurrection, as Mr. Telfair very well 
 remarked, which the leaders in this business are most afraid 
 of, is not an insurrection of slaves, but an insurrection of 
 conscience — an insurrection which they intend to find the 
 means, if they can, to anticipate and prevent. 
 
 “ Here, now,” he added, taking up a newspaper, “ here 
 it is openly confessed and stated in so many words by the 
 Washington Telegraph , a leading champion of the rights and 
 interests of the slave-holder, and a chief promoter of all the 
 prevailing alarm : ‘ We hold ’ — here he read from the paper 
 ‘that we have most to fear from the gradual operation of 
 public opinion among ourselves, and that those are the most 
 insidious and dangerous invaders of our rights and interests 
 who, coming to us in the guise of friendship, endeavour to 
 persuade us that slavery is a sin, a curse, and an evil. Our 
 greatest cause of apprehension is from the operation of the 
 morbid sensibility which appeals to the consciences of our 
 people, and would make them the voluntary instruments of 
 their own destruction.’ And the way in which it is proposed 
 to prevent these appeals to the morbid sensibility of conscience 
 is pretty distinctly set forth in another paragraph, which I find 
 quoted from the Columbia Telescope , a South Carolina paper : 
 ‘ Let us declare that the question of slavery is not, and shall 
 not be, open to discussion ; that the system is deep-rooted 
 among us, and must remain for ever ; that the very moment 
 any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evil and 
 immorality, and the necessity of putting means in operation to 
 secure us from them, in the same moment his tongue shall be 
 cut out and cast upon the dunghill.’ 
 
 “ This appeal to southern consciences, which it is proposed 
 to put down by this summary process, has revealed the true 
 state of the case. The great mass of our people, whether at 
 the south or the north, even those who speak of slavery as an 
 evil, do not really regard it so. Compared with the emancipa- 
 tion of the slaves, they regard it ps a positive good. They 
 may possibly admit that slavery is bad, but they are quite 
 certain that freedom would be much worse. Then again, 
 there appears to be among us a vastly larger class than 
 anybody supposed who hold that slavery is no evil at all in 
 any sense, but a positive good — a good thing for the slaves, 
 who are thus enabled to live free from care, in sleek and happy 
 contentment j and a good thing for the masters, who, in being 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 249 
 
 raised above the necessity of base and servile employments, 
 are thus enabled to preserve the dignity of freedom. This 
 romantic view of the case might not, perhaps, so well bear 
 discussion, but you see they do not intend to allow any. Yet, 
 without a full and free discussion of our existing system, in all 
 its bearings and operations, how can we reasonably hope or 
 expect to bring about any beneficial change ? The struggle 
 which you now see beginning, and which this northern appeal 
 to southern consciences has provoked, is plainly, to my mind, 
 the final and decisive struggle between the extension and 
 perpetuation of slavery on the one hand and emancipation on 
 the other. The institution of slavery in this country is vastly 
 more potent than anybody had supposed. It not only has 
 complete control of the governments of all the southern states, 
 so as to be enabled to enact whatever laws it pleases, but, by 
 means of its vigilance committees and its system of lynchings, 
 it completely overrides both laws and constitutions in the: 
 exercise of a despotic and arbitrary power, derived from the 
 discretionary discipline of the plantation, but totally incon- 
 sistent with all established ideas of English or American 
 liberty. Not content with this, it is eagerly clutching at all the 
 powers and patronage of the general government, which it 
 seeks to transform from a bulwark of freedom to a bulwark 
 of slavery ; and not content with this, it seeks to dictate to the 
 northern states a course of action in conformity with this same 
 view. Having completely suppressed, at least for the time 
 being, all liberty at the south of speech, writing, or reading on 
 this forbidden subject, it is endeavouring to accomplish the 
 same thing at the north. Northern politicians are stimulated, 
 by hopes of currying southern favour, to put themselves at the 
 head of anti-abolition mobs; and northern merchants, by the 
 hope of securing southern customers, to hold public meetings 
 to call upon the state legislatures to pass laws to restrict the 
 liberty of the press. That very thing I see has just been 
 done in the degenerate city of Philadelphia ; and Boston and 
 New York are very loudly called upon to imitate the disgrace- 
 ful example. Yes, Mr. Moore, seasonably or unseasonably, 
 the great battle has begun— the great struggle on which the 
 future fate of America is to depend. The slavery or . the 
 freedom of our coloured inhabitants is an interesting question , 
 that, however, has already become but a merely subordinate 
 one. The first great question is, shall not merely the political, 
 
250 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 but the intellectual, moral, and religious control of this country 
 pass into the hands of the upholders of perpetual slavery ? or 
 shall our old American notions that all men are equal before 
 God, and ought to be equal before the law, continue to circu- 
 late ? Shall the control, not only of our politics and legislation, 
 but of our newspapers, our churches, our literature, our public 
 sentiment, pass into the hands of the hard, the cruel, the 
 tyrants by nature, the mercenary, the scoffers at justice and 
 human rights, the sleek, comfortable time-servers, equally * 
 
 ready, for a consideration, to read prayers to God or to the 
 devil? or shall the votaries of human advancement, the friends 
 of man, the true servants of the God of love, have liberty to 
 live, speak, and labour among us? The first question is 
 about our own liberty, and that not alone the liberty of acting, 
 but the mere liberty even of writing, reading, talking; and 
 thinking.” 
 
 Warming with his subject, and striding up and down the 
 room, Mr. Mason had uttered all the latter part of this long 
 discourse, not without many gesticulations, and in a tone o & f 
 voice rising at times a little above the ordinary key. But he 
 suddenly checked himself, and added, in a subdued tone, “ I, 
 for my part, had rather have been born the most miserable 
 negio in North Carolina, than, having enjoyed, as I have, the 
 advantages of education and the privileges of freedom, to find 
 myself, from being the master, as I had imagined, of my own 
 slaves, my own thoughts, and my own course of conversation 
 and reading, all at once converted into a deputy slave-driver, 
 under a committee of vigilance, composed, as those com- 
 mittees generally aie, of the greatest fools and the greatest • 
 scoundrels among us, and obliged to read, talk, and think 
 under their inquisitorial jurisdiction.” 
 
 “ Pardon me,” said I, “Mr. Mason, u I take the liberty of 
 putting one question. How is it possible that, entertaining 
 the opinions which, since I have enjoyed the pleasure of your 
 hospitality, I have heard you so freely express — how is it 
 possible that you can continue a slave-holder ? ” “ As to 
 
 that,” answered Mr. Mason, “you must have observed before r ’ 
 
 now that the opinions and practices of men do not always run 
 in parallel channels. A man’s own opinion and his own 
 choice have often very little to do with the position which he 
 occupies. The people on this and the other plantation came 
 to me by inheritance. You certainly would not have me, to 
 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 251 
 
 escape from a position personally disagreeable, sell out my 
 interest in slaves, pocket the money, move off to the north, 
 and leave them to their fate.” 
 
 “No, certainly,” I replied; “if they are to remain slaves, 
 I hardly think they would gain anything by a change of 
 masters.” 
 
 “ Their remaining slaves,” said Mr. Mason, “ is not at 
 present a thing within my control. In the first place, there 
 exists still an undischarged mortgage, in which they are 
 included. But that I hope to pay off within the next six 
 months. Then the portions of these two young sisters of mine 
 are a lien upon the estate, for the discharge of which I have 
 yet made only a partial provision. Then, again, here in North 
 Carolina, a master cannot set his slaves free at his own will 
 and pleasure. He must first have the consent of the county 
 court, and nowadays that is not a thing so easy to be 
 obtained. 
 
 “However,” he added, “since I have gone so far in making 
 a confidant of you, I will tell you yet another secret. I do 
 not mean to remain a slaveholder, except just so long as is 
 necessary to escape from that position with honour to myself 
 and benefit to all the parties concerned. All my arrangements 
 are made with that view. To give me any freedom of action 
 in this matter it is necessary first to clear off the encumbrances, 
 the debts due, and the portions of my sisters. Those sisters 
 are to set off in a few days for the north, there to be placed 
 for their education. I mean to invest their money at the 
 north. I hope they will marry and settle at the north. They 
 shall have no slave-holding husbands, if I can help it ; and that 
 for more reasons than one. I don’t want my sisters to be the 
 mere heads of a seraglio, with some black or brown favourite 
 perhaps quite carrying the day over them in real preference. 
 Their poor mother — you are to observe they are only half- 
 sisters of mine — suffered quite enough in that way. The poor 
 woman actually fretted herself to death with jealousy and 
 vexation, for which, I am sorry to say, my honoured father 
 gave her too much cause. In fact, he had very patriarchal 
 ideas. You may easily perceive, from the variety of com- 
 plexion, that, among the servants here and at Poplar Grove, 
 there is a considerable infusion of Anglo-Saxon blood. I 
 don’t doubt that a large part of the lighter-coloured among 
 them can claim more or less blood relationship to myself ; and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 252 
 
 therefore I feel the more called upon to act the part, not of a 
 mean, selfish despot, but of the head of a family, the chief of 
 a tribe, whose clansmen are his poor relations, who have a 
 family claim upon him for the judicious conduct of their joint 
 affairs. 
 
 “ My plan is this : As soon as the debts are paid, and I 
 have laid by enough money to purchase a good tract of land 
 in Ohio or Indiana, I mean to emigrate with the whole family. 
 To set them free here, even if there were no legal obstacles in 
 the way, would not, in the present state of feeling towards free 
 coloured people, and the little chance they can have to rise in 
 the world, be much of a favour. It would be too much like 
 setting them free as the ’coons are, as one of them once said 
 to me, making a sort of free vermin of them, rather than free 
 men. And with the ignorance and incapacity which a life of 
 slavery has engendered, and the prejudices and obstacles they 
 would have to encounter in any of the free states in some 
 respects more violent and oppressive than those felt here — it 
 would hardly be much of a favour to send them out by them- 
 selves to seek their fortune at the north. To give them a 
 fair chance, to prevent them from bringing a disgrace on the 
 idea of emancipation, I intend to go with them, and to be the 
 leader and founder of the colony. That is the work for which 
 I reserve myself. I live a bachelor, as you see 3 nor do I ever 
 mean to marry, so long as I live in a slave state. With all 
 these people to settle and provide for, I have quite family 
 enough, quite encumbrances enough on my hands, without 
 that.” 
 
 What an honest glow of enthusiasm, confidence, and self- 
 respect kindled in Mr. Mason’s face as he spoke ! How the 
 nobleness of the man grew upon me as he thus detailed his 
 plans and intentions ! Here, indeed, was the spirit of genuine 
 Christianity. Here was a man indeed. How small a number 
 of such men would suffice to save the southern Sodom from 
 perdition! to make it truly a land of joy, of justice, of 
 peace, plenty, and of hope, instead of what it now is — the 
 stumbling-block of freedom, the opprobrium of civilisation and 
 Christianity I 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 253 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 In leaving Mr. Mason’s hospitable mansion, where I had pro- 
 tracted my stay beyond all reason, I felt like parting with an 
 old friend. As he pressed my hand and said farewell, he bade 
 me remember that much had passed between us in confidence; 
 and that any hint, dropped incautiously, _ as to his opinions and 
 intentions, might affect him most injuriously, endangering his 
 peaceful residence in the country, and it might be his life. 
 
 Returning to the stage tavern, whence I had made this 
 agreeable side visit, I prepared to pursue my southern journey. 
 
 I resolved, however, while forwarding my baggage to Charleston 
 by the stage-coach, to proceed myself leisurely on horseback ; 
 for I had some curiosity to strike upon, if I could, and to 
 retrace the road which I had followed in my escape from 
 slavery. It being made known that I wished to purchase a 
 horse, I soon found myself beset by a dozen jockeys or more, 
 whb did their best to impose upon me, one after the other, 
 animals lame, halt, blind, and broken-winded. But I suc- 
 ceeded, by the aid and assistance of my friend, the Yankee 
 stage-driver, whom I found very knowing on the subject of 
 horse flesh, and who, to explain the fact that so many broken- 
 down animals were offered, observed to me aside, and with a 
 knowing wink, that these southern folks treated their horses 
 almost as bad as they did their niggers— in mounting myself 
 to my satisfaction ; and with a few shirts and other necessaries 
 stuffed into my saddle-bags, I started afresh on my journey. 
 
 A few days’ travelling, without the occurrence of anything 
 . remarkable, brought me into the vicinity of Camden ; and as 
 I carefully scrutinised the road, I did not fail presently to 
 recognise that very same little hedge-tavern where Thomas and 
 myself had been taken as prisoners, and whence, by the aid of 
 the blue-eyed little girl, we had effected our escape, carrying 
 with us the spoils of Egypt, in the shape of the clothes and 
 money of our captors. With mind excited as mine had been 
 by the incidents of that eventful escape, the whole scene, with 
 all its surroundings, stamps itself wonderfully on the memory. 
 I could recall exactly the general appearance of the road, as 
 we had been dragged along, fastened to the saddles of our 
 captors, and of the little hedge-tavern, as it had first appeared 
 in sight, and no sooner did I again see it than I recognised it 
 
254 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 at once for the very same ; indeed, there was the less difficulty 
 in doing that, since, in the whole of my horseback journey, I 
 had not found a single house which had any appearance of 
 newness about it, nor were houses of such frequent occurrence 
 as to tend much to confuse one’s recollection. Twenty years 
 had made very little change in that part of the country. As 
 the house still had the external appearance of a tavern, or at 
 least of a whiskey-shop, I determined to stop awhile to 
 reconnoitre. 
 
 A stout and rather good-looking boy of twelve or fourteen, 
 without hat or shoes, and with no other clothes than a shirt, 
 not lately washed, and the tattered fragments of a pair of 
 pantaloons, so much too large for him as probably to have 
 been his father’s, took my horse as I dismounted at the door, 
 and promised to provide him with water and corn. Walking 
 into the single room which served for kitchen, bar-room, din- 
 ing and sleeping-room for the family, the only other room in 
 the house being reserved for guests, I observed an old crone 
 of a woman sitting by the window, zealously plying a loom, in 
 which she was weaving a piece of coarse homespun. Two 
 small children, who were rolling and tumbling on the floor, 
 spoke to her as “granny.” She might doubtless have once 
 been the mistress of the family, but seemed now to have 
 resigned the more immediate charge of matters to a younger 
 woman, probably a daughter of hers, as the children, while 
 calling the old woman “ granny,” called the younger one 
 mammy. . dhis younger woman stood at a table, mixing 
 corn-cakes in a great wooden tray. She was very poorly 
 dressed, and without shoes or stockings, but with an expres- 
 sion of good-nature on her face, and an expressive, soft blue 
 eye, which marked her, however rude and poverty-stricken, as 
 one of those tender-hearted females who can never look upon 
 distress without doing what they can to remove it. Entering 
 into conversation with the woman about the weather, crops, 
 distance to Camden, and whether they could give me anything 
 foi dinner, and so forth, I presently inquired, as if incidently, 
 whether they had long lived at this place. “Oh, law, yes,” said 
 the old woman at the loom. “ Why, my Susy, there, who, you 
 see, has already a family growing up about her— she was born 
 in this house, and three or four more children, too, older than 
 she, and as many more younger ; but they are all gone now, 
 except only her that stays by her old mother.” 
 
255 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ^ Not dead, I hope ?” I asked, in a sympathising tone. 
 
 Oh, no ! not dead,” said the old woman, “ but as good as 
 dead to me ; all gone, all moved off— some to Florida, and 
 some to Alabama, and some to Texas, and that’s the last I 
 shall ever hear of them.” And here followed a deep sigh. 
 
 “ But don’t you sometimes get a letter ? ” I inquired. 
 
 “Get a letter!’’ said the old woman, with a toss of the 
 head, such as left little doubt in my mind that she had been a 
 smart piece in her day, very different from her good-natured 
 daughter “get a letter! And which of my sons and 
 daughters, do you suppose, knows how to write, or to read 
 cither, for that matter ? Poor people here in Carolina don’t 
 have any chance at learning ; no schools, and nothing to pay 
 the teacher with, if we had any. That’s what has made them 
 all move off to seek a living elsewhere. Susy here knows how 
 to read ; I reckon you must have heard of it somewhere ; but 
 how do you suppose it happened ? When she was a young 
 giil, theie was a \ankee pedler stopped once at our house, one 
 of those fellows as goes travelling with a horse and waggon, sell- 
 ing wooden clocks — and there’s one of them now” (here she 
 pointed to the corner where the machine hung), “only it 
 hasn’t gone any this ten years— and pins and needles, and tin- 
 ware,. and they do say wooden nutmegs, though I don’t know 
 as this one that I am speaking of ever sold any. Awful cheats, 
 though, some of those Yankee pedlers are — awful ! ” said the 
 old lady, dropping her shuttle, and holding up both hands, and 
 looking at me with a very woe-begone expression. “ That’s 
 one reason our folks are all so poor, and that even those who 
 own slaves have to keep moving off to Alabama, because these 
 cheating Yankee pedlers carry off all the money out of the 
 country ; at least, that’s what I heard Colonel Thomas, the 
 member of Congress, say, the last time he was round this way 
 electioneering. Howsomever, I don’t know any harm of this 
 particular Yankee that I was speaking of. He used to come 
 round about once a year ; and he sold his things a good deal 
 cheaper, and I can t say but that they were just as good as you 
 can buy in Camden Town. Well, one time this pedler came 
 to our house sick with a mighty smart fever. I thought he 
 would die, sure enough; and I rather reckon he would, if 
 Susy, there, though she was then only twelve or fourteen years 
 old, had not looked after him just as if he had been her own 
 father. And so, you see, when he began to get well, as it was a 
 

 256 THE WHITE SLA VE. \ 
 
 good while before he was able to travel again, he took to teach- 
 ing the child to read, as he said, out of gratitude. He put her on 
 the track, and gave her a spelling-book out of those he carried 
 round to sell ; and a nice new Bible — get it, Susy, and show it 
 to the stranger — which he said his mother gave him just before 
 he set out from Connecticut ; and so, you see, whenever any 
 pedler, or Methodist minister, or other person of learning that 
 wasn’t too proud, came along, Susy would get a lesson from 
 them, till she learnt to read as glib as could be ; and now she 
 teaches her children too. You wouldn’t believe it, but that 
 boy Jim there,” pointing to the boy who had taken my horse, 
 
 “ knows how to read ! All his mother’s doings ) and if he can 
 only now and then get hold of a newspaper, he is as proud as 
 a peacock.” 
 
 All this long history of her daughter, on the part o'f the old 
 lady, served to confirm me in the conjecture I had formed, 
 that the barefooted matron before me, distinguished by such 
 remarkable literary accomplishments and motherly tenderness, 
 and to the first-rate excellency of whose corn-cakes I was 
 myself shortly after able to testify, must be the identical little 
 girl to whom Thomas and myself had owed our escape on that 
 night, so memorable to me, on which I had started on my 
 northern travels in pursuit of freedom. 
 
 To make matters sure, while she was setting a table for my 
 dinner in the other room, I inquired of her if she could 
 recollect how, a great many years ago — it must have been 
 before the time that the pedler taught her to read — two men, 
 one black, the other white, had been brought prisoners to her 
 mother’s house, and confined for the night in this very room. 
 
 As I went into the matter somewhat in detail, I could easily 
 perceive, as the circumstances were recalled to her memory, 
 though she said nothing, a gleam of wondering recognition 
 lighting up a face which, though it could not be called 
 handsome, more especially as the uncombed hair hanging 
 about her head gave her a sort of wild appearance, had yet 
 upon it an unmistakable stamp of good-heartedness which did , 
 
 not fail to make a very agreeable impression. But when, in 
 the course of the story, I came to speak of the little girl who ^ 
 stole in at night, and, while their keepers slept, cut the bonds 
 of the prisoners, alarm and anxiety spread over her before 
 smiling features ; and though she strove hard to preserve an 
 unconscious self-composure, it was easy to perceive that she 
 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 25 7 
 
 experienced no little terror, as if she were now in danger of 
 being called to account for that act of childish generosity. 
 However, I very soon quieted her fears on that score. 
 Great, indeed, was her astonishment, when I informed 
 her that I was the self-same white prisoner whom she 
 had released, and what was more, that I was both ready 
 and able to make some return to her for the favour she had 
 then done me. 
 
 Upon taking the liberty, after this introduction, and the 
 assurance that I wished to befriend her, to inquire a little 
 into her domestic affairs, I learnt, chiefly indeed from this old 
 woman, who insisted upon doing pretty much all the talking, 
 that her husband, though a good sort of a man enough, was 
 shiftless and idle, and that the support of the family devolved 
 pretty much on the women. The husband, indeed, wanted to 
 emigrate, but the old woman, with a degree of home-feeling 
 not very usual, so far as I have noticed, with that class of the 
 American people, was unwilling to go, and the daughter would 
 not without the mother. It seemed to be the great object of 
 the daughter’s ambition to send her eldest boy, Tom, to school. 
 She had already taught him all she knew, and he was presently 
 called in to give a specimen of his accomplishments by reading 
 a chapter from the pedler’s Bible, which the good mother 
 produced from a closet, and which, carefully covered with 
 cloth, was evidently preserved with great care. 
 
 There was, it seemed, in that neighbourhood, what was 
 called a manual-labour boarding-school, lately set up by the 
 Methodists, of which religious sect the boy’s mother was a 
 zealous member. This school was principally designed for the 
 instruction of those of limited means, who, by labouring a 
 certain number of hours in the day, might acquire, along with 
 their learning, some mechanical trade, and at the same time 
 diminish the cost of their board and instruction. This cost, 
 even without such reduction, did not much exceed the 
 moderate sum of a hundred dollars a year. But though, by 
 great economy, my benefactress had already laid aside, as she 
 told me, about thirty-seven dollars, where the rest of the 
 hundred was to come from — and she wanted the boy to have 
 at least a year’s schooling — she did not know ; and besides, it 
 would take about the whole of her present savings to fit him 
 out with clothes, books, and other necessaries. 
 
 I bade the good woman make herself easy on that score, 
 
 17 
 
258 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 and the boy having washed and dressed himself, and caught a 
 scrubby pony belonging to the family, we set out together 
 that same afternoon to visit the school, which was at no great 
 distance. 
 
 The founder and chief teacher of it, lately a travelling 
 minister of the Methodist connection, but who had now 
 devoted himself entirely to this new work, was, I found, 
 originally from the north. He had been bred a shoemaker, 
 but feeling a call to preach, had quitted his original vocation, 
 and after many wanderings had finally reached South Carolina, 
 of- which circuit he had become one of the preachers. In 
 point of education and manners, the contrast was very marked 
 indeed between this good man (for such I soon satisfied myself 
 he was) and my late clerical acquaintance, Mr. Telfair ; but in 
 zeal, enthusiasm, and the desire of benefiting those about him, 
 both physically and spiritually, there were strong points of 
 resemblance between them. On the whole, I was \Vfell satisfied 
 that my young protege should be trusted in such good hands. 
 I paid down for him his board and tuition for a year, and in 
 case it should be thought best for him to remain a second 
 year, I left with the teacher an order on the merchant in 
 Charleston, on whom I had letters of credit. I also desired 
 to be informed by letter, through the same source, of the boy’s 
 progress and promise, with a view, if he proved deserving, of 
 doing something more for him. Having sent him home with 
 money enough to fit him out, without intrenching on his 
 mother’s little store, I turned my horse’s head towards 
 Charleston, resolved to take my route as nearly as I could in 
 the general direction of my former travels in that region. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 As I began to approach the neighbourhood of Loosahach.ee, I 
 perceived at a distance on the road a group of men on horse- 
 back, upon whom, as they moved at a very slow pace, I gained 
 rapidly. As I drew nearer, the group presented a very striking 
 appearance. There were twelve or fifteen fierce-looking white 
 men, very variously mounted, with rifles in th'eir hands, and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 259 
 
 well provided with pistols and bowie knives, their dresses 
 bedaubed with half-dry mud, as though they had been engaged 
 in some aquatic expedition. A negro fellow, who followed on 
 foot, and by the side of whom, with a sharp eye upon him, 
 rode a white man armed to the teeth, held in leash some four 
 or five savage-looking dogs, which I easily recognised as of the 
 breed usually trained and employed for hunting runaway 
 slaves. But the most remarkable objects, and those upon 
 which the attention of the white men of the company seemed 
 to be fixed with looks gloomy and ferocious, though not 
 unmingled with triumph, were near the centre of the group, a 
 little in front. Here I perceived the apparently lifeless body 
 of a white man, whose pale features bore still a scowl of brutal 
 rage upon them, that contrasted strangely with their death-like 
 fixedness. The clothes, muddy and torn, as if in some recent 
 struggle, were all dabbled with blood, which seemed still to ooze 
 from a fatal wound in the breast. The body had been secured 
 on the back of a horse, which was led by a negro man, whose 
 blank and stolid features, upon which, however, I thought I 
 could trace a certain obscure gleam of repressed satisfaction, 
 presented a curious contrast, as did that of the black man who 
 led the hounds to the fierce, furious, and indignant looks of 
 the white men. 
 
 Side by side with this dead body rode a black man, wounded 
 and bleeding, and evidently a prisoner, for his feet were tied 
 together under the horse’s belly, and his hands bound behind 
 him. He was a man of most powerful and athletic frame, 
 verging on old age, with an enormous bushy beard, weak, 
 apparently from his wounds, and almost fainting, so that it 
 seemed with great difficulty that he kept erect ; yet, in spite of 
 his feebleness and captivity, and the vengeful glances, 
 mixed with occasional curses, which his captors directed at 
 him, still preserving, in a certain haughty and dogged aspect 
 of defiance, the look of one who had been long accustomed to 
 liberty. 
 
 There was another captive in the company on foot, with a 
 rope round his neck fastened to the saddle of one of the white 
 men, of a lighter colour than the mounted prisoner, barefoot 
 and bareheaded, as was the other, and with very scanty 
 clothing. He did not appear to be wounded ; but his back 
 was all cut and bleeding, as if he had just undergone a most 
 severe flagellation, and his woful, supplicating, subdued look 
 
26 o 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 made the sullen, defiant air of his fellow-captive on horseback 
 the more remarkable. 
 
 Riding up by the side of the mounted master of the hounds, 
 who brought up the rear of this strange cavalcade, I inquired 
 what had happened. It was apparent from his manner and 
 language, notwithstanding the rude company in which I found 
 him, that he was a person of cultivation, not unaccustomed to 
 civilised society. Indeed, it soon appeared that he was the 
 owner of a neighbouring plantation, who, with some of his 
 friends and neighbours, and other rougher professional 
 assistants, engaged for the occasion, had been out on a grand 
 slave-hunt. The dead man they were bringing back was, he 
 told me, no other than his own overseer. 
 
 This overseer was, he said, a very smart, driving fellow, a 
 Yankee, who had first visited that part of the country as a 
 pedler, but who had afterwards turned schoolmaster, and then 
 overseer. It was generally observed that these Yankee 
 overseers would contrive to get the most work out of the 
 people, and being somewhat in debt, he had employed him on 
 that very account. But in the great ambition of Mr. Jonathan 
 Snapdragon — for such was his name — to sustain the reputation 
 of the section of the country from which he came, he had 
 rather overdone the matter. The price of cotton was 
 unusually high, and in hope of making an extraordinary crop, 
 this Yankee overseer had resolved to work a couple more 
 acres to the hand than had ever before been attempted on that 
 plantation. What made the matter worse, the corn, of which 
 the crop in all that section of the country had been light the 
 preceding year, fell short, and it became necessary, in addition 
 to the increased tasks, to put the people on half allowance. 
 However, by means of a pretty liberal use of the whip, in 
 which the Yankee overseer was a great adept, and which he 
 seemed to take a real delight in, things had worried along till 
 just at the pinch of the season, when it all depended upon 
 three or four weeks of most assiduous labour whether the 
 weeds or the cotton should gain the ultimate ascendency. 
 Just at this crisis of the fate of the crop, when their services 
 were most wanted, all the prime male hands had scurvily 
 skulked off a few nights since into the woods, leaving the 
 overseer with the women, children, and sick, to contend 
 against the weeds as best he could ; and that, too, said my 
 communicative planter, looking at me with the air of a most 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 261 
 
 ill-treated man, and as if sure of my sympathy, with cotton at 
 sixteen cents the pound, and promising to be higher yet by the 
 time the crop was ready for the market. 
 
 There had, he told me, been prowling about in that neigh- 
 bourhood for a great many years past, perhaps twenty or more, 
 to the infinite annoyance of the whole country, a runaway 
 negro, known commonly among the people as Wild Tom. He 
 was believed to belong to old General Carter, a rich planter 
 of Charleston, who had long ago offered a standing reward of 
 a thousand dollars for his capture, dead or alive. The story 
 was, that he had run away from Loosahachee, one of General 
 Carter’s rice plantations some distance below, after having first 
 killed the overseer in some quarrel about whipping his^ife • 
 and the burning down of the expensive rice-mills at 
 Loosahachee, which had happened no less than five or six 
 times within the last twenty years, had been commonly 
 ascribed to his artful and daring malice and revenge. 
 
 Great efforts had been made at times to take this dangerous 
 outlaw, and many ingenious plans had been formed to entrap 
 him, but all had hitherto failed, not without the desperate 
 wounding of several persons who had met him in personal 
 encounter. He seemed to have various lurking-places 
 scattered over a considerable range of country, from one to 
 another of which he fled, as occasion required, thus eluding all 
 attempts at his capture. Sometimes, when the pursuit after 
 him had been very hot, he would seem to disappear for 
 months, or even a year or two, but was pretty certain to make 
 his re-appearance when least expected and least welcome. 
 Had he merely confined himself to the petty depredations 
 necessary to support himself and his band of confederates, the 
 matter would have been of less consequence; but he was 
 believed to keep up an underhand communication with almost 
 every plantation in the neighbourhood, and to be a general 
 instructor in mischief and insubordination, an aider and 
 abettor of runaways, and harbourer of fugitives. 
 
