From log cabin to the pulpit : or fifteen years in slavery

Front matter

DUKE UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

THIRD EDITION

Chapter I

I was born in Wilmington, a town in North Carolina, March 11, 1848. Wilmington is situated near th© mouth of the Cape Fear river, on the Atlantic coast. It has a good harbor on the tidal waters of Cape Fear river. The chief exports are cotton and tobacco from the uplands, and lumber, rosin and turpentine from the yellow pine forests of the coastal plains. The swampy coastal lowlands produce great quantities of rice.

In reading Stanley and Livingston on Africa we notice that the negro race is divided into different tribes. Among them is the Madagascar tribe, who are noted for their mechanical skill. To this tribe my parents both belonged.

My parents, Peter and Rosy, belonged to a very wealthy ship and slave holder, who owned two farms and over five hundred slaves.

My father was an engineer and towed vessels in and out of Wilmington harbor into the Atlantic ocean. Ho pursued 'this occupation for over fifteen years and received many tips by being courteous and always on the alert for ships heaving in sight. While the master received pay for the towage, my father by constant contact with white men, received money in many other ways. *'As association breeds assimilation" so my father learned the art of making and saving money until he had accumulated about eleven hundred dollari.

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My mother was a cook at the great house, but hired her time from her mistress, for which she paid three dolhirs per month.

It becomes necessary to exphiin how slaves would get nioney to pay for their time There were shipped from Wilmington a great many ground-peas or peanuts, as we now call them. They were brought from the country in bulk and so had to be sacked and sewed up. The slaves were hired for this work, for which they received one cent and a half ])er sack. This is one of the great mediums through which they made money. Another was, a ^^reat many hoo^sheads of molasses were brought from New Orleans and unloaded on the docks, and the hot sun would cause them to ferment and run out through the chimes. The negro women would catch this molasses by running their hands over the hogshead and wiping the molasses from their hands into a pail. I am often made to wonder now when I see people gagging at the idea of eating bread made up by black hands, when in those days the poor whites were truly glad to buy the molasses caught in the hands of our mothers, and like Elijah, who was fed by the ravens, they ate it and asked no questions.

Father enjoyed the friendship of two very distinguished Quakers, Mr. Fuller and Mr. Elliott, who owned oyster sloops, and stood at the head of what is known in our country as the underground railroad, or an organization filled with love of freedom for suffering humanity, that had for its end the liberation of slaves and that onl}^ Hundreds of men belonging to this organization sacrificed their lives in carrying out this noble purpose.

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Father was with Messrs Fuller and Elliott every day towing them in and out from the oyster bay. This gave them an opportunity to lay and devise plans for getting many into Canada (the only safe refuge for the negro this side the Atlantic.) and my father was an important factor in this line.

The system of deliverance by the underground railroad was to divide the country off into sections, and at every fifteen or twenty miles would be a station or depot. One man would haul the slaves at night to the end of his station and get back home before daylight, undiscovered, then they would be conveyed the next niofht in waj^ons from that station to the next, and so on until they reached Canada.

Often the wagons had double linings, with corn or wheat visible, while the cavity was filled with women and children.

Father, having a foretaste of liberty to some extent, and growing weary of the life of a slave, with the assistance of his Quaker friends plans were laid for him to purchase his own freedom and go to Canada. Then his family would be sent to him by the underground railroad, Jf any one connected with the underground railroad was caught the penalty was a heavy fine and expulsion from the state.

Allow me to state here that in 1875, while on the trafn going to Wilmington, North Carolina, in search of a sister and brother, I met a white man having the appearance of a lawyer. He talked very freely with me and I soon learned that he was from Boston, Massachusetts, and that he was a merchant instead of a

