Francis
Fredric was
born a slave in Fauquier County, Virginia. When he was fourteen years
old, Fredric's master moved to Mason County, Kentucky. Befriended
by his master's wife, Fredric became a well-treated house
slave. However, after attending a prayer-meeting he was so badly
flogged he decided to run away. He was free for nine weeks but was
captured and received 107 strokes of the whip.
With the support of a local farmer who opposed slavery, Fredric was
put in touch with the Underground Railroad
who managed to safely get him to Canada. Francis Fredric later moved
to Liverpool in England where he published
his autobiography, Fifty
Years of Slavery,
in 1863.
(1)
Francis Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
Many masters possessing large plantations, and some hundreds
of slaves, being desirous to divest themselves as much as possible
of the cares of managing the estate, hire white men, at a salary of
from 1,200 to 1,400 dollars per annum, to look after the whole property.
These are the best and most humane overseers. But other slave proprietors,
in order to save the cost of an overseer, but chiefly to exact as
much work as possible out of the niggers, make a nigger an overseer,
who if he does not cruelly work the slaves is threatened with a flogging,
which the master cannot give to a white man. In order to save his
own back the slave overseer very often behaves in the most brutal
manner to the niggers under him.
My grandmother's master was one of the hard kind. He had made her
son an overseer. Consequently, my grandmother having committed the
crime of attending a prayer-meeting, was ordered to be flogged by
her own son. This was done by tying her hands before her with a rope,
and then fastening the rope to a peach tree, and laying bare the back.
Her own son was then made to give her forty lashes with a thong of
a raw cow's-hide, her master standing over her the whole time blaspheming
and threatening what he would do if her son did not lay it on.
(2)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
My master had about 100 slaves, engaged chiefly
in the cultivation of tobacco, this and wheat being the staple produce
of Virginia at that time. The slaves had to work very hard in digging
the ground with what is termed a grub hoe. The slaves leave their
huts quite early in the morning, and work until late at night, especially
in the spring and fall. I have known them very often, when my master
has been away drinking, work all night long, husking Indian corn to
put into cribs.
(3)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
Slaves
every Monday morning have a certain quantity of Indian corn handed
out to them; this they grind with a handmill, and boil or use the
meal as they like. The adult slaves have one salt herring allowed
for breakfast, during the winter time. The breakfast hour is usually
from ten to eleven o'clock. The dinner consists generally of black-eyed
peas soup, as it is called. About a quart of peas is boiled in a large
pan, and a small piece of meat, just to flavour the soup, is put into
the pan. The next day it would be bean soup, and another day it would
be Indian meal broth. The dinner hour is about two or three o'clock;
the soup being served out to the men and women in bowls; but the children
feed like pigs out of troughs, and being
supplied sparingly, invariably fight and quarrel with one another
over their meals.
I remember when a boy I did not care how I was fed, all I was anxious
about was to get sufficient. This mode of living is no doubt adopted
for the express purpose of brutalizing the slaves as much as possible,
and making the utmost difference between them and the white man. Slaves
live in huts made of logs of wood covered with wood, the men and women
sleeping indiscriminately together in the same room. But English people
would be perfectly surprised to see the natural modesty and delicacy
of the women thus huddled together; every possible effort being exerted,
under such circumstances, to preserve appearances - an unchaste female
slave being very rarely found.
(4)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
I
had arrived at about my fourteenth year of age, without having been
engaged in any definite employment, running errands, tending the corn-fields,
looking after the cattle, in short, doing anything and everything
in turns about the plantation. My master had determined to give up
his plantation in Virginia, and to go to another in Kentucky. I shall
never forget the heart-rending scenes which I witnessed before we
started. Men and women down
on their knees begging to be purchased to go with their wives or husbands,
who worked for my master, children crying and imploring not to have
their parents sent away from them; but all their beseeching and tears
were of no avail. They were ruthlessly separated, most of them for
ever. Still, after so many years, their wailings and lamentations
and piercing cries sound in my ears whenever I think of Virginia.
