Chatham
Mr. —
[The name and former residence of the person who furnished the following testimony of his experience as a slave, and his present doings as a free man, are suppressed, on account of the circumstances connected with his escape. The writer has suppressed several interesting narratives and parts of narratives for similar reasons.]
At sixteen years of age, I went in a chain-gang to Mississippi, where I was sold and taken to another State. There they calculated to work me down. Taking my shirt off and whipping me, was a new thing to me—it was what was never done by them that raised me. Then ‘t was cut on some two or three hundred. Once I received a very severe whipping—the colored people told me it was two hundred—with the paddle. I had no friends there. The colored people were as eager to catch me as the whites. I wanted to find some friend. I made my way back to the place where I was raised, and saw my old mistress who had raised me from an infant. Her second husband, while I was stopping around there, secreted me, but was watching the advertisements, to let the reward run up high, so as to get a great sum. The mistress told me he was calculating to pocket the reward, and return me into the hands of my owners. She said there was a free country, called Canada: she gave me a few dollars, and told me to follow the north star. If it was too dark to see the north star, to feel of the trees, and on that side where the moss was longest, was my way. I followed her directions, and travelled through the woods, exposed to wet and cold and starvation.
On my way I was caught and put in jail, where I was kept six weeks. They could find no master. I was hired out one month. They calculated to keep me twelve months, advertising me, in hopes my owner would appear. I was again hired out, on the second month, to a drunken dog,—but I had learned better sense than to follow the plans he was determined on. While his guard was at supper, I made my escape. I was pursued the next day, and saw my pursuers, but they did not see me: I made my escape by hiding in the brush. The first friend I met was a white man at last—an abolitionist. He kept me two weeks till I got recruited.
I leased a piece of ground, and went to clearing up. It was heavily wooded. I have cleared four acres, and cut it into cord-wood; have got it under good fence,—have raised one crop, and have a prospect of another. I was to have it three years more if I wished—if I leave it, I am to be paid for my improvements. I can understand about written agreements, but do not know how to write, and have suffered losses from this cause.
Slavery is one of the greatest curses that ever was. There could not be one so despised in the sight of God. I believe that the place of punishment was made for those who separate husbands and wives, and traffic in their fellow men: killing babes—I have seen one with its brains dashed out against a red oak tree. Tired of carrying it, its mother being in the gang, and troubled with it, as any man would be, they put it out of the way.