Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998

Languages Used:

• English

LC Subject Headings:

• Fugitive slaves -- Virginia -- Fiction.
  
• Plantation life -- Virginia -- Fiction.
  
• Slavery -- United States -- Fiction.
  
• Slavery -- Virginia -- Fiction.
  
• Slaves -- Virginia -- Fiction.
  

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THE
SLAVE: OR
MEMOIRS OF ARCHY MOORE.

        ALL men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain INHERENT RIGHTS, of which, when they enter into society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity, viz: the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing happiness and safety. Virginia Bill of Rights, Art. I.

VOLUME II.

BOSTON:
JOHN H. EASTBURN, PRINTER.
1836.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by JOHN
H. EASTBURN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

MEMOIRS.

CHAPTER I.

        IT seemed to be with great reluctance, that the poor girl carried back her recollection to that terrible day, which had separated us, as we then thought, forever. She hesitated,--and seemed half ashamed, and almost unwilling to speak of what had followed after that separation. I pitied her,--and great as was my curiosity, if my feelings on that occasion deserve so trifling a name, I could almost have wished her to pass over the interval in silence. Distressing doubts and dreadful apprehensions crowded upon me, and I almost dreaded to hear her speak. But she hid her face in my bosom, and murmuring in a voice half choked with sobs, "my husband must know it,"--she began her story.

        She was already, she said, more than half dead with fright and horror, and the first blow that colonel Moore struck, beat her senseless to the ground. When she came to her senses, she found herself lying on a bed, in a room which she did not recollect ever to have seen before. She rose from the bed as well as her

bruises would allow her;--for she did not move without difficulty. The room was prettily furnished; the bed was hung with curtains, neat and comfortable; a dressing table stood in one corner; and there was all the usual furniture of a lady's bed-chamber,--but it was not like any room in the house at Spring-Meadow.

        She tried to open the doors of which there were two,--but both were fastened. She endeavored to get a peep from the windows, in the hope that she might know some part of the prospect. But she could only discover that the house seemed to be surrounded by trees; for the windows were guarded on the outside by close blinds, which were fastened in some way she did not understand, so that she could not open them. This fastening of the doors and windows, satisfied her that she was held a prisoner, and confirmed all her worst suspicions.

        As she passed by the dressing table, she caught a look at the glass. Her face was deadly pale;--her hair fell in loose disorder over her shoulders, and looking down, she saw stains of blood upon her dress, but whether her own or her husband's she could not tell. She sat down on the bed-side; her head was dizzy and confused, and she scarcely knew whether she was awake or dreaming.

        Presently one of the doors opened, and a woman entered. It was Miss Ritty,*

        * Henrietta.

and dignity of colonel Moore's favorite. Cassy's heart beat hard, while she heard some one fumbling at the lock. When the door opened she was glad to see that it was only a woman, and one whom she knew. She ran towards her, caught her by the hand, and begged her protection. The girl laughed, and asked what she was afraid of. Cassy hardly knew what answer to make. After hesitating a moment, she begged Miss Ritty to tell her where she was, and what they intended to do with her.

        "It is a fine place you 're in," was the answer, "and when master comes, you can ask him what is to be done with you." This was said with a significant titter which Cassy knew too well how to interpret.

        Though Miss Ritty had evaded a direct answer to her inquiry, it now occurred to her where she must be. This woman, she recollected, occupied a small house,--the same that once had been inhabited by Cassy's mother and by mine,--at a considerable distance from any other on the plantation. It was surrounded by a little grove which almost hid it from view, and was very seldom visited by any of the servants. Miss Ritty looked upon herself, and was in fact regarded by the rest of us, as a person of no little consequence; and though she sometimes condescended to make visits, she was not often anxious to have them returned. Cassy, however, had been once at her house. There were two little rooms in front, into which she was freely admitted; but the room behind was locked, and it was whispered among the servants, that colonel Moore kept the key, so that even Miss Ritty herself

did not enter it except in his company. This perhaps was scandal; but Cassy recollected to have noticed that the windows of this room were protected against impertinent curiosity, by close blinds on the outside; and she no longer doubted where she was.

        She told Miss Ritty as much, and inquired, if her mistress knew of her return.

        Miss Ritty could not tell.

        She asked if her mistress had got another maid in her place.

        Miss Ritty did not know.

        She begged for permission to go and see her mistress; but that, Miss Ritty said, was impossible.

        She requested that her mistress might be told where she was; and that she wished very much to see her. Miss Ritty said that she would be glad to oblige her, but she was not much in the habit of going to the House, and the last time she was there, Mrs Moore had spoken to her so spitefully, that she was determined never to go again, unless she were absolutely obliged to.

        Having thus exhausted every resource, poor Cassy threw herself upon the bed, hid her face in the bedclothes, and sought relief in tears.

        It was now Miss Ritty's turn. She patted the poor girl on the shoulder, bade her not be down-hearted, and unlocking a bureau which stood in the room, she took out a dress which she pronounced to be mighty handsome. She bade Cassy get up and put it on, for her master would be coming presently. This was what Cassy feared; but she hoped, if she could not

escape the visit, at least to defer it. So she told Miss Ritty that she was too sick to see any body; she absolutely refused to look at her dresses, and begged to be allowed to die in peace. Miss Ritty laughed when she spoke of dying; yet she seemed a little alarmed at the idea of it, and inquired what was the matter.

        Cassy told her that she had seen and suffered enough that day, to kill any body; that her head was sick and her heart was broken, and the sooner death came to her relief the better. She then mustered courage to mention my name, and endeavored to discover what had become of me. Miss Ritty again shook her head and declared that she could give no information.

        At this moment the door opened, and colonel Moore came in. He had a haggard and guilty look. The flush which overspread his face, when she had last seen him, was wholly gone; his countenance was pale and ghastly. She had never seen him look so before, and she trembled at the sight of him. He bade Ritty begone; but told her to wait in the front room as perhaps he might need her assistance. He bolted the door, and sat down on the bed by Cassy's side. She started up in terror, and retired to the farthest corner of the room. He smiled scornfully, and bade her come back and sit down beside him. She obeyed;--for however reluctant, she could do no better. He took her hand, and threw one arm about her waist. Again she shrank from him and would have fled; but he stamped his foot impatiently, and in a harsh tone, bade her be quiet.

        For a moment he was silent;--then changing his manner, he summoned up his habitual smile, and began in that mild, gentle, insinuating tone, in which he was quite unsurpassed. He plied her with flattery, soft words and generous promises. He reproached her, but without any harshness, for her attempts to evade the kindness he intended her. He then spoke of me; but no sooner had he entered on that subject than his voice rose, his face became flushed again, and he seemed in manifest danger of loosing his temper.

        She interrupted him, and besought him to tell her how I did and what had become of me. He answered that I was well enough; much better than I deserved to be; but she need give herself no further thought or trouble on that score, for he intended to send me out of the country as soon as I was able to travel, and she need not hope nor expect ever to see me again.

        She throw herself at his feet and begged that she might be sent off and sold with me. He affected to be greatly surprised at this request, and inquired why she made it. She told him, that after all that had happened, it were better that she should not live any longer in his family;--beside, if she were sold at the same time, the same person might buy her that bought her husband. That word, husband, put him into a violent passion. He told her that she had no husband, and wanted none; for he would be better than a husband to her. He said that he was tired of her folly, and with a significant look, he bade her not be a fool, but to leave off whining and crying, be a good girl, and

do as her master desired; was it not a servant's duty to obey her master?

        She told him that she was sick and wretched, and begged him to leave her. Instead of doing so, he threw his arms about her neck, and declared that her being sick was all imagination, for he had never seen her look half so handsome.

        She started up;--but he caught her in his arms, and dragged her towards the bed. Even at that terrible moment her presence of mind did not forsake her. She exerted all her strength, and succeeded in break-away from his hateful embraces. Then summoning up all her energies, she looked him in the face, as well as her tears would allow her, and striving to command her voice, "Master,--Father," she cried, "what is it you would have of your own daughter?"

        Colonel Moore staggered as if a bullet had struck him. A burning blush overspread his face; he would have spoken, but the words seemed to stick in his throat. This confusion was only for a moment. In an instant he recovered his self-possession, and with out taking any notice of her last appeal, he merely said, that if she was really sick, he did not wish to trouble her. With these words he unbolted the door, and walked out of the room.

        She heard him talking with Miss Ritty; and he had been gone but a few moments, before she entered. She began with a long string of questions about what colonel Moore had said and done; but when Cassy did not seem inclined to give her any answer, she laughed, and thanked her, and told her she need not

trouble herself, for she had been peeping and listening at the key-hole, the whole time. She said, she could not imagine, why Cassy made such a fuss. In a very young girl it might be excusable; but in one as old as she was, and a married woman too, she could not understand it. Such is the morality, and such the modesty to be expected in a slave!

        The poor girl was in no humor for controversy; so she listened to this ribaldry without making any answer to it. Yet even at this moment, a faint ray of hope began to display itself. It occurred to her, that if Miss Ritty could be made sensible of the risk she ran in aiding to create herself a rival, she would not be pleased at the prospect of being perhaps supplanted in a situation, which she seemed to find so very agreeable. This idea appeared to offer some chance of gaining over Miss Ritty to aid her in escaping from Spring-Meadow; and at once, she resolved to act upon it. It was necessary to be cautious and to feel her way, lest by piqueing the girl's pride, she might deprive herself of all the advantage to be gained from working upon her fears.

        She approached the subject gradually, and soon placed it in a light, in which, it was plain, her companion had never viewed it. When it was first suggested to her, she expressed a deal of confidence in her own beauty, and affected to have no fears;--yet it soon became obvious, that notwithstanding all her boasting, she was a good deal alarmed. Indeed it was quite impossible for her, to look her anticipated rival in the face, and not to be so. Cassy was well pleased to see

the effect of her suggestions; and began to entertain some serious hopes of once more making her escape.

        It was, to be sure, a miserable, and most probably an ineffectual resource, this running away. But what else could she do? What other hope was there of escaping a fate which all her womanly and all her religious feelings taught her to regard with the utmost horror and detestation? This was her only chance; she would try it, and trust in God's aid to give her endeavors a happy issue.

        She now told Ritty distinctly, how she felt, what she intended, and what assistance she wanted. Her new confederate applauded her resolution. "Certainly, if colonel Moore was really her father, that did make a difference; and her being a methodist might help to account for her feelings, for she knew that sort of folks were mighty strict in all their notions."

        But though Miss Ritty was ready enough to encourage and applaud, she seemed very reluctant to take any active part in aiding and abetting an escape, which though apparently it tended to promote her interests, might end, if her agency in it were discovered, in bringing her into danger and disgrace.

