William J. Anderson

I was a slave from birth, until thirty-two years old, on Red River, Bayou Rapide. I belonged to a man who kept me at home until twenty-one years of age. He was a constable, and I was the turnkey some two or three years. After twenty-one, I hired out to work on a steamboat, paying my master $25 a month, and supporting a family: and at the age of thirty-two I had $500. I was steward and cook. One day, at New Orleans, I heard the news of my master’s death. I felt that I had lost my only friend; for although a mean man, he had some good qualities—he could not bear a man that drank, and yet he was drunk all the time himself. On hearing his death, an acquaintance of mine said, “Now is your time to put.”

I packed some clothes, took my $500, started for the North, and reached Cincinnati. I was robbed of my money on the passage. I opened a shop, and did very well by cooking at the hotels. After four years, I had some words with a man named Magee, who was a runaway, who had come barefoot, and I had given him employment to keep my grocery. He went down to the place where I came from, and informed where I was: he was retaken, and held in slavery.

I married in Ripley, Ohio. One day I heard a gentleman in Cincinnati talking to his brother about buying “niggers” and horses: one of them said, “Old Atwood is dead.” I asked my wife if her name really was Atwood. She applied to the men, and found that Atwood had left her mother and the balance of the servants free—say ten—and left $8,000 to each of them. Part of this I invested in Ohio, and a part I brought with us to Canada. Her father was her master, and had brought her to Ohio when she was six years old.

I had a brother named Charles, who carried a basket of eggs on board a boat named Red River, that ran up Red River. When he came off, he did not get the money for the eggs, as was expected by Mr. T—, a Frenchman, who had hired him. He belonged to my master. When he went back, the Frenchman jumped on him, and beat him severely. Charles, however, struck the Frenchman. My master said, “Charles will certainly be hung for striking a white man: so you fix four stakes, and I’ll whip him.” I drove the four stakes into the ground for my brother: he was fourteen, and I thirteen years old. Master asked me if the stakes were ready. Said I, “Charles, before I’d be whipped for that Frenchman, I’d cut my throat.” He did cut his throat, and ran into the river, where he beat off five men who tried to get him out. Then he came out himself, and was clear—was not whipped. In a few weeks he got well: he meant to kill himself.

I have seen many whipped till they could not stand up. S—P. S—whipped a man in Red River jail while I was turnkey, until he burst a bloodvessel, and died. I saw this done: no notice was taken of it.^[1]