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lawyer. His continued conversation with me attracted the attention of nearly all the passengers in the car, and they were not careful or considerate in their criticism, for they were heard to say several times, ' ' he is a Northern negro lover," or, "one of Lincoln's hirelings," and suchlike expressions We were truly glad when we reached Wilmington and could get away from the scrutinizing eyes and listening oars of the passengers in the car. He asked me if Wilmingloii was my home. I told him it was, but that I did not h)ve a grain of sand of that soil. He a'^sured me ihiit tliis was the case with him, for said he, ' ray fnther lo^t his life here trying to help a colored man to lilterty." I asked him who his father was. He said, -'Sam Fuller." When he learned that I had known his father from mv childhood days it seemed to draw him closer to me, and we were both dumbfounded for a moment when it was made known that his father had lost his life because he had tried to help my father secure his freedom. We both broke down and wept for a few moments, but I recognized the danger we were in, even in 1875, in a southern state. So we parted with the understanding that we keep in touch with each other until we got to Indianapolis, Indiana. As there was danger of both being murdered we passed each other almost as strangers on the streets of Wilmington for over a week, and finally we both left on the same train. We spent a week together in the city of Indianapolis , Indiana. From the way he spent money on me it seemed that he thought he owed me some gratitude instead of my owing it to him.

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He now told me the story of the death of his father and how it came about. My master became suspicious, or mistrusted from surrounding circumstances, that Mr- Fuller was the deviser of father's attempt to buy his freedom. A few nights after father was sold from Wilmington a posse of men notified Mr. Fuller to leave the state at once, and they left a crossbone and skull on a stick in front of his door. He left his wife and four children, Samuel, Jr., the man I met on the train being the oldest, with the understanding that he would send for them in a few days. He has never been heard from since. The supposition is that he was murdered. The family remained there until the rebellion, when they left for Indiana, afterward going from there to Massachusetts.

The young man's business in Wilmington was to look after the little homestead, which was about forty acres of land. I was not successful in finding my sister and brother, but felt amply paid by meeting an old friend to the negro race and one who helped my father in many different ways.

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CHAPTER 11.

The plans to free father were put into execution in 1858 My father went to his master to ascertain what he would take for him. The first question master asked him was, what white man had put him up to this^ His suspicion at once fell on these two Quakers. Father finally succeeded in convincing him that no white man was implicated. Then his next question was, ''how much money have you?" Father told him $450, so he agreed to take $1,150 for him. This was an exorbitant price and he didn't think father would ever be able to pay it. He could have paid him the amount down, but in counsel the Quakers had thought it would not be the best thing to do for fear it would confuse the whole plan and jeopardize their lives.

He was to pay for himself on the installment plan, paying $450 down, with the understanding that he continue six months on the tnor to teach another man to run it, then he could work wherever he pleased. Every year he was to pay as much as he could, which he did, together with the interest.

At this time the subject of slavery was being greatly agitated in the north, and slaves were depreciating in value. In 1859 my father went to California with a surveying company, staying one year. He returned during the holidays, paying $350 more on himself,

Miaking a total of $800 paid on his debt. He went back to California after the holidays and was gone about three months, when the news came to us that he was returning in chains. We knew exactly what that meant; to rob him of what he had paid and sell him away from us, and we were not mistaken, for this was the exact purpose.

You may wonder how we received the news, know- * ing we had no access to the teleg^raph or postoffice. Now, to explain this. To get news from one farm to another one slave would tell the other, and so on, until by this means and that of the uoderground railroad, it would reach it's destination. So father sent us the news in this way, clear from California to North Carolina.

For two months we went every day when the boat came, to see if father was on it. At last the sad hour came when the boat arrived, bringiDg father bound in chains. We saw him pulling his whiskers (a mark of deep sorrow with him.) Wiien they took him off the boat we found he had worn handcuffs fourteen days and his ankles, from the manacles, were as raw as a piece of beef.

That night they took him to the jail, or negro pen, and there we left them trying to unlock the handcuffs, for the flesh had swollen so it made it almost impossible to unlock them. The negro trader ordered mother and five of us children to go home, assuring us that we would see father in the morning.

That night I saw mother in every attitude of prayer a human beino^ could assume. Sometimes she would

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be prostrate upon her face on the floor; sometimes on her knees and again in a sitting posture, imploring God to use his power in some way to keep father from being sold from us.

Then about twelve o'clock that night mother said we would go to the great ho Tse, and so we went, notwithstanding the rigidness of the law; for there was a standing law, that any negro caught out after nine o'clock at night should be struck thirty -nine lashes. But now, as the war was dawning, they were more rigid than ever, and raised it to forty-nine lashes.

