19 - My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglasss remarkable journey unfolds in these pages, showcasing not only his extraordinary rise against overwhelming odds but also serving as a powerful testament to the noble aspirations of the American anti-slavery movement. (Introduction)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eighteen of My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglas.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. New relations
and duties, change of masters, benefits derived by the change
fame of the fight with Covey, reckless, unconcerned, Author's abhorrence

(00:24):
of slavery, ability to read a cause of prejudice. The
holidays house spent sharp hit at slavery. Effects of holidays
a devisive slavery difference between Covey and Freeland. An irreligious
master preferred to a religious one. Catalog of floggable offenses.

(00:47):
Hard life at Coveys useful to the author, improved condition
not followed by contentment. Congenial society at freelance. Author's sabbath school,
instituted secrecy necessary, affectionate relations of tudor and pupils, confidence
and friendship among slaves. The author declines publishing particulars of

(01:10):
conversations with his friends. Slavery the inviter of vengeance. My
term of actual service to mister Edward Covey ended on
Christmas Day, eighteen thirty four. I gladly left the snakey Covey,
although he was now as gentle as a lamb, my

(01:31):
home for the year eighteen thirty five was already secured.
My next master was already selected. There is always more
or less excitement about the matter of changing hands. But
I had become somewhat reckless. I cared very little into
whose hands I fell. I meant to fight my way

(01:53):
despite of Covey too. The report got abroad that I
was hard to whip, that I was guilty of kicking back,
that though generally a good tempered negro, I sometimes got
the devil in me. These sayings were rife in Talbot County,
and they distinguished me among my servile brethren. Slaves generally

(02:17):
will fight each other and die at each other's hands.
But there are few who are not held in awe
by a white man, trained from the cradle up to
think and feel that their masters are superior, and invested
with a sort of sacredness. There are few who can
outgrow or rise above the control which that sentiment exercises.

(02:43):
I had now got free from it, and the thing
was known, one bad sheep will spoil a whole flock
among the slaves. I was a bad sheep. I hated slavery,
slaveholders and all pertaining to them, and I did not
fail to inspire others with the same feeling, wherever and

(03:04):
whenever opportunity was presented. This made me a marked lad
among the slaves, and a suspected one among the slaveholders.
A knowledge of my ability to read and write got
pretty widely spread, which was very much against me. The

(03:24):
days between Christmas Day and New Year's are allowed the
slaves as holidays. During these days, all regular work was suspended,
and there was nothing to do but to keep fires
and look after the stock. This time we regarded as
our own, by the grace of our masters, and we

(03:45):
therefore used it or abused it as we pleased. Those
who had families at a distance were now expected to
visit them and to spend with them the entire week.
The younger slaves or the unmarried ones, were expected to
see to the cattle and attend to incidental duties at home.

(04:06):
The holidays were variously spent. Those sober thinking and industrious
ones of our number would employ themselves in manufacturing corn brooms, mats,
horse collars, and baskets, and some of these were very
well made. Another class spent their time in hunting opossums, coons, rabbits,

(04:29):
and other game, But the majority spent the holidays in sports, ball, playing, wrestling, boxing,
running foot races, dancing, and drinking whiskey, and this latter
mode of spending the time was generally most agreeable to
their masters. A slave who would work during the holidays
was thought by his master undeserving of holidays, such in

(04:54):
one had rejected the favor of his master. There was
in this simple act of continued work an accusation against slaves,
and a slave could not help thinking that if he
made three dollars during the holidays, he might make three
hundred during the year. Not to be drunk during the
holidays was disgraceful, and he was esteemed a lazy and

(05:17):
improvident man who could not afford to drink whiskey. During Christmas,
the fiddling, dancing, and jubilee beating was going on in
all directions. This latter performance is strictly Southern. It supplies
the place of a violin or of other musical instruments,
and has played so easily that almost every farm has

(05:40):
its juba beater. The performer improvises as he beats and
sings his merry song, so ordering the words as to
have them fall pat with the movement of his hands
among a mass of nonsense and wild frolic. Once in
a while, our sharp hit is given to the meanness
of slave holes. Take the following for an example. We

(06:04):
raise de wheat, They give us the corn. We bake
the bread. They give us de cruss. We sift the meal.
They give us the huss We peel to meet. They
give us the skin, and that's the way day takes
us in. We skim the pot. They give us the
liquor and say that's good enough for a nigger. Walk over.

