 Introduction of my bondage and my freedom. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction of my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass. By James McHune Smith. Introduction. When a man raises himself from the lowest condition in society to the highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration. When he accomplishes this elevation by native energy guided by prudence and wisdom, their admiration is increased. But when his course, onward and upward, excellent in itself, furthermore proves a possible, what had hitherto been regarded as an impossible reform, when he becomes a burning and a shining light on which the aged may look with gladness, the young with hope and the downtrodden as a representative of what they may themselves become. To such a man, dear reader, it is my privilege to introduce you. The life of Frederick Douglass recorded in the pages which follow is not merely an example of self elevation under the most adverse circumstances. It is moreover, a noble vindication of the highest aims of the American anti-slavery movement. The real object of that movement is not only to disenthrall, it is also to bestow upon the negro the exercise of all those rights from the possession of which he has been so long debarred. But this full recognition of the colored man to the right and the entire admission of the same to the full privileges, political, religious, and social of manhood requires powerful effort on the part of the enthralled, as well as on the part of those who would disenthrall them. The people at large must feel the conviction as well as admit the abstract logic of human equality. The negro for the first time in the world's history brought in full contact with high civilization must prove his title to all that is demanded for him. In the teeth of unequal chances, he must prove himself equal to the mass of those who oppress him. Therefore, absolutely superior to his apparent faith and to their relative ability. And it is most cheering to the friends of freedom today that evidence of this equality is rapidly accumulating, not from the ranks of the half free colored people of the free states, but from the very depths of slavery itself. The indestructible equality of man to man is demonstrated by the ease with which black men scares one removed from barbarism. If slavery can be honored with such a distinction, vault into the high places of the most advanced and painfully acquired civilization. Ward and Garnet, Wells Brown and Pennington, Logan and Douglas are banners on the outer wall under which abolition is fighting its most successful battles because they are living exemplars of the practicability of the most radical abolitionism. For they were all of them born to the doom of slavery, some of them remain slaves until adult age, yet they all have not only one equality to their white fellow citizens in civil, religious, political and social rank, but they have also illustrated and adorned our common country by their genius learning and eloquence. The characteristics whereby Mr. Douglas has one first rank among these remarkable men and is still rising toward highest rank among living Americans are abundantly laid bare in the book before us. Like the autobiography of Hugh Miller, it carries us so far back into early childhood as to throw light upon the question when positive and persistent memory begins in the human being. And like Hugh Miller, he must have been shy, old-fashioned child, occasionally oppressed by what he could not well account for, peering and poking about among the layers of right and wrong, of tyrant enthrall, and the wonderfulness of that hopeless tide of things which brought power to one race and unrequited toil to another, until finally he stumbled upon his first found ammonite hidden away down in the depths of his own nature and which revealed to him the fact that liberty and right for all men were anterior to slavery and wrong. When his knowledge of the world was bounded by the visible horizon on Colonel Lloyd's plantation and while everything around him bore a fixed iron stamp as if it had always been so, this was for one so young a notable discovery. To his uncommon memory then we must add a keen and accurate insight into men and things, an original breadth of common sense which enabled him to see and weigh and compare whatever passed before him and which kindled a desire to search out and define their relations to other things not so patent, but which never succumbed to the marvelous nor the supernatural, a sacred thirst for liberty and for learning, first as a means of attaining liberty, then as an end in itself most desirable. A will, an unfaltering energy and determination to obtain what is so pronounced desirable, a majestic selfhood to determine courage, a deep and agonizing sympathy with his embroidered crushed and bleeding fellow slaves and an extraordinary depth of passion together with that rare alliance between passion and intellect which enables the former men deeply roused to excite, develop, and sustain the latter. With these original gifts in view, let us look at his schooling, the fearful discipline through which it please God to prepare him for the high calling on which he has since entered the advocacy of emancipation by the people who are not slaves. And for this special mission, his plantation education was better than any he could have acquired in any letter school, what he needed was facts and experiences, welded to acutely wrought up sympathies, and these he could not elsewhere have obtained in a manner so peculiarly adapted to his nature. His physical being was well trained also, running wild until advanced into boyhood, hard work and light diet thereafter, and a skill in handicraft and youth. For his special mission, then this was considered in connection with his natural gifts a good schooling. And for his special mission, he doubtless left school just at the proper moment. Had he remained longer in slavery, had he fretted under bonds until the ripening of manhood and its passions until the drear agony of slave wife and slave children had been piled upon his already bitter experiences. Then not only would his own history have had another termination, but the drama of American slavery would have been essentially varied. For I cannot resist the belief that the boy who learned to read and write as he did, who taught his fellow slaves these precious acquirements as he did, who plotted for their mutual escape as he did would when a man at bay strike a blow which would make slavery real and stagger. Furthermore blows and insults he bore at the moment without resentment, deep but suppressed emotion rendered him insensible to their sting. But it was afterward when the memory of them went seething through his brain, breeding a fiery indignation at his injured self would that the rebel came to resist and the time fixed when to resist. And the plot laid how to resist, and he always kept his self pledged word. In what he undertook in this line, he looked fate in the face and had a cool keen look at the relation of means to ends. Henry bid to avoid chance stisement, strewed his master's bed with charmed leaves, and was whipped. Frederick Douglass quietly pocketed out like fetish, compared his muscles with those of Covey, and whipped him. In the history of his life in bondage we find well developed that inherent and continuous energy of character which will ever render him distinguished. What his hand found to do he did with his might even while conscious that he was wronged out of his daily earnings he worked and worked hard. At his daily labor he went with a will, with keen, well-set eye, brawny chest, lithe figure, and fair sweep of arm he would have been king among caulkers had that been his mission. It must not be overlooked in this glance at his education that Mr. Douglass lacked one aid to which so many men of Mark have been deeply indebted. He had neither a mother's care nor a mother's culture, save that which slavery grudgingly needed out to him. Bitter nurse may not even her features relax with human feeling when she gazes at such offspring how susceptible he was to the kindly influences of mother culture may be gathered from his own words on page 57. It has been a lifelong standing grief to me that I know so little of my mother and that I was so early separated from her. The councils of her love must have been beneficial to me. The side view of her face is imaged on my memory and I take few steps in life without feeling her presence, but the image is mute and I have no striking words of hers treasured up. From the depths of chattel slavery in Maryland, our author escaped into the cast slavery of the North in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here he found oppression, assuming another and hardly less bitter form of that very handy craft, which the greed of slavery had taught him his half freedom denied him the exercise for an honest living. He found himself one of a class free colored men whose position he has described in the following words. Aliens are we in our native land, the fundamental principles of the Republic to which the humblest white men, whether born here or elsewhere may appeal with confidence in the hope of awakening a favorable response are held to be in applicable to us. The glorious doctrines of your revolutionary