Chatham
Isaac Griffin
I am from Trimble county, Ky. I was a slave in Kentucky forty-six years. Then I had $500 for self, wife, and child. I left eight children in bondage, who undertook to escape. The oldest got here; the others were retaken, and sold in Texas.
Two years ago, I saw one hundred men chained, besides women and children, going down south.
I have often been down the Mississippi on flat-boats,—following the river every year for five or six years. Mornings I would hear something like a bell—it is a clock though,-—then the hands have to rise; if they do n’t, the overseer is among them.
Just before day, the first time I went down, as I was floating down the Grand Gulf, I heard the whip cracking, and a man crying, “Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Oh Lord!” I was afraid somebody was murdering: I called my master,—he said, “Somebody is whipping his slave.” We had to put in there. I saw the man: he was put over a log, his feet tied, and his hands tied, and a rail put between. They would whip him, and then rest upon it. They flogged him off and on until daylight. His back . . . . .
At one time I went down on a boat. There were many slaves on board, and one yellow girl with a child. At Natchez, a man came on board who wanted to buy a yellow girl without children. Her master told her to say she had none. The man bought her, and the trader gave her child, six weeks old, to a white woman.
Slavery is the greatest curse on earth. Nothing exceeds it for wickedness. A slave in the South suffers death many times before he does die.
I felt, when free, as light as a feather—a burden was off of me. I could get up and go to my work without being bruised and beaten. The worst thought was for my children,—what they might have to go through. I cannot hear from them.
I have lived in Canada one year. I find the people laboring well generally: as industrious as any men. The law is the same for one as another. We have our meetings and gatherings here, and have no trouble at all.
I am doing as well, for a poor man, as I can expect—I get a good living.