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National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox The Making of African American Identity: Vol. I, 1500-
In several hundred narratives published in the 1800s, formerly enslaved African Americans portrayed the unique relationship of master and slave as they experienced it in the "peculiar institution.” Presented here are the perspec- tives of William J. Anderson, Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, James Curry, Frederick Douglass, Moses Grandy, William Grimes, Harriet Jacobs, Solomon Northup, Austin Steward, and an “unnamed runaway slave.” *
Why am I a slave? Why are some people slaves, and others masters? Was there ever a time when this was not so? How did the relation commence? These were the perplexing questions which began now to claim my thoughts, and to exercise the weak powers of my mind, for I was still but a child, and knew less than children of the same age in the free states. As my questions concerning these things were only put to children a little older, and little better informed than myself, I was not rapid in reaching a solid footing. By some means I learned from these inquiries, that “God, up in the sky,” made everybody, and that he made white people to be masters and mistresses and black people to be slaves. This did not satisfy me, nor lessen my interest in the subject. I was told, too, that God was good, and that He knew what was best for me and best for everybody. This was less satisfactory than the first statement because it came, point blank, against all my notions of goodness. It was not good to let old master cut the flesh off Esther [his aunt] and make her cry so. Besides, how did people know that God made black people to be slaves? Did they go up in the sky and learn it? or did He come down and tell them so? All was dark here. It was some relief to my hard notions of the goodness of God that, although he made white men to be slaveholders, he did not make them to be bad slaveholders, and that in due time he would punish the bad slaveholders ⎯ that he would, when they died, send them to the bad place where they would be “burnt up.” Nevertheless, I could not reconcile the relation of slavery with my crude notions of goodness. Then, too, I found that there were puzzling exceptions to this theory of slavery on both sides, and in the middle. I knew of blacks who were not slaves; I knew of whites who were not slaveholders; and I knew of persons who were nearly white, who were slaves. Color, therefore, was a very unsatisfactory basis for slavery. Once, however, engaged in the inquiry, I was not very long in finding out the true solution of the matter. It was not color, but crime, not God, but man, that afforded the true explanation of the existence
- (^) National Humanities Center, 2007: nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/. Some spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing modernized; all italics in original texts. Title engravings on this page in Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (1853). Engravings ccompanying selections of Curry and the “unnamed runaway slave” from Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb (1849). Author portraits from their narrative frontispieces; photo- graph of Harriet Jacobs courtesy of Jean Fagan Yellin. All images courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, in online collection Documenting the American South (docsouth.unc.edu/index.html). Complete image credits at nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/imagecredits.htm.
Frederick Douglass
“Why are some people slaves, and others masters?”
ON THE
MASTER–S LAVE
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of slavery; nor was I long in finding out another important truth, viz [that is to say]: what man can make, man can unmake. The appalling darkness faded away, and I was master of the subject. There were slaves here, direct from Guinea [west Africa]; and there were many who could say that their fathers and mothers were stolen from Africa ⎯ forced from their homes, and compelled to serve as slaves. This, to me, was knowledge; but it was a kind of knowledge which filled me with a burning hatred of slavery, increased my suffering, and left me without the means of breaking away from my bondage. Yet it was knowledge quite worth possessing. I could not have been more than seven or eight years old when I began to make this subject my study. It was with me in the woods and fields, along the shore of the river, and wherever my boyish wanderings led me; and though I was, at that time, quite ignorant of the existence of the free states, I distinctly remember being, even then, most strongly impressed with the idea of being a freeman some day. This cheering assurance was an inborn dream of my human nature ⎯ a constant menace to slavery ⎯ and one which all the powers of slavery were unable to silence or extinguish.
Slaveholders have been known to send spies among their slaves, to ascertain, if possible, their views and feelings in regard to their condition. The frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the maxim that a still tongue makes a wise head. They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and, in so doing, they prove themselves a part of the human family. If they have anything to say of their master, it is generally something in his favor, especially when speaking to strangers. I was frequently asked, while a slave, if I had a kind master, and I do not remember ever to have given a negative reply. Nor did I, when pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what was utterly false; for I always measured the kindness of my master by the standard of kindness set up by slaveholders around us. However, slaves are like other people and imbibe similar prejudices. They are apt to think their condition better than that of others. Many, under the influence of this prejudice, think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true.