(5)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
From Welland we took boats
to Maysville, Kentucky. My master had bought a farm in Mason County,
about twenty miles from Maysville. When we arrived there we found
a great deal of uncultivated
land belonging to the farm. The first thing the negroes did was to
clear the land of bush, and then to sow blue grass seed for the cattle
to feed upon. They then fenced in the woods for what is called woodland
pasture. The neighbouring planters came and showed my master how to
manage his new estate. They told the slaves how to tap the sugar-tree
to let the liquid out, and to boil it down so as to get the sugar
from it. The slaves built a great many log-huts; for my master, at
the next slave-market, intended to purchase more slaves.
I
was taken into the house to learn to wait at table--a fortunate chance
for me, since I had a better opportunity of getting food. I shall
never forget my first day in the kitchen. I was delighted to see some
bread in the pantry. I took piece after piece to skim the fat from
the top of the boiling-pot, overjoyed that I could have sufficient.
(6)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
My mistress took a fancy to
me, and began to teach me some English words and phrases, for I only
knew how to say "dis" and "dat," "den"
and "dere," and a few such monosyllables. It is a saying
among the masters, the bigger fool the better nigger. Hence all knowledge,
except what pertains to work, is systematically kept from the field-slaves.
My mistress made me stand before her to learn from her how I was to
take a message. "Now, Francis," she said, "I want to
make you quite a ladies' man. You must always be very polite to the
ladies. You must say, 'I will go and tell the ladies.'" I repeated
some hundreds of times, "I will go and tell the ladies."
After some days' training, she thought she had made me sufficiently
perfect to deliver a message. "Francis!" "Yes, marm,"
I said. "Go and tell Mrs.---- that I shall feel obliged by her
calling upon me at half-past twelve o'clock to-morrow." "Yes,
marm," I said; and she made me repeat the message some dozens
of times. When perfect, as she thought, away I went, repeating all
the way, feel
obliged by your calling upon her at half-past twelve; Missis will,"
&c., until I met a gentleman on the road who had seen and heard
me repeating the words over and over again before I saw him. He called
out, "Whom are you talking to?" I jumped, and every word
jumped out of me, for I forgot it all. I ran back to my mistress and
told her I had forgotten it, but did not tell her the reason why.
"Just as I thought," she said. The teaching
re-commenced, and, after some scores of repetitions of the message,
I started again, determined that no one should hear me. I went whispering
the words all the way as fast as ever I could, hastened into the lady's
house, and hurriedly said the words over two or three times to the
lady, and then ran back.
Upon one occasion my mistress's sister said that she wanted me to
do some washing, and gave me a dress to wash. I picked it up, and
put it on the wash-board, and immediately tore it on purpose. She
had left the room to fetch some thing for me to wash it with, and,
returning in a minute, "Francis," she said, "I hope
you have not begun to wash that dress yet?" "Oh, yes, missis,
I have," I answered, holding up the
torn dress at the same time. "You blockhead!" she said,
"I shall never be able to teach you anything; I can never drive
anything into your thick skull. I have a good mind to take a stick
and kill you, you worthless good-for-nothing." But I was sufficiently
cunning by this stratagem to escape what appeared to
me the degrading womanly occupation of washing.
She attempted to teach me to milk the cow. By no
possible ingenuity could she, as she thought, make me learn the right
side of the cow to milk upon; consequently, the cow invariably kicked
when I was on the wrong side, and upset the milk-pail. I saw one day
some cotton drying by the fire; I thought I would try whether I could
make it blaze, thinking, if it did, I could easily put it out. I lit
a stick, and set the cotton on fire. Every one in and about the house
rushed to the kitchen to extinguish the flame; after some time they
succeeded. I told my mistress that a spark had fallen upon it and
made it blaze. This story seemed to satisfy her at the time. Some
weeks afterwards my mistress called me into her room, and gave me
some treacle and bread, and asked me if it was sweet. "Yers,
missis," I said. "We are very good friends now, are we not?"
