CHAPTER IX

I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left

Baltimore, and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael’s,

in March, 1832. It was now more than seven years since I lived with him

in the family of my old master, on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. We of

course were now almost entire strangers to each other. He was to me a

new master, and I to him a new slave. I was ignorant of his temper and

disposition; he was equally so of mine. A very short time, however,

brought us into full acquaintance with each other. I was made

acquainted with his wife not less than with himself. They were well

matched, being equally mean and cruel. I was now, for the first time

during a space of more than seven years, made to feel the painful

gnawings of hunger—a something which I had not experienced before since

I left Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. It went hard enough with me then,

when I could look back to no period at which I had enjoyed a

sufficiency. It was tenfold harder after living in Master Hugh’s

family, where I had always had enough to eat, and of that which was

good. I have said Master Thomas was a mean man. He was so. Not to give

a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development

of meanness even among slaveholders. The rule is, no matter how coarse

the food, only let there be enough of it. This is the theory; and in

the part of Maryland from which I came, it is the general

practice,—though there are many exceptions. Master Thomas gave us

enough of neither coarse nor fine food. There were four slaves of us in

the kitchen—my sister Eliza, my aunt Priscilla, Henny, and myself; and

we were allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and

very little else, either in the shape of meat or vegetables. It was not

enough for us to subsist upon. We were therefore reduced to the

wretched necessity of living at the expense of our neighbors. This we

did by begging and stealing, whichever came handy in the time of need,

the one being considered as legitimate as the other. A great many times

have we poor creatures been nearly perishing with hunger, when food in

abundance lay mouldering in the safe and smoke-house, and our pious

mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that mistress and her husband

would kneel every morning, and pray that God would bless them in basket

and store!

Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every

element of character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare

sort. I do not know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The

leading trait in his character was meanness; and if there were any

other element in his nature, it was made subject to this. He was mean;

and, like most other mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his

meanness. Captain Auld was not born a slaveholder. He had been a poor

man, master only of a Bay craft. He came into possession of all his

slaves by marriage; and of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst.

He was cruel, but cowardly. He commanded without firmness. In the

enforcement of his rules, he was at times rigid, and at times lax. At

times, he spoke to his slaves with the firmness of Napoleon and the

fury of a demon; at other times, he might well be mistaken for an

inquirer who had lost his way. He did nothing of himself. He might have

passed for a lion, but for his ears. In all things noble which he

attempted, his own meanness shone most conspicuous. His airs, words,

and actions, were the airs, words, and actions of born slaveholders,

and, being assumed, were awkward enough. He was not even a good

imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the

power. Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the

copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of

inconsistency; and of consequence he was an object of contempt, and was

held as such even by his slaves. The luxury of having slaves of his own

to wait upon him was something new and unprepared for. He was a

slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves. He found himself

incapable of managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud. We

seldom called him “master;” we generally called him “Captain Auld,” and

were hardly disposed to title him at all. I doubt not that our conduct

had much to do with making him appear awkward, and of consequence

fretful. Our want of reverence for him must have perplexed him greatly.

He wished to have us call him master, but lacked the firmness necessary

to command us to do so. His wife used to insist upon our calling him

so, but to no purpose. In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist

camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced

religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to

emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at

any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both

these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to

emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him

more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been

a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his

conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him

in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious

sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest

pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed

morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his

brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity

in revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands

of the church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers’

home. They used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for

while he starved us, he stuffed them. We have had three or four

preachers there at a time. The names of those who used to come most

frequently while I lived there, were Mr. Storks, Mr. Ewery, Mr.

Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at our

house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We believed him to be a good man.

We thought him instrumental in getting Mr. Samuel Harrison, a very rich

slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by some means got the

impression that he was laboring to effect the emancipation of all the

slaves. When he was at our house, we were sure to be called in to

prayers. When the others were there, we were sometimes called in and

sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more notice of us than either of the

other ministers. He could not come among us without betraying his

sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the sagacity to see it.

While I lived with my master in St. Michael’s, there was a white young

man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the

instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the

New Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks,

both class-leaders, with many others, came upon us with sticks and

other missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended

our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael’s.

I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an

example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I

have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy

cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip;

and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage

of Scripture—“He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not,

shall be beaten with many stripes.”

Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid

situation four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up

early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to

his store, return at dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the

places already made raw with his cruel lash. The secret of master’s

cruelty toward “Henny” is found in the fact of her being almost

helpless. When quite a child, she fell into the fire, and burned

herself horribly. Her hands were so burnt that she never got the use of

them. She could do very little but bear heavy burdens. She was to

master a bill of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant

offence to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of

existence. He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift,

she was not disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use

his own words, “set her adrift to take care of herself.” Here was a

recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same

time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas

was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very

charitable purpose of taking care of them.

My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found me

unsuitable to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very

pernicious effect upon me. It had almost ruined me for every good

purpose, and fitted me for every thing which was bad. One of my

greatest faults was that of letting his horse run away, and go down to

his father-in-law’s farm, which was about five miles from St.

Michael’s. I would then have to go after it. My reason for this kind of

carelessness, or carefulness, was, that I could always get something to

eat when I went there. Master William Hamilton, my master’s

father-in-law, always gave his slaves enough to eat. I never left there

hungry, no matter how great the need of my speedy return. Master Thomas

at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine

months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings,

all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be

broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named

Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the

place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it.

Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young

slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him

to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could

have had it done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought

it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for

the sake of the training to which they were subjected, without any

other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in

consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of

Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a

class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his

reputation as a “nigger-breaker.” I was aware of all the facts, having

been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I

nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough

to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.