fathers and the more glorious teachings of the Son of God are construed and applied against us. We are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities, human and divine. American humanity hates us, scorns us, disowns and denies in a thousand ways our very personality. The outspread wing of American Christianity apparently broad enough to give shelter to a perishing world refuses to cover us. To us its bones are brass and its features iron. In running thither for shelter and sucker we have only fled from the hungry bloodhound to the devouring wolf from a corrupt and selfish world to a hollow and hypocritical church. Speech before American and foreign anti-slavery society May 1854. Four years or more from 1837 to 1841 he struggled on in New Bedford sawing wood, rolling casks or doing what labor he might to support himself and young family. Four years he brooded over the scars which slavery and semi-slavery had inflicted upon his body and soul. And then with his wounds yet unhealed he fell among the Garrisonians a glorious wave to those most ardent reformers. It happened one day at Nantucket that he diffidently and reluctantly was led to address an anti-slavery meeting. He was about the age when the younger Pitt entered the House of Commons like Pitt too he stood up a born orator. William Lord Gerson who was happily present writes thus the Mr. Douglas Maiden effort I shall never forget his first speech at the convention. The extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind the powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory completely taken by surprise. I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment. Certainly my perception of the enormous outrage which is inflicted by it on the godlike nature of its victims was rendered far more clear than ever. There stood one in physical proportions and stature commanding and exact in intellect richly endowed in natural eloquence a prodigy. It is of interest to compare Mr. Douglas's account of this meeting with Mr. Garrison's. Of the two I think the latter the most correct it must have been a grand burst of eloquence the pent up agony indignation and pathos of an abused and harrowed boyhood and youth bursting out in all their freshness and overwhelming earnestness. This unique introduction to its great leader led immediately to the employment of Mr. Douglas as an agent by the American Anti-Slavery Society. So far as his self-relying and independent character would permit he became after the strictest sect a Garrisonian. It is not too much to say that he formed a compliment which they needed and they were a compliment equally necessary to his makeup. With his deep and keen sensitiveness to wrong and his wonderful memory he came from the land of bondage full of its woes and its evils and painting them in characters of living light. And on his party found told out in sound Saxon phrase all those principles of justice and right and liberty which had dimly brooded over the dreams of his youth seeking definite forms and verbal expression. It must have been an electric flashing of thought and a knitting of soul granted to but few in this light and will be a lifelong memory to those who participated in it. In the society moreover of Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, William Lord Garrison and other men of earnest faith and refined culture, Mr. Douglas enjoyed the high advantage of their assistance and counsel in the labor of self-culture to which he now addressed himself with wanted energy. Yet these gentlemen although proud of Frederick Douglas failed to fathom and bring out to you the light of day, the highest qualities of his mind, the force of their own education stood in their own way. They did not delve into the mind of a colored man for capacities which the pride of race led them to believe to be restricted to their own Saxon blood. Bitter and vindictive sarcasm, irresistible mimicry and a pathetic narrative of his own experiences of slavery were the intellectual manifestations which they encouraged him to exhibit on the platform or in the lecture desk. A visit to England in 1845 through Mr. Douglas among men and women of earnest souls and high culture and whom moreover had never drank of the bitter waters of American caste. For the first time in his life he breathed an atmosphere congenial to the longings of his spirit and felt his manhood free and unrestricted. The cordial and manly greetings of the British and Irish audiences in public and the refinement and elegance of the social circles in which he mingled, not only as an equal but as a recognized man of genius. There are joys on the earth and to the wayfaring fugitive from American slavery or American caste. This is one of them, but his sojourn in England was more than a joy to Mr. Douglas, like the platform at Nantucket it awakened him to the consciousness of new powers that lay in him. From the pupillage of garrisonism he rose to the dignity of a teacher and a thinker. His opinions on the broader aspects of the great American question were earnestly and incessantly sought from various points of view and he must perforce to stir himself to give suitable answer with that prompt and truthful perception which has led their sisters in all ages of the world together at the feet and support the hands of reformers, the gentle women of England were foremost to encourage and strengthen him, to carve out for himself a path fitted to his powers and energies in the life battle against slavery and caste to which he was pledged. And one stirring thought inseparable from the British idea of the evangel of freedom must have smote his ear from every side, a redditary bondman, no ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The result of this visit was that on his return to the United States he established a newspaper. This proceeding was sorely against the wishes and the advice of the leaders of the American anti slavery society. But our author had fully grown up to the conviction of a truth which they had once promulged but now forgotten to wit that in their own elevation self elevation colored men have a blow to strike on their own hook against slavery and caste. Differing from his Boston friends in this matter, dividend in his own abilities reluctant that they're dissuading how beautiful is the loyalty with which he still clung to their principles and all things else and even in this. Now came the trial hour without cordial support from any large body of men or party on this side the Atlantic and too far distant in space and immediate interest to expect much more after the much already done on the other side he stood up almost alone to the arduous labor and heavy expenditure of editor and lecturer. The garrison party to which he still adhered did not want a colored newspaper. There was an odor of caste about it. The Liberty party could hardly be expected to give warm support to a man who smote their principles as with the hammer and the white golf which separated the free colored people from the garrisonians also separated them from their brother Frederick Douglass. The arduous nature of his labors from the date of the establishment of his paper may be estimated by the fact that anti slavery papers in the United States, even while the organs of and when supported by anti slavery parties have with a single exception failed to pay expenses. Mr. Douglas has maintained and does maintain his paper without the support of any party and even in the teeth of the opposition of those from whom he had reason to expect counsel and encouragement. He has been compelled at one and the same time and almost constantly during the past seven years to contribute matter to its columns as editor and to raise funds for its support as lecturer. It is within bounds to say that he has expended $12,000 of his own hard earned money in publishing this paper, a larger sum than has been contributed by any one individual for the general advancement of the colored people. There have been many other papers published and edited by colored men beginning as far back as 1827 when the Reverend Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russ Worm, a graduate of Bowdoin College and afterward Governor of Cape Palmas published the Freedom's Journal in New York City. Probably not less than 100 newspaper enterprises have been started in the United States by free colored men born free and some of them of liberal education and fair talents for this work, but one after another they have fallen through, although in several instances anti slavery friends contributed to their support. It had almost been given up as an impracticable thing to maintain a colored newspaper, but Mr. Douglas with fewest early advantages of all his competitors as say and has proved the thing perfectly practical and moreover of great public benefit. This paper, in addition to its power and holding up the hands of those to whom it is especially devoted, also affords irrefutable evidence of the justice safety and practical ability of immediate emancipation. It further proves the immense loss which slavery inflicts on the land while it booms such energies as his to the hereditary degradation of slavery. It has been said in this introduction that Mr. Douglas has raised himself by his own efforts to the highest position in society as a successful editor in our