Josiah
Henson was
born a slave on 15th June, 1789 in Charles County, Maryland. He was
sold three times before he reached the age of eighteen. By 1830, Henson
had saved up $350 to purchase his freedom. After giving his master
the money he was told that the price had increased to $1,000.
Cheated
of his money, Henson decided to escape with his wife and four children.
After reaching Canada, Henson formed a community where he taught other
ex-slaves how to be successful farmers. His autobiography,
The Life of Josiah
Henson (1849) was read by Harriet
Beecher Stowe and inspired her best-selling novel,
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
(1)
Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson (1849)
My
earliest employments were, to carry buckets of water to the men at
work, and to hold a horse- plough, used for weeding between the rows
of corn. As I grew older and taller, I was entrusted with the care
of master's saddle-horse. Then a hoe was put into my hands, and I
was soon required to do the day's work of a man; and it was not long
before I could do it, at least as well as my associates in misery.
(2)
Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson (1849)
A description of the everyday life of a slave on a southern plantation
illustrates the character and habits of the slave and the slaveholder,
created and perpetuated by their relative position. The principal
food of those upon my master's plantation consisted of corn-meal and
salt herrings; to which was added in summer a little buttermilk, and
the few vegetables which each might raise for himself and his family,
on the little piece of ground which was assigned to him for the purpose,
called a truck- patch.
In ordinary times we had two regular meals in a day: breakfast at
twelve o'clock, after laboring from daylight, and supper when the
work of the remainder of the day was over. In harvest season we had
three. Our dress was of tow-cloth; for the
children, nothing but a shirt; for the older ones a pair of pantaloons
or a gown in addition, according to the sex. Besides these, in the
winter a round jacket or overcoat, a wool-hat once in two or three
years, for the males, and a pair of coarse shoes once a year.
(3)
Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson (1849)
We lodged in log huts, and on the bare ground.
Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled,
like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children. All
ideas of refinement and decency were, of course, out of the question.
We had neither bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds
were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners
and boxed in with boards; a single blanket the only covering. Our
favourite way of sleeping, however, was on a plank, our heads raised
on an old jacket and our feet toasting before the smouldering fire.
The wind whistled and the rain and snow blew in through the cracks,
and the damp earth soaked in the moisture till the floor was miry
as a pig- sty. Such were our houses. In these wretched hovels were
we penned at night, and fed by day; here were the children born and
the sick- - neglected.
(4) In his autobiography, Josiah
Henson described how as a child he saw his father punished for attempting
to protect his wife against the plantation overseer.
The day for the execution of the penalty was appointed. The Negroes
from the neighbouring plantations were summoned to witness the scene.
A powerful blacksmith named Hewes laid on the stripes. Fifty were
given, during which the cries of my father might be heard a mile away,
and then a pause ensured. True, he had struck a white man, but as
valuable property he must not be damaged. Judicious men felt his pulse.
Oh! he could stand the whole. Again and again the throng fell on his
lacerated back. His cries grew fainter and fainter, till a feeble
groan was the only response to the final blows. His head was then
thrust against the post, and his right ear fastened to it with a tack;
a swift pass of a knife, and the bleeding member was left sticking
to the place. Then came a hurrah from the degraded crowd, and the
exclamation, "That's what he's got for striking a white man."
Previous to this affair, my father, from all I can learn, had been
a good-humoured and light-hearted man. His banjo was the life of the
farm. But from this hour he became utterly changed. Sullen, morose,
and dogged, nothing could be done with him. He brooded over his wrongs.
No fear or threats of being sold to the far south - the greatest of
all terrors to the Maryland slave - would render him tractable. So
off he was sent to Alabama. What was his fate neither my mother nor
I have learned.
A whipped slave in the 1860s.
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