| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Chains and Freedom - or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living
Author: Lester, Charles Edwards
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chains and Freedom - or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living" ***
[Illustration:
PETER WHEELER.
J.W. Evans, Pinrt P. H. Reason, Sc.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES
OF
PETER WHEELER.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAINS AND FREEDOM:
THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES
OF
PETER WHEELER,
A COLORED MAN YET LIVING.
A SLAVE IN CHAINS,
A SAILOR ON THE DEEP,
AND
A SINNER AT THE CROSS.
THREE VOLUMES IN ONE.
BY
THE AUTHOR OF THE ‘MOUNTAIN WILD FLOWER.’
------------------
“Mind not high things; but condescend to men of low estate.”
PAUL.
------------------
New York:
PUBLISHED BY E. S. ARNOLD & CO.
1839.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------
ENTERED, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839, in the
Clerk’s Office of the Southern District of New York.
----------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
---------------------
The following Narrative was taken entirely from the lips of Peter
Wheeler. I have in all instances given his own language, and faithfully
recorded his story as he told it, _without any change whatever_. There
are many astonishing facts related in this book, and before the reader
finishes it, he will at least feel that
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
But the truth of every thing here stated can be relied on. The subject
of this story is well known to the author, who for a long time brake
unto him “the bread of life,” as a brother in Christ, and beloved for
the Redeemer’s sake. There are, likewise, hundreds of living witnesses,
who have for many years been acquain’ted with the man, and aware of the
incidents here recorded, who cherish perfect confidence in his veracity.
He has many times, for many years, related the same facts, to many
persons, in the same language _verbatim_; and individuals to whom the
author has read some of the following incidents, have recognized the
story and language, as they heard them from the hero’s lips long before
the author ever heard his name. There are also persons yet living, whom
I have seen and known, who witnessed many of Peter’s most awful
sufferings.
* * * * *
Of course, the book lays no claim to the merit of _literature_, and will
not be reviewed as such; but it does claim the merit of _strict verity_,
which is no mean characteristic in a book, in these days.
The subject, and the author, have but one object in view in bringing the
book before the public:—a mutual desire to contribute as far as they
can, to the freedom of enchained millions for whom Christ died. And if
any heart may be made to feel one emotion of benevolence, and lift up a
more earnest cry to God for the suffering slave; if one generous impulse
may be awakened in a slaveholder’s bosom towards his fellow traveller to
God’s bar, whose crime is, in being “born with a skin not coloured like
his own;” and if it may inspire in the youthful mind, the spirit of that
sweet verse, consecrated by the hallowed associations of a New-England
home—
“I was not born a little slave
To labour in the sun,
And wish I were but in my grave,
And all my labor done.”
it will not be in vain.
* * * * *
That it may hasten that glorious consummation which we know is fast
approaching, when slavery shall be known only in the story of past time,
is the earnest prayer of the
AUTHOR.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Certificate of the Citizens of Spencertown._
This is to certify, that we, the undersigned, are, and have been _well
acquain’ted_ with Peter Wheeler, for a number of years, and that we
place _full confidence in all his statements_:—
ERASTUS PRATT, Justice of the Peace.
CHARLES B. DUTCHER, Justice of the Peace.
ABIAH W. MAYHEW, Deacon of the Presbyterian Church.
CHARLES H. SKIFF, M.D.
WILLIAM. A. DEAN.
JOHN GROFF.
DANIEL BALDWIN.
ELISHA BABCOCK.
PHILIP STRONG.
PATRICK M. KNAPP.
WILLIAM TRAVER.
EPHRAIM BERNUS.
SAMUEL HIGGINS.
WILLIAM PARSONS.
JAMES BALDWIN.
FRANCIS CHAREVOY.
[It may be proper to state that many of these gentlemen have known Peter
more than thirteen years; likewise, that they are men of the first
respectability.
AUTHOR.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
----------
BOOK THE FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
Author’s first interview with Peter—Peter calls on the Page 17–35
Author, and begins his story—his birth and residence—is
adopted by Mrs. Mather and lives in Mr. Mather’s
house—his “_red scarlet coat_”—fishing expedition on
Sunday with Hagar when he sees the Devil—a feat of
horsemanship—saves the life of master’s oldest son, and
is bit in the operation by a wild hog—an encounter with
an “old-fashioned cat owl” in the Cedar Swamp—a man
killed by wild cats—a short “sarmint” at a Quaker
Meeting—“I and John makes a pincushion of a calf’s
nose, and got _tuned_ for it I tell ye”—holyday’s
amusements—the marble egg—“I and John great
cronies”—Mistress sick—Peter hears something in the
night which he thinks a forerunner of her death—_she
dies a Christian_—her dying words—Peter’s feelings on
her death.
CHAPTER II.
Peter emancipated by his old Master’s Will—but is stolen Page 36–55
and sold at auction, and bid off by GIDEON MOREHOUSE ☜
Hagar tries to buy her brother back—parting scene—his
reception at his new Master’s—sudden change in
fortune—Master’s cruelty—the Muskrat skins—prepare to
go into “the new countries”—start on the journey
“incidents of travel” on the road—Mr. Sterling, who is
a sterling-good man, tries to buy Peter—gives him a
pocket full of “Bungtown coppers”—abuse—story of the
Blue Mountain—Oswego—Mr. Cooper, an
Abolitionist—journey’s end—Cayuga county, New York.
CHAPTER III.
They get into a wild country, “full of all kinds of Page 56–82
varmints,” and begin to build—Peter knocked off of a
barn by his master—story of a rattlesnake charming a
child—Peter hews the timber for a new house, and gets
paid in lashes—Tom Ludlow an abolitionist—Peter’s
friends all advise him to run off—the fox-tail company,
their expeditions on Oneida Lake—deer stories—Rotterdam
folks—story of a pain’ter—master pockets Peter’s share
of the booty and bounty—the girls of the family
befriend him—a sail on the Lake—Peter is captain, and
saves the life of a young lady who falls overboard, and
nearly loses his own—kindly and generously treated by
the young lady’s father, who gives Peter a splendid
suit of clothes worth seventy dollars, and “a good many
other notions”—his master ☞ steals his clothes ☜ and
wears them out himself—Mr. Tucker’s opinion of his
character, and Peter’s of his fate.
CHAPTER IV.
An affray in digging a cellar—Peter sick of a typhus Page 83–124
fever nine months—the kindness of “the
gals”—physician’s bill—a methodist preacher, and a leg
of tain’ted mutton—_“master shoots arter him” with a
rifle!!_—a bear story—where the skin went to—a glance
at religious operations in that region—“a camp
meeting”—Peter tied up in the woods in the night, and
“expects to be eat up by all kinds of wild
varmints”—master a drunkard—owns a still—abuses his
family—a story of blood, and stripes, and groans, and
cries—Peter finds ‘Lecta a friend in need—expects to be
killed—Abers intercedes for him, and “makes it his
business”—Mrs. Abers pours oil into Peter’s
wounds—Peter goes back, and is better treated a little
while—master tries to stab him with a pitchfork, and
Peter nearly kills him in self-defence—tries the rifle
and swears he will end Peter’s existence now—but the
ball don’t hit—the crisis comes, and that night Peter
swears to be free or die in the cause.
CHAPTER V.
Peter’s master prosecuted for abusing him, and fined Page 155–171
$500, and put under a bond of $2000 for good
behavior—Peter for a long time has a plan for running
away, and the girls help him in it—“the big eclipse of
1806”—Peter starts at night to run away, and the girls
carry him ten miles on his road—the parting
scene—travels all night, and next day sleeps in a
hollow log in the woods—accosted by a man on the
Skeneateles bridge—sleeps in a barn—is discovered—two
pain’ters on the road—discovered and pursued—frightened
by a little girl—encounter with “two black gentlemen
with a white ring round their necks”—“Ingens” chase
him—“Utica quite a thrifty little place”—hires out nine
days—Little Falls—hires out on a boat to go to
“Snackady”—makes three trips—is discovered by Morehouse
☜—the women help him to escape to Albany—hires out on
Truesdell’s sloop—meets master in the street—goes to
New York—a reward of $100 offered for him—Capt. comes
to take him back to his master, for “one hundred
dollars don’t grow on every bush”—“feels
distressedly”—but Capt. Truesdell promises to protect
him, “as long as grass grows and water runs”—he follows
the river.
BOOK THE SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
Beginning of sea stories—sails with Captain Truesdell for Page 173–185
the West-Indies—feelings on leaving the American
shore—sun-set at sea—shake hands with a French
frigate—a storm—old Neptune—a bottle or a
shave—caboose—Peter gets two feathers in his cap—St.
Bartholomews—climate—slaves—oranges—turtle—a small pig,
“but dam’ old”—weigh anchor for New York—“sail ho!”—a
wreck—a sailor on a buoy—get him aboard—his story—gets
well, and turns out to be an enormous swearer—couldn’t
draw a breath without an oath—approach to New
York—quarantine—pass the Narrows—drop anchor—rejoicing
times—Peter jumps ashore “a free nigger.”
CHAPTER II.
Peter spends the winter of 1806–7 in New York—sails in Page 185–199
June in the Carnapkin for Bristol—a sea tempest—ship
becalmed off the coast of England—catch a shark and
find a lady’s hand, and gold ring and locket in
him—this locket, &c. lead to a trial, and the murderer
hung—the mother of the lady visits the ship; sail for
home—Peter sails with captain Williams on a trading
voyage—Gibralter—description of it—sail to
Bristol—chased by a privateer—she captured by a French
frigate—sail for New York—Peter lives a gentleman at
large in “the big city of New York.”
CHAPTER III.
Peter sails for Gibralter with Captain Bainbridge—his Page 202–230
character—horrible storm—Henry falls from aloft and is
killed—a funeral at sea—English lady prays—Gibralter
and the landing of soldiers—a frigate and four
merchantmen—Napoleon—Wellington and Lord Nelson—a slave
ship—her cargo—five hundred slaves—a wake of blood
fifteen hundred miles—sharks eat ’em—Amsterdam—winter
there—Captain B. winters in Bristol—Dutchmen—visit to
an old battle field—stories about Napoleon—Peter falls
overboard and is drowned, _almost_—make New York the
fourth of July—Peter lends five hundred dollars and
loses it—sails to the West Indies with Captain
Thompson—returns to New York and winters with Lady
Rylander—sails with Captain Williams for
Gibralter—fleet thirty-seven sail—cruise up the
Mediterranean—Mt. Etna—sails to Liverpool—Lord
Wellington and his troops—war between Great Britain and
the United States—sails for New York and goes to sea no
more—his own confessions of his character—dreadful
wicked—sings a sailor song and winds up his yarn.
BOOK THE THIRD.
CHAPTER I.
Lives at Madam Rylander’s—Quaker Macy—Susan a colored Page 233–248
girl lives with Mr. Macy—she is kidnapped and carried
away, and sold into slavery—Peter visits at the
“Nixon’s, mazin’ respectable” colored people in
Philadelphia—falls in love with Solena—gits the consent
of old folks—fix wedding day—“ax parson”—Solena dies in
his arms—his grief—compared with Rhoderic Dhu—lives in
New Haven—sails for New York—drives hack—Susan Macy is
redeemed from slavery—she tells Peter her story of
blood and horror, and abuse, and the way she made her
escape from her chains.
CHAPTER II.
Kidnappin’ in New York—Peter spends three years in Page 249–260
Hartford—couldn’t help thinkin’ of Solena—Hartford
Convention—stays a year in Middletown—hires to a man in
West Springfield—makes thirty-five dollars fishin’
nights—great revival in Springfield—twenty
immersed—sexton of church in Old Springfield—religious
sentiments—returns to New York—_Solena again_—Susan
Macy married—pulls up for the Bay State again—lives
eighteen months in Westfield—six months in
Sharon—Joshua Nichols leaves his wife—Peter goes after
him and finds him in Spencertown, New York—takes money
back to Mrs. Nichols—returns to Spencertown—lives at
Esq. Pratt’s—Works next summer for old Captain
Beale—his character—falls in love—married—loses his
only child—wife helpless eight months—great revival of
1827—feels more like gittin’ religion—“One sabba’day
when the minister preached at me”—a resolution to get
religion—how to become a christian—evening
prayer-meeting—Peter’s convictions deep and
distressing—going home he kneels on a rock and
prayed—his prayer—the joy of a redeemed soul—his family
rejoice with him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK THE FIRST.
-------
PETER WHEELER IN CHAINS.
DEDICATED TO
Every body who hates oppression, and don’t believe that it is right,
under any circumstances, to buy and sell the image of the Great God
Almighty; and to all who love Human Liberty well enough to help to
break every yoke, that the oppressed may go free——God bless all such!
“I own I am shocked at the _purchase_ of slaves,
And fear those that buy them and sell them are knaves;
What I hear of their hardships, their tortures and groans,
Is almost enough to draw pity from stones.”
COWPER.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I.
Author’s first interview with Peter—Peter calls on the Author, and
begins his story—his birth and residence—is adopted by Mrs. Mather and
lives in Mr. Mather’s house—his “_red scarlet coat_“—fishing
expedition on Sunday with Hagar when he sees the Devil—a feat of
horsemanship—saves the life of master’s oldest son, and is bit in the
operation by a wild hog—an encounter with an “old-fashioned cat owl”
in the Cedar Swamp—a man killed by wild cats—a short “sarmint” at a
Quaker Meeting—“I and John makes a pincushion of a calf’s nose, and
got _tuned_ for it, I tell ye”—holyday’s amusements—the marble egg—“I
and John great cronies”—Mistress sick—Peter hears something in the
night which he thinks a forerunner of her death—_she dies a
Christian_—her dying words—Peter’s feelings on her death.
_Author._ “Peter, your history is so remarkable, that I have thought it
would make quite an interesting book; and I have a proposal to make
you.”
_Peter._ “Well, Sir, I’m always glad to hear the Domine talk; what’s
your proposal? I guess you’re contrivin’ to put a spoke in the Abolition
wheel, ain’t ye?”
A. “Peter you know I’m a friend to the black man, and try to do him
good.”
P. “Yis, I know that, I tell ye.”
A. “Well, I was going to say that this question of Slavery is all the
talk every where, and as _facts_ are so necessary to help men in coming
to correct conclusions in regard to it, I have thought it would be a
good thing to write a story of your life and adventures—for you know
that every body likes to read such books, and they do a great deal of
good in the cause of Freedom.”
P. “I s’pose then you’ve got an idee of makin’ out some sich a book as
Charles Ball, and that has done a sight of good. But it seems to me I’ve
_suffered_ as much as Charles Ball, and I’ve sartinly _travelled ten
times as fur_ as he ever did. But I should look funny enough in print,
shouldn’t I? The Life and Adventers of Peter Wheeler—!! ha! ha!! ha!!!
And then you see every feller here in town, would be a stickin’ up his
nose at the very idee, jist because I’m a “nigger” as they say—or
“snow-ball,” or somethin’ else; but never mind, if it’s a goin’ to du
any _good_, why I say _let split_, and we’ll go it nose or no
nose—snow-ball or no snow-ball.”
A. “Well, I’m engaged this morning Peter, but if you will call down to
my study this afternoon at two o’clock, I’ll be at home, and ready to
begin. I want you to put on your “thinking cap,” and be prepared to
begin your story, and I’ll write while you talk, and in this way we’ll
do a good business—good bye Peter, give my love to your family, and be
down in season.”
P. “Good bye Domine, and jist give _my_ love to your folks; and I’ll be
down afore two, if nothin’ happens more’n I know on.”
* * * * *
A. “Walk in—Ah! Peter you’re come have you? you are _punctual_ too, for
the clock is just striking. I’m glad to see you; take a seat on the
settee.”
P. “I thought I couldn’t be fur out of the way: and I’m right glad to
see _you_ tu, and you pretty well? and how does your lady du?”
A. “All well, Peter.”
P. “You seem to be all ready to weigh anchor.”
A. “Yes, and we’ll be soon under way.—And now, Peter, I have perfect
confidence in your veracity, but I want you to watch every word you
utter, for ’twill all be read by ten thousand folks, and I wouldn’t send
out any exaggerated statement, or coloured story, for all the books in
Christendom. You know it’s hard to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth;’ and now you will have plenty of time to _think_,
for I can’t write as fast as you will talk, and I want you to think
carefully, and speak accurately, and we’ll have a _true_ story, and I
think a _good_ one.”
P. “I’ll take good care of that, Mr. L—— and we’ll have a _true_ story
if we don’t have a big one; but I’m a thinkin’ that afore we git through
we’ll have a pretty good yarn spun, as the sailors say. I always thought
’twas bad enough to tell one lie, but a man must be pretty bad to tell
one in a book, for if he has ten thousand books printed, he will print
ten thousand lies, and that’s lying on tu big a scale.”
A. “Well, Peter, in what age, and quarter of the world were you born?”
P. “As near as I can find out, I was born the 1st of January 1789, at
Little Egg Harbour, a parish of Tuckertown, New Jersey. I was born a
slave ☜—and many a time, like old Job, I’ve _cussed_ the day I was born.
My mother has often told me, that my great grandfather was born in
Africa, and one day he and his little sister was by the seaside pickin’
up shells, and there come a small boat along shore with white sailors,
and ketches ’em both, and they cried to go back and see mother, but they
didn’t let ’em go, and they took ’em off to a big black ship that was
crowded with negroes they’d stole; and there they kept ’em in a dark
hole, and almost starved and choked for some weeks, they should guess,
and finally landed ’em in Baltimore, and there they was _sold_.
Grandfather used to set and tell these ’ere stories all over to mother,
and set and cry and cry jist like a child, arter he’d got to be an old
man, and tell how he wanted to see mother on board that ship, and how
happy he and his sister was, a playing in the sand afore the ship come;
and jist so mother used to set and trot me on her knee, and tell me
these ’ere stories as soon as I could understand ’em—”
“Well, as I was sayin’, I was born in Tuckertown, and my master’s name
was Job Mather. He was a man of family and property, and had a wife and
two sons, and a large plantation. He was a Quaker by profession, and
used to go to the Quaker meetin’s; but afore I git through with him,
I’ll show you he warn’t overstocked with Religion. He was the first and
last Quaker I ever heard on, that owned a slave,[1] and he warn’t a
_full-blooded Quaker_, for if he had been, he wouldn’t owned me; for a
full-blooded Quaker won’t own a slave. I was the only slave he owned,
and he didn’t own me ☜ but this, is the way he _come by_ me.[2] Mistress
happened to have a child the same time I was born, and the little feller
died. So she sent to Dinah my mother, and got me to nuss her, when I was
only eight days old.”
Footnote 1:
Would to God, it could be said of any other denomination of Christians
in Christendom!!
Footnote 2:
A grand distinction for some _big Doctors_ to learn!
“Well, arter I’d got weaned, and was about a year old, mother comes to
mistress, and says she, ‘Mistress, have you got through with my baby?’
‘No,’ says Mistress, ‘no Dinah, I mean to bring him up myself.’ And so
she kept me, and called me Peter Wheeler, for that was my father’s name,
and so I lived in master’s family almost jist like his own children.”
“The first thing I recollect was this:——Master and Mistress, went off up
country on a journey, and left I and John, (John was her little boy
almost my age,) with me at home, and says she as she goes away, ‘now
boys if you’ll be _good_, when I come back, I’ll bring you some handsome
presents.’”
“Well, we _was_ good, and when she comes back, she gives us both a suit
of clothes, and mine was _red scarlet_, and it had a little coat
buttoned on to a pair of trousers, and a good many buttons on ’em, all
up and down be-for’ard and behind, and I had a little cap, with a good
long tostle on it; and oh! when I first got ’em on, if I didn’t feel
_big_, I won’t guess.”
“I used to do ’bout as I was a mind tu, until I was eight or nine year
old, though Master and Mistress used to make I and John keep Sunday
_’mazin strict_; yet, I remember one Sunday, when they was gone to
Quaker meetin’, I and Hagar, (she was my sister, and lived with my
mother, and mother was free,) well, I and Hagar went down to the creek
jist by the house, a fishin’. _She_ stood on the bridge, and _I_ waded
out up to my middle, and had big luck, and in an hour I had a fine
basket full. But jist then I see a flouncin’ in the water, and a great
monstrous big thing got hold of my hook, and yauked it arter him, pole,
line, nigger and all, I’d enemost said, and if he didn’t make a
squashin’ then I’m a white man. Well, Hagar see it, and she was scart
almost to pieces, and off she put for the house, and left me there
alone. Well, I thought sure ’nough ’twas the Devil, I’d hearn tell so
much ’bout the old feller; and I took my basket and put out for the
house like a white-head, and I thought I _should_ die, I was _so scart_.
We got to the house and hid under the bed, all a tremblin’ jist like a
leaf, afeard to stir one inch. Pretty soon the old folks comes home, and
so out we crawled, and they axed us the matter, and so we up and telled
’em all about it, and Master, says he ‘why sure ’nough ’twas the Devil,
and all cause you went a fishin’ on a Sunday, and if you go down there a
fishin’ agin Sunday he’ll catch you both, and that’ll be the end of you
two snow-balls.”
A. “Didn’t he whip you, Peter, to pay for it?”
P. “Whip us? No, Sir; I tell ye what ’tis, what he telled us ’bout the
Devil, paid us more’n all the whippens in creation.”
A. “What was the big thing in the creek?”
P. “Why, I s’pose ’twas a _shark_; they used to come up the creek from
the ocean.”
A. “Did you have much Religious Instruction?”
P. “Why, the old folks used to tell us we musn’t lie and steal and play
sabba’day, for if we did, the _old boy_ would come and carry us off; and
that was ’bout all the Religion I got from them, and all I knowed ’bout
it, as long as I lived there.”
A. “What did you used to do when you got old enough to work?”
P. “Why, I lived in the house, and almost jist like a gal I knew when
washin’-day come, and I’d out with the poundin’-barrel, and _on_ with
the big kittle, and besides I used to do all the heavy cookin’ in the
kitchen, and carry the dinner out to the field hands, and scrub, and
scour knives, and all sich work.”
A. “Did you always used to have plenty to eat?”
P. “Oh? yis, Sir, I had the handlin’ of the victuals, and I had my
_fill_, I tell ye.”
A. “Did you ever go to school, Peter?”
P. “Yis, Sir, I went one day when John was sick in his place, and that
was the only day I ever went, in all my life, and I larned my A, B, C’s
through, both ways, and never forgot ’em arter that.”
A. “Well, did you ever meet with any accidents?”
P. “Why, it’s a wonder I’m _alive_, I’ve had so many wonderful
_escapes_. When I was ’bout ten year old, Master had a beautiful horse,
only he was as wild as a pain’ter, and so one day when he was gone away,
I and John gits him out, and he puts me on, and ties my legs under his
belly, so I shouldn’t git flung off, and he run, and snorted, and broke
the string, and pitched me off, and enemost broke my head, and if my
skull hadn’t a been pretty thick, I guess he would; and I didn’t get
well in almost six weeks.” Another thing I think on, Master had some of
these ’ere old-fashioned long-eared and long-legged hogs, and he used to
turn ’em out, like other folks, in a big wood nearby, and when they was
growed up, fetch ’em and pen ’em up, and fat ’em; and so Master fetched
home two that was dreadful wild, and they had tushes _so long_, and put
’em in a pen to fat. Well, his oldest son gits over in the pen one day
to clean out the trough, and one on ’em put arter him, and oh! how he
_bawled_, and run to git out; I heard him, and run and reached over the
pen, and catched hold on him, and tried to lift him out; but the old
feller had got hold of his leg, and took out a whole mouthful, and then
let go; and I pulled like a good feller, and got him most over, but the
old sarpent got hold of _my hand_, and bit it through and through, and
there’s the scar yit.”
A. “Did you let go, Peter?”
P. “Let go? No! I tell ye I didn’t; the hog got hold of his heel, and
bit the ball right off; but when he let go _that_ time, I fetched a
dreadful lift, and I got him over the pen, _safe and sound, only_ he was
badly bit.
“And while I think of it, one day Mistress took me to go with her
through the Cedar Swamp to see some Satan, only she took me as she said
to keep the snakes off. It was two miles through the woods, and we went
on a road of cedar-rails, and when we got into the swamp, I see a big
old-fashioned cat owl a settin’ on a limb up ’bout fifteen foot from the
ground I guess; and as I’d heard an owl couldn’t see in the day time, I
thought I’d creep up slily, and catch him, and I says ‘Mistress,’ says
I, ‘will you wait?’ and she says, ‘yis, if you’ll be quick.’ And so up I
got, and jist as I was agoin to grab him, he jumped down, and lit on my
head, and planted his big claws in my wool and begun to peck, and I
hollered like a loon, and swung off, and down I come, and he stuck tight
and pecked worse than ever. I hollows for Mistress, and by this time she
comes up with a club, and she pounded the old feller, but he wouldn’t
git off, and she pounded him till he was dead; and his claws stuck so
tight in my wool, Mistress had to cut ’em out with my jack-knife, and up
I got, glad ’nough to git off as I did; and I crawled out of the mud,
and the blood come a runnin’ down my head, and I was clawed and pecked
like a good feller, but I didn’t go owlin’ agin very soon, I tell ye.”
“Well, we got there, and this was Saturday, and we stayed till the next
arternoon. Sunday mornin’ I see a man go by, towards our house, with an
axe on his shoulder; and we started in the arternoon, and when we’d got
into the middle of the swamp there lay that man _dead_, with two big
wild cats by him that he’d killed: he’d split one on ’em open in the
head, and the axe lay buried in the neck of t’other; and there they all
lay dead together, all covered with blood, and sich a pitiful sight I
hain’t seen. But oh! how thick the wild cats was in that swamp, and you
could hear ’em squall in the night, as thick as frogs in the spring; but
ginerally they kept pretty still in the day time, and so we didn’t think
there was any danger till now; and we had to leave the dead man there
alone, only the dead wild cats was with him, and make tracks as fast as
we cleverly could, for home.”
A. “Did you ever go to meetings?”
P. “Sometimes I used to go to Quaker meetin’s with mistress, and there
we’d set and look first at one and then at t’other; and bi’m’by somebody
would up and say a word or two, and down he’d set, and then another, and
_down he’d set_. Sometimes they was the stillest, and sometimes the
noisiest meetin’s I ever see. One time, I remember, we went to hear a
new Quaker preacher, and there was a mighty sight of folks there; and I
guess we set still an hour, without hearin’ a word from anybody: and
that ’ere feller was a waitin’ for _his spirit_, I s’pose; and, finally
at last, an old woman gits up and squarks through her nose, and says
she, “Oh! all you young gentlemen beware of them ’ere young
ladies—Ahem!—Oh! all you young ladies beware of them ’ere young
gentlemen—Ahem—Peneroyal tea is good for a cold!” ☜ and down she sat,
and I roared right out, and I never was so tickled in all my life; and
the rest on ’em looked as sober as setten’ hens:—but I couldn’t hold in,
and I snorted out _straight_; and so mistress wouldn’t let me go agin.
And now you are a Domine, and I wants to ask you if the Lord inspired
her to git up, whether or no He didn’t forsake her soon arter she _got_
up?”
A. “Why, Peter, you’ve made the same remark about her, that a famous
historian makes about Charles Second, a wicked king of England. Some of
the king’s friends said, the Grace of God brought him to the throne—this
historian said, “if it _brought_ him to the throne it forsook him very
soon after he _got_ there.”
A. “Did you have any fun holydays, Peter.”
P. “Oh! yis, I and John used to be ‘mazing thick, and always together,
and always in mischief——One time, I recollect, when master was gone
away, we cut up a curious dido; master had a calf that was dreadful
gentle, and I and John takes him, and puts a rope round his neck, and
pulls his nose through the fence, and drove it full of pins, and he
blatted and blatted like murder, and finally mistress see us, and out
she come, and makes us pull all the pins out, one by one, and let him
go; she didn’t say much, but goes and cuts a parcel of sprouts, and I
concluded she was a goin’ to _tune_ us. But it come night, we went into
the house, and she was mighty good, and says she, ‘come boys, I guess
it’s about bed time;’ and so she hands us a couple of basins of samp and
milk, and we eat it, and off to bed, a chucklin’, to think we’d got off
as well as we had. But we’d no sooner got well to bed, and nicely
kivered up, when I see a light comin’ up stairs, and mistress was a
holdin’ the candle in one hand, and a bunch of sprouts in t’other; and
she comes up to the bed, and says she, ‘boys do you sleep warm? I guess
I’ll tuck you up a little warmer, and, at that, she off with every rag
of bed clothes, and if she _didn’t tune_ us, I miss my guess: and ‘now,’
says she, ‘John see that you be in better business next time, when your
dad’s gone; and _you nigger_, you good for nothin little rascal, you
make a pincushion of a calf’s nose agin, will ye?’ And I tell ye they
_set close, them ’ere sprouts_.”
A. “Well, Peter, you were going to talk about holydays, and I shouldn’t
think it much of a holyday to be ‘tuned with them sprouts.’”
P. “Oh! yis, Sir, we had great times every Christmas and New-Years; but
we thought the most of Sain’t Valentine’s Day. The boys and gals of the
whole neighborhood, used to git together, and carry on, and make fun,
and _sich like_. We used to play pin a good deal, and I and John used to
go snacks, and cheat like Sancho Panza; and there’s where we got the
pins to stick in the calf’s nose, I was tellin’ you on. We used to have
a good deal of _fun_ sometimes in _bilein eggs_. Mistress would send us
out to hunt eggs, and we’d find a nest of a dozen, likely, and only
carry in three or four, and lay the rest by for holydays. Well, we used
to bile eggs, as I was sayin’, and the boys would strike biled eggs
together, and the one that didn’t get his egg broke should have
t’other’s, for his’n was the best egg. Well, we got a contrivance, I and
John did, that brought us a fine bunch of eggs. John’s uncle was down
the country once, and he gin John a smooth marble egg: oh! ’twas a
dreadful funny thing, and I guess he’s got it yit, if he’s a
livin’—well, we kept this egg, year in, and year out, and we’d take it
to the holydays, and break all the eggs there, and carry home a nice
parcel, and have a good bunch to give away, and I guess as how the boys
never found it out.”
A. “Why, you had as good times as you could ask for, it seems to me.”
P. “Oh! yis, Sir, I see many bright days, and, when I was a boy, I guess
no feller had more fun than I did. And I mean, Domine, all through the
book, to tell things jist as they was, and when I was frolicsome and
happy I’ll say so, and when I was in distress, I’ll say so; for it seems
to me, a book ought to tell things jist as they be. Well, I had got
about to the end of my happy fun, for mistress, who was the best friend
I had, was took sick, and I expected her to die—and sure ’nough she did
die; and as I was kind ‘a superstitious, one night afore she died, I
heard some strange noises, that scart me, and made me think ’em
forerunners of mistress’ death; and for years and years them noises used
to trouble me distressedly. Well, mistress had been a good woman, and
died _like a christian_. When she thought she was a dyin’, she called up
her husband to her bed-side, and took him by the hand, and says, ‘I am
now goin’ to my God, and your God, and I want you to prepare to follow
me to heaven,’ and says ‘farewell;’ she puts her arms round his neck and
kisses him. Then she calls up her children, and says pretty much the
same thing to them; and then me, and she puts her arms round all our
necks, and kisses us all, and says ‘good bye dear children,’ and she
fell back into the bed and died, without a struggle or a groan.
“Oh! how I cried when mistress died. She had been kind to me, and loved
me, and it seemed I hadn’t any thing left in the world worth livin’ for;
put it all together, I guess I cried more’n a week ’bout it, and nothin’
would pacify me. I _loved_ mistress, and when I see her laid in the
grave it broke my heart. I have never in all my life with all my
sufferin’s had any affliction that broke me down as that did. I thought
I _should_ die: the world looked gloomy ‘round me, and I knew I had
nothin’ to expect from master after she was gone, and I was left in the
world friendless and alone. I had seen _some_, yis _many_, good days,
and I don’t believe on arth there was a happier boy than Peter Wheeler;
but when mistress closed her eyes in death, my sorrows begun; and oh!
the tale of ’em will make your heart ache, afore I finish, for all my
hopes, and all my fun, and all my happiness, was buried in mistress’
grave.”
A. “Well, Peter, I’m tired of writing, and suppose we adjourn till
to-morrow.”
P. “Well, Sir, that’ll do I guess—oh! afore I go, have you got any more
Friend of Man?”
A. “Oh! yes, and something better yet—here’s Thomson and Breckenridge’s
Debate.”
P. “Is that the same Thomson that the slavery folks drove out of the
country, and the gentleman of property and standing in Boston tried to
tar and feather?”
A. ☞“YES.” ☜
P. “Well, I reckon he must have rowed Breckenridge up Salt River.” ☜
A. “You’re right, Peter, and he left him on Dry Dock!!!”
P. “Good bye, Domine.”
A. “Good bye, Peter.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
Peter emancipated by his old Master’s Will—but is stolen and sold at
auction, and bid off by GIDEON MOREHOUSE ☜—Hagar tries to buy her
brother back—parting scene—his reception at his new Master’s—sudden
change in fortune—Master’s cruelty—the Muskrat skins—prepare to go
into “the new countries”—start on the journey—“incidents of travel” on
the road—Mr. Sterling, who is a sterling-good man, tries to buy
Peter—gives him a pocket full of “Bungtown coppers”—abuse—story of the
Blue Mountain—Oswego—Mr. Cooper, an Abolitionist—journey’s end—Cayuga
county, New York.