 I his same Wild Tom had been seen, within a short time 
 past, lurking about in the neighbourhood ; and it was suspected 
 that the late stampede had not taken place without his aid and 
 assistance. It was deemed a much easier thing to find and to 
 take him encumbered by a dozen or twenty raw recruits than if 
 alone, or only attended, as he generally was, or at least was 
 generally supposed to be for in all that was commonly 
 
262 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 reported of him, there was a great deal more of conjecture than 
 of knowledge — by one or two trusty, tried, and experienced 
 companions. With my new acquaintance, the planter — from 
 whom I was deriving all this information, in which, since he 
 had made mention of Wild Tom, I began to feel the deepest 
 interest — the recovery of his people was a matter almost of 
 life and death, pecuniarily speaking, since, unless they were 
 recovered, it would be necessary for him to abandon half or 
 more of his crop, and that too with cotton at sixteen cents the 
 pound, and promising to be higher; for hired free labourers 
 were things unknown in that part of the country ; nor could 
 even slave labour be hired at that season of the year, when 
 everybody was straining for dear life against the weeds, and 
 when the ordinary supply of almost every plantation was 
 expected to be diminished by the absence of a certain number 
 of incorrigible fellows, who make it a rule, just at that season, 
 to absent themselves for a summer vacation in the woods, 
 being willing to risk the severest punishment they might 
 encounter when taken, for the sake, at that particular season of 
 the year and the crop, of a few weeks of agreeable woodland 
 retirement. And here, indeed, a strong resemblance might be 
 traced between them and very many of their masters, who, as 
 the hot weather and unhealthy season came on, were accus- 
 tomed to abandon their plantations, and to figure away for a 
 few weeks, as grand as runaway Cuffee himself, at Philadephia, 
 New York, or Saratoga, to the astonishment of admiring and 
 curious Yankees, in the assumed character of millionaires and 
 nabobs ; though sure to pay for it by pinching at home all the 
 rest of the year, and living in almost as much terror of duns, 
 writs, and executions as their unhappy slaves do of the lash. 
 In this extremity, therefore, my new acquaintance had offered 
 a large reward for the recovery of his people; to which 
 inducement was added the standing reward for Wild Tom; 
 also other rewards which had been offered for other runaways 
 from other plantations in the neighbourhood, more numerous 
 this year than usual on account of the short supply of corn, 
 and the greater breadth of cotton, which the prevailing high 
 price had caused to be planted. A grand hunt had accord- 
 ingly been proclaimed, and at short notice a company of near 
 a hundred men had been collected — planters, overseers, loafers, 
 poor whites, with four or five professional slave-catchers, and 
 seyeral packs of hounds, armed to the teeth — and prepared to 
 
THE WHITE SLA EE. 
 
 263 
 
 make a search of the neighbouring swamps, in which it was 
 customary for the runaways to take refuge, lying hid by day, 
 and coming out by night to supply themselves by killing cattle 
 and otherwise, and to communicate with their wives and 
 friends who remained behind. The season, indeed, was very 
 favourable to this operation, an uncommonly long drought 
 having dried up the swamps to a considerable extent, and 
 made them much more accessible than usual. 
 
 The entire company had been accordingly divided into five 
 or six divisions, each to carry on operations by itself, and each 
 provided with its pack of dogs, that into whose company I had 
 fallen — I speak here not so much of the dogs as of the men — 
 being one of them. What had been the success of the other 
 parties my informant could not tell. What I saw before me 
 indicated, in a general way, the mixed fortune which his party 
 had encountered. 
 
 It had been appointed to them as their duty to search a 
 swamp of no great extent, but very inaccessible on account of 
 the unusual depth of the mud and water, in many places over a 
 man’s head, in the centre of which was a small island of firm 
 land, believed to be a favourite lurking-place of Wild Tom’s, 
 who was supposed to know better than anybody else the most 
 convenient approaches to it. 
 
 Within half-a-mile from the swamp the dogs had started the 
 lighter-coloured of the two prisoners, upon whom they came 
 suddenly as he lay concealed in the long grass, hoping to 
 escape observation. As the party were close by, the dogs' were 
 prevented from tearing him, and he was made prisoner without 
 trouble. The mud on his feet and legs, and the wetness of 
 the scanty fragments of clothing that he wore, afforded pretty 
 strong indications that he had lately come from the swamp 
 island, which it was the object of the party to search. He was 
 charged with this, but affected the most stolid ignorance of 
 the existence of any such island, or swamp either. When 
 questioned whence he came, and whom he belonged to, he 
 acknowledged himself a runaway from a rice plantation below, 
 who had lately wandered into this vicinity, of which he 
 professed an entire ignorance, declaring himself to be dying 
 of hunger, and not to have eaten anything hardly for a week — 
 a story to which his plump and comfortable aspect did not 
 give much credit. He acknowledged having heard of Wild 
 Tom, who indeed figured largely in the current legends, 
 
264 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 white and negro, of all that region ; but denied most positively 
 ever having seen him, or knowing anything of any other 
 runaways. 
 
 These protestations, however, did not satisfy ; and to make 
 him confess, he was tied up and whipped till he fainted ; but 
 while begging for mercy he still insisted on the truth of his 
 story, and that he had nothing further to tell. 
 
 This experiment having failed, he was placed on the stump 
 of a fallen tree, and a rope being put round his neck and 
 fastened to a branch above, he was threatened with instant 
 hanging if he did not confess. Still he continued dogged as 
 ever, when one of the company pushed him off the stump, 
 and allowed him to swing till he grew black in the face. He 
 was then placed back upon the stump, the rope loosened, and 
 himself supported by the two or three slaves who accompanied 
 the party. At length, beginning to recover himself, whether 
 out of terror of death, or the confusion of his ideas and the 
 destruction of his self-control by the pressure of blood upon 
 the brain, he began to confess freely enough that he had just 
 come from the swamp island, and that Wild Tom was there; 
 but he denied all knowledge of any other runaways, or that 
 Wild Tom had anybody with him. 
 
 The prospect of capturing this celebrated outlaw, the glory 
 thus to be gained, and the public service to be rendered — not 
 to mention the thousand dollars reward — produced a great 
 sensation in the company, though till it had first been 
 ascertained by further inquiries from the confessing prisoner 
 that his formidable chief had neither rifle, pistol, nor fire-arms 
 of any sort, no arms in fact but a knife, there did seem to be 
 some little lack of vigour in proceeding with the business ; so 
 my planter informant told me, lowering his voice, and casting 
 a knowing glance, with a significant smile, at two or three of 
 the fiercest-looking fellows in the cavalcade before us — one in 
 particular, who bestowed every now and then very savage looks 
 on the mounted prisoner, and seemed with difficulty to keep 
 his hands off him. 
 
 To make all sure, eight or ten of the company were sent to 
 patrol on horseback round the edges of the swamp, together 
 with all the dogs but one, while five or six of the strongest and 
 most resolute proposed to penetrate the interior, and to storm 
 the island retreat. The prisoner, with the rope still about his 
 neck, the other end made fast to the waist of one of the stoutest 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 265 
 
 of the company, was required to serve as guide ; and though he 
 protested that he knew nothing in particular of the approaches 
 to the island, he was threatened with instant death in case he 
 did not conduct them safely and expeditiously across. The 
 fellow, however, whether through ignorance or design, led them 
 into very deep water, in some places fairly up to their necks, 
 through which they were obliged to wade, holding their rifles 
 and powder-horns over their heads ; and, in spite of every 
 effort to keep him quiet, as the party drew near the island he 
 would insist on crying, as if giving directions as to the passage, 
 but, as was strongly suspected, with the real design of alarming 
 his confederate. And, indeed, before the party could make 
 good their footing on the island, he had already taken the 
 alarm, and had plunged into the water on the other side. He 
 had gained a considerable distance before he was seen, and as 
 he dodged behind the great trees of the swamp several rifle 
 shots fired at him failed to take effect. In plunged the others 
 in fresh pursuit, while the fugitive, engrossed by this danger 
 behind, made the best of his way through the mud and water 
 till he gained the firm land on the other side of the swamp, 
 where he encountered a new danger, being seen by one of the 
 scouts patrolling along the edge. As he bounded through the 
 piny woods like a deer a rifle shot grazed his side, and though 
 it did not bring him dpwn, yet it materially checked the swift- 
 ness of his flight. Four or five horsemen were soon upon his 
 track. Snapdragon, the overseer, leading in the chase, soon 
 came up with the flying negro ; and after vainly calling to him 
 to yield, and firing his pistols with only partial effect, sprang 
 from his horse and attempted to seize him. Snapdragon was 
 a powerful man, but he had now found his match. Wild Tom, 
 if indeed it were really he, exhausted and wounded as he was, 
 caught his assailant in his arms, and as they rolled upon the 
 ground the negro’s knife was not long finding its way to the 
 overseer’s heart. But already the dogs and the other pursuers 
 were upon him, and before he could disengage himself he was 
 made a prisoner and securely bound. It was not long before 
 the whole party was assembled, when some of the more violent 
 proposed to revenge the dead overseer by putting the new 
 prisoner to death on the spot. But the pleasure and glory of 
 making a parade and exhibition of their prize, and the necessity, 
 too, in order to secure the promised reward, to identify him as 
 General Carter’s runaway, had stayed this summary procedure ; 
 
266 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 and it had been resolved forthwith to hasten to the village 
 which served as a seat of justice for the county to commit the 
 prisoners to jail. 
 
 We were already in the near vicinity of the county seat, 
 which proved to be a more considerable village than usual, 
 and from which, as if by some premonition of our coming, 
 issued to meet us a most miscellaneous multitude, of all 
 colours, white, brown, and black ; of every age, from infants 
 scarcely able to go alone to old negroes with heads perfectly 
 white, making their way staff in hand; and of almost every 
 variety of equipment, from the well-dressed and well-mounted 
 planters to little negro boys, perfectly naked, riding on sticks 
 by way of horses, and shouting and screaming like so many 
 witch urchins. 
 
 Great time it was at the village of Eglinton, to which three 
 or four other parties of the grand hunt had lately returned not 
 unsuccessful. As we approached the jail — a little, wretched 
 brick building, containing a single room of ten or twelve feet 
 square, with one little grated window, whence proceeded a 
 steam and stench perceptible at a considerable distance — we 
 found it crammed completely full of recaptured negroes, sortie 
 of them severely wounded, tumbled pellmell into this black 
 hole, which contained also two white women, committed on 
 some charge of theft; the slaves to be detained until their 
 masters should come forward and pay the promised reward for 
 their capture, together with certain fees and charges which the 
 law allows in such cases. 
 
 By way of refreshment after their fatigues, and in com- 
 memoration of their prowess, these successful men-hunters had 
 indulged in pretty copious draughts of peach brandy and 
 whiskey ; and the dead body of the overseer, conveyed to the 
 tavern and laid out upon the table, soon wrought up those who 
 gazed at it into a state of furious indignation. 
 
 As it was absolutely impossible to thrust any more prisoners 
 into the jail, the two taken by the company to which I had 
 attached myself, after being fettered and handcuffed, had been 
 fastened by heavy chains to the iron bars of the prison window- 
 grating. 
 
 It was only by the greatest efforts that I mastered my 
 emotions, as making my way among the crowd of blacks and 
 whites that gathered around him I approached the one sup- 
 posed to be Wild Tom. I bent upon him a scrutinising eye. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 26? 
 
 He was greatly altered ; yet I did not fail to recognise the 
 features, too strongly impressed upon my mind ever to be for- 
 gotten, of my old friend and compatriot of twenty years before. 
 
 I had expected it ; yet what an agony shot through my heart to 
 know it ! It was necessary, however, to control myself, and I 
 did. I spoke a few words, when, satisfied by my tone and 
 look that I felt a sympathy for him, he laid aside for a moment 
 that air of proud defiance with which, like a lion in the toils, 
 he had glanced round on the crowd, and with a tone of 
 entreaty begged me for a drink of water. By the promise of 
 half-a dollar I induced one of the negroes to bring me a large 
 gourdful ; but just as the wounded prisoner was slowly raising 
 it with his manacled arms to his lips a well-dressed white map 
 struck it with a stick which he held in his hand and dashed it 
 to the ground. I could not refrain from some words of protest 
 against this piece of wanton cruelty; but the man with the 
 stick turned upon me with a volley of oaths, inquired who I 
 was that dared to comfort this infernal negro murderer, and by 
 drawing the eyes of the company upon me as a stranger, began 
 to make my position very uncomfortable. 
 
 Just at this moment we heard a loud shout at the tavern 
 door at no great distance, followed up by a vigorous fight and 
 a great uproar, as it seemed, between two parties into which 
 the crowd assembled there had become divided. This drew 
 off all those who had collected about the prisoners except the 
 negro man who had brought the water, and who still stuck by 
 to keep me in remembrance of the half-dollar; and by the 
 promise to double it I succeeded in obtaining another gourd- 
 ful, from which my poor captured friend was enabled without 
 interruption to quench his feverish thirst. As he dropped the 
 empty gourd he turned to me an eye of acknowledgment. 
 Thank Heaven, that in his distress and extremity I was enabled 
 to do for him even so much as this ! 
 
 Incapable as I was of affording any succour, I felt an 
 invincible desire to make myself known to him. I felt, 
 indeed, that to his noble and generous soul it would afford a 
 glow of satisfaction, even in the depth of his own distress, to 
 know of the welfare of his old friend and confederate. I 
 stepped close to him, and placing my hand on his arm, I said, 
 in a whisper, “Thomas, do you know me? Remember 
 Loosahachee ! Remember Ann, how she was murdered, and 
 how you vowed vengeance over her grave ! Remember 
 
263 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Martin, the overseer, and how we buried him and the blood* 
 hound together ! Remember our parting, when I went north 
 and you went south ! I am Archy ; do you know me ? ” 
 
 How keenly he fixed his eyes upon me as I began ! With 
 what devouring glances he gazed at me as I went on I I, too, 
 was greatly altered — far more than he ; but before I had 
 spoken my name, I saw that he knew me. But in an instant, 
 his eye glancing from me, that momentary gleam of joyous 
 surprise which had lighted up his face passed suddenly away, 
 and his features again resumed that sullen look of defiance, 
 which seemed to say to his captors, “ Do your worst : lam 
 ready.” 
 
 I felt at that same moment a hand rudely laid on my 
 shoulder, while a voice, which I recognised as -that of the 
 same man who had dashed the calabash of water from 
 Thomas’s grasp, exclaimed, with a volley of oaths, “ What the 
 devil are you doing here in close confab with this murderer? 
 I tell you, stranger, you don’t leave here without giving an 
 account of yourself ! ” 
 
 At the same time a number of men, rushing up to Thomas, 
 began to unfasten the chains from the prison-bars, and to 
 conduct him towards the door of the tavern. 
 
 The fight had been between the more drunken and infuri- 
 ated portion of the company, who, enraged at the sight of the 
 dead overseer, wished to try and execute Thomas at once, and 
 those who had wished to await the arrival of General Carter, 
 for whom a messenger had been sent, and to delay final pro- 
 ceedings till the prisoner had first been identified as the 
 veritable Wild Tom, and General Carter’s property, lest other- 
 wise there might be some difficulty in recovering the promised 
 reward. 
 
 The more violent and drunken party had, however, pre- 
 vailed j a court of three freeholders had been organised on 
 the spot, and Thomas, again surrounded by a rabble of blacks 
 and whites, was now brought before this august tribunal. I 
 was myself, at the same time, taken into custody as a suspected 
 person, with an intimation that my case should be attended to 
 as soon as that of the negro was disposed of. 
 
 “ Whom do you belong to?” Such was the first question 
 which the honourable court addressed to the prisoner. 
 
 “I belong,” answered Thomas, with much solemnity, “to 
 the God who made us all ! ” A reply so unusual was received 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 269 
 
 by some with a stare, by others with a laugh, redoubled at the 
 repartee by one of the judges, “To God! Ah, I rather 
 reckon you belong to the devil ! Anyhow, he’ll very soon 
 have you.” 
 
 To reiterated demands as to whose property he was, Thomas 
 steadily replied that he was a freeman, when the same witty 
 judge raised a new laugh by requesting him to show his free 
 papers. 
 
 The court, after hearing a witness or two, pronounced him 
 guilty of the murder of the overseer, after which he was asked, 
 with a sort of mock solemnity, if he had anything to say why 
 sentence of death should not be passed upon him. 
 
 “ Go on,” said the indignant culprit ; “ hang me, kill me, do 
 your will ! I was held a slave for the best years of my life. 
 My wife was flogged to death before my eyes. As a freeman, 
 you have hunted me with bloodhounds, and shot at me with 
 rifles, and placed a price upon my head. Long have I fooled 
 you, and paid you back in your own coin. That white man 
 to-day was not the first who has found me too much for him. 
 One by one, two by two, three by three, I defy, and would 
 whip the whole of you, but the whole dozen mounted and 
 armed, with dogs to boot, were too much for one poor black 
 man, with nothing but his feet, his hands, and his knife. 
 They have not always been too much ; but I am getting old. 
 Better die now, while I have strength and courage to defy 
 your worst, than fall into your hands a broken-down old man.” 
 
 These words of defiance wrought up the assembled mob of 
 planters and overseers to a fury perfectly devilish. “ Hanging 
 is too good for him,” some of them cried out, and presently 
 the awful cry was raised, “Burn him! burn him!” No 
 sooner was the horrible idea suggested, than volunteers were 
 found to prepare to carry it into execution. It was in vain 
 that I, and indeed two or three of those who had been 
 engaged in the capture of Thomas, and among them the 
 planter by whose side I had ridden, and from whom I had heard 
 the story of it, remonstrated against this horrible and illegal 
 cruelty. The same brutal scoundrel who had dashed the 
 water from Thomas’s lips now stood forward as the leader and 
 manager in this new atrocity. It was necessary, he said, with 
 the country agitated by abolition incendiaries, some of them, 
 he repeated— and here he cast a malignant glance at me— in 
 communication with this very outlaw, now that they had him 
 
270 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 in their power, to make an example of him. This Wild Tom 
 had been the terror of the whole neighbourhood for years. 
 The stories of his exploits, circulating among the negroes, had 
 done infinite damage, and might make many imitators. It 
 was necessary, therefore, to counteract this impression by 
 having his career terminated in a way to inspire awe and 
 terror. 
 
 A pile of light wood was soon collected, and the victim of 
 slaveholding vengeance was placed in the midst of it. 
 
 The pile was then lighted, and the smoke and flames began 
 to wreathe above his head. But even yet unsubdued, he 
 looked round on his shouting tormentors with a smile of 
 contemptuous defiance. 
 
 Unable to endure the horrid spectacle, I attempted to rush 
 from among the crowd ; but I found myself watched, and 
 directly I was seized, and, by orders of the self-appointed 
 master of the ceremonies of this horrible scene, conveyed close 
 to the burning pile, as one on whom the spectacle of such an 
 execution might make a salutary impression. 
 
 Thomas recognised me — at least I thought so — from amid 
 the flames, and he lifted up his arm, as if to bid me farewell. 
 
 O, the horrible agony of that moment ! Had I myself been 
 in the place of my friend, could I have suffered more ? My 
 heart-strings seemed to crack; the blood rushed in a torrent to 
 my brain. Nature could not endure it. I dropped fainting 
 and senseless to the ground. 
 
 CHAPTER XL VI. 
 
 When I recovered my senses, I found myself on a bed, with 
 four or five black women about me, applying various restor- 
 atives ; and, as I opened my eyes, they burst out with great 
 shouts of delight. 
 
 I found afterwards that, during my fainting fit,- my pockets, 
 as well as my saddle-bags, had been thoroughly searched, 
 in hopes of obtaining some proofs to corroborate the sus- 
 picions raised against me by the sympathy I had exhibited. 
 
 But the only papers found were some letters of credit and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 271 
 
 introduction addressed from Liverpool to mercantile houses of 
 established character in Charleston and New Orleans, in which 
 I was described as an English traveller, on a tour partly of 
 business and partly of pleasure. 
 
 Upon the production and public reading of these letters, a 
 great difference of opinion had sprung up among the sover- 
 eigns assembled at Eglinton, acting in my case as a committee 
 of vigilance, with full powers, of the extent of which so terrible 
 an instance had just been committed before my eyes. 
 
 The mere fact that I was an Englishman went very far with 
 many of the ruder sort to confirm the supposition that I must 
 be an abolitionist and a conspirator. The draught of water 
 which I had persisted in procuring for Thomas was regarded by 
 several as a very suspicious circumstance. The words I had 
 privately addressed to him, and the appearance of some under- 
 standing between him and myself, weighed very heavily against 
 me. The remonstrances I had made against the cruel death to 
 which he had just been subjected were set down as, at the 
 very best, a great piece of impertinent interference — especially 
 coming from an Englishman. 
 
 The same ruffian who had already twice interfered between 
 Thomas and myself, and who had caused my seizure as a 
 suspected person, now assumed the part of chief prosecutor. 
 He argued with great zeal that I must be an emissary of the 
 English abolitionists, and perhaps of the English government, 
 sent out on purpose to stir up a slave revolt, and, from what 
 had passed between me and Wild Tom, apparently in cor- 
 respondence with that dangerous outlaw, and the least that 
 could be done, in his opinion, with any proper regard for the 
 public safety, was to give me a sound flogging, and to ride me 
 on a rail out of the county. 
 
 This proposal was very favourably received ; and nothing but 
 the strenuous exertions of the planter whose acquaintance I 
 had made on the road saved me from falling a victim to it. 
 As I had entered Eglinton in his company, he seemed to 
 consider me, in some sort, as under his protection ; and he 
 accordingly took up my cause with no little zeal. My over- 
 taking him on the road, so he argued, was a matter of pure 
 accident ; my interference on behalf of the bloody murderer, 
 upon whom such just, proper, and signal vengeance had been 
 taken, was only a piece of misjudged humanity. It was not to 
 be supposed that a stranger, and an Englishman, could enter 
 
272 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 into all of their feelings. While adopting all proper means 
 promptly to suppress and punish all interference with the 
 domestic institutions of the south, for which nobody was more 
 zealous than he, they ought to be careful how they overstripped 
 the limits of reason and prudence. If I had been only a 
 northerner, it would be safe enough to maltreat me to any 
 extent, even to burn me alive, as they just had done the “nigger.” 
 Those pitiful Yankees might be whipped, kicked, and other- 
 wise punished, to any extent, with reason or without, and there 
 would not be the least danger of any rumpus about it, for 
 fear it might diminish the trade with the south. But to meddle 
 with an Englishman was quite another affair. England did not 
 allow any of her people to be maltreated with impunity. It 
 was apparent from my letters that I was a person who had 
 money and friends, and those concerned in any irregular 
 violence inflicted upon me might find themselves called upon 
 to answer for it. To be sure, the United States could whip 
 the British again, as they hacl done in the last war. But still, 
 in the present excited state of the slave population, a war with 
 England was not exactly desirable. Such, as he afterwards 
 informed me, was the general tenor of the argument by which 
 my planter friend had saved me from the clutches of the 
 vigilance committee. Had he or they suspected my true 
 history, how different the result might have been ! 
 
 While this discussion had been going on, I had been con- 
 veyed to the tavern, still in a senseless condition, where the 
 negro women, with their usual good nature, had exerted them- 
 selves, as I have mentioned already, for my recovery. My 
 planter friend soon made his appearance. He saw that I was 
 not yet in a condition to resume my journey; and as the 
 village, and especially the tavern and its neighbourhood, still 
 continued a scene of drunken uproar, such as made my further 
 stay there neither conducive to my health nor perhaps com- 
 patible with my safety, he insisted upon taking me to his 
 own house. This invitation, under the circumstances, I was 
 glad to accept ; and keeping my room for three or four days, I 
 gradually recovered, and grew strong again. 
 
 My host, who, of course, was without any clue to the special 
 interest which I had in the death of Thomas, seemed rather 
 surprised at the serious effect which that incident had produced 
 upon me; nor could he otherwise explain it except by sup- 
 posing that alarm for my own personal safety had a great 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 273 
 
 share in it. He therefore exerted all his eloquence, as well to 
 reassure me personally as to vindicate the reputation of the 
 southern states against any conclusions which I might hastily 
 draw. He assured me, upon his honour, that such scenes as I 
 had witnessed were not by any means common. Once in a 
 while the indignation of the people, roused to the highest pitch 
 by some atrocious villainy on the part of some negro, did vent 
 itself in the way I had witnessed. But this burning alive was 
 quite an exceptional circumstance. He had never known more 
 than two or three other instances of it, and those provoked by 
 some horrible misdemeanour, such as the murder of a white man, 
 or the rape of a white woman. He hoped I should be candid 
 enough to admit that a few such instances could not be con- 
 sidered as seriously detracting from the claims of the southern 
 states to stand in the highest ranks of civilisation and 
 Christianity. The fact was, the negroes were such a set of 
 unmitigated savages, that occasional examples were necessary 
 to inspire them with a wholesome degree of dread. 
 
 I was not at present in a state of mind to conduct an argu- 
 ment with much advantage. Besides, notwithstanding my 
 
 host’s personal kindness towards me, I very soon discovered 
 
 what the circumstances under which I had first met him 
 might have given me sufficient assurance of, that upon the 
 subject of the evils or wrongs of slavery he was perfectly 
 impenetrable. Remembering, therefore, the evangelical injunc- 
 tion of not casting pearls before swine’s feet, I contented 
 myself with letting him understand that, however it might 
 be in America, which I freely admitted to be a great country, 
 the practices of slave hunts and negro burning were wholly 
 incompatible with my English ideas of civilisation or Christi- 
 anity. This statement of my sentiment was received by my 
 host with a gracious smile, a condescending wave of the hand, 
 and the observation — evidently intended to be apologetical for 
 my heresies, and exculpatory of them — that the prejudices of 
 John Bull, upon some points, were unaccountable. 
 
 These mutual explanations occurred very soon after reaching 
 the planter’s house. _ As hopeless, apparently, of convicting 
 me, as I was of making any impression upon him, he allowed 
 the subject to drop ; and during the remainder of my stay with 
 him we conversed upon indifferent matters only. As soon as 
 I felt able to ride, I hastened to resume my journey — not 
 without a friendly warning from my host to be cautious how 1 
 
 iS 
 
274 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 gave utterance to my English prejudices. When travelling in 
 Turkey — so he remarked, without seeming to be aware how 
 little creditable the comparison was to his state of South 
 Carolina — it was best to do as they did in Turkey, or, at 
 least, to let the Turks do as they chose, without interference 
 or observation. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 Shortly after arriving at Charleston, which I reached without 
 any further adventure worthy of note, I waited upon the 
 mercantile gentlemen to whom I had letters of credit. Upon 
 entering the counting-house, I found another stranger there, 
 whom, from his bearing and appearance, I recognised at once 
 as the master of some merchant-ship. He was speaking with 
 great vehemence, and apparently complaining of some injury. 
 
 I gathered from what he said that his vessel belonged to 
 Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, and that, having 
 encountered a severe storm while on a voyage to the Havana, 
 he had been obliged to put into Charleston to refit. Not only 
 was his cook a coloured man, but of the eight sailors by 
 whom the brig was manned, no less than five were coloured, 
 all, as the captain said, natives of Massachusetts, born on Cape 
 Cod, and as able seamen as ever trod a deck. 
 
 These coloured men — so the captain was complaining in 
 pretty hard terms — had just been taken out of his ship and 
 carried off to jail ; and he wished to know of the Charleston 
 merchants, who it seemed were the correspondents of his 
 owners, whether there was no security against this outrage, as 
 inconvenient to him as it was injurious to the men. 
 
 “ Why,” said the merchant, to whom he addressed himself, 
 with a significant glance at his partner, and a mischievous sort 
 of look at the captain, “ there has just arrived here, I under- 
 stand, a commissioner from Massachusetts, appointed by the 
 governor of that state, under a resolve of the legislature, to 
 bring this very question of the imprisonment of coloured 
 seamen of that state to a legal issue. The commissioner is 
 staying at such a hotel,” naming the very one at which I had 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 27 5 
 
 put up ; “ that is, unless he has been turned away, for notice has 
 already been issued to all the hotel-keepers not to harbour him. 
 You had better apply to him, and quick too, or you may not 
 find him. He is the very man for you, and yours is the very 
 case for him. Try and see what he and the United States laws, 
 and the State of Massachusetts, will do for you.” 
 
 The ironical, sneering tone in which this was said was 
 evident enough to me ; but the honest sea captain, to whom it 
 was addressed, seemed to take it all in good earnest, and 
 hastily started off in pursuit of the commissioner. 
 
 Having arranged my business matters with these merchants, 
 and provided for meeting such drafts as might be made on 
 behalf of my North Carolina proteg'e , I ventured to inquire 
 whether the arrest of which I had just heard the captain 
 complaining was really made under any law. 
 
 “ Oh, yes, certainly,” was the answer. “ All negroes and 
 coloured people who arrive here on shipboard are taken at 
 once to jail, and kept there till the ship is ready to depart, 
 when, by paying their board, jail fees, and costs, they are 
 allowed to go in her.” 
 
 “ And suppose they can’t pay ? ” said I. 
 
 “Oh, the captain, you know, must have his men, and he pays 
 for them.” F y 
 
 “ But suppose the captain does not choose to pay?” 
 
 “ Why, in that case, the fees are raised by selling the men at 
 auction.” 
 
 “ Sell free men at auction,” said I; “driven into your ports by 
 stress of weather, and imprisoned merely for not being white ! ” 
 There was. something in the tone in which I spoke that 
 brought a slight tinge of colour into the merchant’s cheek. 
 He endeavoured to apologise for this law by suggesting the 
 great danger of insurrection, if free coloured men, from the 
 north or elsewhere, should be permitted to come in contact 
 with a slave population far exceeding the whites in number, as 
 was the case in Charleston and the neighbourhood. 
 
 “But. what is it,” I asked, “about this Massachusetts 
 commissioner, to whom you referred the captain ? ” 
 
 “ Why,” said the merchant, with a contemptuous sort of a 
 smile, “ the Boston shipowners, finding these prison fees and 
 expenses, a charge upon their ships, have all at once been 
 seized with a mighty strong sympathy for negroes’ rights — if 
 you want to stir a Boston man up, just touch him in the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 276 
 
 pocket — and so they have got this commissioner sent on here 
 to try this question in the courts. They pretend that South 
 Carolina has no right to make a law for the imprisonment of 
 free persons from Massachusetts, not charged with any 
 crime, but merely from a general suspicion on account of their 
 
 COlOUr -” • , „ t t j 
 
 “ And when is the case likely to come to trial ? I asked. 
 
