The Great Stain

by Noel Rae

  “Persons who own plantations and yet live in cities often take children from their parents as soon as they are weaned and send them into the country, because they do not want the time of the mother taken up by attendance upon her own children, it being too valuable to the mistress. As a favor, she is in some cases permitted to go to see them once a year. So, on the other hand, if field slaves happen to have children of an age suitable to the convenience of the master, they are taken from their parents and brought to the city. Parents are almost never consulted as to the disposition to be made of their children; they have as little control over them as have domestic animals over the disposal of their young.

  “Every thing cruel and revolting is carefully concealed from strangers, especially those from the North. Take an instance. I have known the master and mistress of a family send to their friends to borrow servants to wait on company because their own slaves had been so cruelly flogged in the Work House that they could not walk without limping at every step, and their putrified flesh emitted such an intolerable smell that they were not fit to be in the presence of company. How can Northerners know these things when they are hospitably received at Southern tables and firesides? I repeat it, no one who has not been an integral part of a slave-holding community can have any idea of its abominations.”

  Finally, this story from the memoirs of Boston-born Mary Livermore, who was serving as a governess to the family of a southern planter when she witnessed this scene: “Caroline, a pretty and graceful mulatto, was a servant in the dining room. One morning, when passing a cup of coffee to Mr.——, her master and owner, by an unlucky movement of his hand he knocked it from the tray on which she served it, to his knees. It was warm weather; he was attired in linen, and the hot coffee scalded him. Jumping up with an oath, he raised his chair and felled the girl to the floor, striking her two or three times after she had fallen. She was carried to the cottage of ‘Aunt Aggy,’ her mother, who had witnessed the scene from an adjoining room—stunned, bruised, bleeding and unconscious. I left the table and withdrew to my own apartment, shocked beyond expression.

  “Later in the day Aunt Aggy came to my room on some household errand, when I expressed my indignation at the brutal treatment her daughter had received, uttering myself with the frankness of a New England girl of nineteen who had been trained to be true to her convictions. I was astonished at the change that came over the taciturn and dignified woman. Turning squarely about and facing me, with her large, lustrous eyes blazing with excitement, she spoke in a tone and manner that would have befitted a seer uttering a prophecy:—

  “‘Thar’s a day a-comin’! Thar’s a day a-comin’!’ she said, with her right hand uplifted. ‘I hear the rumblin’ of the chariots! I see the flashin’ of the guns! White folks’ blood is a-runnin’ on the ground like a river, and the dead’s heaped up that high,’ measuring to the level of her shoulder. ‘Oh, Lord! hasten the day when the blows, and the bruises, and the aches, and the pains shall come to the white folks, and the buzzards shall eat them as they is dead in the streets. Oh Lord! roll on the chariots, and give the black people rest and peace. Oh, Lord! give me the pleasure of livin’ till that day, when I shall see white folks shot down like the wolves when they come hungry out of the woods.’

  “And without another word she walked from the room.”

  Portrait of Solomon Northup from the frontispiece of Twelve Years a Slave. Although he may have had some editorial help, the book was clearly written by Northup himself—hence the signature written with such a confident flourish. The condescending tone of the caption, using his first name only—“Solomon in his plantation suit”—is typical of well-meaning but often prejudiced Northerners. The clean white “plantation suit” is misleading since field slaves were given only the cheapest and coarsest of clothing. And his relaxed posture, sitting comfortably with folded hands, his broom set aside, does little to prepare the reader for the horror story he had to tell.

  CHAPTER 9

  BLACK EXPERIENCE

  THIS STORY WAS TOLD BY HENRIETTA KING, OF VIRGINIA, TO AN INTERVIEWER for the Federal Writers’ Project and later included in the multi-volume series known as Slave Narratives. The interviews were conducted in the late nineteen-thirties, when she was probably in her mid-eighties.

  “See this face? See this mouth all twisted over here so I can’t shut it? See that eye? All red, ain’t it? Been that way for eighty-some years now. Guess it gonna stay that way till I die. Well, old Missus made this face this way.”

  This happened when Henrietta, then aged about eight, was a house servant whose duties included emptying the washbasin in the owners’ bedroom. One day she found a piece of peppermint candy on the washstand.

  “I seed that peppermint stick laying there, and I ain’t dared go near it ’cause I knew old Missus just waiting for me to take it. Then one morning I so hungry that I can’t resist. I went straight in there and grab that stick of candy and stuffed it in my mouth and chew it down quick so old Missus never find me with it.