        Several plans were talked over, but Miss Ritty had some objection to all of them. She preferred any thing to the risk of being suspected by her master, of plotting to defeat his wishes. As they found great difficulty in fixing upon any feasible plan, it was agreed at last, in order to gain time, to give out that Cassy was extremely sick. This indeed was hardly a fiction;--for nothing but the very critical nature of her situation

had enabled the poor girl to sustain herself against the shocks and miseries of the last four and twenty hours. Ritty undertook to pursuade her master, that the best thing he could do, was to let her alone till she got better. She would promise to take her into training in the mean time, and was to assure colonel Moore, that she did not doubt of being soon able to convince her, that it was both her interest and her duty, to comply with her master's wishes.

        So far things went extremely well. They had hardly arranged their plan, before they heard colonel Moore's step in the outer room. Ritty ran to him, and succeeded in pursuading him to go away without any attempt to see Cassy. He commended her zeal, and promised to be governed by her advice. The next day a circumstance happened which neither Cassy nor Ritty had anticipated, but which proved very favorable to their design. Colonel Moore was obliged to set off for Baltimore, without delay. Some pressing call of business, made his immediate departure indispensable. Before setting out, however, he found time to visit Miss Ritty, and to enjoin upon her to keep a watchful eye upon Cassy, and to take care and bring her to her senses, before his return.

        If Cassy was to escape at all, now was her time. She soon hit upon a scheme. Her object was, to screen Ritty from suspicion as much as to favor her own flight. Luckily the same arrangement might be made to accomplish both purposes. Cassy could only escape through the door or out of the windows. Escaping through the door was out of the question, because

Ritty had the key of it, and was supposed to be sleeping or watching, or both together, in the front room. The escape then must be by the windows. These did not lift up as is commonly the case, but opened upon hinges on the inside. The blinds by which they were guarded on the outside were slats nailed across the window-frames and not intended to be opened. These must be cut or broken, and as they were of pine, this was a task of no great difficulty. Ritty brought a couple of table knives, and assisted in cutting them away,--though according to the story she was to tell her master, she was sleeping all the time, most soundly and unsuspiciously, and Cassy must have secretly cut away the slats with a pocket-knife.

        Early in the evening of colonel Moore's departure, every thing was ready, and Cassy was to sally forth as soon as she dared to venture. Ritty agreed not to give any notice of her escape till late the next day. This delay she could account for by the plea of not being able to find the overseer, and by a pretended uncertainty as to whether it would be colonel Moore's wish, that the overseer should be informed at all about the matter. At all events, they hoped that no very vigorous pursuit would be made until colonel Moore's return.

        Cassy now made ready for her departure. She felt a pang at the idea of leaving me;--but as Ritty could not or would not tell her what had become of me, and as she knew, that separated and helpless as we were, it was impossible for us to render each other any assistance, she rightly judged, that she would best serve me,

and best comply with my wishes, by adopting the only plan, that seemed to carry with it any likelihood of preserving herself from the violence she dreaded.

        Cassy had supplied herself from Ritty's allowance, with food enough to last for several days. It was now quite dark, and time for her to go. She kissed her hostess and confederate, who seemed much affected at dismissing her on so lonely and hopeless an adventure, and who freely gave her what little money she had. Cassy was a good deal touched at this unexpected generosity. She let herself down from the window, bade Ritty farewell, and summoning up all her resolution and self-command, she took the nearest way across the fields, towards the high-road. This road was little traveled except by the people of Spring-Meadow and one or two other neighboring plantations, and at this hour of the evening, there was little danger of meeting any body, except perhaps a night-walking slave, who would be as anxious as herself to avoid being seen. There was no moon,--but the glimmer of the star-light served to guide her steps. She felt no apprehension of losing her way, for she had frequently been in the carriage with her mistress, as far as the little village at the court-house of the county; and it was hither, that in the first instance, she determined to go.

        She arrived there, without having met a single soul. As yet there were no signs of morning. All was still, save the monotonous chirpings of the summer insects, interrupted now and then by the crowing of a cock or the barking of a watch-dog. The village consisted of a dilapidated court-house, a black-smith's shop, a tavern,

two or three stores, and half a dozen scattered houses. It was situated at the meeting of two roads. One of these she knew, led into the road that ran towards Baltimore. She had flattered herself with the idea of reaching that city, where she had many acquaintances, and where she hoped she might find protection and employment. Her chance of ever getting there was very small. Baltimore was some two or three hundred miles distant; and she did not even know which of the roads that met at the court-house she ought to take. She could not inquire the way, beg a cup of cold water, or even be seen upon the road, without the greatest danger of being taken up as a run-away, and carried back to the master from whom she was flying.

        After hesitating for some time, she took one of the roads that offered themselves to her choice, and walked on with vigor. The excitement of the last day or two seemed to give her an unnatural strength, for after a walk of some twenty miles, she felt fresher than at first. But the light of the morning dawn, which began to show itself, reminded her that it was no longer safe to pursue her journey. Close by the road side was a friendly thicket, the shrubs and weeds all dripping with the dew. She had gone but a little way among them, when she found them so high and close as to furnish a sufficient hiding-place. She knelt down, and destitute as she was of human assistance, she besought the aid and guardian care of Heaven. After eating a scanty meal,--for it was necessary to husband her provisions,--she scraped the leaves together into a rude bed, and

composed herself to sleep. The three preceding nights she had scarcely slept at all,--but she made it up now, for she did not wake till late in the afternoon.

        As soon as evening closed in, she started again, and walked as vigorously as before. The road forked frequently; and she had no means of determining which of the various courses she ought to follow. She took one or the other, as her judgment, or rather as her fancy decided; and she comforted herself with the notion, that whether right or wrong in her selections, at all events, she was getting further from Spring-Meadow.

        In the course of the night she met several travelers. Some of them passed without seeming to notice her. She discovered some at a distance and concealed herself in the bushes till they had passed. But she did not always escape so easily. More than once, she was stopped and questioned,--but luckily she succeeded in giving satisfactory answers. Indeed there was nothing in her complexion, especially in the uncertain light of the evening, that would clearly indicate her to be a slave; and in answering the questions that were put to her, she took care to say nothing that would betray her condition. One of the men who questioned her, shook his head, and did not seem satisfied; another, sat on his horse and watched her till she was fairly out of sight; a third told her, that she was a very suspicious character;--but all three suffered her to pass. She was the less liable to interruption, because in Virginia, the houses of the inhabitants are not generally situated along the public roads. The

planters usually prefer to build at some distance from the high way,--and the roads, passing along the highest and most barren tracts, wind their weary length through a desolate, and what seems almost an uninhabited country. When morning approached again, she concealed herself as before, and waited for the return of night to pursue her journey.

        She proceeded in this way for four days, or rather nights, at the end of which time her provisions were entirely exhausted. She had wandered she knew not whither,--and the hope of reaching Baltimore, which at first had lightened her fatigue, was now quite gone. She knew not what to do. To go much further without assistance was scarcely possible. Yet should she ask any where for food or guidance, though she stood some chance perhaps of passing for a free white woman, still her complexion, and the circumstance of her travelling alone, might cause her to be suspected as a run-away, and very probably, she would be stopped, put into some jail, and detained there, till suspicion was changed into certainty.

        She was traveling slowly along, the fifth night, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and reflecting upon her unhappy situation, when descending a hill, the road came suddenly upon the banks of a broad river. There was no bridge; but a ferry boat was fastened to the shore, and close by was the ferry house, which seemed also to be a tavern. Here was a new perplexity. She could not cross the river without calling up the ferry people or waiting till they made their appearance, and this would be exposing herself at once

to that risk of detection which she had resolved to defer to the very last moment. Yet to turn back and seek another road seemed to be an expedient equally desperate. Any other road, which did not lead in a direction opposite to that which she wished to follow, would be likely to bring her again upon the banks of the same river; and as she could not live without food, she would be soon compelled to apply somewhere for assistance, and to face the detection she was so anxious to avoid.

        She sat down by the road side, resolved to wait for the morning and to take her chance. There was a field of corn near the house, and the stalks were covered with roasting ears. She had no fire, nor the means of kindling one, but the sweet milky taste of the unripe kernels served to satisfy the cravings of hunger.

        She had chosen a place where she could observe the first movements about the ferry house. The morning had but just dawned, when she saw a man open the door and come out of it. He was black, and she walked boldly up to him, and told him that she was in great haste and wished to be taken across the ferry immediately. The fellow seemed rather surprised at seeing a woman, a traveler, alone, and at that hour of the morning;--but after staring at her a minute or two, he appeared to recollect that here was an opportunity of turning an honest penny, and muttering something about the earliness of the hour, and the ferry boat not starting till after sunrise, he offered to take her across in a canoe, for half a dollar. This price she did not hesitate to pay; and the fellow no doubt,

put it into his own pocket, without ever recollecting to hand it over to his master, or to mention a word to him about this early passenger.

        They entered the boat, and he paddled her across. She did not dare to ask any questions, lest she should betray herself, and she did her best to quiet the curiosity of the boatman, who however, was very civil and easily satisfied. Having landed on the opposite shore, she traveled on a mile or two further. By this time it was broad day-light and she concealed herself as usual.

        At night, she set out again. But she was faint with hunger, her shoes were almost worn out, her feet were swollen and very painful, and altogether, her situation was any thing but comfortable. She seemed to have got off the high-way, and to be traveling some cross-road, which wound along through dreary and deserted fields, and appeard to be very little frequented. All that night, she did not meet a single person or pass a single house. Painful as was the effort, she still struggled to drag along her weary steps; but her spirits were broken, her heart was sinking, and her strength was almost gone. At length the morning dawned; but the wretched Cassy did not seek her customary hiding-place. She still kept on in hopes of reaching some house. She was now quite subdued; and chose to risk her liberty, and even to hazard being carried back to Spring-Meadow and subjected to the fearful fate from which she was flying, rather than perish with hunger and fatigue. Sad indeed it is, that the noblest resolution and the loftiest stubbornness of soul is compelled

so often to yield to the base necessities of animal nature, and from a paltry and irrational fear of death,--of which tyrants have ever known so well to take advantage,--to sink down from the lofty height of heroic virtue, to the dastard submissiveness of a craven and obedient slave!

        She had not gone far before she saw a low mean looking house by the road side. It was a small building of logs, blackened with age, and not a little dilapidated. Half the panes or more, were wanting in the two or three little windows with which it was provided, and their places were supplied by old hats, old coats, and pieces of plank. The door seemed dropping from its hinges; and there was no enclosure of any kind about the house, unless that name might properly be given to the tall weeds with which it was surrounded. Altogether, it showed most manifest signs of thriftless and comfortless indolence.

