Hamilton
Williamson Pease
[A white man with blue eyes.]
My name in slavery was Williamson. I was born in Hardeman county, Tenn. I remained in slavery until January, 1854. I was a house-servant. At about six or seven years of age, the family I belonged to, removed to Haywood county, carrying my mother, her two sisters, and myself. I do not know who my father was, but have heard that he was a white man. My mother was called there a mulatto. I passed for a white man when among strangers. My master and mistress tried to teach me at home, but never sent me to school. I would get out of the way when they tried to teach me, being small and not knowing the good of learning. I have since learned to read and write.
In Haywood county I ploughed some, but when wanted, served in the house. While I lived with my first master, I was well used, and suffered nothing, except for want of education, which I now feel to be a great depriving.
When I was about eighteen years old, my master died, and I fell to his grandson, then, I believe, between twenty-two and twenty-three. All the property fell to him, my mistress having died some time before. My first master was an Englishman and had been a sailor.
Under this master I went on as before, and the change made no difference in my treatment or work. In about a year and a half, he sold out the place—the house and farm—and two children; and a woman he sold, or swapped off. Then he removed to Arkansas, to a place about fifteen miles east of Saline River, and about forty or forty-five miles from Gaines’s Landing. Here he rented a plantation of cotton, I think of about one hundred and fifty acres. When we got there, we were put to picking out cotton in a field for the man who was moving off. I then drove the wagon, hauling rails, etc. When he had got the land partly prepared, but before the planting season, my master rented the place to another man. Then he sold all his slaves except me, at private sale to one man. Me he kept to go with him to California. I went there with him across the Isthmus to San Francisco, in 1850; from there to Mercès River, in the southern mines. There my master and I worked in the mines about six weeks. We went out with a company, but had now left it. We got some gold, about eighty dollars’ worth, but not enough to pay expenses. Then we went back to San Francisco. My master was sick before he got to the mines: his health continued rather bad, and he concluded to return. I told him I should stay in the mines until I got money enough to buy my freedom. He said I could do better in San Francisco. For that reason, I went back with him to that city. He went about with me to find a place. I was offered forty dollars a month as a waiter. Master said that would hardly pay my washing and clothing bill.
Before we left home, he had told me that I should be free after two years in the mines; and if we cleared enough over his expenses, he would give me five hundred dollars. After humbugging me about San Francisco, and even promising to make me out free papers, he urged me, on account of his sickness to go home with him. I told him if I went back, I would only be free myself, but my mother would still be a slave; while if I remained in San Francisco, I would be free, and might earn enough to buy her. He then told me that if I would go back, he would buy my mother back again, and so I would be sure that she would be just as well off, as if I were to buy her and set her free. I know now that it was foolish in me to go with him back, but I had been fooled and humbugged about so much that I did not know what to do. I was offered five dollars a day to drive a dray, but my master tried and discouraged me from every thing they would offer me. I have wished a great many times since, that I had stayed there: but at last he persuaded me so hard, saying that he only wanted me for company to take care of him, as he was sick, and might get worse, and none of the company who went out with him were going, that I concluded to return with him.
I worked my passage on board a sail vessel with him, bound to Panama,—but the wind being ahead, we were thirty days at sea, and then put into Acapulco, being short of provisions. There the passengers made a fuss in regard to their passage-money: some, among whom were my master and myself, took horses and rode across the country through the city of Mexico to Vera Cruz. My master was now perfectly well.
At Vera Cruz I was after him for my papers again. He said he would give them to me. I walked out to look at the town. On my return my master was snuffling as if he was crying, and he said that if he gave me my papers, and took me back through New Orleans, both him and me would be put in the penitentiary. After declining to give me the papers, he told me that if I would go back with him, and stay until he got married and settled, I could leave him if I wished, and he would give me thirty dollars to start with, to go where I liked. He said he would give me a bill of sale there in Vera Cruz, if I would not let anybody see it. I could not read, and supposed it would be some paper of no consequence, and I knew it would do no good if nobody else was to see it: so I concluded to go on with him on his promise that I was a free man, and that he would have no claim on me at all.
We embarked for New Orleans in a Spanish schooner, and reached port without any thing worthy of notice. We went on directly to Monticello, near the place whence I came, where he had sold out. We stayed with his cousin, until he went to New Orleans and got a stock of goods, and opened a dry goods store, which I tended with him. Before he went for the goods, I spoke to him for my papers, and he said he would fix it in a day or two: but it was not done. This was in the spring; I remained with him until July. I did not say any thing more to him about the papers; I had got tired of fooling with him, and gave it up, not expecting to get them.