Miss Marguerite Robinson.

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Chapter III

There were four classes of men who made their livino- on the bhjod of the neo^ro The first class is the master proper. He feels himself too honorable to drive the slave from two or three o'clock in the morning until nine or ten at night, therefore he sees the necessity of the second class, so he hires a poor white man as overseer, to do this dirty work.

The overseer had the authority, if the slave — man, woman or child — failed lo do his task, to tie him up and whip him, but not to exceed one hundred and tif ty lashes. If the crime demanded more than that he must get special authority from the master. The punishment, as will be shov/n further on, was very high for trivial offenses.

Sometimes the task w^ms too heavy for the negro and he could not complete it, and would rise up in his manhood and would not be whipped. Then his only alternative was to run away, and this usually was the first thought in his mind. The third man raised blood hounds and trained them to hunt nothing but negroes. He made his living by catching runaway negroes, receiving the paltry sum of three dollars per head. The fourth man is the negro trader, who made a perpetual business of buying and selling negroes, as men do cattle in this country. He would buy up eight, ten or twenty, as the case might be, and locate

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them at some central point until he had from three to five hundred. Then he would have a long chain and handcutf them on either side of the chain and march them to Richmond, Virginia, which Avas the central slave market of the south, owned and conducted by the Lees and known as Lee's negro trader's pen, and when there they would auction them oif to the highest bidder.

The prosperity of the poor whites, with but few exceptions, depended upon the amount of brutality that he showed towards the negro. His word was not valued as highly as that of the negro if it was not in favor with that of his employer. He lived in no better h(^mes, and many of them not as good as the negro quarters. I need not say that they had but little or no aspirations, save that of raising blood hounds to catch the slaves with when they ran away. They were usually very illiterate, many of them had no education at all; they had no association only among themselves and the negroes. Their wives were glad to do the drudgery for that class of whites who would not own slaves. There were no free school systems, and they had not aspirations enough to pay for schooling their children. When they went before their employer they put their hats under their arms, as any negro would do, and usually were as afraid of him as the negro was of the overseer. They dressed as hideously as they possibly could in order to strike terror to the heails of the negroes; they wore broad brimmed slouch hats, their pants down in their boots and a long blacksnake whip across their shoulders;

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they trained their voices to be as harsh as possible. Their very appearance would cause one to shiver. Their living was not as good as that of the average negro, for the slaves were industrious and w^ould work by the light of the moon to earn a few pennies, while the overseer was lazy and seemed to be satisfied with most any kind of fare.

Every week he drew a certain amount of fat meat, corn meal, and a little fiour from his master's smoke houses just the same as the slaves did. He of ten hired the slaves to steal hogs or chickens for him and if caught the slaves would have to lake it all upon themselves in order to keep the good will of the overseer. They used the same dialect as the negro in every respect. AVhile the negro looked for a day of deliverance the overseer looked for nothing. He was at the height of his ambition while driving the negro.

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Chapter IV

Let us go back to the ''great house" where we left my mother. She awoke Master Tom and thought she would reach him through his religious views, so she said: "Master Tom, have you forgotten your religion? Have you the heart to sell my husband from me and my children after he has served you all these days and made you a fortune?" He said, ''No, Rosy, I've nothing to do with that. Your husband is in the hands of the state of California, but I'll see that he is not taken out of this state."

Of course he knevv that mother was ignorant as to the laws of the state, that he would have had to have been tried in the state where the offense was committed had there been any offense, but this was only a pretext he used to rob her of her husband, and her children of their father; the father of his money and liberty.

Mother asked why he was brought back as a slave when he was buying himself and had already paid eight hundred dollars. He told her that father had become intimate with a white lady. (She could not have been a lady and be intimate with a negro, and that negro a slave.) After assuring mother that father would not again be taken out of the state, Master Tom wrote us a pass and we went back home.

About three a. m. mother concluded we had better

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go to the jail, so we went, and saw father standing at the window. I called him once, but he waved his hand to us, as if to tell us some one was down stairs, and motioned for us to go back home.