There was a whisper, that my master was my father; yet it was only a whisper, and I cannot say that I ever gave it credence. Indeed, I now have reason to think he was not. Nevertheless the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that, by the laws of slavery, children in all cases are reduced to the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders and their profligate sons, brothers, relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin the additional attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written on this single feature of slavery, as I have observed it. One might imagine that the children of such connections would fare better in the hands of their masters than other slaves. The rule is quite the other way, and a very little reflection will satisfy the reader that such is the case. A man who will enslave his own blood may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins ⎯ unless they have a mind to repent ⎯ and the mulatto child's face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child.
While I heard of numerous murders committed by slaveholders on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I never knew a solitary instance in which a slaveholder was either hung or imprisoned for having murdered a slave. The usual pretext for killing a slave is that the slave has offered resistance. Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self-defense, the white assaulting party is fully justified by southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the slave down. ___Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom , 1855
I ought, perhaps, to blame slavery more than my master’s [brutality]. The disposition to tyrannize over those under us is universal, and there is no one who will not occasionally do it. I had too much sense and feeling to be a slave, too much of the blood of my father, whose spirit feared nothing. I was therefore, perhaps, difficult to govern in the way in which it was attempted. William Grimes, Life of William Grimes, The Runaway Slave , 1825
If we hated master ever so much, we did not dare to show it, but we must always look pleased when he saw us, and we were afraid to speak what we thought because some would tell master. I knew that I was wronged, and I have laid many a time and thought how to get revenge, but something always said “don’t do it.” We had heard a little about a free country. A man called Sailor Jack once came among us and told us that there were no slaves in his land; but we did not believe him, and some of the slaves got angry when anything was said about it. They would say it was all a lie. That we were made to serve Buckra [master] and that was what we had got to do all our lives, and our best way was to bear it as well as we could. They said it only made us unhappy to keep talking all the time about freedom, and that if there was any free country, Buckra’s land was so big we could never get there, so the best way was to say no more about it. I did not really believe there was any free country till two days before I left slavery.
___“Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave,” The Emancipator , Aug. 23, Sept. 13 & 20, Oct. 11 & 18, 1838
My name is Moses Grandy: I was born in Camden County, North Carolina. I believe I am fifty-six years old. Slaves seldom know exactly how old they are; neither they nor their masters set down the time of a birth; the slaves, because they are not allowed to write or read; and the masters, because they only care to know what slaves belong to them. Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America , 1843
m, the old
wned a plantation out of the town where he lived, used to go out once in two or three weeks, and while
they work as hard as the slaves, I can tell them from experience, they no
a domestic servant. I played with
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When I was a lad, my master’s uncle came one day to see him, and as I was passing near the
man took ho
an,
n, who
ld of me and asked my master if this was one of Lucy’s boys. Being told that I was, he said, ‘Well, his father was a free man and perhaps when he gets to be a man, he’ll be wanting to be free too.’ Thinks I to myself, indeed I shall. But if he had asked me if I wanted to be free, I should have answered, ‘No, Sir.’ Of course, no slave would dare to say, in the presence of a white m that he wished for freedom. But among themselves, it is their constant theme. No slaves think they were made to be slaves.
I have been told that Paul Cammon [Cameron], son of Judge Cammo o
James Curry
“No slaves think they were made to be slaves.”
there have one or two slaves tied and whip them unmercifully for no offense but merely, as he said, to let them know he was their master.
... when I hear people here say k w nothing about it. And even if they did work as hard, there is one striking difference. When they go home at night, they carry to their families the wages of their daily labor, and then they have the night for rest and sleep. Whereas the slave carries to his family at night only a weary body and a sick mind, and all he can do for them is done during the hours allowed him for sleep.