        She knocked softly at the door, and a female voice, but a rough and harsh one, bade her come in. There was no hall or entry; the out-door opened directly into the only room; and on entering, she found it occupied by a middle aged woman, barefooted, and in a slovenly dress, with her uncombed hair hanging about a haggard and sun-burnt face. She was setting a rickety table, and seemed to be making preparations for breakfast. The house had but one room, of which one side was almost wholly taken up by an enormous fire place. A fire was burning in it, and the corn cakes were baking in the ashes. In the opposite corner was a low bed, on which a man, the master of the

family most likely, lay still a-sleep, undisturbed by the cries and clamors of half-a-dozen brats, who had been tumbling and bawling about the house, unwashed, uncombed and half naked, but who were seized with sudden silence, and slunk behind their mother, at the sight of a stranger.

        The woman pointed to a rude sort of stool or bench, which seemed the only piece of furniture in the nature of a chair, which the house contained, and asked Cassy to sit down. She did so; and her hostess eyed her sharply, and seemed to wait with a good deal of curiosity to hear who she was, and what she wanted. As soon as Cassy could collect her thoughts, she told her hostess that she was traveling from Richmond to Baltimore to see a sick sister. She was poor and friendless, and was obliged to go on foot. She had lost her way, and had wandered about all night, without knowing where she was, or whither she was going. She was half dead, she added, with hunger and fatigue, and wanted food and rest, and such directions about the road, as might enable her to pursue her journey. At the same time she took out her purse, in order to show that she was able to pay for what she wanted.

        Her hostess, notwithstanding her rude and poverty-stricken appearance, seemed touched with this pitiful story. She told her to put up her money; she said she did not keep a tavern, and that she was able to give a poor woman a breakfast, without being paid for it.

        Cassy was too faint and weak to be much in a humor for talking; besides, she trembled at every word, less she might drop some unguarded expression that

would serve to betray her. But now that the ice was broken, the curiosity of her hostess could not be kept under. She overwhelmed her with a torrent of questions, and every time Cassy hesitated, or gave any sign of confusion, she turned her keen grey eyes upon her, with a sharp and penetrating expression that increased her disorder.

        Pretty soon the ash-cakes were baked, and the other preparations for breakfast were finished, when the woman shook her good man roughly by the shoulder, and bade him bestir himself. This connubial salutation roused the sleeper. He sat up on the bed and stared about the room with a vacant gaze; but the redness of his eyes, and the sallow paleness of his face, seemed to show thst he had not quite slept off the effects of the last night's frolic. The wife appeared to know what was wanting; for she forthwith produced the whiskey-jug, and poured out a large dose of the raw spirit. Her husband drank it off with a relish, and with a trembling hand, returned the broken glass to his wife, who filled it half full and emptied it herself. Then turning to Cassy, and remarking, that, "a body was fit for nothing till they had got their morning bitters," she offered her a dram, and seemed not a little astonished at its being declined.

        The good man then began leisurely to dress himself; and had half finished his toilette before he seemed to notice that there was company in the house. He now came forward and bade the stranger good morning. His wife immediately drew him aside, and they began an earnest whispering. Now and then they would

both look Cassy in the face, and as she was conscious that she must be the subject of their conversation, she began to feel a good deal of embarrasment, which she was too little practised in deceit to be able to conceal. This matrimonial conference over, the good woman bade Cassy draw up her stool and sit down at the breakfast table. The breakfast consisted of hot corn-cakes and cold bacon, a palatable meal enough in any case, but which Cassy's long starvation made her look upon as the most delicious she had ever eaten. Sweet indeed, ought to be that mess of pottage, for which one sells the birthright of freedom!

        She ate with an appetite which she could not restrain; and her hostess seemed a good deal surprised and a little alarmed, at the rapidity with which the table was cleared. Breakfast being finished, the man of the house began to question her. He asked her about Richmond, and whether she knew such and such persons, who, as he said, were living there. Cassy had never been in Richmond, and knew the town only by name. Of course, her answers were very little to the purpose. She blushed and stammered and held down her head, and the man completed her confusion by telling her, that it was very plain she had not come from Richmond, as she pretended; for he was well acquainted with the place, and it was clear enough, from her answers, that she knew nothing about it. He told her that it was no use to deny it;--her face betrayed her;--and he reckoned, if the truth was told, she was no better than a run-away. At the sound of this word, the blood rushed into her face, and her heart

sunk within her. It was in vain, that she denied, protested, and entreated. Her terror, confusion and alarm only served to give new assurance to her captors, who seemed to chuckle over their prize, and to amuse themselves with her fright and misery, very much as a cat plays with the mouse it has caught.

        He told her that if she were in fact a free woman, there was not the slightest ground for alarm. If she had no free papers with her, she would only have to lie in jail till she could send to Richmond and get them. That was all!

        But that was more than enough for poor Cassy. No proofs of freedom could she produce; and her going to jail would be almost certain to end in her being restored to colonel Moore, and becoming the wretched victim of his rage and lust. That fate, must be deferred as long as possible, and there seemed but one way of escaping it.

        She confessed that she was a slave, and a run-away; but she positively refused to tell the name of her master. He lived, she said, a great way off; and she had run away from him not out of any spirit of discontent or disobedience, but because his cruelty and injustice were too great to be endured. There was nothing she would not choose rather than to fall into his hands again; if they would only save her from that,--if they would only let her live with them, she would be their faithful and obedient servant as long as she lived.

        The man and his wife looked at each other and seemed pleased with the idea. They walked aside

and talked it over. Nothing appeared to deter them from accepting her proposal, at once, but the fear of being detected in harboring and detaining a run-away. Cassy did her best to quiet these apprehensions; and after a short struggle, avarice and the dear delight of power triumphed over their fears, and Cassy became the property of Mr Proctor; for so the man was named. His property, as he might speciously argue, by her own consent,--a ten times better title, than the vast majority of his countrymen could boast.

        To prevent suspicious among the neighbors, it was agreed that Cassy should pass for a free woman, whom Mr Proctor had hired; and as this gentleman had been so fortunate as to have been initiated into the art and mystery of penmanship, an accomplishment somewhat rare among the 'poor white folks' of Virginia, in order that Cassy might be prepared to answer impertinent questions, he gave her free-papers, which he forged for the occasion.

        It was a great thing to have escaped returning to Spring-Meadow. But for all that, Cassy discovered, that her present situation would not prove very agreeable. Mr Proctor was the descendant and representative of what, at no distant period, had been a rich and very respectable family. The frequent division of a large estate, which nobody took any pains to increase, while all diminished it by idleness, dissipation and bad management, had left Mr Proctor's father in possession of a few slaves and a considerable tract of worn-out land. At his death, the slaves had been sold to pay his debts, and the land, being divided

among his numerous children, had made Mr Proctor the possessor of a few barren acres. But though left with this miserable pittance, he had been brought up, in the dissipated and indolent habits of a Virginian gentleman; the land he owned, which was so poor and worthless that none of his numerous creditors thought it worth their while to disturb him in the possession of it, still entitled him to the dignity of a freeholder and a voter; and he felt himself as much above, what is esteemed in that country, the base and degraded condition of a laborer, as the richest aristocrat in the whole state. He was as proud, as lazy, and as dissipated as any of the nabobs, his neighbors; and devoted the principal part of his time to gambling, politics and drink.

        Luckily for Mr Proctor, his wife was a very notable woman. She boasted no patrician blood; and when her husband began to talk, as he often did, about the antiquity and respectability of his family, she would cut him short by observing, that she thought herself full as good as he was,--but for all that, her ancestors had been 'poor folks' as far back as any body knew any thing about them. If the question between aristocracy and democracy were to be settled by the experience of the Proctors, the plebeians, most undoubtedly, would carry the day; for while her husband did little or nothing but frolic, drink and ride about the country, Mrs Proctor plowed, planted and gathered in the crop. But for her energy and industry, it is much to be feared that Mr Proctor's aristocratic habits would

have soon made himself and his family a burden upon the county.

        Cassy's services were a great accession to this establishment. Her new mistress seemed resolved to make the most of them, and the poor girl before long, was almost completely broken down, by a degree and a kind of labor to which she was totally unaccustomed. Two or three times a week, at least, Mr Proctor came home drunk; and on these occasions, he blustered about, threatened his wife, and beat and abused his children without any sort of mercy. Cassy could hardly expect to come off better than they did;--indeed his drunken abuse would have become quite intolerable, if the energetic Mrs Proctor had not known how to quell it. At first, she used mild measures, and coaxed and flattered him into quiet; but when these means failed, she would tumble him into bed, by main strength, and compel him to lie still by the terror of the broom-stick.

        It was nothing but the wholesome authority, which Mrs Proctor exercised over her husband, that protected Cassy against what she dreaded even more than Mr Proctor's drunken rudeness. Whenever he could find her alone, he tormented her with solicitations of a most distressing kind; and nothing could rid her of his importunities, except the threat of complaining to Mrs Proctor. But her troubles did not end even here. Mrs Proctor listened to her complaints, thanked her for the information, and said she would speak to Mr Proctor about it. But she could not imagine that a slave could possibly be endowed with the slightest

particle of that virtue, of which the free women of Virginia boast the exclusive possession. Full of this notion, she judged it highly improbable, whatever merit Cassy might pretend to claim, that she had actually resisted the importunities and solicitations of so very seducing a fellow as Mr Proctor; and filled with all the spite and fury of female jealousy, she delighted herself with torturing and tormenting the object of her suspicions. Mrs Proctor, with all her merit, had one little foible which, most likely she had adopted out of compliment to her husband. She thought a daily dram of whiskey necessary to keep off the fever and ague; and when through inadvertance, as sometimes would happen, she doubled the dose, it seemed to give a new edge to the natural keenness of her temper. On these occasions, she plied both words and blows with a fearful energy; and though perhaps it were difficult to say which of the two was most to be dreaded, both together they were enough to exhaust the patience of a saint.

        Poor Cassy could discover no means of delivering herself from this complication of miseries, under which she was ready to sink, when she was most unexpectedly relieved, by the unsolicited interference of a couple of Mr Proctor's neighbors. They were men of leisure like him; like him too, they were of good families, and one of them had received an excellent education, and was more or less distantly connected with several of the most distinguished people in the state. But a course of reckless dissipation had long ago stripped them of such property as they had inherited,

and reduced them to live by their wits; which they exercised in a sort of partnership, principally on the race-course and at the gaming table.

        These two speculating gentlemen were on terms of intimacy with Mr Proctor, and they knew that he had a free woman, for such they supposed Cassy to be, living at his house. In common with most Virginians, they considered the existence of a class of freed people as a great social annoyance, and likely enough in the end, seriously to endanger those 'sacred rights of property,' in defence of which there is nothing, which a true-born son of liberty ought not to be proud to undertake. Instigated doubtless, by such patriotic notions, these public-spirited persons judged that they would be rendering the state a service,--to say nothing of the money they might put into their own pockets,--by applying to this great political evil, so far at least as Cassy was a party to it, a remedy, which the doctrines of more than one of the Virginian statesmen, and the spirit of more than one of the Virginian statutes would seem fully to sanction. In plain English, they resolved to seize Cassy and sell her for a slave!