_Author._ “Well, Peter, I’ve come up to your house this morning, to
write another chapter in the book; and you can go on with your boots
while I write, and so we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
_Peter._ “Well, I felt distressedly when mistress died, and I cried, and
mourned, and wept, night and day. I was now in my eleventh year. While
she lived I worked in the house, but, as soon as she died, I was put
into the field; and so, on her death, I entered into what I call the
field of trouble; and now my story will show ye what stuff men and women
is made of.
“My master didn’t _own_ me, for I was made free by my old master’s
_will_, who died when I was _little_; and, in his will, he liberated my
mother, who had always been a slave and all her posterity; so that as
soon as old master died, I _was free by law—but pity me if slavery folks
regard law that ever I see_: ☜ for slavery is a tramplin’ on all laws.
Well, arter mother was free, she got a comfortable livin’ till her
death. In that will I was set free, but I lived with master till after
mistress’ death, and then I was _stole_, and in this way. Master got
uneasy and thought he could do better than to stay in that country, and
so he advertised his plantation for sale. It run somethin’ like this, on
the notice he writ:
‘FOR SALE,
‘A plantation well stocked with oxen, horses, sheep, hogs,
fowls, &c.—and ☞ one young, smart nigger, sound every way. ☜’
“You see they put me on the stock-list!! Well, when the day came that I
was to be sold, oh! how I felt! I knew it warn’t _right_, but what could
_I_ do? _I was a black boy._ They sold one thing, and then another, and
bim’bye they made me mount a table, and then the auctioneer cries out:—
‘Here’s a smart, active, sound, well trained, young nigger—he’s a first
rate body servant, good cook, and all that; now give us a _bid_:’ and
one man bid $50, and another $60; and so they went on. Sister Hagar, she
was four years older than me, come up and got on to the table with me,
(they dassent sell her,) and she began to cry, and sob, and pity me, and
says she, ‘oh Peter, you ain’t agoin’ way off, be ye, ‘mong the wild
Ingens at the west, be ye?’ You see there was some talk, that a man
would buy me, who was a goin’ out into York State, and you know there
was a _sight_ of Ingens here then, and folks was as ‘fraid to go to York
State then, as they be now to go to Texas—and so Hagar put her arms
round my neck, and oh! how she cried; $95 cries out one man; $100 cries
another, and so they kept a bidden’ while Hagar and I kept a cryin’ and
finally, ☞ GIDEON MOREHOUSE ☜ (oh! it fairly makes my blood run cold, to
speak that name, to this day,) well, he bid $110, and took me—master
made him promise to school me three quarters, or he’d not give him a
bill of sale; so he promised to do it, and I was his ☞ Property. ☜ And
that’s all a slaveholder’s word is good for, for he never sent me to
school a day in his life. Now, how could that man get any _right_ to me,
when he bought me as _stolen property_; or how could any body have even
a _legal right_ to me? why no more as I see than you would have to my
cow, if you should buy her of a man that stole her out of my barn. And
yit that’s the way that every slaveholder gits his right to every slave,
for a body must know that a feller _owns himself_. But I gin up long ago
all idee of slavery folks thinkin’ any thing ’bout _law_. ☜
“Well, I should think I stood on that table two hours, for I know when I
come down, my eyes ached with cryin’ and my legs with standin’ and tears
run down my feet, and fairly made a puddle there. Sister Hagar, she was
a very lovin’ sister, and she felt distressedly to think her brother was
a goin’ to be sold; and so she went round and borrowed and begged all
the money she could, and that, with what she had afore, made 110 Mexican
dollars, jist what I sold for, and she comes to my new master, and says
she, ‘Sir, I’ve got $110 to buy my brother back agin, and I don’t want
him to go off to the west, and wont you please Sir, be so kind, as sell
me back my brother?’ ‘Away with ye,’ he hollered, ‘I’ll not take short
of 150 silver dollars, and bring me that or nothin’;’ and so Hagar tried
hard to raise so much, but she couldn’t, and oh! how she cried, and come
to me and sobbed, and hung round my neck, and took on dreadfully, and
wouldn’t be pacified; and besides, mother stood by, and see it all, and
felt distressedly, as you know a mother must; but, what could _she_ do?
she was a _black woman_. ☞ Now, how would your mother feel to see you
sold into bondage? Why, arter mistress died, it did seem to me that
master become _a very devil_—he ‘bused me and other folks most
all-killin’ly. He married a fine gal as soon arter mistress’ death as
she would have him; and she had 400 silver dollars, and a good many
other things, and he took her money and went off to Philadelphia, and
sold some of his property, and the rest at this auction I tell on; and
then told her she must leave the premises, and another man come on to
’em, and she had to go; and she and Hagar lived together a good many
year, and got their livin’ by spinnin’ and weavin’, and she was _almost_
broken-hearted all the time; and when I got way off into the new
countries, I hears from Hagar, that she died _clear_ broken-hearted.
Well, I was sold a Friday, and master was to take me to Morehouse’s a
Sunday; Sunday come, and I was _obliged_ to go. I parted from mother,
and never see her agin, till I heard she was dead; but you must know how
I felt, so I won’t describe it. She felt distressedly, and gin me a good
deal of good advice, but oh! ’twas a sorrowful day for our little
family, I tell ye, Mr. L——.
“Well, I got to my new master’s, and all was mighty good, and the
children says, “Oh! dis black boy fader bought, and he shall sleep with
me;” and the children most worshipped me, and mistress gin me a great
hunk of gingerbread, and I thought I had the nicest place in the world.
But my joy was soon turned into sorrow. I slept that night on a straw
bed, and nothin’ but an old ragged coverlid over me; and next morning I
didn’t go down to make a fire, for old master always used to do that
himself; and so when I comes down, master scolds at me, and boxes my
ears pretty hard, and says, ‘I didn’t buy you to play the gentleman, you
black son of a bitch—I got ye to work.’
“Well, I began to grow home-sick; and when he was cross and abusive, I
used to think of mistress.
“Master was a cabinet-maker; and so next day, says he, ‘I’m agoin’ to
make you larn the trade,’ and he sets me to planin’ rough cherry boards;
and when it come night, my arms was so lame I couldn’t lift ’em to my
head, pushin’ the jack-plane; and he kept me at this cabinet work till
the first day of May, when I got so I could make a pretty decent
bedstead. I come to live with him the first of March, and now he begins
to fix and git ready for to move out to the new countries. Well, when we
was a packin’ up the tools, I happened to hit a chisel agin’ a hammer,
and dull it a little, and he gets mad, and cuffs me, and thrashes me
’bout the shop, and swears like a pirate. I says, ‘Master, I sartinly
didn’t mean to do it.’ ‘You lie, you black devil, you did,’ he says;
‘and if you say another word, I’ll split your head open with the
broad-axe.’ Well, _I felt bad ’nough_, but said nothin’. He advertised
all his property pretty much, and sold it at vendue; and now we was
nearly ready for a start. Master had promised to let me go and see
sister Hagar, and mother, a few days afore we started; and as he was
gone, mistress told me I might go. So I had liberty, and I detarmined to
use it. I had catched six large muskrats, and had the skins, and thinks
I to myself, what’s mine is _my own_; and so I went up stairs, and wraps
a paper round ’em, and flings ’em out the window, and puts out with them
for town, and sold ’em for a quarter of a dollar a piece. I went Friday;
but I didn’t see mother, for she was gone away, and Sunday I spent
visiting Hagar, and that night I got home. While I was gone they had
found out the skins was a missin’; and soon as I’d got home, I see
somethin’ was to pay; for master looked dreadful _wrothy_ when I come
in, and none of the family said a word, ‘how de,’ nor nothing, only
Lecta, one of the gals, asked me how the folks did, and if I had a good
visit; and she kept a talkin’, and finally, the old lady kind a scowled
at her, (you see the muskrat skins set hard on her stomach,) and
finally, master looked at me cross enough to turn milk sour, and says
he, ‘Nigger, do you know anything ’bout them skins?’ Says I, ‘No, Sir;’
and I lied, it’s true, but I was _scart_. And says he, ‘you lie, you
black devil.’ So I stuck to it, and kept a stickin’ to it, and he kept a
growing madder, and says he, ‘If you don’t own it, I’ll whip your guts
out.’ So he goes and gits a long whip and bed-cord, and that scart me
worser yit, and I _had to own it_, and I confessed I had the money I got
for ’em, all but a sixpence I had spent for gingerbread; and he searched
my pocket, and took it all away, and _half a dollar besides, that Mary
Brown gin me to remember her by_!! ☜—and then he gin me five or six cuts
over the head, and says he, ‘Now, you dam nigger, if I catch you in
another such lie, I’ll cut your dam hide off on ye;’ and then he drives
me off to bed, without any supper; and he says, ‘If you ain’t down
_airly_ to make a fire, I’ll be up arter ye with a raw hide.’
“Well, next day we went to fixin’ two kivered wagons for the journey;
and, arter we’d got all fixed to start, he sends me over to his mother’s
to shell some seed corn, upstairs, in a tub. Well, I hadn’t slept ’nough
long back, and so, in spite of my teeth, I got to sleep in the tub. He
comes over there, and finds me asleep in the tub, and he takes up a
flail staff and hits me over the head, and cussed and swore, and telled
his mother to see I didn’t git to sleep, nor have anything to eat in all
day. Well, arter he’d gone, the old lady called me down, and gin me a
good fat meal, and telled me to go up and shell corn as fast as I could.
Well, I did, and it come night—I got a good supper, and put out for
home; and I’ve always found the women cleverer than the men—they’re
kind’a tender-hearted, ye know.
“Well, we got ready, and off we started, and I guess ’twas the 9th of
May; and I drove a team of four horses, and it had the _chist_ of tools
and family; and he drove another team, full of other things, and his
brother-in-law, Mr. Abers, who was agoin’ out to larn the trade; and
Abers was mighty good to me.
“Well, we started for York State, and one night we stayed in Newark, and
I thought ’twas a dreadful handsome place; for you could see New York
and Brooklyn from there, and the waters round New York, that’s the
handsomest waters I ever see, and I have seen hundreds of harbors.
“Next day we got to a place called Long Cummin, and put up at a Mr.
Starling’s, and he kept a store and tavern, and they was fine folks. In
the evenin’ Mr. Starling comes into the kitchen where I was a sittin’ by
the fire, holdin’ one of the children in my lap, and he slaps me on the
shoulder, and master comes in too, and says he, ‘Morehouse, what will
you take for that boy, cash down? I want him for the store and tavern,
and run arrants, &c.’ Master says, ‘I don’t want to sell him.’—’Well,’
says Starling, ‘I’ll give you $200 cash in hand.’ Master says, ‘I
wouldn’t take 500 silver dollars for that boy, for I mean to have the
workin’ of that nigger myself.’ ‘Well,’ says Starling, ‘you’d better
take that, or you won’t git anything, for he’ll be running off
bi’m’bye.’ And I tell ye, I begun to think ’bout it myself, about that
time. Well, I went to bed, and thought about it, and wanted to stay with
Starling; and next mornin’ Mrs. Starling comes to master, and says she,
‘I guess you’d better sell that boy to my husband, for he’s jist the boy
we want to git:’ and says I, ‘Master, I wants to stay here, and I wish
you’d sell me to these ’ere folks;’—and with that he up and kicked me,
and says he, ‘If I hear any more of that from _you_, I’ll tie ye up, and
tan your black hide; and now go, and up with the teams.’ Well, when we
got all ready to start, I wanted to stay, and I boohooed and boohooed;
and Mr. Starling says to master, ‘I want your boy to come in the store a
minute;’ and I went in, and he out with a bag of Bungtown coppers, and
gin me a hull pocket full, and says he, ‘Peter, I wish you could live
with me, but you can’t; and you must be a good boy, and when you git to
be a man you’ll see better times, I hope;’ and I cried, and took on
dreadfully, and bellowed jist like a bull; for you know, when a body’s
grieved, it makes a body feel a good deal worse to have a body pity ’em.
I see there was no hope, and I mounted the box, and took the lines, and
driv off; but I felt as bad as though I had been goin’ to my funeral.
Oh! it seemed to me they was all happy there, and they was so kind to
me, and they seemed to be so good, it almost broke my heart: I had every
thing to eat—broiled shad, cake, apple pie, (I used to be a great hand
for apple pie,) rice pudden’ and raisins in it, beefsteak, and all that;
and the children kept a runnin’ round the table, and sayin’, ‘Peter must
have this, and Peter must have that;’ and I kept a thinkin’ as I drove
on, how they all kept flocking round me when we come away, and I cried
’bout it two or three days, and every time master come up, he’d give me
a lick over my ears, ‘cause I was a cryin’. If I should die I couldn’t
think of the next place where we stayed all night. We travelled thirty
miles, and the tavern keeper’s name was Henry Williams. Well, the day
arter, we had a very steep hill to go down, and the leaders run on fast,
and I couldn’t hold ’em, and when we got to the bottom, master hollered,
‘Stop!’ and up he come, and _whipped me dreadfully_, and _kicked me with
a pair of heavy boots_ so hard in my back, I was so lame I couldn’t
hardly walk for three or four days, and everybody asked me what was the
matter. The next place we stopped at, the tavern keeper’s folks was old,
and real clever; and master telled ’em not to let me have any supper but
buttermilk, and that set me to cryin’, and I boohooed a considerable;
and the darter says, ‘Come, mother, let’s give Peter a good supper, and
his master will pay for it, tu;’ and so they did; and as I was a settin’
by the fire, she axed me, and I telled her all ’bout how I was treated,
and says she, ‘Why don’t you run away, Peter? I wouldn’t stay with sich
a man: I’d run, if I had to stay in the woods.’ Next mornin’ the old man
was mad ’nough when he see the bill for my buttermilk, and swore a good
deal ’bout it. Next day we come to the ‘Beach Woods,’ and ’twas the
roughest road you ever see, and the wheels would go down in the mud up
to the hubs, then up on a log; and he’d make me lift the wheels as hard
as I any way could, and he wouldn’t lift a pound, and stood over me with
his whip, and sung out, ‘_lift, you black devil, lift_.’ And I did lift,
till I could fairly see stars, and go back and forth from one wagon to
t’other, he to whip, and I to lift; and so we kept a tuggin’ through the
day till night. That night we stayed to a _black man’s tavern_; and when
we come up, and see ’twas a black man’s house, master was mad ’nough;
but he couldn’t git any furder that night, and so he had to be an
abolitionist once in his life, any how!!! Well, he didn’t drive that
nigger round, I tell ye, he was on tu good footin’: he owned a farm, and
fine house, and we had as good fare there as any where on the road.
“The next day the goin’ was so bad we couldn’t git out of the woods, and
we had to stay there all night; and oh! what times we _did_ see; I
lifted and strained till I _was_ dead: and that night we slept in the
wagons—the women took possession of one, and we of t’other; and the
woods was alive with wolves and panthers; and such a howlin’ and
screamin’ you never heard; but we builds up a large fire, and that kept
’em off. We lay on our faces in the wagon, with our rifles loaded,
cocked and primed; and when them ’ere varmints howled, the horses
trembled so the harnesses fairly shook on ’em: but there warn’t any more
sleep there that night, than there would be in that fire.
“Next day we worried through, and stopped at a house, and got some
breakfast of bears’ meat and hasty pudden’; and it come night, we made
the ‘Blue Mountain;’ and on the top of it was some good folks; we stayed
there one night, and Mr. Cooper, the landlord, come out to the barn, and
axed me if I was _hired_ out to that man, or _belonged_ to him? ‘Well,’
said he, ‘if you did but know it, you are free now, for you are in a
free state, and it’s agin’ the law to bring a slave from another state
into this; and where be you goin’?’ ‘To Cayuga County,’ says I. ‘Well,
when you git there, du you show him your backsides, and tell him to help
himself.’
The next night we stayed in Owego; but I’m afore my story, for goin’
down the Blue Mountain next day, the leaders run, and I couldn’t hold
’em if I should be shot, and they broke one arm off of the block tongue.
Well, I stopped, and master comes runnin’ up, and he fell on, and struck
me, and mauled me most awfully; and jist then a man come up on
horseback, and says he to master, ‘If you want to _kill_ that boy, why
don’t ye beat his brains out with an axe and done with it—but don’t maul
him so; for _you_ know, and _I_ know, for I see it all myself, that that
boy ain’t able to hold that team, and I shouldn’t a thought it strange
if they had dashed every thing to pieces.’ Well, master was mad ’nough,
for that was a dreadful rebuke; and says he, ‘You’d better make off with
yourself, and mind your own business.’ The man says, ‘I don’t mean to
quarrel with you, and I won’t; but I think ye act more like a _devil_
than a _man_! ☜ So off he went; and _I love that man yit_!
Next night we stayed in Owego; and the tavern keeper, a fine man, had a
talk with me arter bed-time; and says he, ‘Peter, your master can’t
touch a hair of your head, and if you want to be free you can, for we’ve
tried that experiment here lately; and we’ve got a good many slaves free
in this way, and they’re doing well. But if you want to run away, why
_run_; but wait awhile, for you are a boy yit, and _there are folks in_
York State, mean ’nough to catch you and send you back to your master!’
☜ [3]
Footnote 3:
Yes, and there are folks, yes judges and dough faced politicians
enough in _the state now_ who would blast all the hopes that led a
poor slave on from his chains; and when he was just stepping across
the threshold of the temple of freedom, dash him to degradation and
slavery, and pollute that threshold with his blood. Until a fugitive
from tyranny shall be safe in the asylum of the oppressed and the home
of liberty, let us not be told to go to the south. And who are the men
who would, who _have_ done this? Certainly not _philanthropists_; for
the philanthropist loves to make his brother man happy, and will
always _strike_ for his freedom. Certainly not _Christians_; for it
was one of the most explicit enactments of God, when he established
his theocracy upon earth, and incorporated into the code of his
government, that “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant
that is escaped from his master unto thee.” (Deut. xxii. 15.) And can
a man, who respects and regards the laws of heaven, turn traitor to
God, and prostrate, at one fell swoop, all the claims of benevolence
the fugitive slave imposes, when he lifts his fetter-galled arms to
his brother, and cries, “Oh! help me to freedom—to liberty—to heaven?”
“Well, I parted from that man, and I resolved that I would run away, but
take his advice, and not run till I could clear the coop for good. Well,
we finally got to the end of our journey, and put up at Henry Ludlow’s
house, in Milton township, and county of Cayuga, and State of New York.”
A. “Well, Peter, I think we can afford to stop writing now, for I’m
fairly tired out. Good bye, Peter.”
P. “Good bye, Domine.”
* * * * *
As I came away from the lowly cottage of Peter Wheeler, and thought of
the toils and barbarities of a life of slavery, and returned to the
sweet and endearing charities of my own quiet home, tenderness subdued
my spirit; and I could not but repeat, with emotions of the deepest
gratitude, those sweet lines of my childhood:
‘I was not born a little slave,
To labor in the sun;
And wish I were but in my grave,
And all my labor done.’
Oh! I exclaimed as I entered my study, and sat down before a bright,
cheerful fireside, and was greeted with the kind look of an affectionate
wife, as the storm howled over the mountains, Oh! God made man to be
_free_, and he must be a _wretch_, and not a man, who can quench all
this social light forever. I hate not slavery so much for its fetters,
and whips, and starvation, as for the blight and mildew it casts upon
the social and moral condition of man. Oh! enslave not a soul—a
deathless spirit—trample not upon a mind, ’tis an _immortal thing_. Man
perchance may light anew the torch he quenches, but the soul! Oh!
tremble and beware—lay not rude hands upon God’s image there—I thought
of the vast territory that stretches from the Atlantic to the foot of
the Rocky Mountains, and from our Southern border to the heart of our
Capitol, as one mighty altar of Mammon—where so much social light is
sacrificed and blotted from the universe; where so many deathless
spirits, that God made free as the mountain wild bird, are chained down
forever, and I kneeled around my family altar, and I could not help
uttering a prayer from the depths of my soul, for the millions of _God’s
creatures, and my brethren_, who pass lives of loneliness and sorrow in
a world which has been lighted up with the Redeemer’s salvation. What a
scene for man to look at when he prays: A God who loves to make all his
creatures happy! A world which groans because man is a sinner! A man who
loves to make his brother wretched! Oh! thought I, if prayer can reach a
father’s ear to-night, one yoke shall be broken, and one oppressed slave
shall go free.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
They get into a wild country, “full of all kinds of varmints,” and begin
to build—Peter knocked off of a barn by his master—story of a
rattlesnake charming a child—Peter hews the timber for a new house,
and gets paid in lashes—Tom Ludlow an abolitionist—Peter’s friends all
advise him to run off—the fox-tail company, their expeditions on
Oneida Lake—deer stories—Rotterdam folks—story of a pain’ter—master
pockets Peter’s share of the booty and bounty—the girls of the family
befriend him—a sail on the Lake—Peter is captain, and saves the life
of a young lady who falls overboard, and nearly loses his own—kindly
and generously treated by the young lady’s father, who gives Peter a
splendid suit of clothes worth seventy dollars, and “a good many other
notions”—his master ☞ steals his clothes ☜ and wears them out
himself—Mr. Tucker’s opinion of his character, and Peter’s of his
fate.
_Author._ “Well, Peter, you found yourself in a wild country, out there
in Cayuga, I reckon.”
_Peter._ “You’re right, there’s no mistake ’bout _that_; most every body
lived in loghouses, and the woods was full of wild varmints as they
could hold; well, as soon as we’d got there, we went to buildin’ a log
house; for see master owned a large farm out there, and as soon as we
gits there we goes right on to work; we finally got the house up, and
gits into it, and durin’ the time I suffered _most unaccountably_. There
we went to buildin’ a log barn tu, and we had to notch the logs at both
ends to fay into each other; well, as I was workin’ on ’em, I got one
notched, and we lifted it up breast high to put it on, and he sees ’twas
a _leetle_ tu short, and nobody was to blame, and if any body ’twas
_him_, for he measured it off; but he no sooner sees it, than he drops
his end, and doubles up his fist, and knockes me on the temples, while I
was yit a holdin’ on, and down I went, and the log on me, and oh! how he
_swore_! well, it struck my foot, and smashed it as flat as a pancake,
and in five minutes it swelled up as big as a puffball, and I couldn’t
hardly walk for a week, and yit I had to be on the move all the time,
and he _cussed_ cause I didn’t go faster. When I gits up I couldn’t only
stand on one leg, but he made me stand on it, and lift up that log
breast high, but he didn’t lift a pound, but cried out ‘_lift, lift_,
you black cuss.’ Well, we got the logs up, and when we was a puttin’ the
rafters on, I happened to make a mistake in not gittin’ one on ’em into
the right place, and he knocked me off of the plate, where I was a
standin’ and I and the rafter went a tumblin’ together, down to the
ground. It hurt me distressedly, and I cried, but gits up, and says,
‘master, I thinks you treat me rather.’ ‘Stop your mouth, you black
devil, or I’ll throw these ’ere adz at your head;’ and I _had_ to shet
my mouth, _pretty sudden, tu_, and keep it shet, and he made me lift up
that rafter when I couldn’t hardly stand, and keep on to work; and there
I set on the evesplate a tremblin’ jist like a leaf, and every move he
made, I ’spected he’d hurl me off agin’, and his voice seemed like a
tempest—oh! how savage! But he didn’t knock me _off_ agin’—I had to
thatch that barn in the coldest kind of weather, with nothin’ but ragged
thin clothes on; and I used to git some bloody floggin’s, cause I didn’t
thatch fast enough.
“But I’ve talked long ’nough ’bout him, and jist for amusement, I’m a
goin’ to tell ye a story ’bout a rattlesnake, and you may put it in the
book, or not, jist as ye like.
“We lived, as I was a tellin’, in a dreadful wild country, and ’twas
full of all kinds of wild varmints—wolves, and panthers, and bears, was
’mazin plenty, and rattlesnakes mighty thick; and so one day, as we
comes into dinner, mistress seemed to be rather out of humor, and she
sets the baby down on the floor in a pet, and he crawls under the bed,
and begins to be very full of play. He’d laugh, and stick his little
hands out, and draw ’em back, and, as my place in summer was generally
on the outside door, on the sill, I happened to look under the bed, and
there I see a bouncin’ big rattlesnake, stickin’ his head up through a
big crack, and as the child draws his hands back, the snake sticks his
head up agin’. I sings out, with a loud voice, and says I, ‘master,
there’s a rattlesnake under the bed.’ ‘You lie,’ says he; and says I,
‘why master, only jist look for yourself,’ and, at that, mistress runs
to the bed, and snatches up the baby, and it screamed and cried, and
there was no way of pacifyin’ on it in the world. Well, master begins to
think I speaks the truth, and we out with the bed, and up with a board,
and there lay five bouncin’ rattlesnakes, and one on ’em had
twenty-three rattles on him; and so we killed all on ’em. Now that
rattlesnake had _charmed_ that child, and for days and days that child
would cry till you put it down on the floor, and then ‘twould crawl
under the bed to that place, and then ‘twould be still agin’; and it did
seem as though it would never forget that spot, nor snake, and it didn’t
till we got into the new house.
“Well, this winter we went to scorein’ and hewin’ timber for the new
house, and I followed three scores with a broad-axe, and the timber had
to be _hewed_ tu; and I was _so tired_ many a time, that I wished him
and his broad-axe 5000 miles beyond time. Well, I was a hewin’ one of
the plates, and as ’twas very long, I got one on ’em a leetle windin’
and master see it, and he comes along and hits me a lick with the sharp
edge of a square right atwixt my eyes, and cut a considerable piece of a
skin so it lopped down on my nose, and on a hewin’ I had to go when the
blood was a runnin’ down my face in streams; and, finally, one of the
men took a winter-green leaf, and stuck it on over the wound, and it
stopped bleedin’ and it healed up in a few days. This warn’t _much_, but
I tell it to show the natur’ of the man; for any body will abuse power,
if they have it to do just as they please.
“Young Tom Ludlow, one of the scorers, comes up to me, arter master was
gone, and says he, ‘Peter, why in the name of God don’t you show
Morehouse the bottoms of your feet? I’d be hung afore I’d stand it.’
‘Well, Tom,’ says I, ‘I wants to wait till I knows a little more of the
world, and then I’ll show him the bottoms of my feet _with a greasein’_.
Well, Tom laughed a good deal, and says he, ‘that’s _right_ Pete.’
“Tom was a great friend of mine, and he tried to get me to _run off_ for
a good while, and Hen, his brother, he was a good feller, and he tried
tu; and Miss _Sara_, their sister, she was a good soul, and every chance
she got, she’d tell me to run; and Mrs. Ludlow always told me I was a
fool for stayin’ with _sich a brute_; and every time I went there, I
used to git a piece of somethin’ good to eat, that I didn’t get at home;
and Mr. Humphrey’s folks was all the time a tryin’ to git me to run off.
‘Why,’ they say, ‘do you stay there to be beat, and whipt, and starved,
and banged to death? why don’t you run?’ The reply I used to make was,
wait till I git a leetle older, and I’ll clear the coop _for arnest_.
“Squire Whittlesey, that lived off, ’bout six miles, where I used to go
on arrants, says to me one day, ‘Peter, where did you come from?’ So I
ups and tells him all ’bout my history. Then says he, ‘Peter, can I put
any confidence in you?’ ‘Yis, Sir,’ says I; ‘you needn’t be afeared of
me.’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘you’re free by law, and I advise you to run; but,
wait a while, and don’t run till you can make sure work; and now mind
you don’t go away and tell any body.’
“And, finally, enemost every body says ‘_run Pete_, why don’t you run?’
But thinks I to myself, if I run and don’t make out, ‘twould be better
for me not to run at all, and so I’ll wait, and when I run I’ll run for
sartin.
“There wasn’t many slaves in that region, but a good many colored folks
lived there, and some on ’em was pretty decent folks tu. Well, we used
to have some _‘musements_ as well as many _sad things_; for arter all
Mr. L——, a’most any situation will let a body have some good things, for
its a pretty hard thing to put out _all a body’s_ joys in God’s world;
and then you see a slave enjoys a good many little kinda comforts that
free people don’t think on; and if a time come when he can git away from
his master, and forgit his troubles, why, he’s a good deal happier than
common folks. Well, we used to have some very bright times. We had a Fox
Tail Company out there of forty-seven men, and Hen Ludlow was captain,
and old boss was lefttenant, and I was private, and when we catched a
fox, then ’twas _hurrah boys_. Sometimes we used to have a good deal of
‘musements over there on Oneida Lake, and we used to have fine sport. We
used to start on a kind of a _fishin’ scrape_, and come out on a kind of
a _hunt_.
“Round that lake used to be a master place for deer. Oh! how thick they
was! We used to go over and fish in the arternoon and night; and goin’
cross the lake we’d use these ’ere trolein’ lines; and then we’d fish by
pine torches in the night, and they looked fine in the night over the
smooth water, all a glissenin’; and arter we’d done, we’d sleep on a big
island in the lake, near the outlet—they called it the “Frenchman’s
Island” then, and I guess there was nigh upon fifty acres on it. We’d
start the dogs airly next mornin’ on the north shore, out back of
Rotterdam, and they’d run the deer down into the lake, and then we’d
have hands placed along the shore with skiffs, to put arter ’em into the
water; and we’d have a sight of fun in catchin’ em, arter we’d got ’em
nicely a swimmin’.
“There was a lawless set of fellows round that ’ere Rotterdam, that’s a
fact; and when they heard our dogs a comin’ to the shore, they’d put out
arter ’em, and if they could git our deer first, they wouldn’t make any
bones on it: but they never got but _one_, for we used to have young
fellers in the skiff that understood their business, and they’d lift ’em
along some, I reckon.
“But we used to have the finest sport catchin’ fish there you ever
see—eels, shiners, white fish, pikes, and cat-fish, whappers I tell ye,
and salmon, trout, big fellers, and oceans of pumkin-seed, and pickerel,
and bass; and, while I think on it, I must tell ye one leetle scrape
there that warn’t slow.
“We put up a creek—I guess ’twas Chitining, but I ain’t sartin’—a
spearin’ these ’ere black suckers, and of course we had rifle, powder
and ball along. Well, we had mazin’ luck, and I guess we got three peck
basketfuls; and at last Tom Ludlow says, ‘I swear, Pete, don’t catch any
more.’
“‘Twas now ’bout midnight, and we went back to the fire we’d built under
a big shelvin’ rock, and pitched our camp there for the night; and this
was Saturday night, and we begins to cook our fish for supper. Arter
supper, while we was a settin’ there, some laughin’, some tellin’
stories, some singin’, and some asleep, the gravel begins to fall off of
the ledge over us, and rattle on the leaves.
“Well, we out and looked up, and see a couple of lights about three
inches apart, like green candles, a rollin’ round; and Hen Ludlow says,
‘That’s a _pain’ter_, by Judas;’ and I says, ‘If that’s a pain’ter, I’ve
got the death weapon here, for if I pinted it at any thing it must
come.’
“Bill, a leetle feller about a dozen year old, says he, ‘If I’d a known
this, I wouldn’t a come;’ and so he sets up the dreadfullest bawlin’ you
ever see.
“Hen says, ‘Peter, can you kill that pain’ter?’ ‘Yis,’ says I, ‘I can;
but you must let me rest my piece ‘cross your shoulder, so I shan’t
goggle, for it’s kind’a stirred my blood to see that feller’s
glisseners;’ and he did: so I took sight, as near as I could, right
atwixt them ’ere two candles, as I calls ’em, and fired, and the candles
was dispersed ’mazin quick. Then we harks, and hears a dreadful rustlin’
up there on the rock, and bim’bye a most dolefullest dyin’ kind of a
groan; but we hears nothin’ more, and so we goes under the rock to
sleep, glad ’nough to let all kinds of varmints alone, if they’d only
keep their proper distance; but mind you, we didn’t sleep any that
night. Come daylight, we ventured out, and up we goes on to the rock,
and there lay a mortal big pain’ter, as stiff as a poker. I’d hit him
right atwixt his candles, and doused his glims for him, in a hurry. Hen,
says he, ‘Now, Pete, you’ll have money ’nough to buy gingerbread with
for a good while.’ You see there was a big bounty on pain’ters. And I
says, ‘Hen, if my master was as clever to me as your dad is to you, I
should have money ’nough always.’ Hen says, ‘I shall have my part of the
bounty money, and Morehouse ought to let you have your’n.’
“Arter this, he takes his hide off, and stuffs it with leaves and moss;
and we gathers up our fish, tackle, and pain’ter, and starts for home,
Sunday mornin’.
“Well, when we got home, master and mistress was glad ’nough of the
fish, for they had company. Master’s rule was to give me half the fish I
got, (I’ll give the devil his due,) but this time I didn’t git any, and
I felt rather hard ’bout it, tu. Hen and Tom says, ‘Pete, you call up at
our house to-night, and we’ll settle with you for your share of the
bounty for the pain’ter.’
“So I goes to master, with my hat under my arm, and asks him, ‘If he’d
please to let me go up to Mr. Ludlow’s?’ ‘What do you want to go up to
Mr. Ludlow’s for?’ ‘To git my bounty money,’ says I. ‘No, you main’t go
up to Ludlow’s; but you may go and bring up my brown mare, and saddle
her; and du you du it quick, tu.’
“Well, I goes and does what he says; and he goes up to Mr. Ludlow’s, and
_gits my part of the bounty money, and pockets it up; and that’s all I
got for dousin’ his glims_! ☜
“While he was gone, Lecta, my friend, comes, and says, ‘Peter, where’s
father gone?’