 “ Come to trial ! ” said the Carolina merchant, rolling up the 
 whites of his eyes ; “ and do you suppose we are going to allow 
 the case to be tried ? ” 
 
 “ And why not ? ” I asked ; “ and how can you help it ? 
 
 “ Ten to one,” he answered, “ the cause, if tried, would go 
 against us. The law in question has already been pronounced 
 unconstitutional by one of the United States judges, and he, 
 too, a South Carolina man ; but whether unconstitutional or 
 not, we think it necessary ; and the niggers and the Yankee 
 merchants must learn to put up with it. As to helping it, that 
 is a very simple matter. The commissioner from Massachusetts 
 has already had notice to take himself off, and all the hotel- 
 keepers, as I mentioned to the captain, not to entertain him, 
 at their peril. We shan’t tolerate any such abolitionist spies 
 and conspirators here in Charleston. In fact, if the old 
 gentleman had not had the Yankee shrewdness to bring a 
 daughter of his along with him by way of protector, he might 
 before this time have found himself tumbled out of the city, 
 neck and heels, comfortably dressed in a coat of tar. and 
 feathers. There is not a lawyer here who would dare bring a 
 suit for him. Most of our merchants are northern men I 
 am one myself,” said my informant — “ but we are all Carolinians 
 in feeling ; in fact, if we expect to live here, we have to be so, 
 and I shall be on hand to do my part, and if the old gentleman 
 hesitates about it, to help him in finding his way out of the 
 city. The matter has been settled at a public meeting. He 
 is not to be allowed to sleep here another night ” 
 
 “ And what do you imagine the State of Massachusetts and 
 the Boston merchants will say at being so unceremoniously 
 kicked out of the court-house doorway ? ” 
 
 “ Oh, as to the merchants, they will probably do like a well- 
 bred Carolina negro, who takes off his hat when he gets a kick 
 for his insolence, and grins out, with a low bow, £ Thank ye, 
 master.’ Kicking agrees quite as well with Yankee merchants 
 as with niggers; and both niggers and merchants are quite 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 2 77 
 
 used to it ! As to the State of Massachusetts, so long as that 
 state continues to be controlled, as at present, by the 
 mercantile and manufacturing influence, there is no danger of 
 any trouble from her. She will pocket the insult very quietly. 
 The political leaders in Massachusetts of both part'es are 
 exceedingly anxious to hire themselves out as negro-drivers to 
 the south. What would become of Boston or Massachusetts 
 without the southern trade ? As the poor Yankees live on the 
 crumbs which fall from our table, they are not to be particular 
 about the terms on which they are allowed to pick them up. Of 
 course, if they are allowed to pick up the crumbs they must 
 expect now and then to eat a little dirt." 
 
 My Carolina acquaintance seemed to make a rather low 
 estimate of the spirit of Massachusetts ; yet when I recollected 
 what I had myself seen and heard in passing through Boston 
 a few weeks before, I could not but admit that this calcula- 
 tion upon mercantile servility and cupidity was a pretty safe 
 one. 
 
 As I reached the hotel, on my return from the merchant’s, I 
 found a great crowd collected in the streets. A carriage stood 
 at the door, and presently a tall, white-haired old gentleman 
 appeared, with a lady leaning on his arm, very ceremoniously 
 attended by half-a-dozen gentlemen in white kid gloves, whom 
 I afterwards understood to be a detachment of the vigilance 
 committee, specially appointed to escort the Massachusetts 
 commissioner out of the city. The commissioner and his 
 daughter were placed in the carriage, which drove off amid the 
 shouts, jeers, and execrations of the assembled multitude; 
 and so far as I have heard, this is the last that Massachusetts 
 has ever done towards vindicating the rights of her imprisoned 
 seamen. 
 
 English seamen, as I have been told, sometimes suffer under 
 the same law. If such are the facts, Great Britain will no 
 doubt find the means of bringing these insolent slaveholders to 
 reason ; and perhaps, through her agency, the timid and 
 trembling northern states may sooner or later regain a free 
 entry into the port of Charleston. It would indeed be a 
 curious circumstance if British aid and interference should be 
 found the only means of securing to the northern merchants 
 and seamen, as against the domineering influence of their 
 southern masters, their rights under the constitution of the 
 United States. Such an interference on behalf of humanity 
 
278 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 and sailors’ rights might almost pass for an offset to the wrongs 
 formerly inflicted by Great Britain in the impressment of 
 American seamen. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 y 
 
 Hitherto, during my journey southward, the excitement of 
 the various adventures through which I had passed, as well as 
 the occupation which I had found for my thoughts in revisiting 
 the scenes of my youth under circumstances so changed, had 
 kept my mind from dwelling upon the hopelessness of the 
 search which I had undertaken. Augusta, in the State of 
 Georgia, was the last point to which, in my researches many 
 years before, I had been able to trace my wife and child. It 
 was now some twenty years since they had entered that town 
 as part of a slave coffle destined for the south-western market. 
 This was the last trace I had of them. To Augusta, therefore, 
 I now directed my course ; not, however, without the most 
 depressing feelings, and a painful consciousness that when I 
 reached that place I should be without the slightest clue to 
 guide me any further. 
 
 I left Charleston in the stage-coach for Augusta, long before 
 daylight. As the day began to dawn, I found myself one of 
 four passengers. At first we were pretty silent, each trying to 
 sleep in his corner, or else eyeing his fellow-passengers, as if 
 wishing to ascertain their character before making any 
 advances towards acquaintance. At breakfast we began to 
 thaw out a little, and by dinner-time we were quite sociable. 
 
 It presently appeared that two of the passengers were 
 northern men ; one of them the editor of a New York 
 newspaper, the other a Boston agent, employed in the 
 purchase of cotton for some mercantile houses or manu- 
 facturing companies of that city. The third passenger was a 
 person of very striking appearance, with a face of great 
 intelligence, a dark eye that seemed to penetrate you at a 
 glance, a captivating smile, manners exceedingly soft and 
 winning, and something in his whole bearing that indicated a 
 man accustomed to mingle freely in society. 
 
 He was evidently taken by the other two for a wealthy 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 2 79 
 
 planter, and he neither did nor said anything to contradict the 
 assumption, receiving with an air of gracious condescension 
 the court which they paid to him. 
 
 After a variety of topics, the conversation, as is common in 
 America, settled down upon politics, and especially upon the 
 nomination lately made for president and vice-president by a 
 convention of the democratic or Jackson party assembled at 
 Baltimore. Mr. Van Buren, the nominee of that convention 
 for the presidency, was very sharply criticised by the two 
 northern men, on the ground, principally, that in a convention 
 for revising the state constitution of New York, he had been 
 in favour of allowing the blacks to vote. The planter, or 
 supposed planter, adopted, in the course of the conversation, a 
 non-committal course, which, according to the criticisms made 
 on Mr. Van Buren’s character, might almost have rivalled the 
 adroitness of that gentleman himself. The nomination of Mr. 
 Richard M. Johnson for the vice-presidency seemed to give 
 still less satisfaction ; indeed, it was mentioned that a portion 
 of the members of the convention by which it was made had 
 been greatly dissatisfied at it, and had refused to give it their 
 support. Some hints that were dropped excited my curiosity 
 as to the grounds of their opposition, and I followed up the 
 matter by a good many questions. The opposition to Mr. 
 Johnson was made, I was told, by the delegation from 
 Virginia. They did not object to the political orthodoxy of 
 Mr. Johnson, who, indeed, was a democrat of the first water — 
 to say the truth, so the New York editor told me, considerably 
 too much of a democrat to suit the tastes of the Virginians. 
 He was not respectable enough for them ; quite too vulgar in 
 his tastes and habits ; and they had insisted upon nominating 
 a certain Mr. Rives in his place. 
 
 Upon my inquiring more specifically in what the vulgarity 
 of Mr. Johnson consisted, it came out that he entertained in 
 his house a number of black and brown wives, and was the 
 father of a family of coloured children. 
 
 Very much to the surprise of my two northern fellow- 
 passengers, who exhausted all their rhetoric in condemnation 
 of Mr. Johnson’s coarseness and vulgarity — a practical 
 amalgamator for vice-president ! — the supposed planter avowed 
 himself a supporter of the Van Buren-Johnson nomination ; 
 and he undertook to offer some apologies for the latter 
 gentleman. 
 
28 o 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 “ The horror of you northern people,” he said, nodding his 
 head to the Boston cotton-broker, “ and the hue and cry you 
 have lately raised on the subject of amalgamation and the 
 intermixture of the races, may be all very sincere ; but tor 
 us in the south, with so many living evidences of our frailty 
 multiplying about us in every direction, to attempt to make a 
 bugbear of amalgamation, or to wink it into non-existence by 
 any ostrich-like process of sticking our heads into the sand, 
 and refusing to recognise as a fact what everybody knows, and 
 what is testified to by the varying complexion of every 
 considerable family of slaves in the country, is certainly a very 
 great absurdity. 
 
 “ For my part, I like to see a little consistency. We 
 southerners defend slavery because, as we say, it is a law of 
 nature that when two races are brought together in the same 
 community, the stronger and nobler race should predominate 
 over the weaker. But if, in such a case, it is the law of nature 
 that the men of the weaker race should be made slaves of by 
 those of the stronger, is it not just as much also a law of 
 nature that the women of the weaker race should become 
 concubines to the men of the stronger ? Does not it always 
 so operate ? and is not that the means which nature takes 
 gradually to extinguish the inferior race, and to substitute an 
 improved, mixed race in the place of it ? 
 
 “ Some of us undertake to defend slavery out of the Bible, 
 and to justify it by the example of the patriarchs. Very well ; 
 if the example of the patriarchs is to justify me in holding 
 slaves, will it not also justify our democratic candidate for the 
 vice-presidency in raising up to himself a family by the help of 
 his maid-servants ? 
 
 “In fact, sir,” turning to me, who had taken an early 
 opportunity to avow myself an Englishman, “ it is precisely 
 because our democratic candidate for the vice-presidency follows 
 the example of the patriarchs a little too closely that all this 
 hue and cry is raised against him. It is not his taste for black 
 women, it is not his family of coloured children — perhaps these 
 innocent gentlemen here from the north know nothing about 
 the matter, but, if so, any white boy in the city of Charleston 
 of sixteen years old and upwards could enlighten them — it is 
 not these little peccadilloes that reflect anything upon Mr. 
 Johnson’s character. They are as much parts of our domestic 
 \ institutions here at the south as the use of the cow-hide : just 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 281 
 
 as natural to us southerners as chewing tobacco ; just about as 
 common, and just as little thought of. But the pinch is here. 
 Mr. Johnson, being a bachelor, with no white wife or white 
 children to control him, and, withal, one of the best-natured 
 men in the world, must .needs so far imitate the example of 
 the patriarchs as actually to recognise a number of coloured 
 daughters as his own children. He has raised and educated 
 them in his own house. He has even made efforts to introduce 
 them into respectable society. The spirit of the Kentucky 
 women — the women, you know, are all natural aristocrats — 
 defeated him in that ; but he has procured white husbands for 
 them, and their children, under the law of Kentucky, will be 
 legally white, and entitled to all the rights and privileges of 
 white persons. It is this in which the scandal of Mr. 
 Johnson’s conduct consists. If instead of acting the affec- 
 tionate father by his daughters, he had quietly shipped them 
 all off to New Orleans to be sold at auction, to be made 
 concubines of by the purchasers, instead of marrying them 
 respectably, and securing for their children the full privileges 
 of Kentucky citizenship, we should never have heard that 
 brought against him, either north or south, as a reason why he 
 ought not to be vice-president. I do not imagine that either 
 of. our northern friends here would have made the least 
 objection to him on that score ! ” 
 
 “But you don’t undertake to say,” stammered out the 
 Boston cotton-broker, “ that any respectable man at the south 
 does that ? 1 hat, I thought, was one of the slanders of the 
 
 abolitionists.” 
 
 “ I do undertake to say,” was the answer, “ that a man may 
 do it without any tarnish to his respectability; and if he should 
 apply the next day after to be admitted a member of any of 
 our most pious Christian churches,, that would never be made 
 a ground for refusing him. Church discipline is mighty strict 
 in some matters. I once knew a man excommunicated from 
 a Presbyterian church for sending his children to a dancing- 
 school ; but I never yet heard of any southern church that 
 ventured to inquire into the paternity of slave children, or the 
 relations of female slaves towards their owners. The violent 
 death of a slave by the hand of the owner may, under certain 
 circumstances, lead to a judicial investigation more or less 
 strict; but, short of that, a Turkish harem is not more safe 
 from impertinent intrusions and inquiries, whether civil or\ 
 
282 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ecclesiastical, than one of our slave-holding families. If 
 honest Dick Johnson had not acknowledged those children to 
 be his, do you suppose that anybody — unless, perhaps, by way 
 of joke — would have ventured to charge them upon him? 
 His offence consists not in having the children, but in owning 
 them.” 
 
 “ I am afraid,” said the New York editor, “ you will give 
 our English friend here,” nodding at me, “ rather a low idea 
 of southern morals. There are some little family secrets tha* 
 ought not to be spoken of before everybody.” 
 
 “Pity,” said the other, “you had not thought of that before 
 In that case you might have let Dick Johnson alone. All 1 
 insist upon is that, bating the lack of a little hypocrisy and 
 grimace, and making due allowance for a little extra good- 
 nature, he is not so very much worse than his neighbours.” 
 
 “But,” retorted the New York editor, “as a southern man 
 and a slaveholder, can you undertake to say that such conduct 
 as his — this attempt to put blacks and whites on an equality — 
 is not dangerous to the institutions of the country ? ” 
 
 “Not so dangerous by half,” was the prompt reply, “as the 
 attempting to commingle and confound with the mass of the 
 slaves the children of free fathers, inheriting from the father’s 
 side a spirit not very consistent with the condition of servitude. 
 What do you think is likely to be the consequence of having 
 among our slaves the decendants of such men, for instance, as 
 Thomas Jefferson ? ” 
 
 “Thomas Jefferson! nonsense!” exclaimed the New 
 Yorker. 
 
 “ Nonsense or not, I can only say that I once saw a very 
 decent, bright mulatto woman, at least three-quarters white, 
 sold at auction, who claimed to be a granddaughter of that 
 famous ex-president, and, as far as resemblance goes, her face 
 and figure sustained her pretensions. At any rate, the woman 
 brought an extra hundred dollars or so beyond her otherwise 
 market value, as the purchaser facetiously observed, on account 
 of the goodness of the breed.” 
 
 The two northern passengers seemed a little shocked at this 
 story, the force of which they attempted to evade by insisting 
 that the woman must have been an impostor, and that perhaps 
 this idea was got up for the very purpose of enlivening the 
 sale. 
 
 “ Well,” said the other with a laugh, “ that certainly is very 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 283 
 
 possible. Gouge & McGrab were unquestionably shrewd 
 fellows, and, in the way of trade, up to almost anything.” 
 
 My interest in the conversation was here redoubled. Gouge 
 & McGrab ! McGrab was the name of the slave-trader by 
 whom my wife and child had been purchased and transported 
 to Augusta, and it was as his property that my agent formerly 
 employed in that business had obtained the last trace of them. 
 
 I hastened to inquire when and where it was that my 
 fellow-passenger had witnessed this sale of Jefferson's alleged 
 granddaughter. 
 
 “ Oh, at Augusta, in Georgia, some twenty years since,” was 
 the answer. 
 
 “And pray,” I asked, “who is this McGrab that you speak 
 of? I have an interest in getting some trace of a slave-dealer 
 of that name.” 
 
 He readily replied that McGrab was a Scotchman by birth, 
 but a South Carolinian by education, engaged some years ago, 
 along with his partner Gouge, in the supply of the southern 
 market with slaves. The head-quarters of their traffic was at 
 Augusta. McGrab scoured the more northern slave-states, 
 attending sheriffs’ and executors’ sales, and driving such private 
 bargains as he could to keep up the supply, which he forwarded 
 from time to time to his partner Gouge, who attended chiefly 
 to the business of selling at Augusta. But the partnership had 
 been many years dissolved, and McGrab himself a long time 
 dead. Gouge was still living at Augusta, retired from business, 
 and one of the wealthiest men in the place. 
 
 “ I ought to know something,” he added, aside to me, “ of 
 these men and their business, for in my younger days I was 
 three or four years their clerk and bookkeeper, and for a while 
 their partner. I owe old Gouge a grudge, and if you have any 
 claim against them, and I can any way assist you, you shall be 
 welcome to my services.” 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 The stage-coach stopped for dinner at a dirty, uncomfortable 
 tavern, the management of which seemed to be altogether in 
 the hands of the slaves, of whom there was a great super- 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 284 
 
 abundance, the landlord being a sort of gentleman guest in his 
 own house. The head-servant of the establishment, a large, 
 portly, soft-spoken mulatto, but very shabbily and dirtily 
 dressed, seemed, for some reason or other perhaps from my 
 politeness to him — to take quite a fancy to me. After dinner 
 he called me aside, and inquired if I was acquainted with the 
 gentleman who had sat opposite to me at the table. 1 his was 
 the supposed planter, my stage companion, in his younger 
 days, as he had informed us, clerk and bookkeeper, and 
 afterwards partner, of Gouge & McGrab. “No, I answered, 
 “I did not know him, except as my fellow-traveller from 
 Charleston ; I should like very well to know his name.” 
 
 “As to his name,” said my mulatto friend, “it would not be 
 so easy to tell that. He goes by a good many names. Most 
 every time he comes this way he has a new one. Have a care 
 of him, master ; he’s a gambler. I thought I d tell you, lest 
 you might get cheated by him.” 
 
 As this information seemed to come from pure good-will 
 on the part of my informant, I had no reason to distrust its 
 correctness. I knew very well that gambling was not only 
 practised in these southern slave states, as it is in the over- 
 grown capitals of Europe, as a means of relieving the ennui of 
 idleness, but that here, as there, a regular class of professional 
 gamblers had sprung into existence, who lived by fleecing the 
 unskilful and unwary. It was by no means unusual for 
 members of that fraternity to have all the external marks of 
 gentlemen ; nor was there any improbability in the suggestion 
 that my new acquaintance belonged to it. 
 
 Though he had inclined to differ, in the course of the. morn- 
 ing, from our two northern companions on some questions of 
 politics and morality, I could not but admire the grace and art 
 with which he contrived, in the course of the afternoon, to 
 worm himself into their confidence. When the stage-coach 
 stopped for the night at another tavern, still more dirty, 
 uncomfortable, and every way untidy — if that could well be — 
 than the one at which we had dined, he proposed, after supper, 
 a game of cards by way of whiling away the time. The other 
 two were ready enough for it, and the three were soon busy at 
 the game, in which they were joined by one or two planters of 
 the vicinity, who happened to be lounging about the house. 
 For myself, I positively declined to join them, declaring that 
 I never touched a card, and never played at any game for 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 285 
 
 money ; and perceiving from my manner that I was quite 
 inflexible on that point, the alleged gambler remarked, with 
 some significance, that I had taken a very wise and safe 
 resolution for a stranger travelling through the southern states. 
 
 After watching the game for some time I retired to bed, 
 and rising pretty early the next morning, since the journey 
 was to be renewed at five o’clock, I found them still at 
 it ; the two northern dupes haggard with want of sleep, 
 and their very lengthened faces, distorted with ill-suppressed 
 anxiety and suffering, seeming to have grown ten years older in 
 that single night. They bore, in fact, but a distant resemblance 
 to the two spruce, sleek gentleman with whom I had ridden 
 the day before. The other seemed as fresh and self-possessed 
 as at the moment he had sat down ; and as I entered the room 
 he took up and pocketed, with a graceful nonchalance that was 
 quite admirable, the last stakes, and, as it proved too, the last 
 money of his two companions. 
 
 Having sat down, as I afterwards learnt, with only ten 
 dollars in his pocket as his whole means and stock-in-trade, he 
 had made a good night of it. In the morning he had not less 
 than two thousand, besides a fine mulatto boy of fifteen or 
 sixteen, whom one of the planters had made over to him by 
 way of squaring accounts. 
 
 Finding our two companions quite drained, he insisted upon 
 paying their tavern bills himself, and upon lending each of 
 them fifty dollars, as a fund to go upon till they could obtain 
 further remittances ; and this he did with as unconscious an 
 air of sympathy and commiseration as if they had lost their 
 money by some accident, instead of his having himself been the 
 agent of their loss, by means not merely of his superior cool- 
 ness and skill, but probably also by some other tricks of his 
 profession. Not the master who tosses a dollar to his slave by 
 way of Christmas present could do it with a greater air of 
 generosity. 
 
 It was curious to remark the crestfallen air of the Boston 
 cotton-broker and the New York editor after the loss of their 
 money. The day before they had held up their heads ; they 
 had had their opinions, and pretty positive ones too ; nor had 
 they been at all slow or modest in asserting them. To-day 
 they seemed quite sunk into nobodies, the stiffening all taken 
 out of them, moody and silent, with nothing to say about 
 anything, eyeing the person to whom their money had been 
 
286 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE, 
 
 transferred, and to whom, the day before, they had paid such 
 court as a rich planter, with a singular mixture of dislike and 
 terror, much like that with which I had often seen an unfor- 
 tunate slave eye a master whom he feared and hated, but from 
 whom he felt it impossible to escape. 
 
 Indeed, I could not but think, that strip those two northern 
 gentlemen of their fine clothes, and set them up in their 
 present crestfallen and disconsolate condition on the auction- 
 block of Messrs. Gouge & McGrab, or some other slave- 
 dealers, especially with the cool, keen eye of their late 
 depredator upon them, and they might very easily have passed 
 muster as two “white niggers,” born and bred in servitude, and 
 stupid fellows at that, easily to be kept in order, and from 
 whom very little mischief or trouble need be apprehended. 
 
 Finding these two disconsolate individuals sad, solemn, and 
 as dry as a squeezed lemon, and quite insensible to all his 
 efforts to amuse them, the gambler, whose victims they had 
 become, directed his conversation to me. I cannot say but 
 that I decidedly enjoyed their predicament. “ Oh, my fine 
 fellows,” said I to myself, “ you now have a little experience 
 what a nice thing it is, this being stripped and plundered ! 
 You think it mighty hard to part with a few hundred dollars, 
 the earnings, by means I don’t know how particularly honest, 
 of perhaps only a few weeks — money lost, too, not less by your 
 own consenting folly than by the skill and tricks of a man 
 more knowing and adroit than yourselves. Now, learn to 
 sympathise with multitudes of poor fellows, in natural gifts and 
 endowments not so very much, if at all, your inferiors — some 
 of them, indeed, vastly your superiors — regularly stripped and 
 plundered, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week 
 by week, month by month, year by year, through a whole 
 lifetime ; and that, too, by pure fraud and force, without any 
 consenting folly on their part ; plundered, too, not only of the 
 earnings of their hands, but, it may be, of the very wives of 
 their affections, and children of their love, sent off to a slave- 
 auction to suit the convenience, or to meet the necessities, of 
 the men that call themselves their owners ; and with just about 
 as much right and title of ownership as this gambler has in you 
 — the right of the weak over the strong, and of the crafty over 
 the simple ! ” 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 287 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 As the late clerk, bookkeeper, and partner of Gouge & 
 McGrab, now, as it seemed, professional blackleg and gambler, 
 might be able, from his former connection with that respectable 
 slave-trading firm, to afford me information essential to the 
 search in which I was engaged, I received his advances very 
 graciously. In fact, the manliness of sentiment which he had 
 evinced the day before in the defence of his favourite candidate 
 for the vice-presidency had inclined me in his favour ; and as 
 to his present pursuits, I was disposed to think them quite as 
 honest and respectable as the slave-trading business in which 
 he had formerly been engaged, or as the slave-breeding business 
 by which so many southern gentlemen of unquestioned respect- 
 ability gained at least a part of their livelihood. 
 
 I found him, indeed, a very agreeable companion, free, in a 
 great measure, from those local provincialisms and narrow- 
 nesses almost universal among even the best educated and 
 most liberal-minded Americans ; keen in his observations, 
 acute in his judgments (a vein of sly satire running through his 
 conversation), but good-natured rather than bitter. 
 
 Such was the beginning of a companionship which gradually 
 ripened into something of a confidential intimacy. I did not 
 conceal from Mr. John Colter (for that was the name by which 
 he chose to be known to me) my knowledge of his rather 
 dubious profession ; at the same time, I was willing to accept, 
 at their full value, his graces, talents, agreeable parts, and the 
 frequent indications which he gave, at least in words, of a 
 naturally generous and kindly disposition. Why not make 
 allowance for his position and circumstances? Why not 
 regard him with as much charity as is asked generally for 
 slave-holders ? 
 
 As if to confirm me in this toleration, by which he was 
 evidently not a little flattered, and to which he did not seem 
 much accustomed, in the course of a second night’s stoppage, 
 in a ramble by moonlight, Mr. Colter, having at hand no more 
 pigeons to pluck, let me pretty fully into his history. 
 
 It appeared that he was the son of a wealthy planter, or of 
 one who had once been wealthy, and who, while he lived, had 
 maintained the reputation of being so. He had, of course, 
 been brought up in habits of great profusion and extravagance. 
 
288 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 His literary instruction had not been neglected, and he had 
 been sent to travel a year or two in Europe, where he spent a 
 great deal of money, and fell into very dissipated habits, and 
 whence he was recalled by the death of his father, whose 
 estate, when it came to be settled, proved insolvent, the 
 plantations and slaves being covered by mortgages, and a 
 large family of children left wholly unprovided for. 
 
 Thus thrown entirely on his own resources, he had great 
 difficulty in finding means to live. The general resource of 
 decayed families was to emigrate to the new lands of the west ; 
 but this was hardly possible, unless one could take a few slaves 
 with him, and he had none, nor the means of procuring any, 
 his character for profusion and extravagance being too well 
 established for any of his father’s old friends to be willing to 
 trust him. Indeed, since the estate had turned out insolvent, 
 it was curious to remark, notwithstanding his father’s numerous 
 acquaintance, and the ostentatious hospitality with which for 
 so many years he had kept open doors, how very few friends 
 the family had. 
 
 Being a good scholar, he might have found occupation as 
 tutor in some family ; but this was looked upon as a servile 
 position, incompatible with the dignity of a southerner, and 
 only fit to be filled by fellows from the north. “ The Romans, 
 you know ” — so he remarked to me — “ entrusted the educa- 
 tion of their children to slave pedagogues ; we generally get 
 ours from New England.” As to going into mercantile busi- 
 ness, that would require capital; and that business, too, was 
 mostly engrossed by adventurers from the north, who 
 generally procured their clerks and assistants from the same 
 quarter. 
 
 At length, unable to do any better, he had obtained employ- 
 ment from the rich slave-trading firm of Gouge & McGrab, 
 rising presently to be their first clerk and bookkeeper, and 
 being finally admitted as a partner. 
 
 But this kind of business he had found objectionable on 
 several accounts. In the first place, it was not considered 
 respectable, though on what grounds he was puzzled to tell. 
 He could well understand how I, an Englishman, and even 
 how one of these Yankee fellows — if it were possible to find 
 one, which might be doubted, with courage enough to say 
 that his soul was his own — might find something objectionable 
 in this business of trading in human muscles and sinews, 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 289 
 
 buying and selling men, women, and children, at auction or 
 otherwise. For himself, he did not pretend to any great piety 
 or morality ; he left that to the other members of the firm. 
 McGrab was not actually a Methodist, but his wife and 
 children were devoutly so ; and as the old man himself fre- 
 quently attended their meetings, the Methodists expected to 
 get him, too, at last. Gouge was a very devout Baptist, who 
 had been regularly converted and dipped, and had built a 
 church at Augusta, almost entirely at his own expense j but 
 with all his piety he had never been able to see any harm in 
 the business, buying and selling fellow church members with 
 as little scruple as the mere unconverted heathen. Indeed, 
 Gouge thought slavery and slave-trading a very good thing 
 every way, not only in the concrete, but in the abstract also. 
 Didn’t St. Paul say, “ Slaves, obey your masters ? ” And didn’t 
 that settle the question that some were to be slaves, and some 
 were to be masters, and that the slaves had nothing to do but 
 to obey? Such was the way that Gouge reasoned, putting 
 the matter with wonderful force and unction ; so much so, 
 that once — when on a visit to New York in search of three or 
 four prime house-servants, who had been purchased in Balti- 
 more, but had broken prison the night after, and whom 
 Gouge had traced to that city— falling into an argument on 
 the subject at the hotel where he was stopping, and having a 
 very grave address and clerical aspect, he had been mistaken 
 by a clerygman, who happened to be present, for a D.D., and 
 had been invited to preach on the divine origin of slavery in 
 one of the most fashionable churches of that city. 
 
 “ Still,” said Colter, “ in spite of the reasoning and the texts 
 of my pious partner, I never have been able to approve either 
 of slavery or the slave-trade in the abstract. What, indeed, 
 could be more contemptible than for a parcel of intelligent 
 and able-bodied white folks to employ their whole time, pains, 
 and ingenuity, in partly forcing, partly teasing, and partly 
 coaxing a set of reluctant, unwilling negroes into half-doing, 
 in the most slovenly, slouchy, deceptive, and unprofitable 
 manner, what those same white people might do fifty times 
 better, and with fifty times less care and trouble, for them- 
 selves ? Viewed thus in the abstract, the whole system, I 
 must say, seems to me a very pitiful affair. But in what 
 respect the slave-traders are less respectable than the slave- 
 raisers, or the slave-buyers, I am unable to see ) and yet it is a 
 
 19 
 
290 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 fact that Mr. A. B., of Virginia, who only saves himself from 
 emigration and a sheriffs sale by selling e ery year a half-a- 
 dozen or so of prime young hands, male and female, for the 
 southern market, pretends to look with a certain contempt on 
 the trader to whom he sells them ; while Mr. C. D., of Georgia, 
 who invests all his surplus cash, and all that he can borrow 
 besides, in the purchase of fresh slaves, pretends to look with 
 a similar contempt on the trader of whom he buys them.” 
 For some reason or other — so Mr. Colter humorously 
 remarked — the old maxim, that the receiver is as bad as the 
 thief, did not seem to hold good of the slave-trading business ; 
 for what reason, except that it is so much easier to see the 
 mote in a neighbour’s eye than the beam in one’s own, he was 
 quite unable to tell. 
 