"Yers, missis." She gave me two more pieces. "Now,
Francis," she said, "don't friends always tell one another
the truth?" "Yers, missis." "Don't friends tell
each other every thought?" "Yers, missis." "Now,
Francis," she added, fixing her eyes fully upon mine, "did
you not set fire to the cotton?" "Ye-ye-yers, missis,"
I replied. "Now you shall have a good whipping for your lies
and for setting fire to the cotton," she said; and sure enough
I was flogged right soundly.
(7)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
Two
slaves, who were perhaps not so completely cowed as the rest, said
to my master, who was about to flog them, "No, massa, we not
going to be flogged so much, we won't submit." "What is
that you say?" my master said, starting back. They repeated,
"We are not going to allow you to beat us as you have done."
"How will you prevent it?" he said. "You'll see, you'll
see, massa," speaking half threateningly. He was evidently afraid
of them. When they went home at night he spoke mildly to them, and
told them, "he only wanted them to do their work, that it would
be better if they could get on in the fields without him. Don't hurry
yourselves, my boys."
For two or three days he never went much among them, and
when he did he spoke in a very quiet, subdued manner. But mounted
negroes were sent with letters to all the plantations around. The
slaves had been sent to a species of barn where they shell the Indian
corn. Suddenly above a hundred slaveholders, armed with revolvers,
marched from different points, and at one time, evidently agreed upon,
surrounded the place where the negroes were. All the slaves were ordered
out, and the two who had refused to be flogged were made to strip,
and my master first had one tied up, and flogged him as hard as he
could for some time, the poor slave calling out, "Oh, pray, massa!
Oh, pray, massa!"
My master, pausing to take breath, one of the slaveholders said, "I
would not flog him in that way, I would put him on a blacksmith's
fire, and have the slaves to hold him until I blew the bellows to
roast him alive." Then my master started again and flogged until
the poor fellow was one mass of blood and raw flesh. The other was
tied up and served in a similar manner, one of the slaveholders saying
he ought to be tied to a tree and burnt alive. And now I would ask,
How can an unarmed, an unorganized, degraded, cowed set of negroes
prevent this treatment? The slaveholders can and do flog them to death,
and nothing more is thought of it than of a dog being killed.
(8)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
I
was about twenty-eight or thirty years of age when my old master was
seized with a fever. He was upwards of seventy years of age, and,
prior to this, had been a healthy man. When he was taken ill, the
family wished to send for a doctor. "No," he said, "I
know it is of no use; I shall die."
My young master now was about twenty-four or twenty-five years of
age; he did not seem to mourn much for his lost father, but said,
"You slaves have been living upon white bread, but I will soon
teach you something different from that. You shall now have the treatment
proper for niggers. I have been wishing for some time to tan your
hides for you." Of course his discourse was interlarded with
oaths and curses, with which I cannot pollute my page. I soon began
to wish that I was a field-hand, for day by day he was drunk and hanging
about the kitchen.
I began to have a terrible life of it. A few years
before his father's death, he had led a riotous, dissipated life,
losing money by gambling, and then borrowing. All his neighbours were
astonished at the amount of his debts, for the sheriff's officers
were constantly on the premises. No doubt the state of his circumstances
made him drink more.
Aunt Aggy was the first slave sold; she had a little
boy eight or nine years of age, and when she was driven to the chained
gang on the road he ran after her, crying, "Mother, mother; oh
my mother." My master ordered one of the slaves to fetch him
the waggon whip. He took it and lashed the poor little fellow, round
the neck and legs until he fell down, then he flogged him until he
got up again, and still my master cut at him until the boy shrieked
out dreadfully, writhing in agony, the blood streaming down his little
legs. His mother was driven off with the gang, and her little boy
never saw her more.