“‘To git more pain’ter money,’ says I, ‘that I arns for him nights.’
“‘I think dad’s got money ’nough,’ says she, ‘without stealin’ your’n,
that you arn nights off on that Oneida Lake.’
“I says, with tears in my eyes, ‘I know it’s hard, Lecta; but as long as
master lives, I shan’t git anything but a striped back; and what I arns
nights, he puts in his own pockets.’
“‘I know it’s hard, Peter,’ says Lecta; ‘but there’s an end comin’ to
all this; and dad won’t live _always, perhaps_.’ And I’d often heard her
say, arter master had been abusin’ on me, ‘I declare, I shouldn’t be a
bit astonished at all, to see the devil come, and take dad off,
bodily—_so there_.’
“Well, while I stood there a cryin’, out comes Julia, and asks me what I
was a cryin’ at? ‘What’s the matter?’ says she.
“‘Matter ’nough,’ says I, ‘for master takes all I can arn days and
nights, tu.’
“‘What?’ says Julia, ‘dad han’t gone up to Ludlow’s arter your pain’ter
money?’
“‘Yes he has,’ I says.
“‘Well,’ says she, ‘it’s no mor’n you can expect from a dumb old hog.’ ☜
Now, that speech come from a _darter_, and a pretty smart darter tu, and
it was jist coarse ’nough language to use ’bout master, tu; but Miss
Julia never was in the habit of makin’ coarse speeches. ‘But never mind,
Peter,’ says she, ‘’twill be time to take wheat down to Albany, pretty
soon, and then you’ll git pay for your pain’ter.’
“‘Yis,’ says I, ‘and I’ll git pay for a good many other things, tu.’
☞ “Now, Mr. L——, I wants to ax you what reason, or right, there is, in
the first place, of stealin’ a man’s body and soul, to make a slave on
him? ☜ _and then for stealin’ his money he gits for killin’ pain’ters,
nights_?
☞ But the slave ain’t a _man_, and can’t be, a slave is a _thing_; he’s
jist what the slave laws calls him, ☞ a chattel, property, jist like a
_horse_, and like a horse _he can’t own the very straw he sleeps on_.
But, never mind, ☞ there’s a judgment day a comin’ bim’by. ☜ ‘And when
he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them.’ You recollect you
preached from that text a Sunday or two ago, and said, if my memory
sarves me right, that, at the judgment day, God would require of every
slaveholder in the universe, the blood of every soul he bought, and
sold, and owned, _as property_; for ’twas trafficin’ in the image of the
great God Almighty. Ah! that’s true, and I felt so when you said it.”
A. “Why, Peter, it appears that your master was not only _cruel_, but
_mean_.”
P. “_Mean_? I guess he was, why, I’ll tell you a story, and when I git
to the end on it, you’ll see what mean, means:—
“We lived near the Lake, and master had a fine sail boat that cost a
good deal of money, and the young folks round there, that felt pretty
smart, used to sail out in it now and then, and I was captain. One day
there comes four couples, and they wanted to sail out on the Lake with
our gals, and so out we went. Susan Tucker, one of the gals, was a
high-lived thing, and the calkalation was, to go down about three miles,
and the wind was quarterin’ on the larboard side. Well, as I sat on the
starn of the boat, she comes, and sets down on the gunnel, and I says,
‘Susan, that ain’t a very fit place for you to set;’ for the wind was
kind a bafflin’. She replies, ‘I guess there ain’t any danger,’ and
she’d no sooner got the words out of her mouth, than there come a sudden
flaw in the wind, and that made the main boom jibe, and it struck her
overboard, and on we went, for we had a considerable headway,—well, I
let up into the wind, and hollered out, ‘ain’t any body a goin’ to
help?’ and there set her _suitor scart to death_, and all the rest on
’em. Well, I off with all my rags but my pantaloons, and I kept them on
out of modesty till the last thing, and then I slipped out on ’em, like
a black snake out of his skin, and put out. I swam, I guess, ten rods,
and come to where the blubbers come up, and lay on my face, and looked
down into the water to see when she come up; and pretty soon I see her a
comin’, and she come up within a foot I guess of the top, some distance
from me, and sallied away agin. I keep on the look out, and pretty soon
she comes up agin, and as soon as I see, I dove for her, and went down I
guess six feet; and my plan was to catch her round the neck, and when I
did, she seized her left arm round my right shoulder, and hung tight. I
fetched a sudden twist, and brought her across my back, and riz up to
the top of the water, and started for the shore, and I had one arm and
two legs to work with, and she grew heavier and heavier, and I looked to
the shore with watery eyes, I tell you. Finally I got all beat out, and
my stomach was filled with water, and I thought I must give up. Well,
while I stood there a treadin’ water a minute, I thinks I’d better save
myself and let her go, and so not both be drowned. I hated to, but I
shook her off my back, and she hung tight to my shoulder, and that
brought me on my side; and I kept one arm a goin’ to keep us up, and
cast my eyes ashore, and gin up that we must go down, and jist that
minute a young man come swimmin’ along, and sings out, ‘Pete, where is
she?’ and I answers, as well as I could, for I was now a sinkin’, and
she was out of sight of him, and says, ‘under me,’ and he dove, and
catched her under his arm, and with such force, it broke her loose from
me, and off he put for the shore; and I gin up that _I_ must sink, and
so down I begins to go, and I recollect I felt kind a happy that Susan
was safe, if _I_ was a goin’ to die, for I loved her, and jist then
another man come along, and hollers out, ‘Pete, give me hold of your
hand.’ I couldn’t speak, but I hears him, and I knew ’nough to reach out
my hand, and he took hold on it, and by some means, or other, foucht me
on to his back out of the water, and finally got me safe ashore: and
sure ’nough, there we all was, and the first thing I knew, he run his
finger down my throat, and that made me fling up Jonah, and when I had
hove up ’bout a gallon of water, I begins to feel like Peter agin, and I
sees I was as naked as an eel, and I set still in the sand. Well, I
looked out on the Lake, and there was the boat, and this feller, Susan’s
suitor, was a rale goslin’, and so scart, that he couldn’t even jump
into the water arter his lady love; and there she was a rockin’ in the
troughs, (_i.e._ the boat,) and one of these same young men that came
out arter us, swum out for her, and catched hold of her bow chain, and
towed her ashore; and I gits my clothes out, for up to this time I felt
egregious streaked, all stark naked there, and I on with my clothes, and
goes to Susan, and she was a comin’ tu, and as soon as she could speak,
she says, ‘where’s Peter?’ I says, ‘I’m here, Miss Susan;’ and she says,
‘and so am I, and if it hadn’t a been for you, I should have been in the
bottom of that Lake.” And while we was a talkin’ there, who should come
up but her father, and he says, ‘my dear child how happened all this?’
“‘Pa,’ says she, ‘it all happened through my carelessness; Peter warned
me of my danger, but I didn’t mind him, and I fell off.’
“‘Who saved you out of the water?’ says Mr. Tucker; ‘that poor black boy
there, that’s whipped and starved and abused so,’ says Susan; then she
turns round to me, still cryin,’ and says ‘Peter, have you hurt you
much, my dear fellow?”
“‘No, not much, I guess, Miss Susan,’ says I. Mr. Tucker then says,
‘come darter, can you walk as fur as the carriage?’
“‘Yes, Sir,’ says she, ‘and Peter must go along with us, tu—come Peter,
come along up to our house.’ ‘Yes, Peter, come along,’ says Mr. Tucker,
a cryin’. ‘Yes, Sir,’ says I, as soon ever as I’ve locked the boat;’ and
he says, ‘if you’ll _run_, I’ll wait for you.’ Well, I did run, and lock
the boat, and put the key in my pocket, and come back to the carriage,
and says he, ‘Git in, Peter.’
“‘No, Sir,’ says I, ‘I’ll _walk_.’
“‘Oh! Pa,’ says Susan, ‘have Peter git in, I want him with us;’ and,
finally, I got in, and then Mr. Tucker drives on up to his house. When
we got opposite master’s, Mr. Tucker calls out to him, and says, ‘I want
to take your boy up to my house a leetle while;’ and he hollered out
‘what’s the matter?’ So Mr. Tucker tells him all ’bout it; and says he,
“‘Nigger, where’s the boat?’
“‘Locked, Sir.’
“‘Where’s the key?’
“‘In my pocket, Sir.’
“‘Let’s have it!’
“So I handed it out, and when all on us felt so kind’a tender, and his
speakin’ _so cross_, and not carein’ anything for it, oh! it did seem
that he was worse than ever. ☜
“‘Go,’ says he, ‘but be back in season.’ Oh! how stern! Well, we comes
to Mr. Tucker’s house, and Mrs. Tucker cried and wrung her hands in
agony; and Rebecca, her sister, cried and screamed, and Edwin, her
brother, made a dreadful _adoo_; and Susan says, ‘why, don’t be
frightened so, for I ain’t hurt any;’ and so we sat down and told all
about it, and talked a good while, and Susan said, ‘but I shall always
remember that I owe my life to Peter, and he’s my noble friend.’ Well,
pretty soon supper was ready; we all sot down, I ‘mong the rest,
although I was a _poor black outcast_—and Susan, she sat down and
drinked a cup of tea, and they wanted her to go to bed, but she
wouldn’t, and she axed me if I wouldn’t have _this_, and if I wouldn’t
have _that_; and, in fact, the whole family seemed to feel grateful, and
I think I never enjoyed myself better than I did at that table. I didn’t
think so much of the _victuals_ as I did of the _folks_.
“Well, arter supper Mrs. Tucker says, ‘well, Susan, what you goin’ to
_give Peter_?’
“‘Why, Ma, anything that Pa will let me.’ ‘Pa says anything, my dear,
that Peter wants out of the store, you may give him.’
“So Pa hands Susan the key and says, ‘go into the store and give him a
good handkerchief, and I’ll be in by that time.’ So we went in, and she
gin me the handkercher, and then Mr. Tucker come in, and took down two
pieces of handsome English broad-cloths,—oh! how they shone! one piece
was green, and t’other was blue, and says he, ‘Peter, you may have a
suit off of either of them pieces you like best, from head to foot.’
“I says, ‘I can’t pay for ’em, and master would _thrash me_, if he knew
I bought ’em.’
“Mr. Tucker says, ‘you’ve paid for ’em already, and as much agin more;’
and I recollect he said some Bible varse, ‘as ye did it unto one of the
least of mine, ye did it unto me.’ And so he measured off two and a half
yards of blue for a coat, and one and a quarter green for pantaloons,
and picks me out a handsome vest pattern, and three and a half yards of
fine Holland linen for a shirt, and threw in the trimmin’s—and then
picks me out a beaver hat, marked $7 50—then a pair of shoes, with
buckles, and turns round and says, ‘now, Susan, you take these things up
to the house;’ and then he gin me a new handsome French crown, and
filled all my pockets with raisins, and so we went into the house, and
Mrs. Tucker measures me; and Mr. Tucker, says he, ‘now, Peter, you’d
better run home, and say nothin’ to master and mistress, but come up
here next Sunday morning, airly.’
“And so I puts out for home, and next day Susan sends for ‘Lecta and
Polly, our gals, and they stayed there three days, and had what I calls
an abolition meetin’; and, arter the old folks was gone to bed one
night, ‘Lecta comes to me and says, ‘Peter, you’ve got a dreadful
handsome suit made:’ and Polly says, ‘yis, that’s what we’ve been up to
Mr. Tucker’s so long about,—we’ve got ’em all done, and a fine Holland
shirt for you, all ruffled off for you round the bosom and wristbands,
and we want to go up to Ingen Fields to meetin’, next Sunday, and I’ll
ask father to let you drive the iron grays for us.
“Well, Sunday comes, and I goes and tackles up the grays and carriage,
and ’twas a genteel establishment, and drove up to the door, and ‘Lecta
tells me to drive up to Mr. Tucker’s, and change my clothes, and leave
my old ones up there; and so I drove up to Mr. Tucker’s in a hurry, and
went in, and Mrs. Tucker, says she, ‘now Peter, wash your hands and
feet, and face clean;’ and I did. And Mr. Tucker says, ‘now, Peter, comb
your hair;’ and I did. Well, he gin me a comb, and so I combed it as
well as I could, for _’twas all knots_; and then Mrs. Tucker opened the
bedroom door, and says she ‘Peter, now go in there and dress yourself;”
and I did; and out I come, and she made me put on a pair of
clock-stockin’s, and she put a white cravat round my neck; and Mr.
Tucker says, ‘now, Peter, stand afore the glass;’ and I did; and then I
got my beaver on, and there I stood afore the glass, and strutted like a
crow in a gutter, and turned one way and then t’other, and twisted one
way and then t’other, and I tell you I felt fine; and Susan says, ‘Pa,
there’s one thing we’ve forgot.’ So she runs into the store and bring
out a pair of black silk gloves, and hands ’em to me, and says, ‘be
careful on ’em, won’t you, Peter.’ Then I was fixed out, and ’twas the
finest suit I ever had. It cost above seventy dollars.
“Well, I took the gals in; and drove over, and took our gals in, and off
we started for Ingen Fields. The old folks had gone on afore us in the
gig, and we come up and passed ’em, and _if master didn’t stare at me,
I’ll give up_.
“Arter we got there, I hitches my horses, and starts, and walks along to
the ‘black pew,’ ☜ as straight as a candle; and I out with my white
handkercher, and wipes the seat off, and down I sot; and I tell you,
_there warn’t any crook in my back that day_.
“And master set, and viewed me from head to foot, all day; and I don’t
b’lieve he heard one single bit of the sarmint all day—he seemed to be
thunderstruck. Well, arter meetin’ we drove home, and I shifts my
clothes, and puts the team out, and comes into the house; and master
gives me a dreadful cross look, and says, ‘Nigger, where did you git
them clothes?’
“‘Mr. Tucker gin ’em to me, Sir,’ I says.
“‘What did Mr. Tucker give ’em to you for?’ he says, in rage.
“‘For savin’ Susan’s life, Sir,’ I answers.
“‘_Susan’s life?_ you _devil_! What right has Mr. Tucker got to give
_you such_ a suit of clothes, without my liberty? Hand me that coat.’
And I did, but I felt bad.
“Well, he took it, and held it out, and says he, ‘Why, nigger, that’s a
better coat than I ever had on my back, _you cuss—you_;’ and at that he
took it, and flung it on the floor in rage. I picks it up, and hands it
to ‘Lecta, and she puts it in her chist. I had the pleasure of wearing
that coat one Sunday more, and then ☞ he took it, and wore it out
himself! ☜
“The gals says, ‘Why, father, _how can_ you take away that coat?’
“‘Shet _your_ heads, or you’ll git a tunin’.’
“‘Well, father, but how _’twill look_—and what will _Mr. Tucker’s folks
think of you_?’
“‘Shet your dam heads, or I’ll take away the rest of his clothes; for
he’s a struttin’ about here as big as a meetin’ house. I’ll do as I
please with my _nigger’s things_! ☞ He’s my property!! ☜ It’s a dam pity
if _my nigger’s things_ don’t belong to me!’[4] ☜
Footnote 4:
And with the same propriety, might he say, that his nigger’s _soul_
belonged to him; or, if he possessed salvation by Christ, that his
title to heaven belonged to him. With such premises, he could
logically prove that he could _kill_ his slave, and do no wrong, as he
would innocently kill his ox, or other property. Here we see the
legitimate and necessary inference of this barbarous, inhuman and
wicked position, that it is right, under certain circumstances, to
_own property in man_. A man is not _safe_, as long as he acknowledges
this right; for if he believes it _ever_ can exist, he will _exercise_
it as soon as circumstances are favorable, and become one of the most
barbarous and abandoned of slaveholders in an hour.]
“Now, Mr. L——, he robbed me of _myself_, then of my _money_, and then of
my _clothes_, that a good man gin me for savin’ his darter’s life. Now
you see what _mean, means_.
“One day, arter this, I met Mr. Tucker in the road, and says he, ‘Well,
Peter, how do you git along?’ ‘Oh! Sir, well ’nough; only master has
took my clothes away you gin me, and is a wearin’ them out himself.’
“‘What!’ says he, ‘not them clothes I gin you?’
“‘Oh! yis, Sir; and I thinks it’s cruel to me, and insultin’ you most
distressedly.’
“‘Well,’ said Mr. Tucker, ‘he ought to be hung up by the tongue atwixt
the heavens and ’arth, till he is _dead_, DEAD, DEAD, without any mercy
from the Lord or the devil.’” ☜
A. “Well, Peter, I’ve seen cruel and _mean_ things, but that is without
exception the meanest thing I ever heard of in my life. Where do you
suppose the wretch has gone to, Peter?”
P. “He has gone unto the presence of a God, who hates oppression and
oppressors with all his heart; and _God will take care of_ him, I tell
you, and _he’ll do it right tu_.”
A. “Yes, Peter, such men are rebels against Jehovah’s government, and
it’s absolutely necessary for God to punish them, unless they reform;
it’s as necessary for God to send such men to hell in the world to come,
as it is for us to bang a murderer, or put him in prison. And, Peter,
which had you rather be, the slaveholder or the slave?”
P. “Domine, I’d rather be the _most miserablest slave in the univarse_,
here and herearter, than to be the _best slaveholder_ in creation; for I
wouldn’t, under any circumstances, _own a human bein’_. The sin lies
more in the ownin’ property in a human bein’, than in the ‘busin’ on
’em, ‘cordin’ to my way of thinkin’.”
A. “You’re _right_, Peter; and there will be no progress made in the
destruction of slavery, until you destroy the right of property in
man!!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV.
An affray in digging a cellar—Peter sick of a typhus fever nine
months—the kindness of “the gals”—physician’s bill—a methodist
preacher, and a leg of tain’ted mutton—“_master shoots arter him_”
_with a rifle!!_—a bear story—where the skin went to—a glance at
religious operations in that region—“a camp meeting”—Peter tied up in
the woods in the night, and “expects to be eat up by all kinds of wild
varmints”—master a drunkard—owns a still—abuses his family—a story of
blood, and stripes, and groans, and cries—Peter finds ‘Lecta a friend
in need—expects to be killed—Abers intercedes for him, and “makes it
his business”—Mrs. Abers pours oil into Peter’s wounds—Peter goes
back, and is better treated a little while—master tries to stab him
with a pitchfork, and Peter nearly kills him in self-defence—tries the
rifle and swears he will end Peter’s existence now—but the ball don’t
hit—the crisis comes, and that night Peter swears to be free or die in
the cause.
_Author._ “I’ve come up again, Peter, to go on with our story, and you
can drive the peg while I drive the quill.”
_Peter._ “I had as many friends in that region as about any other man, I
reckon, and if it hadn’t been for _one man_, I should have got along
very well; but oh! how cruel master was. As I was a tellin’ on you, we
went on buildin’ the frame house, and in diggin’ the cellar. I was a
holdin’ the scraper and master was drivin’, and a root catched the
scraper and jerked me over under the horse’s heels, and he took the but
end of his whip, and mauled me over the head; and says I, ‘master, I
hold the scraper as well as I can, and I wish you’d git somebody that’s
stronger than me, to do it.’
“‘Come up here,’ says he, as he jumps up out of the cellar, with a
halter in his hand, ‘and I’ll give you somebody that’s strong ’nough for
you.’ Well, I got up, and he makes me strip, and hug an apple tree, and
then ties me round it, and whips me with his ox-goad, while I was stark
naked, _till he’d cut a good many gashes in my flesh, and the blood run
down my heels in streams_; and then he unties me, and _kicks me down
into the cellar_ to hold scraper agin. ☜
“At that, one of his hired men, who was a shovelin’, says, ‘Morehouse,
you are too savage, to use your boy so, I swear!!’ Well, one word
brought on another, till master orders him off of his premises. ‘Out of
the cellar,’ says he, in a rage, for jist so soon as he reproved him, he
biled like a pot, for you know if a body’s doin’ wrong, it makes ’em mad
to be told on it. Well, out he got, and says he, as he jumps out on the
bank, ‘now, Morehouse, if you are _a man_, come out here tu.’ But master
darn’t do that, for he was a small man. ‘Then pay me!’ and master says,
‘I’ll be dam’d if I do.’ ‘Well,’ says the man, ‘I’ll put you in a way to
pay me afore night.’ So it comes night, master rides up and pays him,
and tries to _hire him agin_; but says he, ‘I wouldn’t work for sich a
barbarous wretch, if you’d give me fifty dollars a day.’[5]
Footnote 5:
There are certain _principles_, developed in these facts, which the
reader ought to notice. Abolitionists meet with opposition from the
slaveholder, and his abettors, for the same reason that this man was
cursed by the tyrant who had just lashed Peter! He was angry with the
man, _because he told him the truth_. It excited all the malignity of
a demon in his breast to be rebuked. He knew he was doing _wrong_, and
_conscience_ made the reproof a barbed arrow to his soul, and he raved
_because his pride was mortified_, and he felt disturbed.—So is it
now! The Abolitionists are opposed for the same reason.—They are the
first body of men in America, who have depicted slavery—they have
dissected the fiendish monster, and brought down the contempt of the
world, who love freedom, upon the head of the southern slaveholder.
They have poured light, like a stream of fire, upon the whole South,
and disturbed the consciences of the buyers and sellers of souls. And
we see the malignity of hell itself boiling out of the southern mouth,
and southern press; and politicians and religious (?) editors, and
ministers of the gospel, are all _pressed_ into the vile and low-lived
business of bolstering up tyrants upon their unholy thrones, and
propping up the darkest, and blackest system of oppression that ever
existed on earth. These men have not been needed _before_, their help
was not called for;—for nothing was being done to break down slavery.
The Colonization Society, met with a different fate at the South, and
for this reason it was sustained by all slaveholders who knew the
policy. It was the best friend the slaveholder ever had—it kept the
consciences of the tyrants quiet—it was a healing plaster just large
enough for the sore.—And some of the most distinguished slaveholders
in the United States, some of them officers of the American
Colonization Society, and the most liberal donors of its funds, told
the author of this note, that, _they considered the Society the
firmest support slavery had in the world_, for ‘twould keep the North
and the South quiet about _their peculiar institutions_. “The
Society,” said one of them, who was at the time a member of the United
States Senate, “_has carried away about three thousand or four
thousand niggers in twenty years, and the increase has been over half
a million. Now, Sir, I can afford, on selfish principles, to give ten
thousand dollars a year to that Society, rather than have it go down;
for when it goes down, slavery will go with it, and it will go down
just as soon as it loses the confidence of the people of the
North!!!!!!!_ ☜ Very good reason why slaveholders should support
Colonization!!!!!! There is not the fain’test doubt in creation, that
the great mass of the South wish slavery, under the circumstances, to
continue; and they make war against the Abolitionists because they
want it to stop, and are doing all they can to put it down; (for this
is the definition of an Abolitionist;) just as the drunkard makes war
upon the Temperance Reformation, because it strikes a blow at his
idol; just as infidels oppose revivals, because they disturb their
consciences, and make infidelity contemptible. Now, I hesitate not to
say, that no system of principles, or measures, will ever do away with
slavery, except that system which meets with the determined, and
combined opposition of slaveholders, and those who are interested in
sustaining the system. For the system that destroys slavery, must aim
a deadly blow at selfishness, and this will excite malignity, and this
will show itself out in the gall that is poured upon Abolitionists,
from the cowardly and sophistical apologies of Pro-Slavery Princeton
Divines, down to the hard, but not convincing arguments of brick-bats.
The truth is, that the South oppose Abolition, not because “it has put
back emancipation,” as the New York Observer says,—for, in that case,
its champions would be found south of “Mason’s and Dixon’s line,”—but,
because Abolition has a direct, and decided, and tremendous influence
in hurling the system of heathenish, and cruel oppression to the
ground. _But there are some, a noble, an immortal few, hearts in the
South_ who are waiting for the consolation of Africa, who bless God
for every prayer we offer, and for every convert we gain. And the
prayers of every man, and woman, in the slaveholding states, who longs
for the freedom of the slave, follow the Abolitionists, and contribute
to the spread and triumph of our principles.
“By being exposed, and abused, and whipped, and almost starved and
frozen to death, through the winter, in the spring I was took down with
the typhus fever, and lay on a bed of straw, behind the back kitchen
door, six months, almost dead; and the doctor come to see me every day,
and finally says he to master, ‘if you want that boy to git well, you
must give him a decenter place to lay than all that comes tu, for
’tain’t fit for a sick dog.’
“So the gals moved me up stairs, in their arms, and there I lay. They
was kind to me durin’ my sickness, but master was very indifferent, and
didn’t seem to care whether I lived or died. Well, the gals, one
pleasant day in the fall, took me in their arms, and carried me down
stairs, and put me in a little baby wagon, and drew me ’bout twenty rods
and back, and then took me up stairs agin’, oh! how tired I was, and
they did that every day, till I got so I could walk about, and I shall
always remember it in ’em, tu.
“Well, in ’bout two months arter this, I got so I could work a leetle,
and one day Doctor Walker comes in with his bill of seventy odd dollars;
and master says he, ‘_I wish the dam_ _nigger had died, and then I
shouldn’t had this money to pay._’ Master payed him off arter some
_jawing_; but oh! how savage master was to me arter this![6]
Footnote 6:
One would think that so long a time for reflection, would have
softened the poor tyrant’s heart—but it is no easy matter to eradicate
the tyranny which is fostered in the bosom of the possessor of
irresponsible power.
“Well, next Sunday a Methodist preacher comes along, and was agoin’ to
preach at Ingen Fields. And so he and his wife come down to dine with
us, and we cooked a leg of mutton we had on hand, for dinner, and got it
on the table, and all sets down, and master begins to cut it, and come
tu, ’twas distressedly tain’ted round the bone, and smelled bad.
“Well, master orders it off the table; and I goes and knocks over five
chickens, and dresses ’em, and friccazeed them in a hurry, and got ’em
on to the table; and I guess we didn’t hinder ’em mor’n half an hour.
“Well, nobody could stand the mutton, it stunk so; but master tells the
folks to give me nothin’ else to eat; and I eat, and eat away upon it,
day after day, as long as I could; and then I’d tear off bits, and hide
’em in my bosom, and carry ’em out, and fling ’em away, to git rid on
it; and one night, when it stunk so bad it fairly knocked me down, I
takes the _whole frame_ and leaves for the lot with it, and buries it;
and thinks, says I, _now_ the old mutton leg won’t trouble me any
more.—— ☞ But it happened, that a few days arter this, that we was
ploughin’ that lot, and he was holdin’ the plough; and fust he knows, up
comes the mutton leg, and fust he looks at it, and then at me, and takes
it up, and scrapes the dirt off on it—and oh! how he biled!—and says he,
‘You black devil, what did you hide that mutton for?’ And he took the
whip out of my hand, and cut me with it a few times; and says I,
‘Master, I won’t stand this;’ and off I run towards the house, and he
arter, as fast as we could clip it; and he into the house and gits the
rifle, and I see it, and oh! how I cleared the coop into the lots; and
as I was a goin’ over a knoll, he let strip arter me, and I hears the
ball whistle over my head. I tell ye, how it come!—and I scart enemost
to death.
“Well, I wanders round a while, my heart a pittepattin’ all the time,
and finally, comes back to the house. But I see him a comin’ with the
rifle agin’ as I got into the lot, and I fled for shelter into the shell
of an old hemlock-tree left standin’, (you’ve seen such arter a lot is
burnt,) and he see me, and he let strip agin’, and whiz went the ball
through the old shell, about a foot over my head, for I’d squat down,
and if I hadn’t he’d a fixed me out as stiff as a maggot. He comes up,
and sings out, ‘You dead, nigger?’ ‘Yis, Sir.’
“‘Well, what do ye speak for, then, you black cuss?’ Then he catches
hold on me, and drags me out, and beats me with a club, till _I was dead
for arnest, enemost_; and then, lookin’ at the hole in the tree, he
turns to me, lyin’ on the ground, and says, ‘Next time I’ll bore a hole
through _you_, you black son of a bitch. Now drive that team, and
straight, tu, or you’ll catch a junk of lead into you.’
“Well, I hobbled along, and we ploughed all day; and come night, I
boohooed and cried a good deal, and the children gits round me, and
asks, ‘What’s the matter, Peter?’ I tells ’em, ‘Master’s been a poundin’
on me, and then he shot arter me, and I don’t know what he will do
next.’ Julia speaks, and says, ‘I declare it’s a wonder the devil don’t
come and take father off.’
“He orders the family not to give me any supper; but arter he’d gone to
bed, the gals comes along, and one on ’em treads on my toe, and gin me
the wink, and I know’d what it meant; and so I goes into the wood-house,
and finds a good supper laid on a beam, where I’d got many a good bite;
and went off to bed with a heavy heart.
“But, as I hate to be a tellin’ bloody stories all the time, I’ll jist
give you a short one ’bout a bear; for I was as mighty a hand for bears
as ever ye see.
“One night I went along arter my cows into the woods, a whistlin’ and a
singin’ along, with the rifle on my shoulder, a listenin’ for my
cow-bell, but couldn’t hear nothing on it; and so on I goes a good ways,
and hears nothin’ yit; and I’d hearn old-fashioned people say, you must
clap your ear down on the ground to hear your cow-bell, and I did, and I
hears it away towards the house; and so for home I starts; and it gits
to be kind’a duskish; and the first thing I hears or sees, was right
afore me, a great _big black bear_, that riz right up out of the
scrub-oaks, and stood on his hind feet; and I was so scart, I didn’t
know how to manage the business; and there I stood atwixt two evils; one
way I was ‘fraid of the dark, and t’other I was ‘fraid of the bear; and
finally, I starts and runs from him, and he jist then down on his legs
and put arter me. Well, I turns round and faces him, and he riz up on
his hind feet agin’, and kind’a growled. Atwixt me and him, there was a
small black oak staddle, and thinks I to myself, if I can git to that, I
can hold my gun steady ’nough to shoot him; but then I was afeard I
shouldn’t _kill him_; and if I didn’t he’d _kill me_. However, I starts
for the staddle; and he kind’a growled, and wiggled his short tail, and
seemed to be tickled to think I was a comin’ towards him. As quick as I
got up to the staddle, I cocked my piece, and aimed right at his
brisket, atwixt his fore legs, as near as I could, and fired—_and run_;
and never looked behind me, to see whether I’d killed my adversary or
not, and put for the house as fast I could. Well, up I come to the
house, so short-winded, that I puffed and blowed like a steamboat; and
old master says he, ‘What you shot, nigger?’
“‘A bear, Sir.’
“‘Where is he?’
“‘In the scrub-oaks, out there; and I b’lieve I _killed_ him, tu.’
“‘Killed him? you black puppy; go and git t’other rifle, and load it.’
And I goes. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘start back for your bear; and if you han’t
shot any, I’ll shoot _you_.’ And so back I goes; and master follows
along behind me, half scared to pieces, for fear my _dead_ bear would
bite him.
Well, come to the scrub-oaks, there lay my bear a strugglin’, with his
fore-paws hold on a scrub-oak, a twistin’ it round and round, and _then_
master steps up, as resolute as an Ingen warrior, to shoot him, and he
first made me fire into his head, and then he fired into his heart; and
when we’d killed him _dead_, we draws him to the house and skins him;
and I think ’twas the fattest bear I ever see in all my life.
Well, that fall master went to Philadelphia, and he takes that skin with
five others I’d killed, that he’d already got the premium on, and sold
’em in Philadelphia—and in all, they come to over one hundred dollars,
bounty, skins, and all, to say nothin’ at all ’bout _meat_; and he never
gin me a Bungtown copper out of the whole. _No_, not enough to buy a
pinch of snuff, or a chew of tobacco.”[7]
Footnote 7:
Another exemplification of the abominable doctrine of the right of
property in man! Concede this right, and his master did right, and
Peter ought not to complain.
A. “Were there any churches in that region?”
P. “Yis, Sir; there was two of our gals belonged to the Methodist
meetin’—Julia and Polly, and I used to have to drive them to meetin’
every other Sunday, to a place about four or five miles off, towards
Auburn, called Plane Hill. Every season we used to have a Camp meetin’,
at what’s called Scipio Plains, and used to have to go and strike a tent
and carry down the family, and wait on ’em till the meetin’ was over.
Well, the most I can recollect about them meetin’s was, they used to
make a despod hollerin’ and shoutin’. Some would sing ‘glory
hallelujah,’ and ‘amen,’ and some, ‘I can see Jesus Christ, I see him a
comin’, I see him a comin’,’ and I was jist fool enough to look and see
if I could see him, but I never see anything.
“One Camp meetin’ we had I went to, and paid strict ‘tention, and it
seemed to me that a part of the sarmint was aimed at me, _straight_, but
I was so ignorant that I didn’t take the sense on it. In what they calls
their ‘prayin’ circles,’ there was a colored man—quite an old man, but
mighty good, for he made a great prayer; and while he prayed, a good
many old and young cried, and shed a good many tears. Well, seein’ them
cry, made me cry, I ‘spose, for I can’t assign any other reason; and
this colored man see me cryin’ and he comes to me and says he, ‘my son,
do you want religion?’ ‘Yis, Sir,’ says I, ‘what is religion?’ He speaks
in a kind of a broken language, and says, ‘Religion is to do as we
do—sing and shout and pray, and call on God; and don’t you want us to
pray for you?’
“‘Yis, Sir,’ says I, ‘I wants every body to pray for me.’