 Then, again, there were things about the trade very un- 
 pleasant. To be sure, with the worst part of it he had little to 
 do. The buying up the slaves in the more northern states 
 was principally managed by McGrab. The getting them 
 away from their homes, and the separation of families, was 
 often a troublesome and disagreeable business; at least it 
 would have been to him, though McGrab never complained of 
 it. The principal management of the sales at Augusta had 
 been in the hands of Gouge, who understood, as well as any- 
 body, showing off the stock to the best advantage. Very few 
 persons could outdo him in passing off a consumptive or 
 scrofulous hand as every way sound, or a woman of forty-five 
 for a woman of thirty. _ His (Colter’s) share of the business 
 had chiefly consisted in having charge of the slave-pen at 
 Augusta, where the stock was kept to be fatted and put in 
 order for market. Indulgence and plenty were the order of 
 the day at the pen, the object being to keep the people as 
 cheerful, and to put them into as good plight as possible. 
 Yet some scenes would occur there— Such as the separation of 
 mothers and children hitherto kept together — rather distress- 
 ing to a man of sensibility like himself ; so said Colter) laying 
 his hand upon his heart, with a sort of theatrical, mocking air, 
 which made it difficult to tell whether he was in jest or earnest. 
 “To confess the truth,” he added, “ I always had a foolish sus- 
 ceptibility about me to the tears of women and children, which 
 a little unsuited me for the business. Not being by any means 
 pious, I’ve tried my hand at several things, first and last, but 
 have had too much respect for the memory of my mother, who 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 291 
 
 instilled into my youthful mind a great veneration for religion, 
 to make any pretensions to that — I was not able, like my 
 partner Gouge, to shelter myself behind St. Paul and the 
 patriarchs ; and my natural, carnal, unconverted heart, as 
 Gouge said, would sometimes betray me into very bad 
 bargains. 
 
 “ In fact,, the first serious quarrel that I had with my partners 
 — and which led to my going out of the concern — grew out of 
 an incident of that sort. McGrab had brought in a superior lot 
 of people from North Carolina, and among them an uncom- 
 monly fine young woman with a nice little boy just old enough 
 to talk — very light mulattoes ; in fact, they might have passed 
 for white. The deep melancholy of her great black eyes, and, 
 in spite of a sadness which no smile ever enlivened, the sweet 
 expression of her face made an impression on my susceptible 
 heart the very first moment that I saw her. I should have 
 desired to retain her as my own, but this I knew was a piece 
 of extravagance to which my partners would never consent, 
 especially as I was already indebted to the firm for two other 
 girls selected from the stock. She had evidently been raised 
 very delicately, the body-servant of a lady whose goods had 
 been sold on execution ; and McGrab, relaxing into a grim 
 smile, chuckled over her as about the finest piece he had ever 
 purchased — and such a bargain too ! He had bought her and 
 her boy for five hundred and fifty dollars, while she alone was 
 worth at least two thousand, and the boy might sell for a 
 hundred more. She understood needlework very well, and 
 would fetch a thousand dollars any day as seamstress or body- 
 servant, but at least twice as much, said McGrab — winking 
 with one eye at Gouge, whose solemn face lighted up into a 
 sort of smile at the anticipation — at least twice as much in the 
 New Orleans market as a fancy article ! ” 
 
 Struggle as I might, it was impossible for me, at these cruel 
 words, to suppress a deep sigh. The keen eye and quick 
 observation of Colter had not failed to perceive that the men- 
 tion of the young woman and her child from North Carolina 
 had touched me in some tender point, and he seemed to have 
 dwelt with more detail on the incident as if with design to probe 
 me. 
 
 “What is the matter?” he exclaimed, coming to a stop, and 
 looking me full in the face. “You seem to be strangely 
 affected. If you are going to sigh and mourn over every 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 292 
 
 handsome young woman sold as a fancy article in^the New 
 Orleans market, you will have a pretty sad time of it.” 
 
 It was only by the greatest effort that I controlled my voice 
 to inquire if he remembered the young woman’s name. 
 
 “ Oh, yes,” he replied ; “ it was some time ago — twenty years, 
 I dare say; but names and faces I very seldom forget. The girl, 
 I think, was called 1 Cassy.’ ” 
 
 At the sound of that dear name my heart beat violently ; but 
 supporting myself against a tree under which we stood, “ Can 
 you recollect,” I asked, “ the name of the child ? ” 
 
 “ Let us see,” said my companion, reflecting for a moment. 
 “ Oh, yes, I have it. I think she called the child ‘Montgomery.’” 
 That was the name we had given to our boy out of compli- 
 ment to Cassy’s kind mistress, and I no longer doubted that it 
 was of my wife and my child that he spoke. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 Mastering my emotion as well as I could, I begged Colter to 
 go on with his story. But this he was in no hurry to do. 
 
 “ You seem,” he said, eyeing me closely, “ to have some more 
 than ordinary interest in this affair. You mentioned, I recol- 
 lect, this not being your first visit to America, and that you had 
 formerly travelled here some twenty years ago. Twenty years 
 ago you must have been a young man, and young men are 
 easily captivated ; and you young Englishmen, when you get 
 among us, notwithstanding all we hear about English virtue 
 and decorum, are no more anchorites than the rest of us.. But 
 even the chaste Joseph, or Scipio, or the Pope of Rome himself 
 might readily be pardoned for melting a little before such 
 attractions. There is a soft, winning, captivating way about 
 some of those girls that makes them perfectly irresistible. . I 
 don’t wonder at the envy, rage, and jealousy of our white 
 women ; they can’t help being conscious of their own inferiority 
 in these respects. Of course, it makes them cross and fractious 
 —natural enough; but that does not help the matter, nor 
 render them any the more agreeable. So they have to be 
 content with being mistresses of the house and the servants, 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 293 
 
 while some slave girl, black, yellow, or white, as the case may 
 be, is mistress of their husbands’ affections. 
 
 “ There are a good many of these girls whom it is quite 
 enough to spoil the temper of the best-natured woman in the 
 world to have in the house with them.” 
 
 “As to this Cassy, in whom you seem to take such a 
 particular interest, she would do credit to anybody’s choice. I 
 say this as both connoisseur and amateur in these matters, and 
 indeed professionally, as a dealer in the article in all which 
 respects I reckon my opinion to be worth something. The 
 boy was a fine boy too. I wonder who his father was! 
 Fact,” said he, looking me full in the face, with a comical 
 sort of an air, “ I shouldn’t be surprised if there was some 
 
 resemblance!” _ . 
 
 Perceiving, however, that his attempted jocularity did not 
 suit the temper of my mind, and his keen glance detecting, 
 probably, the tear that stood in my eye, he modified his tone a 
 
 little. . 
 
 “ They do sometimes get a tight hold of our hearts. It is 
 
 all very well for us to lord it over the men, as if they were 
 brutes, monkeys, inferior animals; but the women are very 
 often too much for us. Why, I have known before now the 
 most fierce, brutal, savage fellow, who feared neither God nor 
 man, made a complete baby of— as manageable as a tame bear 
 who dances to order — by some little black or yellow girl of 
 fifteen or twenty, who has thus contrived to play the Queen 
 Esther on the plantation, and to stand often between the fury 
 of her lord and master and the backs of her dingy kindred. 
 This is one of its alleviations not much dwelt upon by those 
 who undertake to apologise for slavery, but which, perhaps, 
 does more than everything else put together to infuse a certain 
 modicum of kindly feeling into the relation of master and 
 slave. That is the way that nature takes to bring both master 
 and slave to their natural equality. Cupid, with his bow and 
 arrows, is the sworn enemy of all castes and patrician 
 distinctions. 
 
 “ Pray, sir, did you ever read Edwards’s History of the West 
 Tidies ? ” 
 
 “ Yes, I have.” . . 
 
 “Then, perhaps, you recollect an ode inserted m it, ad- 
 dressed to the Sable Venus. Edwards, you know, was a 
 Jamaica planter, a grave historian, an advocate of the slave- 
 
 
294 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 trade, perfectly orthodox on that whole subject, but a man of 
 sense and observation, experience and sensibility, who had 
 both seen and felt too much to undertake to found an argu- 
 ment for slavery, such as we hear nowadays, on the pretended 
 antipathy between the races, and who, in wishing to give a 
 correct view of the state of things in the West Indies, thought 
 it best to assume the disguise of verse and allegory. Happen- 
 ing to meet with the book lately at Charleston, the ode quite 
 struck my fancy, and by the way of joke, I wrote off several 
 copies, and sent them to a number of our leading southern 
 statesmen at Washington. I dare say I can repeat it, pre- 
 serving the ideas at least, if not always the words, and changing, 
 as I did in my copies, the scene from Jamaica, where Edwards 
 lays it, to this meridian, which it suits just about as well.” 
 
 So saying, he repeated, with a sort of mock earnestness 
 suited to their tone, the following stanzas, of which he after- 
 wards gave me a copy : — 
 
 THE SABLE VENUS. 
 
 AN ODE. 
 
 Come to my bosom, genial fire, 
 
 Soft sounds and lively thoughts inspire ; 
 
 Unusual is my theme ; 
 
 Not such dissolving Ovid sung, 
 
 Nor melting Sappho’s glowing tongue — 
 More dainty mine I deem. 
 
 Sweet is the beam of morning bright, 
 
 Yet sweet the sober shade of night, 
 
 From rich Angola’s shores ; 
 
 While beauty, clad in sable dye, 
 Enchanting fires the wondering eye. 
 Farewell, ye Paphian bowers ! 
 
 O, sable queen, thy wild domain 
 I seek, and court thy gentle reign, 
 
 So soothing, soft, and sweet ; 
 
 Where melting love, sincere delight, 
 Fond pleasure ready joys invite, 
 
 And unpriced raptures meet. 
 
 The prating French, the Spaniard proud, 
 The double Scot, Hibernian loud, 
 
 And sullen English own 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 295 
 
 The pleasing softness of thy sway, 
 
 And here transferred allegiance pay, 
 
 For gracious is thy throne. 
 
 From east to west, o’er either Ind, 
 
 Thy sceptre sways : thy power, we find, 
 Beyond the tropics felt ; 
 
 The blazing sun, that gilds the zone, 
 
 Waits but the triumphs of thy throne, 
 
 Quite round the burning belt. 
 
 When thou, America to view, 
 
 That vast domain, thy conquest new, 
 
 First left thy native shore, 
 
 Bright was the morn and soft the breeze : 
 With wanton joy the curling seas 
 The beauteous burden bore. 
 
 Thy skin excelled the raven’s plume, 
 
 Thy breath the fragrant orange-bloom, 
 
 Thy eye the tropic’s beam ; 
 
 Soft was thy lip as silken down, 
 
 And mild thy looks as evening sun 
 That gilds the mountain stream. 
 
 The loveliest limbs thy form compose, 
 
 Such as thy sister-Venus chose 
 In Florence, where she’s seen : 
 
 Both just alike, except the white— 
 
 No difference at all at night 
 The beauteous dames between. 
 
 Oh, when thy ship had touched the strand, 
 What raptures seized the ravished land ! 
 
 From every side they came ; 
 
 Each mountain, valley, plain, and grove, 
 Haste eagerly to show their love ; 
 
 Right welcome was the dame. 
 
 Virginia’s shouts were heard aloud. 
 
 Gay Carolina sent a crowd, 
 
 Grave Georgia not a few ; 
 
 No rabble rout. I heard it said 
 Some great ones joined the cavalcade ; 
 
 The muse will not say who. 
 
 Gay goddess of the sable band, 
 
 Propitious still this grateful land 
 With thy sweet presence bless : 
 
 Here fix secure thy constant throne ; 
 
 We all adore, and thee alone, 
 
 The queen of love confess. 
 
296 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 For me, if I no longer pay 
 Allegiance to thy sister’s sway, 
 
 I act no fickle part : 
 
 It were ingratitude to slight 
 Superior kindness. I delight 
 To feel a grateful heart. 
 
 Then, playful goddess, cease to change, 
 Nor in new beauties vainly range ; 
 
 For whatsoe’er thy hue, 
 
 Try every form thou canst put on, 
 
 I’ll follow thee through every one ; 
 
 So staunch I am, so true. 
 
 Do thou in gentle Phibia smile, 
 
 In artful Beneba beguile. 
 
 In wanton Mimba pout, 
 
 In sprightly Cuba’s eyes look gay, 
 
 Or grave in sober Quashaba, 
 
 I still should find thee out. 
 
 “ There,” said he, repeating the last stanza, and giving to it 
 all the benefit of a very graceful elocution, “ that’s a chorus 
 equal to anything in Tom Moore, in which three-quarters of 
 our young men, and a good many of the old ones, too, for that 
 matter, might join ; and yet half of them, perhaps just fresh 
 from love-making to some sable inamorata, will talk to you 
 about the antipathy of the races, and just as likely as not 
 wind up with a discourse on the horrors of amalgamation ! 
 What a world of cant, humbug, and hypocrisy we do live 
 in ! ” 
 
 As I remained silent, he still went on — “ Supposing, though, 
 this Cassy to have been a sweetheart of yours — and I can’t 
 conceive why else you show so much interest in her — still 
 I can hardly set you down as a votary of the sable Venus. 
 She rather belonged to the white race ; but, you know, here at 
 the south, we reckon all slaves as ‘niggers,’ whatever their 
 colour. Just catch a stray Irish or German girl, and sell her — 
 a thing sometimes done — and she turns a nigger at once, and 
 makes just as good a slave as if there were African blood in 
 her veins.” 
 
 “If,” I said, commanding myself as well as I could, “you 
 really supposed I have any such interest as you speak of in the 
 girl and her child, you might as well leave off this fooling, and 
 tell me what became of them. We will, if you please, discuss 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 297 
 
 these matters of antipathies, and amalgamation, and the sable 
 Venus, which you seem so fond of, at some other more 
 convenient opportunity.” 
 
 “Well,” said he, “so far as I personally am concerned, I 
 stand quite clear. If I had actually foreseen that, twenty years 
 after, I was to be hauled over the coals by yourself in person — 
 and,, having, been watching your eye for the last half-hour, I 
 judge you to be one I should not care about quarrelling with — 
 1 could not, on the whole, have done better by the girl than I 
 did. 
 
 “ Should I say that I made no amorous advances .to her, 
 you would scarcely believe me. I did ; but she replied with 
 such a mere agony of tears and entreaty as quite extinguished 
 all my passion, and converted it into pity. 
 
 “I soon found that her most immediate and pressing 
 source of suffering was the apprehension lest she might be 
 separated from her boy \ and, indeed, there was some occasion 
 for it. A New Orleans trader, with whom we had often dealt, 
 had evinced a great disposition to buy her. After a careful 
 examination of her person, taking more liberties than I shall 
 care to mention to you, he pronounced her a prime wench, 
 a first-rate article, a number one, extremely well adapted to 
 the New Orleans market, and he offered to pay two thousand 
 dollars for her, cash, which Gouge agreed to take, provided he 
 would give an additional hundred dollars for the boy. But the 
 trader did not want the boy, who would only be a drawback 
 upon the value of the woman when he came to sell her ; at 
 least, so he pretended, and he insisted that the boy ought to be 
 thrown into the bargain. A lady of Augusta, in search of 
 a small boy to bring up as body-servant to her infant son, 
 offered to give seventy-five dollars for him. The chance 
 seemed to be that the boy would be sold to the Augusta woman, 
 and the mother to the New Orleans trader. Aware of this, in 
 the greatest distress she appealed to me to save her from this 
 separation. It so happened that during Gouge s absence at a 
 sheriff’s sale some ten miles in the country, where he thought 
 some bargains might be picked up, a lady and gentleman 
 called at the pen in search of a female attendant for the lady. 
 The gentleman was a Mississippi planter, resident somewhere 
 in the neighbourhood of Vicksburg, returning home with his 
 new wife, whom he had lately married at the north. I pointed 
 out this Cassy to their notice, and she besieged them with 
 
298 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 pressing entreaties, making the little boy kneel, and put his 
 tiny hands together, and pray first the lady, and then the 
 gentleman, to buy him and his mother, and not to let the 
 New Orleans trader take his mother away from him. 
 
 “ The lady, after due inquiries of Cassy as to her accomplish- 
 ments and capabilities, declared her to be just the person she 
 wanted. She had been bred up at the north, did not like 
 niggers, and could not bear to have a black wench about her ; 
 whereas this one, she said, was as nice and as white almost as 
 a New England girl, and the boy might soon be taught to 
 clean the knives, wait at table, and make himself otherwise 
 useful. 
 
 “ I offered to take, for the two, two thousand and fifty 
 dollars — a price which the husband thought enormous. He 
 could buy three first-rate field-hands for that. Somebody that 
 was not quite so young and good-looking would answer his 
 wife’s purpose just as well, and might perhaps, too, be a safer 
 bargain all round — an intimation clear enough to me, but 
 which the wife did not seem to understand. She still insisted 
 upon buying Cassy, and being yet in the honeymoon, she 
 carried the day ; and the bill of sale was signed, the money 
 paid, and the mother and child delivered to their new owners 
 just as Gouge rode up to the pen. 
 
 “ When the hard-hearted old rascal found out that I had 
 sold the mother and child together for twenty-five dollars less 
 than he could have got by selling them separately, you can’t 
 imagine what a fuss he made. This pious Baptist church 
 member, who had been mistaken in New York, as I have told 
 you, for a doctor of divinity, thrown quite off his balance, 
 cursed and swore like a pirate. If I had fairly given them 
 away he would not have been more abusive. I should have 
 thought that for the moment at least he had fallen from grace, 
 only that was no part of his creed. He was no Methodist ; he 
 and McGrab used to have some warm disputes sometimes on 
 that head. McGrab thought that even the best man might 
 sometimes fall away ; but Gouge insisted very positively upon 
 the perseverance of the saints, of whom he did not doubt him- 
 self to be one. 
 
 “ I dwelt upon the hardship of separating the mother and 
 her child, and told Gouge he ought to be satisfied, as we made 
 a handsome profit on the transaction as it was. I had 
 ascertained — so I told him — that the woman was pious, and 
 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 299 
 
 that, apart from her dread of being separated from her child, 
 she had a great horror of being sold for the New Orleans 
 market; and I insisted that, as a matter of religion and 
 conscience, it was better to dispose of her, as I had done, to a 
 private family, and most probably a kind mistress, than to sell 
 her to the New Orleans slave-trader. Here I thought I had 
 my pious partner at advantage, and I followed it up by 
 quoting the text, “ Thou shalt not oppress the widow and the 
 fatherless.” Though I was not so well read in the Scriptures 
 as Gouge, it came into my mind as quite to the purpose. But 
 highly indignant that such a graceless fellow as I, who belonged 
 to no church, and made no pretensions to have any religion, 
 should presume to dictate to him on that subject, Gouge 
 turned upon me with a perfect fury. The text, he said, did 
 not apply. He had once had a long talk on that very subject 
 with Parson Softwords. As slaves could not be married, there 
 could be — so the parson thought — no widows among them ; 
 and as to the children, not being born in lawful wedlock, they 
 could not become fatherless — for they had no fathers — being 
 in the eye of the law, as he had heard the learned Judge 
 Hallett observe from the bench, the children of nobody. As 
 to pious niggers, that was all moonshine ; he did not believe 
 in any such thing. He belonged, in fact, to a pretty numerous 
 sect in these parts, called Anti-mission Baptists, or Hard Shells, 
 who don’t think the Lord ever intended the heathen to be 
 converted, or negroes to be anything but slaves, or anybody to 
 be saved except their own precious selves, and that entirely by 
 faith and grace, wholly independent of works. As to the girl’s 
 making such a fuss about parting from her child, that, Gouge 
 said, was a piece of great nonsense. Wasn’t she young enough 
 to have a dozen more ? 
 
 “ The upshot of the matter was, what with Gouge’s brutality 
 and purse-proud insolence, and my hot temper, which I had 
 not then learned so well how to command, that we soon got 
 into a violent quarrel, which ended in my giving him a 
 caning on the spot, and, of course, in the breaking-up of the 
 partnership. 
 
 “ I was, indeed, quite too soft for that business. As to the 
 men, I should have done well enough with them; but the 
 women, old and young, were always getting up such, scenes, 
 and were always so full of complaints about being separated 
 from their daughters, and their mothers, and their babies, and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 300 
 
 their husbands, that to a man who had the least of a tender 
 spot in his heart it was perfectly intolerable. 
 
 “ Thus ousted from the slave-trading business, it became 
 necessary for me to find some other occupation 3 but that was 
 not so easy. The occupations that a southern gentleman can 
 adopt without degradation are very few indeed. My manners, 
 address, the good songs I could sing, and good stories I could 
 tell, had made me rather a favourite in society 3 and as I never 
 drank, and understood a thing or two about cards and dice, 
 billiards and faro tables, I was able to replenish my pockets in 
 that way 3 and finally, for want of a better, that became my 
 regular profession.” 
 
 “ And,” said I, wishing to pay him off a little for his late 
 tantalisings, “ is this one of those few occupations which a 
 southern gentleman can adopt without degradation ? ” 
 
 “The gentility of gambling can’t be denied,” he said, 
 “ since it is very freely practised by the larger part of southern 
 gentlemen. Once in a while the legislatures are seized with a 
 fit of penitence or virtue, and pass laws to break it up 3 but 
 nobody ever thinks of paying any attention to those laws, 01 
 attempting to enforce them, except now and then sonie poor 
 plucked pigeon, who undertakes to revenge himself in that 
 way. But though gambling is just as genteel as slave-holding, 
 somehow or other, by an inconsistency like that in the case of 
 the slave-traders, we who make a profession of it, though we 
 associate constantly with gentlemen, are not, I must confess, 
 reckoned to belong precisely to that class, except, indeed, we 
 get money enough to buy a plantation and retire.” 
 
 “It is charged,” said I, “upon those of your profession, 
 that, not content with the fair chances of the game, you 
 contrive to take undue advantages.” 
 
 “ Yes 3 and so do half of the gentlemen players, as far as 
 they know how, and have the opportunity. There is always a 
 tendency, in games of chance, to run a little into games of skill. 
 Suppose we do plunder the planters — don’t they live by 
 plundering the negroes ? What right have they to complain ? 
 Isn’t sauce for the goose sauce for the gander ? I tell you, our 
 whole system here is a system of plunder from beginning to 
 end. ’Tis only the slaves, and some of the poor whites who 
 own no slaves, who can be said to earn an honest living. The 
 planters live on the plunder of the slaves, whom they force to 
 labour for them. The slaves steal all they can from the 
 

 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3 QI 
 
 planters, and a good many of the poor whites connive at and 
 help them in it. A parcel of blood-sucking Yankee pedlers 
 and New York agents overrun our country, and carry ott their 
 share of the spoils; and we who have cool heads and dexterous 
 hands enough to overreach the whole set — planters, Yankees, 
 and New Yorkers— we stand, for aught I see, upon just as 
 sound a moral basis as the rest of them. Everything belongs 
 to the strong, the wise, and the cunning ; that is the founda- 
 tion-stone of our southern system of society. The living upon 
 the plunder of others is one of the organic sms of this 
 community ; and the doctrine, I believe, has been advanced 
 by a celebrated northern divine, that for the organic sms of a 
 community nobody is individually responsible. Now, it this 
 good-natured sort of doctrine, which, for my part, I don t fine 
 any fault with, is going to save the souls and the characters o 
 Gouge and McGrab, or of the planters who patronise and 
 support them, shan’t we professional gentlemen also have the 
 
 benefit of it ? ” 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 It was not very difficult to discover under the volubility and 
 vivacity, a little forced, of this philosophical blackleg into 
 whose intimacy I had been so suddenly introduced, a deep- 
 seated and bitter chagrin, and even shame, at living as he di , 
 however he might urge, by way of apology, that it was only 
 one of the applications of the fundamental principle of every 
 slave-holding community. This, indeed, was an idea upon 
 which he seemed to pride himself, and upon which he dwelt 
 with a good deal of pertinacious ingenuity. To gain a living 
 by the plunder of the weak and simple was, he admitted, in 
 the abstract, not to be defended. Yet, if he did not do t, 
 somebody else would. His abstinence would not save them 
 The weak and simple were destined to be plundered , and 
 plundered they would be by somebody. Bred up as he had 
 Seen to extravagant habits, could he be expected to renounce 
 an employment— liable indeed to some fluctuations and 
 uncertainties, as well as to some moral objections, but, on tl e 
 whole, one that paid— and to run the risk of starving, just to 
 
302 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 gratify his conscientious scruples ? He trusted, he said, that, 
 though a professional gambler, he had a conscience. His 
 quarrel with Gouge & McGrab, and his abandonment of the 
 slave-trading business, at which he might have made a fortune, 
 was, he thought, evidence enough of that. But there was a 
 limit to all things. A man must live, and live by such means, 
 too, as his position and gifts allow him to adopt ; and, all 
 things considered, he did not see that he could be expected to 
 give up his profession any more than the slaveholders their 
 slaves. Nor can I say that I did, either. 
 
 On the whole, besides the necessity I was under of 
 using him, and the additional information he might give me 
 in the search in which I was engaged, there was something 
 in his straightforward, downright way of looking at things, as 
 well as in his lively conversation and agreeable manners, which 
 rather pleased me. 
 
 I, therefore, proceeded to make a return of his confidence, 
 at which he seemed to be a good deal flattered. Compli- 
 menting his sagacity, I admitted my intimacy with a female 
 slave, many years ago, whom, from his description of her, 
 and the circumstances he had mentioned, I believed to be 
 the very one whom McGrab had purchased in North Carolina, 
 and whom he had sold to the Mississippi planter; and I added 
 that I believed her boy to be my child. What was the name 
 of the planter, and could he aid me any further in finding 
 them out? 
 
 “And suppose you find them,” he asked, “what do you 
 intend to do ? ” 
 
 “ Bu y them,” I answered, “ if I can, and set them free.” 
 
 “Better think twice,” he replied, “before you set out on any 
 such adventure. Time, you know, makes changes. You can’t 
 expect to get back the young girl you left in North Carolina. 
 Oh, the deceitful baggage! Didn’t she tell me, with tears 
 streaming down those great black eyes of hers, and such an air 
 of truth that I couldn’t help believing her, that she had a 
 husband, the only man she had ever known anything about, 
 who was the father of her child, and who had been carried 
 off by the slave-traders a year or two before, and whom she 
 expected yet to meet, by some good providence, somewhere in 
 the soutn ! Don’t flatter yourself with the idea of any constancy 
 to you. Even had she wished it, it could hardly have been 
 in her power. Like as not you will find her, if at all, grown 
 
V 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 303 
 
 as plump as a beer-barrel, housekeeper, and something else 
 besides, to her master ; or may be, by this time, cook or 
 washerwoman, and the mother, as Gouge said she might be, 
 of a dozen additional children, and perhaps with an agreeable 
 variety of complexions ; though, for that matter, slave-women 
 of her colour are in general mighty squeamish and particular — 
 quite as much so as the white women— as to any connection 
 with men of a darker hue than themselves.” 
 
 Painful to me as these suggestions were, I could not but 
 admit their high degree of probability. To what might not 
 twenty years of servitude have reduced the wife of my heart ! 
 To what humiliations, dishonours, miserable degradations, 
 corrupting connections, might she not have been subjected, 
 tempting as she was by her innocence, beauty, and gentleness, 
 and exposed, without the least shield of law, religion, or public 
 opinion, to the unbridled appetite, I do not say of any leche- 
 rous debauchee, but of polygamous patriarch, amorous youth, 
 or luxurious respectability who might have the fancy or the 
 means to purchase her ! 
 
 It made my heart grow sick and my brain spin to think 
 of it. 
 
 “ And then the boy,” continued my tormentor. “ If you 
 had him as I saw him — a bright little fellow, just able to speak, 
 full of life and joy, and unable to understand what made his 
 mother cry so — you might hope to make something of him. 
 He was a child such as nobody need be ashamed of. But 
 what do you suppose he is by this time, with the benefit of 
 a slave education ? If, my dear sir, you intended to act the 
 father by him, or the friend by her, you should not have left 
 them all this time in slavery.” 
 
 I hastened to explain, in general terms, that my leaving them 
 as they were was, at the time of my separation from them, a 
 thing entirely beyond my control ; it was not in my power to 
 do otherwise ; but that, so soon as I became possessed of the 
 means, I had made every effort to discover and to purchase 
 them ; that I had traced them to Augusta, where all clue to 
 them had been lost ; but that the clue which he had so unex- 
 pectedly and accidentally put into my hands had recalled all 
 the past, and, as I was unmarried, childless, and with nothing 
 else in particular to occupy my thoughts, had inspired me with 
 fresh desire to find them out, and, if possible, to make them 
 free. 
 
304 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 “ Quite a romantic fellow, I see,” rejoined my companion ; 
 “ quite another Dick Johnson. True enough, the idea is not 
 very agreeable of having one’s children kicked, cuffed, and 
 lashed through the world at the discretion of brutal overseers, 
 peevish mistresses, or drunken, cross-grained masters, with no 
 possible opening to rise if they would, and with no chance 
 before them but to propagate a race of slaves. I dare say it 
 seems so to you, with your English education, and especially 
 as you have not any lawful children for your affections to fix 
 upon. But here we don’t mind it. A man is expected to 
 sacrifice his own private paternal feelings, if he has any, for the 
 good of the class to which he belongs. I dare say, in the 
 course of time, the only representatives of many of our most 
 distinguished southern statesmen and wealthiest families will 
 be found among their slave descendants. 
 
 “Take my advice, and give over a ridiculous, Quixotic 
 expedition. However, if you will persist in it, I will help you 
 what little I can. The Mississippi planter, to whom the girl 
 and her child were sold, was named Thomas. I have seen him 
 several times since in my travels. Indeed, some handsome 
 sums of money have before now passed from his pocket to 
 mine. He still lives, or did lately, at no great distance from 
 Vicksburg. I have friends in that town to whom I will give 
 you letters, and by whose assistance you can find him out. 
 Perhaps your girl and her boy are still living in his family. 
 But have a care that you don’t catch a Tartar.” 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 Leaving my new acquaintance behind at Augusta, where, as 
 he said, he had business to attend to, and provided with the 
 letters which he had promised me, I set out for Vicksburg. 
 
