Chapter I
NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
CHAPTER I.
I WAS born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough,†Historical annotation: Talbot County, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, had been an important tobacco-growing region since colonial times. In 1788 the state legislature designated Easton, until then known as Talbot Town, as the administrative center for state operations for all nine Eastern Shore counties. Hillsborough (or Hillsboro) is situated northeast of Easton on Tuckahoe Creek, a tributary of the Choptank River that forms part of the eastern boundary of Talbot County. Dickson J. Preston, Talbot County: A History (Centreville, Md., 1983), 140, 191, 256; Paul Wilstach, Tidewater Maryland (Indianapolis, 1931), 104-05. and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age,†Historical annotation: As nearly as can be determined, Douglass was born in February 1818. Ledger books kept by his master Aaron Anthony contain a table, "My Black People," with the notation "Frederick Augustus son of Harriott Feby 1818." Further evidence for the year 1818 is presented in Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 31-34, 218-19nnl-5; Aaron Anthony Ledger B, 1812-26, folder 95, 165, Dodge Collection, MdAA. never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell†Textual note here indicates which edition or impression a text variation occurs: The preposition "of" after "tell" in the copy-text (B) is awkward and inaccurate. Douglass was referring only to the slaves" inability to give their dates of birth, not to other information that slaves might relate about their birthdays. Because Douglass made changes in D2 at Richard D. Webb's suggestion, this alteration is almost certainly authoritative (D2: Second impression of the Dublin edition, published in 1846). Textual emendation: D2; tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master†Historical annotation: Aaron Anthony (1767-1826), Frederick Douglass's first owner and possibly his father, was born at Tuckahoe Neck in present-day Caroline County, Maryland. Anthony's father was a poor and illiterate farmer who died when Aaron was only two. Despite his impoverished origins, Anthony acquired a rudimentary education and a small amount of property. He became the captain in 1795 of the Sally Lloyd, the family schooner of Edward Lloyd IV, the wealthiest planter in Talbot County. In 1797 he increased his wealth through his marriage to Ann Catherine Skinner, the daughter of an old and prominent Eastern Shore family, who brought with her the slave family into which Douglass was later born. Soon thereafter, Anthony became chief overseer and general manager of the Lloyd family's thirteen farms, one of the largest estates in the United States. He remained in this position for the remainder of his life, all the while accumulating land and slaves of his own. By the time of his death in 1826, Anthony had become a moderately wealthy planter, accumulating three farms totaling 597 1/2 acres, thirty slaves worth $3,065, and personal property. His estate was valued at $8,042. Anthony Family Bible, Oxford Museum, Oxford, Md.; Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of My Bondage and My Freedom, folder 93, 58, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Inventory of estate of Aaron Anthony, 13 January 1827, Talbot County Inventories, box 13, 5-9, MdTCH; Hulbert Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore: Seventeen Maryland Rivers (New York, 1944), 285, 299-304; Charles B. Clark, ed., The Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia, 3 vols. (New York, 1950), 1 : 491-92; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 22-30; idem, "Aaron Anthony" (unpublished paper, Easton, Md., 1977), MdTCH. concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
My mother was named Harriet Bailey.†Historical annotation: Harriet Bailey (1792-1825) was the second child of a free black man, Isaac Bailey, and his enslaved wife, Betsey. She was owned by her mother's master, Aaron Anthony. From 1808 until her death, she was hired out by Anthony to local farmers as a field hand. In February 1818, while serving Perry Steward, a tenant farmer on Anthony's Holme Hill Farm in Tuckahoe Creek, she gave birth to Frederick Augustus Bailey, her fourth of six or seven children. In late 1825 or early 1826, she died on the Holme Hill Farm in Tuckahoe Creek after a long illness. Aaron Anthony, Ledger B, 1812-26, folder 95, 165, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 8,9, 17, 21, 34-35,62-64, 205, 206, 219n9. She was the daughter of Isaac†Historical annotation: Born some time before 1775, Isaac Bailey was a free black man and the husband of Betsey Bailey, a slave owned by Aaron Anthony. Isaac and Betsey lived together on Anthony's Tuckahoe Creek farm. A sawyer, Bailey was frequently employed by both Anthony and Edward Lloyd V to provide lumber for their plantations. On occasion, he hired one of Anthony's slaves to assist him in his work. He also sometimes earned wages as a plowman and harvest laborer on Anthony's farms. Bailey appears in the 1820 Talbot County census as a free black presiding over a large household with four adult women and nine children. The 1840 census lists him as living with one adult woman and a young boy. Bailey died during the 1840s. Ledger B, 1812-26, folder 95, Ledger C, 1809-27, folder 96, Anthony Family Papers, Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 336; 1840 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 9; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 17-20. and Betsey Bailey,†Historical annotation: Betsey Bailey (1774-1849), the maternal grandmother of Frederick Douglass, grew up a slave on the Skinner plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. In 1797 she became the property of Aaron Anthony, who acquired her and several other slaves through his marriage to Ann Skinner. Anthony moved her to his farm on Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County. She married Isaac Bailey, a free black who earned his living as a sawyer, and lived with him in her cabin. There she bore nine daughters and three sons. She was also a midwife, a service for which Anthony paid her. Upon Anthony's death in 1826, Bailey was inherited by Andrew Skinner Anthony, Aaron's son; when Andrew died in 1833, she became the slave of John Planner Anthony. Despite this succession of masters and the death of her husband, she remained in her cabin on the Tuckahoe Creek farm, living alone, nearly destitute, and going blind. In 1840, Thomas Auld, John Anthony's uncle, learned of Bailey's condition and sent for her, caring for her in his Talbot County home until her death. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; Inventory of Negroes owned by Aaron Anthony, 19 December 1826, folder 71, Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 27 September 1827, folder 77, "My Black People[s] Ages," Aaron Anthony Ledger A, folder 94, Aaron Anthony Ledger B, 1812-26, folder 77, 159, 165-68, Harriet Anthony's annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folder 93, 180, all in the Anthony Family Papers, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Douglass to Thomas Auld, 3 September 1848, 3 September 1849, in NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849, reprinted in Lib., 22 September 1848, 14 September 1849; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 8, 16-20, 167. both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.