Mother cooked a good breakfast for him, and between eight and nine o'clock we went back to the negro trader's pen, but before we got there we heard singing of two clases. Some religious songs, such as "God has delivered Daniel," and other melodies, while others were sin^ino^ the sonojs of the world, all seemingly rejoicing in their own way. Some were rejoic - ing because they were sold, hoping to fall into the hands of better masters, while others were rejoicing because of the hope of meeting their mother, father or child.

We knew exactly what that meant; we knew that the number was complete and about to start for Richmond, and we were not mistaken, for there were three hundred men, women and children ready to start within thirty minutes from the time we got there. We hastily scanned the line over for father, but he was not in that gang. But there was a vehicle built something like our omnibuses, which convey passengers from the depot, only it was bailt of heavy oak boards, with ssaples driven in them. They would handcuff men that were valuable and men that would not be whipped . I .'limbed upon the wheel of this vehicle and saw father sitting with his face buried in his hands. As I spoke he came to the iron grating or window, and asked where mother was. I told him she was th^re, then he said to me, "William, never pull

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off your shirt to be whipped. I want you to die in defense of your mother, for once I lay in the woods eleven months for trying to prevent your mother from being whipped." He shook my hands and kissed me good bye through the iron bars. Then three sisters and two brothers climbed upon the wheel and bade him good bye. Now the most trying scene of all is at hand. Mother climbed upon the wheel and father said, ''Rosy, I'm bound for Richmond, Virginia, and from there to some Southern market, I don't know where. We uiay nev^er meet again this side of the shores of time, but Rosy, keep the faith in God, and meet me in heaven. I want this one assurance from you before we part: I want to know if you believe the nhnrge brought against me, for which they are robbing me of my li[)erty'^" My mother a-sured him she did not believe it.

The trader came up, ordered mother down from the wheel, i\ud the vehicle to start. Father kissed her good bve, with a mutual agreement that they would never marry any one else, even though they never met again. Foriy years ]:)assed into eternity from that sad hour until mother's death, in 1898, and father and mother never met again until they met on the other shore.

This was the beginning of sorrow in our home. It was not over three weeks from the time that father was sold away until mother and three children were taken to the great house, and the other children scattered around on the different farms. I was taken into the house to wait on table.

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About a month after I entered upon my new occupation my master told me one day, while sitting on the porch, to light his pipe. He smoked a pipe with a long i-eed stem and would rest the bowl of it on a shelf. After 1 lit the pipe he ordered me to bring him a glass of water. I went for it, but on returning I found he had turned a sallow complexion. I spoke to hiai but he did not answer. 1 called old mistress, (this is the way we distinguished her from the children, as we called all, frdra the least to the biggest, mistress and master.) She came and spoke to him, but there was no reply. He had died sitting there in his chair.

It was the custom among the slave holders to have the older slaves come and view the remains of their masters or mistresses while they lay in state, and if the master was a man of any humanity, or what we termed a good master, they would actually shed tears over his body. So as usual, they cidled the slaves in, but old mistress did not know that Master Tom had incurred the ill-will of every slave ou the place by selling father.

Father was almost a prophet among my people, because he secured all the news through his Quaker friends, and other white men that were friendly to him, with whom he came in contact. Then he would tell it to our people. Of course the slaves held him in high esteem, and v/hen Master Tom sold him they never ag?iin had any good feeling for him. They came as usual, bui just outside the door they wet their fingers with saliva and made ^-crocodile tears" and passed on pretending to l)e crying, and saying, 'Toor Massa

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Tom is gone. Of course they didn't say where he had gone.

This may appear very deceptive, but had we not made some demonstration of grief our very lives would have been in danger.

Chapter V

About three weeks later they began to look up the will, for boys then were like a good many are today, just waiting for the old man to die, so they could run through with what he had accnmnlated. We have many young men of that class today. They are not worthy to bear their father's name. It was found in the will that mother and three of the children had fallen to Scott Co wens — ^the meanest of all the Co wens family. He was a drunkard and a gambler, for he had taken three different women's sons, between the ages of twelve and fourteen years, and gambled them off and came back home without them, leaving the parents in anguish. We went to his home, mother as cook, the rest as servants in general.