        The business of kidnapping is one of the native fruits of the American system of slavery; and is as common, and as well organized in many parts of the United States, as the business of horse-stealing is, in many other countries. When they take to stealing slaves, the business of these adventurers becomes very hazardous; but while they confine themselves to stealing only free people, they can pursue their vocation

with comparatively little danger. They may perhaps inflict some trifling personal wrong;--but according to the doctrines of some of the most popular among the American politicians, they are doing the public no inconsiderable service; since, in their opinion, nothing seems to be wanting to render the slave-holding states of America a perfect paradise, except the extermination of the emancipated class. It was no doubt, by some such lofty notions of the public good, that Cassy's friends were actuated. At all events, those sophistries which tyranny has invented to justify oppresssion, are as much an apology for them as for any one else.

        As far as Cassy could learn, their scheme was pretty much as follows. They invited Mr Proctor to a drinking frolic, and as soon as the whiskey had reduced him to a state of insensibility, a message was sent to his wife that her husband was taken dangerously ill, and that she must instantly come to his assistance. Notwithstanding a few domestic jars, Mr and Mrs Proctor were a most loving couple; and the good woman, greatly alarmed at this unexpected news, immediately set out to visit her husband. The conspirators had followed their own messenger, and were concealed in a thicket close to the house watching for her departure. She was hardly out of sight, before they rushed into the field where Cassy was at work, bound her hand and foot, put her into a sort of covered waggon or carry-all which they had provided for the occasion, and drove off as fast as possible. They traveled all that day, and the following night. Early the next

morning, they reached a small village where they met a slave-trader with a gang of slaves, on his way to Richmond. The gentlemen-thieves soon struck up a bargain with the gentleman slave-trader; and having received their money, they delivered Cassy into his possession.

        He seemed touched with her beauty and her distress, and treated her with a kindness which she hardly expected from one of his profession. Her shoes and clothes were nearly worn out. He bought her new ones,--and as she was half dead with fatigue, terror and want of sleep, he even went so far as to wait a day at the village in order that she might recover a little before setting out, on the journey to Richmond.

        But she soon found that she was expected to make a return for all these favors. When they stopped for the night, at the end of the first day's journey, she received an intimation that she was to share the bed of her master; and directions were given to her how and when to come there. These directions she saw fit to disregard. In the morning her master called her to account. He laughed in her face, when she spoke of the wickedness of what he had commanded, and told her he did not want her to be preaching any of her sermons to him. He would excuse her disobedience this time; but she must take very good care not to repeat it.

        The next evening she received directions similar to those which had been given her the day before; and again she disobeyed them. Her master, who had been drinking and gambling half the night, with some

boon companions whom he found at the tavern, enraged at not finding her in his room as he had expected sallied forth in pursuit of her. Luckily he was too drunk to know very well where he was going. He had gone but a few steps from the tavern door, before he stumbled over a pile of wood, and injured himself very seriously. His cries soon brought some of the tavern's people to his assistance. They carried him to his room, bound up his bruises, and put him to bed.

        It was late the next morning before he was able to rise; but he was no sooner up than he resolved to take ample vengeance for his disappointment and his bruises. He came hobbling to the tavern door, with a crutch in one hand and a whip in the other. He had all his slaves paraded before the house, and made two of the stoutest fellows among them hold Cassy by the arms, while he plied the whip. Her cries soon collected the idlers and loungers, who seem to constitute the principal population of a Virginian village. Some inquired the cause of the whipping, but without seeming to think the question of consequence enough to wait for an answer. It seemed to be the general opinion that the master was tipsy, and had chosen this way to vent his drunken humors; but whether drunk or sober, nobody thought of interfering with his 'sacred and unquestionable rights.' On the contrary, all looked on with unconcern, if not with approbation; and the greater number seemed as much pleased with the sport, as so many boys would have been, with the baiting of an unlucky cat.

        Just in the midst of this proceeding, a handsome

traveling carriage drove up to the door. There were two ladies in it, and they no sooner saw what was going on, than with that humanity, so natural to the female heart, that not even the horrid customs and detestable usages of slave-holding tyranny can totally extinguish it, they begged the brutal savage to leave beating the poor girl, and tell them what was the matter. The fellow reluctantly dropped the lash, and answered in a surly tone, that she was an insolent disobedient baggage, not fit to be noticed by two such ladies, and that he was only giving her a little wholesome correction. However, this did not seem to satisfy them; and in the mean time the carriage steps were let down and they got out. Poor Cassy was sobbing and crying and scarcely able to utter a word; her hair had fallen down over her face and shoulders; and her cheeks were all stained with tears. Yet even in this situation, the two ladies seemed struck with her appearance. They entered into conversation with her, and soon found that she had been bred a ladies' maid, and that her present master was a slave-trader. These ladies, it seemed, had been traveling at the north; and while on their journey, had lost a female servant by a sudden and violent attack of fever. They were now on their return to Carolina; and the younger of the two, suggested to her mother, for such their relation proved to be, to buy Cassy to supply the place of the maid they had lost. The mother started some objections to purchasing a stranger, about whom they knew nothing, and who had been sold by her former owner, they knew not for what reasons. But when Cassy's

tears and prayers and supplications, were added to the entreaties of her daughter, she found herself quite unable to resist; and she sent to ask the man his price. He named it. It was a high one;--but Mrs Montgomery, for that was the lady's name, was one of those people, who when they have made up their minds to do a generous action, are not easily to be shaken from their purpose. She took Cassy into the house with her, ordered the trunks to be brought in, and told the man to make out his bill of sale. The purchase was no sooner completed, than her new mistress took Cassy up stairs and soon fitted her with a dress better becoming her new situation, than did the coarse gown and heavy shoes for which she was indebted to the generosity of her late master.

        Cassy was dressed, the bill of sale was delivered, and the money paid, when Mrs Montgomery's brother and traveling companion rode up. He rallied his sister not a little, on what he called her foolish propensity to interfere between other people and their servants; he took her to task rather severely, for the imprudence of her purchase, and the high price she had paid; and he told her with a smile and a shake of the head, that one time or other, her foolish confidence and generosity would be her ruin. Mrs Montgomery took her brother's raillery all in good part; the carriage was ordered, and they proceeded together on their journey.

        The ladies with whom Cassy had come to the meeting, were Mrs Montgomery and her daughter. They lived some ten miles from Carleton-Hall. So near had Cassy and myself been to each other for six long

months or more, without knowing it. Cassy spoke of her mistress with the greatest affection. Her gratitude was unbounded; and she seemed to find a real pleasure and enjoyment in serving a benefactress who treated her with a gentle and uniform kindness, not often exerted even by those who are capable of momentary acts of the greatest generosity.

        As Cassy finished her story, she threw her arms about my neck, leaned her head upon my bosom, and looking me in the face, while the tears were streaming from her eyes, she heaved a sigh, and whispered that she was too, too happy! With such a mistress, and restored, so unexpectedly to the arms of a husband, whom, fondly as she loved him, she feared to have lost forever, what more could she desire!

        Alas poor girl!--she forgot that we were slaves;--and that the very next day might again separate us, subject us to other masters, and renew my tortures and her miseries!

CHAPTER II.

        BEFORE we had half finished what we had to say to each other, the movement of the people on the hill-side informed us that the morning's religious services were over. Never before had one of my master's sermons seemed so short to me. We hastened towards the spot; I to receive my master's orders, and Cassy to attend upon her mistress. As we came near the rural pulpit I observed Mr Carleton in conversation with two ladies, who proved to Mrs Montgomery and her daughter. We stopped at a little distance from them. Miss Montgomery looked around, and seeing us standing together, she beckoned to Cassy, and pointing to me, she inquired if that was the husband, who had put her into such a flutter that morning? This question drew the notice of the other two, and my master seemed a little surprised at seeing me in this new character. "What's this Archy" he said, "what is the meaning of all this? It is the first I ever heard of your being married. You don't pretend to claim that pretty girl there for your wife?"

        I replied that she was indeed, my wife, though it was now some two years or more, since we had seen or known any thing of each other. I added, that I had never mentioned my marriage to him, because I had despaired of ever seeing my wife again; and now,

it was nothing but the merest accident that had brought us together.

        "Well Archy if she is your wife, I don't know how I can help it, though I suppose I shall have you spending half your time at Poplar-Grove;--is not that what your place is called Mrs Montgomery?"

        She said it was;--and after a moment's pause, observed, that too little respect, she feared, was often paid to the matrimonial connexions of servants. For her part, she could not but regard them as sacred; and if Cassy and myself were really married, and I was a decent, civil fellow, she had no objection to my visiting Poplar-Grove, as often as Mr Carleton would permit me.

        My master undertook to answer for my good behavior; and turning to me, he bade me bring up the horses. I made all the haste I could; but before I returned, Mrs Montgomery was gone, and Cassy with her. We mounted, and had already taken the road to Carlton-Hall, when my master seemed to recollect that I had just found a wife from whom I had been long separated; and it began to occur to him, that possibly we might take some pleasure in being indulged with a little of one another's company. He gave me joy of my discovery, with an air half serious, half jocose,--as if in doubt whether a slave were properly entitled to a master's serious sympathy,--and remarked, in a careless tone, that perhaps I would like to spend the remainder of the day at Poplar-Grove.

        As I knew that Mr Carleton had much real goodness of heart, I had long since learned to put up with

his cavalier manner; and however little I might be pleased with the style in which he made the offer, the matter of his present proposal was so much to my fancy, that I eagerly caught at it. He took his pencil from his pocket, and wrote me a pass; I asked and received such directions as he could give me about the way; and putting spurs to my horse, I soon overtook Mrs Montgomery's carriage, which I followed to Poplar-Grove.

        This was one of those pretty, and even elegant country seats, which are sometimes seen, though very seldom, in Virginia and the Carolinas; and which may serve to prove that the inhabitants of those states, notwithstanding their almost universal negligence of such matters, are not totally destitute of all ideas of architectural beauty and domestic comfort. The approach to the house was through a broad avenue of old and venerable oaks. The buildings had the appearance of considerable antiquity; but they were in perfect repair, and the grounds and fences were neat and well kept.

        As the ladies left the carriage I came up. I told Mrs Montgomery that my master had given me leave to visit my wife, and I hoped she would have no objection to my spending the afternoon there.

        Mrs Montgomery answered, that Cassy was too good a girl to be denied any reasonable indulgence; and as long as I behaved well she would never make any objection to my coming to see her. She put me several questions about our marriage and separation; and the softness of her voice and the unassuming gentleness

of her manner, satisfied me that she was an amiable and kind-hearted woman.

        No doubt, through the broad extent of slave-holding America, there are many amiable women, and good mistresses. Yet how little does their kindness avail! It reaches only here and there. It has no power to alleviate the wretchedness or to diminish the tortures of myriads of wretches, who never hear a voice softer than the overseer's, and who know no discipline milder than the lash.