“So he speaks to a minister, and says I wants to be prayed for; and so
they gits into a ring, and crowds round me like a flock of sheep round a
man that’s got a salt dish. I don’t want to make a _wrong comparison_,
but I can’t think of nothin’ else so near like it. Then this white
minister tells me I must git down on my knees; and so down I gits, and
they begins to pray, and shout, and sing, and clap their hands, and I
was scart, and looked two or three times to git a chance to cut stick
and be off, but I couldn’t find a place to git out of the ring; and I
tell ye, thinks says I, _‘if this is religion, I’ve got ’nough on it,
and I’ll be off_.’ They prayed God would send his ‘_power_,’ and convart
that ’ere colored boy; and so while they was shoutin’ right down hard
for me, one of our gals, Polly, I believe, gits what they calls ‘the
power,’ and they kind’a left me and went over to her; but some on ’em
stuck by me, but they didn’t seem _nigh so thick_, and I was right glad
of that, I tell ye, and as quick as I got a chance, I got out of the
ring, and made tracks, and cut like a white head; and when I got a goin’
I didn’t stop till I got down to the horses, and that was half a mile;
and when I got there, the old woman that kept the tavern (she knew me)
says, ‘why, Peter! what’s the matter?’
“‘Matter,’ says I ‘matter enough; they got me into a ring up there, and
scart me half to pieces, and I made off, I tell ye; and if scarein’
folks makes ’em religious, I’ll be a good Christian arter this as any on
’em, for they scart me _like tarnation_.’ Well, goin’ home that night,
the gals talked to me a good deal ’bout religion. They used to be a good
deal more religiouser ’bout Camp meetin’ times than any other times, and
they’d try to git me to pray, and larn me how; and come up into my
chamber arter the old folks had gone to bed, to tell me ’bout religion,
and all that; and so, arter this meetin’ I used to pray some, and when I
went arter my cows, I’d git behind some big tree, and pray as well as I
knew how, and so every time I got a chance, I’d keep it up, for six or
seven months, and then I’d git all over it, and I could swear as bad as
ever; and by this time the gals had got kind’a cold, and didn’t say much
’bout religion; and that’s the history of all my religion then. And
arter this _scare_ I tell on, I didn’t have any more religious fits very
soon.
“Prayin’ in the woods makes me think of bein’ _tied up_ there. Once
master gits mad with me, cause I didn’t plane cherry boards ’nough, and
he takes me out into the woods, and ties me up, ’bout dark, and says he,
‘now stay there, you black devil, till mornin’.’ Well, _he’d whipped me
raw afore this_, and there ’twas dark as pitch, and the woods full of
all kinds of live varmints,—a sore back, and enemost starved; and I tell
ye if I didn’t scream jist like a good fellow, I’ll give up. I hollered
jist as loud as I could bawl, and there I stayed a good while, afeared
of bein’ eat up by varmints every minute. Finally, a man who hears me,
comes up and says, ‘whose there?’
“‘Peter,’ says I.
“‘And what’s the matter?’
“‘Matter ’nough! Master’s _whipped me raw_, and enemost starved me, and
tied me up, and is a goin’ to keep me here all night.’
“‘No, he ain’t ‘nother.’ And at that he out with a big jack-knife, and
cut the rope; and I says, ‘Thank’ee, Sir;’ and off he went. But I warn’t
much better off now, for I darn’t go to the house, for there I should
git it worse yit; and so I went to the fence, so if any wild thing come
arter me, I could be _on the move_; and there I stood, and hollered, and
bawled, and screamed, till I thought it must be near mornin’; and
finally, one of the gals comes out to untie me; and if ever I was glad
to see a woman’s face, ’twas then; but if there’d been fifty wild beasts
within a mile on me, they’d been so scart by my bawlin’, that they’d
made tracks t’other way.
“But up to ’bout this time, I used to have some sunny days, when I’d
enjoy myself pretty well. But I don’t think that for five years, my
wounds, of his make, fairly healed up, afore he tore ’em open agin’ with
an ox-goad, or cat-o’-nine-tails, and made ’em bleed agin’. But I’ve not
told you the worst part of the story yit. Master got to be more savage
than ever, and so cruel, that it did seem that I couldn’t live with him.
He got to be a _dreadful drunkard_, and ☞ owned a share in a still; ☜
and he used to keep a barrel of whiskey in his cellar all the time; and
he’d git up airly in the mornin’, and take jist enough to make him
cross; and then ’twas ‘here, nigger,’ and ‘there, nigger,’ and ‘every
where, nigger,’ at once.
“He got to be sheriff, and then he drinked worse than ever; and when he
come home, he used to ‘buse his wife and family, and beat the fust one
he’d come to; and I’d generally be on the move, if my eyes was open,
when he got home, for he’d thrash me for nothin’. And I’ve seen him whip
his gals arter they got big enough to be _young women grown_, in his
drunken fits; and many a time I’ve run out, and stayed round the barn,
for hours and hours, till I was _nearly froze_, from fear on him; only,
sometimes, when I _knew_ he _would thrash_ somebody, he was _so_ savage,
_I’d stay in doors, and_ _let his rage bile over on me, rather than on
the gals_; _for I couldn’t bear to have them beat so_.
“One day he tells me to git up the team, and go to drawin’ wood to the
door. I used to have nothin’ to eat generally, but buttermilk and samp,
except, now and then, a good bite from some of the gals or neighbors.
The buttermilk used to be kept in an old-fashioned Dutch barrel-churn,
till ’twas sour enough to make a pig squeal. Well, I drawed wood all
day, and one of the coldest in winter, and eat nothin’ but a basin of
buttermilk in the mornin’, and so at night I goes to put out the team,
and he says, ‘Nigger, don’t put out that team yit; go and do your
chores, and then put up ten bushels of wheat, and go to mill with it,
and bring it back to-night _ground_, or _I’ll whip your guts out_.’
“Well, I hadn’t had any dinner or supper, and it was a tremendous cold
night; but ‘Lecta puts into the sleigh one of these old-fashioned
cloaks, with a hood on it, and says she, ‘Don’t put it on till you git
out of sight of the house, and here’s two nut-cakes; and, if I was in
your place, I wouldn’t let the horses creep, for it’s awful cold, and
I’m ‘fraid you’ll freeze.’
“Well, I come to the mill, which was ten miles off, and told the miller
my story, and what master said, with tears in my eyes; for my spirit had
got so kind’a broken by my hard lot, that I didn’t seem to have anything
manly about me. ☞ Oh! how you can degrade a man, if you’ll only make him
a slave! ☜
“The miller says, ‘Peter, you shall have your grist as soon as
possible.’ And I set down by the furnace of coals, he kept by the
water-wheel to keep it from freezin’, and begun to roast kernels of
wheat, for I was dreadful hungry. He axed me to go in and eat; but I
didn’t want to. And so about twelve o’clock at night I got my grist, and
starts for home, and gits there, and takes good care of every thing; and
then I begins to think about my own supper. The folks was all abed and
asleep; but I finds a basin of buttermilk and samp down in the
chimney-corner, and I eats that; and, if any thing, it makes me hungrier
than I was afore; and I sets down over the fire, and begins to
_think_![8] ☜
Footnote 8:
_Thought_ must ultimately prove the destruction of all oppression. Man
is a being of intellect; and if his mind is not so benighted by
darkness, or be-numbed by oppression, light will find its way into his
soul; and his natural love of freedom, and his consciousness of his
inalienable rights, will show him the claims of justice, and the deep
and awful guilt of slavery; and then he will win his way to liberty,
either by _flight_ or _blood_. Humanity may be so _chafed_ by repeated
acts of cruelty and abuse, that any means will _seem justifiable_, in
the sight of the being who is to use _some_ means for his release, if
he ever ceases to groan. It is wisdom, then, to make the slave free
while we _can_; for, as sure as God made man for freedom, so sure he
will ultimately be free, in one way or another.
“I had had many a time of thinkin’ afore, but I had never before _felt_
master’s _cruelty_ as I felt it now. Here he was, a rich man; and I had
slaved myself to death for him, and been a thousand times more faithful
in his business than I have ever been in my own; and yit I must
_starve_. I felt the _natur’ of injustice most keenly_, and _I bust into
tears_, for I felt kind’a broken-hearted and desolate. But I thought
_tears wouldn’t ever do the work_! ☜ I axed myself if I warn’t a _man_—a
human bein’—one of God’s crutters: and I riz up, detarmined to have
justice! ☜ ‘And now,’ says I, ‘I may as well die for an old sheep as a
lamb; and if there is any thing in this house that can satisfy my
starvation, I’ll have it, if it costs me my life.’
“So I starts for the cupboard, and finds it locked, and I up with one of
my feet and staves one of the panels through in the door, and there was
every thing good to eat; and so I eat till I got my _fill_ of beef, and
pork, and cabbage, and turnips and ‘taters; and then I laid into the
nicknacks, sich as pies, cakes, cheese and sich like. Well, arter I’d
done and come out, and set down by the fire, master opens his bedroom
door and sings out, ‘away with you to bed, you black infernal nigger
you, and I’ll settle with you in the mornin’, and he ripped out some
oaths that fairly made my wool rise on end, and then shets the door.
Well, thinks I, if I am to die, and I expected he’d kill me in the
mornin’, I’ll go the length of my rope, and die on a full stomach. So I
goes to an old-fashioned tray of nut-cakes, and stuffs my bosom full on
’em, and carries ’em up stairs, and puts ’em in my old straw bed, and I
knew nobody ever touched that but Pete Wheeler, and I crawled in and I
had a plenty of time to think. ☜
“In the mornin’ the old man gits up and makes up a fire, a thing he
hadn’t done afore in all winter, and then comes to the head of the
stairs, and calls for ‘his nigger;’ and I hears a crackin’ in the
fire,—and he’d cut a parcel of _withes_—walnut, of course, and run ’em
into the ashes, and wythed the eends on ’em under his feet, and takes
’em along,—and a large rope,—and hits me a cut and says, ‘out to the
barn with me, nigger;’ and so I follows him along.
“Well, come to the barn, the first thing he swings the big doors open,
and the north wind swept through like a harricane. ‘Now,’ says he,
‘nigger, pull off your coat;’ I did.
“‘Now pull off your jacket, nigger;’ I did.
“‘Now off with your shirt, nigger;’ I did.
“‘Now off with your pantaloons, nigger;’ I did.
“‘And be dam quick about it too.’
“Arter I gits ’em off, he crosses my hands, and ties ’em together with
one end of a rope, and throws the other end up overhead, across a beam,
and then draws me up by my hands till I clears the floor two feet. He
then crosses my feet jist so, and puts the rope through the bull-ring in
the floor, and then pulls on the rope till I was drawn _tight_—till my
bones fairly snapped, and ties it, and then leaves me in that doleful
situation, and goes off to the house, and wanders round ’bout twenty
minutes; and there the north wind sweeps through: oh! how it stung; and
there I hung and cried, and the tears fell and froze on my breast, and I
wished I was _dead_. But back he comes, and says he, as he takes up a
_withe_, ‘now, you dam nigger, I’m a goin’ to settle with you for
breaking open the cupboard,’ and he hits me four or five cuts with one
and it broke; and he catches up another, and he cut all ways, cross and
back, and one way and then another, and he whipped me till the blood run
down my legs, and froze in long blood isicles on the balls of my heels,
as big as your thumb!! ☜ !! and I hollered and screamed till I was past
hollerin’ and twitchin’, for when he begun, I hollered and twitched
dreadfully; and my hands was swelled till the blood settled under my
nails and toes, and one of my feet hain’t seen a well day since: and I
cried, and the tears froze on my cheeks, and I had got almost blind, and
so stiff I couldn’t stir, and near dyin’. How long he whipped me I can’t
tell, for I got so, finally, I couldn’t tell when he _was_ a whippin’ on
me!!! ‘Oh! Mr. L.——,’ “said Peter, as the tears rolled down his wrinkled
cheeks, while the picture of that scene of blood again came up vividly
before his mind, “‘oh! Mr. L.——, it was a sight to make any body that
has got any feelin’ weep; and there I hung, and he goes off to the
house, and arter a while, I can’t tell how long, he comes back with a
tin cup full of brine, heat up, and says he, ‘now nigger, I’m goin’ to
put this on to keep you from mortifyin,’ and when it struck me, it
brought me to my feelin’, I tell ye; and then, arter a while, he lets me
down and unties me, and goes off to the house.
“Well, I couldn’t stand up, and there the barn doors was open yit, and I
was so stiff and lame, and froze, it seemed to me I couldn’t move at
all. But I sat down, and begins to rub my hands to get ’em to their
feelin’, so I could use ’em, and then my legs, and then my other parts,
and my back I couldn’t move, for ’twas as stiff as a board, and I
couldn’t turn without turnin’ my whole body; and I should think I was in
that situation all of an hour, afore I could git my clothes on.
“At last I got my shirt on, and it stuck fast to my back, and then my
t’other clothes on, and then I gits up and shuts the barn doors, and
waddles off to the house; and he sees me a comin’, and hollers out
‘nigger, go and do your chores, and off to the woods.’
“Well, I waddled round, and did my chores as well as I could, and then
takes my axe and waddles off to the woods, through a deep snow. I gits
there, and cuts down a large rock oak tree, and a good while I was ’bout
it, tu, and my shirt still stuck fast to my back. I off with one eight
foot cut, and then flung my axe down on the ground, and swore I’d _die_
afore I cut another chip out of that log that day; and I gets down and
clears away the snow on the sunny side of the log, and sets down on the
leaves, and a part of the time I sighed, and a part of the time I cried,
and a part of the time I swore, and wished myself dead fifty times.
“Well, settin’ there I looked up and to my surprise I see a woman comin’
towards me; and come to, it turned out to be my old friend ‘Lecta, and
the first thing she says, when she comes up was, ‘ain’t you _most dead_,
Peter?’ ‘Yis, and I wish I was _quite_, Miss ‘Lecta;’ and she cries and
I cries, and she sets down on the log and says, ‘Peter, ain’t you
hungry? here’s some victuals for you;’ and she had some warm coffee in a
coffee-pot, and some fried meat, and some bread, and pie, and cheese,
and nut-cakes; and says she to me, ‘Peter, eat it _all_ up if you can.’
A. “Why! Peter what would become of the world, if it warn’t, for the
women?”
P. “Why, Sir, they’d _eat each other up_, and what they didn’t _eat_,
they’d _kill_. Then they keep the men back from doin’ a great many
ferocious things. Why, only ‘tother day when that duel was fit in
Washington, between Graves and Cilley, the papers say that Mrs. Graves,
when she found out that the duel was a comin’ on, tried to stop her
husband, but he wouldn’t hear to her, and so he went on, and killed poor
Cilley, and made his wife a widder, and his children orphans. Now, only
think how much misery would have been spared, if he’d only heard to his
wife.
“‘Well,’ says ‘Lecta, ‘I wouldn’t strike another stroke to day.’ And
then to be undiscovered, she goes up to a neighbor’s and stays there all
day. So at night I goes home, and does my chores the best way I could.
So I carries in a handful of wood, and master says, ‘how much wood you
cut, nigger?’ ‘I don’t know, Sir.’ ‘One load?’ ‘I don’t know, Sir.’ ‘How
many trees you cut down!’ ‘One, Sir.’ ‘You cut it up?’ ‘No, Sir.’ ‘Well,
tell me how much you have cut, dam quick, tu.’ ‘One log off, Sir.’ At
that he catches up his cane, and throws on his great coat, and fetches a
heavy oath, and starts off for the woods. I sets down in the corner,
with a dreadful ticklin’ round my heart; and the children kept a lookin’
out of the winder, to see him comin’, and in he comes, _frothy_, he was
so mad. Mistress says to him, ‘possup,’ which means, ‘stop,’ I ‘spose,
and then he went into the other room to supper.
Finally, I crawls into my nest of rags, and I laid on my face all night,
I couldn’t lay any other way; and next mornin’ after tryin’ several
times, I made out to git up and go down, and do my chores.
“Arter breakfast, Mr. Abers, his brother-in-law, come down, and says he,
‘Gideon, what’s your notion in torturin’ this boy, so? If you want to
kill him, why not take an axe and put him out of his misery?’ Master
says, ‘is it any of your business?’ ‘Yis, Sir, ’tis my business, and the
business of every human bein’ not to see you torture that boy so. You
know he’s faithful, and every body knows it, and a smarter boy you can’t
find any where of his age.[9] Master then colours up, with wrath, and
says, ‘you or any body else, help yourself! I’ll do with my nigger as I
please—he’s my property, ☜ and I have a right to use my own property, as
I please. You lie, that it’s any of your business to _interfere_ with my
concerns.’[10]
Footnote 9:
Here is Abolition, and its opposition in a nut-shell. Abolitionists,
are those who claim that if a fellow-man is suffering, it is the
_business_ of his brother to help him, if possible, and in the best
way he can. Accordingly, we lift up our voice against the abominations
that are done in this land of _chains, and whips, and heathenism, and
slaves_! Who are our opposers, and revilers, and enemies? They are men
who _don’t believe it to be their business_, to interfere with the
rights of the slave breeder, and slave buyer, and slaveholder, of the
United States. Their creed will let them stand by and look at a
brother bleeding, and groaning, and dying under a worse than high-way
robbery, and yet ’twill bind their arms if they would extend a helping
hand—’twill stop their mouths if they wish to plead for the dumb. Oh!
my soul! who that respects the claims of humanity, ain’t ashamed to
disgrace man so? What philanthropist who wants to see all men rise
high in virtue, and happiness, ain’t ashamed to hold one set of
principles for _men_ in _freedom_, and another for _men in chains_.
What christian don’t blush, to urge as an excuse for chilling and
freezing his sympathies for the slave, “the legislation of the country
forbids me to help a brother in distress.”
Footnote 10:
The old corner stone of the whole edifice—☞ _property in man_. ☜ This
reply of the master, is just like the low, and vile swaggering and
bragging of the South, that has so long intimidated the time-serving
_politician of the North, with Southern principles_, and the
dough-faced christian with infidel principles. There is something
humiliating in the thought, that the South has been able always to put
down the rising spirit of freedom at the North, by brags and swagger!
☜ Ever since the early days of the Revolution, when Adams and Hancock,
and Ames, and Franklin, tried to get the South to wash her hands from
the blood of oppression, and be clean, bluster, and noise, and brags
have crushed our efforts. And these same patriots, noble in every
thing else, were dragooned into submission, and this Moloch of the
South was worshipped by the signers of the greatest instrument the
world ever saw. And, as the compromise _must go on_, an unholy
alliance was formed between liberty and despotism; and as the price
paid for the temple’s going up, tyranny has made a great niche in our
temple of freedom, and there this strange god is worshipped by
freemen. Oh! God! what blasphemy is here? tyranny and liberty
worshipped together! offerings made to the God of heaven, and the
demon of oppression on the same altar!
Nullification lifted its brags and boasts, and swagger, and the North
gave up her principles. And because the South has always succeeded,
they already boast of victory over all the Abolitionists of the North,
and expect either that they have accomplished the work of crushing
them, or that they can do it just when they please. But the South will
find that since the days of Jay, and Adams, liberty has _grown
strong_, and when the great struggle comes, they will see that there
are but two parties on the field,—a few slave-driving, slave-breeding
tyrants covered with blood, unrighteously shed, at war with the
combined powers of the world. The principles of Abolition, have
ennobled the human mind, and in all the world’s history, cannot be
found a body of men, who have endured so much obloquy and abuse, with
so much unflinching firmness, and manly fortitude, as the
Abolitionists. They are not to be awed by swagger, nor stopped by
brags. No! thanks to our Leader, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died to
break every chain in creation, the work of human freedom must go
forward; and the South has no more power to stop the progress of
light, and principles of liberty in this age, than the progress of the
sun in the heavens. The great guiding principle of all the benevolence
in the world is, to interfere to save a brother from distress and
tyranny.—Every reform must interfere with tyranny: ’twas so with
christianity in its establishment—with the Reformation—with our
Revolution—and shall be so—for christianity makes it man’s business to
interfere with every usurpation, and system of tyranny and invasion of
human rights, until every yoke shall be broken in the entire dominions
of God.
“‘Don’t, you give me the lie again,’ says Abers, ‘or I’ll give you what
a liar deserves.’ Well, master give him the lie agin, and Abers took him
by the nape of the neck and by the britch of his clothes, and flings him
down on the floor, as you would a child, (for master was a small man,)
and he pounds him and kicks him and bruises him up _most egregiously_
and then starts for the door and says, ‘come along with me, Peter, you
are agoin’ to be my boy a spell, and I’ll see if this is your fault, or
‘_master’s_’ as _you_ call him.’
“So I picks up my old hat, there warn’t any crown in it, but swindle tow
stuffed in, and goes along with him. I gits there, and Mrs. Abers,
master’s sister, says, ‘my dear feller, ain’t you almost dead?’
“So arter breakfast, for Mr. Abers had come down afore breakfast, and I
sets down and eats with ’em, Mrs. Abers takes a leetle skillet, and
warms some water, and then she tries to pull my shirt off, and it stuck
fast to my back, and so she puts in some castile soap-suds all over my
back, and I finally gits it off, and all the wool that had come off of
my old homespun shirt of wool, and the hairs of this, sticks in the
wounds, and so she takes and picks ’em all out, and washes me with a
sponge very carefully, but oh! how it hurt.—Arter this she takes a piece
of fine cambric linen, and wets it in sweet ile, and lays it all over my
back, and I felt like a new crutter; and then I went to bed and slept a
good while, and only got up at sundown to eat, and then to bed agin. So
next mornin’ she put on another jist like it, and I stayed there a
fortnight and had my ease, and lived on the fat of the land tu, I tell
ye.”
A. “Didn’t your master come after you, Peter?”
P. “Oh! no, Sir; he had all he could do to take care of the bruises
Abers gin him. So one Monday mornin’ he tells me I had better go home to
master’s. Well, I begins to cry, and says, ‘I’ll go, but master will
whip me to death, next time.’ ‘No he won’t,’ says Abers. ‘You go and do
your chores, and be a good boy; and I’ll be over bim’bye, and see how
you git along.’
“Well, as soon as I got home, I opened the door, and mistress says, ‘You
come home agin’, have you, you black son of a bitch?’
“‘Yes, ma’am; and how does master do?’
“‘None of your business, you black skunk, you.’
“So master finds I’d got home, and he sends one of the children out
arter me; and in I goes, and finds him on his bed yit. He speaks, ‘You
got home, have you?’ ‘Yis, Sir; and how does master do?’ ‘Oh! I’m
_almost dead_, Peter;’ and he spoke as mild as _you_ do. And I says,
‘I’m dreadful sorry for you;’ and I _lied, tu_. So I pitied him, and
pretended to feel bad, and cry. And he says, ‘You must be a good boy,
and take good care of the stock, till I gets well.’ And so out I goes to
the barn, and sung, and danced, and felt as tickled as a boy with a new
whistle, to think master had got a good bruisin’ as well as myself, and
I’d got on my taps first.
“Well, for six months he was a kind of a decent man; he’d speak kind’a
pleasant—for he was so ‘fraid of Abers, that he darn’t do any other way.
“Next winter followin’, I was in the barn thrashin’; and, as I stood
with my back to the south door, a litter of leetle white pigs comes
along, and goes to eatin’ the karnels of wheat that fell over master’s
barn door sill; and I was kind’a pleased to see sich leetle fellers,
they always seemed so kind’a _funny_; and the fust thing I knew, he
struck me over the head with one of these ’ere old-fashioned pitchforks,
and I fell into the straw jist like a pluck in a pail of water. I
gathers as quick as I could, arter I found out I was down, and he stood,
with a fork in his hand, and swore if I stirred, he’d knock me down, and
pin me to the floor.
“I run out of the big door, and he arter me, with the fork in his hand;
and he run me into the snow, where ’twas deep, and got me to the fence,
where I was up to my middle in snow, and couldn’t move; and he was a
goin’ to thrust arter me, and I hollers, and says, ‘Master, _don’t_
stick that into me.’ ‘I _will_, you black devil.’ I see there was no
hope for me; and I reaches out, and got hold of a stake, and as I took
hold on it, as ’twas so ordered, _it come out_; and, as he made a plunge
arter _me_, I struck arter him with this stake, and hit him right across
the _small of his back_; and the way I did it warn’t slow; and he fell
into the snow like a dead man; and he lay there, and didn’t stir, only
one of his feet _quivered_; and I began to grow scart, for fear he was
dyin’; and I was tempted to run into the barn, and dash my head agin’ a
post, and dash my brains out; and the longer I stood there, the worse I
felt, for I knew for murder a body must be hung.
“But bim’bye he begun to gasp, and gasp, and catch his breath; and he
did that three or four times; and then the blood poured out of his
mouth; and he says, as soon as he could speak, ‘Help me, Peter.’ And I
says, ‘I shan’t.’ And he says agin’, in a low voice, ‘Oh! help me!’ I
says, ‘I’ll see the devil have you, afore I’ll help you, you old
heathen, you.’ And at that he draws a dreadful oath, that fairly made
the snow melt; and says agin’, ‘Do you help me, you infernal cuss.’ I
uses the same words agin’; and he tells me, ‘if you don’t, I’ll kill you
as sure as ever I get into the house.’
“Soon he stood clear up, and walked along by the fence, and drew himself
by the rails to the house; and I went to thrashin’ agin’. Pretty soon
‘Lecta comes out to the barn, and says, ‘Peter, father wants to see
you.’ I says, ‘If he wants to see me mor’n I want to see him, he must
come where I be;’ and I had a dreadful oath with it. And she speaks as
mild as a blue-bird, and says, ‘Now, Peter, ‘tend to me. You know I’m
always good to you; now if you don’t mind, you’ll lose a friend.’ That
touches my feelin’s, and I starts for the house; but I ’spected to be
_killed_ as sure as I stepped across the _sill_.
“Well, I entered the old cellar-kitchen; and mistress locks the door,
and puts the key in her side-pocket; and master set in one chair, and
his arm a restin’ on another, as I set now, and he raises up, and takes
down the rifle that hung in the hooks over his head on a beam; and _I
knew I was a dead man_, for I had loaded it a few days afore for a bear;
and says he, as he fetches it up to his face, and cocks it, and pints it
right at my heart. ‘Now, you dam nigger, I’ll end your existence.’
“Now death stared me right in the face, and I knew I had nothin’ to
lose; and the minute he aimed at me, I jumped at him like a _streak_,
and run my head right atwixt his legs, and catched him, and flung him
right over my head a tumblin’, and I did it as quick as lightnin’; and,
as he fell, _the rifle went off_, and bored two doors, and lodged in the
wall of the bedroom; and I flew and _on_ to him, and clinched hold on
his souse, and planted my knees in his belly, and jammed his old head up
and down on the floor, and the way I did it warn’t to be beat.
“Well, by this time, old mistress come, and hit me a slap on the
backsides, with one of these ’ere old-fashioned Dutch fire-slices, and
it didn’t set very asy ‘nother; but I still hung on to one ear, and
fetched her a _side-winder_ right across the bridge of her old nose, and
she fell backwards, and out come the key of the door out of her pocket;
and ‘Lecta got the key, and run and opened the door—for the noise had
brought the gals down like fury; and I gin his old head one more mortal
jam with both hands, and pummelled his old belly once more hard, and
leaped out of the door, and put out for the barn.
“At night I come back, and there was somethin’ better for my supper than
I had had since I lived there. I set down to eat; and he come out into
the kitchen with his cane, and cussed, and swore, and ripped, and tore;
and I says, ‘Master, you may cuss and swear as much as you please; but
on the peril of _your life_, don’t you lay a finger on me;’ and there
was a big old-fashioned butcher-knife lay on the table, and I says to
him, ‘Just as sure as you do, I’ll run that butcher-knife through you,
and clinch it.’ I had the worst oath I ever took in all my life, and
spoke so savage, that I fairly _scart him_.
“I told him to give me a paper to look a new master; for you see, there
was a law, that if a slave, in them days, wanted to change masters, on
account of cruelty, that his old master must give him a paper, and he
could git a new one, if he could find a man that would buy him. At fust
he said he would give me a paper in the mornin’, but right off he says,
‘No, I swear I won’t; _I’ll have the pleasure of killin’ on you
myself!_’ ☜
“So he cussed, and finally, went into the other room; and the gals says,
‘Peter, now is your time; stick to him, and you’ll either make it better
or worse for you.’
“So I goes off to bed, and takes with me a walnut flail swingle; and I
crawled into my nest of rags, and lay on my elbow all night; and if a
rat or a mouse stirred, I trembled, for I expected every minute he’d be
a comin’ up with a rifle to shoot me; and I didn’t sleep a wink all that
night. And I swore to Almighty God, that the fust time I got a chance
I’d clear from his reach; and I prayed to the God of freedom to help me
get free.”
A. “Well, Peter, it’s late now, and we’ll leave that part of the story
for another chapter.”[11]
Footnote 11:
All this is a true picture of slavery and oppression, all over the
globe. Man is not fit to possess _irresponsible power_—God never
designed it; and every experiment on earth has proved the awful
consequence of perverting God’s design. I know it will be said by
almost every reader, who closes this chapter, that this was an
isolated and peculiar case; but I know, from observation, that there
is nothing at all peculiar in it to the system of slavery; and when
the judgment day shall come, and the history of every slaveholder is
opened, in letters of fire, upon the gaze of the whole universe, that
there will be something peculiarly dark and awful in every chapter of
oppression which the universe shall see unfolded. And if I could quote
but one text of God’s Bible, in the ear of every slaveholder in
creation, it would be that astounding assertion—“When he maketh
inquisition for blood he remembereth them.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V.
Peter’s master prosecuted for abusing him, and fined $500, and put under
a bond of $2000 for good behavior—Peter for a long time has a plan for
running away, and the girls help him in it—“the big eclipse of
1806”—Peter starts at night to run away, and the girls carry him ten
miles on his road—the parting scene—travels all night, and next day
sleeps in a hollow log in the woods—accosted by a man on the
Skeneateles bridge—sleeps in a barn—is discovered—two pain’ters on the
road—discovered and pursued—frightened by a little girl—encounter with
“two black gentlemen with a white ring round their necks”—“Ingens”
chase him—“Utica quite a thrifty little place”—hires out nine
days—Little Falls—hires out on a boat to go to “Snackady”—makes three
trips—is discovered by Morehouse ☜—the women help him to escape to
Albany—hires out on Truesdell’s sloop—meets master in the street—goes
to New York—a reward of $100 offered for him—Capt. comes to take him
back to his master, for “one hundred dollars don’t grow on every
bush”—“feels distressedly”—but Capt. Truesdell promises to protect
him, “as long as grass grows and water runs—he follows the river.
_Author._ “Good evening, Peter,—how do you do to-night?”
_Peter._ “Very well; and how’s the Domine?”
A. “Pretty well. Take a chair and go ahead with your story.”
P. “My mind had been made up for years to git out of my trouble,—but I
thought I’d wait till spring afore I started. Things had got to sich a
state, I see I must either stay and be killed myself, or kill master, or
run away; and I thought ‘twould be the best course to run away; and I
wanted good travellin’, and I concluded I’d wait till the movin’ was
good. In the meantime, Master prosecuted Abers for assaulting him in his
own house, and Abers paid the damages; I don’t know how much; and then
Abers prosecuted master afore the same court, for abusin’ me, on behalf
of the state. His whole family was brought forward and sworn, and
testified agin’ him, and the trial lasted two days. I was brought
forward, and had my shirt took off, to show the scars in my meat; and
the judge says, ‘Peter, how long did he whip you in the barn?’ And I up
and told him the story as straight as I could. Then the lawyers made
their pleas on both sides, and the case was submitted to the jury, and
out they went, and stayed half an hour, and brought in a verdict of
abuse, even unto _murder intent_. The judge says, ‘how so?’ The foreman
on the jury says, ‘because he thrice attempted to kill him with a
rifle.’
“Well, his sentence finally was, to pay five hundred dollars damages, or
to go to jail till he did; and be put under bonds of two thousand
dollars for good behavior in future. The judge gin him half an hour to
decide in; and he sot and sot till his time was up; and then the judge
told the sheriff to take him to jail, and he went to get the hand-cuffs,
and put ’em on to master’s hands; and the judge says, ‘_screw ’em
tight_;’ for you see ‘master hadn’t treated the court with proper
respect,’ the judge said. I should think he had the cuffs on ten
minutes, and then he says, ‘I’ll pay the money;’ and the sheriff off
with the cuffs, and master out with his pocket-book, and counted out the
money to the sheriff, and then he gin bail, and so the matter ended.
“The judge come to me and says, ‘now, Peter, do you be faithful, and if
you are abused come to me, and I’ll take care of it.
“Well, all went home, and arter that master behaved himself pretty
decent towards me, only the gals said he used to say, ‘I wish I’d
_killed_ the dam _nigger_, and then I shouldn’t have this five hundred
dollars to pay.’
“My whole fare was now better, ☞ but I still considered myself a slave,
☜ and that galled my feelin’s, and I determined I’d be free, or die in
the cause; for you see, by this time, I’d larned more of the _rights of
human natur’_, and I felt that I was a man!!
“I had this in contemplation all of three or four years afore I run, and
I swore a heap ’bout it tu. The gals had made me a new suit, and had it
ready for runnin’ a year afore. The gals paid for it, and kept it
secret; and so a woman can keep a secret, arter all; and I had
twenty-one dollars, in specie, that I’d been a gettin’ for five years,
by little and little, fishin’ and chorin’, and catchin’ muskrats, that I
kept from master; and I made ‘Lecta my banker; and every copper and
sixpence I got I put into her hand, and now I’d got things ready for a
start.
