Christopher Hamilton

I was raised in St. Louis, Mo. I went to school a little, to a Sunday School, and learned to read, but was stopped—I suppose because I was learning too fast. My people came from Virginia. They were all free by right. My grandmother was an Indian woman. She put my mother with a man by the name of E—G—, to bring up. He moved to Kentucky, stopped a little while, then went to Missouri, thence to Jackson, Miss. While they were moving out, on their way to Kentucky, I was born on board a boat in Pittsburg. After we reached Jackson, my father, my mother, and all their sons and daughters, except myself and a sister who had two children, were sent to Mine Oburden—lead mines—they moved there with Dr. G—, who kept them all for slaves. After he had stopped there awhile, he sold them to a man named S—P—. My sister, her two children, and myself, were sold by W—G—, to whom the Dr. had given us up for debt, to a man in St. Louis. W—G—was in debt to a man named H—, and H—was in debt to a Frenchman named B—. We slipped along from one to another to pay debts. With B—I remained from ten years old, till I left for the North. I have written kind letters to B—, but got no reply. The people who were sold to S—P—all were finally removed with him to St. Louis, except one who died in the South.

I look on slavery as the greatest evil that ever existed The preaching I used to hear was, “Servants, be obedient to your masters.” “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.” I was well used by my master, and well treated, until he married a second time. He married a very mean woman. He was a very wealthy man, and when she married him, it raised her right up. Nothing could please her. I had been married two years, and she tried to persuade her husband to sell my wife down the river: she wanted to whip my wife, and my wife would n’t let her. I did not wait to see whether he would sell her or not: but we came away,—got off very comfortably. I had only sixteen dollars when I started. When I got here, I found a brother of mine here,—he helped me about getting work, and I make out to live comfortably. I would n’t go back for all St. Louis, poor as I am.

They have no good feeling there for colored people anyhow. All they care for is, to get all the work out of them they can. They whip them to death, starve them to death, and I saw one colored man burned to death,—McIntosh, who had killed a man.

I used to go to Sunday School in St. Louis, to Mr. Lovejoy—the man who was killed.

The colored people in London are generally saving; they do not waste their means; they are getting along as well as they can expect, as a general thing. I do not know of one who suffered so much here, as he would in slavery. There are some who are vicious and dissolute, and so there are of all nations. Take them in general, and they are getting along first-rate.