land he occupies this position. Our editors rule the land and he is one of them as an orator and thinker his position is equally high in the opinion of his countrymen. If a stranger in the United States would seek its most distinguished men, the movers of public opinion, he will find their names mentioned and their movements chronicled under the head of by magnetic telegraph in the daily papers. The keen caterers for the public attention set down in this column such men only as have one high mark in the public esteem. During the past winter 1854 to five very frequent mention of Frederick Douglas was made under this head in the daily papers. His name glided as often this week from Chicago next week from Boston over the lightning wires as the name of any other man of whatever note to no man did the people more widely nor more earnestly say tell me that I thought and somehow or other revolution seemed to follow in his wake. His were not the mere words of eloquence which coasts up speaks up that delight the ear and then pass away. No, they were workable doable words that brought forth fruits in the revolution in Illinois and in the passage of the franchise resolutions by the assembly of New York. And the secret of his power what is it he is a representative American man, a type of his countrymen naturalist tell us that a foreground man is a resultant or representative of all animated nature on this glow, beginning with the early embryo state then representing the lowest forms of organic life and passing through every subordinate grade or type until he reaches the last and highest manhood. In like manner and to the fullest extent has Frederick Douglas pass through every gradation of rank, comprised in our national makeup and bears upon his person and upon his so everything that is American. And he is not only for sympathy with everything American is proclivity or bent to active toil and visible progress are in a strictly national direction, delighting to outstrip all creation. Nor have the natural gifts already named as his lost anything by his severe training when unexcited his mental processes are probably slow, but singularly clear in perception and wide envision the unfailing memory bringing up all the facts in there. Every aspect in congruities, he lays hold of incontinently and holds up on the edge of his keen and telling wit. But this wit never descends to frivolity. It is rigidly in the keeping of his truthful common sense and always used in illustration or proof of some point which could not so readily be reached any other way. Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding is a shaft that strikes home in a matter never so laid bare by satire before the Garrisonian views of disunion if carried to a successful issue. We'd only place the people of the North in the same relation to American slavery which they now bear to the slavery of Cuba or the Brazils is a statement in a few words which contains the result and the evidence of an argument which might cover pages, but could not carry stronger conviction nor be stated in less pregnant form. In proof of this I may say that having been submitted to the attention of the Garrisonians in print in March it was repeated before them at their business meeting in May the platform par excellence on which they invite free fight to all comers. It was given out in the clear ringing tones where with the Hall of Shields was want to resound of old yet neither Garrison nor Phillips nor May nor Ramon nor Foster nor Burley with his subtle steel of the ice Brooks temper ventured to break a lance upon it. The doctrine of the dissolution of the Union as a means for the abolition of American slavery was silenced upon the lips that gave it birth and in the presence of an array of defenders who compose the keenest intellects in the land. The man who is right is a majority is an aphorism struck out by Mr. Douglas in that great gathering of the friends of freedom at Pittsburgh in 1852 where he towered among the highest because with abilities inferior to none and move more deeply than any there was neither policy nor party to trample the outpourings of his soul. Thus we find opposed to all the disadvantages which a black man in the United States labors and struggles under is this one vantage ground when the chance comes and the audience where he may have a say he stands for the freest most deeply moved and most earnest of all men. It has been said of Mr. Douglas that his descriptive and declamatory powers admitted to be of the very highest order take precedence of his logical force. Whilst the schools might have trained him to the exhibition of the formulas of deductive logic, nature and circumstances forced him into the exercise of the higher faculties required by induction. The first 90 pages of this life in bondage affords specimens of observing comparing and careful classifying of such superior character that it is difficult to believe them the results of a child's thinking. He questions the earth and the children and the slaves around him again and again and finally looks to God in the sky for the why and the where for of the unnatural thing slavery. Year if indeed thou art wherefore dost thou suffer us to be slain is the only prayer and worship of the God forsaken Dodo's in the heart of Africa, almost the same was his prayer. One of his earliest observations was that white children should know their ages while the colored children were ignorant of theirs. And the songs of the slaves graded on his inmost soul because of something told him that harmony in sound and music of the spirit could not consociate with miserable degradation. To such a mind the ordinary processes of logical deduction are like proving that two and two make four. Mastering the intermediate steps by an intuitive glance or recurring to them as Ferguson resorted to geometry. It goes down to the deeper relation of things and brings out what may seem to some mere statements but which are new and brilliant generalizations each resting on a broad and stable basis. Thus Chief Justice Marshall gave his decisions and then told brother story to look up the authorities and they never differed from him. Thus also in his lecture on the anti-slavery movement delivered before the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. Mr. Douglas presents a mass of thought which without any showy display of logic on his part requires an exercise of the reasoning faculties of the reader to keep pace with him. And his claims of the Negro ethnologically considered is full of new and fresh thoughts on the dawning science of race history. If as has been stated his intellect is slow when unexcited it is most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused. Memory, logic, wit, sarcasm, invective, pathos and bold imagery of rare structural beauty well up as from a copious fountain yet each in its proper place and contributing to form a whole grand in itself yet complete in the minutest proportions. It is most difficult to hedge him in a corner for his positions are taken so deliberately that it is rare to find a point in them undefended of forethought. Professor reason tells me the following on a recent visit of a public nature to Philadelphia and in a meeting composed mostly of his colored brother Mr. Douglas proposed a comparison of views in the matters of the relations and duties of our people. He holding that prejudice was the result of condition and could be conquered by the efforts of the degraded themselves. A gentleman present distinguished for logical acumen and subtlety and who had devoted no small portion of the last 25 years to the study and elucidation of this very question held the opposite view that prejudice is innate and unconquerable. He terminated a series of well dovetail socratic questions to Mr. Douglas with the following. If the legislature at Harrisburg should awaken tomorrow morning and find each man's skin turned black and his hair woolly what could they do to remove prejudice. Immediately passed laws entitling black men to all civil political and social privileges was the instant reply and the questioning seized. The most remarkable mental phenomenon in Mr. Douglas is his style in writing and speaking. In March 1855 he delivered an address in the assembly chamber before the members of the legislature of the state of New York. An eyewitness describes the crowded and most intelligent audience and their rapt attention to this speaker as the grandest scene he ever witnessed in the capital. Among those whose eyes were riveted on the speaker full two hours and a half were thorough low weed and Lieutenant Governor Raymond the latter at the conclusion of the address exclaimed to a friend I would give $20,000 if I could deliver that address in that manner. Mr. Raymond is a first-class graduate of Dartmouth, a rising politician ranking foremost in the legislature. Of course his ideal of oratory must be of the most polished and finished description. The style of Mr. Douglas in writing is to me an intellectual puzzle. The strength, affluence and terse-ness may easily be accounted for because the style of a man is the man. But how are we to account for that rare polish in his style of writing which most critically examined seems the result of careful early culture among the best classics of our language. It equals if it do not surpass