 Great was my joy at once more getting on the track of the 
 lost ones ; yet I could not but be harassed with many distress- 
 ing doubts and uncertainties as to what, even if I found them, 
 might be the results of my search. 
 
 The first part of my journey from Augusta led me through 
 a district worn out and partially abandoned ; a fac-simile — and 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 30S 
 
 from the same causes — of what I had seen so much of in 
 Virginia and the Carolinas. Crossing the Oconee, and pres- 
 ently the Oakmulgee, I reached a new country, of which the 
 earliest settlements did not date back more than twenty years ; 
 but which already presented, here and there, specimens of the 
 destructive agricultural system of the south, in gullied fields, 
 especially on the hill-sides, from which the soil had been com- 
 pletely washed away, over which still stood erect the blackened 
 trunks of the tenants of the original forest, killed by the pro- 
 cess of girdling, but which, though dead and blasted, remained 
 yet firmly rooted in the soil, sternly smiling, as it were, over 
 the scene of destruction ; the virgin soil, at first so fertile, 
 having been washed into the neighbouring hollows, and leav- 
 ing exposed nothing but a barren surface of red and arid clay. 
 Can there be a more striking symbol than one of these 
 abandoned fields — the dead, giant trunks still towering over it, 
 as if by way of memento of what it once was— of the natural 
 effects of the plundering system upon which the whole organis- 
 ation of the slave-holding states is based, and which extends 
 even to the land itself, rifled of its virgin strength by a shiftless 
 system of ignorant haste to be rich — and then abandoned to 
 hopeless sterility ? 
 
 Having crossed the Flint, I entered then upon the primitive 
 forests, the hunting-grounds of the Creeks, but from which the 
 insatiable cupidity of the greedy Georgians, backed by the 
 power of the federal government, was already preparing forcibly 
 to expel them — a thing soon after effected — in order to replace 
 the wild, free tenants of the forest by gangs of miserable slaves 
 purchased up and transferred from the worn-out fields of 
 Virginia and the Carolinas. 
 
 Upon presently reaching the banks of the Alabama, I 
 emerged from these soon-to-be-violated solitudes, and thence 
 to the banks of the Mississippi, traversed a country which the 
 Indians had been already compelled to resign, and which was 
 rapidly filling up with a most miscellaneous population from 
 the more northern slave states; scions of the “first families” 
 of Virginia, with such numbers of slaves as by some hocus- 
 pocus they could save from the grasp of their creditors, coming 
 to refound their fortunes in this new country ; gangs of slaves 
 sent out under overseers by the wealthier slaveholders of the 
 old states, to open new plantations, where their labour might 
 be more productive; Georgia “Crackers,” with their pale, 
 
 20 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 306 
 
 tallow-coloured visages; with other wretched specimens of 
 white poverty, ignorance, and degradation, coming from North 
 Carolina, squatters on these new lands ; Yankee traders, and 
 doctors, and lawyers, quacks, and pettifoggers, with land- 
 speculators, slave-traders, gamblers, horse thieves, and all 
 kinds of adventurers, including a reasonable mixture of Baptist 
 and Methodist preachers — all, except the preachers, and not 
 all of them, with but one idea in their heads, the growing rich 
 suddenly ; and with but two words in their mouths — namely, 
 “ niggers ” and cotton. 
 
 It was, indeed, in these new settlements, had one leisure 
 and curiosity for the purpose, that the slave-holding system of 
 the United States might be seen operating unrestrained, and 
 exhibiting its true character and richest development. All the 
 old slave states had been originally planted as free communi- 
 ties on the British model, slavery having been superinduced 
 thereupon as an excrescence or accessory; and, by tradition 
 and habit, there still remain in those states — though fast dying 
 out, under the influence of the slave-breeding business — some 
 good old wholesome English ideas. But the states of Alabama 
 and Mississippi have been thoroughly slave states from the 
 beginning, filled up by a colluvium of immigrants from the 
 older slave states, mostly young men who, in leaving their 
 homes, would seem to have left behind them, as mere preju- 
 dices every principle of humanity, justice, or moderation, 
 ready, like so many ferocious sharks, to devour everything and 
 everybody, and even each other. Nowhere in any part of the 
 globe calling itself civilised, I doubt very much if anywhere, 
 at any time, have ferocious enormities and cold-blooded 
 murders, with pistols, rifles, and bowie-knives, been so much a 
 matter of everyday occurrence. Nowhere, between Lynch 
 law committees on the one hand and private murderers on the 
 other, has life been so utterly insecure. As to the security of 
 property, let the New York merchants who have traded to 
 those states, let the English holders of Mississippi bonds, 
 answer. Not that the holders of those bonds deserve any 
 commiseration. Those securities were created — and the pur- 
 chasers of them knew it, or ought to have known it — to raise 
 funds with which to enable the Mississippi planters to increase 
 their stock of slaves ; and it is but a righteous retribution that 
 Englishmen who lent their money for so nefarious a purpose 
 should be cheated out of every penny of it. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 / 
 
 307 
 
 In the older slave states, the slaves living often on planta- 
 tions on which they were born, and the connection between 
 them and their owners being frequently hereditary, they cannot 
 but establish certain ties of sympathy with those owners more 
 or less strong, and customs of indulgence, and especially family 
 relations among themselves, which have a partial operation to 
 alleviate their condition. But in the migration southward, 
 accomplished, to a great extent, through the agency of slave- 
 traders, all these ties and connections are broken up ; all the 
 horrors of the African slave-trade are renewed; all the rudi- 
 ments of ideas previously existing in Maryland and Virginia, 
 and North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, that the 
 negroes, after all, though they be slaves, are still men, and as 
 such entitled to a certain degree of human sympathy and 
 regard, and even to be looked upon as capable of improve- 
 ment, of religious instruction, and perhaps, sometime or other, 
 of liberty ; these shoots of the sentiment of humanity, which, 
 though tender and, as it’ were, scarcely daring to show them- 
 selves, and nipped of late by disastrous frosts, yet give promise 
 and hope of a rich future harvest — all these germs of consola- 
 tion, in the transfer of the wretched slaves to the states of 
 which I now speak, are assiduously plucked up as pernicious 
 weeds in the nettle-bed of slavery. Every better sentiment, 
 every voice of sympathy, is carefully extinguished, the idea 
 being sedulously inculcated by courts, and legislatures, and 
 politicians, and newspapers, and by at least half or more of those 
 who call themselves ministers of the Gospel, that the negroes 
 are in nature what they are treated as being — mere merchandise, 
 mere property, mere animals, intended to be used like horses 
 and oxen in making cotton, and like horses and oxen to be 
 kept for ever under the yoke, the bridle, the goad, and thS 
 whip, never fit for or capable of being anything but slaves. 
 
 The old English idea that liberty is to be favoured— that 
 idea which abolished slavery in Europe, and which once had 
 considerable influence on the courts and legislatures of the 
 more northern slave states— has, in these new hotbeds of 
 cotton and despotism, been totally extinguished. Once a 
 slave, a slave for ever— black father or white father, whatever 
 the complexion— beyond the possibility even that the slave- 
 owning parent shall be able to emancipate his own children. 
 Such is the diabolical doctrine of despotism, announced by 
 Chief-Justice Sharkey — and never was judge more significantly 
 
3oS 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 named — from the bench of the Supreme Court of Mississippi. 
 And already this doctrine begins to find many advocates 
 among the inhabitants of the new slave-breeding Guinea, into 
 which Virginia and Maryland have degenerated ; nor, when 
 the pinch comes, will there be wanting northern merchants 
 eager to please their southern customers ; northern politicians, 
 for the prospect of office, ready to worship Satan himself; 
 northern editors, who publish papers for circulation at the 
 south ; northern doctors of divinity, ready to yield up, if not 
 their own mothers — for though he might say it in the heat of 
 the moment, not even the famous Dr. Dewey is quite brave 
 enough to stick to that — yet, at all events, ready to surrender 
 their own brothers into servitude, to keep the slaveholders 
 quiet and good-natured : plenty of such supple tools will not 
 be wanting to preach, throughout the pretended free states, 
 subscription to the perpetuity of servitude as the corner-stone 
 of the American Union ! 
 
 Let those who would trace the onward march of American 
 slavery, since the time of Washington and Jefferson, call to 
 mind the difference between the principles avowed by them 
 and those set up at the present day by the Mississippi 
 Sharkeys and Virginia slave-breeders for the market, who 
 nominate the presidents, dictate the legislation, make tools of 
 the politicians, and aspire, not unsuccessfully, to control the 
 moral and religious sentiment of America ! 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 As I entered the town of Vicksburg an appalling prospect met 
 my eyes : five men hanging by the neck, just swung off, as it 
 would seem, from an extempore gallows, and struggling in the 
 agonies of death ; a military company drawn up in arms ; a 
 band of black musicians playing “ Yankee Doodle ; ” a crowd 
 of bystanders, of all ages and colours, apparently in the 
 greatest state of excitement; and a frantic woman, with a 
 young child in either hand, addressing herself, with vehement 
 gesticulations, to a man who seemed to have the direction of 
 the proceedings, and whom I took — though I did not perceive 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 309 
 
 that he wore any official dress or badge — to be the high-sheriff 
 of the county. 
 
 On reaching the hotel, I learnt, however, to my great 
 astonishment, that this was no regular execution by process of 
 law, but entirely an amateur performance, got up by a com- 
 mittee of citizens, headed by the cashier of the Planters’ Bank 
 — one of those institutions whose bonds are not unknown in 
 England, though I believe they bear no particular price at the 
 present moment — the very person, in fact, whom, from the 
 office he had assumed, I had supposed to be the high-sheriff. 
 I learnt all this with astonishment, because the victims had 
 appeared to be white men. Had they been black or coloured, 
 their being hung in some paroxysm of popular passion or fear 
 would not in the least have surprised me. 
 
 Inquiring a little further into the history of this singular 
 proceeding, I was told that the men who had been hung were 
 gamblers, part of a gang of cheats and desperadoes by whom 
 that town had long been infested ; that the citizens, determined 
 to tolerate such a nuisance no longer, had ordered them to 
 depart, and, when they refused to do so, had proceeded to 
 force their houses and destroy their gambling tools — an 
 operation which the gamblers resisted by force, firing upon 
 their assailants, and having actually shot dead a leading and 
 very estimable citizen, in the act of forcing his way into one 
 of the houses. 
 
 The gamblers, however, had all been taken, except two or 
 three, who had managed to escape. The blood of the com- 
 pany was up. The sight of their slaughtered leader, copious 
 draughts of brandy, the recollection of their own losses at the 
 gaming-table, and the dread of being challenged and shot, or 
 ' shot without being challenged by the gamblers, two or three of 
 whom were known as very desperate fellows — all these motives 
 co-operating, and it being very doubtful whether, if the matter 
 was referred to the legal tribunals, those who had riotously 
 broken into the houses of other people, even with the professed 
 object of destroying roulette-tables, might not run quite as 
 much risk of condemnation as those who had fired, even with 
 fatal effect, upon their burglarious assailants. All these things 
 considered, it had finally been determined, as the shortest and 
 most expedient method of settling the business, to take the 
 gamblers to the skirts of the town, and to hang them there on 
 the instant. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3io 
 
 To those, indeed, accustomed to the curt proceedings of the 
 slave code, under which suspicion serves for evidence, and 
 power usurps the place of judicial discrimination, all the 
 delays and formalities of the ordinary administration of penal 
 jurisprudence must seem tedious and absurd ; and hence the 
 constantly increasing tendency in the south to substitute, in 
 the place of that administration, in the case of white men as 
 well as of slaves, the summary process of Lynch law. It is 
 vain, indeed, to expect that men constantly hardened and 
 brutalised in the struggle to extort from their slaves the utmost 
 driblet of unwilling labour, and accustomed freely to indulge, 
 as against these unresisting victims, every caprice of brutal 
 fury, should retain any very delicate sense of the proprieties of 
 justice as among themselves. 
 
 Before I had yet learnt more than a general outline of the 
 story, the principal actors in this affair, finding it necessary to 
 sustain their dignity and to recruit their self-reliance by fresh 
 draughts of brandy, reached the hotel at which I was stopping. 
 They were followed by the woman with the two little children, 
 whom I had noticed as I passed the place of execution, and 
 whom I now found to be the wife of one of the victims. It was 
 in vain that she besought permission to take down and to bury 
 the body of her husband. This was denied, with brutal threats 
 that any person who dared to cut them down till they had 
 hung there twenty-four hours, by way of example, should be 
 made to share their fate. Such, indeed, was the passionate 
 fury of the multitude, that the poor woman, in alarm for her 
 own life, fled to the river bank, and, placing her two children 
 in a skiff, entered herself, and pushed off, thinking this a safer 
 course than to remain longer at Vicksburg. 
 
 After the tumult had subsided a little, I showed the bar- 
 keeper the direction of the letter of introduction I had brought, 
 and inquired if he knew such a person. 
 
 No sooner had he read the name than his face assumed an 
 expression of horror and alarm. “ Do you know that person ? ” 
 he eagerly inquired. 
 
 I told him I did not. This was my first visit to this part of 
 the country. The letter had been given me by a gentleman 
 whom I had met at Augusta. 
 
 “Pray don’t mention the name,” he replied; “say nothing 
 of it to anybody. This letter is addressed to one of the 
 persons whom you saw hung as you came into the town. He 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3 11 
 
 kept a roulette-table, no doubt, and understood a thing or two, 
 but was a generous-hearted soul for all that, and every way 
 quite as much a gentleman as half those concerned in hanging 
 him. Should you mention his name, you might yourself be 
 seized as one of the gang, and hung with the rest.” 
 
 Congratulating myself on this lucky escape, I then ventured 
 to inquire of the bar-keeper if he knew a planter in that 
 vicinity of the name of Thomas. 
 
 There had been, he told me, a planter of that name— and 
 from the account he gave of him I was satisfied it was the one 
 of whom I was in search — who lived formerly a few miles off; 
 but within two or three years past he had moved to a distance 
 of some fifty miles, in Madison county, up the Big Black. 
 
 The friendly bar-keeper aided me the next day in procuring 
 a horse, and I set out for Madison county, again passing, as I 
 left the town, the five murdered gamblers still swinging from 
 the gallows. 
 
 Proceeding up the Big Black, I presently found that the 
 spirit of extempore hanging was by no means confined to 
 Vicksburg, but raged as a sort of epidemic in all that part of 
 the State of Mississippi 
 
 The counties of Hinds and Madison were excited to a pitch 
 of terror bordering on madness by the rumour of a slave 
 insurrection. Some overseers, lurking among the negro 
 cabins, had obtained some hint of a conspiracy; and two 
 white steam-doctors from Tennessee, through the instigation 
 of two or three of the regular craft — who regarded these 
 “ steamers ” with no little jealousy and indignation, and who 
 insisted that they were nothing but horse thieves in disguise — 
 had been arrested, along with two or three negroes, as 
 concerned in the plot. 
 
 A vigilance committee and volunteer courts had been 
 speedily organised, and the black and white prisoners con- 
 demned to death. Brought out to be hanged, they had been 
 urged to confess, which they had done very extensively, in the 
 hope, probably, of saving their lives; and from their con- 
 fessions, dressed up by the lively imagination of the court and 
 the bystanders, the plot, whether real or imaginary, had been 
 made to assume a most alarming shape. 
 
 According to these confessions, it was not a mere negro 
 or servile plot, but had been got up by a gang of white 
 desperadoes, negro thieves, horse thieves, gamblers, and other 
 
312 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 ingenious gentlemen who lived by their wits, to whom were 
 ascribed ideas as to the rights of the cunningest and the 
 strongest— precisely those to be expected in a slaveholding 
 community. They were to put themselves at the head of the 
 insurgent negroes, were to rob the banks, and thus, like so 
 ma.ny Catalines, to make themselves masters of the country. 
 
 Unable to reach my destination the first day, I sought 
 hospitality for the night at the house of a planter, one of the 
 most, respectable men, as I was afterwards told, in all that 
 vicinity, but who, instead of putting himself forward, as was 
 expected of him, to take the lead in unravelling the plot and 
 punishing its authors, had chosen to remain quietly at home. 
 
 He had great doubts, I found, whether there was, in fact, any 
 plot, and. whether the whole thing was not a chimera of the 
 imagination. Alarms of negro plots, founded on alleged 
 overheard conversations, and throwing everybody, especially 
 the women and children, into the most horrible panics, were 
 as much epidemics, he told me, all through the south, as the 
 autumn bilious fevers. He was too much accustomed to 
 those alarms, which had always, so far as he knew, ended in 
 smoke, or the hanging of a few negroes on suspicion, to pay 
 much attention to them. Yet he admitted that the increasing 
 number, at the south, of desperate and uneasy white men, 
 without property or the means to acquire any, might be likely’ 
 as the present resource failed of helping one’s self to a planta- 
 tion by squatting on Government lands, to lead hereafter to 
 frightful commotions. 
 
 We were quietly discussing this subject over a cup of tea, 
 when two or three truculent-looking white men rode up, to the 
 house; and one of them, dismounting, handed a dirty and 
 rumpled piece of paper to my host. 
 
 As he read it his brows began to lower. It was, in fact, a 
 summons or requisition from the committee of vigilance for his 
 speedy personal appearance before them, bringing with him 
 also the stranger — meaning me — who had been traced to his 
 house. 
 
 . Upon his inquiring of the bearer what the committee of 
 vigilance wanted of him, the answer was, that his not taking 
 any part in the proceedings had been thought very strange, 
 and that some of the confessing prisoners had stated something 
 by which he was implicated. 
 
 To all this he coolly replied that he was ready to answer fof 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3i3 
 
 his conduct before any regular court, but he did not recognise 
 the authority of the committee of vigilance. “As to this 
 gentleman, my guest,” he continued, “ I am a justice of the 
 peace, and if you will bring proof against him of any violation 
 of the laws, I will issue a warrant for his arrest ; but, except 
 on some lawful warrant, I shall not suffer him to be taken from 
 my house.” 
 
 The only ground of suspicion against me seemed to be that 
 I was a stranger, who ought not to be allowed to traverse the 
 country in its present state of alarm without giving an account 
 of myself. But as my host did not think this a sufficient 
 ground for the issue of a warrant, the messengers of the 
 vigilance committee shortly departed; not without furious 
 threats of returning soon with men enough to take us both by 
 force, and pretty plain intimations that after this resistance 
 to the authority of the committee, which could be looked 
 upon in no other light than as plain proof of our concern in 
 the plot, we could reasonably expect nothing short of hanging. 
 Six white men and eighteen negroes, they added, had been 
 hung already, and many more had been arrested. 
 
 No sooner had these fellows gone than I turned to my host 
 to thank him for his protection ; but almost before replying to 
 me, he ordered two horses to be saddled. “I wish I could 
 protect you, he added; “but though I mean to stand a siege 
 myself, and shall rely, if compelled to surrender, upon my 
 numerous friends and connections to shield me, it would not 
 be safe for you to remain. 
 
 “Your horse is hardly fit for a newstart; but I will give 
 you a fresh one, and will send yours back to Vicksburg. You 
 shall have my negro-man Sambo for a guide. He knows the 
 country well, and, if anybody can, will carry you safe to the 
 banks of the Mississippi, for which you had better make by the 
 shortest cut. Steamboats are passing continually up and 
 down. Get on board the first that comes along, and forego 
 your travels in these parts for the present.” 
 
 No sooner said than done. In fifteen minutes I was again 
 on the road ; and travelling all night, under the skilful guid- 
 ance of Sambo, following unfrequented paths, swimming 
 creeks and rivers, and fording swamps, by morning we reached 
 a lonely wood-yard on the banks of the river, where the 
 steamers were accustomed to stop for fuel. Before long, a 
 boat bound to New Orleans made its appearance, and, upon a 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3 T 4 
 
 signal for that purpose, she checked her course lor the 
 moment, and sent a skiff to take me on board. 
 
 A few days after arriving in New Orleans, I read in the 
 newspapers how the house of Mr. Hooper — for that was the 
 name of my generous host — had been attacked ; how he had 
 barricaded his doors and windows ; had wrapped his infant 
 child in a feather-bed, and, not venturing to employ any of his 
 slaves to assist him, had alone defended the house, keeping the 
 assailants at bay for some time, and dangerously wounding one 
 of their number ; nor had he surrendered till the breaking of 
 his arm by a musket-ball had made it impossible for him any 
 longer to load and fire. His case — as I afterwards learned, 
 when he was brought before the vigilance committee had 
 been a subject of vehement controversy; but as his con- 
 nections were numerous and powerful, the committee did not 
 dare to proceed to extremities against him. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 Having written a letter of inquiry to Mr. Thomas, since the 
 disturbed state of the country had interrupted my personal 
 visit, while waiting an answer, passing in one of my walks 
 through a principal street of New Orleans, I was attracted to 
 enter a large warehouse, where a sale of slaves was going on at 
 auction. 
 
 The auctioneer was engaged at the moment in the sale of 
 plantation hands and mechanics. There stood on the block a 
 blacksmith, a first-rate hand, as the auctioneer described him, 
 who had paid his master, as rent for himself, twenty dollars 
 a month, clear of all expenses, for the last five years; and 
 upon whom the bid had already risen to fifteen hundred 
 dollars. A report, indeed, circulated in the room that he had 
 already paid that sum, out of his extra earnings, to purchase his 
 liberty; which amount his master, a Bostonian, settled in New 
 Orleans, had coolly pocketed, and had then sent the man to 
 be sold at auction. The circulation of this story checked the 
 bidding, since this breach of faith, it was thought, might 
 provoke the man to run away. The auctioneer steadily denied 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3*5 
 
 the truth of it ; but being called upon to ask the man himself, 
 he refused to do so, observing with a laugh that the evidence 
 of a slave would not be received against his master. 
 
 My attention was presently attracted to a group of female 
 slaves, apparently of a superior class, and most of them very 
 light-coloured. One woman in particular soon fixed and 
 absorbed all my attention. Those eyes ! that mouth ! Her 
 figure was more plump^and fuller ; the face was older than I 
 remembered it ; but her raven hair and pearl-like teeth, 
 perfectly preserved, still gave her a youthful aspect. Her 
 height was the same, and there was the same grace in every 
 gesture and movement. I watched her with the intensest 
 interest. Was it possible that I could be mistaken? No; 
 ’twas she — ’twas Cassy — ’twas the long-lost wife I sought ; 
 found at last ; but where ? 
 
 Press, reader, to thy heart the wife of thy bosom, and thank 
 God that you were both born free ! After twenty years’ 
 separation, I had again found mine, ripe in womanly beauty, 
 exposed for sale in a slave auction-room 1 Yet even there, 
 reduced to that depth of degradation and misery, she was still 
 calm and self-collected; evidently, by her manner, imposing a 
 certain restraint on the crowd of licentious idlers, callous 
 speculators, and anxious inquirers after human conveniences, 
 to whose inspection, and now gross, now rude, and now 
 teasing inquisition, she, in common with the rest, was 
 subjected. 
 
 The present, however, was not a moment to give way to 
 feeling. It was necessary to act. Summoning up all my 
 energies, I rapidly considered with myself what course I best 
 might adopj. To draw Cassy’s attention to myself in any way 
 would be a hazardous operation, for I felt certain that as I had 
 recognised her, so she would not fail to recognise me ; and so 
 public and peculiar a place as a slave auction-room was hardly 
 a desirable spot for our first interview, which, coming upon 
 her with even greater surprise than upon myself, might have 
 led to a scene very embarrassing, if not hazardous. 
 
 Looking round the room, as these thoughts ran through my 
 mind, whom should I see, as if fortune or providence had 
 determined to favour me, but my late acquaintance, Mr. John 
 Colter, who was walking about the room examining the various 
 groups of slaves, especially the females, with the air, to use his 
 own expression, of both connoisseur and amateur, and with 
 
3i 6 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 pretty evident indications of his own opinion as to his special 
 competency to pass judgment as to the value of the article. 
 
 Catching my eye almost at the same instant that mine rested 
 on him, he approached me with an air of much interest, and 
 inquired what I did there, and what had been the success of 
 my Mississippi travels ? “I feared,” he added, in a low tone, 
 “ when I read the account of that hanging affair in the news- 
 papers, that I had got you into a scrape. I am glad to find 
 you know how to take care of yourself. Here in the 
 south-west it is pretty necessary to have one’s eye-teeth cut, 
 and one’s eyes open.” 
 
 “You are just the man,” I answered, “whom I wanted to 
 see. Your assistance may now be invaluable to me. I have 
 found her ! She’s here ! ” 
 
 “ Here ! The deuce she is ! Where ? Offered for sale ? 
 Have you bought her ? ” 
 
 I pointed out Cassy as she stood with the other women, 
 with downcast eyes, and apparently absorbed in thought. 
 Colter prided himself on the strength of his memory, never 
 forgetting, as he said, a face which he had once seen ; but 
 what could his memory be, in this case, compared to mine ? 
 After two or three glances at her, he admitted that likely 
 enough I might be correct ; but, to make all sure, while I 
 walked in another direction, he approached her, called her by 
 name, reminded her of Augusta and the slave-prison there, 
 and fully satisfied himself, in a short conversation, that she was 
 in fact the same person about whose sale he had quarrelled 
 with Gouge ; and that person, from circumstances already 
 mentioned, I was satisfied was my Cassy. 
 
 Upon his inquiring of her why she was here, and if she was 
 now to be sold ? she answered that she was brought here for 
 that purpose ; but that they had no right to sell her, for she 
 was free. Her former owner, a Mr. Curtis, had given her free 
 papers many years ago ; but he was lately dead, and certain 
 persons, claiming to be his heirs, were now attempting to sell 
 her. 
 
 Colter promised to inquire into the case, and to befriend her 
 in the matter ; for which she expressed great gratitude, adding 
 that she had all along felt confident that heaven would send 
 her aid in some shape. 
 
 He then hastened to report to me ; and while he and I were 
 Still discussing the subject, and considering what was best to 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 3 1; 
 
 be done, the auctioneer, having finished the sale of the planta- 
 tion slaves, began upon the group of females in which Cassy 
 stood. 
 
 The one first placed upon the auction-block was a finely- 
 formed black girl, neatly dressed, her good-humoured face well 
 set off by a bright-coloured handkerchief twisted turban- 
 fashion about her head. Though apparently very young, she 
 held in her arms, and caressed with much fondness, a sprightly 
 infant of seven or eight months, quite richly dressed, and of a 
 colour a good deal lighter than the mother’s. 
 
 “Jemima,” shouted the auctioneer, “first-rate chamber- 
 maid ; hold your head up, my dear, and let the gentlemen see 
 you ; brought up in one of the first families of Virginia ; a good 
 seamstress, too ” — reading from a paper or list containing the 
 names and descriptions of the articles on sale — “ only 
 fifteen years of age, warranted sound and healthy in every 
 particular ! ” 
 
 “And do you sell the pappoose too, mother and child in 
 one lot ? ” asked a thin, squint-eyed, hard-featured fellow. 
 
 “You know the law don’t allow us,” said the auctioneer, 
 with a wink, “ to offer the mother and child separately. Who- 
 ever buys the girl has the privilege to take the child, if he 
 chooses, at the usual rate — a dollar a pound for sucklings, 
 that’s the regular price everywhere ; that you know, old fellow, 
 as well as I. You’ve bought ’em before now, I reckon.” 
 
 This drew out a laugh at the expense of the questioner, 
 who, however, did not seem to notice it ; and the auctioneer 
 having nodded assent to his inquiry whether, if not so taken, 
 the child might be had separately, the sale went on. 
 
 “ Only three hundred dollars offered,” cried the auctioneer ; 
 “ only three hundred dollars for this first-rate chambermaid 
 and seamstress, raised in one of the first families of Virginia, 
 sold for no fault, only to raise the wind.” 
 
 “ Pretty common case with those first Virginian families,” 
 said a voice from among the crowd ; “ they only live by eating 
 their niggers ” 
 
 “ Warranted ” — so the auctioneer went on, without noticing 
 the interruption, which raised another laugh among some of 
 the company — “warranted healthy, sound, and honest.” 
 
 “ But no virgin,” responded the voice from the crowd — a 
 sally which provoked another and still more violent explosion 
 of laughter. 
 
3i8 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 “With privilege to take the child at a dollar a pound,’’ 
 continued the auctioneer. “Three hundred and fifty ! Four 
 hundred ! Thank you, sir,” with a bow and a bland smile to 
 the bidder. “ Four hundred and fifty ? Did I hear it ? Four 
 hundred and fifty ! Five hundred ! Can’t pause, gentlemen ; 
 great heap of ’em here to sell to-day. All done at five 
 hundred ? Five hundred ! Going ! Five hundred dollars 
 for a prime Virginia wench, who begins young, and promises 
 to be a great breeder ; only five hundred dollars ! Why, upon 
 my honour, gentlemen,” pausing, and laying his hammer across 
 his breast — “ upon my honour ” — this with a very decided 
 emphasis — “ she’s worth seven hundred and fifty for anybody’s 
 use ; a handsome, young, good-natured, stout, and healthy 
 chambermaid and seamstress, raised in one of the first families 
 of Virginia, and sold for only five hundred dollars 1 We shall 
 be obliged to stop the sale, gentlemen, if you don’t bid better. 
 All done at five hundred dollars ? Going at five hundred 
 dollars ! Gone ! ” And the hammer fell. “ Gone for five 
 hundred dollars, and mighty cheap at that, to Mr. Charles 
 Parker.” Here a fat, jolly-looking, youngish gentleman 
 stepped forward, and the black girl, looking intently at him, 
 and as if pleased with his appearance, smiled confidingly on 
 her new purchaser. “ Mr. Parker, of course, takes the child,” 
 the auctioneer continued, addressing his clerk; “add thirty- 
 five dollars for the child, at a dollar a pound.” 
 
 “ Not at all 1 ” — so the purchaser interposed ; and as he 
 spoke, how suddenly and sadly the girl’s countenance fell ! 
 “ I’ve bought her for a wet-nurse ; I don’t want the brat — 
 wouldn’t take it as a gift.” 
 