We had been there but a few months when he called my mother one day and asked her why she said 'Hhat God had sent swift judgment upon his father." Of course mother denied it, but in her grief she had thoughtlessly said it, and somehow it had reached hi« ears. He threatened mother very strongly, but didn't strike her.

He left home one evening, telling me to he ready to accompany him when he returned. He did not come back until the next morning. I saw at once that he had been drinking heavily. He sat down to the breakfast table and ordered me to bring him a glass of

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cool water right from the spring. I put the glass of water in front of him. He immediately picked it up and threw the water in my face, saying ''I will show you how to bring me dirty water to drink."

One morning a few days later, he found fjuilt with the biscuits and asked me what was the matter with them. 1 told him I didn't know . He then jumped up from the table and called mother. We, from the least to the largest, were taught ^vhen called by our mistress, or master to answer and go toward that voice. So mother was coming to him and he met her on the porch, l)etween the kitchen and the dining room. He asked mother why she was crying — I had told her about his throwing the water in my face — and before she could answer him he knocked her from the porch to the ground. This was more than I could endure. An ax handle was on the opposite side from which mother fell. He stood over her, curbing and kicking her, and I knocked him down with the ax handle

I knew my only hope of escape was to run away, so I started at once. 1 had often heard ex-runaway slaves, men and women, tell the adventures of when they were in the woods and about their hiding places or rendezvous. I had heard it told so often at my father's fireside that I knew almost directly where they were, for I had passed close by them many times, so I started to look for them. I went to the three mile farm, arriving there about the time they were going to dinner. I went to an old mother — Ave were taught to call each old woman mother, and they called us son or daughter. It seemed there was a natural bond oi

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sympathy existino^ in the heart of every woman for the children of others. I told her what I had done. She gave me a chunk of fat meat and half of a corn dodger and directed me the way to a hiding place. Then with her hand upon my head she pra} ed one of those ferv^ent prayers for God to hasten the day when the cruel chains of slavery would fall, and women's children would not be forced to leave home and take refuge among the beasts of the forest for trying to protect their mothers.

Quite late that night I got opposite the hiding place. It was a low swampy place back of a thick cane brake. It was so dark and the cane so thick when I got to the place where I had been directed to turn in I was afraid to venture. But as I stood there I imagined I could hear the baying of blood hounds, and so strong was the imagination that it drove me in. I had several things to fear, for that country was infested with bears. More than once J had seen a bear come out of a corn field with his arms full of corn, go up to the fence and throw it over, get over, pick it up like a man, and walk oJff. Then we had reptiles, such as water moccasins and rattle snakes. Sometimes 1 could walk upright, sometimes I was compelled to crawl through the cane. About three o'clock the next morning I came out of the cane brake on the banks of a large pond of almost stagnant water. I could see the rocky mound or cave that I had heard so much talk of.

There was no boat around and I was afraid to go into the water, but the same impulse that drove me into the cane brake caused me to go into the water.

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With a Ions: reed for a stati I ^aded into the water until I heard the voice of a man, in the real coarse negro dialect, "'who is datr* My hair was not extremely long, yet it seemed so to me. as I imagined I felt my hat going up. and I answered. **dis is me." lOf course he knew who "me" was. ) He then began to question me as to my name and my parents' name. It was necessary for him to be very cautious whom he lmitted. because white men often disguised themselves and played the role of a runaway, and in this wfiy many runaways had been captured. I finally succeeded in convincing him that I was nor a spy bat nn actual runaway. Then he allowed me to advance, and as I sat on the top of the rocky mound with him he prayed long and earnestlv for the time to come when God would raise up a 'ieliverer to lead us in some way out of bondage. And while he was thus praying I heard this peculiar sound, **gaw goo." The old man saw I was in a terrible dilemma, and he said, "son, } ou need not be uneasy, that is only some men below snoring. " In a few minutes I looked across the field and saw two men coming with poles on their backs, and I got excited again, and called his attention to the fact. He assured me that they were men who had beeo off seeking food. They were stealing.