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Chapter II

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CHAPTER II.

MY master's family consisted of two sons, AndrewHistorical annotation: Andrew Skinner Anthony (1797-1833) was the eldest son of Aaron and Ann Catherine Skinner Anthony and the nephew of Edward Lloyd V. His father apprenticed him as a young man to James Neall, a cabinetmaker, in Easton, Maryland. After completing his apprenticeship, Anthony migrated to Indiana, where he married Ann Wingate of Martin County in 1823. He and his bride returned to Talbot County shortly thereafter. In 1826 Andrew's father died and he inherited a third of his estate, including eight slaves. Although he increased his estate and owned twenty slaves, Andrew suffered from alcoholism and operated a whiskey shop in his final years. John Manross to Douglass, 14 January 1856, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 654-56, FD Papers, DLC; Harriet Anthony's annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folder 93, 176 Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 51; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 26, 29, 218n17, 224n10. and Richard;Historical annotation: Richard Lee Anthony (1800-28), the second eldest of three children born to Aaron and Ann Anthony, was trained as a blacksmith for five years before inheriting land, money, and slaves after his father's death in November 1826. Douglass incorrectly asserted that Richard died before his father. Harriet L. Anthony's annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folder 93, 173-74, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 27, 28, 29, 52, 91, 218n17. one daughter, Lucretia,Historical annotation: Lucretia Planner Anthony Auld (1804-27) was the third child and only daughter of Aaron and Ann Anthony. In 1823 she married Thomas Auld, a boarder in her father's household and an employee of Edward Lloyd. Lucretia subsequently moved to Hillsborough, Maryland, where she and her husband opened a store. Following the deaths of her father and brother Richard Lee, Lucretia and her older brother Andrew inherited their father's estate. Her portion included the young slave Frederick Douglass. She died in 1827 and was survived by one child, Arianna Amanda Auld. Auld Family Bible (courtesy of Carl G. Auld); McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 27; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 28, 30, 62, 87-88, 223n6; Preston, Talbot County, 191; Emerson B. Roberts, "A Visitation of Western Talbot," MdHM, 41 : 244-45 (September 1946). and her husband, Captain Thomas Auld.Historical annotation: Born in St. Michaels, Maryland, Thomas Auld (1795-1880) was the eldest son of Hugh and Zipporah Auld. Trained as a shipbuilder, Auld supervised the construction of the Lloyd sloop, the Sally Lloyd, and subsequently became its captain. In 1823, he met and married Lucretia Anthony while a boarder in the Anthony home. Shortly thereafter, in 1827, Auld became a storekeeper in Hillsborough, Maryland, and inherited Douglass along with ten other slaves from the estate of Aaron Anthony. He later kept store in St. Michaels where he also served as postmaster, before retiring to a nearby farm. The 1850 census listed him as a "farmer" with $8,500 worth of real estate. References to Thomas Auld in Douglass's Narrative and public speeches are generally uncomplimentary although Douglass disclaimed any personal hostility toward his former owner. A reconciliation occurred in the post-Reconstruction period when Douglass visited the dying Auld in St. Michaels. NASS, 25 November 1845; NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849; Baltimore Sun, 19 June 1877; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 1169 (schedule of free
inhabitants); Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, D.C., 1948), 342-43; Tilghman, Talbot County, 1 : 395; Preston, "Aaron Anthony," 5; Roberts, "Visitation of Western Talbot," 235-45.
They lived in one house, upon the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd.Historical annotation: Settled by Edward Lloyd I in 1658, Wye House, the home plantation of the Lloyds, was situated on a peninsula formed by the Wye River on the north and the Miles River on the south. By 1790, Edward Lloyd IV, father of Edward Lloyd V, owned 11,884 acres in the region. The mansion house to which Douglass refers was built in 1784 and overlooks Lloyd's Cove on the Wye River. Aaron Anthony and his family lived in the "Captain's House," a brick outbuilding near the mansion. Douglass lived at Anthony's home at Wye House from August 1824 to March 1826. Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore, 269-93; H[enry] Chandlee Forman, Old Buildings, Gardens, and Furniture in Tidewater Maryland (Cambridge, Md., 1967), 51-80; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 37-40, 199. My master was Colonel Lloyd's clerk and superintendent. He was what might be called the overseer of the overseers. I spent two years of childhood on this plantation in my old master's family. It was here that I witnessed the bloody transaction recorded in the first chapter; and as I received my first impressions of slavery on this plantation, I will give some description of it, and of slavery as it there existed. The plantation is about twelve miles north of Easton, in Talbot county, and is situated on the border of Miles River. The principal products raised upon it were tobacco, corn, and wheat. These were raised in great abundance; so that, with the products of this and the other farms belonging to him, he was able to keep in almost constant employment a large sloop, in carrying them to market at Baltimore. This sloop was named Sally Lloyd,Historical annotation: In 1819 Edward Lloyd V ordered the construction of a new sloop to replace the aging schooner Elizabeth & Ann, which carried his crops to markets in Baltimore and Annapolis and brought back supplies to his scattered Talbot County farms. Thomas Auld had supervised the construction, in Joseph Kemp's St. Michaels shipyard, of the replacement vessel, named the Sally Lloyd in honor of the colonel's eldest daughter, Sally Scott Lloyd. Auld remained in Lloyd's employment as the master of the Sally Lloyd, which was manned by a slave crew. The latter gained celebrity status among the Lloyd slaves because of their contact with the world outside the rural plantations and their ability to purchase small items in the cities for resale to other slaves. Various account books and cash books, Land Papers—Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi. in honor of one of the colonel's daughters.Historical annotation: Sally Scott Lloyd Lowndes, the second daughter of Edward Lloyd V, was the namesake of her mother Sally Scott Murray Lloyd. She married Charles Lowndes, a U.S. Navy officer, on 24 May 1824. Colonel Lloyd purchased an estate called the Anchorage on the Miles River as a gift for the couple. Their son Lloyd Lowndes served as governor of Maryland from 1896 to 1900. Rossiter Johnson, ed., The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, 10 vols. (Boston, 1904), 7:n.p.; Tilghman, Talbot County, 1 : 207; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 47, 222n4. My master's son-in-law, Captain Auld, was master of the vessel; she was otherwise manned by the colonel's own slaves. Their names were Peter, Isaac, Rich, and Jake.*Historical annotation: Two of the slaves who served as the crew of the Sally Lloyd appear in the business records of Edward Lloyd V: Peter (1799-?) and Rich (1817-?). Various account books and cash books, Land Papers—Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi. These were esteemed very highly by the other slaves, and looked upon as the privileged ones of the plantation; for it was no small affair, in the eyes of the slaves, to be allowed to see Baltimore.

Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slavesHistorical annotation: Douglass exaggerates the number of slaves owned by Edward Lloyd V. In 1824, the year Douglass arrived on the Lloyd's main plantation, there were 181 slaves at Wye House, including the fifteen owned by Aaron Anthony who also lived there. The Lloyds owned slaves on adjoining farms as well, though their number is not available. Edward Lloyd IV owned 305 slaves in 1790, and his grandson, Edward Lloyd VI, owned an estimated 700 slaves, including those on his Mississippi Valley plantations. Return Book, 1 January 1824, Land Papers—Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi; Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore, 280-81; Tilghman, Talbot County, 1 : 225; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 48, 220nl3. on his home plantation, and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms belonging to him. The names of the farms nearest to the home plantation were Wye TownHistorical annotation: Wye Town is located at the confluence of the Miles River and the Wye River in Talbot County, next to the main Lloyd plantation Wye House. At the urging of the Lloyds, the Maryland General Assembly had established the site of a town here in 1683 which was later abandoned. Wye Town Farm, part of the land owned here by the Lloyds, encompassed 260 acres. Henry Chandlee Forman, Tidewater Maryland Architecture and Gardens (New York, 1956), 49-54. and New Design.Historical annotation: New Design Farm was one of several smaller plantations owned by Edward Lloyd V in Talbot County. At least through the 1820s, Lloyd used it primarily for growing wheat. Various account books and cash books, Land Papers—Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi. "Wye Town" was under the overseership of a man named Noah Willis.Historical annotation: In 1819 Aaron Anthony's records indicate that he employed a Noah Willes. A Noah Willis is listed in the 1820 census as an overseer in Talbot County. He was between 26 and 45 years old. Willis is listed again in the 1830 census but without any job designation. He was married by then, having eight children under 15 in his household, and owned four slaves. Willis held over 400 acres of land by the late 1820s. Aaron Anthony Papers, Ledger A, 1790-1818, file 94, 19; 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 7; 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 14; Whitman H. Ridgway, Community Leadership in Maryland, 1790-1840: A Comparative Analysis of Power in Society (Chapel Hill, 1979), 339. New Design was under the overseership of a Mr. Townsend.Historical annotation: Between 1809 and 1812, George Townsend worked for Aaron Anthony, probably as an overseer. In 1820, he was between twenty-six and forty years of age, and managed a farm which had 23 slaves. 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 6; Aaron Anthony Ledger C, 1809-27, folder 96, 3, 35,69, 114, 119, 128, 171, 177, 286, 315, Dodge Collection, MdAA. The overseers of these, and all the rest of the farms, numbering over twenty, received advice and direction from the managers of the home plantation. This was the great business place. It was the seat of government for the whole twenty farms. All disputes among the overseers were settled here. If a slave was convicted of any high misdemeanor,

