by Noel Rae
After twelve years as a slave, Northup succeeded in regaining his freedom. With the help of a sympathetic carpenter, he smuggled a letter to friends in the North, telling what had happened to him. His case clearly came under the 1840 New York law, “An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this state from being kidnapped or reduced to slavery.” The governor “took a lively interest in the matter” and before long an official agent was sent to Bayou Boeuf to obtain his release. After various legal formalities had been completed, the moment came for Solomon to depart. Mrs. Epps was “affected to tears,” Mr. Epps cursed him “in a surly, malicious manner,” and Patsey, “tears streaming down her face,” exclaimed “You’re goin’ to be free—you’re goin’ way off yonder, where we’ll nebber see ye any more … I’m glad you’re goin’ to be free—but oh! de Lord! de Lord! What’ll become of me?”
Few slave narratives were more popular in their day than The Life of Josiah Henson, the man who claimed to have been the original for the saintly Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel. Born the youngest of six children in 1789 in Maryland on a farm belonging to Francis Newman, Henson had a rough start in life. His first memory “was the appearance of my father one day, with his head bloody and his back lacerated … His right ear had been cut off close to his head, and he had received a hundred lashes on his back. He had beaten the overseer for a brutal assault on my mother, and this was his punishment. Furious at such treatment, my father became a different man, and was so morose, disobedient and intractable that Mr. Newman determined to sell him.” The buyer was Newman’s son, who lived in Alabama, “and neither my mother nor I ever heard of him again.”
Soon after, Josiah and his mother were sold to a Dr. McPherson, “a man of good natural impulses, kind-hearted, liberal, and jovial. The latter quality was so much developed as to be his great failing,” and one evening “the doctor was riding home from one of his scenes of riotous excess when, falling from his horse in crossing a little run not a foot deep, he was unable to save himself from drowning.
“In consequence of his decease it became necessary to sell the estate and the slaves in order to divide up the property among the heirs; and we were all put up at auction and sold to the highest bidder, and scattered over various parts of the country. My brother and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded. My mother was then separated from me and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac Riley, residing in Montgomery County, and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother, half distracted with the parting forever from all her children, pushed through the crowd while the bidding was going on to the spot where Riley was standing. She fell at his feet and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little ones at least. Will it, can it, be believed that this man, thus appealed to, was capable not merely of turning a deaf ear to her supplication, but of disengaging himself from her with such violent blows and kicks as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach, and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a breaking heart?”
Josiah was sold to a different buyer, but by a piece of what might be called slave’s luck, he fell so seriously ill that his new owner offered to sell him to Riley “at such a trifling rate that it could not be refused. I was thus providentially restored to my mother; and under her care I recovered my health and grew up to be an uncommonly vigorous and healthy boy and man.”
Captioned “Mother being separated from her baby,” this naive woodcut had an impact that in a more visually sophisticated age may be hard to appreciate, but was powerful at the time. The heartbreak caused by separating families was one of the abolitionists’ most compelling themes.
When he was eighteen, he went to hear a lay preacher—“a baker, whose character was that of an upright, benevolent Christian man,” and who was “noted especially for his detestation of slavery.” Until then “I had never heard a sermon, nor any discourse or conversation whatever upon religious topics, except what had been impressed upon me by my mother of the responsibility of all to a Supreme Being. When I arrived at the place of meeting the speaker was just beginning his discourse, from the text Hebrews ii. 9: ‘That he, by the grace of God, should taste of death for every man.’ This was the first text of the Bible to which I had ever listened, knowing it to be such. I have never forgotten it, and scarce a day has passed since in which I have not recalled it, and the sermon that was preached from it. The divine character of Jesus Christ, his life and teachings, his sacrifice of himself for others, his death and resurrection were all alluded to, and some of the points were dwelt upon with great power—great at least to me, who heard of these things for the first time of my life. I was wonderfully impressed too with the use which the preacher made of the last words of the text—‘for every man.’ He said the death of Christ was not designed for the benefit of a select few only, but for the salvation of the world, for the bond as well as the free; and he dwelt on the glad tidings of the Gospel to the poor, the persecuted, and the distressed, its deliverance to the captive, and the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, till my heart burned within me and I was in a state of the greatest excitement.”
Looking back, Josiah dated “my conversion and my awakening to a new life from this day, so memorable to me. I used every means and opportunity of inquiry into religious matters; and so deep was my conviction of their superior importance to everything else, so clear my perception of my own faults, and so undoubting my observation of the sin and darkness that surrounded me, that I could not help talking much on these subjects with those about me; and it was not long before I began to pray with them, and exhort them, and to impart to the poor slaves those little glimmerings of light from another world which had reached my own eye. In a few years I became quite an esteemed preacher among them, and I will not believe it is vanity which leads me to think that I was useful to some.”