“Well, the big eclipse, as they called it, come on the 16th of June,
1806, I believe, and we had curious times, I tell ye. I was in the lot a
hoein’ corn, and it begun to grow dark, right in the day time, and the
birds and whip-poor-wills begun to sing, jist as in the evenin’, and the
hens run to the roost, and I come to the house; and the folks had
smoked-glass lookin’ through at the sun, and I axed ’em ‘what’s the
matter?’ and they said ‘the moon is atwixt us and the sun.’
“Well, thinks says I, ‘that’s rale curious.’ Master looked at it _once_,
and then sot down and groaned, and fetched some very heavy sighs, and
turned pale, and looked solemn; and there was two or three old Dutch
women ‘round there that looked distracted; they hollered and screamed
and took on terribly, and thought the world was a comin’ to an end.
Well, I didn’t find out the secret of that eclipse, till a sea captain
told me, long arter this. I b’lieve this eclipse happened on Tuesday;
and next Sunday night, atwixt twelve and one o’clock, I started, and
detarmined that if ever I went back to Gideon Morehouse’s, _I’d go a
dead man_.
“We all went to bed as usual, but not to sleep; and so, ’bout twelve
‘clock, I went out as still as I could, and tackled up the old horse and
wagon, and oh! how I felt. I was kind’a glad and kind’a sorry, and my
heart patted agin my ribs hard, and I sweat till my old shirt was as wet
as sock. So I hitched the horse away from the house, and went in and
told the gals, and I fetched out my knapsack that had my new clothes in
it, and all on us went out and got in and started off. Oh! I tell ye,
the horse didn’t _creep_; and the gals begins to talk to me and say,
‘now, Peter, you must be honest and true, and faithful to every body,
and that’s the way you’ll gain friends;’ and ‘Lecta says, ‘if you work
for anybody, be careful to please the women folks, and if the women are
on your side, you’ll git along well enough.’
“Well, we drove ten miles, and come to a gate, and ‘twouldn’t do for
them to go through, and so there we parted; and they told me to die
afore I got catched,—and if I did, not to _bring ’em out_. I told them
I’d die five times over afore I’d fetch ’em out; and so ‘Lecta took me
by the hand and kissed me on the cheek, and I kissed her on the _hand_,
for I thought her _face_ warn’t no place for me: and then she squeezes
my hand, and says, ‘God bless you, Peter;’ and Polly did the same, and
there was some cryin’ on both sides. So I helped ’em off, and as we
parted, each one gin me a handsome half-dollar, and I kept one on ’em a
good many years; and, finally, I gin it to my sweet-heart in Santa Cruz,
and I guess she’s got it yit.
“I starts on my journey with a heavy heart, sobbin’ and cryin’, for I
begun to cry as soon as I got out of the wagon. I guess I cried all of
three hours afore mornin’, and I felt so distressedly ’bout leavin’ the
gals I almost wished myself back; but I’d launched out, and I warn’t
agoin’ back _alive_.
“I travelled till daylight, and then, to be undiscovered, I took to the
woods, and stayed there all day, and eat the food I took along in the
knapsack; and a dreadful thunder-storm come, and I crawled, feet first,
into a fell holler old tree, and pulled in my knapsack for a pillar, and
had a good sleep; only a part of the time I cried, and when I come out I
was very dry, and I lays down and drinks a bellyful of water out of a
place made by a crutter’s track, and filled by the rain, and on I went
till I come to Skaneatales Bridge; and ’twas now dark, and when I got
into the middle, a man comes up and says ‘good evenin’, Peter.’ Well, I
stood and says nothin’, only I expected my doom was sealed. He says ‘you
needn’t be scart, Peter,’ and come to, it was a black man I’d known, and
he takes me into his house in the back room, and gin me a good meal. You
see I’d seen him a good many times agoin’ by there with a team. Arter
supper his wife gin me a pair of stockins and half a dollar, and he gin
me half a loaf of wheat bread, and a hunk of biled bacon, and a silver
dollar, and off I started, with a kind of a light heart. I travels all
that night till daylight, and grew tired and sleepy; and on the right
side of the road I see a barn, and so I goes in and lies down on the
hay, and I’d no sooner struck the mow than I fell asleep. When I woke up
the sun was up three hours, and some men were goin’ into the field with
a team, and that ‘woke me up. I looks for a chance to clear, and I sees
a piece of woods off about half a mile, and I gits off; so the barn hid
me from ’em, and I lays my course for these woods, and jist by ’em was a
large piece of wheat, and I gits in and was so hid I stays there all
day; and a part of the time I cried, and sat down, and stood up, and
whistled, and all that, and it come night, I started out, and travelled
till about midnight, and had a plenty to eat yit.
“Well, the moon shone bright, and I was travellin’ on between two high
hills, and the fust thing I hears was the screech of a pain’ter; and if
you’d been there, I guess you’d thought the black boy had turned white.
Well, on the other hill was an answer to this one; and I travelled on,
and every now and then, I heard one holler and t’other answer, but I
kept on the move; and when the moon come out from a cloud it struck on
the hill, and I see one on ’em, and bim’bye, both on ’em got together,
and sich a time I never see atwixt two live things. Their screeches
fairly went _through_ me. Not long arter I come up to a house, and bein’
very dry, I turned into the gate to git a drink of water, and I drawed
up some, and a big black dog come plungin’ out, and in a minute a light
was struck up, and out come a man, and hollered to his dog to ‘_git
out_;’ and he says to me, ‘Good night, Sir; you travel late.’ ‘Yis,
Sir.’ ‘What’s the reason?’ And I had a lie all ready, cut and dried. ‘My
mother lies at the pint of death in the city of New York, and I’m a
hastenin’ down to see her, to git there if I can afore she dies.’ He
rather insisted on my comin’ in, but I declined, and bid him a good
night, and passed on my way. I left the road for fear this man might
think I was _a run-away_, and so pursue me; and on I went to the woods.
I hadn’t got fur afore I hears a horse’s hoofs clatterin’ along the
road; and thinks, says I, ‘I’m ahead of you, now, my sweet feller—_I’m
in the bush_.’ And so I put on; and by daylight I thought I was fur
enough off, and I could travel a heap faster in the road, so I put for
the road; and nothin’ troubled me till ten o’clock. And as I come along
to an old loghouse, a little gal come out, and hollers, ‘Run, nigger,
run, they’re arter ye; you’re a _run-away, I know_.’ I tell you it
struck me with surprise, to think how she knew I was a run-away. I says
nothin’, but she says the same thing agin’; and on I goes till I come to
a turn in the road where I was hid, and I patted the sand nicely for a
spell I tell ye. When I got along a while, I run into a bunch of white
pines; and as I slipped along, I come across one of these ’ere black
gentlemen with a white ring round his neck, and he riz up and seemed
detarmined to have a battle with me. Well, I closed in with him, and
_dispersed_ him quick, with a club; and in about four rods I met
another, and I dispersed him in short order; and got out into the road,
and travelled till night; and come to a gate, and axed the man if I
might _stay with him_. An Ingen man kept the gate, and a kind of a
tavern, tu; and he says, ‘yis;’ and I stayed, and was treated _well_,
and not a question axed. Well, I axed him how fur ’twas to a village,
and he says, ‘six miles to Oneida village,’ and says he, ‘what be you,
an Ingen, or a nigger?’ I says, ‘I guess I’m a kind of a mix:’ and he
put his hand on to my head, and says, ‘well, I guess you’ve got some
nigger blood in ye, I guess I shan’t charge you but half price,’ and so
off I starts. Well, soon I come to a parcel of blackberry bushes, and
out come an Ingen squaw, and says, ‘sago;’ and I answers, ‘sagole,’
that’s a kind of a ‘how de.’ And all along in the bushes was young
Ingens, as thick as toads arter a shower, and I was so scart to think
what I’d meet next, my hair fairly riz on end; and in a minute, right
afore me I see a comin’ about twenty big, trim, strappin’ Ingens, with
their rifles, and tomahawks, and scalpin’ knives, and then I wished I
was back in master’s old kitchen, for I thought they was arter me; and I
put out and run, and a tall Ingen arter me to scare me, and I run my
prettiest for about fifty rods, and then I stubbled my toe agin a stone,
and fell my length, heels over head. But, I up and started agin, and
then the Ingen stopped, and oh! sich a yelp as he gin, and all on ’em
answered him, and off he went and left me, and that made me feel better
than bein’ in old master’s kitchen.
“I travels on and comes to a tavern, and got some breakfast of fresh
salmon, and had a talk with the landlord’s darter, and she was half
Ingen, for her father had married an Ingen woman; and while I was there,
up come four big Ingens arter whiskey, and they had no money, and so
they left a bunch of skins in pawn till they come back. So I paid him
thirty-seven and a half cents and come on. The next time I stopped at a
cake and beer shop, and I told the old woman sich a pitiful story, that
she gin me all I’d bought and a card of gingerbread to boot, and I come
on rejoicin’. They was Yankee folks, and, say what you will, the Yankee
folks are fine fellers where ever you meet ’em.
“Next place I passed was Utica, which was quite a _thrifty little
place_; but I didn’t stop there; and on a little I got a ride with a
teamster down twenty miles, to a place about six miles west of Little
Falls, and there I put up with a man, and he hired me to help him work
nine days and a half, and gin me a dollar a day, and paid me the silver,
and he owned a black boy by the name of Toney. We called him Tone, and
they did abuse him bad enough, poor feller! he was all scars from head
to foot, and I slept with him, and he showed me where they’d cut him to
pieces with a cat-o’-nine-tails. And it did seem, to look at him, as
though he must have been cut up into mince meat, almost!! ☜ !!
“Well, I left him, and got down about two miles on my journey, and there
lay a Durham boat, aground in the Mohawk River; and a man aboard
hollered to me, to come down, and he axed me if I didn’t want to _work
my passage down to Snackady_. I says, ‘_yis, if you’ll pay me for it_!!’
You see I felt very independent jist now, for I begun to feel my oats a
leetle; and so he agreed to give me twenty shillin’s if I would, and so
I agreed tu, and went aboard, and glad enough tu of sich a fat chance of
gittin’ along.
“We come to ‘the Falls,’ and they was a great curiosity I tell ye; and
we got our boat down ’em, through a canal dug round ’em by five or six
locks. Oh! them falls was a fine sight—the water a thunderin’ along all
foam. Well, we had good times a goin’ down, and come to Snackady, the
man wanted to hire me to go trips with him up and down from Utica, and
offered me ten dollars a trip. So we got a load of dry goods and
groceries, and goes back for Utica, and gits there Saturday night. The
captain of the boat was John Munson, and I made three trips with him,
and calculated to have made the fourth, but somethin’ turned up that
warn’t so agreeable. I stayed there Sunday, and Sunday evenin’ about
seven o’clock, I goes up on the hill with one of the hands, to see some
of our colour, and gits back arter a roustin’ time about ten o’clock,
and as soon as I enters the house, Mrs. Munson says, ‘why lord-a-massa
Peter, _your master has been here arter you_, and what shall we do?’ And
I was so thunderstruck, I didn’t know what to say, or do. And says she,
‘you must make your escape the best way you can.’
“I goes up stairs and gathers up my clothes, and the women folks comes
up tu, and while we was there preparin’ my escape, old master and the
sheriff comes in below! and he says to Munson, who lay on the bed, ‘I’m
a goin’ to sarch your house for my nigger;’ and Munson rises up and
says, ‘what the devil do you mean? away with you out of my house. I
knows nothin’ about your nigger, nor am I your nigger’s keeper—besides,
‘afore you sarch my house, you’ve got to bring a legal sarch-warrant,
and now show it or out of my house, or you’ll catch my trotters into
your starn, _quick_ tu.’
“Well, I darn’t listen to hear any thing more, but all a tremblin’, says
I to the women, ‘what in the name of distraction shall I do?’
“Mrs. Munson says, ‘I’ll go down and swing round the well-sweep, and you
jump on, and down head-foremost.’ I flings out my bundle, and up comes
the well-sweep, and I hopped on, and down I went head foremost, jist
like a cat, and put out for the river; and I found Mrs. Munson there
with my clothes, for she’d took ’em as soon as she could, and put out
with ’em for the river. ‘And now Peter,’ says she ‘do you make the best
of your way down to Albany, and travel till you git there, and don’t you
git catched; and so I off, arter thankin’ Mrs. Munson, and I wanted to
thank Mr. Munson tu, for his management, but I couldn’t spend the time,
and I moved some tu; and I got down to Albany by one o’clock at night,
and there lay a sloop right agin’ the wharf, alongside the old stage
tavern; and as I was a wanderin’ along by it, there seemed to be a
colored man standin’ on deck, ’bout fifty years old, and his head was
most as white as flax, and says he as he hails me, ‘where you travellin’
tu, my son?’ I says, ‘I’m bound for New York,’ and I out with my old lie
agin ’bout my mother. You see that lie was like some minister’s
sarmints, that goes round the country and preaches the same old sarmint
till it’s threadbare—but it sarved my turn. ‘Come aboard my son, and
take some refreshments;’ and so I goes down into the cabin, and I feels
kind’a guilty, sorry, and hungry, and my feet was sore, for I’d walked
bare-foot from Snackady; and if you did but know it, it was a dreadful
sandy road, but I wanted no shoes ’bout me that night. Well, pretty soon
my meal was ready, and I had a good cup of coffee, and ham, and eggs,
and arter that, says he, ‘now lay down in my berth;’ and I laid down,
and in two minutes I got fast to sleep, and the first I knew old master
had me by the nape of the neck, and called for some one to help him, and
he had a big chain, and he begins to bind me and I sings out, ‘murder,’
as loud as I could scream, and the old gentleman comes to the berth, and
says, ‘what’s the matter my son?’ and I woke up, and ’twas _a dream_,
and I was so weak I couldn’t hardly speak, and I was cryin’ and my shirt
was as wet as a drownded rat; and the old man says, ‘why, what’s the
matter, Peter? you’re as white as a sheet? ‘I says, ‘nothin’ only a
dream;’ and says he, ‘try to git some sleep my son, nobody shan’t hurt
you.’ And so I catches kind’a cat-naps, and then the old man would chase
me, and I run into the woods; and three or four men was arter me on
white horses, and I run into a muddy slough, and jumped from bog to bog,
and slump into my knees in the mud, and I’d worry and worry to git
through, and at last I did; and then I had to cross a river to git out
of their way, and I swum across it, and it was a pure crystal stream,
and I could see gold stones and little fish on the bottom. Well, I got
to the bank and sets down, and they couldn’t git to me, and I had a good
quiet sleep. Finally, the old man comes to me, and says, ‘come, my son,
git up and eat some breakfast. And I up, and the sun was an hour high,
and more tu. I washes me, and we had some stewed eels and coffee; and we
eat alone, for all the hands and captain was a spendin’ the night among
their friends ashore. And the old man begins to question me out whether
I warn’t a run-away, and I rother denied it in the first place; and he
says, ‘you needn’t be afeard of me. You’re a run-away, and if you’ll
tell me your story, I’ll help you.’ So I up and told him my whole story,
and he says, ‘I know’d you was a run-away when you come aboard last
night, for I was once a slave myself, and now arter breakfast you go
with me, and I’ll show you a good safe place to go and be a cook.’
“So we walked along on the dock, and says he, ‘there comes the Samson,
Captain John Truesdell, I guess he wants you, for I understood his cook
left him in Troy.’
“So the Samson rounded up nigh our’n, and the captain jumps ashore, and
says he, ‘boy do you want a berth?’ and I touches my hat, and says,
‘yis, Sir.’ And he says, ‘can you roast, bake, and bile, &c.?’ I says,
‘I guess so.’ ‘Can you reef a line of veal, and cook a tater?’ ‘Yis,
Sir, all that.’ ‘Well, you are jist the boy I want; ‘what do you ask a
month?’ I says, ‘I don’t know:’ but I’d a gone with him if he hadn’t
agin me a skinned sixpence a month. Well, he looks at me, and slaps me
on the shoulder, and says he, ‘you look like a square-built clever
feller,—I’ll give you eight dollars a month.’
“This colored man looks at me and shakes his head, and holds up all
hands, and fingers, and thumbs, and that’s ten you know. So I axed him
ten dollars a month. And says he, ‘I’ll give it;’ and my heart jumps up
into my mouth. And he claps his hand into his pocket, and took out three
dollars, and says he, ‘now go up to the market and git two quarters
veal, and six shillin’ loaves of bread, and here’s the market basket.’
Well, I thought it kind’a strange that he should trust me, cause I was a
stranger; but I found out arter this, a followin’ the seas, that it was
the natur’ of sailors to be trusty. Well, I off to the market, and I
goes up State-street and looked across on ‘tother side, and who should I
see but _Master and the Sheriff_, a comin’ down; so I pulls my tarpaulin
hat over my eyes, for I’d got all rigged out with a sailor suit on the
Mohawk, and I spurs up, and the grass didn’t grow under my feet any
nother. I does my business, and hastens back as fast as possible, and
got aboard, and the captain made loose, and bore away into the wind, and
made all fast; and the sails filled, and down the river we went like a
bird. A stiff breeze aft, and I was on deck, for I wanted to see, and
the captain comes along and says, ‘boy, you’d better below,’ and down I
went. Well, we run under that breeze down to the overslaugh, and got
aground, and then my joy was turned into sorrow. The captain says to me,
‘boy, you keep ship while I and the hands go back and git _a lighter_,
or we shan’t git off in a week; and he takes all hands into the jolly
boat and starts for the city again. Arter they’d gone I wanders up and
down in the ship, and cried, and thought this runnin’ aground was all
done a purpose to catch me; and I goes down into the cabin and ties all
my clothes up in a snug bundle, and goes into the aft cabin, and opens
the larboard window, and made up my mind that if I see any body come
that looked suspicious, I’d take to the water.
Well, afore long, I see the jolly boat a comin’ down the river, and
every time the oars struck she almost riz out of the water. Three men on
a side and the captain sot steerin’ and as she draws nigher and nigher I
draws myself into a smaller compass, for I was afeard master was aboard
that boat. Well, she comes alongside, but thanks to God no master in
that boat.
“The captain comes on deck and says with a smile, ‘_Peter, you may git
dinner now_.[12] So I goes and gits a good dinner, for I understood
cookin’ pretty well, and they eats, and I tu, and then I clears off the
table, and washes the dishes, and sweeps the cabin, and goes on deck.
And sees a lighter comin’ down the river, and she rounded up and come
alongside, and we made fast, and up hatches and took out the wheat, and
worked till evenin’, and then she swung off; and by mornin’ we’d got all
the freight aboard, and we discharged the lighter and highted all sail,
and the wind was strong aft, and we lowered sail no more till we landed
in New York, and that was the next day at evenin’.
Footnote 12:
What a cheerful air hangs around the path of liberty! I was once
reading this page to a warm-hearted and benevolent Abolitionist, and
when I came to this speech of the captain, he burst into tears as he
exclaimed, “Oh, what a change in that boy’s existence! It seems to me
that such kindness must almost have broken his heart. Oh! a man must
have a bad heart not to desire to see every yoke broken, and all the
oppressed go free.”
“Well, the second night arter this, the captain come down into the
cabin, and says he, ‘Peter I’ve got a story for you.’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I
wants to hear it, Sir.’ ‘Well last night there was a small man from
Cayuga county, by the name of Gideon Morehouse ☜ come aboard my sloop,
and says, “you’ve got my nigger concealed aboard your ship, and I’ve got
authority to sarch your vessel;” and he sarched my vessel and every body
and every thing in it, and by good luck _you_ was ashore, or he’d a had
you; for you must be the boy by description.’
“Now I was on the poise whether to tell the truth or not; but I was
rather constrained to lie; but the captain says, ‘tell me the truth,
Peter, for ’twill be better for you in the end; so I up and told him my
whole story, as straight as a compass, and long as a string.
“‘Well’ says he, ‘be a good boy, and I’ll take care on you.’ So we
stayed in New York a few days, and back to Albany, and started for New
York agin and we had fourteen pretty genteel passengers, and the captain
says, ‘now Peter be very attentive to ’em and you’ll git a good many
presents from ’em.’ ‘So I cleaned their boots and waited on ’em, and
when I got to York I carried their baggage round the city, and when I
got to the sloop I counted my money, and had six dollars fifty cents,
jist for bein’ polite, and it’s jist as easy to be polite as any way.
“Well, the next mornin’ the captain comes to me about daylight, and
hollers, ‘up nig, there’s a present for you on deck.’
“So I hops up in great haste and there was stuck on the sign of the
vessel, an advertisement, and ‘reward of one hundred dollars, and all
charges paid for catchin’ a large bull-eyed Negro, &c.’ The captain
reads that to me, and says very seriously, ‘Peter that’s a great reward.
You run down in the cabin and git your breakfast, I must have that
hundred dollars; for one hundred dollars don’t grow on every bush.’
“Well, I started and went down, a sobbin’ and cryin’ to get breakfast,
and calls the captain down to eat, and he sets down and says he, ‘Peter
ain’t you agoin’ to set down and eat somethin’? it will be the last
breakfast you’ll eat with us.’
“I says with a very heavy heart, ‘no Sir, I wants no breakfast.’ Arter
breakfast says he, ‘now clear off the table, and do up all your things
nice and scour your brasses, so that when I get another cook he shan’t
say you was a dirty feller.’ So I goes and obeys all his orders, and I
shed some tears tu, I tell ye; and then I set down and had a
regular-built cryin’ spell, and then the captain comes down and says,
‘you done all your work up nicely?’ ‘Yis Sir,’ ‘well, now go and tie up
all your clothes.’ So I did, and I cried louder than ever about it, and
he says, ‘I guess you han’t got ’em all have ye?’ So he unties my
bundle, and takes all on ’em out one by one, and lays ’em in the berth,
and I cried so you could hear me to the forecastle; and finally he turns
to me a pleasant look and says, ‘Peter put up your clothes; I’ve no idea
of takin’ you back, I’ve done this only to try you; and now I tell you
on the _honor of a man_, as long as you stay with me, and be as faithful
as you have been, nobody shall take you away from me _alive_; and then I
cries ten times worse than ever, I loved the captain so hard. But a
mountain rolled off on me, for I tell you to be took right away in the
bloom of liberty, arter I’d toiled so hard to git it, and then have all
my hopes crushed in a minute, I tell you for awhile I had mor’n I could
waller under. But when I got acquain’ted with the captain, I found him a
rale abolitionist, for he’d fight for a black man any time, and ☞ Oh!
how he did hate slavery: ☜ but then he kind’a loved to run on a body,
and then make ’em feel good agin, and he was always a cuttin’ up some
sich caper as this; but he was a noble man and I love him yit.
“Now I felt that I was raly free ☜ although I knew Morehouse was a
lurkin’ round arter me: _and arter this I called no man master_, but I
knew how to treat my betters. I now begun to ☞ feel somethin’ like a
man, ☜ and the dignity of a _human bein’_ begun to creep over me, and I
_enjoyed_ my liberty when I got it, I can tell you. I didn’t go a
sneakin’ round, and spirit-broken, as I know every man must, if he’s a
slave; but ☞ I couldn’t help standin’ up straight, arter I knew I was
free. ☜ Oh! what a glorious feelin’ that is! and oh! how I pitied my
poor brethren and sisters, that was in chains. I used to set down and
think about it, and cry by the hour; and when I git to thinkin’ about it
now, I wonder how any good folks, and specially christian people, can
hate abolitionists. ☜ I think it must be owin’ to one of two things;
either they don’t know the horrors or miseries of a slave’s life, or
they can’t have much feelin’; for the anti-slavery society is the only
society I know on, that professes to try to set ’em all free; for you
know the colonization folks have give up the idee long ago, that they
can do any thing of any amount that way; and so they say they are agoin’
to enlighten Africa. And I can’t for the life on me see how the
abolitionists is so persecuted; it’s raly wonderful! ☜ But I’m glad I
can pray to God for the poor and oppressed, if I am a black man; and I
think it can’t be a long time afore all the slaves go free—there is so
many thousands of christians all prayin’ for it so arnestly; and so many
papers printed for the slave, and so many sarmints preached for him, and
sich a great struggle agoin’ on for him all over creation. Why all this
is God’s movin’s, and nobody can’t stop God’s chariot wheels.” ☜
A. “Well, Peter, you’ve come to a stopping place now, and I think we’ll
close this book, for I suppose you’ll have some sea stories to tell.”
P. “Yis, Domine. I shall have some long yarns to reel off when I gets my
sails spread out on the brine, for I think the rest of my history is no
touch to my sailor’s life. But one thing, it won’t be so sorrowful, if
’tis strange; for, if I was rocked on the wave, I had this sweet thought
to cheer me, as I lay down on my hammock, ☞ _I’m free_; ☜ and dreams of
liberty hung round my midnight pillow, and I was happy, because I was no
longer Peter Wheeler in chains.”
--------------
_Thoughts suggested by the incidents of the First Book._
It may be profitable and interesting to notice some of the principles
involved in the foregoing story. The history of Peter Wheeler in Chains,
is a rich chapter in the tale of oppression and slavery in America. The
horrors and barbarities here recorded, ought not to go forth before the
citizens of a free nation, without producing an appropriate and powerful
impression, that will give _impulse_ and triumph to the principles of
our constitution. A few plain thoughts occur to the reader of this
history, which we will notice:—
I. We see the necessary and legitimate influence of irresponsible power,
upon its possessor and victims. It is one of the broad principles of the
bible, and of our republican government, that it is not safe to place
irresponsible power in the hands of a fallible being, under any
circumstances; for, in every recorded instance of the world’s history,
it has been abused, and produced unmixed misery.
When young Nero assumed the purple of imperial Rome, his heart revolted
at the thought of tyranny, and when first asked to sign a criminal’s
death-warrant, his hand refused to do its office-work, and he exclaimed,
“Would to God I had never learned to write.” And yet, under the
influence of irresponsible power, he at last became so transformed, that
he illuminated his gardens with the bodies of burning Christians, and
danced to the music of a drunken fiddler while Rome was on fire! As man
is constituted, he is not equal to a possession of unlimited power,
without abusing it. Experience confirms all this, and common sense too.
And if the history of every slaveholder in creation could be unfolded,
we should see that every hour his character acquired new and worse
features. Even if he did not gradually become more hard and tyrannical
in his treatment of his slaves, yet it would be seen that his own heart
was constantly losing its higher and nobler qualities, and the dark
trail of oppression, like the course of the serpent, was leaving its
foul and polluted stain upon all it touched. Slavery _must_ call forth
malignant and unholy passions in the breast, and their repeated exercise
must harden and pollute the heart. It degrades the _whole man_,—for
there is not a faculty or propensity of the being but what is tain’ted
by the foul breath of slavery. The reader must have remarked the steady
and rapid moral defilement which was going on in Peter’s master, till at
last he was plunged into the deepest degradation, which sought _his
death_. Oh! who can conceive of a degradation more complete than that
which made its subject exult in the thought of torturing a poor black
boy, even unto death! There are noble and generous hearts in the South,
who feel, most keenly, the debasing influence of slavery upon the
father’s, and the husband’s, and the lover’s heart; and they are
weeping, in secret places, because every green thing around the social
altar is burned up by this withering blast. The author of this note has
heard the lamentations of daughters and wives, whose homes have been
made desolate by the foul spirit of tyranny, and their longings and
prayers for a brighter day, which shall regenerate the South by
emancipating the slave. Oh! how can man become viler than to hunt down
the poor fugitive slave, like a blood-hound, when he has cast off his
fetters, and is emerging into the light and glory of freedom. The first
impulse of a generous or benevolent heart would be joy, to see the poor
victim break away from his bondage, and go free, in God’s beautiful
world. Let us hear no more of the desire of the South to emancipate
their slaves, when every fugitive is tracked by blood-hounds, till he
crosses the waters of the St. Lawrence, and finds shelter under the
throne of a British Queen. In most instances, slavery will make the
master thirst for the blood of the slave who escapes from his chains;
and let this fact bespeak its influence on his heart.
II. Opposition to anti-slavery principles, is no new thing under the
sun. We should conclude, from the reasoning of some, in these days, that
all efforts made to suppress slavery, which elicit the opposition of the
South, must be wrong, for, say they, “slavery can be destroyed without
any opposition from the slaveholder!”
Monstrous!!! what? the most stupendous structure of selfishness and
abominations on earth, be uptorn without opposition or convulsion! As
well may you say, that God could have emancipated the Hebrews, without
exciting so much opposition from their masters! The truth is, that the
doctrine was never broached till these latter days, that freedom could
be achieved without a struggle. As well say that our fathers could have
achieved the independence of ‘76 without opposition. The experiment was
made for twenty years, by colonizationists, to do away with slavery,
without opposition, and, accordingly, they were obliged to mould their
scheme and plans to suit the South, so as to avoid opposition; and the
South succeeded, and gave them a scheme which would transport to a dark,
and desolate, and heathen shore, to die of starvation, four or five
thousand, while the increase was 700,000, ☜ to say nothing of the old
stock on hand. Good reason why the South should not oppose such a plan.
They would display unutterable folly in their opposition.
_Slavery is one of the strongholds of hell_, and it is not to be torn
down without a struggle, any more than satan will surrender any other
part of his kingdom without opposition. Peter’s master was enraged at
any reproof or interference from others, that came in collision with his
tyranny, and so it is now.
III. We see, also, that the slave, in all ages, thinks so badly of
slavery, that he is disposed to run away, if he can. This is enough to
say about slavery. Men are not disposed to run away from great
blessings. And yet we are told, constantly, by the South, that the
slaves are contented and happy with their masters. Now, if this is true,
it only makes slavery worse; for what kind of a system is that which
degrades a man so low, and prostrates all his better and more glorious
attributes to such degradation, that _the love of liberty is crushed in
his soul_; that no heaven-directed thought is lifted for the high
enjoyments of an intellectual and bright being; that he is stripped of
all that he received from Jehovah, which elevates him above the worm
that crawls at his feet. Oh! fellow-man beware! if you have succeeded so
completely in defacing the lineaments of divinity in the human soul,
that all the glorious objects of creation will not draw forth from his
bosom a thought or a wish after a brighter abode. If the gay carol of
the wild bird, or the fresh breezes of morning which bring it to his
ear, or the stars of heaven, as they roll in their orbits, or the bright
dashing of the unfettered waters which sweep by, or the playful gambols
of the lamb that skips and plays on their banks; or, above all, if the
spirit of the Eternal Father, which breathes nobility and greatness into
the soul of his children, does not fan the fires of liberty in his
bosom; oh! fellow-man, if you have so completely dashed to oblivion and
nothingness, an immortal spirit, you have done a deed at which all hell
would blush; you have covered the throne of the Eternal in mourning. If
this be true, you are worse than you have ever been described.
But, Sir, your whole enginery of death has never accomplished such a
total destruction as this. You may have _degraded mind_, and you _have_,
but oh! thanks to God, you have not made such awful havoc with a
deathless spirit as this. No! you have only poured gall into wounded
spirits; you have only torn open deeply lacerated bosoms;—you have only
plucked the most glorious pearl from man’s diadem; you have only heaped
insult upon a son or a daughter of God Almighty, who is redeemed by the
blood of the Lamb;—and your stroke or bolt of woe, that unchained the
spirit, only open a passage-way for it to the gates of eternal glory.
But, you have done enough God knows! You have done enough to heap up
fuel for your own damnation; and encircled by those faggots, “you shall
burn, and none shall quench them,” through eternal ages, unless you are
cleansed by atoning blood.
The truth is yet to be told. The slave is not contented and happy—more,
no slave in the universe ever was, or can be contented, till God shall
strip him of his divinity which makes him a man. I have conversed with
several thousands in bondage, and many who have got free, and never did
I hear such a sentiment fall from human lips. It is estimated by facts
already in our possession, (viz. the numbers who win their way to
freedom, and those who are advertised as run-aways who are caught,) that
more than fifty thousand slaves attempt their escape from bondage every
year. And yet so anxious are their masters to still bind the chains,
that many of them are chased over one thousand miles. What bare-faced
hypocrisy in a man, to give money to transport to an inhospitable and
barbarous clime, a worn-out slave, and yet to chase _his brother_ one
thousand miles to reduce him again to bondage, or to death!!
IV. _The low and base meanness of slave-holding._ Nothing is accounted
_meaner_ than theft and _stealing_! ☜ And yet ☞ every slaveholder is
necessarily a constant, and perpetual thief. ☜ He steals the slave’s
body and soul. And if there is one kind of theft which is worse than all
others, it is to steal the wages of the poor, three hundred and
sixty-five days in the year! It would be accounted very mean in a rich
man, to employ a poor day laborer and then follow him to his home at
night, after the toils of the day were over, and steal from his pocket
the price of his day’s labor, which he had paid to him to buy bread for
his children, and such a man would be called a wretch all over the
world;—and yet every slaveholder as absolutely steals the slave’s wages
every night—for he goes to his dwelling and family, if he have one,
pennyless after a day of hard toil. It would be considered the worst
kind of _meanness_ to go, and divide, and separate by an impassable
distance the members of a poor family; and yet not a slave lives in the
South, who has not at some time or other, seen the same barbarous
practice in the circle of his own relationship, and love.
It is the necessary and legitimate inference of the master, from the
doctrine of _the right of property in man_, that all the slave possesses
or acquires belongs to the one who owns him. Accordingly, Morehouse had
a _perfect right_ to the broadcloth coat which Mr. Tucker gave Peter for
saving the life of his daughter. The whole difficulty, the grand cause
of all the barbarities of slavery, lies in this unfounded and infamous
claim of the right to own, as property, the image of the Great Jehovah.