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became unmanageable, or evinced a determination to run away, he was brought immediately here, severely whipped, put on board the sloop, carried to Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk,Historical annotation: Austin Woolfolk of Augusta, Georgia, became a slave trader serving the Southwest, which rapidly expanded following the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. He settled in Baltimore in 1819 to avail himself both of the large surplus slave population in the state and the excellent shipping facilities which the port afforded. During the 1820s he lived on Pratt Street to the west of the city's commercial center. Woolfolk's business prospered as he sent agents through-out Maryland ready to pay high prices in cash for young black males. He annually transported from 230 to 460 slaves to markets in New Orleans, many of them having been purchased from planters on the Eastern Shore. In the 1830s, however, Woolfolk's business declined due to increased competition from larger firms, a decrease in the number of slaves for sale owing to manumissions and owner emigrations, and the heightened opposition of Marylanders to the interstate slave trade. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 50, 58, 76-80, 96, 102; William Calderhead, "The Role of the Professional Slave Trader in a Slave Economy: Austin Woolfolk, A Case Study," Civil War History, 23 : 195-211 (September 1977). or some other slave-trader, as a warning to the slaves remaining.

Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly allowance of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth,Historical annotation: Coarse, durable, inexpensive cloth manufactured for sale to slaveowners for their servants. one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars. The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the old women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. When these failed them, they went naked until the next allowance-day. Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year.

There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This, however, is not considered a very great privation. They find less difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep; for when their day's work in the field is done, the most of them having their washing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or none of the ordinary facilities for doing either of these, very many of their sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day; and when this is done, old and young, male and female, married and single, drop down side by side, on one common bed, the cold, damp floor, each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets; and here they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver's horn. At the sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field. There must be no halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe betides them who hear not this morning summons to the field; for if they are not awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of feeling: no age nor sex finds any favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used to stand by the door of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented from being ready to start for the field at the sound of the horn.

Mr. SevereHistorical annotation: During the years 1809-12 and possibly thereafter, William Sevier worked for Aaron Anthony, probably as an overseer on his farms. In 1820, he was between twenty-six and forty years old. At that time Sevier occupied a small red frame house on the east side of Wye House's Long Green, and was Edward Lloyd V's overseer for the more than 150 slaves at the main plantation. Aaron Anthony Ledger A, 1790-1818, folder 94, 19, Ledger C, 1809-27, folder 96, 1, 3, 13, 87, 119, 124, 177, 286, 291; 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 7; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 70-71, 222n5 and n6. Textual note here indicates which edition or impression a text variation occurs. Douglass's misspelling of personal names has not been corrected in this edition unless the correction appears in D1 or D2. His spelling of the names of persons he knew or heard of while living in Maryland, especially, should be retained as a significant element of his memory of his slavery experience at the time he wrote the Narrative. An excellent case in point is his recollection of the name of one of the overseers on the Lloyd plantation. By the time Douglass wrote My Bondage and My Freedom, his second autobiography, in 1855, he had learned that the name he had remembered as Mr. "Severe" ten years earlier was actually spelled "Sevier" (91-96). With this knowledge he was compelled to exclude his comment in the Narrative that "Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man." Correcting the Narrative spelling obviously would pull most of the punch of his play on words (D1: First impression of the second edition, published in Dublin in 1845; D2: Second impression of the Dublin edition, published in 1846). was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him