In three or four weeks after this, a "trader"
was seen talking to my master. The slaves were in a state of consternation,
saying, "Is it me? Is it me? Who'll go next?" One of the
slaves said, "See, they are selling the pigs to go to Virginia.
They don't seem to care, but we can't be like pigs, we can't help
thinking about our wives and children."
The slaves were all taking their dinners in their
cabins about two o'clock. My master, the "trader," and three
other white men walked up to the cabins, and entered one of them.
My master pointed first to one, and then to another, and three were
immediately handcuffed, and made to stand out in the yard. One of
the slaves sold had a wife and five children on another plantation;
another slave had a wife and three children; and the other had a wife
and one child. My master, the dealer, and the others then went into
another large cabin, where there were eight or nine women feeding
the children with Indian-meal-broth. My master said, "Take your
pick of the women."
The "trader" said, "I'll give you
800 dollars for that one." My master said, "I'll take it."
The "trader," touching her with a long cane he had in his
hand, said, "Walk yourself out here, and stand with those men."
She jumped up and laid her child out of her arms in an old board-cradle,
and walked to the chained men. My master said, "Take your pick
of the rest."
(9)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
Even
his own child, by a black woman or a mulatto, when the child is called
a quadroon, and is very often as white as any English child, is frequently
sold to degradation. There are thousands upon thousands of mulattoes
and quadroons, all children of slaveholders, in a state of slavery.
Slavery is bad enough for the black, but it is worse, if worse can
be, for the mulatto or the quadroon to be subjected to the utmost
degradation and hardship, and to know that it is their own fathers
who are treating them as brutes, especially when they contrast their
usage with the pampered luxury in which they see his lawful children
revel, who are not whiter, and very often not so good-looking as the
quadroon.
(10)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
I had been flogged for going to a prayer-meeting, and, before my back
was well, my master was going to whip me
again. I determined, therefore, to run away. It was in the morning,
just after my master had got his breakfast, I was ordered to the back
of the premises to strip. My master had got the thong of raw cow's-hide;
when off I ran, towards the swamp.
He saw me running, and instantly called
three bloodhounds, kept for the purpose, and put them on my track.
I saw them coming up to me, when, turning round to them, I clapped
my hands, and called them by name; for I had been in the habit of
feeding them. I urged them on, as if in pursuit of something else.
They instantly passed me, and flew upon the cattle. I saw my master
calling them off, and returning. No doubt, he perceived it was useless
to pursue me, with dogs which knew me so well.
I now hurried on further, into a dismal swamp,
named the Bear's Wallow; and, at last, wearied and exhausted, I sat
down at the foot of a tree, to rest, and think what had best be done.
I knelt down, and prayed earnestly to the Almighty, to protect and
direct me what to do. I rose from my knees, and looked stealthily
around, afraid that the dogs and men were still in pursuit. I listened,
and listened again, to the slightest sound, made by the flapping of
the wings of a bird, or the rustling of the wild animals among the
underwood; and then proceeded further into the swamp. My path was
interrupted, every now and then, by large sheets of stagnant, putrid,
green-looking water, from which a most sickening, fetid smell arose;
the birds, in their flight, turning away from it. The snakes crawled
sluggishly across the ground, for it was autumn time, when, it is
said, they are surcharged with their deadly poison.
When awake in the morning, I tried to plan out
some way of escape, over the Ohio River, which I knew was about thirty
miles from where I was. But I could not swim; and I was well aware
that my master would set a watch upon every ferry or ford, and that
the whole country would be put on the alert, to catch me; for the
planters, for self-protection, take almost as much interest in capturing
another man's slaves, as they do their own.
At length, driven by hunger and desperation, I
approached the edge of the swamp; when I was startled by seeing a
young woman ploughing. I knew her, and called her by name. She was
frightened, and shocked at my appearance - worn, from hunger, almost
to a skeleton; and haggard, from the want of sound sleep. I begged
of her to go to get me something to eat. She, at first, expressed
her fears, and began to tell me of the efforts which my master was
making to capture me. He had offered $500 reward - had placed a watch
all along the Ohio River - had informed all the neighbouring planters,
who had cautioned all their slaves not to give me any food or other
assistance, and he had made it known, that, when I should be caught,
he would give me a thousand lashes.