        The house servants at Poplar-Grove, were treated with kindness and even with indulgence, and were much attached to the family; but as happens in so many other cases, the situation of the field hands was extremely different. Some three years before, Mrs Montgomery, by her husband's death, and the will which he left, became the owner and sole mistress of the estate. Upon this occasion, her good nature, and her sense of justice, prompted her to extend the same humane system to the management of the plantation, which she had always acted upon, in the government of her own house-hold. During her husband's life, the servant's quarter had been three miles or more from the House; and as the slaves were never allowed to come there, unless they were sent for, Mrs Montgomery saw scarcely any thing of them, and knew very little of their wants and grievances, and next to nothing of the general management of the estate. Indeed she spent the greater portion of every year, in visiting her relations in Virginia, or in trips to the northern cities; and when at home, her husband's manifest disinclination

to her having any thing to do with those matters, had always prevented her from meddling in any way, with the plantation affairs.

        But when her husband was dead, and the plantation and slaves had become her own property, she could not reconcile herself to the idea of taking no thought, concern or care for the welfare and well-being of more than an hundred human creatures, who toiled from morning to night for her sole benefit. She resolved upon a total change of system; and ordered the servant's quarter to be removed near the house, so that she might be able to go there daily and have an opportunity of inspecting and relieving the wants and grievances of her servants.

        She was shocked at the miserable pittance of food and clothing which her husband had allowed them, and at the amount of labor which he had exacted. She ordered their allowances to be increased, and their tasks to be diminished. Several instances of outrageous severity having reached her ears, she dismissed her overseer and procured a new one. The servants no sooner discovered that their mistress had interested herself in their welfare, than she was overwhelmed with petitions, appeals and complaints. One wanted a blanket, another a kettle, and a third, a pair of shoes. Each asked for some trifling gift, which it seemed very hard to refuse; and every request that was granted was followed by half-a-dozen others, equally trifling and equally reasonable. But before the end of the year, these small items amounted to a sum sufficient to swallow up half the usual profits of the plantation. Scarcely a day

passed, that Mrs Montgomery was not pestered with complaints about the severity of her new overseer; and the servants were constantly coming to her to beg off from some threatened punishment. Two or three instances in which the overseer was checked for the tyrannical manner in which he exercised his authority, only served to increase this annoyance. She was perplexed with continual appeals, as to which she found it next to impossible to get at the truth; since the overseer always told one story and the servants another. The second overseer was dismissed; a third threw up his place in disgust; and a fourth, who resolved to humor the indulgent disposition of his employer, suffered the hands to take their own course and to do pretty much as they pleased. Of course they did not care to work, while they had the choice of being idle. Every season, since Mrs Montgomery had commenced her experiments, the crop had fallen lamentably short; but this year, there was scarcely any crop at all.

        Her friends now thought it time to interfere. Her brother, whom she loved, and for whose opinion and advice she entertained a high regard, had all along, remonstrated against the course she was pursuing. He now spoke in a more decided tone. He told her, that the silly notions she had taken up about the happiness of her slaves, would certainly ruin her. Where was the need of being more humane than her neighbors?--and what folly could be greater than to reduce herself and her children to beggary in the vain pursuit of a sentimental and impracticable scheme?

        Mrs Montgomery defended herself and her conduct with great earnestness. She pleaded her duty towards those unhappy beings whom God had placed in her power and under her protection. She even went so far as to hint at the injustice of living in luxury upon the fruits of forced labor; and she spoke with much feeling of the savage brutality of overseers and the torture of the lash. Her brother replied, that such talk was very pretty, and generous, and philanthropic, and all that; and while it went no further than talk, he had not the least objection to it. But pretty and philanthropic as it was, it would not make either corn or tobacco. She might talk as she pleased; but if she expected to live by her plantation, she must manage it like other people. Every body who knew any thing about the matter would tell her, that if she wished to make a crop she must keep a smart overseer, put a whip into his hands, and give him unlimited authority to use it. If she would do this, she might justly call herself the mistress of the plantation; but as long as she followed her present plan, she would be no better than the slave of her own servants; and her philanthropy would end in their being sold for debt, and her being left a beggar.

        These warm remonstrances made a deep impression upon Mrs Montgomery. She could not deny that the plantation had produced scarcely any thing since she had come into possession of it; and she was conscious that after all her labors in their behalf, her servants were discontented, idle and insubordinate. However, she did not feel inclined to yield the point. She still

maintained that her ideas on the mutual relation of master and servant, were the obvious dictates of justice and humanity, which no one could despise or overlook, who made any pretensions to virtue or to conscience. She argued that the system, which she was attempting to introduce, was a good one; and that nothing was wanting except an overseer who had sense enough to carry it into judicious operation. Possibly there was something of truth in this. If she could have found a man like major Thornton, and made an overseer of him, she might perhaps have succeeded. But such men are seldom found any where, and in slave-holding America, very seldom indeed. Take the American overseers together, and they are the most ignorant, intractable, stupid, obstinate, and self willed race that ever existed. What could a woman do, who could only act through assistance of this sort, and who had the prejudices of the whole neighborhood actively excited against her? Things went on from bad to worse. The ready money which her husband had left her was all spent, and her affairs soon became so entangled and embarrassed, that she was obliged to call upon her brother for assistance. He refused in the most positive manner, to have any thing to do with the business, unless she would surrender to him the sole and exclusive management of her affairs. To these hard terms, after a short and ineffectual struggle, she was obliged to consent.

        He immediately took the plantation into his own hands. He removed the cabins to their former situation; revived the old rule that no servant should ever

go to the House unless specially sent for; reduced them to their former allowance of food and clothing; and engaged an overseer on the express condition that Mrs Montgomery should never listen to any complaints against him, or intermeddle, in any way, with his management of the plantation.

        Within the first month after this return to the old system, near one third of the working hands ran away. Mrs Montgomery's brother told her, that this was no more than might be expected; for the rascals had been so spoiled and indulged as to render them quite impatient of the necessary and wholesome severity of plantation discipline. After long searching, and a good deal of trouble and expense, the run-aways, except one or two, were finally recovered; and Poplar-Grove, under its new administration, passed by degrees to its ancient routine of whipping and hard labor. Once in awhile, notwithstanding all the pains that were taken to prevent it, some instance of severity would reach the ear of Mrs Montgomery; and in the first burst of indignant feeling, she would sometimes declare, that the narrowest poverty would be far better, than the wealth and luxury for which she was indebted to the whip of the slave-driver. But the first burst of generous passion was no sooner over, than she acknowledged to herself, that to think of giving up the luxury to which she had been accustomed from her infancy, was out of the question. She strove to escape from the knowledge, and to banish the recollection of injustice and cruelty, which her heart condemned, but which she lacked the power, or rather the spirit, to remedy.

She fled from a home, where she was forever haunted by the spectre of that delegated tyranny, for which, however she might attempt to deny or disguise it, she could not but feel herself responsible; and while her slaves toiled beneath the burning sun of a Carolina summer, and smarted under the lash of a stern and relentless overseer, she attempted to drown the remembrance of their wrongs in the dissipations and gaieties of Saratoga or New York.

        But she was obliged to spend a part of the year at Poplar-Grove; and with all her care, she could not always save her feelings from some rude brushes. Of this I had a striking instance on my first visit. One of her plantation hands had been so far indulged by the overseer, who, by the way, was a very rigid presbyterian, as to receive a pass to attend Mr Carleton's meeting. After the meeting was over, his mistress happened to to see him there; and as she wished to send a message to one of her neighbors, she called him to her, and sent him with it. It so happened that Mrs Montgomery's overseer, was at this neighbor's, when the servant arrived there with his mistress' message. The overseer no sooner saw him, than he inquired what business he had to come there, when his pass only allowed him to go to the meeting and return again. It was in vain that he pleaded his mistress' orders. The overseer said that made no difference whatever; for Mrs Montgomery had nothing at all to do with the plantation hands; and to impress this fact upon his memory he gave him a dozen lashes on the spot.

        The poor fellow was bold enough to come to the

House, and make his complaint to Mrs Montgomery. Nothing could exceed her anger and vexation. But her agreement with her brother left her without a remedy. She made the servant a handsome present; told him that he had been very unjustly punished; and begged him to go home and say nothing about it to any body. She submitted to the mortification of making this request, in hopes of saving the poor fellow from a second punishment. But by some means or other, as I learned afterwards, the overseer found out what had been going on; and to vindicate his supreme authority, and keep up the discipline of the plantation, he inflicted a second whipping more severe than the first.

        Such is the malignant nature and disastrous operation of the slave-holding system, that in too many instances, the sincerest good will, and best intended efforts in the slave's behalf, end only in plunging him into deeper miseries. It is impossible to build any edifice of good on so evil a foundation. The whole system is totally and radically wrong. The benevolence, the good nature, the humanity of a slave-holder, avail as little as the benevolence of the bandit, who generously clothes the stripped and naked traveler in a garment plundered from his own portmanteau. What grosser absurdity than the attempt to be humanely cruel and generously unjust! The very first act in the slave's behalf, without which, all else is useless and worse than useless, is--to make him free!

CHAPTER III.

        I have before observed that Sunday is the slave's holiday. Where intermarriages are allowed between the slaves of different plantations, this is generally the only occasion on which the scattered branches of the same family are indulged with an opportunity of visiting each other. Many planters, who pride themselves upon the excellence of their discipline, forbid these intermarriages altogether; and if they happen to have a superabundance of men-servants, they prefer that one woman should have a half-a-dozen husbands rather than suffer their slaves to be corrupted, by gadding about among other people's plantations.

        Other managers, just as good disciplinarians, and a little more shrewd than their neighbors, forbid the men only to marry away from home. They are very willing to let their women get husbands where they can. They reason in this way. When a husband goes to see his wife, who lives upon another plantation, he will not be apt to go empty-handed. He will carry something with him, probably something eatable, plundered from his master's fields, that may serve to make him welcome and render his coming a sort of festival. Now every thing that is brought upon a plantation in this way, is so much clear gain; and so far as it goes, it amounts to feeding one's people at the expense of one's neighbors!

        Sunday, as I have said, is the day upon which are paid the matrimonial visits of the slave. But Sunday was no holiday to me; for I was generally obliged, on that day, to attend my master upon his ecclesiastical excursions. To make up for this, Mr Carleton allowed me Thursday afternoons, so that I was able to visit Cassy at least once a week.

        The year that followed, was the happiest of my life; and with all the inevitable mortifications and miseries, which slavery, even under its least repulsive form, ever carries with it, I still look back to that year with pleasure,--a pleasure that still has power to warm a heart, saddened and embittered by a thousand painful recollections.