the style of Hugh Miller, which was the wonder of the British literary public until he unraveled the mystery in the most interesting of autobiographies. But Frederick Douglass was still caulking the seams of Baltimore clippers and had only written a pass at the age when Miller's style was already formed. I asked William Wipper of Pennsylvania, the gentleman alluded to about whether he thought Mr. Douglass's power inherited from the Nigroid or what is called the Caucasian side of his makeup. After some reflection he frankly answered, I must admit, although sorry to do so, that the Caucasian predominates. At that time I almost agreed with him, but facts narrated in the first part of this work throw a different light on this interesting question. We are left in the dark as to who was the paternal ancestor of our author, a fact which generally holds good of the Romuluses and Remuses who are to inaugurate the new birth of our republic. In the absence of testimony from the Caucasian side we must see what evidence is given on the other side of the house. My grandmother, though advanced in years, was yet a woman of power and spirit. She was marvelously straight in figure, elastic, and muscular. After describing her skill in constructing nets, her perseverance in using them, and her widespread fame in the agricultural way, he adds it happened to her as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person residing in an ignorant and improvident neighborhood to enjoy the reputation of being born to good luck. And his grandmother was a black woman. My mother was tall and finally proportioned of deep black glossy complexion, had regular features, and among other slaves was remarkably sedate in her manners. Being a field hen she was obliged to walk twelve miles and return between nightfall and daybreak to see her children. I shall never forget the indescribable expression of her countenance when I told her that I had had no food since morning. There was pity in her glance at me and a fiery indignation at Aunt Katie at the same time. She read Aunt Katie a lecture which she never forgot. I learned after my mother's death that she could read and that she was the only one of all the slaves and colored people in Takahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How she acquired this knowledge I know not for Takahoe is the last place in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. There is in Pritchard's natural history of man the head of a figure on page 157 the features of which so resemble those of my mother, but I often recurred to it was something of the feeling which I suppose others experienced when looking upon the pictures of dear departed ones. The head alluded to is copied from the statue of Rams sees the great and Egyptian king of the 19th dynasty. The authors of the types of mankind give a side view of the same on page 148 remarking that the profile like Napoleon's is superbly European. The nearness of its resemblance to Mr Douglas mother rests upon the evidence of his memory and judging from his almost marvelous feats of recollection of forms and outlines recorded in this book. This testimony may be admitted. These facts show that for his energy, perseverance, eloquence, invective, sagacity, and white sympathy he is indebted to his Negro blood. The very marvel of his style would seem to be a development of that other marvel. How his mother learned to read the versatility of talent which he wields in common with Dumas. Ira Aldridge and Miss Greenfield would seem to be the result of the grafting of the Anglo Saxon on good original Negro stock. If the friends of Caucasus choose to claim for that region what remains after this analysis to it combination, they are welcome to it. They will forgive me for reminding them that the term Caucasian is dropped by recent writers on ethnology for the people about Mount Caucasus are and have ever been Mongols. The great white race now seek paternity according to Dr Pickering in Arabia. Aroda, new tricks of the best breed of horses etc. Keep on gentlemen, you will find yourselves in Africa by and by. The Egyptians like the Americans were a mixed race with some Negro blood circling around the throne as well as in the mud hovels. This is the proper place to remark of our Arthur that the same strong selfhood which led him to measure strength with Mr Covey and to wrench himself from the embrace of the Garrisonians in which has borne him through many resistances to the personal indignities offered him as a colored man sometimes becomes a hypersensitiveness to such assaults as many of his mark will meet with on paper. King and unscrupulous opponents have sought and not unsuccessfully to pierce him in this direction for while they know that if assailed he will smite back. It is not without a feeling of pride dear reader that I present you with this book the son of a self emancipated bond woman. I feel joy in introducing to you my brother who has rent his own bonds and who in his every relation as a public man as a husband and as a father is such as does honor to the land which gave him birth. I shall place this book in the hands of the only child spared me bidding him to strive and emulate its noble example. You may do likewise. It is an American book for Americans in the fullest sense of the idea. It shows that the worst of our institutions in its worst aspect cannot keep down energy, truthfulness and earn a struggle for the right. It proves the justice and practical ability of immediate emancipation. It shows that any man in our land no matter in what battle his liberty may have been cloven down no matter what complexion in Indian or in African son may have burned upon him. Not only may stand forth redeemed and disenthralled but may also stand up a candidate for the highest suffrage of a great people. The tribute of their honest hearty admiration reader valet. New York. James McCune Smith. End of introduction of my bondage my freedom. Chapter one of my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass. This liberal box recording is in the public domain. The author's childhood place of birth character of the district. Origin of the name chop tank river time of birth genealogical trees motive counting time names of grandparents their position grandmother especially esteemed born to good luck sweet potatoes superstition the log cabin its charms separating children author's aunts their names first knowledge of being a slave old master griefs and joys of childhood compared to happiness of the slave boy and the son of a slave holder in Talbot County eastern shore Maryland near East in the county town of that county there is a small district of country thinly populated and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn out sandy desert like appearance of its soil. The general dilapidation of its farms and fences the indigent and spiritless character of its inhabitants and the prevalence of a gu and fever. The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken district is tucker hoe a name well known to all Marylanders black and white. It was given to this section of country probably at the first merely in derision or it may possibly have been applied to it as I have heard because of someone of its earlier inhabitants have been guilty of the petty meanness of stealing a hoe or taking a hoe that did not belong to him. Eastern shore men usually pronounced the word took as tuck took a hoe therefore is in Maryland parlance tucker hoe, but whatever may have been its origin. And about this I will not be positive that name has stuck to the district in question, and it is seldom mentioned, but with contempt and derision on account of the barrenness of its soil and the ignorance, indolence and poverty of its people. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin population of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for the chop tank river, which runs through it from which they take abundance of shad and herring and plenty of ague and fever. It was in this dull flat and unthrifty district or neighborhood surrounded by a white population of the lowest order indolent and drunken to a proverb and amongst slaves who seem to ask, Oh, what's the use every time they lifted a hoe that I without any fault of mine was born and spent the first years of my childhood. The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth on the score that it is always a fact of some importance to know where a man is born. If indeed it be important to know anything about him. In regard to the time of my birth I cannot be as definite as I have been respecting the place, nor indeed cannot impart much knowledge concerning my parents. Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves. A person of some consequence here in the north sometimes designated father is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice. It is only once in a while that an exception is found to this statement. I never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was. Few slave mothers know anything of the months of the year, nor of the days of the month. They keep no family records with marriages, births, and deaths. They measure the ages of their children by springtime, wintertime, harvest time, planting time, and the like, but these soon become undistinguishable and forgot. Like other slaves I cannot tell how old I am. This destitution was among my earliest troubles. I learned when I grew up that my master, and this is the case with masters generally, allowed no questions to be put to him by which a slave might learn his age. Such questions are deemed evidence of impatience and even of impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of which I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born about the year 1817. The first experience of life with me that I now remember, and I remember it but hazily, began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather, Betsy and Isaac Bailey. They were quite advanced in life and had long lived on the spot where they then resided. They were considered old settlers in the neighborhood, and from certain circumstances I infer that my grandmother especially was held in high esteem, far higher than is the lot of most colored persons in the slave states. She was a good nurse and a capital hand at making nets for catching shad and herring, and these nets were in great demand not only in Takahoe, but at Denton and Hillsboro neighboring villages. She was not only good at making the nets, but was also somewhat famous for her good fortune in taking the fishes referred to. I've known her to be in the water half the day. Grandmother was likewise more provident than most of her neighbors in the preservation of seedling sweet potatoes, and it happened to her as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person residing in an ignorant and improvident community to enjoy the reputation of having been born to good luck. Her good luck was owing to the exceeding care which she took in preventing the succulent root from getting bruised in the digging and in placing it beyond the reach of frost by actually burying it under the heart of her cabin during the winter months. In the time of planting sweet potatoes, Grandmother Betty, as she was familiarly called, was sent for in all directions simply to place the seedling potatoes in the hills, for superstition had it that if Grandma Betty but touches them at planting they will be sure to grow and flourish. This high reputation was full of advantage to her and to the children around her, though Takahoe had but few of the good things of life, yet of such as it did possess Grandmother got a full share in the way of presence. If good potato crops came after her planting she was not forgotten by those for whom she planted and as she was remembered by others so she remembered the hungry little ones around her. The dwelling of my grandmother and grandfather had few pretensions, it was a log hut or cabin built of clay, wood and straw. At a distance it resembled though it was much smaller, less commodities and less substantial, the cabins erected in the western states by the first settlers. To my child's eye, however, it was a noble structure admirably adapted to promote the comforts and conveniences of its inmates. A few rough Virginia fence rails flung loosely over the rafters above answered the triple purpose of floors, ceilings and bedsteads. To be sure this upper apartment was reached only by a ladder, but what in the world for climbing could be better than a ladder. To me this ladder was really a high invention and possessed a sort of charm as I played with the light upon the rounds of it. In this little hut there was a large family of children, I dare not say how many, my grandmother whether because too old for field service or because she had so faithfully discharged the duties of her station in early life I know not, enjoyed the high privilege of living in a cabin separate from the quarter with no other burden than her own support and the necessary care of the little children imposed. She evidently esteemed it a great fortune to live so the children were not her own but her grandchildren, the children of her daughters. She took delight in having them around her and in attending to their few wants. The practice of separating children from their mothers and hiring the ladder out at distances too great to admit of their meeting except at long intervals is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave system. But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery which always and everywhere is to reduce man to a level with the brute. It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and heart of the slave all just ideas of the sacredness of the family as an institution. Most of the children however in this instance being the children of my grandmother's daughters, the notions of family and the reciprocal duties and benefits of the relation, had a better chance of being understood than where children are placed as they often are in the hands of strangers who have no care for them apart from the wishes of their masters. The daughters of my grandmother were five in number, their names were Jenny, Esther, Millie, Priscilla and Harriet. The daughter last named was my mother of whom the reader shall learn more by and by. Living here with my dear old grandmother and grandfather it was a long time before I knew myself to be a slave. I knew many other things before I knew that grandmother and grandfather were the greatest people in the world to me. And being with them so snugly in their own little cabin, I supposed it be their own knowing no higher authority over me or the other children than the authority of grandma for a time there was nothing to disturb me. But as I grew larger and older I learned by degrees the sad fact that the little hut and the lot on which it stood belonged not to my dear old grandparents, but to some person who lived a great distance off and who was called by grandmother old master. I further learned the sadder fact that not only the house and lot, but that grandmother herself grandfather was free and all the little children around her belonged to this mysterious person he called by grandmother with every mark of reverence old master. Thus early did clouds and shadows begin to fall upon my pad. Once on the track troubles never come singly I was not long in finding out another fact still more grievous to my childish heart. I was told that this old master whose name seemed ever to be mentioned with fear and shuddering only allowed the children to live with grandmother for a limited time. And that in fact as soon as they were big enough they were promptly taken away to live with the said old master. These were distressing revelations indeed and though I was quite too young to comprehend the full import of the intelligence and mostly spent my childhood days and glee some sports with the other children shade of disquiet rested upon me. The absolute power of this distant old master had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold cruel iron and left me something to root over after the play and in moments of repose. Grandmami was indeed at that time all the world to me and the thought of being separated from her in any considerable time was more than an unwelcome intruder it was intolerable. Children have their sorrows as well as men and women and it would be well to remember this in our dealings with them slave children are children and prove no exceptions to the general rule. The liability to be separated from my grandmother seldom or never to see her again haunted me. I dreaded the thought of going to live with that mysterious old master whose name I never heard mentioned with affection but always with fear. I look back to this as among the heaviest of my childhood sorrows. My grandmother my grandmother and the little hut and the joyous circle under her care but especially she who made us sorry when she left us but for an hour and glad on her return how could I leave her and the good old home. But the sorrows of childhood like the pleasures of afterlife are transient. It is not even within the power of slavery to write indelible sorrow at a single dash over the heart of a child. The tear down childhoods cheek that flows is like the dew drop on the rose. When next the summer breeze comes by and waves the bush the flower is dry. There is after all but little difference in the measure of contentment felt by the slave child neglected and the slaveholders child cared for and petted the spirit of the all just mercifully holds the balance for the young. The slaveholder having nothing to fear from impotent childhood easily affords to refrain from cruel inflections. And if cold and hunger do not pierce the tender frame the first seven or eight years of the slave boys life are about as full of sweet content as those of the most favored and petted white children of the slaveholder. The slave boy escapes many troubles which befall and vex his white brother. He seldom has to listen to lectures on propriety of behavior or on anything else. He is never chided for handling his little knife and fork improperly or awkwardly for he uses none. He is never reprimanded for soiling the tablecloth for he takes his meals on the clay floor. He never has the misfortune in his games or sports of soiling or tearing his clothes for he has almost none to soil or tear. He is never expected to act like a nice little gentleman for he is only a rude little slave. Thus freed from all restraint the slave boy can be in his life and conduct a genuine boy doing whatever his boyish nature suggests. Inacting by turns all the strange antics and freaks of horses