Destroy this claim, and slavery must cease forever. Acknowledge it in
_any instance_, or _under any circumstances_, and the flood-gate is
flung wide open to the most tyrannical oppression in an hour. This was
illustrated in the case of Dr. Ely, of Philadelphia, who pretended to be
“opposed to slavery as much as any body,” and yet who still main’tained
_that corner-stone principle of tyranny, “that it is right under certain
circumstances to hold man as property.”_ He removed to a slave state,
and found that “these circumstances” occurred. He _bought a slave,
Ambrose_, with, (as he declared,) _benevolent designs_, intending to
spend the avails of his unrequited labor, in buying others to
emancipate. He was expostulated with by his brethren in the ministry,
and out of it, against the _sin of his conduct in owning a fellow-man_,
and making the innocent labor without reward, to free the enslaved. And
“the hire of the laborer which he kept back cried to God.” He was told
of _the danger of owning a man for an hour_, by a keen-sighted editor of
New York; and this same editor uttered a prophecy which seemed almost
like the voice of inspiration, that God would pour contempt upon such an
unholy experiment, “of doing evil that good might come.” But still the
Doctor passed on, and heeded it not. At length, after that prophecy had
been forgotten by all but the friends of the slave, its fulfilment came
from the shores of the Mississippi, and God had blasted the Doctor’s
unrighteous scheme, and his speculations all failed, and poor Ambrose
was sold to pay his master’s debts. ☜ Then the experiment was fairly,
and one would think, _satisfactorily_ made, and the principle was
settled forever by God’s providence, that “_it is wrong under any
circumstances to hold man as property_.” We want the slaveholder to give
up his unholy, and unfounded claim to the image of God, and when he will
practically acknowledge this principle, then he will cease to be a
slaveholder.
V. We see, in the light of this story, the debasing, degrading, and
withering influence of slavery upon its poor victim. Peter tells the
truth, when he says, “no man can hold up his head _like a man_ if he is
a slave.” Any person who has been on a southern plantation must confess,
that there is a degraded and servile air upon the countenance of all the
slaves. A more abject, low, vacant, inhuman look, cannot be seen in the
face of a being in the world, than you see when you meet a southern
slave. It is not the tame and subdued look of a jaded beast. It is
infinitely more painful to behold a slave than such a spectacle. He
seems to be a man with the soul of a beast; God’s image does not speak
from his dim and lustreless eye, or his lifeless and degraded bearing.
You see a human form, but you cannot see the image of his Maker and
Father there. The slave loses his self-respect, and all regard for his
nature. He is shut out from all the lovely and glorious objects of
creation; and a soul which was made to soar upward in an eternal flight
towards its Sire, is smothered, and debased, and ruined;—its existence
is almost blotted from creation, and when it leaves its abused and
lacerated house of mortality, the world does not feel the loss;—the
departure is unnoticed, except by a few who loved him in life, and are
glad when his pilgrimage is over. The spirit flies, “no marble tells us
whither and he is forgotten, and only a few like himself know that he
ever existed in a green and beautiful world. But “a soul is a deathless
thing,” and that soul shall _speak_ at the last judgment day! It shall
tell its tale of blood to an assembled universe, and that universe shall
pronounce the doom of its murderer. ☜ In forecasting the proceedings of
the last day, I tremble to think I shall be one of its spectators; _not
because I shall be tried_, for I humbly trust I shall have an advocate
there, whose plea the Judge will accept, and whose robe of complete
righteousness shall mantle my naked spirit. But the revelations of that
solemn tribunal, which millions of enslaved Africans shall unfold, will
make the universe turn pale. And I should feel a desire to withdraw
behind the throne, till the sentence had been passed upon all buyers,
and sellers, and owners, of the image of the Omnipotent Judge, and
executed; did I not wish to behold _all the scenes_ of that great day,
and mingle my sympathies with _all the fortunes of that Throne_. For, as
I expect to stand among that mighty company, who shall cluster around
the Judgment Seat, _I do believe, that God’s Book will contain no page
so dark with rebellion and crime, as that which records the story of
American Slavery_! And yet I believe that that Book will embrace the
history of the whole creation.
VI. We see the glorious and hallowed influence of freedom upon man:—
No sooner had Peter escaped from chains, than he began to emerge from
degradation into the dignity of a human being. He breathed an inspiring
and ennobling atmosphere; he felt the greatness and glory of immortal
existence steal over him, and his soul, which had been shrouded in
darkness, begun to lift itself up from a moral sepulchre, and feel the
life-giving energy of a resurrection from despair. It must have been so,
for man’s element is freedom, and it cannot live in any other; deprived
of its necessary element, it will languish and die.
While I am writing this paragraph, Peter Wheeler comes into my room, and
we will hear his own testimony; he says, “Arter I’d got my liberty, I
felt as though I was in a _new world_; although I suffered, for a while,
a good deal, with fear of being catched.
“When I look back, and think how much I suffered by bein’ beat, and
banged, and whipt, and starved; and then my feelin’s arter I got free,
when I held up my head among men, and nobody pinted at me when I went by
and said, ‘there goes this man’s nigger, or that man’s nigger;’ why, I
can’t describe how I felt for two or three years. I was almost crazy
with joy. What I got for work was _my own_, and if I had a dollar, I
would slap my hand on my pocket and say, ‘_that’s my own_;’ and if I
hauled out my turnip, why it ticked for me and not for master, and ’twas
mine tu when it ticked. And I bought clothes, and good ones, and my own
_arnin’s_ paid for ’em. In fact, I breathed, and thought, and acted, all
different, and it was almost like what a person feels when he is changed
from darkness into light. Besides, when gentlemen and ladies put a
handle to my name, and called me _Mr. Wheeler_, why, for months I felt
odd enough; for you see a slave han’t got no name only ‘nig,’ or ‘cuss,’
or ‘skunk,’ or ‘cuffee,’ or ‘darkey;’ and then, besides, I was treated
like a man. And if you show any body any kindness, or attention, or good
will, you improve their characters, for you make them respect you, and
themselves, and the whole human race a sight more than ever. Why,
respect and kindness lifts up any body or thing. Even the beast or dog,
if you show ’em a kindness, they never will forgit it, and they’ll strut
and show pride in treatin’ on you well; and pity if man is of sich a
natur’ that he ain’t as noble as that, then I give it up. Why, arter I
come to myself, and I would git up and find all the family as pleasant
as could be, and I would go out and look, and see the sun rise, and hear
the birds sing, and I felt so joyful that I fairly thought my heart
would leap out of my body, and I would turn on my heel and ask myself
‘is this Peter Wheeler, or ain’t it? and if ’tis me, why how changed I
be.’ I felt as a body would arter a long sickness, when they first got
able to be out, and felt a light mornin’ breeze comin’ on ’em, and a
fresh, cool kind of a feelin’ comin’ over ’em; and they would think they
never see any thing, or felt any thing afore, for all seemed brighter
and more gloriouser than ever; and oh! it does seem to me that no
Christian people in the world can help wantin’ to see all free, for
Christians love to see all God’s crutters happy.
VII. “I b’lieve that one of the wickedest and most awful things in
creation, and the root, and bottom, and heart of all the evil, is
prejudice agin’ color.’ ☜ There is most, or quite as much of this at the
North as there is at the South, for I can speak from experience. There
is that disgrace upon us, that many people think it’s a disgrace to ’em
to have us come into a room where they be, for fear that they will be
_blacked_, or _disgraced_, or _stunk_ up by us poor off-scourin’ of
‘arth. And if I come into a room with a sarver of tea, coffee, rum,
wine, or sich like, they can’t smell any thing; but jist the second I
set down on an equal with ’em, as one of the company, they pretend they
can smell me. But, worse than this, this same disgrace is cast on our
color in the Sanctuary of the Living God. In enemost all the meetin’
houses, you see the ‘nigger pew;’ and when they come to administer the
Lord’s Supper, they send us off into some dark pew, in one corner, by
ourselves, as though they thought we would disgrace ’em, and stink ’em
up, or black ’em, or somethin.’ Why, ’twas only at the last Sacrament in
our Church this took place. All communicants was axed to come and
partake together, and I come down from the gallery, and as I come into
the door, to go and set down among ’em; one of the elders stretched out
his arm, with an air of disdain, and beckoned me away to a corner pew,
where there was no soul within two or three pews on me, as though he had
power to save or cast off. Now think what a struggle I had, when I sot
down, to git my mind into a proper state for the solemn business I was
agoin to do.
“First, I thought it was hard for me to be so cast off by my brethren in
the church, and a feelin’ riz, and I fit agin’ it, and, finally, I
thought I could submit to my fate; and I believed God could see me, and
hear my cry, and accept my love, as well there as though I sot in the
midst on ’em. And it is the strangest thing in the world, too, that
Christian people can act so. There must be some of the love of
Christianity wantin’ in their hearts, or they could not treat a brother
in Christ in that way. As I sot there, I thought, ‘can there be any sich
place as a dark-hole, or black pew, or behind the door, or under the
fence, in heaven? If there is sich a spirit or policy there, I don’t
feel very anxious desire to go there.’ The bible says, ‘God is no
respecter of persons.’ ☜
“And what is worse than all, this spirit is carried to the graveyard;
and for fear that the dead body of a black man shall black up or
disgrace the body of a white, they go and dig holes round under the
fences, and off in a wet corner, or under the barn, and put all of our
colour in ’em; for every one may be an eyewitness if he’ll go to our
graveyard and others; for I have lived now goin’ on fourteen years in
one place, and any colored person who has been buried at all there, has
been buried all along under the fences, and close up to the old barn
that stands there. I know God will receive the souls of sich, jist as
well as though they was buried in the middle of the yard, but I say
this, to let the reader know what a cruel and unholy thing prejudice
agin color is, and what it will do to us poor black people.
“Now I know that all this is the reason why the people of our colour
don’t rise any faster. The scorn, the disgrace that every body flings on
’em, keeps ’em down, and they are sinkin’, and such treatment is enough
to sink the Rocky mountains.
“Now I know from experience, that the better you treat a black man the
better he will behave; for his own pride will keep his ambition up, and
he’ll try to rise; why if you should treat white folks so they’d grow
bad jist as fast. Why, who don’t know that a body will try to git the
good will of those who treat ’em well, so as to make ’em respect ’em
still more? And it’s jist like climbin’ a ladder; you’ll git up a round
any day, but if you keep a knockin’ a man on the head with the club of
prejudice, how in the name of common sense can he climb up.
“Now this is most as bad as slavery; ☜ for slavery keeps the foot on the
black man’s neck all the time, and don’t let ’em rise at all; and
prejudice keeps a knockin’ on him down as fast as he gits up; and we
ought not to go to the South, till we can git the people of the North to
treat our color like men and women. A good many people oppose
abolitionists, and say, ‘why what will you do with the niggers when they
are free? They will become drunken sots and vagabonds like our niggers
at the North; why don’t _they_ rise?’ I can answer that question in a
hurry! The reason is, because they don’t give us the same chance with
white folks; they won’t take us into their schools and colleges, and
seminaries, and we don’t be allowed to go into good society to improve
us; and if we set up business they won’t patronize us; they want us to
be barbers, and cooks and whitewashers and shoeblacks and ostlers,
camp-cullimen, and sich kind of mean low business. We ain’t suffered to
attend any pleasant places, or enjoy the advantages of debating schools
and libraries, and societies, &c. &c., and all these things is jist what
improves the whites so fast. And if we by hook or by crook git into any
sich place, why some feller will step on our toes, and give us a shove,
and say, ‘stand back nig, you can see jist as well a little furder off.
“Now all these things is what keeps us so much in the back ground; for
if we have a chance, we git up in the world as fast as any body. For
there _is_ smart and respectable colored folks; and you sarch out their
history, and you’ll find that they once had a good chance to git
larnin’, and they jumped arter it. I think one of the greatest things
the abolition folks should be arter, is to help the free people of color
to git up in the world, and grow respectable, and educated, and then we
will prove false what our enemies say, ‘that we are better off in chains
than we be in freedom.’”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK THE SECOND
----------
PETER WHEELER ON THE DEEP.
CHAPTER I.
Beginning of sea stories—sails with Captain Truesdell for the
West-Indies—feelings on leaving the American shore—sun-set at
sea—shake hands with a French frigate—a storm—old Neptune—a bottle or
a shave—caboose—Peter gets two feathers in his cap—St.
Bartholomews—climate—slaves—oranges—turtle—a small pig, “but dam’
old”—weigh anchor for New York—“sail ho!”—a wreck—a sailor on a
buoy—get him aboard—his story—gets well, and turns out to be an
enormous swearer—couldn’t draw a breath without an oath—approach to
New York—quarantine—pass the Narrows—drop anchor—rejoicing times—Peter
jumps ashore “a free nigger.”
_Author._ “Where do you hail from to day, Peter?”
_Peter._ “From the street, where I’ve found some folks that makes me
feel bad.”
A. “What now, Peter?”
P. “Why, there’s some folks that feels envious and flings this in my
face—’Oh! you’ve got to be a mighty big nigger lately, han’t ye? and
you’re agoin’ to have your life wrote.’ And this comes principally from
people of my own colour, only now and then a white person flings in
somethin’ to make it go glib; but the white folk round here generally
treat me very kindly.”
A. “Well, don’t revenge yourself, Peter; bear it like a man and a
christian. Now let us launch out on the deep.”
P. Well, we’ll weigh anchor,—but it won’t do for me to tell every thing
that happened to me in my sea v’iges, for ‘twould fill fifty books; and
so I’ll only tell some things that always seemed to please folks more’n
the rest:
I followed the North River all that summer I run away, and in the fall
of that year Captain John Truesdell sold his sloop and engaged to go out
to sea as master of a large vessel for a company of New York merchants.
“So, on the 22d of October, 1806, at nine o’clock we weighed anchor for
St. Bartholomews, and bore away for the Narrows. Arter we’d got out some
ways, I turned back to take one look at my old native land, and I felt
kind’a streaked, and sorry and grieved, and you may say I felt kind’a
rejoiced tu, for if I was a goin’ away from home and country, out on the
wide waters, I’d got my liberty, and was every day gettin’ it
_stronger_.
“We had a fine ship; she was one of the largest vessels in port, and she
carried twenty guns, for she was rigged to sail for any port, and fight
our own way. We had thirty-seven able-bodied men besides officers; and
in all, with some officers, about fifty men aboard. When we’d been out
nearly two days, towards night, we looked off ashore, and the land
looked bluer and bluer, till all on it disappeared, and nothin’ could be
seen but a wide waste of waters, blue as any thing, and the sun set jist
as though it fell into a bed of gold; and when the moon riz she looked
jist as though she come up out of the ocean; and the next mornin’, when
the mornin’ star rose, he looked like a red hot cinder out of a furnace.
Well, we all looked till we got out of sight of land, and then some went
to cryin’ and _I_ felt rather ticklish; but most on us went to findin’
out some amusements. The sails was all filled handsome, and she bounded
over the waters jist like a bird. Some on us went to playin’ cards, some
dice, and some a tellin’ stories, and he that told the fattest story was
the best feller.
“Next day ’bout nine in the mornin’, we spied a French frigate on our
larboard bow, bearin’ right down upon us, and first she hailed, “ship
ahoy!” Captain answered, and the frigate’s captain says, “what ship?”
“Sally Ann, from New York.” The Frenchman hollered, “drop your peak and
come under our lee.” And he did, and he come on board our ship with
twelve men, and captain took ’em down into the cabin, and hollers for
me, and says, ‘bring twelve bottles of madeira;” and so I did, and
stepped back and listened, and there they talked and jabbered, and I
couldn’t understand ’em any more’n a parcel of skunk blackbirds; but our
captain could talk some French. Well, they stayed aboard I guess, two
hours, and examined the ship all through, and then they left, and
boarded their ship, and they fired us two guns, and we answered ’em with
two stout ones, and then we bore off under a stiff breeze. This is what
sailors calls shakin’ hands, and wishin’ good luck, this firin’ salutes.
“The fifth day about ten o’clock A.M. there comes up a tremendous
thunder storm, and the waves run mountain high, and it blowed as though
the heavens and arth was a comin’ together; and the wind and storm riz
till two o’clock in the arternoon, and _increased_; and we drew an ile
cloth over the hatch comin’s and companion way. And all the sails was
took down, every rag on ’em, and we sailed under bare poles; and the log
was flung out, and we found we was a runnin’ at the rate of fifteen
knots an hour; and there come a sea and swept every thing fore and aft,
and it took me, for I’d just come out of my caboose, and swept my feet
right from under me, but I hung fast to the shrouds; and there wave
arter wave beat agin us, and swept over us clean. And oh! dear me suz,
the lightnin’ struck on the water and sissed like hot iron flung in, and
the thunder crashed like a fallin’ mountain, and the sailors acted some
on ’em pretty decent, and the rest on ’em like crazy folks. They ripped,
and swore, and cussed, and tore distressedly; and one old feller up
aloft reefin’ sail, his head was white as flax, cussed his Maker, ‘cause
he didn’t send it harder.
“Oh! how I trembled when I heard him! Why he scart me a thousand times
worse than the lightnin’. ‘Bout nine at night we tries the pumps, and
finds three feet water in the bold, and then eight men went to pumpin’
till the pumps sucked, and the captain looked pretty serious I tell ye;
and ’bout twelve o’ clock the storm went down, and all was quiet, only
the sea, and that was distressedly angry; and the next mornin’ ’twas as
calm, as the softest evenin’ ye ever see.
“Captain comes round and says, ‘boys, old Neptune will be round to-day,
and make every one pay his bottle or be shaved,’ and sure enough, ’bout
eleven the old feller comes aboard with an old tarpaulin hat on, and his
jacket and breeches all tore to strings, and the water running off on
him, and says, ‘captain you got any of my boys aboard?’ ‘Yis, here’s
one;’ and he p’inted at _me_. ‘Well boy, what have you got for me
to-day?’ ‘A bottle of wine,’ says I; and he says ‘now I’m goin’ to swear
you by the crook of your elbow, and the break of the pump, that you will
let no man pass without a bottle or a shave.’ So he goes round to all on
board and then goes away. The captain told me he was ‘old Neptune, and
lived in the ocean;’ but I was detarmined to foller him; so on I goes
arter him, and I finds him snug hid under the cathead a changin’ his
clothes, and then he comes on deck, and I charged him that he was the
old Neptune, and finally he confessed it, and said ’twas the way all old
sailors did to make every raw hand, when they got to sich a spot in the
ocean, pay his bottle or be shaved with tar, soap, and an iron razor.
“Along in the day, captain calls all hands on deck, and says, ‘we’ve had
a pretty hard time boys, and new we’ll rig a new caboose, and clear up,
and then we’ll splice the main brace and ’twas done quick and well, _for
grog was ahead_.
“The captain says to me, ‘now cook, you go down and draw that ten quart
pail full of wine, and give every man a half a pint; and drink and be
merry boys, but let no man get drunk. Well, I got a good supper, and
arter that a jollier set of fellers you never seed. We was runnin’ under
a stiff breeze from N. W. and all sails well filled; and we had sea
stories, and songs, and music, and all kinds of amusements, and the
captain was as jolly as any body.
“Well, arter bedtime, the captain says, ‘cook, you must be my watch
to-night,’ and he comes and tells me jist how to manage the helm; and he
turns in, and I managed it _well_, for I’d managed his old sloop on the
river, but this was somethin’ more of a circumstance; and afore the
watch was up, I got so I could manage a ship as well as the fattest on
’em, and a tickelder feller you never see.
“In the mornin’ the hands praised me up; and the captain says, ‘why,
he’s the best man aboard, for he can do _my duty_;’ and that made me
feel good, and I got two considerable feathers in my cap that time.
“But I must hurry on. We made St. Bartholomews in nineteen days from New
York, and sold cargo, and took in a load for Porto Rico, and there
filled up with sugar and molasses, and put out for New York. The climate
there was hot enough to scorch all the wool off a nigger’s head. The
fever was ragin’ dreadfully in another part of the island, and we
didn’t, any on us, pretend to go ashore much. The sand was so hot at
noon ‘twould burn your feet, and the white inhabitants didn’t go out at
all in the middle of the day; but the niggers didn’t seem to mind the
heat at all; bare-footed, bare-headed, and half-naked; yis, more’n halt
a considerable, and it seemed the hotter it was the better they liked
it. But they suffered a good deal, and they’d come aboard our ship and
try to make thick with the crew. They talked a broken lingo, kind’a
Ginney, I s’pose; and they called white folks ‘buddee,’ and they’d say,
‘buddee give eat, and I give buddee orange.’ And so at night, they’d
fetch their oranges aboard, and give a heap on ’em for a few
sea-biscuit, and I tell ye, them oranges wan’t slow. One night, five or
six on ’em fetched a big sea turkle aboard, and we bought him and paid a
kag of biscuit for him, and he weighed two hundred and seventy pounds,
and the fellers seemed dreadfully rejoiced, and patted their lips and
bellies, and laughed, and kissed the captain’s feet, and laughed and
seemed tickled enough, and off they went. Next day another feller come
aboard, and says, ‘Cappy, you buy fat pig?’ ‘Yis, and when will you
bring him?’ ‘Mornin’ Cappy.’ So, in the mornin’ he come aboard with his
pig; he was small, but _terrible fat_; and so the captain pays him and
looks at him, and says, ‘Jack, your pig is small.’ ‘Oh! massa, he’s
small, but _dam old_.’ Oh! how the captain laughed! and he used that for
a bye-word all the v’yge.
“Well, we cooked the turkle, and sich meat I never see; there was all
kinds on it, and if we didn’t live fat for some days I miss my guess. I
was a goin’ to throw the shell overboard, but the captain hollered and
stopped me, and so he saved it and sold it in New York for a good sight
of money; and finally, arter bein’ in the islands some time, we weighed
anchor for New York.
“We’d got ’bout half way home, and one day the cabin boy was aloft, and
he cries out, ‘Sail ho!’
“‘Where away?’ ‘Over the starboard quarter.’
“‘How big?’ ‘As big as a pail of water.’
“‘Bear down to her, helmsman, and yon cook, bring my big glass.’ So I
brings it, and ’twas a big jinted thing, and ‘twould bring any thing
ever so fur off as nigh as you pleased. Captain looks and says, ‘It’s a
man on a buoy.’ And as we got nearer, sure enough we could see him; and
the captain cries, ‘down with the small boat, man her strong, put out
for him and handle him carefully.’ And bein’ pretty anxious, I was the
first man aboard, and we come along side on him and lifts up his head,
and he says in a weak voice, ‘Oh! my God’ don’t hurt me!!’ And we lifts
him up, and still he hangs to the buoy, and we told him to let go. And
he says, ‘I will, if you won’t let me fall;’ and we told him we
wouldn’t, and he let go reluctantly, and we took him in; and his breast,
where he lay on the buoy, was _worn to the bone_, where he’d hugged it,
and the motion of the waves had chafed him so. Well, we got him down in
a berth, and the captain tries to talk with him, but he couldn’t speak,
and we changes all the clothes on him that was left, and feeds him with
cracker and wine; and the captain sets and feels of his pulse, and says
once in a while, ‘he’s doin’ well’: and then he fell asleep, and slept
an hour as calm as a baby, and the captain told me to wash him in
Castile soap-suds, and says he, ‘we’ll have a new sailor in a hurry.’
“I prepares my wash and he wakes up, and says, ‘how in the name of God
did I come here?’ so we told him, and the captain says, ‘you hungry?’
‘Yis.’ And I fed him a leetle more and washed him; and oh! how he swore,
it smarted so. ‘Where’s the captain,’ says he. ‘Here.’ ‘_Captain, have
you got any rum?_’ ☜ And so he ordered him some weak sling, and arter
this he seemed a good deal stronger, and then the captain sets his chair
down by him, and asks him who he was and where he come from?
“He says, ‘my name is Tom Wilson, and I was born in Bristol, England,
and lived there till I was sixteen, and then sailed for Boston, and
followed the seas twenty years, and at last was pressed aboard an
English man of war in London. I escaped, and got on board a French ship,
and started for America in a merchantman. We’d made ’bout half v’yge
when a tremendous storm riz, and we was stove all to pieces, and every
body and every thing went down, for all I know, and I took to a big cork
buoy as my only hope. The last I see of the wreck was two days arter
this. Well, I hung to my buoy, and floated on, and on, and it got, calm,
and it got to be the fifth day, and I thought I must give up. I lost all
sense enemost, and didn’t know what did happen, till I beard your boat
come up, and then my heart fluttered; and now is the first time for days
I know what I am about. And this is the second time I have been cast
away and not a man aboard saved but myself. How long I was aboard the
buoy arter I lost my sense, I can’t say, but it seems to me it was
_some_ days, but I an’t sartin. Now captain, if I get well, make me one
of your men.’
“The captain says, ‘I will, Tom.’
“Well, he got up fast, and eat up ‘most all creation, he was so nigh
starved; and when he got able to work ship-tackle, he turns out to be a
great sailor, but an awful wicked man, for every breath heaved out an
oath.
“Well, in twenty-one days from the West-Indies, we made the New York
Light, and then there was rejoicin’ enough I tell ye. I know I was glad
enough, and as soon as we got hauled up, I jumped ashore and the first
thing says I,
“Here’s a Free Nigger.” ☜
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
Peter spends the winter of 1806–7 in New York; sails in June in the
Carnapkin for Bristol; a sea tempest; ship becalmed off the coast of
England; catch a shark and find a lady’s hand, and gold ring and
locket in him; this locket, &c. lead to a trial, and the murderer
hung; the mother of the lady visits the ship; sail for home; Peter
sails with captain Williams on a trading voyage; Gibralter;
description of it; sail to Bristol; chased by a privateer; she
captured by a French frigate; sail for New York; Peter lives a
gentleman at large in “the big city of New York.”
_Author._ “What did you do in New York, Peter?”
_Peter._ “We laid by and unrigged for winter, and the captain sent to
Troy and had his family brought down to the city, and I lived in his
family that winter as servant; and I had fine times tu, for he was a
noble man, and lived as independent as a prince, in Broadway, nigh where
the Astor House stands. I had a fine winter of it, and come spring he
hired the Carnapkin, one of the biggest and best ships in port, and all
rigged. We weighed anchor for Bristol, and this was rare sport for me,
for we was a goin’ to see old John Bull.
“When we’d been out about seven or eight days, we was overhauled by a
tremendous storm from the north-east; and it grew worse and worse, and
about midnight she lay on her beam ends for some time, and we expected
to go to pieces; and the second mate sounded the hold and found four
feet water in her, and that started the hair. We got the pumps a goin’
and pretty soon the captain hollers out, ‘she rights,’ and glad enough
we was; and the carpenter found her leak, and makes all tight, and by
next day all was clear as a bell. The captain found himself off of his
course over two hundred miles, and so he hauls on agin; and in about
twenty days we made sight of the white coast of old England, and there
we was becalmed for two days, and didn’t stir a mile.
“The captain says, ‘now boys, you may go and fish till we git a breeze.’
Well, we hadn’t been out long afore we fell foul of a shark, and the
first thing he knowed he had the harpoon in him, and we got him aboard,
and then we calculated on a great hurrah, and sure enough we did have a
_melancholy_ one tu. The captain says, ‘now let’s have his liver
cooked,’ for you see a shark’s liver is a great dish at sea. And so I
goes to work and cuts him open, and what do you think I found there?
“Why the first thing I found was the _hand of a human person_, and on
the middle finger was a gold ring, and on it ’twas wrote who she was in
Spanish characters. The captain stands by and says, ‘dig carefully a
leetle furder and see what you find.’ So on I dug with my butcher-knife,
and up comes a gold chain; and I pulled away and out come a gold locket,
and it had a lock of hair in it, and a name on it. We hunted along and
found human bones, and nails of fingers partly _dissolved_.
“Well, the captain sings out, ‘fling the monster overboard, for we won’t
have any thing aboard that devours human flesh; and cook you clean that
locket and hand, &c., as clean as you can.’ And so I did, and the hand
we preserved in rum, and the captain kept all of ’em till we got to
port, and then we found out the end on it, and all about it.
“Well, we made port, and then the captain advertises the story of the
shark; and the day arter this there come a splendid carriage to the
dock, and who should it be but a Spanish lady, and she was in great
splendor tu, and she comes aboard and calls for the captain; and he
waits upon her with great respect down into the cabin, and her servant
goes down with her, and she spoke in broken English, and asks him all
about the shark, and then he tells all about it, and then showed her the
hand; and when I brought it she broke out into ‘my God!’ and she seemed
to be grieved and vexed, and broken down, and yit spunky by turns; and
then she’d say, as she looked at the locket and hand and ring, ‘sacra
venga,’ and swear, and her face would look red and pale by turns; and
finally she turns to the captain and says, ‘Sir, this was my child,’ and
says she ‘there was a young Spaniard engaged to my daughter, and they
walked out one evening towards the water-side, and that’s the last I’ve
heard of my child till now. He went to his own lodgings that night and
was inquired of for her, but give no answer, and they made great sarch
for her, but nothin’ could we hear. It always seemed to me he killed
her, but I couldn’t git any evidence of it, and so I let it rest, and
this happened nearly two weeks ago, and to day, you and your crew must
come up and testify to the whole transaction.’ So she left.
That arternoon, four gentlemen come in a coach to the ship, and we had
to go up to the City Hall, I guess ’twas; a large stone building, and it
had great pillars in front on it, and I looked at it _good_ I tell you,
for ’twas the handsomest buildin’ I ever see. So we got there, and they
put us all into a room and locked us up; and we stayed there till two
o’clock, and then a man come and took out the captain, and then me, and
I was sworn, and told the whole story; and then all the crew was fetched
on, and testified the same thing; and the cabin-boy, when he finished
his testimony, says, ‘and I believe this lady was killed and flung
overboard by some body,’ and he said it with some courage, tu; and at
that a young Spaniard of a dark complexion and long black eyebrows that
come round under a curl at the corner of his eye, and oh! how black his
eye was, and he had long mustaches on his upper lip, and a big pair of
whiskers, and I tell you he looked as though he could murder as easy as
you could eat a meal of victuals. But he looked kind’a chopfallen, and
up he got, and says he, ‘I’m the man—I flung her off the wharf, and I
give myself up to the law;’ you see he had been taken and brought to the
bar. Then the king’s Attorney Gineral, spoke to this prisoner, and I
tell you he was dressed splendidly. He had on an elegant blue coat and
satin vest, and black satin pantaloons, and buff pumps, and he had on a
girdle of red morocco, and it had a gold plate in front, and it had a
big star on it, and his head was powdered in great style, and he fixes
his eyes on the Spaniard like a blaze of fire, and says, ‘prisoner,
deliver up that knife in your sleeve;’ and at that the Spaniard slips a
ribbon off of his wrist and drew out a knife like what we call a Bowie
knife in this country, and handed it to the Attorney, and I tell ye if
the Spaniard didn’t look beat!
“And then his lawyer got up and made a smart plea for him and set down;
but then you might know he was a rowin’ agin the tide, for he was a
pleadin’ for the devil himself.
“Then the Attorney Gineral got up, and says, ‘My Lords and Judges, and
Gentlemen of the Jury, &c. &c.’ And if he didn’t make a splendid plea
then I’m no judge—I once could tell all about it, for you see I was all
ear when them big fellers spoke and we all talked it over on the v’yge
so much, and what one forgot ‘tother recollected, and then besides ’twas
published in the Bristol papers; and once I could say it all to a T, and
I only wish I could remember it word for word, it would be sich great
stuff for this book. But my memory has kind’a failed me for a few years;
only I know the Gineral made all on us cry, he talked so fine, and I do
remember the closin’ off sayin’. ‘My Lords, I have now finished the
defence for the crown, and I submit the case to your lordships, feeling
that your verdict will respect the rights of the throne and the
liberties and safety of its loyal subjects. My Lords I have done.’ And
down he sat.
“And there that big room—it was as big as the whole of our big red
barn—was crowded full as it could stick and hold, and there was a’most
all nations on ‘arth there. And I tell you if I didn’t feel fine to git
up afore my lords, (as that ere Attorney Gineral called ’em,) and all
them big bugs, and tell about that poor lady there; _and there agin I
was treated better than I ever was in an American court in my life; for
I never got up in a court room in this country to give testimony or see
a black man, who warn’t rather laughed at by somebody_. Well, when the
Attorney Gineral had finished, three of these ’ere lords I tell on went
into another room, and stayed there a few minutes, and come back, and
then the chief lord of the establishment got up, and drew on a kind of a
black cap, and commanded the attention of all present, and the room was
so still you could hear a pin drop. The prisoner was fetched forward,
and the Judge turns to him and says:—
“‘By the testimony of Captain Truesdell and crew, and by your own
confession, I find you, accordin’ to the laws of our king and country,
_guilty_ of this murder; and have you any thing to offer why sentence of
death should not be pronounced upon you?’ The Spaniard shook his head,
and then the Judge pronounced his doom.
“‘In the Name of the King of the Realm, and by the Authority of Almighty
God, I sentence you to be executed this evening at half-past six
o’clock, until you are _dead_, DEAD, DEAD; and may God have mercy on
your soul.’
“Well, the sheriff took the prisoner and ordered us to be sent back in a
large carriage and four milk white horses to the ship.
