John Warren

I was born in Wilson Co., Tenn., lived there twelve and a half years, and was then carried to Mississippi, by my owners who settled in Marshall Co. Two of us, brothers, went down with the young man, to whom we fell on settlement of estate. Then he sold us to his brother who was a regular speculator, buying and selling all the time—kept from eighteen to twenty on the place. I went right to work on the cotton farm, under an overseer. The overseers changed every year I stayed there. There was pretty hard work and many kinds of it on the cotton plantations. The overseers were generally cruel, hard men, but some had more consideration than others. Four o’clock was rising time. We blew but one horn—when that sounded we all got up, fed the stock, hogs, horses, etc., and went to work. The farm contained 645 acres. We took a little breakfast with us, which we cooked generally over night: but at picking cotton time we had a cook to cook for us. Every man took his little bucket of breakfast to the field, where fifteen minutes was allowed for breakfast, sometimes with water, and sometimes without,—no coffee nor tea in the field. The provision was corn bread and pork—sometimes enough, and sometimes not. After breakfast we worked until one. The overseer generally stayed with the hoe-gang—women and children. He could see from one field to another. We had no drivers on our farm—plenty in the neighborhood. On the big farms they fared worse than we did.

The overseer walked to and fro behind to see that they did not cut out too much cotton with the hoe, and that they took up the grass; if they did not, he would whip generally with a long bull whip, sometimes with a bunch of six or eight black-gum switches, generally laying on hard. There are marks on me made soon after I went there. The only way I got shut of the whip was when I got stouter, to fight them and run away. I was always watching, and they hated to lose my time. Twenty-five acres of cotton and corn together were allowed to a hand, and if one goes, it makes it hard for them. Before I was twenty years old, I was tied up and received two hundred lashes. Generally, they give fifty, and then stop a little—then give fifty more. They sometimes tie round a tree, sometimes to four stakes, and sometimes gammon them. Gambrel is meant here: the wrists are bound together—the arms made to embrace the lower limbs, and a gambrel is thrust through under the knees.] I have seen a man receive five hundred and fifty lashes for running away. The overseer and boss drank brandy, and went at him. They gave him brandy for devilment,—making fun with him: then they would leave him tied a while, and then go and put it on again. I have seen men on the next farm, whipped with a handsaw flatwise: the teeth would cut when the blow was put on. The saw was used after the bull whip.

I learned to spell and read some in Tennessee, among the children. The owners knew I could read. I bought a copy of the letters in writing of a white boy in Mississippi, for half a dollar. It was a good price, but I did not mind that. I kept that copy of the letters three years, and learned to write from it. I practised nights and Sundays. . . . I got so I could write, but I had nobody to show me, and did not know how to hold the pen. But I wrote three passes for myself. I wrote one to go to Memphis with. I left the farm on the night of the 3d July, 1854. I had beaten the overseer on the Sunday evening before: he undertook to whip me for going away Sunday. I knocked him over, bumped his head against the logs of the corn-crib, and went into the woods, where I staid all day Monday; Tuesday morning I left, and travelled to Memphis on foot, excepting the last four miles, which I rode. At Memphis, I threw away the first pass and took the second, which was a privilege to work out in Memphis a month: my calculation was to get on board a boat before a month was out. Then I had a third pass, which said I had hired my time for the rest of the year to work in the State or out of the State. I worked in Memphis three days, then went aboard a boat and showed my year’s pass. The first trip, I went down the Mississippi and up White River to Jackson Port, in Arkansas: then back to Memphis. We were gone eight days, lacking an hour. Then I hired on a boat bound to Cincinnati. I saw the sign “Cincinnati,” and went aboard: sailed that evening, and got safely to Cincinnati in five days. I stopped there two or three days, and then left for Canada. A man in Chatham hired me to come here to work. I get good wages.

I always hated slavery from the first. It never seemed right to work for nothing, driven in the rain, and so on. When I was small, I had heard of a free State where black people were free, and had no master nor mistress, and I wanted to go there. I have no disposition to go South again—I love liberty too well for that. I do n’t have to get up at four and work till nine; I do n’t have now to drive a wagon Sundays to haul cotton bales.

I believe that if the slaves were hired and paid for their labor, they’d all go to work, and they would do a great deal more work than they do now, for they would not be thinking all the time about running away, and fighting the overseers,—there would not be so much confusion. Sometimes, on a holiday, the boss hires them,—they go to work singing and hollowing, without an overseer, and they do the work better than when he is behind them. Now I do n’t study all day about running into the woods, nor dream of it nights, as I used to. There are no hounds here to be running after me. There is a man down there, who gets ten dollars for catching a runaway: if he has been gone longer, he gets more. A good “nigger dog” is worth four hundred dollars. I knew how to kill the scent of dogs when they came after me: I could do it with red pepper. Another way which I have practised is, to dig into a grave where a man has been buried a long time, get the dust of the man, make it into a paste with water, and put it on the feet, knees, and elbows, or wherever I touched the bushes. The dog won’t follow that.

I came here to work and expect to work. Time goes smoother with me than it did. One month there seemed longer than two do now.

A planter near us in Mississippi, bought a man from Kentucky out of a drove, who ran away, he was treated so mean. They followed him, got ahead as he was going back, caught him and brought him back. He fought hard not to be taken, gave them some bruises, but they took him. When they got him back, they gave him two hundred lashes every morning for seven mornings. The hands on the place told me so, the man told me so, and the master told my boss so, just like any other joke: he said “he was the d—dest nigger on God’s earth.” They put a heavy log chain, which weighed twenty pounds around his body. In about a year they sold him to a speculator.

The white folks down south do n’t seem to sleep much, nights. They are watching for runaways, and to see if any other slave comes among theirs, or theirs go off among others. They listen and peep to see if any thing has been stolen, and to find if any thing is going on. “What is there in this barrel? Too many d—d barrels in here,—I’ll have ‘m put out.”

From those who had slaves we would steal whatever we could get to eat—chickens, turkeys, geese, etc.

The slaves have no particular rules, except in regard to marriage: they try to make it as near lawful as they can.