The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 20
I had not been long in Mr Carleton's service, before I discovered, that a pretty sure way of getting into his good graces, was to be a great admirer of his religious performances, and a devout attendant upon such of them as his servants might attend. There never was a person less inclined by nature to hypocrisy than myself. But craft and cunning are the sole resource of a slave; and I had long ago learned to practise a thousand arts, which, at the same time that I despised them, I often found extremely useful.
For these arts, I now had occasion; and I plied my flattery to such purpose, that I soon gained the good will of my master, and before long, was duly established in the situation of confidential servant. This was a station of very considerable respectability; and next to the overseer, I was decidedly the most consequential person on the place. It was my duty to attend specially upon my master, to ride about with him to meetings, carry, his cloak and Bible, and take care of his horse; for among other matters Mr Carleton was a connoisseur in horses, and he did not like to trust his, to the usual blundering negligence of his neighbors' grooms.
Pretty soon, my master found out my accomplishments of reading and writing, — for I inadvertently betrayed a secret, which I had determined to keep to myself. At first he did not seem to like it; but as he could not unlearn me, he soon determined to turn these acquirements of mine to some account. He had a good deal of writing, of one sort and another; and he set me to work as copier. In my character of secretary, I was often called upon, when my master was busy, to write passes for the people. This raised my consequence extremely; and my fellow servants soon began to look upon me, as second only to 'master' himself.
Mr Carleton was naturally humane and kind-hearted; and though his sudden out-breaks of impatience and fretfulness were often vexatious enough, still if one humored him, they were generally soon over; and as if he reproached himself for not keeping a better guard upon his temper, they were often followed by an affability and indulgence greater than usual. I soon learned the art of managing him to the best advantage, and every day I rose in his favor.
I had a good deal of leisure; and I found means to employ it both innocently and agreeably. Mr Carleton had a collection of books very unusual for a North Carolina planter. This library must have contained between two and three hundred volumes. It was the admiration of all the country round; and contributed not a little, to give its owner the character of a great scholar, and a very learned man. My situation of confidential servant, gave me free access to it. The greater part of the volumes treated of divinity, but there were some of a more attractive description; and I was able to gratify occasionally and by stealth— for I did not like to be seen reading any thing but the Bible — that taste for knowledge which I had imbibed when a child, and which all the degradations of servitude, had not utterly extinguished. All things considered, I found myself much more agreeably situated, than I had been at any time since the death of my first master.
I wish, both for their sakes and his own, that all the rest of Mr Carleton's slaves had been as well off and as kindly treated as myself. The house servants, it is true, had nothing to complain of; except indeed, those grievous evils, which are inseparable from a state of servitude, and which no tenderness or indulgence on the part of the master, can ever do away. But the plantation hands — some fifty in number — were very differently situated. Mr Carleton, like a large proportion of American planters, had no knowledge of agriculture, and not the slightest taste for it. He had never given any attention to the business of his plantation; his youth had been spent in a course of boisterous dissipation; and since his conversion, he had been entirely devoted to the cause of religion. Of course his planting affairs and all that related to them, were wholly in the hands of his overseer, who was shrewd, plausible, intelligent and well acquainted with his business; but a severe task-master, bad tempered, and if all reports were true, not very much overburdened with honesty. Mr Warner, for this was the overseer's name, was engaged on terms which however ruinous to the planter and his plantation, were very common in Virginia and the Carolinas. Instead of receiving a regular salary in money, he took a certain proportion of the crop.. Of course, it was his interest to make the largest crop possible, without any regard whatever to the means used to make it. What was it to him though the lands were exhausted, and the slaves worn out with heavy tasks and unreasonable labors? He owned neither the lands nor the slaves, and if in ten or twelve years, — and for something like that time he had been established at CarletonHall, — he could scourge all their value out of them, the gain was his, and the loss would be his employer's. This desirable consummation, he seemed pretty nearly arrived at. The lands at Carleton-Hall, were never cultivated, it is likely, with any tolerable skill; but Mr Warner had carried the process of exhaustion to its last extremity. Field after field had been 'turned out' as they call it — that is, left uncultivated and unfenced, to grow up with broom-sedge and persimmon bushes, and be grazed by all the cattle of the neighborhood. Year after year, new land had been opened, and exposed to the same exhausting process, which had worn out the fields that had been already abandoned; — till at last, there was no new land left upon the plantation.
Mr Warner now began to talk about throwing up his employment; and it was only by urgent solicitations, and a greater proportion of the diminished produce, that Mr Carleton had prevailed upon him to remain another year.
But it was not the land only, that suffered. The slaves were subjected to a like process of exhaustion; and what with hard work, insufficient food, and an irregular and capricious severity, they had become discontented, sickly and inefficient. There never was a time that two or three of them, and sometimes many more, were not runaways, wandering in the woods; and hence originated further troubles, and fresh severity.
Mr Carleton had expressly directed, that his servants should receive an allowance of corn, and especially of meat, which in that part of the world was thought extremely liberal; and I believe, if the allowance had been faithfully distributed, the heartiest man upon the place would have received about half as much meat as was consumed by Mr Carleton's youngest daughter, a little girl some ten or twelve years old. But if the slaves were worthy of belief, neither Mr Warner's scales nor his measure were very authentic; and according to their story, so much as he could plunder out of their weekly allowance, went to increase his share in the yearly produce of the plantation.