His calling as a preacher did not interfere with his other duties. These included acting as bodyguard to Riley, who was “coarse and vulgar in his habits, unprincipled and cruel in his general deportment, and especially addicted to the vice of licentiousness.” On weekends, Riley would get together with other planters at the local tavern and “gamble, run horses or fight gamecocks, discuss politics, and drink whiskey, and brandy and water, all day long. Perfectly aware that they would not be able to find their own way home at night, each one ordered a slave, his particular attendant, to come after him and help him home. I was chosen for this confidential duty by my master, and many is the time I have held him on his horse when he could not hold himself in the saddle, and walked by his side in the darkness and mud from the tavern to his house.” Tavern fights often broke out, “and whenever they became especially dangerous, and glasses were thrown, dirks drawn and pistols fired, it was the duty of the slaves to rush in, and each one was to drag his master from the fight and carry him home.”
Josiah also acted as overseer on the farm and was responsible for selling its products—wheat, oats, hay, fruit and butter—in the local markets, always keeping scrupulous accounts. When he was twenty-two he “married a very efficient and, for a slave, a very well-taught girl belonging to a neighboring family, reputed to be pious and kind, whom I first met at the chapel I attended; and during nearly forty years that have since elapsed I have had no reason to regret the connection.” At the time of writing, his wife had borne twelve children.
“Things remained in this condition for a considerable period,” and then Riley got involved in a lawsuit. To dodge his creditors, he decided to move all his slaves from Maryland to his brother’s property in Kentucky. Josiah was made to promise that he would escort them there, Riley “well knowing from his past experience of my character that I should hold myself bound by such promise to do a
ll that it implied.” They set off in February, 1825. “There were eighteen Negroes besides my wife, two children and myself, to transport nearly a thousand miles through a country I knew nothing about, and in winter time. My master … furnished me with a small sum of money and some provisions, and I bought a one-horse wagon to carry them, and to give the women and children a lift now and then; the rest of us were to trudge on foot.”
At Wheeling he sold the wagon and bought a boat in which they sailed down the river. Everything went well except for “one source of anxiety.” This came when, “passing along the State of Ohio, we were frequently told that we were free, if we chose to be so. At Cincinnati especially the colored people gathered round us and urged us with much importunity to remain with them; told us it was folly to go on; and in short used all the arguments now so familiar to induce slaves to quit their masters.” Josiah admitted that he was tempted—“from my earliest recollection freedom had been the object of my ambition”—but his “sense of honor on the subject” led him to believe that the only way to gain his freedom was to buy it. As to those in his charge, to let them escape “would have been a retribution which might be called righteous,” but “it was a punishment which it was not for me to inflict. I had promised that man to take his property to Kentucky and deposit it with his brother; and this, and this only, I resolved to do.”
Four years later he was again on a riverboat, this time heading for New Orleans. In the meantime he had remained in Kentucky, working for Riley’s brother, Amos, and also serving as a part-time itinerant preacher; by concluding his sermons with appeals for financial help, he had managed to accumulate 350 of the 450 dollars Riley had agreed to take for his freedom. On a visit back to Maryland, he handed over the $350, gave a note for the rest, and received his manumission papers; but before returning to Kentucky, Riley persuaded him that it would be safer to mail the precious papers to his brother Amos, rather than carry them with him. This seemed a sensible idea, but on his return Amos Riley told him that he would not be given the papers until he had made up the full purchase price; and this, said Amos, was $1000, rather than $450. Unable to prove otherwise, Josiah “set about my work again, with as quiet a mind as I could command, resolved to trust in God, and never despair.”
But worse was to come, for Riley, desperate for money, wrote to Amos to send Josiah to New Orleans, and there sell him. Josiah got wind of the plan, “and my heart sunk within me”; but he felt there was nothing he could do. Amos Riley told him that he was to go down-river on a flat boat, along with son, also called Amos, a crew of three, and a load of farm produce.
“My wife and children accompanied me to the landing, where I bade them an adieu which might be for life, and then stepped into the boat. The load consisted of beef-cattle, pigs, poultry, corn whiskey and other articles from the farm which were to be sold as we dropped down the river.” Everyone had to take a turn at the helm, and “as I was the only Negro on the boat I was made to stand at least three tricks to any other person’s one; so that from being much with the captain, and frequently thrown upon my own exertions, I learned the art of steering and managing the boat far better than the rest. I watched the maneuvers necessary to shoot by a sawyer, to land on a bank, or avoid a snag or a steamboat in the rapid current of the Mississippi.” Josiah often also had to keep watch when they tied up at night, “to prevent depredations by Negroes on shore, who used frequently to attack boats such as ours. As I paced backwards and forwards on the deck during my watch, it may well be believed I revolved many a painful and passionate thought.” The more he dwelt on the cruel injustice being done him, the “more ferocious” he became, until he was in the grip of an “almost uncontrollable fury.” At length, “blinded by passion and stung to madness,” he “resolved to kill my four companions, take what money there was in the boat, then to scuttle the craft and escape to the north.