Next mornin’ at ten o’clock the Spanish lady came aboard, and went down
in the cabin with the captain, and sot there and talked a good while
about the affair, and cried a good deal, and when she got up she put her
hand into her little huzzy and took out twenty doubloons, and give ’em
to the captain, and told him to divide that with his crew, and she calls
for me and gives me a half-joe, and says she, ‘I give you that for bein’
so good as to find my darter,’ and she went off, and I had a doubloon
and a half-joe, and that night we heard the Spaniard was hung.
“Well, we lay in port about four weeks, and we had fine times and see a
good many big characters, and I was in England arter this, and I see
some of the biggest kind of bugs they got, and I’ll tell about that when
I git to it. Well, we took in a load of goods, and weighed anchor for
home, and had as fine a passage as ever was sailed over the brine. We
made New York and the hands was all paid off, and I had one hundred and
sixty dollars in specie except a little on the Manhattan Bank. Then I
quit Captain Truesdell, and he gin me a recommend, and I hired to
Captain James Williams, and we hadn’t been in port but four weeks afore
I sailed with him for Gaudaloupe. We started in November, on Sunday
mornin’ jist as the bells begun to ring for church, and weighed anchor
for the West Indies, and then I see the difference atwixt the sailor’s
Sunday and a Yorker’s, and it made me feel kind’a serious and rother
bad.
“The captain had started on a tradin’ and carryin’ v’yge; so when we’d
cruised round some months in the West Indies, we took a load and sailed
for Gibralter, and if that Gibralter warn’t a pokerish lookin’ place I
never see one. We come into the bay and cast anchor under the fort, and
they fired three guns over our ship, as a shakin’ hands, to let us know
we was welcome, and then the captain and officers had to go ashore and
account for themselves. As we lay there and looked up, we could see
three tiers of cannon one above another, and soldiers with blue coats
trimmed with red, and horseskin caps (as I calls them) paradin’ there.
And as soon as the captain got leave of tradin’ back and forth from the
governor, all these ’ere cannons was drawn back.
“The English colors way flyin’ from the top of the Rock, and at twelve
o’clock every day the drums beat, and they played what they called ‘The
roast beef of old England.’ In the mornin’ the revelie beat and six
cannon was fired from the fort, and if any armed ships lay in the harbor
they answered ’em; and every single hour in the night we could hear the
sentinel’s heavy tread on the Rock, and his cry, ten o’clock and all’s
well, eleven o’clock and all’s well, &c., and so he kept it up all
night. Some on ’em told me they’d had distressed times round the old
Rock afore this. About the time of our Revolutionary War the French and
Spaniards leagued together and got hundreds of ships and thousands of
sogers together, and battered away at the old fort, and shot more _red
hot_ cannon balls agin it than you could shake a stick at; but they only
went ‘_bum, bum_,’ and shivered the Rock a little, and fell down into
the sea, and they attacked the fort on the land side and worked away
there, day arter day, but they didn’t hurt a hair of the old Rock’s
head, and finally they agreed to quit it.—Why Sir, all the nations on
the globe could not take that fort. The English will always have it till
the end of the world. Well I looked up through the straits, and it did
look beautiful; I could see the African shore; yis, the same Africa
where so many millions of my poor brothers and sisters had been stole
and carried off into slavery—oh! I felt bad. Well, we sold our load of
provisions to the governor of the Rock, and bought a few things and
started for England.
“When we’d been out four days we was chased by a privateer, and once
they got in a quarter of a mile on us, but we had the most canvass, and
we histed the sky scrapers, moon rakers, and star gazers, and water
sail, and a good wind. But they fired on us all the time they was near
enough. They chased us two days, and then we fell in with a French
frigate, and they hailed us, and wanted to know if we’d seen a privateer
along the coast, and so the captain told all about it and they gin three
cheers and bore away arter her.
“In a few hours we heard a dreadful cannonadin’, and a great cloud of
smoke riz out of the sea, and we concluded they’d overhauled her, and we
left her in good hands. We sailed on for Bristol, and arter we’d been
there five days, the news come that a French frigate had captured a
Spanish privateer, but didn’t take any of her crew, for no sooner than
they found themselves taken than they blew up their ship.
“We stayed in Bristol some time, and started at last for New York. On
our passage out, we come across a wreck, and we sailed within forty rods
on her, and sent out a small boat, and there warn’t a livin’ soul aboard
to tell the story, and there she lay bottom side up, and as handsome a
copper bottom as ever you see; but we couldn’t do any thing with her,
and so we left her and sailed on.
“About a week arter, we was a sailin’ along afore a pleasant breeze, and
the moon shinin’ on the waters, and they looked like melted silver, the
first thing we knew up come a seventy-four gun ship right alongside, her
guns run out, and men standin’ with burnin’ torches jist ready to fire,
and we felt streaked enough, for we expected to be blown up every
minute, and there we stood a tremblin’ and didn’t dare to say one word;
and she passed right by and never fired a pistol, and in one minute she
was out of sight—she come and she went and that’s all you can say. Now
that’s what the sailors call ‘_the phantom ship_.’ You see there’s no
ship about it, only some curious appearances on the sea, that always
scares sailors, and makes them think they are a goin’ to be captured.
Well, we had a fine v’yge home, and made the New York light the first of
November, arter a cruise of nearly twelve months. I didn’t like Captain
Williams, and I quit him, and he paid me off one hundred and fifteen
dollars, and I had now two hundred and fifty dollars, and I kept it
safe. And a part of the time I went round New York with a saw-buck on my
shoulder, and part of the time I was a gentleman at large in the big
city—and so I spent that winter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
Peter sails for Gibralter with Captain Bainbridge—his character—horrible
storm—Henry falls from aloft and is killed—a funeral at sea—English
lady prays—Gibralter and the landing of soldiers—a frigate and four
merchantmen—Napoleon—Wellington and Lord Nelson—a slave ship—her
cargo—five hundred slaves—a wake of blood fifteen hundred
miles—sharks eat ’em—Amsterdam—winter there—Captain B. winters in
Bristol—Dutchmen—visit to an old battle field—stories about
Napoleon—Peter falls overboard and is drowned, _almost_—make New York
the fourth of July—Peter lends five hundred dollars and loses it—sails
to the West Indies with Captain Thompson—returns to New York and
winters with Lady Rylander—sails with Captain Williams for
Gibralter—fleet thirty-seven sail—cruise up the Mediterranean—Mt.
Etna—sails to Liverpool—Lord Wellington and his troops—war between
Great Britain and the United States—sails for New York and goes to sea
no more—his own confessions of his character—dreadful wicked—sings a
sailor song and winds up his yarn.
_Peter._ “The next spring in the fore part of May, I saw Captain
Bainbridge on the Battery, and he hails me and says, ‘don’t you want a
berth for a summer v’ge? I says, ‘yis Sir,’ and then we bargains about
wages; and I was to have twenty-five dollars a month, and he told me to
go to the Custom-house in the mornin’; and so I did, and several others
he’d seen, and we all hired out, and he gin me a steward’s perquisites
and twenty-five dollars a month. So we goes aboard his fine new ship
jist built in New Bedford, and ’twas one of the best I ever see; and she
was to sail in a week on Monday, and all on us agreed to be aboard, by
ten o’clock; and by ten o’clock all on us was there to a man, and we
received our orders, and they was mazin’ strict, for he was the
strictest captain I ever sailed under, but a fine feller with all—sound,
good hearted and a hail feller well met.
“We all hands stood on deck, and a sight of passengers, and we’d bid our
wives and sweethearts all farewell, and at twelve o’clock, noon, we
weighed anchor for Gibralter. The pilot took us out to sea—she was a
little steamboat, for only two or three years afore this, Fulton got his
steamboat invented on the Hudson. Well she left us ’bout three o’clock
and bid us all ‘good bye;’ and a nice evenin’ breeze sprung up, and we
spread all sail and cut the waves like any thing. And so ’bout midnight
I goes on deck, and looked and looked ashore, but the shore of my
country was hid, for we’d moved on so brisk, it had disappeared. We had
a beautiful time till we’d sailed eight days; and one day afterwards the
breeze grew stronger, and the moon shone and played over the waters,
till it looked like silver; and such an evenin’ I hardly ever see be at
sea.
“Well next day, at one o’clock, a dark awful cloud riz up out of the
northeast, and it got so the lightnin’ played along the edge of the
cloud pretty briskly afore it covered the sun. The thunder rattled like
great chariots over a great stone pavement. Captain orders all hands to
their posts, and begun to reef and make all fast, and cover the hatches,
and prepare for a storm. Finally the cloud covered the whole face of the
heavens, and the captain says ‘attention all hands! Now fellow sailors
be brave, we’ve got a new ship and her riggin’ will slack some, and we
don’t know how she’ll work; but stick to your posts, and by the help of
God, we’ll weather the storm.’
“Well the storm increased, and we kept a reefin’; for you see I used to
be ’bout as much of a sailor as any on ’em, and in a storm there warn’t
much to be cooked till ’twas over. And I quit the caboose, and was in
the riggin’ and all round the sap works till it abated. While we was a
takin’ a double reef on the main sail of the mizzen mast, there was a
boy by the name of Henry Thomson, the captain’s boy, who went up aloft
with an old sailor, to larn to take a reef-plat, and by misfortune, one
of the foot-ropes gin way, and the little feller _fell_ and struck on
the quarter-deck railin’, and left part of his brains there, and his
body went overboard; and we was agoin’ so fast, we couldn’t ’bout and
get him, and we had to leave the poor feller to find companions in the
deep. _Oh! he was a noble boy_ and I felt so arter it, that I always
thought of this varse of an old sailor song.
‘Days, months, years, and ages, shall circle away,
And still the vast waters above thee shall roll,
Earth loses thy pattern, for ever and aye,
Oh! sailor boy! sailor boy! peace to thy soul.’
“Well we sailed on, and the storm increased till midnight; and oh! how
the ocean did look! It seemed as though it was all a blaze of fire, and
the ship couldn’t keep still one second. She pitched and tumbled about
like a drunken man, and yit every thing held as strong as iron; and so
’bout one o’clock at night, the storm passed off ’bout as quick as it
had come, and as soon as any light appeared in the heavens, the captain
says, ‘cheer up boys! the storm is agoin’ over and all hands to _bunk_,
only the watch.’
“In the mornin’ it was as clear and pleasant as clear could be, only the
sea was dreadful rough; for you know it takes the sea a good while to
git calm arter a storm; but we gits breakfast and she grows kind’a
calmish, and then the captain comes on deck and tells one of the hands
to go and git a canvass sack and sow it up, and put a stick in it, and a
cannon ball at each end; and then he orders a plank lashed to the side
of the ship, with one end slantin’ down to the water, and calls ‘all
hands ‘tention,’ and then asks, ‘is there any body aboard that feels as
though he could pray?’ And it was as still as death, and all looked at
one another, and nobody answered; for you see in all that company of
’bout fifty, nobody could pray to his God. And all was awful, for I tell
ye what ’tis Domine, it’s a pretty creepy feelin’ gits hold on a body,
if they knows that nobody round ’em can pray! ☜
“But in the suspense there steps out an elderly English lady, and she
said ‘Let us pray! Oh! thou who stillest the waves, &c.’ And so she went
on and if she didn’t make the best prayer I ever heard afore or since,
and she made a beautiful address to us, and she did talk enough to move
the heart of a stone, and with tears in her eyes; and she reproved us
for _swearin’_ so. And while she was a talkin’ and prayin’ so, there lay
the like of that beautiful boy cold in death, and I tell ye it made us
_cry some_ and _feel a good deal_. Well we made as though we put Henry
in that sack, and put him on the plank, and let him slide off into the
ocean, and when he sunk it seemed as though my heart went into the sea
arter him.
“Well the spot where his brains lay there on the deck, stayed there as
long as I stayed aboard that ship; and I used to stand there and watch
it at evenin’, and cry and cry; and I guess if all the tears I shed had
been catched, they’d a filled a quart cup; but I couldn’t help it, for
he was a noble boy, and I loved him like a brother. But we sailed on and
left Henry behind us, and the thoughts on him sometimes checked our glee
and sin, but only for a little while, and all on board soon forgot him,
only me. But oh! how I did love that boy. ☜
“Well we made Gibralter in thirty-six days from New York, and as we
lowered sail and cast anchor under the old fort, they fired six cannon
over our mast, and the English officer comes aboard, and three of his
aids, and the ship and cargo and all her writings was examined, and
findin’ all right side up, he gin us permission to come ashore and do
business; and the governor bought our load of provisions for the navy
sarvice, and we got an extra price ‘case ’twas _scarce_; and while we
lay there, there was four English gun-ships of the line come in
freighted with soldiers from Plymouth, in England, and they was under
the convoy of Admiral Emmons; and they left their soldiers and took some
on the rock, and when they come in sight, if there warn’t some music and
some smoke. All the instruments used in the English navy was played on
the ships, and they fired gun arter gun, from the ships to the fort, and
the fort to the ships, and every round they fired, they beat the English
revelie, and oh! how them cannon shook the ship under us, and the smoke
was so thick, you could fairly cut it; and so they kept it up, and I
tell ye they had jolly times enough.
“Next day they begun to land their recruits, rank and file by companies,
and as one company from the ship marched up the rock to the top of the
fort, another company from the rock would march down aboard the ship,
and in this way we see a heap on ’em landed and shipped. And there stood
the Royal band all day in plain sight; and they was all colored folks,
and _they felt good tu_, and every time they landed they’d fire a
broadside from the fort, and shelter ’em with smoke; and every time a
company of the fort’s soldiers come aboard the ship, they’d cover ’em
with smoke; and put it all together, it was by all odds the handsomest
sight I ever see in my travels.
“Well, two days arter this, ’bout nine o’clock in the morning, the
cannon begun to blaze away from the old fort agin’, and we concluded we
was agoin’ to have some more _doin’s_, and I up on deck and looked and
looked, and bim’by I see a large frigate comin’ up leadin’ four
merchantmen with flying colors, and she blazed back agin’, and when she
got into the harbor, the seventy-fours in port opened their mouths
agin’, and so we had it pretty lively.
“These merchantmen were loaded with provisions for the navy; oh! what a
heap of folks there was in that Rock!! Our captain says ‘boys, they’ve
bought our cargo, but I don’t s’pose ‘twould make a mouthful apiece for
’em.’ And what an expensive establishment that English army and navy is!
“We stayed there at the Rock a good while, and these merchant vessels
went out under the protection of these navy ships, to victual the
English fleet there; and we heard a good deal ’bout Napoleon and Lord
Wellington. They was all the talk, and Wellington was all the toast; and
their armies was a shakin’ the whole ‘arth, and ships and armies agoin’
and comin’ all the time; and there Lord Nelson, he was at the head of
the English navy, and he was a great toast; and every day the papers
would come and fetch stories of battles on land and at sea, till I was
as sick on ’em as I could be. It seemed to be nothin’ but a story of
blood all the time; and Europe and all the ocean was only jist a great
buryin’ and murderin’ ground; and, for my part, I never thought much of
these ’ere great wholesale murderers, as I calls Bonaparte, Wellington,
and Lord Nelson, and sich like sort of fellers. Why, Domine, I should
think, from all accounts I heard at the time, and arter it, that they
must have killed all of five millions of folks, in all that fightin’
agin Napoleon. Oh! it’s a cruel piece of business to butcher folks so;
and yit, nevertheless, notwithstanding, them same men _was_ toasted, and
_be_-toasted _now_ all over the world, and it makes me sick of human
natur’; and if I am a black man, I hate to see respectable people act
so.
“Finally, arter a long stay, we hauled up anchor for Port Antonio. One
day a man aloft cries out ‘ship ahoy.’ The captain looks through his big
glass and says, ‘bear down on her helmsman;’ and when we got nigh
’nough, the captain hails her; ‘what ship?’
“‘Torpedo.’
“‘What captain?’
“‘Trumbull.’
“‘Where from?’
“‘African coast.’
“‘Where bound?’
“‘America.’
“‘Can I come on board you?’
“‘Yes.’
“So he bears down and lays too, and I, ‘mong the rest, went aboard. The
captain treats us very genteel; and when they’d finished drinkin’
Captain Trumbull orders the hatch open, and I looked down, and to my sad
surprise I see ’twas crowded with slaves. The first thing I see was a
colored female, as naked as she was born into the world, and she looked
up at me with a pitiful look; and an iron band went round her leg, and
then she was locked to an iron bolt that went from one end of the ship
to the other; and _there was five hundred slaves down in that hole_;
men, women, and children, all chained down there, and among ’em all not
one had a rag of clothes on,—and not a bit of daylight entered, only
that hatch-way, and then only when they opened it to throw out the dead
ones, or else feed ’em; and when I put my head over the hole, a steam
come out strong ’nough to knock down a horse, for there they was in
their own filth, and oh! how they did smell. There was several women
that had jist had children, and a good many sick, and there they was,
and oh! what a sight,—some on ’em was cryin’ and talkin’ among
themselves, but I couldn’t understand a word they said; and there was a
parcel of leetle fellers, that was from two to ten years old, a runnin’
round ‘mong ’em, and some on ’em was _dead_, and you could hear the
_dyin’ groans of others_. Oh! I never did think a body of folks could
suffer so and _live_. Why, how do you think they sat? They all sat down
with their legs straddled out right up close agin’ one another, and they
couldn’t stir only one arm and hand, _for all else was chained_.
“I felt worse, I ‘spose, and it was entirely more heart-rendin’ to me,
because they was my own species; they warn’t only human bein’s but
_Africans_. ☜ Oh! if I didn’t hate slavery arter this worse than ever;
why! it seemed to me a thousand times worse than it ever did afore, when
I was a slave myself.
“Well, the captain said he started with eight hundred, and three hundred
had died on the v’yge! ☜ and he’d only been out ten days, and that’s
mor’n one an hour; and that he had to keep one hand in there nigh upon
half the time, to knock off the chains from the dead ones, and pitch ’em
upon deck; and, says he, I have left a wake of blood fifteen hundred
miles; for, no sooner than I fling one out than a shark flies at him and
colors all the water with blood in less than one minute; why, says he,
‘a shoal of sharks follows our slave ships clear from Africa to
America!!’ _Oh! my soul, if there is one kind of wickedness greater, and
worser, and viler, and more devilish and cusseder than any other, it is
sich business._ ☜
“The slave captain asked our captain if he thought he could git into
America? He told him he didn’t think he could. ‘How long do you
calculate to be in that business?’ says Captain Bainbridge.
“‘I can’t tell, Sir.’
“‘Well, Sir,’ says our captain, as he left the ship, ‘I advise you to
clear up your ship when you git into port, and quit that cussed traffic,
and go aboard a merchantman, and be a gentleman.’[13] And he didn’t like
it nother’![14] Well, we left, and boarded our own ship; but that scene
of blood I couldn’t forgit! I could see them poor crutters, for a good
many days, in my thoughts and dreams; and sometimes I could see ’em jist
as fresh and sorrowful as ever. Hundreds and hundreds of poor slaves,
now at the South, are their descendants; and, like enough, you see some
on ’em Mr. L.——, when you was at the South; and I know how to pity the
descendants of them that’s fetched over in slave ships, for one of my
grandfathers was fetched out in one, as I told you in the beginnin’ on
my story.
Footnote 13:
All over the world slavery, in all its forms, is repugnant and
offensive to noble and generous feeling: and every where, in all ages
and nations, oppression and this unholy traffic meet with a just
rebuke. Man’s better feeling will revolt from cruelty and injustice
until they are extinguished.
Footnote 14:
Of course he didn’t “like it.” It never did please the devil to be
reproved of his evil deeds. It don’t please Southern soul-dealers and
soul-drivers to be rebuked.
“Well, we made Port Antonio in three weeks, and stayed there thirteen
days, and got a cargo, and then the captain says ‘boys, we shall have a
rough passage home, if we go this fall, it’s so late, for we stayed a
good while over the brine, and now who will hold up hands for staying
till next spring?’
“So all on us up with both hands, and we hauled up anchor for
Amsterdam—that’s in the Dutch country—and we made port in four weeks;
and when we’d been there ’bout a fortnight, the captain got a letter
from his uncle, James Bainbridge, who was in Bristol, and wanted him to
come there and winter with him, for he was a sea captain, tu. So he
leaves his ship in our hands, and makes the first mate captain, and we
had to obey all his orders; and the captain starts and says, ‘farewell
boys, keep ship safe till you see me, and I’ll write to ye often, and
let you know how I cut my jib.’ And we see no more on him till airly
next spring.
“Well, we had all the fun on shore and aboard we could ask for. White
and black, we was all hail fellers, well met. We used to have a heap of
visiters aboard, to hear ’bout America. We’d have an interpreter to tell
our stories, and almost make some of them smoking, thick-skulled
Dutchmen b’lieve that America flowed with milk and honey, and that pigs
run ‘round the streets here with knives and forks in their backs, cryin’
out ‘eat me.’ I used to be a pretty slick darkey for fixin’ out a story,
tu, and a big one ’bout America; and then some white man would set by my
side and put the edge on, and ‘twould go without any greasin’; and the
captain used to say, always, that if any deviltry was agoin’ on, Pete
was always sure to have a finger in the pie. Well, we used to talk a
considerable ’bout the wars they was a havin’ in the old countries, at
that time, and they said they could take us up to a place, a few miles
from there, where there had been a great battle, sometime afore; and for
curiosity, we all went up to see it. Well, we goes, and finds thirty or
forty acres, and there wasn’t a green thing on it, and ’twas covered
with bones and skulls, and all kinds of balls and spikes, and bayonets,
and whole heaps of bones, and I guess you never see so melancholy a
place in all your life. Oh! it made me sick of war to see thousands and
thousands of human bein’s a bleachin’ on the sand. And it seemed that
the ground where that battle was fit, wouldn’t let any green thing grow
there, and I don’t b’lieve any green thing grows there till this day.
And there we was, a hearin’ every day ’bout Bonaparte, and his killin’
his thousands, and his takin’ this city and that city, and his
conquerin’ this gineral and that gineral; but Lord Wellington give him a
tough heat on the land, and Lord Nelson on the sea; but the world see
_terrible sorry times_ for a few years, while that Napoleon was a
runnin’ his career.
“Well, captain got back to Amsterdam the first of April, and on the
fourteenth we weighed anchor for New York. Well, come the sixth day I
guess, at evenin’ arter I’d done all my work, and was a settin’ on the
railin’ rother carelessly, the boom jibed and struck me on the top of my
head, and the first I knew I was pitched head first into the brine. I
fell into the wake and swum as fast as I could, and when I riz on the
wave I could see the ship and her lights, and then when I went down in
the troughs I lost sight of her, and I begun to feel kind’a streakish I
tell ye. But pretty soon a rope struck me on the head, and I grabbed and
hung on, and the hands aboard drew, and finally I got up pretty near,
and the first I knew, and ’bout the last I knew, a wave come and plunged
me head first right agin _the starn_, and that made all jar agin’ and I
see mor’n fifty thousand stars; but I hung on, and they drawed me up
aboard, and when I come fairly tu, the captain comes along and says:—
“‘Nig? where you ben?’
“‘Ben a fishin’, Sir.’
“‘Yis, and if you’d come across a good shark, you’d catched a nice fish
wouldn’t you?’
“And when he spoke ’bout that, it scart me, for I begun to realize my
danger, and I begun to be afeard when ’twas tu late, and I trembled jist
like a leaf.
“But I’ll hurry on. We made the New York light after a long v’yge, and
was kept on quarantine a good while, and on the mornin’ of the fourth of
July, when the bells was a ringin’, and the boats was a flyin’ through
the bay, and the guns from the Battery and Hoboken was a soundin’ along
the bosom of the Hudson, all independence; and we landed and jumped
ashore, and I think I never in all my life felt sich a kind of a gush of
joy rush through all my soul, as I did when I heard them bells ring, and
them guns roar; and this free nigger jumped ashore and celebrated
independence as loud as any body.
“The captain paid us all off, and as I left him, I said I’d never go to
sea agin, but that didn’t make it so; for I hadn’t been ashore a month,
afore I was off agin with Captain George Thomson. Then I had five
hundred dollars—three hundred Spanish mill dollars, and two hundred on
the Manhattan Bank, and I had as good a wardrobe of clothes, both
citizen’s and sailor’s as any other feller. Captain Thomson finds out
I’d got this money, and says he, ‘you better not be a lugging your money
round from port, let it out and git the interest on it;’ and so he
showed me a rich man, Mr. Leacraft, that wanted it, and he gin me two
notes of two hundred and fifty dollars, for one and two years, and I
counted out my money; and we sailed for the West Indies. Well, we got
there and took in a heavy cargo of groceries, and ’bout for home. But
’twas late in the season, and we had cold blusterin’ weather, and
finally it grew so cold the rain froze on the riggin’; and the captain
says, ‘we can’t make New York,’ and the mate says, ‘we can; and so we
sailed on till we made the New York light, and we was all covered with
ice; and the captain says, ‘boys we shall git stove to pieces, for we
can’t manage our riggin’, and we must put back.’ So we did, into a
warmer climate, and in two or three days the riggin’ grew limber, and
the ice all dropped off, and it grew warmer and warmer, till at last we
was in a region like our Ingen summer.
“Well, we’d been out a week, and Captain Woods, north from Bristol
hailed us, and asked how the entrance was to New York. Our captain told
him he couldn’t get in, but he swore he would, and on he sailed, and
he’d been gone ten days, and he come back a cussin’ and swearin’, and
had three of his men froze to death. We stay’d out four weeks longer,
and was nearly out of provisions, and obliged to make port; and it
moderated a leetle, and finally, arter some trouble, we reached home,
and a gladder set of fellers you never did see.
“Well, we got paid off, and I jumped ashore, and says I, ‘I’ll stay here
now; and here’s what’s off to Lady Rylander’s, and the rest of the
season I’ll play the gentleman, for I’m sick of the brine, and I’ve got
money enough to make a dash in the world.’ I’d no sooner got ashore,
than a friend of mine comes up, and says, ‘Pete, you’ve lost all your
money.’ ‘That can’t be possible,’ says I. ‘Yis, Pete, Leacraft is twenty
thousand dollars worse than nothin’. Well, I was thunderstruck, and goes
up to see him. Leacraft says, ‘to be sure I am Peter, all broke down;
but if God spares my life, you shall have every dollar that’s your due.’
“But up to this hour I havn’t got a cent on it. Captain Thomson tried
and tried to git it for me, but all to no purpose; and I grieved and
passed sorrowful days and nights I tell ye; for I’d worked in heat and
cold, and in all climates and countries for it, and thought now I should
be able to begin life right, and ’twas all struck from me at a blow, and
’twas almost like takin’ life I tell ye.
“And now I ‘spose I took a wrong step.—One day I was in a grog shop with
some of my companions, and I took a wicked oath, and flung down my money
on the counter to pay for our wine, and says I, ‘hereafter, no man shall
run away with the price of my labor, and if I have ten dollars, I’ll
spend, here she goes,’ and down went my rhino, and in ten days I had
spent all the pay of my last v’yge; and then I goes to Madam Rylander
and hires out for sixteen dollars a month as her body sarvant. Not a
finer lady ever set foot in Broadway; and she was as pleasant as the
noonday sun, and if her sarvants did wrong, she’d call ’em up and
discharge ’em, all pleasant, but firm; and she’d encourage me to be
economical and good, and I liked her, but I hadn’t got my fill of the
brine yit, and so I thought I’d out on the waves agin. You see I’d been
a slave so long that I was jist like a bird let out of her cage, and I
couldn’t be satisfied without I was a flyin’ all the time, and besides
there was great talk about a war with John Bull, and I liked it all the
better for that; and so I told Lady Rylander I must be off, and she
offered me higher wages, but all that wouldn’t do; I was bound for the
brine and must go.
“I hired out to Captain Williams agin, as steward, for thirty-one
dollars a month; and we weighed anchor for St. Domingo; and we took a
load of goods from there and started for the Rock of Gibralter once
more. On our passage, we was overhauled by an equinoctial storm, and we
had a distressed bad time, and it did seem that we must go to the bottom
for days. We fell in with a fleet of thirty-seven sail from the West
Indies, under the convoy of two English frigates, for London. You see
these ships was merchantmen, and the English Admiral had sent out two
frigates to protect ’em; for England and France was at war, and they’d
seize each other’s commerce, and their governments had to protect ’em.
When we got in hailin’ distance of the frigates, captain cries out, ‘how
long do you think the storm will last?’ ‘Can’t say—all looks bad now;
two of our vessels have gone to pieces, and every soul lost.’ And while
we was talkin’ the seas broke over us like rollin’ mountains; we
couldn’t lay into the wind at all, and we had to let her fly, and we
went like a streak of greased lightnin’, and we soon lost sight on ’em;
and I tell you ’twas a melancholy sight to see _sich a fleet_ strugglin’
_with sich a tempest_; but we had all we could attend to at home,
without borryin’ trouble from abroad. But we finally conquered the
storm, and dropped anchor under the old fort agin. We lay in the basin
two days, and then got liberty from the governor to go up the straits,
and we calculated to run up to Egypt, and we cleared the straits and
went into the Mediterranean; and then we was on what our college-larnt
fellers calls classic ground.
“One day the captain calls me on deck and says, ‘Nig, do you see that
city up the coast?’
“‘Yis? Sir.’
“‘Well, that’s the spot you sing so much about; now let’s have it;
strike up, Nig.’
“So up I struck:—
“‘To Carthagena we was bound,
With a sweet and lively gale,’ &c.
“And I was glad enough to see my old port I’d celebrated so long in my
songs. Well, we sailed along and had the finest time ever one set of
fellers had—the air was as soft as you please, and the islands was as
thick as huckle-berries, and of all kinds and sizes. We sailed on by one
island, and then by another, and bim’by Mount Etna hove in sight, while
we was a hangin’ off the coast of Sicily, and ’twas rocky, and we
couldn’t hug the shore very close; but we had a fine sight of the
volcano; and there was a steady stream of fire and smoke come out of the
top of the mountain, and in the night it was a big sight. It flung a
kind of a flickerin’ light over the sea, and we stayed in sight of it
some time; and disposed of our load pretty much, and got back to the
fort in just eighteen days. We cleared the old Rock the next arternoon;
and I said ‘good night,’ to the old fort, and I hain’t seen her from
that day to this.
“We sailed round Cape St. Vincent, off the coast of Portugal, and then
crossed the Bay of Biscay, O! and passed Land’s Eend—up St. George’s
Channel, and through the Irish Sea, and, on the eighteenth day, dropped
anchor in the harbor of Liverpool.
“The captain calculated to stay in Liverpool till spring, for ’twas now
November, and trade a good deal, and bring home a heavy cargo of English
goods; but for sartin reasons, I’ll tell soon, we didn’t do it. While we
lay in Liverpool, there was some great _doin’s_, I tell ye. The English
troops, to the amount of some thousands, marched out under Lord
Wellington, for foreign sarvice on the continent, and soon arter this
Wellington went to fightin’ in Spain. Well, they marched out under
superior officers, and in the middle of the troops was Wellington’s
carriage, drawn by six milk-white horses, splendidly caparisoned, and he
was in it, and three or four other big lords; and, on each side of the
carriage was six officers, on jet black horses, with drawn swords, and
they made some noise tu; and I shall remember, to my dyin’ day, how
Wellington looked.
“But we hadn’t been there long afore the captain comes down one night
from the city, aboard ship, and calls out to all the crew, and, says he,
‘boys there’s agoin’ to be war betwixt Great Britain and America, and
all that wants to clear port to-night, and spread our sails for New
York, say home!’ and we did say home, _in arnest_, and we made all
preparation, and ’bout midnight we weighed anchor, and towed ourselves
out as still as we could, and I never worked so hard while I was _free_
as I did that night, and by daylight we spread all our sails for home,
and in four hours we was out of sight of Liverpool. Arter breakfast we
all give three cheers, and all hands says, ‘now we are bound for home,
sweet home!’
“Well, we had been out ’bout four days, and we fell in with Commodore
Somebody’s ship, that pioneered a fleet of merchantmen for London; they
hailed us, and we answered the signal and passed on, and they let us go
by peaceable, without a word of war or peace, on either side; and glad
’nough we was to pass ’em so, and we spread all our sails for America,
and felt thankful for every breeze that helped us forward.
“Well, we had a quick passage, and made the New York light, and I never
was so glad to see that light-house in my life, for we expected to git
overhauled by an English man-of-war or a privateer every day. Well, we
got in the last of March, and this was 1812; and well we did, for the
first of April an embargo was laid on all the vessels in the ports of
the United States, and the nineteenth of June war was declared agin
Great Britain, and then the Atlantic was all a blaze of fire.
“Captain Williams quit his ship, and took a privateer, and he tried to
git me ‘long with him, and I thought I would, for a while, but, finally,
I concluded I wouldn’t, _for I was too much afeared of them ’ere blue
plums that flew so thick across the brine for two or three years_. ☜
“Well, captain went out and was gone thirty days, and come back, and his
success was so good that his common hands shared five hundred dollars
apiece, and if I’d a gone, I should have had my five hundred dollars
back agin; but I’d no idee of going to be shot at for money, like these
’ere fools and gumps that goes down to the Florida swamps, to be shot at
all day by Ingens, for eighteen pence a day. Captain met me one day in
the street, and says he, ‘nig, if you’d only gone with me, you’d a been
as big a cuffee now as any on ’em.’ I says ‘captain, I don’t care ’bout
havin’ my head shot off of my shoulders; I’m big cuffee ’nough now!’
“Well, I didn’t go to sea durin’ the war, and afore we got through with
that, I got off of the notion of goin’ at all, and I concluded I’d spend
the rest of my days on ‘terra firma,’ as I’d been tossed round on the
brine long ’nough, and satisfied myself with seein’ and travel, and so I
stayed, and I han’t been out of sight of land ever sence.