  “Next morning old Missus say, ‘Henrietta, you take that piece of candy out my room?’ ‘No mam, ain’t seed no candy.’ ‘Chile, you lying to me. You took that candy.’ ‘Deed, Missus, I tell the truth. Ain’t seed no candy.’ ‘You lying and I’m gonna whip you. Come here.’ She got her rawhide down from the nail by the fireplace, and she grabbed me by the arm and she try to turn me cross her knees whilst she sat in the rocker so’s she could hold me. I twisted and turned till finally she called her daughter. The gal come in and took that strap like her mother told her and commence to lay it on real hard whilst Missus hold me. I twisted away so there warn’t no chance of her getting in no solid lick. Then old Missus lift me up by the legs, and she stuck my head under the bottom of the rocker, and she rock forward so as to hold my head and whip me some more. I guess they must have whipped me near an hour with that rocker leg a-pressing down on my head.

  “Next thing I knew the old doctor was there, and I was lying on my pallet in the hall, and he was a-pushing and digging at my face, but he couldn’t do nothing at all with it. Seem like that rocker pressing on my young bones had crushed them all into soft pulp. The next day I couldn’t open my mouth, and I feel it and they weren’t no bone in the left side at all. And my mouth kept a-slipping over to the right side and I couldn’t chew nothing, only drink milk. Well, old Missus must have got kind of sorry ’cause she gets the doctor to come regular and pry at my mouth. He gets it afterwhile so as it open and I could move my lips, but it kept moving over to the right, and he couldn’t stop that. After a while it was over just where it is now. And I ain’t never growed no more teeth on that side. Ain’t never been able to chew nothing good since. Don’t even remember what it is to chew.

  “Here, put your hand on my face—right here on this left cheek—that’s what slave days was like.”

  The Slave Narratives were the last of a large number of first-person accounts by those who had actually experienced slavery in this country. For a long time these had been few in number, but as the nineteenth century progressed, and the crisis of disunion drew closer, there was a growing—though not overwhelming—demand in the North for such works. Because of the laws in the South against teaching slaves to read and write, and because free blacks in the North were often denied an education, many of these narratives were dictated to or written up by sympathetic white editors; this accounts for the often formal style, but does not affect the truth of their stories.

  One of the best-known of these accounts was Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup, a free black who had been living in upper New York State, happily married and doing quite well, when he was tricked into going to Washington, D. C. by two men who promised him a well-paying job as a musician for a circus. Once there he was drugged, kidnapped and, since he was in the South, and was black, and was therefore presumed to be a slave, he was easily sold in a local market. From Washington he was sent to New Orleans for re-sale. After working for a kindly planter named Ford, and a brutal
carpenter named Tibeats, he was sold yet again to Edwin Epps, who had a cotton plantation on Bayou Boeuf, “a sluggish, winding stream—one of those stagnant bodies of water common in that region, setting back from Red River … Large cotton and sugar plantations line each shore, extending back to the borders of interminable swamps. It is alive with alligators.”

  Epps, his new owner, was “a large, portly, heavy-bodied man with light hair, high cheek bones, and a Roman nose.” His eyes were blue, he had a “sharp, inquisitive expression,” and his manners and speech were “repulsive and coarse.” When drunk he “was a roystering, blustering, noisy fellow whose chief delight was in dancing with ‘niggers,’ or lashing them about the yard with his long whip, just for the pleasure of hearing them screech and scream.” When sober, “he was silent, reserved and cunning.” In his youth he had been a driver and overseer, and was proud of his reputation as a “nigger-breaker.” He now managed a cotton plantation that he leased from his wife’s uncle.

  After a detailed explanation of the laborious and complicated business of raising cotton, Northup goes on:

  “The hands are required to be in the cotton fields as soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes which is given to them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see; and when the moon is full they often times labor till the middle of the night. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order to halt is given by the driver.

  “The day’s work over in the field, the baskets are ‘toted,’ or in other words, carried to the gin-house, where the cotton is weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be—no matter how much he longs for sleep and rest—a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short in weight—if he has not performed the full task appointed him, he knows that he must suffer. And if he has exceeded it by ten or twenty pounds, in all probability his master will measure the next day’s task accordingly. After weighing, follow the whippings; and then the baskets are carried to the cotton house, and their contents stored away.

  “This done, the labor of the day is not yet ended, by any means. Each one must then attend to his respective chores. One feeds the mules, another the swine—another cuts the wood, and so forth; besides, the packing is all done by candle-light. Finally, at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long day’s toil. Then a fire must be kindled in the cabin, the corn ground in the small hand-mill, and supper, and dinner for the next day, prepared. All that is allowed them is corn and bacon, which is given out at the corn-crib and smoke-house every Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. That is all.”

  Solomon’s bed was “a plank twelve inches wide and ten feet long. My pillow was a stick of wood. The bedding was a coarse blanket, and not a rag or shred beside.” His cabin was “constructed of logs, without floor or window.” When it rained, the water was driven in through the crevices, “rendering it comfortless and extremely disagreeable.

  “An hour before day-light the horn is blown. Then the slaves arouse, prepare their breakfast, fill a gourd with water, and in another deposit their dinner of cold bacon and corn cake, and hurry out to the field again. It is an offense invariably followed by a flogging to be found at the quarters after day-break. Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin-house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning.”