        Before the end of the year, Cassy made me a father. The infant boy had all his mother's beauty; and only he who is a father, and as fond a husband too as I was, can know the feelings with which I pressed the little darling to my heart.

        No!--no one can know my feelings,--no one, alas, but he, who is, as I was, the father of a slave. The father of a slave!--and is it true then, that this child of my hopes and wishes, this pledge of mutual love, this dear, dear infant of whom I am the father, is it true he is not mine?

        Is it not my duty and my right, a right and duty dearer than life, to watch over his helpless infancy, and to rear him with all a father's tenderness and love, to a manhood, that will perhaps repay my care, and in turn, sustain and cherish me, a tottering weak old man?

        My duty it may be; but it is not my right. A slave can have no rights. His wife, his child, his toil, his blood, his life, and every thing that gives his life a value, they are not his; he holds them all but at his master's pleasure. He can possess nothing; and if there is any thing he seems to have, it is only by a sufferance which exists but in his owner's will.

        This very child, this very tender babe, may be torn from my arms, and sold to-morrow into the hands of a stranger, and I shall have no right to interfere. Or if not so; if some compassion be yielded to his infancy, and if he be not snatched from his father's embraces and his mother's bosom while he is yet all unconscious of his misery, yet what a sad, wretched, desolate fate awaits him! Shut out from every chance or hope of any thing which it is worth one's while to live for;--bred up a slave!

        That single word, what volumes it does speak! It speaks of chains, of whips and tortures, compulsive labor, hunger and fatigues, and all the miseries our wretched bodies suffer. It speaks of haughty power, and insolent commands; of insatiate avarice; of pampered pride and purse proud luxury; and of the cold indifference and scornful unconcern with which the oppressor looks down upon his victims. It speaks of crouching fear, and base servility; of low, mean cunning and treacherous revenge. It speaks of humanity outraged; manhood degraded; the social charities of life, the sacred ties of father, wife and child trampled under foot; of aspirations crushed; of hope extinguished; and the light of knowledge sacriligiously

put out. It speaks of man deprived of all that makes him amiable or makes him noble; stript of his soul and sunk into a beast.

        And thou, my child, to this fate thou art born! May heaven have mercy on thee, for man has none!

        The first burst of instinctive and thoughtless pleasure, with which I had looked upon my infant boy was dissipated forever, the moment I had recovered myself enough to recollect what he was born to. Various and ever changing, but always wretched and distressing were the feelings with which I gazed at him, as he slept upon his mother's bosom, or waking, smiled at her caresses. He was indeed a pretty baby;--a dear, dear child;--and for his mother's sake I loved him, how I loved him! Yet struggle as I might, I could not, for a moment, escape the bitter thought of what his fate must be. Full well I knew that did he live to be a man, he would repay my love, and justly, with curses, curses on the father who had bestowed upon him nothing but a life incumbered and made worse than worthless, by the inheritance of slavery.

        I found no longer the same pleasure in Cassy's society, which it used to afford me; or rather the pleasure which I could not but take in it, was intermingled with much new misery. I did not love her less; but the birth of that boy had infused fresh bitterness into the cup of servitude. Whenever I looked upon him, my mind was filled with horrid images. The whole future seemed to come visibly before me. I saw him naked, chained, and bleeding under the lash; I saw him a wretched, trembling creature, cringing to escape

it; I saw him utterly debased, and the spirit of manhood extinguished within him; already he appeared that worthless thing,--a slave contented with his fate!

        I could not bear it. I started up in a phrensy of passion; I snatched the child from the arms of his mother; and while I loaded him with caresses, I looked about for the means of extinguishing a life, which, as it was an emanation from my existence, seemed destined to be only a prolongation of my misery.

        My eyes rolled wildly, I doubt not; and the stern spirit of my determination must have been visibly marked upon my face; for gentle and unsuspicious as she was, and wholly incapable of that wild passion which tore my heart, my wife, with a mother's instinctive watchfulness, seemed to catch some glimpse of my intention. She rose up hastily, and without speaking a word, she caught the baby from my feeble and trembling grasp; and as she pressed it to her bosom, she gave a look that told me all that she feared; and told me too, that the mother's life was bound up in that of the child.

        That look subdued me. My arms dropped powerless, and I sunk down in a sort of sullen stupor. I had been prevented from accomplishing my purpose, but I was not satisfied that in foregoing it, I did a father's duty to the child. The more I thought upon it--and it so engrossed me that I could scarcely draw my thoughts away,--the more was I convinced that it was better for the boy to die. And if the deed did peril my own soul, I loved the child so dearly that I did not shrink, even at that.

        But then his mother.

        I would have reasoned with her; but I knew how vain would be the labor to array a woman's judgment against a mother's feelings; and I felt, that one tear stealing down her cheek, one look of hers, like that she gave me when she snatched the child away, would, even in my own mind, far outbalance the weightiest of my arguments.

        The idea of rescuing the boy, by one bold act, from all the bitter miseries that impended over him, had shot upon my mind, like some faint struggling star across the darkness of a midnight storm. But that glimmer of comfort was now extinguished. The child must live. The life I gave him, I must not take away. No! not though every day of it would draw new curses on my devoted head,--and those too, the curses of my child. This, this alas! is the barbed arrow that still is sticking in my heart; the fatal, fatal wound that nought can heal.

CHAPTER IV.

        ONE Sunday morning when the boy was about three months old, two strangers unexpectedly arrived at Carleton-Hall. In consequence of their coming, some urgent business occupied my master's attention, so that he found himself obliged to give up the meeting which he had appointed for that day. I was not sorry for it; for it left me at liberty to visit my wife and child.

        It was the autumn. The heat of summer had abated, and the morning was bright and balmy. There was a soothing softness in the air; and the woods were clothed in a gay variety of colors, that almost outvied the foliage of the spring. As I rode along towards Poplar-Grove, the serenity of the sky, and the beauty of the prospect, seemed to breathe a peaceful pleasure to my heart. It was the more needed; for I had been a good deal irritated by some occurrences during the week; and every new indignity to which my situation exposed me, I now seemed to suffer twice over, once in my own person, and a second time, in anticipation for my child. I had set out in no very agreeable frame of mind; but the ride, the prospect and the fine autumnal air, had soothed me into a cheerful alacrity of spirit, such as I had hardly felt for some weeks past.

        Cassy welcomed me with a ready smile, and those caresses which a fond wife bestows so freely on the husband

whom she loves. Her mistress, the day before, had given her some new clothes for the child, and she had just been dressing him out, to make the little fellow fit, she said, to see his father. She brought the boy and placed him on my knee. She praised his beauty; and with her arm about my neck, she tried to trace his father's features in the baby's face. In the full flow of a mother's fond affection, she seemed unconscious and forgetful of the future; and by a thousand tender caresses, and all the little artifices of a woman's love, she sought to make me forget it too. She had but little success. The sight of that poor, smiling, helpless and unconscious child, brought back all my melancholy feelings. Yet I could not bear to disappoint my wife's hopes and efforts; and to make her think herself successful, I strove to affect a cheerfulness I did not feel.

        The beauty of the day tempted us abroad. We walked among the fields and woods, carrying the child by turns. Cassy had an hundred little things to tell me of the first slight indications of intelligence which the boy was giving. She spoke with all a mother's fluency and fervor. I said but little; indeed I hardly dared to speak at all. Had I once begun, I could not have restrained myself from going on; and I did not wish to poison her pleasure, by an outpouring of that bitterness which I felt bubbling up, at the bottom of my heart.

        The hours stole away insensibly, and the sun was already declining. I had my master's orders to be back that night; and it was time for me to go. I

clasped the infant to my heart. I kissed Cassy's cheek and pressed her hand. She seemed not satisfied with so cold a parting; for she threw her arms about my neck and loaded me with embraces. This was so different from her usual coy and timid manner, that I was at a loss to understand it. Is it possible that she felt some instinctive presentiment of what was going to happen? Did the thought dart across her mind, that this might be our last, our final parting?

CHAPTER V.

        WHEN I got back to Carleton-Hall, I found every thing in the greatest confusion. It was not long before I was made acquainted with the cause. It seemed that some twelve months previous, Mr Carleton had found himself very much pressed for money. This had obliged him to look a little into his affairs. He found himself burdened with a load of debt of which before, he had no definite idea; and as his numerous creditors, who had been too long put off with promises, were begining to be very clamorous, he saw that some vigorous remedy was necessary. To borrow, seemed the most certain means of relief from the immediate pressure of

his debts; and he succeeded in obtaining a large loan from some Baltimore money-lenders, of which he secured the repayment by a mortgage upon his slaves, including even the house servants and myself among the number. This money he expended in satisfying several executions, which had already issued against him; and in stopping the mouths of the most clamorous of his creditors. The money was borrowed for a year; not with any expectation on Mr Carleton's part, of being able to repay it in that time, out of any funds of his own; but in the hope that before the year's end, he might succeed in obtaining a permanent loan, and so be enabled to cancel the mortgage.

        In this expectation, he had hitherto been disappointed; and he was yet negociating with the persons from whom he expected to borrow, when the time of repayment, mentioned in the mortgage, expired. This happened about a month previous; and when I got back to Carleton-Hall, I found that the strangers who had arrived that morning, were the agents of the Baltimore money-lenders, who had been sent to take possession of the mortgaged property. They had already caught as many of the slaves as they could find; and I no sooner entered the house, than I was seized, and put under a guard. These precautions were thought necessary to prevent the slaves from running away, or concealing themselves from the agents of their new owners.

        My poor master was in the greatest distress and embarrassment that could be imagined. It was in vain that he begged for delay, and proposed various terms of accommodation. The agents declared that they had

no discretion in the matter; they were instructed to get either the money or the slaves; and in case the money was not forthcoming, to proceed with the slaves to Charleston, in South Carolina, which, at that time, was esteemed the best market for disposing of that commodity.

        As to paying the money at once, that was out of the question; but Mr Carleton hoped that he might be able in the course of a few days, if not to obtain the loan for which he was negociating, at least to get such temporary assistance as would enable him to discharge the mortgage. The agents agreed to give him twenty-four hours, but refused to wait any longer. Mr Carleton despaired of doing any thing in so short a time; and did not think it worth his while to attempt it. The plantation hands must go; there did not seem to be any remedy for that; but he was very desirous to save his house servants from the slave-market, and he begged the agents not to leave him without a servant to make his bed or cook his dinner.

        The agents replied that they were truly sorry for the disagreeable situation in which he found himself; but that, since the mortgage was made, several of the slaves included in the schedule were dead; that some of the others seemed hardly worth the sum at which they had been valued; that the price of slaves had fallen considerably since the mortgage was made, and seemed likely to fall more; and that every thing considered, they thought it more than doubtful whether the mortgaged property would be sufficient to satisfy the debt. However, they were desirous to indulge him as

far as their duty to their principals would allow; and if he would pay the value of such of the slaves as he wished to retain, they had no objections to receive the money instead of the servants.