Once or twice, complaints of this sort had been: carried to Mr Carleton; but without deigning to examine into them, he had dismissed them as unworthy of notice. Mr Warner, he said, was an honest man and a christian, — indeed it was his christian character that had first recommended him to his employer; — and these scandalous stories were only invented out of that spite which slaves always feel against an overseer, who compels them to do their duty. It might be so; I cannot undertake positively to contradict it. Yet I know that these imputations upon Mr Warner's honesty were not confined to the plantation, but circulated pretty freely through the neighborhood; and if he was not a rogue, Mr Carleton, by an unlimited, unsuspicious and unwise confidence, did his best to make him so.
Whether the slaves were cheated or not, of their allow- ance, there.is no dispute that they were worked hard, and harshly treated. Mr Carleton always took sides with his overseer, and was in the habit of maintaining that it was impossible to get along on a plantation without frequent whipping and a good deal of severity; and yet, as he was naturally good natured, it gave him pain to hear of any very flagrant instance of it. But he was much from home; and that kept him ignorant, to a great degree, of what was going on there; and for the rest, the overseer was anxious to save his feelings, and had issued very strict orders, which he enforced with merciless severity, that nobody should run to the House with tales of what was done upon the planta- tion. By this ingenious device, though a very common one, Mr Warner had every thing in his own way. In fact, Mr Carleton had as little control over his plantation as over any other in the county; and he knew just as little about it.
When my master was a young man, he had betted at horse-races,and gambling-tables, and spent money very freely in a thousand foolish ways. Since he had grown religious he had dropped these expenses, but he had fallen into others. It was no small sum that he spent every year, upon Bibles, church repairs, and other pious objects. For several years his income had been diminishing; but without any corresponding diminution of his expenses. As a natural consequence, he had become deeply involved in debt. His overseer had grown rich, while he had been growing poor. His lands and slaves were mortgaged, and he began to be plagued by the sheriff's officer. But these perplexities did not cause him to forego his spiritual la- bors, which he prosecuted, if possible, more diligently than before. i I had now been living with him some six or seven months, and was completely established in his favor, when one Sunday morning, we set off together for a place about eight miles distant, where he had not preached before, since I had been in his service. The place appointed for the meeting, was in the open air. It was a pretty place though, and well adapted to the purpose, being a gentle swell of ground over which were thinly scattered a number of ancient, and wide-spreading oaks. ‘Their outstretched limbs formed a thick shade, under which there were neither weeds nor undergrowth, but something more like a grassy lawn, than is often to be seen in that country. Near the top of the swell, somebody had fixed up some rude benches ; ‘and partly supported against one of the largest trees, was a misshapen little platform, with a chair or two upon it, which seemed intended for the pulpit.
Quite a troop of horses, and as many as ten or twelve carriages, were collected at the foot of the swell; and the benches were already occupied by a considerable number of people. 'The white hearers however, were far outnumbered by the slaves, who were scattered about in groups, most of them in their Sunday dresses, and many of them very decent looking people. A few however, were miserably ragged and dirty ; and there was quite a number of half-grown children from the adjoining plantations, without a rag to hide their nakedness.
My master seemed well pleased with the prospect of so large an audience. He dismounted at the foot of the hill, if a rise so gentle deserved the name, and delivered his horse into my charge. I sought out a convenient place in which to tie the horses ; and as I knew the services would not begin immediately, I sauntered about, looking at the equipages and the company. While I was occupied in this way, a smart carriage drove up. It stopped. A servant jumped from behind, opened the door and let down the steps. An elderly lady, and another about eighteen or twenty, occupied the back seat. On the front seat, was a woman whom I took to be their maid, though I could not see her distinctly. Something called off my attention and I turned another way. When T looked again, the two ladies were walking up the hill and the maid was on the ground, with her back towards me, taking something from the carriage: A moment after, she turned round, and I knew her. It was Cassy, — it was my wife.
I sprang forward and caught her in my arms. She recognized me at the same moment; and uttering a cry of surprise and pleasure, she would have fallen had I not supported her. She recovered herself directly, and bade me let her go, for she had been sent back for her mistress's fan, and she must make haste and carry it to her. She told me to wait though, for if she could get leave, she would come back again immediately. She tripped up the hill, and overtook her mistress. I could see, by her gestures, the eagerness with which she urged her request: It was granted, and in a moment she was again at my side. Again I pressed her to my bosom, and again she returned my embrace. Once more I felt what it was to be happy. I took her by the hand, and led her to a little wood, on the opposite side of the road. Here was a thick young growth, where we could sit, screened from observation. We sat down upon a fallen tree; and while I held her hands fast locked in mine, we asked and answered a thousand questions.
The first emotions and agitation of our meeting over, Cassy required of me a detailed narrative of my adventures since our separation. With what a kindling eye and heaving bosom did she listen to my story; at every painful incident of it, the fast flowing tears chasing each other down her cheeks, now pale, . now flushed; at every gleam of ease or comfort, a tender, joyous, sympathizing smile beaming upon me, breathing new life into my soul! You who have loved as we loved, — you who have parted as we parted, with no hope ever to meet again, — you who have met as we met, brought together by accident or by Providence, — you, and only you, may imagine the emotions that swelled my heart as I pressed the hand, and felt the presence, and basked in the sympathy of a woman, and a wife, as dear. to me, slave though I was, slave though she was — as dear to me as the wife of his bosom is to the proudest freeman of you all.
My story finished, again Cassy clasped me in her arms, and claimed me as her husband; tears, but tears of joy, again fast flowing down her cheeks. There for a while she sat, silent, seeming as if lost in a sort of reverie, or, indeed, almost as if doubting whether all that she had just heard, — whether the very husband whom she saw before her, — whether our whole unexpected meeting was any thing more than a treacherous dream. But with a kiss or two I recalled her attention, and made her understand that Twas no less anxious to hear her story than she had been to hear mine,