  At least once a fortnight Epps would come home drunk after attending shooting matches at the nearby town of Holmesville. “At such times he was boisterous and half-crazy. Often he would break the dishes, chairs and whatever furniture he could lay his hands on. When satisfied with his amusement in the house, he would seize the whip and walk forth into the yard. Then it behooved the slaves to be watchful and exceeding wary. The first one who came within reach felt the smart of his lash. Sometimes for hours he would keep them running in all directions, dodging around the corners of the cabins. Occasionally he would come upon one unawares, and if he succeeded in inflicting a fair, round blow, it was a feat that much delighted him. The younger children, and the aged who had become inactive, suffered then. In the midst of the confusion he would slily take his stand behind a cabin, waiting with raised whip, to dash it into the first black face that peeped cautiously around the corner.

  “At other times he would come home in a less brutal humor. Then there must be merry-making.” Solomon would be ordered to fetch the violin that Mrs. Epps, who was “passionately fond of music,” had induced her husband to buy for him, and everyone assembled in the living room of “the great house,” as it was called. “No matter how worn out and tired we were, there must be a general dance. When properly stationed on the floor, I would strike up a tune. ‘Dance, you d—d niggers, dance!’ Epps would shout. Then there must be no halting, no delay, no slow or languid movements; all must be brisk, and lively, and alert. ‘Up and down, heel and toe, and away we go,’ was the order of the hour. Epps’ portly form mingled with those of his dusky slaves, moving rapidly through all the mazes of the dance. Usually his whip was in his hand, ready to fall about the ears of the presumptuous thrall who dared to rest a moment, or even stop to catch his breath. When he was himself exhausted there would be a brief cessation, but it would be very brief. With a slash, and crack, and flourish of the whip, he would shout again, ‘Dance, niggers, dance!’ and away they would go once more.” Despite being kept up most of the night, the hands still had to be in the field as soon as it was light, and “the whippings were just as severe … Indeed, after such frantic revels, he was always more sour and savage than before.”

  Epps had two sons, the older “an intelligent lad of ten or twelve years of age. It is pitiable sometimes to see him chastising, for instance, the venerable Uncle Abram. He will call the old man to account, and if in his childish judgment it is necessary, sentence him to a certain number of lashes, which he proceeds to inflict with much gravity and deliberation. Mounted on his pony he often rides into the field with his whip, playing the overseer, greatly to his father’s delight. At such times he applies the rawhide, urging the slaves forward with shouts, and occasional expressions of profanity, while the old man laughs.”

  Among the other slaves at Bayou Boeuf was one called Patsey, whose parents had been brought from Africa to Cuba and then smuggled into America. Patsey was twenty-three, “slim and straight,” and “with an air of loftiness in her movement that neither labor, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy.” In cotton-picking time she “was queen of the field,” flying along the rows and gathering the bolls “with both hands and with such surprising rapidity that five hundred pounds a day was not unusual for her.” By temperament she “was a joyous creature, a laughing, light-hearted girl, rejoicing in the mere sense of existence.

  “Yet Patsey wept oftener, and suffered more, than any of her companions. She had been literally excoriated. Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was backward in her work, nor because she was of an unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress. She shrank before the lustful eye of the one, and was in danger even of her life at the hands of the other, and between the two she was indeed accursed. In the great house, for days together, there were high and angry words, poutings and estrangement, whereof she was the innocent cause. Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see her suffer, and more than once, when Epps refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp.”

  Sometimes when he returned from a shooting-match in Holmesville, Epps wou
ld stumble out into the field where the hands were hoeing and beckon to Patsey, “motioning and grimacing, as was his habit when half-intoxicated. Aware of his lewd intentions, Patsey began to cry.” At other times when he had been drinking Epps would beat her, claiming that it was to please his wife. Ironically, when a child Patsey had been Mrs. Epps’ favorite—“petted and admired for her uncommon sprightliness and pleasant disposition.” Mrs. Epps would give her treats and “fondle her as she would a playful kitten.” But now “only black and angry fiends ministered in the temple of her heart, until she could look on Patsey with concentrated venom.

  “It is a mistaken opinion that the slave does not understand the idea of freedom. Even on Bayou Boeuf, where I conceive slavery exists in its most abject and cruel form, the most ignorant of them generally know full well its meaning … Patsey’s life, especially after her whipping, was one long dream of liberty. Far away, to her fancy an immeasurable distance, she knew there was a land of freedom. A thousand times she had heard that somewhere in the distant North, there were no slaves—no masters. In her imagination it was an enchanted region, the Paradise of the earth. To dwell where the black man may work for himself—live in his own cabin—till his own soil, was a blissful dream of Patsey’s—a dream, alas! the fulfillment of which she can never realize.”