The woman went, and fetched me about two ounces of bread, of which
I eat a small portion, wishing to keep the rest to eat in the swamp,
husbanding it, as much as possible. When she told me that I should
receive a thousand lashes, I felt horrified, and wept bitterly. The
girl wept also. I had seen a slave, who had escaped to the Northern
States, and, after an absence of four years, had been brought back
again, and flogged, in the presence of all
the slaves, assembled from the neighbouring plantations. His body
was frightfully lacerated. I went to see him, two or three weeks after
the flogging. When they were anointing his back, his screams were
awful. He died, soon afterwards--a tall, fine young fellow, six feet
high, in the prime of life, thus brutally murdered.
(11)
Francis
Fredric was caught after being free for nine weeks.
At
the end of about a month my master, one morning, came into the kitchen;
he had a rope and a cow-hide whip in his hands. "Francis!"
he said. "Yers, massa," I answered. "Come this way,
I will now settle with you; you have been
away nine weeks, and I will now reckon with you." I dropped on
my knees, and begged hard for mercy. But all in vain. He produced
a revolver, and said, "Look here, if you attempt to run away,
I will shoot you as sure as you are alive. Strip instantly."
I took my clothes off, and he fastened me to an apple-tree behind
the house, and flogged me until he was tired. I could not cry any
more. The slaves who were watching me told me afterwards that I had
received 107 Lashes. He untied me, I could scarcely walk. For one
cent he swore he would shoot me. He threatened, if ever I attempted
to do so again, he would certainly do for me. I crawled into the kitchen.
I thought I should die.
In the evening my mistress came into the kitchen, and said, "Francis,
you have had a very severe flogging. I could
not prevent it. I hope you will never attempt to run away again. I
thought your master would have killed you (she had been watching the
flogging from a window); you must not be sullen or sulky to him in
any way, or he will flog you again. I shall send you something into
the kitchen to rub your back with," and after some more advice
and cautions she went away.
(12)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
Since
my first attempt to escape I was so uniformly treated badly, that
my life would have been insupportable
if I had not been soothed by the kind words of the good abolitionist
planter who had first conveyed to me a true knowledge of religion.
I had been flogged, and went one day to show him the state in which
I was. He asked me what I wanted him to do. I said, "To get me
away to Canada."
He sat for full twenty minutes thoughtfully, and
at last said, "Now, if I promise to take you away out of all
this, you must not mention a word to any one. Don't breathe a syllable
to your mother or sisters, or it will be betrayed." Oh, how my
heart jumped for joy at this promise. I felt new life come into me.
Visions of happiness flitted before my mind. And then I thought before
the next day he might change his mind, and I was miserable again.
I solemnly assured him I would say nothing to any one. "Come
to me," he said, "on the Friday night about ten or eleven
o'clock; I will wait till you come. Don't bring any clothes with you
except those you have on. But bring any money you can get." I
said I would obey him in every respect.
I went home and passed an anxious day. I walked
out to my poor old mother's hut, and saw her and my sisters. How I
longed to tell them, and bid them farewell. I hesitated several times
when I thought I should never see them more. I turned back again and
again to look at my mother. I knew she would be flogged, old as she
was, for my escaping. I could foresee how my master would stand over
her with the lash to extort from her my hiding-place. I was her only
son left. How she would suffer torture on my account, and be distressed
that I had left her for ever until we should meet hereafter in heaven
I hoped.
At length I walked rapidly away, as if to leave
my thoughts behind me, and arrived at my kind benefactor's house a
little after eleven o'clock. He said but little, and seemed restless.