 I could see, as he spoke, how the mother’s arms closed on 
 the child, as if with a convulsive grasp. I expected a scene, 
 but the same little squint-eyed, hard-featured fellow, whom I 
 had noticed before, stepped up to the purchaser, saying in a 
 whisper, “ Take it — take it ! I’ll take it off your hands, and 
 give a dollar to boot.” 
 
 As the purchaser cast a doubting sort of a look at him, some 
 one in the crowd remarked, “ Oh, that’s old Stubbings, the 
 nigger baby broker ; he makes a business of buying nigger 
 babies ; he’s good ! ” And so, accepting the offer, Mr. 
 Parker took possession of his new purchase, the young mother’s 
 smiles returning, with a profusion of thanks and “God bless 
 ye’s,” when she found she was to take the child with her; 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 319 
 
 wholly unaware, as she seemed to be, of the understanding 
 by which the infant was to become the property of Stubbings, 
 the speculator in that line, who promised Parker, in a few 
 whispered words, to arrange matters so as to take the brat off 
 quietly the next day, without giving the girl a chance to make 
 a fuss. 
 
 “ And now, gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, well satisfied, 
 apparently, that the affair just disposed of had ended so 
 quietly, “ I have now to offer you a most rare chance for a 
 housekeeper.” Here he read from the list — “ Cassy, under- 
 stands housekeeping in all its branches, perfectly trustworthy, 
 and warranted a member of the Methodist church ! I can’t 
 exactly say, gentlemen, that she’s young, but she’s in excellent 
 preservation for all that. Answers to the English description 
 
 of ‘fair .’ You needn’t laugh ; she’s next door to white — 
 
 she answers, I say, to the English description of ‘ fair, fat, and 
 forty.’ Step up, Cassy, girl, and show yourself ! ” 
 
 Oh, my God 1 What did I not suffer at that moment ! Yet 
 it was necessary to be quiet. 
 
 Cassy had been separated from the group where I had first 
 seen her, and brought forward by some of the assistants of the 
 auction-room towards the place of sale. But instead of 
 mounting the block, as directed, she stood still beside it ; and 
 as all eyes were drawn towards her, she spoke out in a gentle, 
 but very firm and steady tone. How that voice, as familiar to 
 my ear as if I had heard it every day for the last twenty years, 
 instead of hearing it now for the first time after a twenty years’ 
 interval — how it went through my heart! “No?” she said, 
 “I am free. By what right do you pretend to sell me ? ” 
 
 This exclamation, as may well be supposed, produced quite 
 an excitement in the auction-room. As I glanced my eye 
 rapidly over the company, it was easy to discover several who 
 seemed to sympathise with this claim of freedom, and the 
 auctioneer was loudly called upon for explanations. 
 
 “ A very common case, gentlemen,” replied the auctioneer, 
 “ very common. The woman, no doubt, thought herself free ; 
 no doubt she has lived as free for several years past ; but that 
 was all by the mere indulgence of her late owner. He’s dead, 
 and now the heirs have taken possession, and offer her for sale. 
 That’s all. Step up, Cassy, step on the block ; you see there 
 is no help for it. Gentlemen, who bids ? ” 
 
 “ Stop a moment ! ” said Mr. Colter, who now quitted my 
 
- 
 
 320 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 side and stepped forward — “not quite so fast, sir, if you 
 please. I appear here as this woman’s friend. ' She is a free 
 woman. Gentlemen will please to take warning : anybody 
 who buys her buys a lawsuit.” 
 
 The peremptory manner in which this was spoken seemed 
 to throw cold water upon the sale. Nobody made an offer, 
 and the auctioneer, to shield himself from the charge of 
 attempting to sell a free women, found it necessary to go into 
 further explanations. 
 
 This woman, he stated, had formerly belonged to Mr. James 
 Curtis, a very worthy citizen, lately deceased, and well-known 
 to many of the company. He had allowed her, for several 
 years past, to live as a free woman, and no doubt the gentle- 
 man it was Colter he alluded to — might have every reason 
 for supposing her to be so ; but the fact was, she had no free 
 papers, or if she had any, they were not in due and proper 
 form; and Mr. James Curtis having died suddenly without a 
 will, his brother, Mr. Agrippa Curtis, of the well-known Boston 
 firm of Curtis, Sawin, Byrne, & Co., had succeeded to all his 
 property ; and finding his ownership of this woman unquestion- 
 able, had directed her to be sold ; “ and here comes the owner 
 himself, said the auctioneer, “ and his Boston lawyer with 
 him ; no doubt they can satisfy you as to the title.” 
 
 As he spoke I observed two individuals entering the room, 
 one a very small man, with a head about as large as that of a 
 respectable tabby cat, and with little wandering, unquiet eyes, 
 and a compressed, pursed-up mouth, that might call to mind 
 the said tabby, caught in the act of stealing cream, but while 
 seeming to anticipate a box on the ear for her villainy, still 
 licking her chops all the while, as though, the cream was all the 
 sweeter for having been stolen. This I afterwards understood 
 was Thomas Littlebody, Esq., of Boston, counsellor-at-law and 
 legal adviser of Mr. Agrippa Curtis, or Grip Curtis, as he was 
 more commonly called among his familiars — the principal in 
 this business, a bald-headed man about forty, the impenetrable 
 and immovable stolidity of whose features made it difficult to 
 form any conjecture, from that source, as to his character, 
 beyond the probability of his not being likely to be carried 
 away by any great excess of sensibility. 
 
 “ A very pretty story,” said Colter, stepping up to these two 
 worthies as they entered the room and approached the 
 auctioneer, and eyeing them with a look that seemed to make 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 321 
 
 them rather uncomfortable. “ The company see how it is. I 
 am glad to find no Louisianian is concerned in this pitiful, 
 kidnapping business. The woman is as free as you or I. This 
 story about the flaw in the papers is all a humbug ; nothing in 
 the world but one of your scurvy, low-lived Yankee tricks, to 
 put a few hundred dollars into the pocket of a scoundrel. 
 Yet, to save trouble, I’m willing to buy off this pretence of 
 claim for a hundred dollars. Come, Mr. Auctioneer, go ahead 
 with your sale. One hundred dollars — that’s my bid.” 
 
 “ One hundred dollars ! ” repeated the auctioneer, as if 
 mechanically — “ gentlemen, I’m offered one hundred dollars ! ” 
 
 “ I offer this,” said Colter, looking proudly round on the 
 company, “to buy off these Yankee blood-suckers, and to 
 secure the freedom of a free woman. We shall see,” he added, 
 “ whether, under these circumstances, any southern gentleman 
 will bid against me, or” — brushing by Mr. Curtis and his 
 lawyer, and darting at them a malign scowl, such as I hardly 
 thought possible from so handsome a face — “ any swindling 
 Yankee either.” 
 
 Thomas Littlebody, Esq., the Boston lawyer, started back 
 some three or four paces, as if this must have certainly been 
 meant for him. Mr. Grip Curtis, with that gravity and 
 immobility which seemed to be a part of his nature, stood his 
 ground better ; and opening his great owl-like eyes, observed, 
 with a drawl, “ I hope you don’t intend to insinuate anything 
 against my moral character ! ” 
 
 “ I shall, though,” rejoined Colter, “ if you undertake to bid 
 at your own auction. It’s quite enough to palm off a free 
 woman upon this respectable company, without turning 
 buy-bidder at the sale ! ” 
 
 “ One hundred dollars is offered, gentlemen — one hundred 
 dollars ! ” repeated the auctioneer ; but there was no further 
 bid. 
 
 The little squint-eyed baby broker, who had watched the 
 whole proceeding with keen interest, as if here might be a 
 chance for him to turn an honest penny, once opened his 
 mouth as if going to bid, but at a look from Colter he shut it 
 as suddenly up as if his tongue had been pricked with a bowie- 
 knife ; and I think Colter showed him the handle of one from 
 under his vest. At all events, the apparently intended bid died 
 away inaudible. 
 
 “ As gentlemen don’t seem inclined to purchase,” said Mr. 
 
 21 
 
322 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE 
 
 Grip Curtis, stepping forward to the auctioneer’s side, “ I 
 withdraw this woman from the sale.” 
 
 These words filled me with lively alarm ; but Colter’s 
 practice, I found, had made him a match for any Yankee of 
 the lot. He coolly produced the advertisement, closing with 
 these words, “To be sold without reserve,” and insisted that 
 the sale should go on. In this the company and the auctioneer 
 sustained him ; and as no other bids were made, presently the 
 auctioneer’s hammer fell. “ Sold,” he said, “ for one hundred 
 dollars, to Mr. ?” 
 
 “ Cash,” answered Colter, handing out one of the very 
 hundred dollar bills which he had won a few weeks before from 
 the Boston cotton-broker. “ Make out a receipted bill of this 
 Boston man’s claim to this woman, as sold to Mr. Archer 
 Moore, of London.” 
 
 The bill was speedily made out, and, in spite of a certain 
 degree of dissatisfaction visible meanwhile even through the 
 solemn stolidity of the foiled Bostonian, Colter, motioning to 
 Cassy to come with us, to which she responded with all 
 alacrity, and we three left the sale-room together; but not 
 before the laughing and good-natured auctioneer had another 
 woman on the auction-block, a lady’s-maid of sixteen, raised in 
 a good Maryland family, warranted intact, and title unquestion- 
 able, upon whom he solicited a generous bid. 
 
 I shall not undertake to describe the scene between myself 
 and Cassy, when she came to recognise in me, as she speedily 
 did, her long-lost husband. Her joy at the meeting was no 
 less exalted than mine ; but her surprise was greatly diminished 
 by a confident expectation which, it seemed, she had all along 
 entertained, and which had formed with her a settled article of 
 belief — the hope of sanguine souls easily transformirig itself 
 into faith — that sooner or later she should certainly again find 
 me. And so, like a true wife and lover, she had kept, in all 
 this long absence, the best place in her heart empty, swept, and 
 garnished, and waiting to receive me; and now she clasped me 
 to it, rather as him whose return from a long wandering she had 
 day by day, and night by night, patiently expected and waited 
 for, than as one irretrievably lost, and unexpectedly, however 
 welcomely, found. 
 
 Oh, tie of love, and natural bond of marriage, union of hearts, 
 which laws and priestly benedictions may sanction if they 
 choose, but cannot make ; so neither can time, nor separation, 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 323 
 
 nor prosperity, nor suffering, nor all that unbridled power may 
 inflict, or helplessness submit to; nor aught save death, nor 
 death itself, undo thee ! 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 The new mistress — into whose hands, by the humane inter- 
 ference of Mr. Colter, Cassy had passed from the slave-pen of 
 those pious and respectable gentlemen, Gouge & McGrab — 
 was, as I knew already from Colter’s account of the matter, the 
 newly-married New England wife of Mr. Thomas, a Mississippi 
 cotton-planter. 
 
 Born on a little New Hampshire farm, the child of poor 
 parents, but, like so many other New England girls, anxious to 
 do something for herself, the new Mrs. Thomas, when she first 
 became acquainted with her future husband, had been employed 
 as one of the teachers at a fashionable boarding-school, at 
 which he had placed, for their education, two young daughters 
 of his by a former wife. 
 
 The current idea in New England of a southern cotton- 
 planter is very much that which prevails, or used to prevail, in 
 Great Britain of a West Indian. He is imagined to be a fine, 
 bold, dashing young fellow, elegant and accomplished, amiable 
 and charming, with plenty of money, and nothing to do but to 
 amuse himself and his friends — an idea formed from a few 
 specimens to be seen at watering-places, who, for the sake of 
 dashing away for a few weeks at the north, run after by all the 
 young women, and old ones too, with marriageable daughters 
 on their hands, and stared at by all the greenhorns — are willing 
 to starve, pinch, and be dunned at home, with now and then a 
 visit from the sheriff, for all the rest of the year. 
 
 The young Mrs. Thomas that was to be, as yet Miss Jemima 
 Devens, delighted at the idea of having captivated a southern 
 planter, and of passing suddenly from poverty to riches, 
 hastened to accept the offer of his heart and fortune, which 
 Mr. Thomas made her after a week’s acquaintance, in the 
 course of which they had met three times. Unfortunately, she 
 did not stop to consider that, southern planter or not, Mr. 
 Thomas was old enough to be her father, had a vulgar, stupid, 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 324 
 
 sleepy look, could not speak English grammatically, and was 
 an enormous consumer of tobacco and brandy ; his affection, 
 even during his courtship, divided pretty equally, to all appear- 
 ances, between chewing, smoking, mint juleps, and Miss 
 Devens, notwithstanding his frequent protestations that he 
 cared for nothing in the world but her. 
 
 That he was really in love with her, so far as it was possible 
 for such an oyster to be in love, was no doubt true ; and for a 
 young lady without connections or money, dependent on her 
 own efforts, with no charms or accomplishments beyond those 
 possessed by a thousand other competitors, and beginning also 
 to verge to the age when the sinking into old maidhood comes 
 to be considered as a possible, however awful, contingency—— 
 for such a young lady to be fallen in love with, even though it 
 be by an oyster in the similitude of a man, is a thing not to be 
 despised ; and the said human oyster, having the reputation of 
 being rich, and able to support her in idleness and luxury, 
 what proportion of girls of the age and in the position of Miss 
 Devens, whether in New England or Old, or elsewhere, would 
 refuse to accept him for a husband ? 
 
 Miss Devens did confess to some little misgiving on one 
 point She had a great horror of negroes — a natural antipathy, 
 as she thought ; though she did remember that when a very 
 little girl they used to frighten her into good behaviour by 
 threatening to give her away to an old black woman, the only 
 black person anywhere in the neighbourhood of the village in 
 which she was born, who lived all alone by herself, in a little 
 hut surrounded by woods, where she sold root beer in the 
 summer-time to the passers-by, dealt in all sorts of herbs, as to 
 which she was reported to be wondrous knowing, and had, 
 besides, at least among the children, the reputation of being a 
 witch. 
 
 The idea of going to live upon a plantation where she 
 would have nobody about her hardly but black people did 
 stagger her resolution a little ; till Mr. Thomas reassured her 
 by suggesting how comfortable it was to own one s own 
 servants, whom one could make do just as one pleased, and 
 by the information that there were plenty of light-coloured 
 * people among the slaves, and that she should have a maid of 
 her own as near white as possible — a promise on the strength 
 of which Cassy had been bought for her, as already mentioned. 
 
 The new Mrs. Thomas had pictured to herself, as her 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 325 
 
 destined future home, an elegant villa, splendidly furnished, 
 surrounded with beautiful and fragrant tropical shrubbery, 
 except the inevitable nuisance of the negroes — to which she 
 hoped to accustom herself in time, or for which she was 
 willing to accept the orange blossoms as an antidote — a 
 perfect southern paradise. Mr. Thomas, it is true, good, easy 
 man, had never promised her anything of the sort; but as 
 young ladies often will, she had taken it all for granted as a 
 matter of course. Judge, then, of her disappointment when, 
 on reaching Mount Flat — for that was the name which Mr. 
 Thomas had given to his plantation, determined, as he said, to 
 stick to the truth, and yet not to be outdone by any of the 
 Mount Pleasants, Monticellos, and other high-sounding names 
 of the neighbourhood — judge of her surprise to find her 
 expected villa in the shape of four log houses, connected 
 together by a floored and covered passage, without carpets, 
 paper-hangings, or even plaster, and with roofs so imperfect 
 that in every heavy storm of rain every room of the four, 
 except only that used as her bedroom, was completely afloat. 
 Some detached log-houses, at a little distance on either side, 
 served as additional sleeping-rooms, and others, a little in the 
 rear, as kitchen and storehouses ; and still farther back, but 
 still in sight of the principal mansion, was a long string of 
 miserable little huts, the town, as they called it, occupied by 
 the plantation slaves. As to shrubbery, there were no 
 enclosures at all about the house, except one, half decayed, of 
 what seemed to have been intended as a garden, but which 
 was now quite grown up with weeds and bushes. The hogs, 
 the mules, a few half-starved cows, and a whole bevy of naked 
 negro children, ranged freely about the house ; and though 
 there seemed once to have been some attempts at shrubbery, 
 that was now all ruined and destroyed. 
 
 The former Mrs. Thomas, belonging, as she always took 
 pains to let the company know, to one of the first families of 
 Virginia, was in fact a very notable woman, whose masculine 
 temper and active spirit had counterbalanced, so far as 
 domestic affairs were concerned, the dozy disposition of her 
 husband. By dint of bustling, scolding, and the free use of 
 the cowhide, which she wielded with a grace and dexterity 
 hardly to be attained except by those females who have had 
 the advantage of a thoroughly southern education in the best 
 families, she had contrived to keep things in tolerable order; 
 
326 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 but shortly after her death, some six years before, the man 
 whom she had employed to keep the garden and the grounds 
 about the house had been taken off and placed in the cotton- 
 field, and everything in the house and around it had since 
 been left to take care of itself ; and with the results that might 
 have been expected, there not being in the house a whole 
 piece of furniture of any description, and the entire aspect of 
 things as untidy, uncomfortable, neglected, and dilapidated as 
 can well be imagined. 
 
 To complete the dismay of Mrs. Thomas, and what gave a 
 good deal of a shock to her New England ideas, among the 
 black children whom she found running and romping in front 
 of the house at the moment of her arrival — the whole group 
 having, in fact, assembled to welcome home master and the 
 new mistress — were quite a number of boys and girls eight or 
 ten years old, naked as they were born, or with only some 
 fragment of a tattered and filthy shirt hanging about them, 
 begrimed with dirt, and shouting and chattering, as she said to 
 Cassy, like so many imps of the evil one himself. 
 
 But within the house a still more disagreeable reception 
 awaited her. She found the keys and the general direction of 
 affairs under the management of a tall, portly, middle-aged 
 black woman, commonly called aunt Emma, of formidable 
 size and strength, who, having been a favourite upper servant, 
 and sort of prime minister, of the late Mrs. Thomas, had 
 succeeded, on her death, to the general control of the house- 
 hold. In the kitchen ruled supreme aunt Dinah, another big 
 black woman, whose face plainly enough betrayed the irrita- 
 bility of her temper, stimulated from time to time by pretty 
 free draughts of whiskey. It is not necessary to mention the 
 other servants, who were in complete subordination to those 
 two, but all of whom, with aunts Emma and Dinah at their 
 head, it soon appeared, were parties to a conspiracy to set 
 at nought the authority of the new Mrs. Thomas, and to make 
 her a mere cipher in her own house. 
 
 By some means or other, probably from one of Mr. 
 Thomas’s daughters, whom the new-married pair had brought 
 home with them, they soon got hold of the information that 
 the new mistress was nothing but the daughter of a poor man, 
 who worked for his living with his own hands, and herself only 
 a poor schoolma’am ; nor could a contempt more sovereign of 
 such humble, plebeian, pitiful origin be evinced by the 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 32 ) 
 
 daintiest female aristocrat that ever wore white kid slippers 
 than by the black housekeeper and the black cook. 
 
 “ Pretty times these, indeed ! very fine times, certainly ! ” 
 exclaimed aunt Emma, with a most ominous shake of the 
 head, and imitating with great exactness the tone, manner, and 
 words of her deceased mistress, the first Mrs. Thomas, whose 
 representative and successor she seemed to consider herself to 
 be, and equally bound to look out for the honour of the family 
 — “fine times these, aunt Dinah ! that you and I, raised in one 
 of the first families of Virginia, should have one of these good- 
 for-nothing, no account, poor folks put over our heads — and a 
 Yankee, too ! Oh, aunt Dinah, who would a-thought it, that 
 two quality niggers like you and I, raised in one of the first 
 families of Virginia, and always accustomed to decent society, 
 should have to take up with a Yankee mistress ? What in 
 heavens and earth could possess poor Massa Thomas that, 
 having once had such a wife as old mistress was, belonging to 
 one of the first families of Virginia, he must needs go and 
 bring home this little Yankee nobody to disgrace us and him 
 too ? ” Such was one of a great number of similar outbursts 
 which Cassy, and indeed Mrs. Thomas herself, could hardly 
 fail to overhear, since the discontented housekeeper made very 
 little privacy of her griefs. 
 
 So far, indeed, did she carry it, that when the new Mrs. 
 Thomas, after being in the house for three or four weeks, 
 intimated to aunt Emma her intention to assume in person the 
 position of housekeeper, and called upon her to give up the 
 keys, she snapped her fingers with significant contempt in the 
 face of her new mistress, and absolutely refused, tier old 
 mistress — no poor body, but born of one of the first families of 
 Virginia — had brought her into Massa Thomas’s family, and 
 had made her housekeeper, and on her death-bed had made 
 her husband promise that he would never sell her, but that she 
 always should be housekeeper ; and housekeeper she meant to 
 be in spite of all the Yankee women and poor white folks in 
 creation. 
 
 Missis might be content to manage those servants she had 
 brought in herself. She had brought in one, to be sure, 
 though, according to all accounts, poor dear Massa Thomas 
 had to buy her with his own money, and to pay a pretty round 
 price, too. But what right had she to come in and undertake 
 to domineer over old mistress’s servants? And here aunt 
 
328 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Emma burst out into a loud laugh, partly in defiance, and partly 
 in derision, at being called upon to give up the keys by such a 
 poverty-stricken Yankee interloper — she — so she wound up, 
 folding her arms, and drawing herself up to her full height, 
 exactly as the late Mrs. Thomas used to do — she who had been 
 raised in one of the first families in Virginia ! But aunt 
 Emma soon sunk down from this high pitch, subsiding into a 
 flood of tears at the thought, as she expressed it, of what poor 
 dear, dead mistress would say, she, born in one of the first 
 families of Virginia, who hated a Yankee as she did a toad or a 
 snake, always speaking of them as in fact no better than a set 
 of free niggers — an opinion in which aunt Emma seemed very 
 cordially to join — to come back, and find her turned out, and 
 the keys in the hands of a Yankee ! 
 
 There is nothing like a strong will, and by virtue of it the 
 slave may sometimes usurp the place of the master. The new 
 Mrs. Thomas made grievous complaints to her husband, 
 insisting that aunt Emma should be whipped and sent into the 
 field. But the good-natured, easy old gentleman was so 
 accustomed to be himself managed by her, and so tickled at 
 the idea of aunt Emma’s contempt for the Yankees, which he 
 himself more than half shared, that he showed a strong dis- 
 position to take her part ; nor was it till after a six months’ 
 struggle, and a long series of curtain lectures, in which 
 particular the wife had the advantage of the housekeeper, that 
 she finally succeeded in getting possession of the keys and 
 aunt Emma fairly out of the house. She insisted very 
 strenuously upon having her sent down the river and sold, or at 
 least that she should be set to work in the field, and especially 
 that she should have a sound flogging for her insolence ; but 
 Mr. Thomas would consent to neither. Mrs. Thomas was 
 welcome to flog aunt Emma as much as she pleased. The late 
 Mrs. Thomas did sometimes use the cowskin on her, he 
 believed ; but during the six years that she had been house- 
 keeper for him, he never had had occasion to do it, and he 
 shouldn’t begin now. The most he could be persuaded to do 
 was to put her out of Mrs. Thomas’s sight by hiring her out 
 somewhere in the neighbourhood — poor Mrs. Thomas com- 
 plaining, in a sort of prophetic spirit, that he wanted to keep 
 her near by, when she, his poor wife, was dead and gone, as 
 she soon should be, to have her for his housekeeper again. 
 
 But, though the black housekeeper was thus at last got rid 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 329 
 
 of, the black cook proved a more formidable enemy. Aunt 
 
 inah s skill m cookery was by no means contemptible, and 
 Mr. Thomas who was something of an epicure, had become 
 so accustomed to her particular dishes that nobody else could 
 suit him. All poor Mrs. Thomas’s efforts to dislodge aunt 
 {I 0111 f he kltch en proved, in consequence, unavailing. 
 She had nothing to do— so Mr. Thomas told her— but to 
 keep out of the kitchen, and let aunt Dinah alone. But that 
 
 Trs. Thomas could not do. She had a great passion for 
 bustling, managing meddling, fretting, and scolding, and 
 scarcely a day passed without an encounter between her and 
 aunt Dinah, whom she accused, not altogether without reason, 
 of not having the slightest idea either of order or of neatness- 
 accusations which aunt Dinah was accustomed to retort bv a 
 sort of growling observation to herself that poor folks couldn’t 
 be expected to understand or duly value the kitchen manage- 
 ment of quality cooks. 
 
 So far did this feud go that Mrs. Thomas declared at last 
 her apprehension of being poisoned, and for some months 
 would eat nothing except what Cassy prepared for her with her 
 own hands; though whether it was aunt Dinah’s dirt, or some- 
 
 t nng more fatal, that she dreaded, Cassy could never clearly 
 make out. 3 
 
 In the midst of all these tribulations, which, as she com- 
 plained, were wearing her out by inches, and bringing her fast 
 o the grave, aggravating the fever and ague by which she con- 
 stantly suffered, poor Mrs. Thomas had no confidant or consoler 
 except only Cassy. The nearest neighbours were three or four 
 miles off. The ladies of these establishments — where there 
 were any, for several of the neighbouring planters preferred a 
 s,ave housekeeper to a white wife— were from Virginia and 
 Kentucky, holding Yankees in almost as much contempt as 
 aunt Dinah did— a prejudice which Mrs. Thomas had too little 
 orce of character, or power of making herself either useful or 
 agreeable, to be able to overcome. Her husband was pretty 
 poor company at best... However it might have been in the 
 ays of his courtship, his wife had long since ceased to com- 
 pete in his affections with his more favourite cigar, mint julep 
 and chaw of tobacco ; and to get rid, as he said, of her eternal 
 complaints about nothing, he kept out of her way as much as 
 possible. Her step-daughter, a girl of fourteen, seemed to be 
 in the conspiracy with aunt Dinah against her. as were the 
 
 i 
 
33 ° 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 washerwoman, seamstress, and all the rest of the house- 
 servants ; and such was the state of nervous uneasiness in 
 which they kept her, breaking out occasionally into exhibitions 
 by no means very lovely, that she expressed one day to Cassy 
 her apprehensions lest these ugly black creatures would not 
 only be the destruction of her health and good looks, which 
 suffered a good deal under the effects of the ague, but the ruin 
 of her soul also. She was sure that living on a plantation was 
 no place to fit folks for heaven. 
 
 Cassy was impressed with a strong feeling of gratitude 
 towards her unfortunate mistress. She greatly pitied, as well 
 the infirmities of her temper, soured by sickness and disap- 
 pointment and failure in everything, as the miserable loneliness 
 and substantial state of slavery into which she had sold herself, 
 a state all the more disagreeable to her naturally busy and 
 bustling temperament, since the post assigned her seemed to 
 be, though bearing the name of mistress, to do nothing and to 
 be nobody. Exerting herself by every means to calm, comfort, 
 and divert her — an office for which she was well fitted by 
 her own uniform, sweet, and sunny disposition — Cassy be- 
 came entirely indispensable to her suffering mistress. This 
 placed her in a rather delicate position as to the other servants, 
 who were inclined to include her in their hostility and 
 antipathy to Mrs. Thomas. But her sweet temper and friendly 
 disposition soon overcame all that. Some little favours and 
 judicious compliments — since she always took a decided 
 pleasure in making others happy — secured for her even the 
 good-will of the formidable aunt Dinah herself, into whose 
 dominions she was thus able to venture with an impunity 
 never vouchsafed to the mistress. 
 
 Little as there was, any way, of Mrs. Thomas, either of 
 intellect or heart, this assiduity and good-will on the part of 
 Cassy, though even she was not safe from occasional bursts of 
 impatience and ill-temper, were by no means thrown away 
 upon her. Finding that Cassy had never been taught to read 
 — an accomplishment which none of her former kind 
 mistresses had thought necessary — she volunteered to teach 
 her, and her little boy also; and she persevered in it, notwith- 
 standing the occasional jocular threats of Mr. Thomas to 
 have her prosecuted under the act against teaching slaves to 
 read. Indeed, she seemed to take so much consolation in 
 having at last found something to do that, besides teaching 
 
The white sla ve. 
 
 331 
 
 Cassy various kinds of needlework, in which she was an adept, 
 she also gave her lessons on a piano, which Mr. Thomas had 
 bought at the north, at the time of his marriage, and which 
 came round by water. Nor was it long before Cassy’s correct 
 ear for music made her a greater proficient than her mistress, 
 which, indeed, was not saying much. 
 
 So things passed away during three or four years, till a 
 bilious fever, which carried off Mrs. Thomas, exposed Cassy to 
 new vicissitudes. She was no longer needed at Mount Flat, 
 and, in hopes to get back the large sum he had paid for her, 
 Mr. Thomas sent her off with her child to New Orleans to be 
 sold. 
 
 Among the purchasers who there presented themselves was 
 a Mr. Curtis, as Cassy afterwards learned, a native of Boston, 
 and well connected there. Like many others from the same 
 city, he had come to New Orleans while still quite young. 
 Afterwards, entering into business himself, and succeeding in 
 it, instead of marrying, he had, as is customary enough with 
 the northern adventurers in that city, fallen into the habits of 
 the place, and formed a connection with a handsome, young, 
 light-coloured slave, whom he had purchased, and for whom 
 he entertained so strong an affection as to have felt very 
 seriously her recent death, leaving behind her a little daughter 
 some three or four years younger than our boy, Montgomery. 
 
 Being of a domestic disposition, and desirous of filling up 
 this break in his household establishment, Mr. Curtis, when 
 his grief was a little assuaged, had become a visitant, with that 
 view, of the slave-warehouses ; and Cassy having at once very 
 decidedly struck his fancy, he made a purchase of her and of 
 her child. I relate all this very coolly ; but imagine, reader, if 
 you can, how I must have felt when, ignorant of the event, I 
 first heard the story from Cassy’s own lips ! 
 
 Duly installed in the superintendence of Mr. Curtis’s house- 
 hold, which at this time was on a small and modest scale, and 
 in the care of his little daughter, it was not long before Mr. 
 Curtis intimated to her, in a very delicate way — for he was 
 thoroughly amiable, and in every respect a gentleman— -his 
 disposition to place the relation between them on a more 
 intimate footing. 
 
 He appeared a good deal surprised, contrasting, it is 
 probable, Cassy’s behaviour with his former experience, at the 
 coolness . with which his advances were received, and her 
 
332 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 attempts to seem not to understand them ; but as he prided 
 himself — and not without reason — on his personal attractions 
 and winning ways with the women, and was, besides, so much 
 more a man of sentiment than of passion as to prize the 
 possession of a woman’s heart, however humble, far beyond 
 that of her person, this only piqued his vanity, and made him 
 the more resolved to make a conquest of her. 
 
