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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

Section 12 of 17 - Table of Contents
CHAPTER X


  I had left Master Thomas's house, and went to live
with Mr. Covey, on the 1st of January, 1833.  I was
now, for the first time in my life, a field hand.  In
my new employment, I found myself even more
awkward than a country boy appeared to be in a
large city.  I had been at my new home but one
week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whip-
ping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run,
and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger.
The details of this affair are as follows: Mr. Covey
sent me, very early in the morning of one of our
coldest days in the month of January, to the woods,
to get a load of wood.  He gave me a team of un-
broken oxen.  He told me which was the in-hand ox,
and which the off-hand one.  He then tied the end
of a large rope around the horns of the in-hand ox,
and gave me the other end of it, and told me, if
the oxen started to run, that I must hold on upon
the rope.  I had never driven oxen before, and of
course I was very awkward.  I, however, succeeded in
getting to the edge of the woods with little diffi-
culty; but I had got a very few rods into the woods,
when the oxen took fright, and started full tilt, carry-
ing the cart against trees, and over stumps, in the
most frightful manner.  I expected every moment
that my brains would be dashed out against the
trees.  After running thus for a considerable dis-
tance, they finally upset the cart, dashing it with
great force against a tree, and threw themselves into
a dense thicket.  How I escaped death, I do not
know.  There I was, entirely alone, in a thick wood,
in a place new to me.  My cart was upset and shat-
tered, my oxen were entangled among the young
trees, and there was none to help me.  After a long
spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart righted,
my oxen disentangled, and again yoked to the cart.
I now proceeded with my team to the place where
I had, the day before, been chopping wood, and
loaded my cart pretty heavily, thinking in this way
to tame my oxen.  I then proceeded on my way
home.  I had now consumed one half of the day.  I
got out of the woods safely, and now felt out of
danger.  I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate;
and just as I did so, before I could get hold of my
ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed through the
gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of
the cart, tearing it to pieces, and coming within a
few inches of crushing me against the gate-post.  Thus
twice, in one short day, I escaped death by the
merest chance.  On my return, I told Mr. Covey
what had happened, and how it happened.  He or-
dered me to return to the woods again immediately.
I did so, and he followed on after me.  Just as I got
into the woods, he came up and told me to stop my
cart, and that he would teach me how to trifle away
my time, and break gates.  He then went to a large
gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches,
and, after trimming them up neatly with his pocket-
knife, he ordered me to take off my clothes.  I made
him no answer, but stood with my clothes on.  He
repeated his order.  I still made him no answer, nor
did I move to strip myself.  Upon this he rushed
at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my
clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his
switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks
visible for a long time after.  This whipping was the
first of a number just like it, and for similar of-
fences.

  I lived with Mr. Covey one year.  During the first
six months, of that year, scarce a week passed with-
out his whipping me.  I was seldom free from a sore
back.  My awkwardness was almost always his ex-
cuse for whipping me.  We were worked fully up
to the point of endurance.  Long before day we were
up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day
we were off to the field with our hoes and plough-
ing teams.  Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat, but
scarce time to eat it.  We were often less than five
minutes taking our meals.  We were often in the field
from the first approach of day till its last lingering
ray had left us; and at saving-fodder time, midnight
often caught us in the field binding blades.

  Covey would be out with us.  The way he used to
stand it, was this.  He would spend the most of his
afternoons in bed.  He would then come out fresh
in the evening, ready to urge us on with his words,
example, and frequently with the whip.  Mr. Covey
was one of the few slaveholders who could and did
work with his hands.  He was a hard-working man.
He knew by himself just what a man or a boy could
do.  There was no deceiving him.  His work went on
in his absence almost as well as in his presence; and
he had the faculty of making us feel that he was
ever present with us.  This he did by surprising us.
He seldom approached the spot where we were at
work openly, if he could do it secretly.  He always
aimed at taking us by surprise.  Such was his cunning,
that we used to call him, among ourselves, "the
snake."  When we were at work in the cornfield, he
would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to
avoid detection, and all at once he would rise
nearly in our midst, and scream out, "Ha, ha!
Come, come!  Dash on, dash on!"  This being his
mode of attack, it was never safe to stop a single
minute.  His comings were like a thief in the night.
He appeared to us as being ever at hand.  He was
under every tree, behind every stump, in every bush,
and at every window, on the plantation.  He would
sometimes mount his horse, as if bound to St. Mi-
chael's, a distance of seven miles, and in half an
hour afterwards you would see him coiled up in
the corner of the wood-fence, watching every motion
of the slaves.  He would, for this purpose, leave his
horse tied up in the woods.  Again, he would some-
times walk up to us, and give us orders as though
he was upon the point of starting on a long journey,
turn his back upon us, and make as though he was
going to the house to get ready; and, before he would
get half way thither, he would turn short and crawl
into a fence-corner, or behind some tree, and there
watch us till the going down of the sun.