Just them a man who kept a billiard saloon was sick with rheumatism, and he hired me to tend the saloon, which I did seven months, boarding with him. Soon after I entered the saloon, my master got married, and about a month or six weeks before I left it, it was rumored that I was sold to his father-in-law. I went to him and asked him about it, but he denied it. Then his father-in-law came into the town from his plantation two miles out, and told me that he had bought me. After this, the saloon man proposed to buy me to keep his saloon, but I refused, and told him I would rather not: I had now made up my mind to leave on the first opportunity. I then went to my master again,—I took him away from the house about a hundred yards, and said to him, “There cannot be so much smoke without some fire; everybody has got it that you have sold me: your father-in-law has told me that he has bought me.” Then he swore that it was a lie: that they were just trying to get me to run away. He told me to go to the man I was living with, and get my clothes, and come back and live with him; that he was going to Texas to open a grocery store, and put me in, and would give me one third of the clear profits. The saloon man wished me to remain, but my master and his father-in-law refused. My master told me I might have a balance of wages due, say fourteen dollars, and I afterwards got it. About the beginning of March, they told me to prepare to go to New Orleans next morning with the father-in-law, to wait on him; afterwards my master came out, and I told him that I knew I was going to New Orleans to be sold. He denied it, and offered to bet fifty dollars that I would come back. I rode over to see my mother, and told her how matters stood. She was very much hurt, but said it was my own fault,—meaning that I ought not to have returned from California. On my way back I met the father-in-law on horseback, bringing my clothes, but not my watch. I requested to go after it, but he would not let me, saying he would get me another. My watch was a good silver watch, which I did not carry, because the crystal was broken. I then rode with him to a place on Saline river called Long View; here we took a small boat, and sailed down to the Washita river, where we took a steamer for New Orleans. There were several slaves on board the boat.
One day, during the passage, a man who owned some of these slaves, came to me as I was alone, leaning against a stanchion, and putting his hand to his chin, gave his head a twist, and said, “I hear bad news about you.” Said I, “What is it?” Said he, “They tell me you are a slave.” I told him I was. Then he said, “You a slave! you ‘re as white as my daughter there;” he pointed to her,—all you’ ve got to do when we get to a landing is to take your clothes and walk; you won ‘t want no testimony nor nothing; just take your clothes and go.”
Afterwards, a man who was on board came to me, and asked, “Have you been to California?” I told him I had. Then he asked me, “Don ‘t you think you ought to be free?” I answered carelessly, “I don ‘t know—maybe I ought.” Then he took my hat off, felt of my hair, and looked at my head, and said, “Your hair is as straight as mine, and you ‘ve got as good a forehead as mine: by G—d, I know that you ought to be free, and if you were mine, I’ll be d—d if I wouldn ‘t set you free.” I made no answer.
Soon after, a colored man came to me, and told me he had overheard the father-in-law trying to sell me to the man who had examined my head.
We went to a hotel in New Orleans for a day or two; then to a private boarding-house. He was trying all through the town to sell me, but could not. After he had tried a while, he came to me and told me that he wanted to sell me, and would get me a good place, and if I would go and help him to sell me, that he would make it profitable to me. I told him “very well,”—for I preferred to take my chances in New Orleans as a slave, rather than return to Arkansas as a slave. We went to three or four trading-houses; none would buy, saying I was too white for them. He took me to one house kept by a swarthy-looking man, and told him what a smart boy I was; that I could read and write, and had been to California, etc. Said the trader, “Can you read and write?” I told him “Yes.” Then said he, “I do n’t want you in here,—I should have to chop your fingers off.” Then we went to a cotton merchant whom he was owing, and offered me in payment. The cotton merchant objected, that I was too white, and knew too much, and might prove too smart for him. Finally, as the father-in-law was about leaving town, he came and asked me if I would go back with him. I told him that I did not want to go back,—that he had better leave me with the cotton merchant, or put me into some shop, or to learn a trade, until he could sell me. I suppose he expected to make a great trade out of me, but he got tripped up. I do not know what passed between the father-in-law and the merchant, but the latter told me he had bought me for nine hundred dollars, in part pay for a debt.