(06:25):
Walk over tom butter and the fat. Poor nigga, you
can't get over debt. Walk over. This is not a
bad summary of the palpable injustice and fraud of slavery,
giving as it does to the lazy and idle the
comforts which God designed should be given solely to the
honest laborer, but to the holidays. Judging from my own

(06:48):
observation and experience, I believe these holidays to be among
the most effective means in the hands of slaveholders of
keeping down the spirit of insurrection the slaves. To enslave
men successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their
minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty

(07:10):
of which they are deprived, A certain degree of attainable
good must be kept before them. These holidays serve the
purpose of keeping the minds of the slaves occupied with
prospective pleasure within the limits of slavery. The young man
can go ruing, the married man can visit his wife.
The father and mother can see their children. The industrious

(07:32):
and money loving can make a few dollars. The great
wrestler can win laurels. The young people can meet and
enjoy each other's society. The drunken men can get plenty
of whisky. And the religious man can hold prayer meetings, preach, pray,
and exhort during the holidays. Before the holidays, these are
pleasures in prospect. After the holidays, they become pleasures of memory,

(07:56):
and they serve to keep out thoughts and wishes of
a more dangerous character. Were slaveholders at once to abandon
the practice of allowing their slaves these liberties periodically, and
to keep them the year round closely confined to the
narrow circle of their homes, I doubt not that the

(08:16):
South were blazed with insurrections. These holidays are conductors or
safety valves to carry off the explosive elements inseparable from
the human mind when reduced to the condition of slavery.
But for these the rigors of bondage would become too
severe for endurance, and the slave would be forced up

(08:38):
to dangerous desperation. Woe to the slaveholder when he undertakes
to hinder or to prevent the operation of these electric conductors.
A succession of earthquakes would be less destructive than the
insurrectionary fires which would be sure to burst forth in
different parts of the South from such interference. Thus, the

(09:01):
holidays become part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrongs,
and in humanity of slavery. Ostensibly they are institutions of
benevolence designed to mitigate the rigors of slave life, but
practically they are a fraud instituted by human selfishness, the
better to secure the ends of injustice and depression. The

(09:25):
slave's happiness is not the end sought, but rather the
master's safety. It is not from a generous unconcern for
the slave's labor that this cessation from labor is allowed,
but from a prudent regard to the safety of the slaves. System.
I am strengthened in this opinion by the fact that

(09:45):
most slaveholders like to have their slaves spend the holidays
in such a manner as to be of no real
benefit to the slaves. It is plain that everything like
rational enjoyment among the slaves is frowned upon. Those wild
and low sports peculiar to semi civilized people are encouraged.

(10:07):
All the license allowed appears to have no other object
than to discuss the slaves with their temporary freedom, and
to make them as glad to return to their work
as they were to leave it by plunging them into
exhausting depths of drunkenness and dissipation. This effect is almost
certain to follow. I've known slaveholders resort to cunning tricks

(10:31):
with a view of getting their slaves deplorably drunk. A
usual plan is to make bets on a slave that
he can drink more whiskey than any other, and so
to induce a rivalry among them for the mastery in
this degradation. The scenes brought about in this way were
often scandalous and loathsome. In the extreme, whole multitudes might

(10:54):
be found stretched out in brutal drunkenness at once helpless
and disgusting. Thus, when the slave asks for a few
hours of virtuous freedom, his cunning master takes advantage of
his ignorance and cheers him with a dose of vicious
and revolting dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of liberty.

(11:15):
We were induced to drink among the rest, And when
the holidays were over, we all staggered up from our
filth and wallowing, took out long breath, and went away
to our various fields of work, feeling upon the whole
rather glad to go, which our masters artfully deceived us
into the belief was freedom back again to the arms

(11:36):
of slavery. It was not what we had taken it
to be, nor what it might have been had it
not been abused by us. It was about as well
to be a slave to master as to be a
slave to rum and whiskey. I am the more induced
to take this view of the holiday system adopted by
slaveholders from what I know of their treatment of slaves

(11:58):
in regard to other things, it is the commonest thing
for them to try to discuss their slaves with what
they do not want them to have or to enjoy.
A slave, for instance, likes molasses, he steals some to
cure him of the taste for it. His master, in
many cases will go away to town and buy a
large quantity of the poorest quality, and set it before

(12:21):
his slave, and with whip in hand, compel him to
eat it until the poor fellow is made too sicken
at the very thought of molasses. The same course is
often adopted to cure slaves of the disagreeable and inconvenient
practice of asking for more food when their allowance has
failed them. The same disgusting process works well too in