“One dark, rainy night, within a few days of New Orleans, my hour seemed to have come. I was alone on deck; Mr. Amos and the hands were all asleep below. I crept down noiselessly, got hold of an axe, and looking by the aid of the dim light there for my victims, my eye fell upon Master Amos, who was nearest to me. My hand slid along the axe handle. I raised it to strike the fatal blow—when suddenly the thought came to me, ‘What! Commit murder? And you a Christian?’ I had not called it murder before. It was self-defense—it was preventing others from murdering me—it was justifiable—it was even praiseworthy. But now all at once the truth burst upon me that it was a crime. I was going to kill a young man who had done nothing to injure me but obey commands which he could not resist; I was about to lose the fruit of all my efforts at self-improvement, the character I had acquired, and the peace of mind which had never deserted me. All this came upon me instantly, and with a distinctness which made me almost think I heard it whispered in my ear; and I believe I even turned my head to listen. I shrank back, laid down the axe, crept up on deck again, and thanked God, as I have done every day since, that I had not committed murder.”
Apart from those who wondered how it was possible to have below-deck cabins on a flat-bottomed boat, or whether he would really have been able to murder four able-bodied men one after the other, few questioned this story of Christian redemption. It was what people wanted to hear, and Josiah emerged the hero of his own tale. And after his escape to Canada, he did his best to help things along, remembering further details for later editions; and when Mrs. Stowe’s novel appeared, letting it be known that he was the model for Uncle Tom—a claim she neither confirmed or denied, but tactfully let pass. Josiah also became pastor and leader of a community of former slaves who had settled in Canada at a place called Dawn; and while on a fund-raising trip to England met not only the Archbishop of Canterbury but also Queen Victoria, who graciously presented him with a photograph of herself.
Delia Garlic was an old woman living in Montgomery, Alabama, when she told her story to an interviewer for the Federal Writers’ Project:
“I was born in Powhatan, Virginia, and was the youngest of thirteen chillen. I never seed none of my brothers and sisters ‘cept brother William. Him and my mother and me was brought in a speculator’s drove to Richmond and put in a warehouse with a drove of other niggers. Then we was all put on a block and sold to the highest bidder. Never seed brother William again.
“Mammy and me was sold to a man by the name of Carter, who was the sheriff of the county. They wasn’t no good times at his house. He was a widower and his daughter kept house for him. I nursed for her and one day I was playing with the baby. It hurt its little hand and commenced to cry, and she whirl on me, pick up a hot iron and run it all down my arm and hand. It took off the flesh when she done it.
“After a while master married again, but things weren’t no better. I seed his wife blacking her eyebrows with smut one day, so I thought I’d black mine just for fun. I rubbed some smut on my eyebrows and forgot to rub it off, and she catched me. She was powerful mad and yelled, ‘You black devil, I’ll show you to mock your betters.’ Then she pick up a stick of stovewood and flails it against my head. I didn’t know nothing more till I come to, lying on the floor. I heard the mistress say to one of the girls, ‘I thought her thick skull and cap of wool could take it better than that.’
“I kept on staying there, and one night the master come in drunk and set at the table with his head lolling around. I was waiting on the table, and he look up and see me. I was scared, and that made him awful mad. He called an overseer and told him, ‘Take her out and beat some sense in her.’ I begin to cry and run and run in the night, but finally I run back by the quarters and heard Mammy calling me. I went in, and right away they come for me. A horse was standing in front of the house, and I was took that very night to Richmond and sold to a speculator again. I never seed my Mammy anymore.
“I has thought many times through all these years how Mammy looked that night. She pressed my hand in both of hers and said, ‘Be good, and trust in the Lord.’ Trusting was the only hope of the poor bla
ck critters in them days. Us just prayed for strength to endure it to the end. We didn’t ‘spect nothing but to stay in bondage till we died.”
Though born into slavery, Thomas Jones was lucky enough to have had an easy-going and kindly master, Owen Holmes, who “did more for me than my own father could have done.” Mr. Holmes had a house and business in Wilmington, N. C., and an estate in the country. When in town, Jones hired himself out as a dock-worker, but during the summers he accompanied the Holmes family as a general servant, and was allowed to range about the countryside preaching and holding camp meetings. One of these took place at the estate belonging to a Mr. Blackman Crumpling, whose family were all Methodists. The meeting was probably held outdoors or in a barn, rather than in a church; blacks and whites attended in about equal numbers and on equal terms; the “anxious” were those teetering on the edge of giving themselves to God; exhorters were assistant ministers who uttered encouraging cries and exclamations.
“My remarks at this meeting were based upon the Scripture, ‘O Lord, revive thy work.’ And the Lord did revive it in mighty power. Large numbers of both white and colored persons were stricken down and led to cry for mercy at God’s hand. I observed that during the sermon Mr. Crumpling was very much affected. I afterwards learned the cause: he was burdened for a neighbor who was present. When I gave the usual invitations for the anxious to come forward for prayer, this neighbor was one of the first to come. Mr. Crumpling immediately stepped to his side, and putting his arm around his neck, exclaimed, ‘Thank God! My prayers are answered!’ We continued the meeting to a very late hour in the evening. Many were converted and returned to their homes shouting the praises of God. One of Mr. Crumpling’s daughters exhorted and shouted praises until her strength gave way and she fell to the ground in a dead faint. It was one of the best meetings I ever attended.