        Mr Carleton had not fifty dollars in the house; but he immediately started off to see what he could borrow in the neighborhood. Wherever he went, he found that the news of what had happened, had preceded him. Besides this Baltimore mortgage, he was known to owe many other debts; and his neighbors generally looked upon him as a ruined man. Of course, the greater part of them felt no inclination to lend him their money; and in fact, very many of them were not so much better off than Mr Carleton as to have much money to lend. After riding about the greater part of the day, he succeeded in borrowing a few hundred dollars, on condition however, that he should secure the repayment by a mortgage of such slaves as he should redeem. He had returned to the house a little before I did, and was already considering with himself which of his slaves he should retain. He told me that I had been a good and trust-worthy servant; and that he was very unwilling to part with me. But he had not money enough to redeem us all; and his old nurse and her family were entitled to be retained in preference to any of the rest of us. Not only were their services the most essential to him, but the mother had long been a favorite servant, her children were born and bred in his family, and he considered it a matter of conscience to keep them, at all events. The agents released those of the servants whom he selected. The

rest of us were kept confined, and received notice to be ready for a start, early the next morning.

        I had yet one hope. I thought if Mrs Montgomery could be informed of my situation she would certainly buy me. I mentioned it to my master. He told me not to flatter myself too much with that idea;--for Mrs Montgomery already had more servants about her house than she had any kind of use for. However, he readily undertook to write her a note explaining my situation. It was despatched by a servant, and I waited with impatient hope for the answer.

        At last the messenger returned. Mrs Montgomery and her daughter had gone that morning to visit her brother, who lived some ten miles from Poplar-Grove, and they were expected to be absent three or four days. I believe I had heard something of this in the morning; but in my hurry, confusion and excitement, it had escaped my memory.

        My last hope was now gone; and as it went, the shock I felt was dreadful. Till that moment, I had concealed from myself, the misery of my situation. I had been familiar with calamity, but this exceeded any thing I had ever suffered. It is true, I had once before been separated from my wife; but my bodily pains, my delirium and fever had helped to blunt the agony of that separation. Now, I was torn from both wife and child!--and that too, without any thing to call off my attention, or to deaden the torture of conscious agony. My heart swelled with impotent passion, and beat as though it would leap from my bosom. My forehead glowed with a burning heat. I would

have wept; but even that relief was denied me. The tears refused to flow; the fever in my brain had parched them up.

        My first impulse was, to attempt making my escape. But my new masters were too well acquainted with the business of legal kidnapping, to give me an opportunity. We were all collected in one of the outhouses and carefully secured. With many of the plantation hands, this was quite an unnecessary precaution. A large proportion of them were so sick and weary of the tyranny of Mr Carleton's overseer, that they were glad of any change; and when their master made them a farewell visit, and began to condole with them upon their misfortune, several of them were bold enough to tell him that they thought it no misfortune at all; for whatever might happen, they could not be worse treated than they had been by his overseer. Mr Carleton seemed not well pleased at this bold disclosure, and took his leave of us rather abruptly; and certainly this piece of information could not have been very soothing to his feelings.

        At early dawn we were put into traveling order. A waggon carried the provisions and the younger children. The rest of us were chained together and traveled in the usual fashion.

        It was a long journey, and we were two or three weeks upon the road. Considering that we were slaves driven to market, we were treated on the whole, with unexpected humanity. At the end of the third or fourth day's journey, the women and children were released from their chains, and two or three days

later, a part of the men received the same indulgence. Those of us, of whom they were more suspicious, were still kept in irons. Our drivers seemed desirous to enhance our value by putting us into good condition. Our daily journey was quite moderate; we were all furnished with shoes, and were allowed plenty to eat. At night we encamped by the road-side; kindled a large fire, cooked our hominy, and made a hut of branches to sleep under. Several of the company declared that they were never so well treated in all their lives; and they went along laughing and singing more like men traveling for pleasure, than like slaves going to be sold. So little accustomed is the slave to kindness or indulgence of any sort, that the merest trifle is enough to put him into ecstacy. The gift of a single extra meal is sufficient to make him fall in love even with a slave-driver.

        The songs and laughter of my companions only served to aggravate my melancholy. They observed it, and did their best to cheer me. There never was a kinder-hearted company, and I found some relief even in their rude efforts at consolation; for there is more power in the sympathy of the humblest human creature than the haughty children of luxury are apt to believe. I was a favorite among the servants at Carleton-Hall, because I had taken some little pains to be so; for I had long since renounced that silly prejudice and foolish pride, which at an earlier period, had kept me aloof from my fellow servants, and had justly earned me, their hatred and dislike. Experience had made me wiser, and I no longer took sides with our oppressors by joining

them in the false notion of their own natural superiority;--a notion founded only in the arrogant prejudice of conceited ignorance, and long since discarded by the liberal and enlightened; but a notion which is still the orthodox creed of all America, and the principal, I might almost say the sole foundation, which sustains the iniquitous superstructure of American slavery. I had made it a point to gain the good will and affection of my fellow servants, by mixing among them; taking an interest in all their concerns; and rendering them such little services as my favor with Mr Carleton put in my power. Once or twice indeed, I had overstepped the mark, and got myself into very serious trouble by letting my master know what severities his overseer inflicted. But though my attempts at serving them were not always successful, their gratitude was not the less on that account.

        When my companions observed my melancholy they stopped their songs, and having run through their few topics of condolence, they continued their conversation in a subdued and moderated tone, as if unwilling to irritate my feeling by what might seem to me, unseasonable merriment. I saw, and in my heart acknowledged the kindness of their intention; but I did not wish that my sadness should cast a shade over what they enjoyed as a holiday; the only holiday perhaps which their miserable fate would ever allow them. I told them that nothing would be so likely to cheer me, as to see them merry; and though my heart was aching and ready almost to burst, I forced a laugh, and started a song. The rest joined in it; the chorus

rose again loud as ever; the laugh went round; and the turbulence of their merriment soon allowed me to sink again into a moody silence.

        I had the natural feelings of a man; I loved my wife and child. Had they been snatched from me by death, or had I been separated from them, by some fixed, inevitable, natural necessity, I should have wept, no doubt, but my feelings would have been those of simple grief, unmixed with any more bitter emotion. But that the dear ties of husband and father, ties so twined about my inmost heart, should be thus violently severed, without a moment's warning, and at a creditor's caprice; and he too the creditor of another; to be thus chained up, torn from my home, and driven to market, there to be sold to pay the debts of a man who called himself my master;--the thoughts of this stirred up within my soul a bitter hatred and a burning indignation against the laws and the people that tolerate such things; fierce and deadly passions which tore my heart, distracted and tormented me, even more than my grief at the sudden separation.

        But the more violent emotions ever tend to cure themselves. If the patient survive the first paroxysm, his mind speedily begins to verge towards its natural equilibrium. I found it so. The torture of furious but impotent emotions at first almost overpowered me. But my feelings softened by degrees; till, at length, they subsided into a dull, but fixed and settled misery; a misery which the impulse of temporary excitement may sometimes make me forget, but which, like the guilty man's remorse, is too deeply rooted to be ever eradicated.

CHAPTER VI.

        AT length we arrived at Charleston, the capital of South Carolina. We spent several days in recruiting ourselves after our long journey. As soon as we had recovered from our lameness and fatigues, we were dressed up in new clothes, and fitted out to show off to the best advantage. We were then exposed for the inspection of purchasers. The women and children, pleased with their new finery, seemed to enjoy the novelty of their situation, and appeared as anxious to find a master and to bring a high price, as though the bargain were actually for their own benefit. The greater part of our company were bought up by a single purchaser, and I among the rest. We were purchased by general Carter, a man of princely fortune, indeed one of the richest planters in South Carolina; and were immediately sent off to one of his plantations, at some distance from the city.

        The lower country of South Carolina, from the Atlantic for eighty or an hundred miles inward, including more than half the state, is, with the exception I shall presently mention, one of the most barren, miserable, uninviting countries in the universe. In general, the soil is nothing but a thirsty sand, covered for miles and miles, with forests of the long-leaved pine. These tracts are called, in the expressive phrase of the country, Pine Barrens. For a great distance inland, these

Barrens preserve almost a perfect level, raised but a few feet above the surface of the sea. The tall, straight, branchless trunks of the scattered pines, rise like slender columns, and are crowned with a tuft of knarly limbs and long, bristly leaves, through which the breezes murmur with a monotonous sound, much like that of falling waters, or waves breaking on a beach. There is rarely any undergrowth, and the surface is either matted with the saw-palmetto, a low ever-green, or covered with a coarse and scattered grass, on which herds of half-wild cattle feed in summer, and starve in winter. The trunks of the pines scarcely interrupt a prospect, whose tedious sameness is only varied by tracts, here and there, of almost impenetrable swamp, thickly grown up with bays, water oaks, cypresses and other large trees, adown whose spreading branches and whitened trunks, the long dusky moss hangs in melancholy festoons, drooping to the ground, the very drapery of disease and death. The rivers, which are wide and shallow, swelled with the heavy rains of spring and winter, frequently overflow their low and marshy banks, and help to increase the extent of swampy ground,--the copious source of poisonous vapors and febrile exhalations. Even where the country begins to rise into hills, it preserves, for a long distance, its sterile character. It is a collection of sandy hillocks thrown together in the strangest confusion. In many places, not even the pine will grow; and the barren and thirsty soil, is clothed only with stunted bushes of the dwarf oak. In some spots

even these are wanting; and the bare sand is drifted by the winds.

        Throughout all this extent of country, of which, with all its barrenness, a great part might, and by the enterprising spirit of free labor doubtless would be, brought into profitable cultivation, there are only some small tracts, principally along the water courses, which the costly and thriftless system of slave labor has found capable of improvement. All the rest still remains a primitive wilderness, with scarcely any thing to interrupt its desolate and dreary monotony.

        This description does not include the tract stretching along the sea-shore, from the mouth of the Santee to that of the Savannah, and extending in some places, twenty or thirty miles up the country. The coast between these rivers, is a series of islands;--the famous sea-islands of the cotton markets; and the main land, which is separated from these islands by innumerable narrow and winding channels, is penetrated, for some distance inland, by a vast number of creeks and inlets. The islands present a bluff shore and a fine beach towards the ocean, but the opposite sides are often low and marshy. They were originally covered with a magnificent growth of ever-green oaks. The soil is light; but it possesses a fertility never yet attained in the dead and barren sands of the interior. These lands are protected by embankments from the tides and floods, and the fields are divided and drained by frequent dikes and ditches. Such of them as can be most conveniently irrigated with fresh water, are cultivated as rice-fields;--the higher and dryer lands are employed

in the production of the long staple, or sea-island cotton,--a species which excels every other in the length of its fibre, and almost rivals silk in strength and softness.