(12:42):
other things, but I need not cite them. When a
slave is drunk, the slaveholder has no fear that he
will plan and insurrection, no fear that he will escape
to the north. It is the sober thinking slave who
is dangerous and needs the vigilance of his master to
keep him a slave. But to proceed with my narrative,

(13:05):
on the first of January eighteen thirty five, I proceeded
from Saint Michael's to mister William Freeland's my new home.
Mister Freeland lived only three miles from Saint Michael's on
an old, worn out farm which required much labor to
restore to anything like a self supporting establishment. I was

(13:26):
not long in finding mister Freeland to be a very
different man from mister Covey. Though not rich, mister Freeland
was what may be called a well bred Southern gentleman,
as different from Covey as a well trained and hardened
Negro breaker is from the best specimen of the first
families of this South. Though Freeland was a slaveholder and

(13:47):
shared many of the vices of his class, he seemed
alive to this sentiment of honor. He had some sense
of justice and some feelings of humanity. He was fretful, impulsive,
and but I must doume the justices say, he was
free from the mean and selfish characteristics which distinguished the

(14:07):
creature from which I have now happily escaped. He was open, frank, imperative,
and practiced no concealments, disdaining to play the spy. In
all this, he was the opposite of the crafty Covey.
Among the many advantages gained in my change from Coveys
to freelance, startling as the statement may be, was the

(14:29):
fact that the latter gentleman made no profession of religion.
I assert most unhesitatingly that the religion of the self,
as I have observed it and proved it, is a
mere covering for the most horrid crimes, the justifier of
the most appalling barbarity, a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,

(14:50):
and a secure shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest,
and most infernal abominations fester and flourished. Were I again
to be red reduced to the condition of a slave
next to that calamity, I should regard the fact of
being the slave of a religious slaveholder the greatest that
could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I

(15:12):
have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I found them,
almost invariably the vilest, meanest, and basest of their class.
Exceptions there may be, but this is true of religious
slaveholders as a class. It is not for me to
explain the fact. Others may do that. I simply state
it as a fact, and leave the theological and psychological

(15:34):
inquiry which it raises, to be decided by others more
competent than myself. Religious slaveholders, like religious persecutors, are ever
extreme in their malice and violence. Very near my new home,
on an adjoining farm, there lived the Reverend Daniel Whedon,
who was both pious and cruel after the real Covey pattern.

(15:55):
Mister Whedon was a local preacher of the Protestant Methodist
persuasion and most zealous supporter of the ordinances of religion. Generally,
this Wheden owned a woman called Seal, who was a
standing proof of his mercilessness. Poor Seal's back, always scantily clothed,
was kept literally raw by the lash of this religious

(16:16):
man and gospel minister. The most notoriously wicked man, so
called in distinction from church members, could hire hands more
easily than this brute. When sent out to find a home.
A slave would never enter the gates of the preacher Wheden,
while a sinful sinner needed a hand behave ill or
behave well. It was the known maximum of Wheden that

(16:38):
it is the duty of a master to use the lash,
if for no other reason. He contended that this was
essential to remind a slave of his condition and of
his master's authority. The good slave must be whipped to
be kept good, and the bad slave must be whipped
to be made good. Such was Wheden's theory, and such
was his practice. The back of his slave woman, will,

(16:59):
in the judge be the swiftest witness against him. While
I am stating particular cases, I might as well immortalize
another of my neighbors by calling him by name and
putting him in print. He did not think that a
child was near taking notes, and will doubtless feel quite
angry at having his character touched off in the ragged
style of a slave's pen. I beg to introduce the

(17:22):
reader to Reverend Rigby Hopkins. Mister Hopkins resides between Easton
and Saint Michael's in Talbot County, Maryland. The severity of
this man made him a perfect terror to the slaves
of his neighborhood. The peculiar feature of his government was
his system of whipping slaves. As he said in advance
of deserving it, he always managed to have one or

(17:43):
two slaves to whip on Monday morning, so as to
start his hands to their work under the inspiration of
a new assurance on Monday that his preaching about kindness, mercy,
brotherly love, and the like on Sunday did not interfere
with or prevent him from establishing his authority. By the
cow's skinned, he seemed to wish to assure them that

(18:03):
his tears over poor, lost and ruined sinners, and his
pity for them, did not reach to the blacks who
tilled his fields. This saintly Hopkins used to boast that
he was the best hand to manage a nigger in
the county. He whipped for the smallest offenses by way
of preventing the commission of large ones. The reader might
imagine a difficulty in finding faults enough for such frequent whipping.

