Slave runaways

“ It is for the interest of the masters (at least they believe it to be) to put upon such slaves iron collars and chains, to brand and crop them; to disfigure, lacerate, starve and torture them—in a word, to inflict upon them such vengeance as shall strike terror into the other slaves. To this class may be added the incorrigibly thievish and indolent; it would be for the interest of the masters to treat them with such severity as would deter others from following their example.
7. Runaways. When a slave has once runaway from his master and is caught, he is thenceforward treated with severity. ”

“ How wonderful is His providence amid the disastrous and destructive doings of men! The slave-trade has been carried on for centuries by cruel, ruthless men, without a thought of mercy. The system of slavery, in the lands of the black man's thraldom, has been a system of greed, and overwork, and lust, and premature decay, and death, with but slight and incidental alleviations. ”

“ The infusion of Anglo-Saxon with African blood has created an insurrectionary feeling among the slaves of America hitherto unknown. Aware of their blood connection with their owners, these mulattoes labour under the sense of their personal and social injuries; and tolerate, if they do not encourage in themselves, low and vindictive passions. On the other hand, the slave owners are aware of their critical position, and are ever watchful, always fearing an outbreak among the slaves. ”

“ I found it just as hard to be beaten over the head with a piece of iron in New York as it was in Virginia. Whips and chains are everywhere necessary to degrade and brutalize the slave, in order to reduce him to that abject and humble state which Slavery requires. ”

“ Slavery is, after all, the great demoralizer of the human race. In addition to the marks of barbarism left upon the features of the African, he has the indelible imprint of the task-master. Want of food, clothing, medical attention when sick, over-work, under the control of drunken and heartless drivers, the hand-cuffs and Negro whip, together with the other paraphernalia of the slave-code, has done much to distinguish the blacks from the rest of the human family. ”

“ It was impossible for them to be accustomed to carry away men and women by force, to keep them in chains, to see their tears, to hear their mournful lamentations, to behold the dead and the dying, to be obliged to keep up a system of severity amidst all this affliction,—in short, it was impossible for them to be witnesses, and this for successive voyages, to the complicated mass of misery passing in a slave-ship, without losing their finer feelings, or without contracting those habits of moroseness and cruelty, which would brutalize their nature. ”

“ It seemed to me, that this gentleman was too benevolent a man, to arrest and send me back to my cruel mistress; and yet, how could I expect, or even hope, that a cotton planter would see a runaway slave on his premises, and not cause him to be taken up, and sent home? Failing to seize a runaway slave, when he has him in his power, is held to be one of the most dishonourable acts, to which a southern planter can subject himself. Nor should the people of the north be surprised at this. Slaves are regarded, in the south, as the most precious of all earthly possessions ”

“ The slave trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent. But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors who remained in the African jungle. ”

“ I wish some of my old northern friends, who think Slavery a good thing, could witness the scenes in the slave auctions, which have so often made my blood run cold. I knew two runaway negroes absolutely starve themselves to death in their hiding-places in this city, rather than make themselves known, and be sent back to their masters. ”

“ And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.
Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops—not of the blight on their children’s souls.
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls. ”

“ And some of the miserable creatures are permitted to hang in that position until they actually expire; some die under the lash, others linger about for a time, and at length die of their wounds, and many survive, and endure again similar torture. These bloody scenes are constantly exhibiting in every slave holding country—thousands of whips are every day stained in African blood! Even the poor females are not permitted to escape these shocking cruelties."—Rankin's Letters. ”

“ Neither the aged nor the sick are spared; women, and even children in the womb, fall a sacrifice to their fury; the huts are plundered, the little possessions of the unfortunate inhabitants carried away or destroyed, and all that fall alive into the hands of the robbers are led as slaves into the camp. When the negroes see that their resistance is no longer of any avail, they frequently prefer death to slavery ”

“ You have dragged them who have never one you any wrong, in chains, and forced them into the vilest slavery, never to end but with life; such slavery as is not found among the Turks in Algiers, nor among the heathens in America. You induce the villain to steal, rob, murder men, women, and children, without number, by paying him for his execrable labor. ”

“ They may be tied to the whipping-post and die under moderate punishment; but he dares not complain. If he murmur, there is the tormenting lash; if he resist, it is death. And the injustice extends even beyond the grave; for the story of the slave is told by his oppressor, and the manly spirit which the poor creature shows, when stung to the very heart's core, is represented as diabolical revenge. A short time ago, I read in a Georgia paper, what was called a horrid transaction, on the part of the negro. A slave stood by and saw his wife whipped, as long as he could possibly endure the sight ”

“ For instance: an aged negro of my acquaintance comes to me one day, with the astounding information that he, and a number of equally decrepit and unserviceable slaves, have been killed and buried by his master. In other words, the owners of these useless helots have hoodwinked the slave emancipators by representing their decrepit human property as defunct, while they substitute fresh importations in their places. ”

“ This is the second stage of the cruelty, from which the miserable exiles are delivered, only to be placed, and that for life, in subjection to a dominion add system of laws, the most merciless and tyrannical that ever were tolerated upon the face of the earth: and from all that can be learned by the accounts of people upon the spot, the inordinate authority which the plantation-laws confer upon the slaveholder is exercised, by the English slaveholder especially, with rigour and brutality. ”