He took some rugs and laid them at the bottom of the waggon, and covered
me with some more. Soon we were on our way to Maysville, which was
about twenty miles from his house. The horses trotted on rapidly,
and I lay overjoyed at my chance of escape. When we stopped at Maysville,
I remained for some time perfectly quiet, listening to every sound.
At last I heard a gentleman's voice, saying, "Where is he? where
is he?" and then he put in his hand and felt me. I started, but
my benefactor told me it was all right, it was a friend. "This
gentleman," he added, "will take care of you; you must go
to his house." I got out of the waggon and shook my deliverer
by the hand with a very, very grateful heart, you may be sure; for
I knew the risk he had run on my account.
He wished me every success, and committed me to
his friend, whom I accompanied to his house, and was received with
the utmost kindness by his wife, who asked me if I was a Christian
man. I answered yes. She took me up into a garret and brought me some
food. Her little daughters shook hands with me. She spoke of the curse
of slavery to the land. "I am an abolitionist," she said,
"although in a slaveholding country. The work of the Lord will
not go on as long as slavery is carried on here." Every possible
attention was paid to me to soothe my troubled mind. The following
night the gentleman and his son left the house about ten o'clock.
A little after twelve o'clock the gentleman returned, and said he
had got a boat and I was to go with him. His lady bid me farewell,
and told me to put my trust in the Lord, in whose hands my friends
were, and asked me to remember them in my prayers, since they had
hazarded everything for me, and, if discovered, they would be cruelly
treated. I was soon rowed across the river, which is about a mile
wide in that place.
The son remained with me in the skiff whilst his
father went to a neighbouring village to bring some one to take charge
of me. After some time, he brought a friend, who told me never to
mention the name of any one who had helped me. He took me to his house
outside the town, where I had some refreshment, and remained about
half-an-hour. A waggon came up, and I was stowed away, and driven
about twenty miles that night, being well guarded by eight or ten
young men with revolvers.
It would do any real Christian man good to see
the enthusiasm and determination of these young Abolitionists. Their
whole heart and soul are in the work. A dozen such men would have
defied a hundred slaveholders. From having seen over and over again
slaves dragged back chained through their country, and having heard
the tales of horrible treatment of the poor hopeless captives, some
having been flogged to death, others burnt alive, with their heads
downwards, over a slow fire, others covered with tar and set on fire,
these noble, courageous, self-sacrificing men have been so wrought
upon, that they are heroes of the highest stamp, and I verily believe
they would willingly lay down their lives rather than allow one fugitive
slave to be taken from them.
(13)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
I
came at last to a large station of what is called the Underground
Railway, about 160 miles from the banks of the Ohio river. At
this large station I remained over the winter, from November to the
middle of May. I had now got pretty well assured of my safety, and
had the range of a large house.
About the middle of May, I was sent to Sindusky
city, on the borders of Lake Erie. I heard my friends bargain with
the captain of a steamer to take me across the lake. He said, "Have
you only one? I wish you had a hundred. I would gladly take them over."
A noble, generous-hearted man he was!
I was landed at some town in Michigan, but I forget
the name of the town. The mate took me to an Abolitionist's house,
who said he would forward me on to Canada. From this town I went to
another place in Pennsylvania, and from thence to a minister's house
in York State. He said, for fifteen miles round they were all Abolitionists,
and I was perfectly safe; that, although he was acting contrary to
the Fugitive Slave Law, he did it with pleasure, since he believed
that law to be contrary to the law of God, and he willingly trampled
it under his feet; that he had had at least thirty fugitive slaves
before me.
After a few months, the Abolitionist gentlemen
held a Meeting, and I told them some of my sufferings in slavery.
They prayed with me; and I remember an old Quaker lady, shaking me
by the hand, and speaking kindly, said, "Thee must not, when
thee gets to Canada, say, 'I have been smart.' Thee must remember,
that it is the Lord who has been thy friend. Ask Him to give thee
a portion of His Spirit; and give Him the glory and honour."
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