My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.
I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five
times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart,†Historical annotation: From 1817 to 1821, Perry Ward Steward (?-1821), a tenant farmer, rented Holme Hill Farm from Aaron Anthony and hired the slave Harriet Bailey as a domestic servant. A Perry W. Stewart was listed in the 1820 Census as the head of a large household of eleven members. Aaron Anthony Ledger A, 1790-1818, file #94, 18, 19, 22, Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 336; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 35, 219n7. who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys†Textual note here indicates which edition or impression a text variation occurs. D2's singular noun is not recommended by the sense of the context. Douglass referred to four or five twelve-mile trips that his mother made at night in order to see him (D2: Second impression of the Dublin edition, published in 1846). to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to the contrary a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not recollect†Textual note here indicates which edition or impression a text variation occurs. D2's deletion of the preposition "of" after "recollect" removes a superfluous as well as an awkward reading (D2: Second impression of the Dublin edition, published in 1846). Textual emendation: D2; recollect of. ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill.†Historical annotation: Levi Lee owned a mill near Holme Hill Farm and the
Tuckahoe River in 1820. In that year, he headed a large household of eight family members and six slaves. 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 48; Preston,
Young Frederick Douglass, 36. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death, of a stranger.
Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation of who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, arid by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father.
I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the
dictate of humanity for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.
Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled or not, it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of people are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from those originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their increase will do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument, that God cursed Ham,†Historical annotation: Douglass refers to the account in the book of Genesis in which Noah curses Canaan, the son of Ham, for an offense that Ham had committed against his father, Noah. Through an obscure history the meaning of the curse "a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren" had evolved in Christian Europe as a justification for the enslavement of Africans, the "sons of Ham." Proslavery advocates in the American South used this argument extensively in the renewed debates of the 1840s. Gen. 9 : 25; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1975), 539-41, 555-56; Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1707-1840 (Athens, Ga., 1987), 106, 118, 189; George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York, 1971), 60-61. and therefore American slavery is right. If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters.
I have had two masters. My first master's name was Anthony. I do not remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony a title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer†Historical annotation: This individual is probably either James Plummer or Philemon Plummer. Both men were longtime residents of Talbot County and, at various times during Douglass's youth, worked for Aaron Anthony as overseers on his Tuckahoe farms. Philemon Plummer is listed in Anthony's accounting records for 1819. Aaron Anthony Day Books, folder 97, 30, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 71, 222n7. was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine,†Historical annotation: Hester Bailey (1810-?) was one of twelve children born to Isaac and Betsey Bailey and owned by Aaron Anthony of Talbot County. The last trace of Hester and the lone child she bore was recorded in 1827, when she was awarded to Thomas Auld after the death of Aaron Anthony. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 18, 27, 206, 221n2. whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make
her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one night, where or for what I do not know, and happened to be absent when my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go out evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to Colonel Lloyd.†Historical annotation: Edward Lloyd V (1779-1834) of Wye House was the scion of Talbot County's first family. One of the state's largest landowners and slaveowners, he was also Maryland's most successful wheat grower and cattle raiser of his era. As a charter member of the Maryland Agricultural Society, a founder of at least two banks, and a speculator in coal lands, he became the wealthiest of a long line of Lloyds that reached back to colonial Maryland. In terms of slaves alone, his huge holdings increased from 420 in 1810 to 545 in 1830. An eager student of politics as an adolescent and a frequent auditor of political debate at the Annapolis State House, Edward V became a Republican delegate to the state legislature as soon as he reached the age of majority in 1800. The following year, he was active in securing passage of a bill removing all restrictions to white male suffrage. From 1806 to 1808 he was a U.S. congressman, voting in 1807 against a bill to end the African slave trade. For the next two years he was governor of Maryland, and from 1811 to 1816 he returned to the state legislature. In 1819 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, from which he resigned in 1826 to return to the Maryland senate, where he was president until 1831. Edward V married Sally Scott Murray on 30 November 1797 and had six children with her. 1810 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 342; Oswald Tilghman, History of Talbot County, Maryland, 1661-1861 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1915), 1 : 184-210; Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore, 283-90; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 26, 30, 48-54, 57-58, 74, 82; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1989: Bicentennial Edition (Washington, D.C., 1989), 1381. The young man's name was Ned Roberts,†Ned Roberts (1810-?) was a slave owned by Edward Lloyd V. It was 1825 when Aaron Anthony discovered that his slave Hester Bailey was continuing to see Ned Roberts. Return Book, 1 January 1824, Land Papers—Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi. generally called Lloyd's Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.
Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been found in company with Lloyd's Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d——d b——h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, "Now, you d——d b——h, I'll learn you how to disobey my orders!" and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horrorstricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture
out till long after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the plantation.