“ Are fifty millions of Africans to be left exposed to the demoralising influence, and the unspeakable horrors of the slave-trade? And are we to talk of humanity and allow ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND miserable human beings to be annually dragged from their native land—from their homes—from their parents—from their friends—and be subjected to the horrors described in pages 41, 42? What means, what power, what system, except the Colonization Society, can check this climax of human barbarity? ”

“ This is an ugly habit of enticing men to such a point of complicity, that an indignant husband, and a close calculator, can appear suddenly and denounce the victim. Many a slave was furnished in this way.—But we restrain the pen from tracing the villanous and savage methods, suggested by violence or fraud or lust, to keep those decks well stocked over which the lilies of France drooped with immunity.
All these negroes differed much in their sensitiveness to the condition of slavery. Many of them suffered silently, and soon disappeared, killed by labor and homesickness. ”

“ In a fifth, it would be a petty negro chief disposing of twenty or thirty negroes taken alive in a recent attack upon a village at a little distance from his own. Sometimes these forays in quest of negroes to sell are on a very large scale, and then they are called slave-hunts. The king of one negro country collects a large army, and makes an expedition into the territories of another negro king, ravaging and making prisoners as he goes. ”

“ How far the slave laws are conducive to the enjoyment of those they govern, each individual can judge for himself. In the Southern papers, we continually see pictures of runaway negroes, and sometimes the advertisements identify them by scars, or by letters branded upon them. Is it natural for men to run away from comfort and happiness, especially when any one who meets them may shoot them, like a dog? and when whipping nearly unto death is authorized as the punishment? I forbear to describe how much more shocking slave whipping is than anything we are accustomed to see bestowed upon cattle. ”

“ The runaway was one of the most difficult problems of slave government. The wild life of the slave in Africa, and the hardships of frontier American slavery naturally created a disposition in the slave to run away from his master’s plantation. Organized bands of slave-stealers, poor whites, and free negroes constantly took advantage of this attitude of the slave. ”

“ There is also debt slavery, the whole family being responsible for the debt of a member.650 Klose, however, describes the ruin wrought by slave raids. "Murder and incendiarism are the orders in this business. Great villages and districts are made deserts and are depopulated by the raids." "It is not in negro nature to subject one's self voluntarily to labor. The negro wants to be compelled to work." ”

“ Meantime the war continued in the plain of Cape François with unmitigated fierceness, and human blood still flowed in torrents amid the cruelty practiced on both sides. It was estimated that within the space of two months, more than two thousand whites had fallen victims to the insurrection — that one hundred and eighty sugar plantations, and nearly nine hundred plantations of coffee, cotton and indigo had been laid waste, and their mills and houses consumed to ashes. The negroes, in the wantonness of their fury, left nothing undestroyed that was not in itself indestructible. ”

“ But if the Bill found people to resist it, it also found people ready to carry it out. Slave-catching had become a profession, and dogs were trained to hunt negroes. Colored men were shot down remorselessly in attempting to escape, and white people convicted of aiding such escapes were imprisoned for years, and fined so heavily that sometimes, unable to pay such fines, they lingered in jail until they died. ”

“ They do not understand what a vast gulf flows between them and the equality of position with the white race which most of those who have aspirations imagine to be meant by emancipation. He said the town slave-owners were very severe and harsh in demanding larger sums than the slaves could earn. The slaves are sent out to do jobs, to stand for hire, to work on the quays and docks. Their earnings go to the master, who punishes them if they do not bring home enough. ”

“ The slave-trade has been the great obstacle to the civilization of Africa, the development of her resources, and the welfare of the Negro race. The prospect of gain, which this traffic held out to the natives, induced one tribe to make war upon another, burn the villages, murder the old, and kidnap the young. ”

“ Thus these poor slaves are deprived of every hope and stimulus by which all other classes and individuals are animated; no good conduct of theirs towards their master, no attachment to his person or family, no fidelity or long service can ensure kind treatment. If the slave effect his escape to his own part of the country, he is there treated with contempt; and when he dies (if a natural death) , his body is dragged to the outside of the village, there to be made sport of by the children, or to furnish food for the dogs! ”

“ I have said that we seldom hear of the grievous wrongs which provoke the vengeance of the slave; I will tell an anecdote, [Pg 193] which I know to be true, as a proof in point. Within the last two years, a gentleman residing in Boston, was summoned to the West Indies in consequence of troubles on his plantation. His overseer had been killed by the slaves. This fact was soon made public; and more than one exclaimed, "what diabolical passions these negroes have!" ”

“ The revolting scenes of the inter-State slave trade, the abominations of slave breeding, the barbarities of the cotton field and rice swamps, the ferocities of the slave hunt with blood-hounds in the South, and with more savage men in the free States, the imprisonments and lynchings of Northern men found in the slave States and suspected of holding abolition sentiments, the many collisions between slavery and freedom, which have in some instances proceeded to bloodshed and death, have caused much irritation and deep indignation throughout the country. ”