dogs pigs and barn door fouls without in any manner compromising his dignity or incurring reproach of any sort. He literally runs wild has no pretty little verses to learn in the nursery. No nice little speeches to make for aunts uncles or cousins to show how smart he is. And if he can only manage to keep out of the way of the heavy feet and fists of the older slave boys he may trot on in his joyous and roguish tricks as happy as any little heathen under the palm trees of Africa. To be sure he is occasionally reminded when he stumbles in the path of his master and this he early learns to avoid that he is eating his white bread and that he will be made to see sites by and by. The threat is soon forgotten the shadow soon passes and our stable boy continues to roll in the dust or play in the mud as best suits him and in the various freedom. If he feels uncomfortable from mud or from dust the coast is clear he can plunge into the river or the pond without the ceremony of undressing. Or the fear of wetting his clothes is little told in a shirt for that is all he has on is easily dry and it needed ablution as much as did his skin. His food is of the course is kind consisting for the most part of corn meal mush which often finds its way from the wooden tray to his mouth in an oyster shell. His days when the weather is warm are spent in the pure open air and in the bright sunshine. He always sleeps in airy apartments he seldom has to take powders or to be paid to swallow pretty little sugar coated pills to cleanse his blood or to quicken his appetite. He eats no candies gets no lumps of low sugar always relishes his food cries but little for nobody cares for his crying learns to esteem his bruises but slight because others so esteem them in a word he is for the most part of the first eight years of his life. Our spirited joyous aporious and happy boy upon whom troubles fall only like water on a duck's back. And such a boy so far as I can now remember was the boy whose life in slavery I am now narrating. End of chapter one chapter two of my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass. This liberal box recording is in the public domain. Chapter two. The author removed from his first home. The name old master a terror Colonel Lloyd's plantation. Why river whence its name position of the Lloyd's home attraction meet offering journey from Tuckahoe to why river scene on reaching old masters departure of grandmother strange meeting of sisters and brothers refusal to be comforted. Sweet sleep. That mysterious individual referred to in the first chapter as an object of terror among the inhabitants of our little cabin under the ominous title of old master was really a man of some consequence. He owned several farms in Tuckahoe was the chief clerk and butler on the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd had over sears on his own farms and gave directions to over sears on the farms belonging to Colonel Lloyd. This plantation is situated on why river the river receiving its name doubtless from Wales where the Lloyd's originated. They the Lloyd's are an old and honored family in Maryland exceedingly wealthy. The home plantation where they have resided perhaps for a century or more is one of the largest, most fertile and best appointed in the state. About this plantation and about that queer old master who must be something more than a man and something worse than an angel. The reader will easily imagine that I was not only curious but eager to know all that could be known. Unhappily for me, however, all the information I could get concerning him but increased my great dread of being carried the of being separated from and deprived of the protection of my grandmother and grandfather. It was evidently a great thing to go to Colonel Lloyd's and I was not without a little curiosity to see the place but no amount of coaxing could induce in me the wish to remain there. The fact is such was my dread of leaving the little cabin that I wish to remain little forever for I knew the taller I grew the shorter my stay. The old cabin with its rail floor and rail bedsteads upstairs and its clay floor downstairs and its dirt chimney and windowless sides and that most curious piece of workmanship of all the rest the ladder stairway. And the whole curiously dug in front of the fireplace, beneath which Grand Mami placed the sweet potatoes to keep them from the frost was my home, the only home I ever had, and I loved it and all connected with it. The old fences around it and the stumps in the edge of the woods near it and the squirrels that ran skipped and played upon them were objects of interest and affection. There, too, right at the side of the hut stood the old well with its stately and scarlet pointing beam so aptly placed between the limbs of what had once been a tree and so nicely balanced that I could move it up and down with only one hand and could get a drink myself without calling for help. Where else in the world could such a well be found and where could such another home be met with? Nor were these all the attractions of the place down in a little valley not far from Grand Mami's cabin stood Mr. Lee's mill where the people came often in large numbers to get their corn ground. It was a water mill and I never shall be able to tell the many things thought and felt while I sat on the bank and watched that mill and the turning of that ponderous wheel. The mill pond, too, had its charms and with my pin hook and thread line I could get nibbles if I could catch no fish. But in all my sports and plays and in spite of them there would occasionally come the painful foreboding that I was not long to remain there and that I must soon be called away to the home of old master. I was a slave born a slave and though the fact was incomprehensible to me it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will of somebody I had never seen and from some cause or other I had been made to fear this somebody above all else on earth. Born for another's benefit as the first lane of the cabin flock I was soon to be selected as a meat offering to the fearful and inexorable demigod whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my childhood's imagination. When the time of my departure was decided upon my grandmother knowing my fears and impity for them kindly kept me ignorant of the dreaded event about to transpire. Up to the morning a beautiful summer morning when we were to start and indeed during the whole journey a journey which child as I was I remember as well as if it were yesterday she kept the sad fact hidden from me. This reserve was necessary for could I have known all I should have given grandmother some trouble in getting me started as it was I was helpless and she dear woman led me along by the hand resisting with the reserve and solemnity of a priestess all my inquiring looks to the lies. The distance from Takahau to Y River where my old master lived was full 12 miles and the walk was quite a severe test of the endurance of my young legs. The journey would have proved to severe for me but that my dear old grandmother blessings on her memory afforded occasional relief by toting me as Marylander's habit on her shoulder. My grandmother though advanced in years as was evident from more than one gray hair which peaked from between the ample and graceful folds of her newly ironed bandana turban was yet a woman of power and spirit. She was marvelously straight in figure elastic and muscular I seemed hardly to be a burden to her. She would have toted me farther but that I felt myself too much of a man to allow it and insisted on walking releasing dear grandmother from carrying me did not make me altogether independent of her when we happen to pass through portions of the somber woods which lay between Takahau and Y River. She often found me increasing the energy of my grip and holding her clothing less something should come out of the woods and eat me up. Several old logs and stumps imposed upon me and got themselves taken for wild beasts. I could see their legs eyes and ears or I could see something like eyes legs and ears till I got close enough to them to see that the eyes were knots washed white with rain and the legs were broken limbs and the ears only ears owing to the point from which they were seen. Thus early I learned that the point from which a thing is viewed is of some importance. As the day advanced the heat increased and it was not until the afternoon that we reached the much dreaded end of the journey. I found myself in the midst of a group of children of many colors black brown copper colored and nearly white. I had not seen so many children before great houses loomed up in different directions and a great many men and women were at work in the fields. All this hurry noise and singing was very different from the stillness of Takahau. As a newcomer I was an object of special interest and after laughing and yelling around me and playing all sorts of wild tricks they the children asked me to go out and play with them. This I refused to do preferring to stay with Grandma Ma. I could not help feeling that our being there voted no good to me. Grandma Ma looked sad she was soon to lose another object of affection as she had lost many before. I knew she was unhappy and the shadow fell from her brow on me though I knew not the cause. All suspense however must have an end and the end of mine in this instance was at hand affectionately patting me on the head and exhorting me to be a good boy. Grandma Ma told me to go and play with the little children. They are kin to you said she go and play with them. Among a number of cousins were Phil, Tom, Steve and Jerry, Nance and Betty. Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry my sister Sarah and my sister Eliza who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before and though I had sometimes heard of them and felt a curious interest in them I really did not understand what they were to me or I to them. We were brothers and sisters but what of that? Why should they be attached to me or I to them? Brothers and sisters we were by blood but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters and knew they must mean something but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. The experience through which I was passing they had passed through before they had already been initiated into the mysteries of old masters domicile and they seem to look upon me with a certain degree of compassion but my heart clave to my grandmother. Think it not strange dear reader that so little sympathy of feeling existed between us. The conditions of brotherly and sisterly feeling were wanting we had never nestled and played together. My poor mother like many other slave women had many children but no family. The domestic heart with its holy lessons and precious endearments is abolished in the case of a slave mother and her children. Little children love one another our words seldom heard in a slave cabin. I really wanted to play with my brother and sisters but they were strangers to me and I was full of fear that grandmother might leave without taking me with her. Intreated to do so however and that too by my dear grandmother I went to the back part of the house to play with them and the other children. Play however I did not but stood with my back against the wall witnessing the playing of the others. At last while standing there one of the children who had been in the kitchen ran up to me in a sort of roguish glee exclaiming bed, bed, grand mammy gone, grand mammy gone. I could not believe it yet fearing the worst I ran into the kitchen to see for myself and found it even so. Grand mammy had indeed gone and was now far away clean out of sight. I need not tell all that happened now almost heartbroken at the discovery I fell upon the ground and wept a boy's bitter tears refusing to be comforted. My brother and sisters came around me and said don't cry and gave me peaches and pears but I flung them away and refused all their kindly advances. I'd never been deceived before and I felt not only grieved at parting as I suppose forever with my grandmother but indignant that a trick had been played upon me in a matter so serious. It was now late in the afternoon the day had been an exciting and worrisome one and I knew not how aware but I suppose I sobbed myself to sleep. There was a healing in the angel wing of sleep even for the slave boy and its balm was never more welcome to any wounded soul than it was to mine the first night I spent at the domicile of old master. The reader may be surprised that I narrate so minutely an incident apparently so trivial and which must have occurred when I was not more than seven years old. But as I wish to give a faithful history of my experience in slavery I cannot withhold a circumstance which at the time affected me so deeply. Besides this was in fact my first introduction to the realities of slavery. End of chapter two. Chapter three of my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The author's parentage. Author's father shrouded in mystery. Author's mother her personal appearance interference of slavery with the natural affections of mother and children. Situation of author's mother her nightly visits to her boy striking incident her death her place of burial. If the reader will now be kind enough to allow me time to grow bigger and afford me an opportunity for my experience to become greater. I will tell him something by and by of slave life as I saw felt and heard it on Colonel Edward Lloyd's plantation. And at the house of old master where I had now despite of myself most suddenly but not unexpectedly been dropped. Meanwhile I will redeem my promise to say something more of my dear mother. I say nothing of father where he is shrouded in a mystery I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families and his laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation. When they do exist they are not the outgrow of slavery but are antagonistic to that system. The order of civilization is reversed here the name of the child is not expected to be that of its father. And his condition does not necessarily affect that of the child. He may be the slave of Mr. Tilgerman and his child when born may be the slave of Mr. Gross. He may be a free man and yet his child may be a child. He may be white glorying in that purity of his Anglo Saxon blood and his child may be ranked with the blackest slaves. Indeed he may be and often is master and father to the same child. He can be father without being a husband and may sell his child without incurring reproach. If the child be by a woman in whose veins courses one thirty second part of African blood. My father was a white man or nearly white. It was sometimes whispered that my master was my father. But to return or rather to begin my knowledge of my mother is very scanty but very distinct. Her personal appearance and bearing are inefficibly stamped upon my memory. She was tall and finally proportioned of deep black glossy complexion and regular features. And among the other slaves was remarkably sedate in her manners. There is in Pritchard's natural history of man the head of a figure on page 157 the features of which so resemble those of my mother that I often record to it with something of the feeling which I suppose others experience when looking upon the pictures of dear departed ones. Yet I cannot say that I was very deeply attached to my mother certainly not so deeply as I should have been had our relations in childhood been different. We were separated according to the common custom when I was but an infant and of course before I knew my mother from anyone else. The germs of affection with which the Almighty in His wisdom and mercy arms the helpless infant against the ills and vicissitudes of His lot had been directed in their growth toward that loving old grandmother whose gentle hand in kind deportment it was the first effort of my infantile understanding to comprehend and appreciate. Accordingly the tendress affection which a beneficent father allows as a partial compensation to the mother for the pains and lash serrations of her heart. Incident to the maternal relation was in my case diverted from its true and natural object by the envious greedy and treacherous hand of slavery. The slave mother can be spared long enough from the field to endure all the bitterness of a mother's anguish when it adds another name to a master's ledger, but not long enough to receive the joyous reward afforded by the intelligent smiles of her child. I never think of this terrible interference of slavery with my infantile affections and its diverting them from their natural course without feelings to which I can give no adequate expression. I do not remember to have seen my mother at my grandmothers at any time. I remember her only in her visits to me at Colonel Lord's Plantation and in the kitchen of my old master. Her visits to me there were few in number, brief in duration, and mostly made in the night. The pains she took in the toil she endured to see me tells me that a true mother's heart was hers and that slavery had difficulty in paralyzing it with unmotherly indifference. My mother was hired out to Mr. Stewart who lived about 12 miles from old masters and being a field hand she seldom had leisure by day for the performance of the journey. The nights and the distance were both obstacles to her visits. She was obliged to walk unless chance flung into her way, an opportunity to ride, and the latter was sometimes her good luck. But she always had to walk one way or the other. It was a greater luxury than slavery could afford to allow a black slave mother a horse or a mule upon which to travel 24 miles when she could walk the distance. Besides it is deemed a foolish whim for a slave mother to manifest concern to see her children and in one point of view the case is made out she can do nothing for them. She has no control over them. The master is even more than the mother in all matters touching the fate of her child. Why then should she give herself any concern? She has no responsibility such as the reasoning and such the practice. The iron rule of the plantation always passionately and violently enforced in that neighborhood makes flogging the penalty of failing to be in the field before sunrise in the morning. As special permission be given to the absentee slave I went to see my child is no excuse to the ear or heart of the overseer. One of the visits of my mother to me while at Colonel Lloyd's I remember very vividly as affording a bright gleam of a mother's love and the earnestness of a mother's care. I had on that day offended Aunt Katie called Aunt