 Nor, indeed, when the master condescends to make love to 
 the slave, the man of the superior class to the woman of the 
 inferior one, a king to a subject, a nobleman to a peasant, or 
 even, if he takes the fancy, to the wife of a citizen, are such 
 conquests in general very difficult. In the case of the slave 
 woman, however transient the connection, it still for the 
 moment elevates her from her own humble level to that of her 
 ' lover ; and in so doing does more to raise her in her own eyes, 
 and those of her class, than any connection she can possibly 
 form within that class — a connection called marriage, perhaps, 
 but only' by courtesy; since it is not so anymore than the 
 other, being, like that other, in the eye of the law, but a 
 transient cohabitation, creating no rights of any sort, giving no 
 paternity to the children, and dissoluble, not only at the 
 caprice of the man, but at that also of the master and his 
 creditors. 
 
 That very same pride, in fact, which impels the woman of 
 the superior class to shrink with a horror, which seems to her 
 instinctive, from any connection with the men of the inferior 
 class, as a degradation from her own level, a sentiment not 
 regulated by colour, but by condition, since a white woman of 
 refinement and education would just as soon think of marrying 
 a negro as one of your newly-imported Irish clod-hoppers, even 
 though he might be an Apollo in figure and, when the dirt 
 was washed off, a perfect Adonis in complexion — that same 
 pride impels the slave woman readily to throw herself into the 
 arms of any man of the superior class who condescends to 
 honour her with his notice ; that very desire for a standing in 
 the world which makes the free woman so coy and reserved, 
 making the slave woman yielding and easy — since, looked at 
 merely with that eye of prudence, by which, more than by 
 choice, sentiment, or passion, the conduct of women in this 
 behalf is everywhere regulated, a left-handed marriage with any 
 man of the superior rank is every way more advantageous than 
 anything to be hoped from any right-handed marriage — even 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 333 
 
 if that were possible, which it is not — with a person of her 
 
 own degraded condition. . 
 
 There was, indeed, nothing but Cassy s affection for me 
 exposed now to a test such as female constancy, in civilised 
 countries, is seldom tried by— and a romantic idea which she 
 had taken up that, sooner or later, we should certainly again 
 find each other, that could have made her proof against the 
 efforts of Mr. Curtis to win her affections; efforts, as he 
 laughingly told her, enough to have made him husband of half 
 the white girls in New Orleans or Boston either.. 
 
 Besides being a man of sentiment, of a delicacy not to be 
 extinguished even by a residence in an atmosphere so corrupt 
 as that of New Orleans, Mr. Curtis had also a good deal of 
 romance in his composition. He could not but applaud^ 
 a constancy and tenderness of which he desired himself to 
 become the object ; but he begged Cassy not to throw away 
 her youth and her charms in an unavailing widowhood since 
 the separation between her and me was in all respects 
 equivalent to death— nor, out of a mere fancy, to persist in 
 refusing a position for herself and her child the best that 
 she could hope; since he promised, in fact, to reward her 
 compliance by a gift of freedom, in due time, to herself and 
 
 If she had any repugnance or dislike to him, he would not 
 push the matter ; but ought she, out of a mere fanciful caprice, 
 to refuse this gratification to him and provision for herself ? 
 
 Finding that she was a Methodist, he even promised to call 
 in a minister of that persuasion to consecrate their union, if 
 she had scruples on that score ; and he strongly advised her 
 to ask the counsel of the one at whose chapel she usually 
 
 attended. , , , , 
 
 Though the Methodists hold that a marriage between two 
 
 slaves, celebrated by one of their ministers, is, in the eye of 
 God every way complete and binding on the parties who, 
 according to Methodist ideas, have souls to be saved as well 
 as white people — yet, notwithstanding the famous text, ‘ Whom 
 God hath joined together let not man put asunder, they 
 have been obliged, in the slave states of America, to concede 
 the supremacy of man ; and to admit that parties separated by 
 the command of a master, or the operation of the slave-trade, 
 may rightly enough marry again, even though they know their 
 former ‘partners to be living. They excuse this by saying that 
 
334 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 they do it of necessity ; since the people, having little taste for 
 celibacy, will form new connections : and they may as well 
 sanction what they cannot help ; the same excuse which they 
 give for allowing their church members to hold slaves — the 
 pious brethren will do it whether or no ; a policy, in both 
 cases, seeming to look rather to the numbers than to the 
 purity of the church, and, perhaps, partaking something more 
 of the wisdom of the serpent than of the harmlessness of the 
 dove. But upon this high point of ecclesiastical policy I shall 
 not venture to express a decided opinion. 
 
 The Methodist clergyman, whom Cassy consulted on this 
 occasion, strongly urged her to accept of Mr. Curtis’s offers, 
 which he assured her she might do — considering all the 
 circumstances of the case — with a perfectly safe conscience, 
 especially if he was called in to consecrate this new connec- 
 tion, which would thus become a perfect marriage in the eye 
 of heaven, however human laws might not so regard it. 
 
 But spite of the urgency of Mr. Curtis, and the advice of 
 the minister, still, every time that she pressed our boy to her 
 bosom, the image of her lost husband rose up before her, and 
 something said in her heart, He lives ! he loves you ! do not 
 give him up ! 
 
 So things went on for a year or more, Mr. Curtis still 
 patiently waiting the effects of time and perseverance, when 
 he was seized by a violent attack of yellow fever, which brought 
 him to death’s door, and from which he recovered only after a 
 tedious and protracted convalescence. It was now Cassy’s 
 turn to show her sense of the kindness and delicacy with 
 which she had been treated, and of the favour with which her 
 master had regarded her. Night and day she was his constant 
 and most assiduous nurse ; and the physician, of whom, at 
 different times, three or four had been called in, all agreed 
 that it was nothing but her tender care — all that a sister, a 
 mother, a wife could have bestowed — to which he was indebted 
 for his life. 
 
 Having been religiously educated in his childhood, the near 
 prospect of death, and the leisure and solitude of his tedious and 
 painful recovery, served to recall may ideas which the tumult 
 of business, the gaiety of youth, the gross, sensual, worldly 
 atmosphere in which he had so long lived, had well-nigh 
 extinguished. It was plain, indeed, that Mr. Curtis rose from 
 his sick-bed — whether from the effect of physical or moral 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 335 
 
 causes, or of both combined — in many respects an altered 
 man, as if indeed twenty years or more had suddenly been 
 added to his age : not less amiable or genial, but graver, and 
 with thoughts less bent on himself : though he could never, at 
 any time, have been accused of being a selfish man. 
 
 One of the first things he did, when he was recovered 
 enough to sit up, was to execute a duplicate deed of manumis- 
 sion for Cassy and her child, to go into effect as soon as 
 the law would allow, she meanwhile to superintend his 
 household, receiving a certain monthly allowance. He also, 
 as Cassy understood, executed at the same time a deed of 
 manumission of his little daughter Eliza, who still remained 
 under Cassy’s care, growing up a nice companion and 
 playmate for our little Montgomery. 
 
 When the children arrived at the proper age, Mr. Curtis had 
 sent them to New England for an education ; first Mont- 
 gomery, and afterwards Eliza, who was sent on to the care of 
 Mr. Curtis’s brother Agrippa, and placed by him, at Boston, in 
 a select, fashionable, aristocratic female school. 
 
 Montgomery, having spent two or three years at a New 
 England academy, had been afterwards placed in a counting- 
 house in New York, and had lately, through the patronage of 
 his kind benefactor, been established there in a business for 
 himself connected with the New Orleans trade. 
 
 Cassy’s monthly allowance in the way of wages having, in 
 the course of years, and with the addition of interest, which 
 Mr. Curtis scrupulously allowed her, accumulated to a con- 
 siderable sum, he had lately invested it for her in the purchase 
 of a small house and garden, in the suburbs of the city, to 
 which — as Mr. Curtis contemplated travelling at the north and 
 in Europe for his health— she had some time before removed. 
 
 Everything thus, she said, had gone well with her, as if she 
 had been a chosen favourite of Providence ; except, indeed, 
 the long-deferred fulfilment of her still cherished hope of again 
 finding me. But this long course of singular prosperity had at 
 length been suddenly and most frightfully overcast. 
 
 News came that Mr. Curtis, while on his way to Boston, in 
 ascending the Ohio river, had been seriously injured by the 
 bursting of a boiler ; and this was followed, not long after, by 
 information of his death. When this occurred, which was 
 only a few weeks previous, Montgomery was employed in his 
 business, at New York, and Eliza was still at school at Boston. 
 
33 ^ 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 She was a beautiful and elegant girl ; her liquid dark eyes, 
 long black hair, and brunette complexion, in strong contrast 
 to the prevailing type of beauty in those regions in which light 
 hair, light eyes, and blond complexions so generally pre- 
 dominate. She had, besides, a grace and elegance of 
 movement very seldom seen in New England — where 
 everybody is more or less awkward — and all the freedom and 
 vivacity of a bird, without the least touch either of that blunt, 
 masculine rudeness, or of that embarrassed self-consciousness 
 which spoils the address of so many of the Boston women. 
 These, by the way, are Eliza’s criticisms, not mine; and I shall, 
 therefore, not hold myself answerable for their correctness. 
 
 She passed for the only daughter of Mr. Curtis, the rich 
 merchant of New Orleans, by a Spanish creole wife of his who 
 had died many years ago ; and as the reputation of an heiress 
 was thus added to her personal attractions, you may be sure 
 that she received a great many attentions ; nor was she without 
 offers even of marriage from some young sprigs of the Boston 
 aristocracy ; but to these she paid no sort of attention, as she 
 and Montgomery had been promised to each other from early 
 childhood. 
 
 On receiving information of the accident to his brother, Mr. 
 Agrippa Curtis had set off for Pittsburg, where he was ; and in 
 three or four weeks he returned with the news of his brother’s 
 death. 
 
 While mourning with all the energetic grief natural to her 
 age and origin over this sad news, Eliza found herself strangely 
 neglected by her late fond school companions, not one of 
 whom came near her ; and while she was wondering what the 
 matter could be, she received a note from the teacher with the 
 information that he could not allow her in his school any 
 longer. . It seems that a report had suddenly spread that Eliza 
 had African blood in her veins ; that she was not Mr. Curtis’s 
 lawful child, nor his heir, but only the daughter of a slave 
 woman. 
 
 Most fierce was the indignation expressed by the mothers of 
 Eliza’s school companions, especially by the daughter of a 
 drunken tallow-chandler, who had married in her youth the 
 keeper of a small grocery and grog-shop, but whose husband, 
 having gone into the business of distilling, had acquired a 
 great fortune, had bought a house in Beacon Street, and being, 
 like his wife, of a pushing and aspiring disposition, had, by 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 337 
 
 a liberal expenditure of money, placed her at the head of the 
 fashion in Boston. This aristocratic lady thought it a most 
 scandalous shame — and she found many sympathisers — that 
 people of good family should be so shockingly imposed upon 
 as to have such a coloured trollop insinuated into the same 
 school with their well-born daughters. Wasn’t there a school 
 down in Belknap Street especially intended for coloured folks, 
 and why hadn’t she been sent there ? This sketch of this Mrs! 
 Highflyer— for that was the name of this fashionable Boston 
 lady — I must also credit to Eliza, who, to confess the truth, 
 was a good deal of a rogue and a mimic, with an eye to the 
 ridiculous, and a little tendency to caricature. 
 
 Nobody seemed , to sympathise more completely with Mrs. 
 Highflyer than Mr. Agrippa Curtis himself, though he had 
 known perfectly well Eliza’s origin from the beginning, and 
 had been himself the person to introduce her into Boston 
 society and the fashionable school she had attended. His 
 relation to his deceased brother, of whose property he gave 
 himself out as the heir, made it improper for him, he said, to 
 express himself freely as to his singular conduct, in the 
 introduction into the fashionable society and respectable 
 families of Boston of such a low person ; though, in fact, his 
 brother was a strange, unaccountable man in many respects, 
 and to him quite unfathomable. But he did not hesitate to 
 express himself in the most decided terms to poor Eliza 
 when she called upon him for protection and advice, going so 
 far as actually to order her out of his house as a vile cheat and 
 impostor. 
 
 The keeper of the fashionable boarding-house where she 
 lodged was prompt to imitate these aristocratic examples ; in 
 fact, the boarders themselves were all up in arms, especially 
 the women— for the men did not seem to have so much 
 objection to her— threatening to leave if she were not turned 
 out ; and the poor girl might, perhaps, have been obliged to 
 sleep in the street, had not a little milliner, to whom she had 
 formerly shown some kindnesses, taken her home, even at the 
 risk of offending all her fashionable customers. 
 
 She wrote at once to Montgomery at New York, who came 
 on immediately to her assistance. Happening to meet Mr. 
 Agrippa Curtis in State Street about the time of high change, 
 he expressed to him, in pretty plain terms, his sense of his 
 conduct. That gentleman— he passed for such in Boston, 
 
 22 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE. 
 
 338 
 
 notwithstanding a prevailing rumour that the mercantile firm 
 of Curtis, Sawin, Byrne, &r Co., to which he belonged, had laid 
 the foundation of their fortune by an underhand connection 
 with the Brazilian slave-trade — retorted, in great dudgeon, that 
 he was not to be lectured by any cursed runaway nigger, the 
 
 son 0 f a • a polite allusion to Montgomery’s descent, a 
 
 circumstance with which Mr. Grip Curtis had become well 
 acquainted in visits to his brother at New Orleans. Mont- 
 gomery replied by knocking the scoundrel down on the spot; 
 and one of the bystanders having the good nature to hand him 
 a stick— for Mr. Agrippa Curtis, though highly respectable, was 
 not very popular — as the fellow rose up, my boy proceeded to 
 give him a severe caning, to the great apparent satisfaction of 
 at least half of the assembled merchants, some of whom made 
 a ring around them, in order, as they said, to have fair play; 
 perhaps, too, for the better chance of enjoying Mr. Grip’s 
 capers and contortions, which, as Montgomery wrote to his 
 mother, were highly ridiculous. 
 
 Mr. Agrippa Curtis immediately made a complaint at the 
 police court, before which Montgomery was had up and fined 
 twenty dollars. He also commenced a private suit, laying his 
 damages at ten thousand dollars, in hopes to prevent Mont- 
 gomery’s getting bail ; in which, however, he did not succeed. 
 
 As Montgomery, so soon as he had got bail in Mr. Grip 
 Curtis’s suit, was preparing to take Eliza with him to New 
 York, a letter to her arrived from a Mr. Gilmore, a lawyer in 
 New Orleans, who had all along been the confidential adviser 
 and law-agent of Mr. Curtis, informing her of Mr. Curtis’s 
 death, and that certain business affairs indispensably required 
 her immediate presence at New Orleans, and enclosing a draft 
 to pay her passage and expenses. On reaching New York a 
 similar letter was found there for Montgomery. Neither of the 
 young people had any reason to imagine that these letters were 
 not written in perfect good faith. They knew Mr. Gilmore 
 as a portly, round-faced, smiling, benevolent-looking, white- 
 haired, oldish gentleman, of whom Mr. James Curtis thought 
 very highly ; and as they had abundant reasons for supposing 
 that he had made some provision for them by will, it seemed 
 reasonable enough that their presence at New Orleans might 
 be necessary. But some business arrangements required 
 Montgomery’s previous attention, and sending on Eliza by 
 packet, he proposed to follow himself as soon as he could. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 339 
 
 Arriving safely at New Orleans much about the same time 
 that I did, Eliza had gone directly to Cassy’s house, who, in a 
 day or two, had waited on Mr. Gilmore to inform him of her 
 arrival. Ihe deceased Mr. Curtis had several times assured 
 Cassy, and particularly just before he left New Orleans the 
 last time, that he had in his will remembered her and 
 Montgomery, and had provided handsomely for Eliza. She 
 made some inquiries of Mr. Gilmore on this subject ; but the 
 lawyer answered her evasively, telling her that it would be 
 necessary for Eliza to call at his house at a certain hour the 
 next day. 
 
 _ She went ; but did not return. Cassy passed a sleepless 
 night _ of anxiety and alarm, and was preparing the next 
 morning to go to Mr. Gilmore’s in pursuit of her, when, 
 by the hand of a black boy, she received a little crumpled 
 note from Eliza, written, apparently in great haste, with a 
 pencil and a blank leaf torn from some book, stating that 
 she was held as prisoner in Mr. Gilmore’s house, as his slave, 
 bought, as he pretended, of Mr. Agrippa Curtis, who had just 
 arrived from Boston, claiming the entire inheritance of his 
 brother’s property, and herself as a part of it ! Cassy was 
 horror-struck at this terrible news ; but while she was 
 considering whom to apply to, and what could be done, Mr. 
 Agrippa Curtis, accompanied by his Boston lawyer, by Mr. 
 Gilmore, and two or three black servants, entered her house, 
 claiming to take possession of that and her as his property; 
 and it was as a sequel to this seizure that she had been 
 exposed for sale in the auction-room where I had so 
 providentially found her, and but for which, spite of her 
 protestations to claims of freedom — which she had no means 
 to substantiate, since the very person in whose hands her free- 
 papers were had proved traitor and kidnapper — she would 
 doubtless have been sold into some new bondage. 
 
 Such was the story of which, at our first interview, Cassy 
 gave me a brief and hasty outline, the particulars of which I 
 afterwards learnt more at length. 
 
 Thank God, I pressed her to my heart once more — my own, 
 my own true wife ! 
 
 But my boy, my son, and her whom Cassy claimed and wept 
 for as her dear, dear daughter — what should be done for Eliza 
 and Montgomery, the one already betrayed and entrapped the 
 other in great danger to be so ? 
 
340 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Again I called Colter into our council, and again I found 
 him prompt to sympathise and ready to act ; quite delighted, 
 indeed, as he said, to help in counter- working these two Yankee 
 scoundrels, who had no doubt conspired together to destroy 
 Mr. Curtis’s will, and to divide the estate between them ; 
 seeking to reduce Cassy and Eliza, and probably Montgomery 
 too, to slavery ; not so much for the sake of what they would 
 sell for — he didn’t suppose that even these cursed skinflint 
 Boston kidnappers, mean opinion as he had of Yankees 
 generally, from what he had seen of them at the south, were 
 quite mean enough for that — but because that would be the 
 most convenient way to dispose of them ; for if allowed to 
 retain their freedom they might yet make trouble, especially if 
 some unexpected duplicate of the will should ever happen to 
 turn up. 
 
 As to Montgomery, indeed, it seemed that Mr. Grip Curtis 
 had a special grudge against him. In fact, as we afterwards 
 heard, he had bought, immediately after his arrival at New 
 Orleans, an immense cow-hide, in order, when the young man 
 was once in his power, and securely tied up, to take satisfactory 
 revenge upon him for his State Street beating. 
 
 With respect to Eliza, it afterwards turned out that the very 
 respectable and pious Mr. Gilmore had been so captivated at 
 first sight by her personal charms and Boston accomplishments, 
 as to come at once to the conclusion to appropriate her and 
 them to his own use, under pretence of ownership, and by the 
 rights which the law gives a master. I say pious Mr. Gilmore, 
 for during a visit to New York some two or three years before, 
 he had been converted to Unitarian Christianity by the preach- 
 ing of that same eloquent Dr. Dewey, whose patriotic zeal I 
 have already had occasion to refer to, and he had since exerted 
 himself with so much zeal to get up a Unitarian society at New 
 Orleans as to have acquired the nickname of the Deacon, by 
 which he was generally known among his lighter-minded 
 acquaintances. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 341 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 On Mr. Colter’s suggestion, and in order to have the assistance 
 of the law, if we could get any from that quarter, I proceeded 
 with him to ask the advice of an eminent counsellor. 
 
 With respect to Cassy, as I had brought up Mr. Grip 
 Curtis’s pretended claim to her, she seemed safe enough ; 
 especially as, by the law of Louisiana, more humane and 
 reasonable in this particular than that of any other slave state, 
 a master, after allowing his slave to live as free for ten years, 
 even without any formal emancipation, cannot after that renew 
 his claim of ownership ; and it would not be difficult to prove 
 that Cassy had for more than ten years past been recognised as 
 free by the deceased Mr. Curtis. But the case of Eliza, and 
 especially of Montgomery, appeared to be surrounded by many 
 legal difficulties. 
 
 No one in Louisiana, as appeared by an extract which the 
 lawyer read to us from the Code Noir , or Slave Code, can 
 emancipate a slave except by special act of the legislature, 
 unless that slave has attained the age of thirty years, and has 
 behaved well for at least four years preceding his emancipation. 
 Nor, according to the decision of the courts, are any emancipa- 
 tions, in case of slaves under thirty, to be established by the 
 mere allowance of freedom. By another provision of the same 
 code, children born of a mother then in a state of slavery 
 follow the condition of their mother, and are consequently 
 slaves, and belong to the master of the mother ; or as the civil 
 code of Louisiana expresses it, “ the children of slaves and the 
 young of animals belong to the proprietor of the mother of 
 them by right of accession.” Such unquestionably was the fact 
 as to both Montgomery and Eliza ; indeed, it was by purchase 
 as a slave that Montgomery had originally come into the 
 possession of the deceased Mr. Curtis, and as neither he nor 
 Eliza were yet thirty years of age, nor near it, it did not seem 
 possible that Mr. Curtis could -have executed in their behalf 
 any valid act of emancipation. They therefore remained a 
 part of his estate, and in default of any testamentary provision 
 they passed to Mr. Agrippa Curtis, who, as his only brother, 
 his father and mother being dead, was his sole heir. There 
 was, indeed, a provision by which slaves under thirty years of 
 age might.be emancipated, provided the owner, upon explaining 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 342 
 
 his motives for it to the judge of the parish and the police jury, 
 could obtain the assent of the judge and of three-fourths of the 
 jury, to the sufficiency of those motives ; but as this could only 
 be done in case of slaves born in the state, even if Mr. Curtis 
 had taken advantage of it in Eliza’s case, it could not have 
 afforded any benefit to Montgomery. 
 
 The law of Louisiana, following the civil law, from which it 
 is mainly derived, and more humane in this respect than the 
 English common law, which prevails in the rest of the states, 
 in case of a father, by acts or words, recognises and acknow- 
 ledges as such children of his born out of wedlock, gives to 
 them, under the name of “natural children,” a claim upon 
 him for sustenance, support, and education in some means of 
 earning a livelihood. But on the other hand, the right of a 
 person, having lawful relations, to dispose of his property by 
 gift, either during his life or after his death, is very much 
 restricted. In England, and in all the United States except 
 Louisiana, a man may give or will his property to whom he 
 pleases ; but there, if he have lawful children, he can give or 
 will nothing to his natural children, though acknowledged to 
 be such, beyond a bare subsistence ; and though he have no 
 lawful children, yet if he have parents, brothers, or sisters, he 
 cannot alienate by gift or will above one-fourth of his property 
 at the utmost ; the palpable object of which departure from 
 the civil and Spanish law formerly in force is to prevent the 
 mixed race from acquiring property by inheritance through 
 paternal affection ; while the provision restricting emancipation 
 is evidently intended to keep as many of them as possible in 
 the condition of slavery. 
 
 It might be, the lawyer told us, that Mr. Curtis, in sending 
 the two children to a free state, had in so doing made them 
 free ; and perhaps that was one of his objects in sending them. 
 Had they remained at the north, they could not have been 
 reclaimed ; but it was not yet a settled question, whether, by 
 returning back to Louisiana, they did not revert to slavery. 
 The Supreme Court of that state had, indeed, once decided, as 
 had been done in several other of the slave-states, that a slave 
 once carried or sent into a free state became free beyond all 
 power of reclamation ; but that decision was made under the 
 influence of old-fashioned ideas, which were fast passing into 
 oblivion; and whether the present court would stick to that 
 opinion was more than he could venture to say. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 343 
 
 As possession was nine points of the law, and in all questions 
 relating to slavery, as the lawyer facetiously added, very nearly 
 ten points, Mr. Gilmore, in having Eliza in his hands, had 
 decidedly the advantage ; and the lawyer informed us, in 
 passing, that he had long known Mr. Gilmore as a cunning, 
 deceitful, cheating rogue ; very smooth and plausible, and full 
 of Yankee cant about duty, justice, and religion, and willing- 
 ness to do what was right ; but who seemed to have very little 
 concern for any duty or justice that did not tend to feather his 
 own nest. 
 
 We ought, he told us, if possible, to prevent Montgomery’s 
 falling into the same trap. In case of any attempt to seize him 
 as a slave, even though he should ultimately sustain his right 
 to freedom, he might still get into great difficulty. By the 
 Slave Code, according to an extract that he read, “free people 
 of colour ought never to insult or strike white people, nor 
 presume to conceive themselves equal to the whites ; but on 
 the contrary, they ought to yield to them on every occasion, 
 and never speak to or answer them but with respect, under 
 penalty of imprisonment, according to the nature of the 
 offence.” 
 
 Now, the best we could make of it was, that Montgomery 
 was a free coloured person. In Virginia and Kentucky, in the 
 fourth descent from a negro, all the other ancestors being 
 white, the African taint, in the eye of the law, is extinguished ; 
 and those thus descended pass into the mass of white 
 inhabitants, all the rights of whom they attain, even though 
 one of their great-grandfathers or great-grandmothers had been 
 a pure negro. But in several other of the states, and 
 Louisiana among them, the African taint never can be got rid 
 of. The most minute and imperceptible drop of African 
 blood, however diluted by the best white blood of the nation, 
 still suffices to degrade him in whose veins it runs into the 
 class of the free coloured, who “are not to presume to 
 conceive themselves equal to the whites,” but who are 
 specially required “ to yield to them on every occasion, and 
 never speak to or answer them but with respect, under 
 penalty of imprisonment.” If, therefore, Montgomery, being 
 seized as a slave, should, in vindication of his liberty, speak 
 disrespectfully to any of the catchpoles, and especially should 
 he venture to repeat the knocking-doAvn process, which he had 
 once tried already on the person of Mr. Grip Curtis, even 
 
344 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 though we should succeed in maintaining his right to freedom, 
 he might still find himself exposed to very disagreeable 
 consequences. 
 
 The first thing, therefore, to be done in Montgomery’s case 
 was, to prevent his falling into the hands of his claimants. As 
 to Eliza, if we could contrive some way of getting her out of 
 Gilmore’s hands, we should then be in a much better position 
 for maintaining her claim to freedom. 
 
 Montgomery, as_it fortunately happened, had written to his 
 mother just at leaving New York, mentioning, among other 
 things, the name of the packet in which he was to sail ; and 
 this letter, by the like good-luck, we found in the post-office on 
 leaving the lawyer’s office. 
 
 Colter immediately employed a boat to proceed down the 
 river, carrying a note to Montgomery from his mother. The 
 passage of the packet from New York had been unusually 
 short. She was found a few miles below the city, and 
 according to the recommendation in the note, Montgomery 
 immediately left her, and being set on shore by the boat, came 
 up by land ; and late that same evening he arrived at a retired 
 and quiet house in the suburbs, indicated in the letter, at 
 which Colter had procured lodgings for myself and Cassy. 
 
 The precaution we had taken was fortunate indeed. Mr. 
 Grip Curtis, as we afterwards found out, had employed some 
 agent in New York to watch Montgomery’s movements, and 
 being informed of the vessel in which he came, soon after 
 Montgomery had left, he boarded her, with a gang of 
 assistants, on purpose to seize him. 
 
 My son, I have thee too! Snatched from the grasp — 
 saved for the moment at least, from the already purchased 
 cowhide of an infuriated and vindictive scoundrel, claiming to 
 own thee ! — Claiming to own my son, my boy, my child ! — no 
 longer, as I left him, a prattling infant, but now full-grown in 
 figure, features, every youthful grace and manly beauty, fit to 
 compare with anybody’s son. 
 
 Never for me can the high ecstasy again be equalled of that 
 moment in which I pressed my long-lost boy to my bosom ! 
 But for his youthful heart, how choked with agony the 
 pleasure of this, to me so joyous a meeting ! What was it to 
 find even a father, whom, though he had heard so often of him 
 from his mother, he had no personal remembrance of, when at 
 the same time he learnt the dreadful situation of Eliza, his 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 345 
 
 playmate, his girl-friend and confidant, his lover now and 
 promised wife ! 
 
 How the blood mantled into his cheeks ! How his dark 
 eyes — his mother’s, but without their downcast mildness — 
 flashed fire at the thought of her danger and distress ! It was 
 with much difficulty that we detained him for a moment ; and 
 that only by assurances that Colter already had spies about the 
 house, so that if Eliza were removed, we should be able to 
 trace her. He knew, he said, Mr. Gilmore’s house, and the 
 adjoining premises, thoroughly. He knew also the servants in 
 the family, having been, as a boy, a decided favourite of Mr. 
 Gilmore’s black housekeeper. He would contrive some means 
 to enter the house that very night, and, at all personal risks, 
 to effect Eliza’s rescue. 
 
 Of the thorough scoundrelism of Mr. Grip Curtis, and his 
 confederate Mr. Gilmore, all doubts were now removed. At 
 Montgomery’s last departure from New Orleans, a year or so 
 before, to establish himself in business at New York, the 
 deceased Mr. Curtis had placed in his hands a sealed packet, 
 with written directions that it should be opened whenever his 
 will was produced and proved in court, or within thirty days 
 after his death, in case no will should be produced. It did 
 not appear that Mr. Curtis entertained any suspicions of the 
 possible ill-faith of his brother, or of Mr. Gilmore, or that they 
 would conspire together to defeat his intentions, and to 
 misappropriate his property. It was only to guard against 
 accidents that he had taken this precaution. 
 