(18:28):
But this is because you have no idea how easy
a matter it is to offend a man who is
on the lookout for offenses. The man unaccustomed to slaveholding
would be astonished to observe how many floggable offenses there
are in the slaveholder's catalog of crimes, and how easy
it is to commit one of them, even when the

(18:48):
slave least intends it. A slaveholder bent on finding fault
will hatch up a dozen of days if he chooses
to do so, and each one of these shall be
of unpunishable description. A mere look, word or motion, a mistake, accident,
or want of power are all matters for which a
slave may be whipped. At any time. Does a slave
look dissatisfied with his condition. It is said that he

(19:11):
has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out.
Does he answer loudly when spoken to by his master
with an air of self consciousness? Then must he be
taken down a buttonhole lower by the lash well laid on.
Does he forget and omit to pull off his hat
when approaching a white person, then he must or maybe
whipped for his bad manners. Does he ever venture to

(19:33):
vindicate his conduct when harshly and unjustly accused, then he
is guilty of impudence, one of the greatest crimes in
the social catalog of Southern society. To allow a slave
to escape punishment, who has impudently attempted to exculpate himself
from unjust charges preferred against him by some white person,
is to be guilty of great dereliction of duty. Does

(19:55):
a slave ever venture to suggest a better way of
doing a thing? No matter what he is all together
two officious wise above what is written, and he deserves,
even if he does not get a flogging for his presumption.
Does he, while plowing break a plow, or while hoeing
break a hoe, or while chopping breaking axe, No matter
what were the imperfections of the implement broken, or the

(20:17):
natural liabilities for breaking? The slave can be whipped for carelessness.
The reverend slaveholder could always find something of this sort
to justify him in using the lash several times during
the week. Hopkins, like coven Wheden were shunned by slaves
who had the privilege, as many had, of finding their
own masters at the end of each year. And yet

(20:38):
there was not a man in all that section of
country who made a louder profession of religion than did
mister Rigby Hopkins. But to continue the thread of my
story through my experience, when at mister William Freeland's, my
poor weather beaten bark now reached smoother water and gentler breezes.
My stormy life at Covey's had been of service to me.

(21:00):
Things that would have seen very hard had I gone
direct to mister Freeland's from the home of Master Thomas,
were now, after the hardships at Covey's trifle as light
as air. I was still a field hand, and had
come to prefer the severe labor of the field to
the innovating duties of a house servant. I had become
large and strong, and had begun to take pride in

(21:20):
the fact that I could do as much hard work
as some of the older men. There as much rivalry
among slaves at times as to which can do the
most work, and masters generally seek to promote such rivalry.
But some of us were too wise to race with
each other very long. Such racing, we had the sagacity
to see was not likely to pay. We had our

(21:41):
times for measuring each other's strength. But we knew too
much to keep up the competition so long as to
produce an extraordinary day's work. We knew that if by
extraordinary exertion a large quantity of work was done in
one day, the fact becoming known to the master might
lead him to require the same amount every day. This
thought was enough to bring us to a dead halt.

(22:02):
Whenever so much excited for the race. At mister Freeland's,
my condition was every way improved. I was no longer
the poor scapegoat that I was when at Coveys, where
every wrong thing done was saddled upon me, and where
other slaves were whipped over my shoulders. Mister Freeland was
too just a man, thus to impose upon me, or

(22:23):
upon any one else it is quite usual to make
one slave the object of a special abuse, and to
beat him, often with a view to its effect upon others,
rather than with any expectation that the slave whipped will
be improved by it. But the man with whom I
now was could descend to know such meanness and wickedness.
Every man here was held individually responsible for his own conduct.

(22:46):
This was a vast improvement on the rule at Covey's.
There I was the general pack horse Bill Smith was
protected by a positive prohibition made by his rich master,
and the command of the rich slaveholder is law to
the poor one. Hughes was favored because of his relationship
to Covey, and the hands hired temporarily escaped flogging, except
as they got it over my poor shoulders. Of course,

(23:10):
this comparison refers to the time when Covey could whip me.
Mister Freelan, like mister Covey, gave his hands enough to eat,
but unlike mister Covey, he gave them time to take
their meals. He worked as hard during the day, but
gave us the night for rest. Another advantage to be
set to the credit of the sinner as against that
of the saint. We were seldom in the field after

(23:31):
dark in the evening or before sunrise in the morning.
Our implements of husbandry were of the most improved pattern,
and much superior to those used at Covey's. Notwithstanding the
improved condition which was now mine, and the many advantages
I had gained by my new home and my new master,
I was still restless and discontented. I was about as

(23:52):
hard to please by a master as a master is
by a slave. The freedom from bodily torture and unceasing
labor had given in my mind and increase sensibility, and
imparted to it greater activity. I was not yet exactly
in right relations, howbeit that was not first which is spiritual,
but that which is natural, and after that which is spiritual.