I went to the merchant’s warehouse, and remained there four or five days: then my master told me that his family lived in a free State, and if he were to carry me there, it would be in my own will whether to stay or not,—that he had nothing for me to do, and would sell me to a good man who would use me well. He sold me to a man back in Arkansas, where I was employed in the house, and sometimes went round with him with guns to shoot squirrels off the corn. He had about a hundred slaves on this place, and he owned a part in two or three others. I stayed there from March, 1852, to January, 1854, when I was about twenty-one years old.
My master got rather against me,—he had no particular cause that I know of. He said, so I heard from others, that I thought I was white: that I was a good boy, but would have to be whipped to let me know that I was a “nigger;” for “niggers always should be whipped some, no matter how good they are, else they’ll forget that they are niggers.”
He told the blacksmith to be fooling with me in the shop some time, and get my measure for a pair of stiff-legs. These are, one iron ring around the ancle and one up on the thigh, joined together by an iron rod behind. When these are put on a man, he cannot bend his knees at all, and so cannot run away. I saw one pair of these on a man on this plantation. My master’s plan was to whip me, as I have the best reasons to believe, then put on the stiff-legs, and chain me to work in the smith’s shop. I then made preparations as quick as I could and left. I took my clothes and a few biscuit from the table at supper. I walked forty miles through the Arkansas Swamp to the Mississippi, along a muddy road, and at 2 o’clock the next day, got to Napoleon, on the Mississippi River. Nobody questioned me. . . . .
I like living in Canada better than in the States. I had chills in Arkansas, but have had first-rate health ever since I have been here. I am treated here as a man ought to be treated. I could not be pulled back into Arkansas,—I would have my head pulled off first.
Almost all the colored people that I know are doing well. It was so in London, where I stopped a while, and it is so here. There is some prejudice here among the low class of people, but it has not the effect here it has in the States, because here the colored man is regarded as a man, while in the States he is looked upon more as a brute.
I saw a great deal of oppression in Tennessee. People were kept from leaving the plantations on Sundays and evenings, when they might have gone as well as not. The excuse for this was that “the niggers would get whiskey, and then steal.” Some of them were not more than half clothed.
In Arkansas, on the river, or on the farm where I lived last, the people were treated worse than brutes. Horses and mules have food by them all the time, but the slaves had four pounds of fat bacon a week, and a peck of corn meal,—not enough to last some men three days. On this account it is, that the slaves help themselves when they can get a chance. I do n’t see how any one can blame them for it. They are up at daybreak and work till dark and sometimes after dark, carrying cotton to the gin, and then have to prepare their food, or else at the first bell-ringing in the morning. Generally, in Arkansas, the men had good clothing so far as I saw, but there were some exceptions. Most I think of was, depriving them of the privilege of going off the place. It was worse imprisonment than the penitentiary. In the penitentiary, a man expects to get out in a few months, but on the plantations they do not expect to get out until they are dead. I never went to church while I was on that last farm: the people did not go. I heard my master say it was “perfect nonsense to have a preacher preaching to niggers: the driver was a good enough preacher for them.” This driver was a colored man, as ignorant as the rest of the slaves, but he used to hold a sort of prayer-meeting on Sundays. He knew nothing at all of a book, and did not know enough to preach.
In Arkansas they whip men with a leather strap about three fingers wide at the handle, and tapering down to two fingers at the end. It is about three feet long, and has a very short handle. I was told that several who were buried while I was there, had strap marks on them. I saw the overseer and the driver together give a man a terrible whipping in the night. The man had been promised fifty lashes, and ran to avoid them, but they caught him, and showed no mercy. They beat him the head with the handle of the strap. They stripped him naked and drove four stakes in the ground to which they tied his hands and his feet. I saw it done—I was looking through the palings. Then they whipped him with the strap and then with a piece of white oak made limber. I saw his back, and it was all raw. The man was sent to work next day, but he gave out, and was laid up from August until some time in the fall—until the cotton had been picked over three times. I have often seen men with their clothes sticking to their backs in the blood. The women who do out-door work are used as bad as the men.
There was a great deal of excitement among the farmers there at one time about a woman on a plantation below, who had been whipped very badly and was then tied out naked all night in a swamp where the mosquitoes were very thick: there was a great deal said about it.
I think the slaves ought to be set free: I do n’t think they would cut their masters’ throats,—if they would do that the time would be while they are oppressed. I believe if they were set free at once, they would go to work at once, except a few loafers,—for there are some loafers among the colored as well as among the white people.