working nights, money enough to buy himself, he would get some one he could trust to buy him; "den work hard as eber, till I could buy my children, den I'd get away from dis yer."—
"Where?"
"O! Philadelphia—New York—somewhere North."
"Why, you'd freeze to death."
"O, no. Missis! I can bear cold. I want to go where I can belong to myself, and do as I want to."
The following communication has been given to the writer by Captain Austin Bearse, ship-master in Boston. Mr. Bearse is a native of Barnstable, Cape Cod. He is well known to our Boston citizens and merchants.
I am a native of the State of Massachusetts. Between the years 1818 and 1830 I was, from time to time, mate on board of different vessels engaged in the coasting trade on the coast of South Carolina.
It is well known that many New England vessels are in the habit of spending their winters on the southern coast in pursuit of this business. Our vessels used to run up the rivers for the rough rice and cotton of the plantations, which we took to Charleston.
We often carried gangs of slaves to the plantations, as they had been ordered. These slaves were generally collected by slave-traders in the slave-pens in Charleston,—brought there by various causes, such as the death of owners and the division of estates, which threw them into the market. Some were sent as punishment for insubordination, or because the domestic establishment was too large, or because persons moving to the North or West preferred selling their slaves to the trouble of carrying them. We had on board our vessels, from time to time, numbers of these slaves,—sometimes two or three, and sometimes as high as seventy or eighty. They were separated from their families and connections with as little concern as calves and pigs are selected out of a lot of domestic animals.
Our vessels used to lie in a place called Poor Man's Hole, not far from the city. We used to allow the relations and friends of the slaves to come on board and stay all night with their friends, before the vessel sailed.
In the morning it used to be my business to pull off the hatches and warn them that it was time to separate; and the shrieks and heart-rending cries at these times were enough to make anybody's heart ache.
In the year 1828, while mate of the brig Milton, from Boston, bound to New Orleans, the following incident occurred, which I shall never forget:
The traders brought on board four quadroon men in handcuffs, to be stowed away for the New Orleans market. An old negro woman, more than eighty years of age, came screaming after them, "My son, O, my son, my son!" She seemed almost frantic, and when we had got more than a mile out in the harbor we heard her screaming yet.
When we got into the Gulf Stream, I came to the men, and took off their handcuffs. They were resolute fellows, and they told me that I would see that they would never live to be slaves in New Orleans. One of the men was a carpenter, and one a blacksmith. We brought them into New Orleans, and consigned them over to the agent. The agent told the captain afterwards that in forty-eight hours after they came to New Orleans they were all dead men, having every one killed themselves, as they said they should. One of them, I know, was bought for a fireman on the steamer Post Boy, that went down to the Balize. He jumped over, and was drowned.
The others,—one was sold to a blacksmith, and one to a carpenter. The particulars of their death I didn't know, only that the agent told the captain that they were all dead.
There was a plantation at Coosahatchie, back of Charleston, S. C, kept by a widow lady, who owned eighty negroes. She sent to Charleston, and bought a quadroon girl, very nearly white, for her son. We carried her up. She was more delicate than our other slaves, so that she was not put with them, but was carried up in the cabin.
I have been on the rice-plantations on the rivet, and seen the cultivation of the rice. In the fall of the year, the plantation hands, both men and women, work all the time above their knees in water in the rice-ditches, pulling out the grass, to fit the ground for sowing the rice. Hands sold here from the city, having been bred mostly to house-labor, find this very severe. The plantations are so deadly that white people cannot remain on them during the summer-time, except at a risk of life. The proprietors and their families are there only through the winter, and the slaves are left in the summer entirely under the care of the overseers. Such overseers as I saw were generally a brutal, gambling, drinking set.
I have seen slavery, in the course of my wanderings, in almost all the countries in the world. I have been to Algiers, and seen slavery there. I have seen slavery in Smyrna, among the Turks. I was in Smyrna when our American consul ransomed a beautiful Greek girl in the slave-market. I saw her come aboard the brig Suffolk, when she came on board to be sent to America for her education. I have seen slavery in the Spanish and French ports, though I have not been on their plantations.
My opinion is that American slavery, as I have seen it in the internal slave-trade, as I have seen it on the rice and sugar plantations, and in the city of New Orleans, is full as bad as slavery in any country of the world, heathen or Christian. People who go for visits or pleasure through the Southern States cannot possibly know those things which can be seen of slavery by ship-masters who run up into the back plantations of countries, and who transport the slaves and produce of plantations.
In my past days the system of slavery was not much discussed. I saw these things as others did, without interference. Because I no longer think it right to see these things in silence, I trade no more south of Mason & Dixon's line.
The following account was given to the writer by Lewis Hayden. Hayden was a fugitive slave, who escaped from Kentucky by the assistance of a young lady named Delia Webster, and a man named Calvin Fairbanks. Both were imprisoned. Lewis Hayden has earned his own character as a free citizen of Boston, where he can find an abundance of vouchers for his character.
I belonged to the Rev. Adam Runkin, a Presbyterian minister in Lexington, Kentucky.
My mother was of mixed blood,—white and Indian. She married my father when he was
working in a bagging factory near by. After a