(24:15):
When entombed at Coveys, shrouded in darkness and physical wretchedness,
temporal well being was the grand desideratum, But temporal wants
supplied the spirit puts in its claims. Beat and cut
your slave, Keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will
follow the chain of his master like a dog. But
feeding clothes and well work him moderately, surround him with

(24:36):
physical comfort and dreams of freedom in true Give him
a bad master, and he aspires to a good master.
Give him a good master, and he wishes to become
his own master. Such as human nature, you may hurl
a man so low beneath the level of his kind
that he loses all just ideas of his natural position.
But elevate him a little, and the clear conception of

(24:56):
rights rises to life and power, and leads him onward.
Thus elevated a little at Freelands, the dreams called into
being by back good Man, father Lawson, when in Baltimore,
began to visit me, and shoots from the tree of
liberty began to put forth tender buds, and dim hopes
of the future began to dawn. I found myself in

(25:17):
congenial society. At mister Freeland's. There were Henry Harris, John Harris,
Handy Caldwell, and Sandy Jenkins. Henry and John were brothers
and belonged to mister Freeland. They were both remarkably bright
and intelligent, though neither of them could read now for mischief.
I'd not been long at Freeland's before I was up
to my old tricks. Raly began to address my companions

(25:39):
on the subject of education and the advantages of intelligence
over ignorance, And as far as I dared, I tried
to show the agency of ignorance in keeping men in slavery.
Webster's Spelling Book and the Columbian Orator were looked into again.
As summer came on and the long sabbath days stretched
themselves over our idleness, I became uneasy and wanted a

(26:01):
sabbath school in which to exercise my gifts and to
impart the little knowledge of letters which I possessed to
my brother slaves. A house was hardly necessary in the
summer time. I could hold my school under the shade
of an old oak tree, as well as anywhere else.
The thing was to get the scholars, and to have
them thoroughly imbued with the desire to learn. Two such

(26:23):
boys were quickly secured in Henry and John, and from
them the contagion spread. I was not long in bringing
around me twenty or thirty young men who enrolled themselves
gladly in my sabbath school, and were willing to meet
me regularly under the trees or elsewhere for the purpose
of learning to read. It was surprising with what ease

(26:43):
they provided themselves with spelling books. These were mostly the
cast off books of their young masters or mistresses. I
taught it first on our own farm. All were impressed
with the necessity of keeping the matter as private as possible,
for the fate of the Saint Michael's attempt was notorious
and fresh in the minds of all our pious masters,

(27:04):
that Saint Michael's must not know that a few of
their dusky brothers were learning to read the Word of God,
lest they should come down upon us with the lash
and chain. We might have met to drink whiskey, to wrestle, fight,
and to do other unseemly things, with no fear of
interruption from the saints or the sinners of Saint Michael's.
But to meet for the purpose of improving the mind

(27:26):
and heart by learning to read the sacred scriptures was
esteemed a most dangerous nuisance to be instantly stopped. The
slaveholders of Saint Michael's, like slaveholders elsewhere, would always prefer
to see the slaves engaged in degrading sports, rather than
to see them acting like moral and accountable beings. Had
anyone asked a religious white man in Saint Michael's twenty

(27:47):
years ago the names of three men in that town
whose lives were most after the pattern of our Lord
and Master Jesus Christ. The first three would have been
as follows. Garrison West class leader, Write Fairbanks class leader,
Thomas All class leader. And yet these were the men
who ferociously rushed in upon my Sabbath school at Saint Michael's,

(28:10):
armed with mob like missiles, and forbad our, meeting again
on pain of having our backs made blody by the lash.
This same Garrison Rest was my class leader, and I
must say I thought him a Christian until it took
part in breaking up my school. He led me no
more after that. The plea for this outrage was then,
as it is now and at all times, the danger

(28:32):
to good order. If the slaves learned to read, they
would learn something else, and something worse. The piece of
slavery would be disturbed. Slavery would be endangered. I leave
the reader to characterize a system which is endangered by
such causes. I do not dispute the soundness of the reasoning.
It is perfectly sound. And if slavery be right, sabbath