by way of respect the cook of old masters establishment. I do not now remember the nature of my offense in this instance for my offenses were numerous in that quarter greatly depending however upon the mood of Aunt Katie as to their heinousness. But she had adopted that day her favorite mode of punishing me namely making me go without food all day. That is from after breakfast the first hour or two after dinner. I succeeded pretty well in keeping up my spirits but though I made an excellent stand against them and fought bravely during the afternoon. I knew I must be concrete at last unless I got the accustomed reinforcement of a slice of cornbread at sundown. Sundown came but no bread and in it stood there came the threat with a scowl well suited to its terrible import that she meant to starve the life out of me. Brandishing her knife she chopped off the heavy slices for the other children and put the loaf away muttering all the while her savage designs upon myself. Against this disappointment for I was expecting that her heart would relent at last I made an extra effort to maintain my dignity but when I saw all the other children around me with merry and satisfied faces I could stand it no longer. I went out behind the house and cried like a fine fellow. When tired of this I returned to the kitchen sat by the fire and brooded over my hard lot. I was too hungry to sleep while I sat in the corner I caught sight of an ear of Indian corn on an upper shelf of the kitchen. I watched my chance and got it and shelling off a few grains I put it back again. The grains in my hand I quickly put in some ashes and covered them with embers to roast them. All this I did at the risk of getting a brutal thumping for Aunt Katie could beat as well as starve me. My corn was not long in roasting and with my keen appetite it did not matter even if the grains were not exactly done. I eagerly pulled them out and placed them on my stool in a clever little pile. Just as I began to help myself to my very dry meal in came my dear mother. And now dear reader a scene occurred which was altogether worth beholding and to me it was instructive as well as interesting. The friendless and hungry boy in his extremist need and when he did not dare to look for a sucker found himself in the strong protecting arms of a mother. A mother who was at the moment being endowed with high powers of manner as well as matter more than a match for all his enemies. I shall never forget the indescribable expression of her accountants when I told her that I had had no food since morning and that Aunt Katie said she meant to starve the life out of me. There was pity in her glance at me and a fiery indignation at Aunt Katie at the same time. And while she took the corn from me and gave me a large ginger cake in its stead she read Aunt Katie a lecture which she never forgot. My mother threatened her with complaining to all master in my behalf for the latter though harsh and cruel himself at times did not sanction the meanness injustice partiality and depressions enacted by Aunt Katie in the kitchen. That night I learned the fact that I was not only a child but somebody's child. The sweet cake my mother gave me was in the shape of a heart with a rich dark ring glazed upon the edge of it. I was victorious and well off for the moment proud on my mother's knee than a king upon his throne. But my triumph was short I dropped off to sleep and waked in the morning only to find my mother gone and myself left at the mercy of the sable Varago dominant in my old master's kitchen whose fiery wrath was my constant dread. I do not remember to have seen my mother after this occurrence death soon ended the little communication that had existed between us and with it I believe a life. Judging from her weary sad downcast countenance and me demeanor full of heartfelt sorrow. I was not allowed to visit her during any part of her long illness nor did I see her for a long time before she was taken ill and died. The heartless and ghastly form of slavery rises between mother and child even at the bed of death. The mother at the verge of the grave may not gather her children to impart to them her holy admonitions and invoke for them her dying benediction. The bond woman lives as a slave and is left to die as a beast often with fewer attentions than are paid to a favorite horse. Scenes of sacred tenderness around the death bed never forgotten and which often arrest the vicious and confirm the virtuous during life must be looked for among the free. Though they sometimes occur among the slaves it has been a lifelong standing grief to me that I knew so little of my mother and that I was so early separated from her. The councils of her love must have been beneficial to me. The side view of her face is imaged on my memory and I take few steps in life without feeling her presence but the images mute and I have no striking words of hers treasured up. I learned after my mother's death that she could read and that she was the only one of all the slaves and colored people in Takahoe who enjoyed that advantage. While she acquired this knowledge I know not for Takahoe is the last place in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. I can therefore fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love of knowledge that a field hand should learn to read in any slave state is remarkable. But the achievement of my mother considering the place was very extraordinary and in view of that fact I am quite willing and even happy to attribute any love of letters I possess and for which I have got despite the prejudices only too much credit not to my admitted Anglo-Saxon paternity but to the native genius of my sable unprotected and an uncultivated mother. A woman who belonged to a race whose mental endowments it is at present fashionable to hold in disparagement and contempt. Summoned away to her account with the impassable gulf of slavery between us during her entire illness my mother died without leaving me a single intimation of who my father was. There was a whisper that my master was my father yet it was only a whisper and I cannot say that I ever gave it credence. Indeed I now have reason to think he was not nevertheless the fact remains in all its glaring odiousness that by the laws of slavery children in all cases are reduced to the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest license to brutal slave holders and their profligate sons brothers relations and friends and gives to the pleasure of sin the additional attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written on this single feature of slavery as I have observed it. One might imagine that the children of such connections would fare better in the hands of their masters than other slaves. The rule is quite the other way and a very little reflection will satisfy the reader that such is the case. A man who will enslave his own blood may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent and the mulatto child's face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child. What is still worse perhaps such a child is a constant offense to the white. She hates its very presence and when a slave holding woman hates she wants not means to give that hate telling effect. Women white women I mean our idols at the south not wives for the slave women are preferred in many instances. And if these idols but not or lift a finger woe to the poor victim kicks cuffs and strikes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to sell this class of their slaves out of deference to the feelings of their white wives and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man to sell his own blood to the traffickers in human flesh. It is often an act of humanity toward the slave child to be thus removed from his merciless tormentors. It is not within the scope of the design of my simple story to comment upon every phase of slavery not within my experience as a slave. But I may remark that if the linear descendants of Ham are only to be enslaved according to the scriptures slavery in this country will soon become an unscriptural institution for thousands are ushered into the world annually. Who like myself owe their existence to white fathers and most frequently to their masters and masters sons. The slave woman is at the mercy of the fathers sons or brothers of her master the thoughtful know the rest. After what I have now said of the circumstances of my mother and my relations to her the reader will not be surprised nor be disposed to censure me. When I tell but the simple truth these that I received the tidings of her death with no strong emotions of sorrow for her and with very little regret for myself on account of her loss. I had to learn the value of my mother long after her death and by witnessing the devotion of other mothers to their children. There is not beneath the sky an enemy to filial affection so destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me. It converted the mother that bore me into a myth. It shrouded my father in mystery and left me without an intelligible beginning in the world. My mother died when I could not have been more than eight or nine years old. On one of old masters farms in Takahoe in the neighborhood of Hillsborough. Her grave is as the grave of the dead at sea unmarked and without stone or stake. End of chapter three.