a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem,
few men would at times appear more devotional
than he. The exercises of his family devotions were
always commenced with singing; and, as he was a
very poor singer himself, the duty of raising the
hymn generally came upon me. He would read his
hymn, and nod at me to commence. I would at
times do so; at others, I would not. My non-com-
pliance would almost always produce much confu-
sion. To show himself independent of me, he would
start and stagger through with his hymn in the most
discordant manner. In this state of mind, he prayed
with more than ordinary spirit. Poor man! such was
his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily
believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the
solemn belief, that he was a sincere worshipper of
the most high God; and this, too, at a time when
he may be said to have been guilty of compelling
his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery. The
facts in the case are these: Mr. Covey was a poor
man; he was just commencing in life; he was only
able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact,
he bought her, as he said, for A BREEDER. This woman
was named Caroline. Mr. Covey bought her from
Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St. Mi-
chael’s. She was a large, able-bodied woman, about
twenty years old. She had already given birth to one
child, which proved her to be just what he wanted.
After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr.
Samuel Harrison, to live with him one year; and him
he used to fasten up with her every night! The re-
sult was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable
woman gave birth to twins. At this result Mr. Covey
seemed to be highly pleased, both with the man and
the wretched woman. Such was his joy, and that of
his wife, that nothing they could do for Caroline
during her confinement was too good, or too hard,
to be done. The children were regarded as being
quite an addition to his wealth.
If at any one time of my life more than another,
I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery,
that time was during the first six months of my stay
with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers.
It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain,
blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the
field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order
of the day than of the night. The longest days were
too short for him, and the shortest nights too long
for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first
went there, but a few months of this discipline
tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I
was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural
elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the
disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that
lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery
closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed
into a brute!
Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in
a sort of beast-like stupor, between sleep and wake,
under some large tree. At times I would rise up, a
flash of energetic freedom would dart through my
soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that
flickered for a moment, and then vanished. I sank
down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that
of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of
hope and fear. My sufferings on this plantation seem
now like a dream rather than a stern reality.
Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesa-
peake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with
sails from every quarter of the habitable globe.
Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so
delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so
many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me
with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have of-
ten, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath,
stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble
bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
eye, the countless number of sails moving off to
the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected
me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utter-
ance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty,
I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude
way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of
ships: —
“You are loosed from your morrings, and are free;
I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move
merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before
the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged
angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in
bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were
on one of your gallant decks, and under your pro-
tecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid
waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go!
Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born
a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship
is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in
the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save
me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any
God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not
stand it. Get caught, or get clear, I’ll try it. I had
as well die with ague as the fever. I have only one
life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die
standing. Only think of it; one hundred miles
straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God
helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live
and die a slave. I will take to the water. This very
bay shall yet bear me into freedom. The steam-
boats steered in a north-east course from North
Point. I will do the same; and when I get to the
head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and
walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania.
When I get there, I shall not be required to have a
pass; I can travel without being disturbed. Let but
the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I
am off. Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under the
yoke. I am not the only slave in the world. Why
should I fret? I can bear as much as any of them.
Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to
some one. It may be that my misery in slavery will
only increase my happiness when I get free. There
is a better day coming.”
Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak
to myself; goaded almost to madness at one mo-
ment, and at the next reconciling myself to my
wretched lot.
I have already intimated that my condition was
much worse, during the first six months of my stay
at Mr. Covey’s, than in the last six. The circum-
stances leading to the change in Mr. Covey’s course
toward me form an epoch in my humble history.
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you
shall see how a slave was made a man. On one of
the hottest days of the month of August, 1833, Bill
Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli, and
myself, were engaged in fanning wheat. Hughes was
clearing the fanned wheat from before the fan. Eli
was turning, Smith was feeding, and I was carrying
wheat to the fan. The work was simple, requiring
strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely
unused to such work, it came very hard. About three
o’clock of that day, I broke down; my strength failed
me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head,
attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every
limb. Finding what was coming, I nerved myself
up, feeling it would never do to stop work. I stood
as long as I could stagger to the hopper with grain.
When I could stand no longer, I fell, and felt as
if held down by an immense weight. The fan of
course stopped; every one had his own work to do;
and no one could do the work of the other, and
have his own go on at the same time.
Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred
yards from the treading-yard where we were fanning.
On hearing the fan stop, he left immediately, and
came to the spot where we were. He hastily in-
quired what the matter was. Bill answered that I
was sick, and there was no one to bring wheat to the