(28:52):
schools for teaching slaves to read the Bible are wrong.
And ought to be put down. These Christian class leaders
were to dissects consistent. They had settled the question that
slavery is right, and by that standard they determined that
Sabbath schools are wrong. To be sure, they were Protestant
and held to the great Protestant right of every man
to search the scriptures for himself. But then to all

(29:14):
general rules, there are exceptions, how convenient, what crimes may
not be committed under the doctrine of the last remark.
But my dear class leading Methodist brethren did not condescend
to give me a reason for breaking up the Sabbath
school at Saint Michael's. It was enough that they had
determined upon its destruction. I am, however, digressing. After getting

(29:36):
the school cleverly into operation the second time, holding it
in the woods behind the barn and in the shade
of trees, I succeeded in inducing a free colored man
who lived several miles from our house, to permit me
to hold my school in a room at his house.
He very kindly gave me this liberty, but he incurred
much peril in doing so, for the assemblage was an

(29:57):
unlawful one. I shall not mention the name of this man,
for it might even now subject him to persecution, although
the offenses were committed more than twenty years ago. I
had at one time more than forty scholars, all of
the right sort, and many of them succeeded in learning
to read. I've met several slaves from Maryland who were
once my scholars, and to obtain their freedom, I doubt

(30:19):
not partly in consequence of the ideas imparted to them
in that school. I have had various employments during my
short life, but I look back to none with more
satisfaction than to that afforded by my Sunday school. An
attachment deep and lasting sprung up between me and my
persecuted pupils, which made my parting from them intensely grievous.

(30:39):
And when I think that most of these dear souls
are yet shut up in this abject thraldom, I'm overwhelmed
with grief. Besides my Sunday School, I devoted three evenings
a week to my fellow slaves during the winter that
the reader reflect upon the fact that in this Christian country,
men and women are hiding from professors of religion and
barns in the woods and fields in order to learn
to read the whole. Those dear souls who came to

(31:03):
my sabbath school came not because it was popular or
reputable to attend such a place, where they came under
the liability of having forty stripes late on their naked backs.
Every moment they spent in my school. They were under
this terrible liability, and in this respect I was a
shaer with them. Their minds had been cramped and starved
by their cruel masters. The light of education had been

(31:25):
completely excluded, and their hard earnings had been taken to
educate their master's children. I felt that delight in circumventing
the tyrants and in blessing the victims of their curses.
The year at mister Freeland's passed off very smoothly to
outward seeming not a blow was given me during the
whole year. To the credit of mister Freeland, irreligious though
he was, it must be stated that he was the

(31:46):
best master I ever had until I became my own
master and assumed for myself as I had a right
to do, the responsibility of my own existence and the
exercise of my own powers. For much of the happiness
or absence of misery with which I passed this year
with mister Freeland. I am indebted to the genial temper,
and art and friendship of my brother slaves. They were

(32:08):
every one of them, manly, generous, and brave. Yes, I
say they were brave, and I will add fine looking.
It is seldom the lot of mortals to have truer
and better friends than were the slaves on this farm.
It is not uncommon to charge slaves with great treachery
toward each other, and to believe them incapable of confiding
in each other. But I must say that I never loved, esteemed,

(32:29):
or confided in men more than I did in these.
They were as true as steel, and no band of
brothers could have been more loving. There were no mean
advantages taken of each other, as is sometimes the case
where slaves are situated, as we were, no tackling, no
giving each other bad names. To mister Freeland, and no
elevating one at the expense of the other. We never

(32:50):
undertook to do anything of any importance which was likely
to affect each other without mutual consultation. We were generally
a unit and moved together. Thoughts and sentiments were exchange
between us, which might well be called very incendiary by
oppress's in tyrants. And perhaps the time has not even
now come when it is safe to unfold all the
flying suggestions which arise in the minds of intelligent slaves.

(33:14):
Several of my friends and brothers, if yet alive, are
still in some part of the house of bondage, and
though twenty years have passed away, the suspicious malice of
slavery might punish them for even listening to my thoughts.
The slaveholder, kind or cruel, is a slaveholder still, the
every hour violator of the just and inalienable rights of man,
and he is therefore every hour silently wedding the knife

(33:37):
of vengeance for his own throat. He never less a
syllable incommendation of the fathers of this republic, nor denounces
any attempted oppression of himself without inviting the knife to
his own throat and asserting the rights of rebellion for
his own slaves. The year is ended, and we are
now in the midst of the Christmas holidays, which are
kept this year as last. According to the general description

(33:59):
previously given in a chapter eighteen