“But, one dreadful thing happened to me by goin’ to sea,—_I got
dreadfully depraved_; and I b’lieve there warn’t a man on the globe that
would swear worse than I would, and a wickeder feller didn’t breathe
than Pete Wheeler. No language was too vile or wicked for me to take
into my mouth; and it did seem to me, when I thought about it, that I
blasphemed my Maker almost every minute through the day; and I used to
frequent the theatre, and all bad places, and drink till I was dead
drunk for days; and nobody can bring a charge agin me for hardly one sin
but murder and counterfeitin’ that I ain’t guilty on. When I thought
’bout it, I used to think it the greatest wonder on ‘arth that God
Almighty didn’t cut me off and strike me to hell, for I desarved the
deepest damnation in pardition; and if any man on ‘arth says I didn’t,
why, all I have to say to sich a man is, that he ain’t a judge. _Why, as
for prayer_, I never thought of sich a thing for years; and as for
Sabbath day, I didn’t hardly know when it come, only I used to be on a
frolic or spree on that day, worse than any other day in the week. As
for the bible, why, for years and years I never see one, or heard one
read; and I didn’t, at that time, know how to read myself a word; and
for six years I never had a word said to me ’bout my soul, or the danger
of losin’ my soul, and I become as much of a heathen as any man in the
Hottentot country: and the truth is, no man can make me out so bad as I
raly was, _for besides all I acted out_, there was a hell in my bosom
all the time, and these outrageous things was only a little bilin’
over,—only a few leetle streams that run out of a black fountain-head.
“Oh! Mr. L.——, I don’t know what I should do at the judgment day, if I
couldn’t have a Saviour. I know I shall have a blacker account than
a’most any body there, and how can it all be blotted out, except by
Christ’s blood?
“Why, Sir, you can’t tell how wicked sailors generally be. There ain’t
more’n one out of a hundred that cares any thing ’bout religion, and
they are head and ears in debauchery and intemperance, and gamblin’, and
all kinds of sin, and oh! ‘twould make your heart ache to hear their
oaths. I’ve seen ’em tremble, and try to pray durin’ a dreadful storm,
and all looked like goin’ to the bottom—for I don’t care how heathenish
and devilish any body is, if they see death starin’ on ’em in the face,
and they ‘spect to die in a few minutes, he’ll cry to God for help—but
no sooner than the storm abated they’d cuss worse than ever. Now this
was jist my fashion, and if any body says that a man who abuses a good
God like that don’t desarve to be cut off and put into hell, why then he
han’t got any common sense.
“But all this comes pretty much from the officers. I never knowed but
one sea captain but what would swear sometimes, and most all on ’em as
fast as a dog can trot; and jist so sure as our officers swears, the
hands will blaspheme ten times worse; and if the captain wouldn’t swear,
and forbid it on board, his orders would be obeyed like any other
orders, _but, as long as officers swears, so long will sailors_. ☜
“But sailors have some noble things about ’em as any body of men. They
will always stand by their comrades in the heart of danger or
misfortune, or attack; and if a company on ’em are on shore, you touch
one you touch the whole; and if a sailor was on the Desert of Arabia,
and hadn’t but a quart of water, he’d go snacks with a companion. They
are sure to have a soft spot in their hearts somewhere, that you can
touch if you can git at it, and when they feel, they feel with all their
souls. But, arter all, _it’s the ruination of men’s characters to go to
sea_, for they become heathens, and ginerally, ain’t fit for sober life
arter it, and _ten to one they ruin their souls_.
“But my v’yges are finished, and I’ll sing you one sailor’s song, and
then my yarn is done.”
_Author._ “Well, strike up, Peter.”
Peter sings—
“THE SAILOR’S RETURN.
“Loose every sail to the breeze,
The course of my vessel improve;
I’ve done with the toil of the seas,
Ye sailors I’m bound to my love.
Since Solena’s as true as she’s fair,
My grief I fling all to the wind;
‘Tis a pleasing return for my care,
My mistress is constant and kind.
My sails are all filled to my dear;
What tropic birds swifter can move;
Who, cruel, shall hold his career,
That returns to the nest of his love?
Hoist ev’ry sail to the breeze,
Come, shipmates, and join in the song;
Let’s drink, while our ship cuts the seas,
To the gale that may drive her along.
I’ve reached, spite of tempests, the port,
Now I’ll fly to the arms of my love;
And, rather than reef I will court,
And win my beautiful dove.”
END OF THE SECOND BOOK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK THE THIRD.
----------
PETER WHEELER AT THE CROSS.
INSCRIBED
_To the Free People of Color in the Free States._
Dear Friends:
I inscribe this Book to you, for several reasons. I love
you, and feel anxious to have you become intelligent and
virtuous. I know that there are only a few books adapted to your
taste and acquirements; and I have had my eye upon your good in
writing this history. I have thought you would understand it a
great deal better if it was told in Peter’s own language, and so
I wrote it just as he told it. I hope you will read it
_through_, and follow Peter to the Lamb of God who taketh away
the sin of the world. And if you are oppressed by the strong arm
of power, and kept down by an unholy and cruel prejudice, forget
it and forgive it all, and go to that blessed Redeemer who came
to save your souls, that he might clothe you, at last, with
clean white linen, which is the righteousness of the sain’ts.
Your friend,
THE AUTHOR.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I.
Lives at Madam Rylander’s—Quaker Macy—Susan a colored girl lives with
Mr. Macy—she is kidnapped and carried away, and sold into
slavery—Peter visits at the “Nixon’s, mazin’ respectable” colored
people in Philadelphia—falls in love with Solena—gits the consent of
old folks—fix wedding day—“ax parson”—Solena dies in his arms—his
grief—compared with Rhoderic Dhu—lives in New Haven—sails for New
York—drives hack—Susan Macy is redeemed from slavery—she tells Peter
her story of blood and horror, and abuse, and the way she made her
escape from her chains.
_Author._ “Well, Peter, what did you go about when you quit the seas?”
_Peter._ “The year I quit the seas, I went to live with Madam Rylander,
and stayed with her a year, and she gin me twenty-five dollars a month,
and I made her as slick a darkey as ever made a boot shine, and she was
as fine a lady as ever scraped a slipper over Broadway. While I lived
there, I used to visit at Mr. John Macy’s, a rich quaker who lived in
Broadway, across from old St. Paul’s. There was a colored girl lived
with his family, by the name of Susan, and they called her Susan Macy;
she was handsome and well edicated tu, and brought up like one of his
own children; and they thought as much on her as one of their daughters,
and she was as lovely a dispositioned gal as ever I seed; and I enjoyed
her society _mazinly_.
“Well, one mornin’ she got up and went to her mistress’ bedroom, and
asked her what she’d have for breakfast—’Veal cutlet’ says she; and the
old man says, ‘Thee’ll find money in the sideboard to pay for it;’ and
she did, and took her basket and goes to the market a singin’ along as
usual—she was a great hand to sing; and gits her meat, and on her
return, she meets a couple of gentlemen, and one had a bundle, and says
he, ‘Girl if you’ll take this bundle down to the wharf, I’ll give you a
silver dollar;” and she thought it could do no harm, and so she goes
with it down to the ship they described, and as she reached out the
bundle, a man catched her and hauled her aboard and put her down in the
hole.
“Her master and mistress got up and waited and waited, and she didn’t
come; and they went and sarched the street, and finds the basket, but
nothin’ could be heard of Susan in the whole city; and they finally gin
up that she was murdered.
“Well, I’ll tell you the rest of the story, for I heard on her arter
this.
“I stayed my year out with Madam Rylander, and then I quit; and she was
despod anxious to keep me, but I had other fish to fry, and took a
notion I’d drive round the country and play the gentleman.
“I come across, in New York, a young feller of color, his parents very
respectable folks who lived in Philadelphia; and they took an anxious
notion for me to go home with ’em; and I started with ’em for
Philadelphia; and I had as good clothes as any feller, and a
considerable money, and I thought I might as well spend it so as any
way. Well come to Philadelphia, I found the Nixon’s very rich and
_mazin’ respectable_; and I got acquain’ted with the family, and they
had a darter by the name of _Solena_, and she was _dreadful handsome_,
and she struck my fancy right off the first sight I had on her. She was
handsome in fetur and pretty spoken and handsome behaved every way. Well
I made up my mind the first sight I had on her, I’d have her _if I could
git her_. I’d been in Philadelphia ’bout a week, and I axed her for her
company, and ’twas granted. I made it my business to wait on her, and
ride round with her, and visit her _alone_, as much as I could. The old
folks seemed to like it _mazinly_, and that pleased me, and I went the
_length of my rope, and felt my oats tu_. I treated her like a gentleman
as far as I knew how—I took her to New York three times, in company with
her brothers and their sweethearts; and we went in great splendor tu,
and I found that every day, I was nearin’ the prize, and finally I
popped the question, and arter some hesitation, she said, ‘Yis, Peter.’
But I had another Cape to double, and that was to git the consent of the
old folks; and so one Sunday evenin’, as we was a courtin’ all alone in
the parlor, I concluded, a fain’t heart never won a fair lady; and so I
brushes up my hair, and starts into the old folks’ room, and I right out
with the question; and he says.
“‘What do you mean, Mr. Wheeler?’
“‘I mean jist as I say, Sir! May I marry Solena.’
“‘Do you think you can spend your life happy with her?’
“‘Yis, Sir.’
“‘Did you ever see any body in all your travels, you liked better?’
“‘No, Sir! She’s the apple of my eye, and the joy of my heart.’
“‘I have no objection Mr. Wheeler. Now Ma, how do you feel?’
“‘Oh! I think Solena had better say, Yis.’
“And then I tell ye, my heart fluttered about in my bosom with joy.
“‘Oh, love ’tis a killin’ thing;
Did you ever feel the pang?’
“So the old gentleman takes out a bottle of old wine from the sideboard,
and I takes a glass with him, and goes back to Solena. When I comes in,
she looks up with a smile and says, ‘What luck?’ I says, ‘Good luck.’ I
shall win the prize if nothin’ happens! and now Solena you must go in
tu, and you had better go in while the broth is hot. So she goes in,
pretty soon she comes trippin’ along back, and sets down in my lap, and
I says, ‘what luck?’ and she says ‘_good_.’ So we sot the bridal day,
and fixed on the weddin’ dresses, and so we got all fixin’s ready and
even the Domine was spoke for. And one Sabba-day arter meetin,’ I goes
home and dines with the family, and arter dinner we walked out over
Schuylkill bridge, and at evenin’ we went to a gentleman’s where she had
been a good deal acquain’ted; and there was quite a company on us, and
we carried on pretty brisk. She was naturally a high-lived thing, and
full of glee; and she got as wild as a hawk, and she _wrestled_ and
scuffled as gals do, and got all tired out, and she come and sets down
in my lap and looks at me, and says, ‘Peter help me;’ and I put my hand
round her and asked her what was the matter, and she fetched a sigh, and
groan, and fell back and died in my arms!!! A physician come in, and
says he, ‘she’s dead and without help, for she has burst a blood-vessel
in her breast.’ And there she lay cold and lifeless, and I thought I
should go crazy.
“She was carried home and laid out, and the second day she was buried,
and I didn’t sleep a wink till she was laid in the grave; and oh! when
we come to lower her coffin down in the grave, and the cold clods of the
valley begun to fall on her breast, I felt that my heart was in the
coffin, and I wished I could die and lay down by her side.
“For weeks and months arter her death, I felt that I should go ravin’
distracted. I couldn’t realize that she was dead; oh! Sir, the world
looked jist like a great dreadful prison to me. I stayed at her
father’s, and for weeks I used to go once or twice a day to her tomb,
and weep, and stay, and linger round, and the spot seemed sacred where
she rested.
“Well, I stayed in Philadelphia some months arter this, and I tell ye I
felt as though _my all_ was gone. I stood alone in the world, as
desolate as could be, and I determined I never would agin try to git me
a wife. It seemed to me I was jist like some old wreck, I’d seen on the
shore.
A. “Peter, you make me think of Walter Scott’s description of Rhoderic
Dhu, in his ‘Lady of the Lake.’
“‘As some tall ship, whose lofty prore,
Shall never stem the billows more,
Deserted by her gallant band,
Amid the breakers lies astrand;
So on his couch lay Rhoderic Dhu,
And oft his feverish limbs he threw,
In toss abrupt; as when her sides
Lie rocking in the advancing tides
That shake her frame with ceaseless beat
But cannot heave her from her seat.
Oh! how unlike her course on sea,
Or his free step, on hill and lea.’
P. “Yis, Sir! I was jist like that same Rhoderic; what’de call him? Oh!
I was _worse_, the world was a prison to me, and I wanted to lay my
bones down at rest by the dust of Solena. I finally went back to New
York, and stayed there for a while, and then up to New Haven, and stayed
there two months, in Mr. Johnson’s family; and we used to board college
students; and we had oceans of oysters and clams; and New Haven is by
all odds the handsomest place I ever see in this country or in Europe;
and finally I sailed back to New York, arter try in’ to bury my feelin’s
in one way and another. But in all my wanderin’s, _I couldn’t forgit
Solena_. She seemed to cling to me like life, and I’d spend hours and
hours in thinkin’ about her, and I never used to think about her without
tears.
“Well, I thought I would try to bury my feelin’s and forgit Solena, and
so I hires out a year to Mr. Bronson, to drive hack, and arter I’d been
with him a few months, I called up to Mr. Macy’s, my Quaker friend, and
I felt kind’a bad to go there tu and not find Susan, for I had the
biggest curiosity in the world to find out where she’d departed tu; but
I thought I’d go and talk with the old folks, and see if they’d heard
any thing about Susan.
“Well, I slicks up and goes, and pulls the bell, and who should open the
door but _Susan herself_. ☜
“I says, ‘my soul, Susan, how on ‘arth are you here? I thought you was
dead.’ And she says as she burst into tears, ‘I have been _all but_
dead. Come in and set down, and I’ll tell you all about it.’
“I says, ‘my heavens! Susan where have you been and how have ye fared?’
“She says, ‘I’ve been in _slavery_, ☜ and fared hard enough;’ and then
she had to go to the door, for the bell rung; and agin pretty soon she
comes back and begins her story, and as ’tain’t very long, and pretty
good, I’ll tell it, and if you’re a mind to put it in the book you may,
for I guess many a feller will be glad to read it.
“‘Well,’ begins Susan, ‘I went down to the vessel, to carry a bundle,
and _three ruffins seized hold on me_, and I hollered and screamed with
all my might, and one on ’em clapped his hand on my face, and another
held me down, and took out a knife and swore if I didn’t stop my noise
_he’d stick it through my heart_; and they dragged me down into the
hold, where there was seven others that had been stole in the same way;
and these two fellers chained me up, and I cried and sobbed till I was
so fain’t I couldn’t set up. Along in the course of the forenoon they
fetched me some coarse food, but I had no appetite, and I wished myself
dead a good many times, for I couldn’t git news to master. I continued
in that state for two or three days, and found no relief but by
submitting to my fate, and I was doleful enough off, for I couldn’t see
sun, moon, or stars, for I should think two weeks; and then a couple of
these ruffins come and took me out into the forecastle, and my
companions, and they told me all about how they’d been stole; and we was
as miserable a company as ever got together. Come on deck, I see five
_gentlemen_, ☜ and one on ’em axed me if I could cook and wait on
gentlemen and ladies, and I says ‘yis, Sir,’ with my eyes full of tears,
and my heart broke with sorrow; and he axed me how old I was? I says,
‘seventeen,’ and he turns round to the master of the vessel and says,
‘I’ll take this girl.’ And he paid four hundred and fifty dollars for
me, and he took me to his house; and I found out his name was Woodford,
and he told me I was in Charleston; but I couldn’t forgit the happy
streets of New York. Now I gin lip all expectation of ever seem’ my own
land agin’, and I submitted to my fate as well as I could, but _’twas a
dreadful heart-breakin’ scene. Master was dreadful savage, and his wife
was a despod cross ugly woman._ When he goes into the house he says to
his wife, ‘now I’ve got you a good gal, put that wench on the
plantation.’ And he pointed to a gal that had been a chambermaid; and
then turnin’ to me says, ‘and you look out or you’ll git there, and if
you do _you’ll know it_.’
“I’d been there four or five weeks, and I heard master makin’ a despod
cussin’ and swearin’ in the evenin’, and I heard him over-say, ‘I’ll
settle with the black cuss to-morrow; I’ll have his hide tanned.’
“So the next day, arter breakfast, mistress orders me down into the back
yard, and I found two hundred slaves there; and there was an old man
there with a gray head, stripped and drawed over a whipping-block his
hands tied down, and the big tears a rollin’ down his face; and he
looked exactly like some old gray headed, sun-burnt revolutioner; and a
white man stood over him with a cat-o’-nine-tails in his hand, and he
was to give him one hundred lashes. ☜ And he says, ‘now look on all on
ye, and if you git into a scrape you’ll have this cat-o’-nine-tails
wrapped round you;’ and then he begun to whip, and he hadn’t struck
mor’n two or three blows, afore I see the blood run, and he was stark
naked, and his back and body was all over covered with scars, and he
says in kind’a broken language, ‘Oh! massa don’t kill me.’ ‘Tan his
hide,’ says master, and he kept on whippin’, and the old man groaned
like as if he was a dyin’, and he got the hundred lashes, ☜ and then was
untied and told to go about his work; and I looked at the block, and it
was kivered with blood, and that same block didn’t git clear from blood
as long as I stayed there. ☜
“‘Well, this spectacle affected me so, I could scarcely git about the
house, for I expected next would be my turn; and I was so afraid I
shouldn’t do right I didn’t half do my work.
“‘It wore upon me so I grew poor through fear and grief. I would look
out and see the two hundred slaves come into the back yard to be fed
with rice, and they had the value of about a quart of rice a day, I
guess.
“‘Every day, more or less would be whipped till the blood run to the
ground; and every day fresh blood could be seen on the block,—and what
for I never found out, for I darn’t ax any body, and I had no liberty of
saying any thing to the field hands.
‘“I used often to look out of the window to see people pass and repass,
and see if I couldn’t see somebody that I knew; and I finally got sick,
and was kept down some time, and I jist dragged about and darn’t say one
word, for I should have been put on the _plantation for bein’ sick_! and
I meant to do the best I could till I dropped down dead; but the almost
whole cause on it was grief, and the rest was cruel hardship. Well,
things got so, I thought I must die soon, and in the height of my
sorrow, I looked out and see Samuel Macy—Master Macy’s second son,
walkin’ along the street, and I could hardly believe my eyes; and I was
stand in’ in the door, and I catches the broom, and goes down the steps
a sweepin’, and calls him by name as he comes along, and I tells him a
short story, and he says ‘I’ll git thee free, only be patient a few
weeks.’ I neither sees nor hears a word on him for over four weeks, but
I was borne up by hope, and that made my troubles lighter. Well, in
about four weeks, one day, jist arter dinner, there comes a gentleman
and raps at the front door, and I goes and opens the door, and there
stood old Master Macy, and I flies and hugs him, and he says ‘how does
thee do, Susan?’ I couldn’t speak, and as soon as I could I tells my
story; and Master Macy then speaks to mistress, who heard the talk and
had come out of the parlor, and says, ‘this girl is a member of my
family, and I shall take her,’ and then master come in and abused Master
Macy dreadfully; but he says, ‘come along with me, Susan;’ and, without
a bonnet or anything on to go out with I took him by the hand, and went
down to the ship; and, afore I had finished my story, an officer comes
and takes old Master Macy, and he leaves me in the care of his son
Samuel, aboard, and he was up street about three hours, tendin’ a
law-suit, and then he come back, and about nine o’clock that evenin’ we
hauled off from that cussed shore, and in two weeks we reached New York,
and here I am, in Master Macy’s old kitchen.
“‘Well, he watches for this slave ship that stole me, and one day he
come in and said he had taken it, and had five men imprisoned; and the
next court had them all imprisoned for life, and there they be yit. And
now there’s no man, gentle or simple, that gits me to do an arrant out
of sight of the house. _Bought_ wit is the best, but I bought mine
dreadful dear. When I got back the whole family cried, and Mistress Macy
says,
“‘Let us rejoice! for the dead is alive, and the lost is
found.”’
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
Kidnappin’ in New York—Peter spends three years in Hartford—couldn’t
help thinkin’ of Solena—Hartford Convention—stays a year in
Middletown—hires to a man in West Springfield—makes thirty-five
dollars fishin’ nights—great revival in Springfield—twenty
immersed—sexton of church in Old Springfield—religious
sentiments—returns to New York—_Solena again_—Susan Macy married—pulls
up for the Bay State again—lives eighteen months in Westfield—six
months in Sharon—Joshua Nichols leaves his wife—Peter goes after him
and finds him in Spencertown, New York—takes money back to Mrs.
Nichols—returns to Spencertown—lives at Esq. Pratt’s—Works next summer
for old Captain Beale—his character—falls in love—married—loses his
only child—wife helpless eight months—great revival of 1827—feels more
like gittin’ religion—“One sabba’day when the minister preached at
me”—a resolution to get religion—how to become a christian—evening
prayer-meeting—Peter’s convictions deep and distressing—going home he
kneels on a rock and prayed—his prayer—the joy of a redeemed soul—his
family rejoice with him.
_Peter._ “Well, I sot a hearin’ Susan’s story till midnight, and that
brought back old scenes agin, and there I sot and listened to her story
till I had enemost cried my eyes out of my head, and I have only gin you
the outline. And that kidnappin’ used to be carried on that way in New
York year after year, and it’s carried on yit. ☜ [15] Why, they used to
steal away any and every colored person they could steal, and this is
all carried on by northern folks tu, and it’s fifty times worse than
Louisiana slavery.
Footnote 15:
It became so common in New York that there was no safety for a colored
person there, and philanthropy and religion demanded some protection
for them against such a shocking system.—At last there was a vigilance
committee organized for the purpose of ascertaining the names and
residences of every colored person in the city; and this committee
used regularly to visit all on the roll, and almost every day some one
was missing. The result has been that several hundreds of innocent men
and women and children have been retaken from their bondage, from the
holds of respectable merchantmen in New York, to the parlours of
southern gentry in New-Orleans. The facts which have been brought out
by this committee are awful beyond description.—It is one of the
noblest, and most patriotic and efficient organization on the globe.
But their design expands itself beyond the protection and recovery of
kidnapped friends;—it also lifts a star of guidance and promise upon
the path of the fugitive slave; it helps him on his way to freedom,
and not one week passes by without witnessing the glorious results of
this humane and benevolent institution, in the protection of the free
or the redemption of the enslaved. The Humane Society, whose object is
to recover to life those who have been drowned, enlists the patronage
and encomiums of the great and good, and yet this Vigilance Committee
are insulted and abused by many of the public presses in New York, and
most of the city authorities.—Why? Slavery has infused its deadly
poison into the heart of the North.
“Well, I stayed in New York till my time was out, and then went to
Hartford and worked three years, and enjoyed myself pretty well, _only I
couldn’t help thinkin’ ’bout Solena_. She was mixed up with all my
dreams and thoughts, and I used to spend hours and hours in thinkin’
about what I’d lost. But arter all I suffered, I’m kind’a inclined to
think ’twas all kind in God to take her away, for arter this, I never
was so wicked agin nigh. I hadn’t time or disposition to hunt up my old
comrades, and if any time I begun to plunge into sin, then the thought
of Solena’s memory would come up afore me and check me in a minute, but
I was yit a good ways from rale religion.
“While I was there, in December, 1814, the famous Hartford Convention
sot with closed doors, and nobody could find out what they was about,
and every body was a talkin’ about it, and they han’t got over talkin’
about it, and I don’t b’lieve they ever will. The same winter the war
closed and peace was declared. I could tell a good many stories about
the war, but I guess ‘twould make the book rather too long, and every
body enemost knows all about the last war.
“Well, I went down to Middletown and stayed a year there, and then I
went to hire out to a man in West Springfield, and he was a farmer, and
he hadn’t a chick nor child in the world, and he had a share in a
fishin’ place on the Connecticut, and he was as clever as the day is
long. He let me fish nights and have all I got, and sometimes I’ve made
a whole lot of money at one haul, and in that season I made thirty-five
dollars jist by fishin’ nights, besides good wages—and I didn’t make a
dollar fishin’ for Gideon Morehouse nights for years!
“While I was there a Baptist minister come on from Boston and preached
some time, and they had a great revival, and I see twenty immersed down
in the Connecticut, and ’twas one of the most solemn scenes that ever I
witnessed.
“They went down two by two to the river, and he made a prayer and then
sung this hymn, and I shan’t ever forget it, for a good many on ’em was
young.
“‘Now in the heat of youthful blood,
Remember your Creator God;
Behold the months come hastening on
When you shall say ‘my joys are gone.’”
“And then he went in and baptized ’em; and I know I felt as though I
wished I was a christian, for it seemed to me there was somethin’ very
delightful in it, and then they sung and prayed agin, and then went
home.
“Arter this I lived in Old Springfield and was sexton of the church
there; and while I rung that bell I heard good preachin’ every Sunday,
and I larnt more ’bout religion than I’d ever knowed in all my life. I
begun to feel a good deal more serious and the need of gettin’ religion.
“Arter my time was out there, I went down to New York, and there I met
Solena’s brother, and that brought every thing fresh to mind agin, and
for weeks agin I spent sorrowful hours. I thought I had about got over
it and the wound was healed; but then ‘twould git tore open agin and
bleed afresh, and sorrowful as ever. It did seem to me that nothin’
would banish the image of that gal from my heart.
“I used to call and see Susan Macy occasionally, and she was now Mrs.
Williams, and lived in good style tu, for a colored person. She was
married at Mr. Macy’s and they made a great weddin’, and all the genteel
darkies in New York was there; and I wan’t satisfied with waitin’ on
_one_, I must have _two_, and if we didn’t have a stir among our color
about them times I miss my guess; and Mr. Macy set her out with five
hundred dollars, and she had a fine husband and they lived together as
comfortable as you please.
“Now I concluded I’d quit the city for good, I spent more money there
and had worse habits, and besides all this I wanted to git away as fur
as I could from the scene of my disappintment.
“Well, I pulled up stakes agin and put out for the Bay State agin, and I
put into Westfield, and stayed there eighteen months, and made money and
saved it, and behaved myself, and ‘tended meetin’ every sabba’day, and
gained friends and was as respectable as any body. From Westfield I went
to Sharon and there I stayed six months, and ‘tended a saw mill, and
there was a colored man there by the name of Joshua Nichols, who had
married a fine gal, and he lived with her till she had one child and
then left her, and went out to Columbia county, New York; and I started
off for Albany, and she axed me if I wouldn’t find her husband on my
route, and so I left Sharon and got here to Spencertown, and found him,
and axed him why he would be so cruel as to leave his wife? He says ‘if
you’ll go and carry some money and a letter down to her I’ll pay you.’
So he gin me the things and I put out for Sharon, and when Miss Nichols
broke open the letter she burst into tears, and says I, “why Miss
Nichols what’s the matter?” “Why Joshua says this is the last letter I
may ever expect from him.”—Well, I stayed one night, and come back and
concluded I’d go on for Albany, but when I got to Erastus Pratt’s he
wanted to hire me six months, and I hired, and his family was nice
folks, and he had a whole fleet of gals—and they was all as fine as
silk, but I used to tell Aunt Phebe, that Harriet was the rather the
nicest—on ’em all. Arter my six months was out, I worked a month in
shoein’ up his family, and I guess like enough some on ’em may be in the
garret yet.
“Next summer I hired out to old Capt. Beale, and he was a noble man, and
did as much for supportin’ Benevolent Societies as any other man in
town, and in the mean time, I had got acquain’ted with her who is now my
wife, and this summer I was married to her by Esq. Jacob Lawrence, and
in the winter we went to keepin’ house.
“When we had been married over a year, we had a leetle boy born, and the
leetle feller died and I felt bad enough, for he was my only child, and
it was despod hard work too, to give him up. I had at last found a woman
I loved, and all my wanderings and extravagancies was over, and I was
gettin’ in years, and I thought I could now be happy and enjoy all the
comforts of a home and fireside, but this was all blasted when I laid
that leetle feller in the grave, and my wife was sick and helpless eight
months.
“In 1827 a great Revival spread over this whole region, and was powerful
here, and I used to go to all the meetin’s, and I begun to think more
about religion than I ever did in all my life; and these feelin’s hung
on to me ’bout a year, and agin I gin myself up to the world, and
plunged into sin, and grieved the Spirit of God, and grew dreadful vile,
as all the folks ‘round here will say, if you ax ’em.—And I myself, who
knows more ’bout myself than any other body, s’pose that _at heart_, I
was one of the wickedest men in the world.
“Well, along in 1828 the religious feelin’ ‘round in this region, begun
to rise agin ‘round in this neighbourhood, and there was a good many
prayer meetin’s held, principally at Deacon Mayhew’s, and Esq. Pratt’s,
and I used to ‘tend ’em pretty steady, and I got back my old feelin’
agin, and now felt more a good deal like gittin’ religion, than I ever
had; and rain or shine, I’d be at the meetin’s, and I detarmined I’d go
through it, if I went at all. This church here, which has since got so
tore and distracted, was all united, and seemed to be a diggin’ all the
same way, and Christ was among ’em. _There was one Sabbath day, I shan’t
ever forgit_, and when I went to meetin’, and the minister took his text
‘Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?’ the very minute the words come
out of his mouth, an arrow went to my heart, and I felt the whole
sarmint was aimed at me, and I felt despod guilty. I went home, and that
night I was distressed beyond all account, and I went to bed troubled to
death. But I formed the resolution, if there was any thing in religion
I’d have it, if I could git it, and I was detarmined as I could be that
I would hunt for the way of Salvation; and when I found it, I travelled
in it, and consider that there I _begun right_. But I was as ignorant of
rale religion as a horse-block, and I didn’t know how to go to work.
Sometimes, something would say, ‘Oh! Peter, give up the business, you
can’t git it through,’ but I held on to my resolution _despod tight_;
and I think, that is the way for a body to go about getting religion; on
the start, be detarmined to hunt for the path of duty, and as soon as
you find it, go right to travellin’ on it, and keep on; I knew I had
some duty to do to God, and I knew I must hunt for it if I found it, and
_do_ it if I ever got the favor of God.
“Well, one night there was a prayer meetin’ in the church, and a shower
of prayer come down on the house like a tempest, and oh! how they did
beseech God that night—as the Bible says, ‘with strong cryin’ and
tears.’
“Deacon Mayhew got up and says, ‘There’s full liberty for any body to
git up and speak or pray.’ And I felt as though I must git up and say
somethin’ or pray, I was so distressed; but then I was a black man, and
was afeard I couldn’t pray nice enough, and so I set still, but I felt
like death. A number of young converts, prayed and made good prayers,
and there was a despod feelin’ there I tell ye.
“Arter meetin’ a good many folks spoke to me, but I couldn’t answer ’em
for tears; and so I started for home, when I was goin’ cross the lots a
cryin’ I come to a large flat rock, and looked round to see if any body
was near by, and then I kneeled down and ’twas the _first time I ever
raly prayed_.
“I begun, but I was so full I couldn’t only say these words and I
recollect ’em well.
“‘Oh! Lord, here I be a poor wretch; do with me just as you please; for
I have sinned with an out stretched arm, and I feel unworthy of the
least mercy, but I beg for _blood_, the blood of him that died Calvary!
Oh! help me, keep up my detarmination to do my duty, and submit to let
you dispose on me jist as you please, for time and eternity; oh! Lord
hear this first prayer of a hell-desarving sinner.’”
“Well, I got up, and felt what I never felt afore; I felt willing to do
God’s will, and that I was reconciled to God; afore this, I had felt as
though God was opposed to me, and I’d got to shift round afore he’d meet
me, and feel reconciled to me. I looked up to heaven, and I couldn’t
help sayin’, ‘My Father:’ never before nor sence, have I felt so much
joy and peace as I felt then, I was glad to be in God’s hands, and let
him reign, for I knew he would do right, and I felt sich a love for him,
as I can’t describe.
“I got up from the rock, and the world did look beautiful round me; the
moon shone clear, and the stars, and then I thought about David, when he
tells about his feelin’s when he looked at the same moon and stars; you
see I was changed and that made the world look so new; and this
beautiful world was God’s world, and God was _my Father_, and that made
me happy, and that is ’bout all I can say ’bout it.
“I went home, and found my wife and mother-in-law abed and ‘sleep, and I
lit up the candle and wakes ’em up, and says,
“I’ve found the pearl of great price.”
“I gits down the New Testament, for I had no Bible, and never owned one
till this time, and says, “I’ll read a chapter and then make a prayer,
(for you see my wife had larnt me to read arter a fashion,) and they say
‘That’s right Peter, I’m glad you feel as though you could pray,’ I
opened the Testament to the 14th chapter of John, ‘Let not your heart be
troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me,’ &c. Then I made a
prayer and set up my family altar, and I have prayed in my family every
day, and mean to keep it up, for I believe all christians ought to pray
mornin’ and evenin’ in their families.
“Well, I went to bed and talked to my wife ’bout religion, till I fairly
talked her asleep, and then I lay awake and thought, and prayed, and
wept for joy, and it will be a good while afore I forgit that night.
“For who can express
The sweet comfort and peace
Of a soul in its arliest Love.”
END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chains and Freedom - or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.