From my childhood until I was sixteen years old, I was brought up my master’s children, and we loved one another like brothers. This is often the case in childhood, but when the young masters and misses get older, they are generally sent away from home to school, and th soon learn that slaves are not companions for them. When they return, the love of power is cultivated i their hearts by their parents, the whip is put into their hands, and they soon regard the negro in no other light than as a slave. ___“Narrative of James Curry, A Fugitive Slave,” The Liberator , 10 January 18
Slaveholders pride themselves upon being honorable men, but if you were to hear the enormous lies they tell their slaves, you would have small respect for their veracity. I have spoken plain English. Pardon me. I cannot use a milder term. When they visit the north and return home, they tell their slaves of the runaways they have seen and describe them to be in the most deplorable condition. A slaveholder once told me that he had seen a runaway friend of mine in New York and that she besought him to take her back to her master, for she was literally dying of starvation, that many days she had only one cold potato to eat and at other times could get nothing at all. He said he refused to take her because he knew her master would not thank him for bringing such a miserable wretch to his house. He ended by saying to me, “This is the punishment she brought on herself for running away from a kind master.”
Harriet Jacobs
“the master had a right to do what he pleased with his own property”
This whole story was false. I afterwards staid with that friend in New York, and found her in comfortable circumstances. She had never thought of such a thing as wishing to go back to slavery. Many of the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not worth while to exchange slavery for such a hard kind of freedom.
They put him [a slave dead from severe punishment] into a rough box and buried him with less feeling than would have been manifested for an old house dog. Nobody asked any questions. He was a slave, and the feeling was that the master had a right to do what he pleased with his own property. And what did he care for the value of a slave? He had hundreds of them. When they had finished their daily toil, they must hurry to eat their little morsels and be ready to extinguish their pine knots before nine o'clock when the overseer went his patrol rounds. He entered every cabin to see that men and their wives had gone to bed together, lest the men, from over-fatigue, should fall asleep in the chimney corner and remain there till the morning horn called them to their daily task. Women are considered of no value unless they continually increase their owner’s stock [of enslaved children]. They are put on a par with animals. This same master shot a woman through the head who had run away and been brought back to him. No one called him to account for it. If a slave resisted being whipped, the bloodhounds were unpacked and set upon him to tear his flesh from his bones. The master who did these things was highly educated and styled a perfect gentleman. He also boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower. I could tell of more slaveholders as cruel as those I have described. They are not exceptions to the general rule. I do not say there are no humane slaveholders. Such characters do exist, notwithstanding the hardening influences around them. But they are “like angels’ visits — few and far between.”
If God has bestowed beauty upon her [a female slave], it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position, but many slaves feel it most acutely and shrink from the memory of it. I cannot tell how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs nor how I am still pained by the retrospect. My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The other slaves in my master’s house noticed the change. Many of them pitied me, but none dared to ask the cause. They had no need to inquire. They knew too well the guilty practices under that roof, and they were aware that to speak of them was an offense that never went unpunished.... The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the
A white person, too poor to own slaves, is as often looked upon with as much disdain by the miserable slave as by his wealthy owner. This disposition seems to be instilled into the mind of every slave at the South, and indeed, I have heard slaves object to being sent in very small companies to labor in the field, lest that some passer-by should think that they belonged to a poor man who was unable to keep a large gang. Nor is this ridiculous sentiment maintained by the slaves only; the rich planter feels such a contempt for all white persons without slaves that he does not want them for his neighbors. I know of many instances where such persons have been under the necessity of buying or hiring slaves just to preserve their reputation and keep up appearances; and even among a class of people who profess to be opposed to Slavery have I known instances of the same kind, and have heard them apologize for their conduct by saying that “when in Rome, we must do as the Romans do.”
There is no one, I care not how favorable his condition, who desires to be a slave, to labor for nothing all his life for the benefit of others. I have often heard fugitive slaves say that it was not so much the cruel beatings and floggings that they received which induced them to leave the South, as the idea of dragging out a whole life of unrequited toil to enrich their masters.
___Austin Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman , 1857
Had I the ability of language and learning, I would try to portray the condition of the slave. To human one of God’s creatures ⎯ reduced to chattelism ⎯ bought and sold like goods or mercha horses! He has nothing he can call his own ⎯ not his wife, or children, or his own body. If th take the soul, he would take it, but I believe the lord takes care of that. William J. Anderson, Life of William J. Anderson, Twenty-Four Y
be a slave ⎯ a ndise, oxen or e master could
ears a Slave, 1857