        These beautiful districts present a strong contrast to the rest of the lower country of South Carolina. As far as the eye can stretch, nothing is to be seen but a smooth, level, highly-cultivated country, penetrated in every direction by creeks and rivers. The residences of the planters are often handsome buildings, placed on some fine swell, and shaded by a choice variety of trees and shrubbery. These houses are inhabited by their owners only in the winter. They are driven from home in the summer, partly by the tedium of a listless and monotonous indolence, and partly, by the unhealthiness of the climate, which is much aggravated by the rice cultivation. This absentee aristocracy congregates in Charleston, or dazzles and astonishes the cities and watering places of the north by its profuse extravagance and reckless dissipation. The plantations are left to the sole management of overseers, who, with their families, form almost the only permanent free population of these districts. The slaves are ten times as numerous as the free. The whole of this rich and beautiful country is devoted to the support of a few hundred families in a lordly, luxurious, dissipated indolence, which renders them useless to the world and a burden to themselves; and to contribute towards this same great end, more than an hundred thousand human beings are sunk into the very lowest depths of degradation and misery.

        General Carter, our new master, was one of the richest of these American grandees. The plantation to which we were sent, was called Loosahachee; and though very extensive; was but one out of several which he owned. Coming as I did from Virginia, there were many things in the appearance of the country, and in the way in which things were managed, that were entirely new to me.

        I and my companions who had always been accustomed to some small quantity of meat as a relish to our corn diet, found our mere unseasoned hominy neither so palatable nor so nourishing as we could wish. Being strangers and new-comers, we had not yet learned the customs of the country; and were quite unacquainted with many of the arts by which the Carolina slaves are enabled to eke out their scanty and insufficient allowance. Our only resource was an appeal to our master's generosity; and it happened, that about a fortnight after we were put upon the plantation, general Carter, with several of his friends, made a flying visit from Charleston to Loosahachee, to see how the crops were coming on. This we thought to be a good opportunity to get some improvement of our fare. We did not like to ask too much, lest our request should be rejected without ceremony. Indeed, we determined to be as moderate as possible; and after due consultation, it was resolved to petition our master for a little salt to season our hominy,--a luxury to which we had always been accustomed, but which was not included in the Loosahachee allowance, which consisted

simply of corn. My companions requested me to act as spokesman; and I readily undertook to do so.

        When general Carter and his friends came near my task, I walked towards him. He asked me what I meant by leaving my work in that fashion, and inquired what I wanted. I told him that I was one of the servants whom he had lately purchased; that some of us were born and raised in Virginia and the rest in North Carolina; that we were not used to living upon bare hominy without any thing to give it a relish; and that we should take it as a very great favor if he would be kind enough to allow us a little salt.

        He seemed to be rather surprised at the boldness of this request, and inquired my name.

        "Archy Moore," I answered.

        "Archy Moore!" he cried with a sneer,--"and pray tell me how long it has been the fashion among you fellows to have double names? You are the first fellow I ever owned, who was guilty of such a piece of impertinence;--and a damned impertinent fellow you are. I see it in your eye. Let me beg leave to request of you, Mr Archy Moore, to be satisfied with calling yourself Archy, the next time I inquire your name."

        I had taken the name of Moore, since leaving Spring-Meadow; an assumption not uncommon in Virginia, and which is there thought harmless enough. But the South Carolinians, who of all the Americans, seem to have carried the theory and practice of tyranny to the highest perfection, are jealous of every thing

that may seem in any respect, to raise their slaves above the level of their dogs and horses.

        The words and manner of my master were sufficiently irritating, but I was not to be shuffled off in that way. I passed over his rebuke in silence, but ventured again, in the most respectful terms I could command, to renew the request, that he would be pleased to allow us a little salt to season our hominy.

        "You are a damned, unreasonable, dissatisfied set of fellows as ever I met with!" was the answer. "Why boy, you eat me out of house and home already. It is as much as I can do to buy corn for you. If you want salt, is n't there plenty of sea-water within five miles? If you want it, you have nothing to do but to make it?"

        So he said; and as they wheeled their horses and rode away, he and his companions joined in a loud laugh at the wit and point of his answer.

CHAPTER VII.

        AMONG Mr Carleton's servants, or rather the servants that had been Mr Carleton's, but who had now become the property of general Carter, was one named Thomas. While we had lived together at Carleton-Hall, I had contracted an intimacy with him, which we still kept up. He was of unmixed African blood, with good features, a stout muscular frame, and on several accounts, a very remarkable man.

        His bodily strength, and his capacity for enduring privation and fatigue, were very uncommon; but the character of his mind was still more so. His passions were strong and even violent; but what is very rare among slaves, he had them completely under his control; and in all his words and actions he was as gentle as a lamb. The truth was, that when quite young, he had been taken in hand by certain methodists, who lived and labored in his neighborhood; and so strong and lasting were the impressions which their teaching made upon him, and so completely had he imbibed their doctrines, that it seemed as if several of the most powerful principles of human nature had been eradicated from his bosom.

        His religious teachers had thoroughly inculcated into a soul, naturally proud and high-spirited, that creed of passive obedience and patient long-suffering, which under the sacred name of religion, has been often found

more potent than whips or fetters, in upholding tyranny and subduing the resistance of the superstitious and trembling slave. They had taught him, and he believed, that God had made him a servant; and that it was his duty to obey his master, and be contented with his lot. Whatever cruelties or indignities the unprovoked insolence of unlimited authority might inflict upon him, it was his duty to submit in humble silence; and if his master smote him on one cheek, he was to turn to him the other also. This, with Thomas, was not a mere form of words run through with, and then forgotten. In all my experience, I have never known a man over whom his creed appeared to hold so powerful a control.

        Nature had intended him for one of those lofty spirits who are the terror of tyrants, and the bold assertors of liberty. But under the influence of his religion, he had become a passive, humble and obedient slave. He made it a point of duty to be faithful to his master in all things. He never tasted whiskey; he would sooner starve than steal; and he preferred being whipped to telling a lie. These qualities, so very uncommon in a slave, as well as his cheerful obedience, and laborious industry, had gained him the good will even of Mr Carleton's overseer. He was treated as a sort of confidential servant; was often trusted to keep the keys and give out the allowance;--and so scrupulously did he fulfil all that was required of him, that even the fretful caprice of an overseer had no fault to find. He had lived at Carleton-Hall more than ten years, and in all that time, had never once been whipped. What was

most remarkable and uncommon of all, at the same time that he obtained the confidence of the overseer, Thomas had succeeded in gaining the good will of his fellow servants. There never lived a kinder-hearted, better tempered man. There was nothing he was not ready to do for a fellow creature in distress; he was ever willing to share his provisions with the hungry, and to help the weak and tired to finish their tasks. Besides, he was the spiritual guide of the plantation, and could preach and pray almost as well as his master. I had no sympathy for his religious enthusiasm, but I loved and admired the man; and we had long been on terms of close intimacy.

        Thomas had a wife, Ann, by name, a pretty, sprightly, good natured girl, whom he loved exceedingly. It was a great comfort to him,--indeed he regarded it as a special interposition of Providence in his behalf,--that when carried away from Carleton-Hall they had not been separated. Never was a man more grateful or more delighted than Thomas was, when he found that both he and Ann had been purchased by general Carter. That they should fall into the hands of the same owner was all he desired; and he readily transferred to the service of general Carter all that zeal and devotion, which, as he had been taught to believe, a slave owes to his master. While all the rest of us, upon our first arrival at Loosahachee, had been complaining and lamenting over the hardness of our tasks and the poor and insufficient food which our new master allowed us, Thomas said not a word; but had worked away with such zeal and vigor, that he soon

gained the reputation of being one of the best hands on the place.

        Thomas' wife had an infant child but a few weeks old, who according to the Carolina fashion, was brought to her in the field to be nursed;--for the Carolina planters, spendthrifts in every thing else, in all that regards their servants, are wonderful economists. One hot afternoon, Ann sat down beneath a tree, and took the infant from the hands of the little child herself scarcely able to walk, who had the care of it during the day. She had finished the maternal office, and was returning slowly, and perhaps rather unwillingly to her task, when the overseer rode into that part of the field. The name of our overseer was Mr Martin. He was one of those who are denominated smart fellows and good disciplinarians. He had established a rule that there was to be no loitering at Loosahachee. Walking was too lazy a pace for him; if there was any occasion to go from one part of the field to another, it was to be in a run. Ann had perhaps forgotten, at all events, she was not complying with this ridiculous piece of discipline. This was no sooner observed by the overseer, than he rode up to her; cursed her for a lazy vagabond; and commenced beating her over the head with his whip. Thomas happened to be working close by. He felt every stroke ten times as keenly as though it had lighted upon his own shoulders. Here was a trial too strong for the artificial principles of any creed. He moved forward as though he would go to his wife's assistance. We who were by, begged him to stop; and told him he would only

get himself into trouble. But the cries and shrieks of his wife made him deaf to our entreaties; he rushed forward; and before the overseer was aware, he seized his whip, snatched it from his hand; and demanded what he meant by beating a woman in that way for no offence whatever?

        To judge from Mr Martin's looks, this was a display of spirit, or as he would call it, of insolence and insubordination, for which he was not at all prepared. He reined back his horse for a rod or two;--when, seeming to recollect himself, he put his hand into his coat-pocket and drew out a pistol. He cocked it and pointed it at Thomas, who dropped the whip and turned to run. Mr Martin fired; but his hand shook too much to enable him to take a very effectual aim; and Thomas continued his flight; leaped the fence; and disappeared in the thicket by which it was bordered.

        Having put the husband to flight, the overseer turned to the wife who stood by trembling and crying. He was boiling over with rage and passion, and seemed determined to spend his fury on this helpless and unhappy woman. He called the driver of the gang, and two or three other men to his assistance, and bade them strip off her clothes.

        The preparations being complete, Mr Martin commenced the torture. The lash buried itself in her flesh at every blow; and as the poor wretch threw up her gashed and gory arms, the blood ran down in streams. Her cries were dreadful. Used as I had been to similar scenes, my heart sickened and my

head grew dizzy. I longed to seize the monster by the throat and dash him to the ground. How I restrained myself I do not know. Most sure I am, that nothing but the base and dastard spirit of a slave could have endured that scene of female torture and distress, and not have interfered.

        Before Mr Martin had finished, poor Ann sunk to the ground in a state of total insensibility. He ordered us to make a litter of sticks and hoe-handles, and to carry her to his house. We laid her down in the passage. The overseer brought a heavy chain, one end of which he put around her neck, and the other he fastened to one of the beams. He said her fainting was all pretence; and that if he did not chain her, she would be running away and joining her husband.

        We were now all ordered into the woods to hunt for Thomas. We separated and pretended to examine every place that seemed likely to conceal him; but with the exception of the drivers, and one or two base fellows who sought to curry favor with the overseer,