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whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother's release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but whatThis emendation note records the edition/impression symbol indicates the text in which the adopted variant first appears. D2; that (D2: Second impression of the Dublin edition, published in 1846). was commenced or concluded by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness his cruelty and profanity. His presence made it both the field of blood and blasphemy.This emendation note records the edition/impression symbol indicates the text in which the adopted variant first appears. D1; of blasphemy (D1: First impression of the second edition, published in Dublin in 1845). From the rising till the going down of the sun, he was cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field, in the most frightful manner. His career was short. He died very soon after I went to Colonel Lloyd's; and he died as he lived, uttering, with his dying groans, bitter curses and horrid oaths. His death was regarded by the slaves as the result of a merciful Providence.Textual note here indicates which edition or impression a text variation occurs. This capitalization is based not on an alteration in a later edition or impression but on the principle of consistency. In three other passages in B in which "providence" is used in an identical sense (31.4, 31.15, and 47.4), it is capitalized in the last two. The "providence" in B 31.4, however, is capitalized in all subsequent editions and in the correlative passage in Bondage and Freedom (139). The weight of the evidence, therefore, is toward Douglass's intent to capitalize, and all four are capitalized in the established text (B: Copy text, first published in Boston in 1845). Textual emendation: providence.

Mr. Severe's place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins.Historical annotation: James Hopkins briefly took the place of William Sevier as overseer of the Wye House plantation. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 73. He was a very different man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr. Severe. His course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations of cruelty. He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called by the slaves a good overseer.

The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting, coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves on the home plantation. The whole place wore a business-like aspect very unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too, conspired to give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was called by the slaves the Great House Farm.Historical annotation: A reference to the principal plantation of Edward Lloyd V, the Wye House plantation. Douglass visited there in June 1881 and several younger members of the Lloyd family escorted him around the grounds. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 192-96. Few privileges were esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms would be of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field from under the driver's lash, that they esteemed it a high privilege, one worth careful living for. He was called the smartest and most trusty fellow, who had this honor conferred upon him the most frequently. The competitors for this office sought as diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers in the political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the slaves of the political parties.

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The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out if not in the word, in the sound; and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this, when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:

"I am going away to the Great House Farm!
O, yea! O, yea! O!"Textual note here indicates which edition or impression a text variation occurs. D1's removal of the period outside the quotation marks in B corrects what is probably a compositor's error (D1: First impression of the second edition, published in Dublin in 1845; B: Copy text, first published in Boston in 1845). Textual emendation: D1; O!."

This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.

I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs, I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling, has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception.Textual note here indicates which edition or impression a text variation occurs. Although all subsequent editions and impressions substitute the plural form, the singular is consistent with the context: Douglass was recalling his first insight into the nature of slavery. In the following sentence he refers back to "that conception"—not "those conceptions." Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence,, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the

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chambers of his soul, and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart."Historical annotation: Douglass quotes line 8 from The Time Piece by William Cowper. J.C. Bailey, ed., The Poems of William Cowper (London, 1905), 267.

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

Creator

Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Description

THE WYE PLANTATION OF COLONEL EDWARD LLOYD. TREATMENT OF THE LLOYD SLAVES LLOYD’S OVERSEERS. CHARACTER OF SLAVE SONGS.

Publisher

Yale University Press

Type

Book chapters

Publication Status

Published