  Mr. Covey's FORTE consisted in his power to de-
ceive.  His life was devoted to planning and perpe-
trating the grossest deceptions.  Every thing he pos-
sessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made
conform to his disposition to deceive.  He seemed
to think himself equal to deceiving the Almighty.
He would make a short prayer in the morning, and
a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem,
few men would at times appear more devotional
than he.  The exercises of his family devotions were
always commenced with singing; and, as he was a
very poor singer himself, the duty of raising the
hymn generally came upon me.  He would read his
hymn, and nod at me to commence.  I would at
times do so; at others, I would not.  My non-com-
pliance would almost always produce much confu-
sion.  To show himself independent of me, he would
start and stagger through with his hymn in the most
discordant manner.  In this state of mind, he prayed
with more than ordinary spirit.  Poor man! such was
his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily
believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the
solemn belief, that he was a sincere worshipper of
the most high God; and this, too, at a time when
he may be said to have been guilty of compelling
his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery.  The
facts in the case are these:  Mr. Covey was a poor
man; he was just commencing in life; he was only
able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact,
he bought her, as he said, for A BREEDER.  This woman
was named Caroline.  Mr. Covey bought her from
Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St. Mi-
chael's.  She was a large, able-bodied woman, about
twenty years old.  She had already given birth to one
child, which proved her to be just what he wanted.
After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr.
Samuel Harrison, to live with him one year; and him
he used to fasten up with her every night!  The re-
sult was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable
woman gave birth to twins.  At this result Mr. Covey
seemed to be highly pleased, both with the man and
the wretched woman.  Such was his joy, and that of
his wife, that nothing they could do for Caroline
during her confinement was too good, or too hard,
to be done.  The children were regarded as being
quite an addition to his wealth.

  If at any one time of my life more than another,
I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery,
that time was during the first six months of my stay
with Mr. Covey.  We were worked in all weathers.
It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain,
blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the
field.  Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order
of the day than of the night.  The longest days were
too short for him, and the shortest nights too long
for him.  I was somewhat unmanageable when I first
went there, but a few months of this discipline
tamed me.  Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me.  I
was broken in body, soul, and spirit.  My natural
elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the
disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that
lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery
closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed
into a brute!

  Sunday was my only leisure time.  I spent this in
a sort of beast-like stupor, between sleep and wake,
under some large tree.  At times I would rise up, a
flash of energetic freedom would dart through my
soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that
flickered for a moment, and then vanished.  I sank
down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that
of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of
hope and fear.  My sufferings on this plantation seem
now like a dream rather than a stern reality.

  Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesa-
peake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with
sails from every quarter of the habitable globe.
Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so
delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so
many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me
with thoughts of my wretched condition.  I have of-
ten, in the deep stillness of a summer's Sabbath,
stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble
bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
eye, the countless number of sails moving off to
the mighty ocean.  The sight of these always affected
me powerfully.  My thoughts would compel utter-
ance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty,
I would pour out my soul's complaint, in my rude
way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of
ships:--

  "You are loosed from your moorings, and are free;
I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!  You move
merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before
the bloody whip!  You are freedom's swift-winged
angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in
bands of iron!  O that I were free!  O, that I were
on one of your gallant decks, and under your pro-
tecting wing!  Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid
waters roll.  Go on, go on.  O that I could also go!
Could I but swim!  If I could fly!  O, why was I born
a man, of whom to make a brute!  The glad ship
is gone; she hides in the dim distance.  I am left in
the hottest hell of unending slavery.  O God, save
me!  God, deliver me!  Let me be free!  Is there any
God?  Why am I a slave?  I will run away.  I will not
stand it.  Get caught, or get clear, I'll try it.  I had
as well die with ague as the fever.  I have only one
life to lose.  I had as well be killed running as die
standing.  Only think of it; one hundred miles
straight north, and I am free!  Try it?  Yes!  God
helping me, I will.  It cannot be that I shall live
and die a slave.  I will take to the water.  This very
bay shall yet bear me into freedom.  The steam-
boats steered in a north-east course from North
Point.  I will do the same; and when I get to the
head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and
walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania.
When I get there, I shall not be required to have a
pass; I can travel without being disturbed.  Let but
the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I
am off.  Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under the
yoke.  I am not the only slave in the world.  Why
should I fret?  I can bear as much as any of them.
Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to
some one.  It may be that my misery in slavery will
only increase my happiness when I get free.  There
is a better day coming."

  Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak
to myself; goaded almost to madness at one mo-
ment, and at the next reconciling myself to my
wretched lot.

  I have already intimated that my condition was
much worse, during the first six months of my stay
at Mr. Covey's, than in the last six.  The circum-
stances leading to the change in Mr. Covey's course
toward me form an epoch in my humble history.
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you
shall see how a slave was made a man.  On one of
the hottest days of the month of August, 1833, Bill
Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli, and
myself, were engaged in fanning wheat.  Hughes was
clearing the fanned wheat from before the fan.  Eli
was turning, Smith was feeding, and I was carrying
wheat to the fan.  The work was simple, requiring
strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely
unused to such work, it came very hard.  About three
o'clock of that day, I broke down; my strength failed
me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head,
attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every
limb.  Finding what was coming, I nerved myself
up, feeling it would never do to stop work.  I stood
as long as I could stagger to the hopper with grain.
When I could stand no longer, I fell, and felt as
if held down by an immense weight.  The fan of
course stopped; every one had his own work to do;
and no one could do the work of the other, and
have his own go on at the same time.
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