 On opening this package, which Montgomery now produced, 
 we found it to contain a duplicate of Mr. Curtis’s will, 
 executed in due form, by which he bestowed upon Eliza, 
 whom he acknowledged and named in it as his natural 
 daughter, one-fourth part of his entire property, which 
 consisted principally in houses in the city of New Orleans, 
 estimated in the will to be worth two hundred thousand 
 dollars. This one-fourth was all which, by the laws of 
 Louisiana, he could give ; the other three-quarters going to his 
 brother, who, with Mr. Gilmore, was made his executor. But 
 not content with even this large inheritance, this unworthy 
 brother had conspired, it seems, with Mr. Gilmore, not only to 
 cheat his brother’s orphan daughter out of her portion, but, by 
 way of effectually stopping her mouth, and preventing all 
 reclamations, to reduce her to slavery and concubinage; 
 
346 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Gilmore, besides his part of her portion, to have her person 
 also for his share of the spoils. 
 
 The will, after reciting that Mr. Curtis had vainly several 
 times attempted to obtain the assent of the parish judge and 
 three-fourths of the police jury to the manumission of Eliza, 
 as the law required in case of slaves under thirty years of age 
 (that respectable body not thinking the circumstance that she 
 was his only daughter and child a sufficient motive to justify 
 it), proceeded to state that he had sent her to be educated at 
 Boston, with the hope, intention, and desire thereby to make 
 her free ; which he declared her to be, so far as it was lawfully 
 in his power to make her so. But in case the law should, 
 notwithstanding his anxiety to divest himself of it, reserve to 
 •him and his estate any property in, or right to, the services of 
 Eliza until her attaining to thirty years of age, then, in that 
 case, he devised and bequeathed those services to Cassy — 
 describing her as a free woman, manumitted many years since 
 by himself, and since employed as his housekeeper — in full 
 confidence that, as she had so long acted the part of a mother 
 towards Eliza, she would continue to do the same. 
 
 This was all the mention made of Cassy in the will ; nor 
 was there any mention of Montgomery, beyond a declaration 
 of his freedom ; but from a separate paper, contained in the 
 parcel, it appeared that Mr. Curtis had deposited the sum of 
 twenty thousand dollars with a London banker, payable, in 
 case of his death, to Montgomery, for the joint benefit of 
 himself and his mother — a contrivance resorted to, apparently, 
 for defeating the stringent restrictions of the Louisiana law on 
 the power of devising property by will in the case of persons 
 leaving near relations. 
 
 The parcel also contained an official copy of a formal act 
 of emancipation, executed many years ago, in favour of Cassy, 
 before a notary public, Mr. Gilmore being one of the 
 witnesses. 
 
 The will wound up with a most solemn adjuration to the 
 two executors to watch sedulously over the welfare of the 
 testator’s daughter, whose guardians, during the continuance of 
 her minority, they were declared to be. 
 
 What attention they had paid to this adjuration we have 
 seen. They were infamous scoundrels, no doubt. Who 
 questions it? Yet they had their temptations. Twenty-five 
 thousand dollars apiece; to Gilmore, the possession of a 
 
THE 'WHITE SLAVE . 
 
 347 
 
 beautiful girl; to Grip Curtis, the gratification of his furious 
 revenge, as well upon the mother as on the son. And it was 
 only three persons that they sought to reduce to slavery. 
 Pray how much worse were they than so many other of your 
 northern Gilmores and Curtises, who — without any direct and 
 positive temptation at all, beyond the uncertain hope of office, 
 or of currying favour with southern customers — are ready to do 
 their best towards the making and keeping of three millions of 
 slaves; even to the hunting down and delivering up to the 
 pretended claimants — without stopping to inquire whether the 
 claim is any better founded than that set up by Gilmore and 
 Curtis to Eliza — any panting fugitive, man, woman, or child, 
 who may take refuge among them? Any man ready to do 
 that — any man who does not blush at the very thought of it — 
 what is he but a Gilmore and Grip Curtis in his soul ? 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. . 
 
 Poor Eliza ! Poor child, indeed ! Even at that distance, 
 separated by the whole length of the city, Montgomery’s heart 
 felt the wild beating of hers, knew that it was her hour of 
 need, and would allow us to detain him no longer. Rescue 
 her he must and would. 
 
 Imagine, you who can, the terror and misery of that young 
 girl, going trustingly to the house of her father’s friend, and 
 there meeting a man like Mr. Grip Curtis, of whose faithless- 
 ness and brutality she had already had some experience in 
 Boston, and being told by him — which statement Mr. Gilmore 
 confirmed — that she was a slave, Mr. Gilmore’s slave, sold to 
 him by Mr. Grip Curtis, to whom she had come by inheritance 
 from his brother and her father ! 
 
 “ And, my dear,” said Mr. Gilmore, chucking her familiarly 
 under the chin, with the leer of an old reprobate as he was, 
 “ that you may fully comprehend the precise legal condition in 
 which you stand, just hear what the law of Louisiana says upon 
 the subject.” Here he took down a book from a shelf. 
 “This, my girl,” he continued, “is the Code JS/oir . , or Black 
 Code, of this state, and thus it lays down the law : ‘ The 
 
343 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 condition of a slave being merely a passive one, his subordina- 
 tion to his master ’ — it reads his child, but it means her too — 
 1 is not susceptible of any modification or restriction, in such a 
 manner that he owes to his master, and to all his family, 
 a respect without bounds, and an absolute obedience ; and he 
 is, consequently, to execute all the orders which he receives 
 from him, his said master, or from them.’” 
 
 “The civil code,” so this learned lawyer continued, “lays 
 it down much in the same way.” Here he read from another 
 and a larger book. “ { A slave is one who is in the power of a 
 master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, 
 dispose of his person , his industry, and his labour ; he can do 
 nothing, possess nothing, and acquire nothing, but what must 
 belong to his master.’ That, my girl, is the law of Louisiana, 
 and under that law you are my slave. I hope you will see 
 the necessity of conforming yourself to your condition and to 
 my wishes. We must all submit,” he added with a snuffle, 
 “ to the decrees of Providence, and the law of the land.” 
 
 Many young ladies in Eliza’s situation would have screamed; 
 many would have gone into hysterics; many would have 
 fainted ; some would have gone mad. She did neither. She 
 merely expressed her fixed determination never, by any act or 
 consent of hers, to give the smallest countenance to anybody’s 
 pretension to make a slave of her. 
 
 Locked up for the night in an attic of the house, the next 
 morning she persuaded a black girl, who brought her a crust 
 of bread, to take charge of the note to Cassy, of which 
 mention has been made. Mr. Gilmore had directed that 
 nothing should be given to her but bread and water, in hopes 
 to bring down her spirit. Judging others by himself, the 
 luxurious old villain had imagined that this putting her on 
 short allowance would be the surest way of bringing her to 
 terms. As there seemed to be little prospect of human 
 deliverance, fallen as she had into the hands of wolves in 
 sheep’s clothing, it only remained for her to invoke the God 
 of the fatherless to guard and protect her. During her second 
 night’s solitary imprisonment, her dead father seemed to stand 
 beside her, and, with the same kind smile so familiar to her 
 memory, to say, with his finger pointing to the distance, 
 “Fear not, daughter, a deliverer comes;” and as her eyes 
 followed in the direction of the finger, she seemed to see 
 Montgomery emerging from the darkness, and rushing towards 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 349 
 
 her with outstretched arms. In her effort to rise to meet him, 
 she awoke and found it but a dream. And yet, how much it 
 consoled her ! In the failure of realities, how much, indeed, 
 of human happiness has to be found in hopes, wishes, and 
 aspirations embodied into dreams and visions ! 
 
 Hitherto she had seen nothing more of Mr. Gilmore, nor of 
 anybody but the same black girl, who once a day brought her 
 bread and water, and who, though shy of any communication 
 with her, as she seemed to be watched from the passage, yet 
 managed to hand her a note from Cassy, conveyed by Colter’s 
 assistance, bidding her escape from the house if she could, 
 telling her where to go, and assuring her that friends were 
 watching for her in the neighbourhood. 
 
 About the very hour, on the third evening of Eliza’s imprison- 
 ment, that Montgomery — whom I followed, not willing to be 
 separated from him, or to trust him alone in so hazardous an 
 enterprise — left our lodgings to seek her out, Mr. Gilmore, 
 having fortified his courage with wine, turned the key of the 
 door, and entered her solitary chamber. She had heard his 
 footstep on the stair, and had prepared to meet him, retreating 
 into a corner behind a small table, which, with a chair and an 
 old mattress on the floor, formed the entire furniture of her 
 prison. As he came directly towards her, she bade him stand 
 off, at the same time drawing and holding up a small stiletto, 
 which Montgomery, in a playful mood, had hung round her 
 neck by a gold chain, just as she was leaving New York, 
 telling her that as she was to make the passage alone to New 
 Orleans, she must have some weapon with which to defend 
 herself ; and, as it happened, she had worn it when she went 
 by appointment to call on Mr. Gilmore. 
 
 He laughed at the sight of the tiny dagger ; but stopped, 
 drew the only chair towards him, sat down upon it, and began 
 to read her a lecture, one half law and the other half divinity, 
 on the folly and wickedness of resistance to legal authority, 
 and the necessity of submission to the divine ordinances. 
 Thomas Littlebody, Esq., the distinguished Boston lawyer, or 
 even the Reverend Dr. Dewey himself, could not have done it 
 better. 
 
 He told her that resistance and opposition were as useless 
 as they would be sinful and criminal ; that it was in vain to 
 hope assistance or relief from any quarter ; that Cassy, no 
 better off than herself, had been sold into slavery the day 
 
35o 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 before ; and that Montgomery, having arrived that very 
 evening from New York, was by this time in the hands of Mr. 
 Agrippa Curtis, who, having punished him sufficiently for his 
 insolence, intended to hire him out to work on a plantation up 
 the Red River. She never need expect to see him more. 
 
 At these cruel words, the falsehood of which she had no 
 means of knowing, poor Eliza turned deadly pale, alarmed 
 more for her lover than herself, and the stiletto was just 
 dropping from her hand, when Montgomery, pushing open the 
 door, which stood ajar, himself entered the room. 
 
 On reaching the street, before Mr. Gilmore’s door, we had 
 found the faithful Colter on the watch. He had obtained 
 from the servants a knowledge of the room in which Eliza was 
 imprisoned. The whole three of us, late as it was, on pretence 
 of urgent business with Mr. Gilmore, gained entrance into the 
 house, and while Colter and myself waited by the door below 
 to secure an egress, Montgomery, who knew the house, 
 proceeded directly to the room where Eliza was. As he trod 
 lightly, he had approached the door, and pushed it open, 
 without attracting the attention of Mr. Gilmore, who sat with 
 his back towards it, quite engrossed in watching the effects on 
 poor Eliza of the falsehoods he was telling, and of the law and 
 theology which he was endeavouring to impress upon her. 
 
 As she saw Montgomery she uttered a slight scream, and as 
 Mr. Gilmore turned his head to see what might be the matter, 
 he found himself seized by the throat. Montgomery pitched 
 him head foremost into the corner where the mattress lay, and 
 tumbling the chair and table upon him, caught Eliza by the 
 hand, and in the twinkling of an eye had her down the stairs, 
 and out at the door. We followed in the rear ; the whole 
 thing being done in the briefest, most quiet, and most orderly 
 manner, and without the slightest noise or confusion. 
 
 In half-an-hour our whole rescued, happy family were united 
 — Eliza, Montgomery, Cassy, and myself. But we were still 
 in New Orleans ; and neither in that city, nor elsewhere in the 
 United States of America, that country meanly boasting to be 
 free, but sunk beneath the dark flood of despotism, was there 
 any olive-tree rising above the waters, any rest to be found for 
 the soles of our feet. 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 351 
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 The very next morning, by Colter’s assistance, kina and 
 zealous to the last, we were on a steamboat bound up the 
 river, in which we reached Pittsburg without accident or 
 adventure. Thence we crossed the mountains to Baltimore, 
 and hastening to New York, took passage in one of the 
 Liverpool packets, feeling no security, night nor day till the 
 good, blue, deep water of the ocean at length rolled beneath^ 
 us ; nor, indeed, hardly then, so long as the significant stripes 
 of the American flag waved above our heads. 
 
 When we touched the British shore we felt safe. I hank 
 God there is a land that impartially shelters fugitives alike 
 from European and from American tyranny Hungarian exiles 
 and American slaves ! 
 
 Before leaving New Orleans Eliza had executed a power 01 
 attorney to Mr. Colter— to whom the copy of Mr. Curtis’s will, 
 entrusted to Montgomery, was delivered — to proceed under it 
 at law for the recovery of her share of her father’s inheritance,^ 
 with an agreement for an equal division between them of 
 
 whatever might be got. , . , . . 
 
 Colter encountered all the obstacles which the piactised 
 chicanery of Gilmore could place in his way j but he entered 
 into the contest with great spirit ; indeed, it seemed to have 
 for him all the excitement of the games to which he was 
 accustomed. He studied the law himself, the better to push 
 it • and whether or not his experience in his former profession 
 was any help to him in his new one, he presently made himself 
 known as a very shrewd and managing member of the bar. 
 Pursuing Gilmore up and down, through every quirk and 
 turning to aid in which we sent occasional supplies of money, 
 he finally established the validity of the will, and after a 
 contest of five years, remitted to Eliza her half of the proceeds 
 having well earned the other half for himself. He still 
 continues to enjoy a good practice at the New Orleans bar, 
 and has even been talked of as a candidate for Congress, but 
 is not thought to be southern enough in his opinions. 
 
 Mr. Grip Curtis’s action against Montgomery for assault and 
 battery, after lingering along in the Boston courts for three 
 or four years, at last came on for trial. Mr. Agnppa Curtis 
 had retained on his side three or four celebrated Boston 
 
352 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 lawyers, and the one who closed the case argued, with great 
 energy, that the Union would certainly be dissolved, and society 
 uprooted from its foundations, if the jury did not visit with 
 signal damages such an instance of coloured insolence towards 
 a citizen every way so amiable and highly respectable, and such 
 a staunch supporter of the Union, as Mr. Agrippa Curtis. But 
 all this grave, weighty argument, though aided by a most flow- 
 ing oration, full, as the newspapers had it, of the most 
 brilliant and beautiful tropes and figures, from the junior 
 counsel, resulted, much to their disappointment, only in a 
 verdict of twenty-five cents damages, which, with costs to one- 
 quarter of that amount, were duly paid over to Mr. Agrippa 
 Curtis’s attorney. The jury, by some fortunate accident, 
 happened to be composed of very low people, mechanics and 
 others ; there was only a single wholesale merchant upon it, 
 and he not engaged in the southern trade. 
 
 As to Messrs. Gilmore and Curtis, they had a fate common 
 with those who get their money over the devil’s shoulder. Mr. 
 Curtis settled in New Orleans, engaged in great speculations ; 
 had at one time the reputation of a millionaire ; but failed, 
 carried down Mr. Gilmore with him, and a goodly number of 
 his Boston friends, including the old firm of Curtis, Sawin, 
 Bryne, & Co. The establishment of his brother’s will, and the 
 consequent necessity of disgorging, gave him the finishing blow. 
 For several years he lived a digraced and ruined man, very 
 much under the weather-board. Some of Gilmore’s trickeries 
 towards white clients coming to light — for cheating coloured 
 people, whether out of their liberty or their property, hurts no 
 man’s reputation at New Orleans— he lost his practice, and 
 sunk pretty much to Mr. Grip Curtis’s level. 
 
 But within a year or two past, since the passage of the new 
 fugitive slave act, by which the American Union has 
 recently been saved from total destruction, these two worthy 
 gentlemen having turned patriots and Union-saviours, have quite 
 recovered themselves. Under the firm of Gilmore & Curtis 
 —and Mr. Colter writes me that it is privately whispered that 
 they have a judge as a secret partner— they have established 
 themselves at Philadelphia in a general slave-catching and 
 kidnapping business. Gilmore has obtained the appointment 
 of a slave-catching commissioner for the eastern district of 
 Pennsylvania, and Mr. Grip Curtis that of assistant to a deputy- 
 marshal, appointed for slave cases exclusively; and, of course, 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE. 353 
 
 all three, commissioner, catchpole, and judge, play beautifully 
 into each other’s hands. 
 
 I need only add that Montgomery follows with profit, at 
 Liverpool, the mercantile pursuits to which he had been 
 educated, and that a family of five beautiful and promising 
 children, of which he and Eliza are the happy parents, does 
 not afford much countenance to the nonsensical physiological 
 theory that the mixed race is hybrid and sterile, under which 
 certain American statesmen are endeavouring to find shelter 
 against the growing inevitable danger by which their favourite 
 system of slavery is threatened. 
 
 In vain, Americans, do you seek to make nature a party to 
 your detestable conspiracy against the rights of humanity, and 
 your own flesh and blood. In vain do your laws proclaim that 
 the children shall follow the condition of the mother. The 
 children of free fathers are not thus to be cheated of their 
 birthright. Day by day, and hour by hour, as the chain 
 becomes weaker, so the disposition and the power to snap 
 it become stronger. Day by day, and hour by hour, through- 
 out the civilised world, sympathy diminishes for you, the 
 oppressors, and sympathy increases for your oppressed victims, 
 becoming, as they do, day by day, not by a figure of speech 
 merely, or by a pedigree derived from Adam, but as a matter 
 of notorious and contemporary fact, more and more your 
 brethren, flesh of your flesh, and blood of your blood. 
 
 Can you stand the finger of scorn pointed at you by all the 
 civilised world ? 
 
 Can you stand the still small voice of conscience, day by 
 day, and hour by hour, re-echoing in your own hearts those 
 uncomfortable epithets — slave-driver, slave-breeder, slave- 
 hunter, dough-face? 
 
 As to you, greybeards in iniquity, with hearts seared, faith 
 blighted, hope whithered, and love dried up, continue, if you 
 will, you and your Aaron, to bow down to the golden calf that 
 first seduced you ! 
 
 It is your sin, your weakness, your want of faith, that have 
 kept your nation wandering this forty years in the wilderness. 
 With imaginations too dull and gross to raise you to the height 
 of any mental Mount Pisgah ; incapable to see even in your 
 mind’s eye, the distant prospect of good things to come; 
 longing secretly in your hearts to return to the flesh-pots of 
 
354 
 
 THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 Egypt ; well content to make bricks for the Pharoahs ; your- 
 selves slaves hardly less than those whom you oppress ; 
 cowardly souls, frightened by tales of giants and lions, it were 
 vain to expect that you should ever enter the promised land ; 
 cravens, fit only to die and to rot in the wilderness ! 
 
 But already is coming forward a new generation, to whom 
 justice will be something more than a mere empty sound ; 
 something as imperiously forced upon them by their own 
 sense of right as by the clamours and demands of those who 
 suffer. In vain do your priests and your politicians labour to 
 extinguish, in the minds of the rising generation, the idea of 
 any law higher than -their own wicked bargains and disgraceful 
 enactments. When to uphold slavery it becomes necessary to 
 prea.ch atheism, we may be certain that the day of its downfall 
 is nigh. Ihis must surely be the darkness which precedes the 
 dawn ; for what greater darkness than this is possible ? 
 
 To you, then, uncontaminated children, I appeal; and in 
 mine speak the cries of millions. That which hath been 
 hidden from the wise and the prudent the voice of love and 
 mercy shall reveal unto you. 
 
 Love and mercy did I say ? There hardly needs that ; a 
 decent self-respect, a regard for yourselves only, might 
 suffice. 
 
 The whip flourishes also over your heads. The white slaves 
 in America are fhr more numerous than the black ones ; not 
 white slaves such as I was, pronounced so by the law, but 
 white slaves such as you are, made such by a base hereditary 
 servility, which, methinks, it is time to shake off. 
 
 The question is raised, and can be blinked no longer : 
 Shall America be what the fathers and founders of her 
 independence wished and hoped — a free democracy, based 
 upon the foundation of human rights, or shall she degenerate 
 into a miserable republic of Algerines, domineered over by a 
 little self-constituted autocracy of slave-holding lynchers and 
 blackguards, utterly disregardful of all law, except their own 
 will and pleasure ? 
 
 Yes, my young friends, it is to this destiny that you are 
 called. Upon you the decision of this question — no longer to 
 be staved off by any political temporising — is devolved. 
 Those who would be free themselves — so it now plainly 
 appears — cannot safely be parties to any scheme of oppression. 
 The dead and the living cannot be chained together. Those 
 
THE WHITE SLA VE. 
 
 355 
 
 chains which you have helped to rivet on the limbs of others 
 you now find have imperceptibly been twined about your- 
 selves ; and drawn so tightly, too, that even your hearts are no 
 longer to beat freely. 
 
 Take courage, then, and do as I did. Throw off the chains ! 
 And stop not there ; others are also to be freed. It seems a 
 doubtful thing ; but courage, trust, and perseverance, proof 
 against delay and disappointment, faith and hope, will do 
 it. I am old, and may not live to see it ; but my five 
 grandchildren, born, thank God, in free England, surely will. 
 
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 Chapter VI. — THE NOSE. 
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 1 ROMANCE OF KING ARTHUR. 
 
 2 THOREAU’S WALDEN. 
 
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 4 THOREAU’S ESSAYS. 
 
 5 ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
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 8 RELIGIO MEDICI, &c. 
 
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 12 THE ENGLISH POETS. 
 
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 15 LORD BYRON’S LETTERS. 
 
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 17 LONGFELLOW’S PROSE. 
 
 18 GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS. 
 
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 21 SENECA’S MORALS. 
 
 22 SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
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 30 BURNS’S LETTERS. 
 
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 34 LIFE OF LORD HERBERT. 
 
 35 ENGLISH PROSE. 
 
 36 IBSEN’S PILLARS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 37 IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. 
 
 38 ESSAYS OF DR. JOHNSON. 
 
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 49 JANE EYRE. 
 
 50 ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND. 
 
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 58 ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS. 
 
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 60 ANNALS OF TACITUS. 
 
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GREAT WRITERS. 
 
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 LIFE 
 
 LIFE 
 
 LIFE 
 
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 LIFE 
 
 LIFE 
 
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 DICKENS. 
 
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 DARWIN. 
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 KEATS. 
 
 SHELLEY. 
 
 SMOLLETT. 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
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 BURNS. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 GOETHE. 
 
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 SCHOPENHAUER. 
 
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 WHITTIER. 
 
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The CANTERBURY POETS. 
 
 Edited by William Sharp. 
 
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 THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY : — 
 
 1 CHRISTIAN YEAR 
 
 2 COLERIDGE 
 
 3 LONGFELLOW 
 
 4 CAMPBELL 
 
 5 SHELLEY 
 
 6 WORDSWORTH 
 
 7 BLAKE 
 
 8 WHITTIER 
 
 9 POE 
 
 10 CHATTERTON 
 
 11 BURNS. Songs 
 
 12 BURNS. Poems 
 
 13 MARLOWE 
 
 14 KEATS 
 
 15 HERBERT 
 
 16 HUGO 
 
 17 COWPER 
 
 18 SHAKESPEARE’S POEMS, etc. 
 
 19 EMERSON 
 
 20 SONNETS OF this CENTURY 
 
 21 WHITMAN 
 
 22 SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc. 
 
 23 SCOTT. Marmion, etc. 
 
 24 PRAED 
 
 25 HOGG 
 
 26 GOLDSMITH 
 
 27 LOVE LETTERS, etc. 
 
 28 SPENSER 
 
 29 CHILDREN OF THE POETS 
 
 30 JONSON 
 
 31 BYRON. Miscellaneous. 
 
 32 BYRON. Don Juan. 
 
 33 THE SONNETS OF EUROPE 
 
 34 RAMSAY 
 
 35 DOBELL 
 
 36 POPE 
 
 37 HEINE 
 
 38 BEAUMONT & FLETCHER 
 
 39 BOWLES, LAMB, etc. 
 
 40 SEA MUSIC 
 
 41 EARLY ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 42 HERRICK 
 
 43 BALLADES and RONDEAUS 
 
 44 IRISH MINSTRELSY 
 
 45 MILTON’S PARADISE LOST 
 
 46 JACOBITE BALLADS 
 
 47 DAYS OF THE YEAR 
 
 48 AUSTRALIAN BALLADS 
 
 49 MOORE 
 
 50 BORDER BALLADS 
 
 51 SONG-TIDE 
 
 52 ODES OF HORACE 
 
 53 OSSIAN 
 
 54 FAIRY MUSIC 
 
 55 SOUTHEY 
 
 56 CHAUCER 
 
 57 GOLDEN TREASURY 
 
 58 POEMS OF WILD LIFE 
 
 59 PARADISE REGAINED 
 
 60 CRABBE 
 
 61 DORA GREENWELL 
 
 62 FAUST 
 
 63 AMERICAN SONNETS 
 
 64 LANDOR’S POEMS 
 
 65 GREEK ANTHOLOGY 
 
 66 HUNT AND HOOD 
 
 67 HUMOROUS POEMS 
 
 68 LYTTON’S PLAYS 
 
 69 GREAT ODES 
 
 70 MEREDITH’S POEMS 
 
 71 IMITATION OF CHRIST 
 
 72 UNCLE TOBY BIRTHDAY BK 
 
 73 PAINTER-POETS 
 
 74 WOMEN POETS 
 
 75 LOVE LYRICS 
 
 76 American Humorous Verse. 
 
 7 7 MINOR SCOTCPI LYRICS 
 
 78 CAVALIER LYRISTS 
 
 79 GERMAN BALLADS 
 
 80 SONGS OF BERANGER 
 Si RODEN NOEL’S POEMS 
 
 82 SONGS OF FREEDOM 
 
 83 CANADIAN POEMS 
 
 84 Contemporary ScottishVerse 
 
 85 POEMS OF NATURE. 
 
 86 CRADLE SONGS. 
 
 London: Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square. 
 
MR. GEORGE MOORE’S NEW NOVEL. 
 
 Cloth, Crown 8vo, Price 6s. 
 
 ESTHER WATERS: A Novel. 
 
 By GEORGE MOORE. 
 
 “ Strong, vivid, sober, jet undaunted in its realism, full to the brim of obser- 
 vation of life and character, Either Waters is not only immeasurably superior 
 to anything the author has ever written before, but it is one of the most 
 remarkable works that has appeared in print this year, and one which does 
 credit not only to the author, but the country in which it has been written.” — 
 The World. 
 
 “As we live the book through again in memory, we feel more and more con- 
 fident that Mr. Moore has once for all vindicated his position among the half- 
 dozen living novelists of whom the historian of English literature will have to 
 take account .” — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 “ It may be as well to set down, beyond possibility of misapprehension, my 
 belief that in Esther Waters we have the most artistic, the most complete, and 
 the most inevitable work of fiction that has been written in England for at 
 least two years.”— A.T.Q.C. in The Speaker. 
 
 “Hardly since the time of Defoe have the habits and manners of the 
 ‘masses’ been delineated as they are delineated here. . . . Esther Waters is 
 the best story that he (Mr. Moore) has written, and one on which he may be 
 heartily congratulated.” — Globe. 
 
 “Matthew Arnold, reviewing one of Tolstoi’s novels, remarked that the 
 Russian novelist seemed to write because the thing happened so, and for no 
 other reason. That is precisely the merit of Mr. Moore’s book. ... It seems 
 inevitable.”— Westminster Gazette. 
 
 OTHER NOVELS BY GEORGE MOORE. 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth, 3s. 6d. each. 
 
 A DRAMA IN MUSLIN. Seventh Edition. 
 
 A MODERN LOVER. New Edition. 
 
 A MUMMER’S WIFE. Twentieth Edition. 
 
 VAIN FORTUNE. 6s. With Illustrations by Maurice Greiffen- 
 hagen. A few Large-Paper Copies at One Guinea. 
 
 Second Edition, Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. 
 
 MODERN PAINTING. By George Moore. 
 
 “Of the very few books on art that painters and critics should on no account 
 leave unread this is surely one.” — Studio. 
 
 “ His book is one of the best books about pictures that have come into our 
 hands for some years.” — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 “ A more original, a better informed, a more suggestive, and, let us add, a 
 more amusing work on the art of to-day, we have never read than this volume.” 
 —Glasgow Herald. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square. 
 
DRAMATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM ARCHER AND ROBERT W. LOWE. 
 
 Three Volumes , Crown Svo, Cloth , Price 3/6 each. 
 
 Dramatic Criticism, as we now understand it — the systematic appraise- 
 ment from day to day and week to week of contemporary plays and 
 acting — began in England about the beginning of the present century. 
 Until very near the end of the eighteenth century, “the critics” gave 
 direct utterance to their judgments in the theatre itself, or in the coffee- 
 houses, only occasionally straying into print in letters to the news-shee+s, 
 or in lampoons or panegyrics in prose or verse, published in pamphlet 
 form. Modern criticism began with modern journalism ; but some of 
 its earliest utterances were of far more than ephemeral value. During 
 the earlier half of the present century several of the leading essayists of 
 the day — men of the first literary eminence— concerned themselves largely 
 with the theatre. Under the title of 
 
 “DRAMATIC ESSAYS” 
 
 will be issued, in three volumes, such of their theatrical criticisms as seem 
 to be of abiding interest. 
 
 THE FIRST SERIES will contain selections from the criticisms 
 of LEIGH HUNT, both those published in 1807 (long out of print), and 
 the admirable articles contributed more than twenty years later to The 
 Tailer, and never republished. 
 
 THE SECOND SERIES will contain selections from the criticisms 
 of WILLIAM HAZLITT. Hazlitt’s Essays on Kean and his contem- 
 poraries have long been inaccessible, save to collectors. 
 
 THE THIRD SERIES will contain hitherto uncollected criticisms 
 by JOHN FORSTER, GEORGE HENRY LEWES, and others, with 
 selections from the writings of WILLIAM ROBSON (The Old Playgoer). 
 
 The Essays will be concisely but adequately annotated, and each 
 volume will contain an Introduction by William Archer, and an 
 Engraved Portrait Frontispiece. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square. 
 
NEW ENGLAND LIBRARY. 
 
 GRAVURE EDITION. 
 
 PRINTED ON ANTIQUE PAPER. PRICE 2 s. 6 d. 
 
 PER VOLUME. 
 
 Each Volume with a Frontispiece in 
 Photogravure. 
 
 THE SCARLET LETTER. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 
 
 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 
 
 TANGLEWOOD TALES. 
 
 TWICE-TOLD TALES. 
 
 A WONDER-BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS. 
 
 OUR OLD HOME. 
 
 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 
 
 THE SNOW IMAGE. 
 
 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY AND 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE. 
 
 LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 
 
 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square. 
 
I 
 
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DUE DATE 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 
 
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 DEC 6 1949