The Great Stain

by Noel Rae

  Though often overshadowed by the charismatic Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown was also prominent in his day as an abolitionist lecturer and writer; he was also well-known as a novelist, playwright and historian. Born in Kentucky, Brown escaped to freedom when he was barely twenty. Before that he spent some time working in the internal slave trade, having been “hired out” in St. Louis to a Mr. Walker, “a Negro speculator, or a ‘soul-driver,’ as they are generally called.” Brown was hired because he had worked as a steward on a Mississippi riverboat, and Walker had a gang of slaves he wanted to ship down to the market in New Orleans, the largest in the country.

  “There was on the boat a large room on the lower deck in which the slaves were kept, men and women, promiscuously—all chained two and two, and a strict watch kept that they did not get loose; for cases have occurred in which slaves have got off their chains and made their escape at landing-places, while the boats were taking in wood. And with all our care we lost one woman who had been taken from her husband and children, and having no desire to live without them, in the agony of her soul jumped overboard, and drowned herself.”

  After selling several of the slaves during a stop-over at Natchez, they reached New Orleans. “Here the slaves were placed in a Negro-pen, where those who wished to purchase could call and examine them. The Negro-pen is a small yard surrounded by buildings, from fifteen to twenty feet wide, with the exception of a large gate with iron bars. The slaves are kept in the building during the night, and turned out in the yard during the day. After the best of the stock was sold at private sale at the pen, the balance were taken to the Exchange Coffee-House Auction Room, and sold at public auction.”

  Nine weeks after their return to St. Louis, Mr. Walker had another “cargo of human flesh made up. There was in this lot a number of old men and women, some of them with gray locks. We left St. Louis in the steamboat Carlton, bound for New Orleans. On our way down, and before we reached Rodney, the place where we made our first stop, I had to prepare the old slaves for market. I was ordered to have the old men’s whiskers shaved off, and the gray hairs plucked out where they were not too numerous, in which case he had a preparation of blacking to color it, and with a blacking brush we would put it on. This was new business to me and was performed in a room where the passengers could not see us. These slaves were also taught how old they were by Mr. Walker, and after going through the blacking process they looked ten or fifteen years younger.

  “We proceeded to New Orleans and put the gang in the same Negro-pen which we occupied before. In a short time the planters came flocking to the pen to purchase slaves. Before the slaves were exhibited for sale, they were dressed and driven out into the yard. Some were set to dancing, some to jumping, some to singing, and some to playing cards. This was done to make them appear cheerful and happy. My business was to see that they were placed in those situations before the arrival of the purchasers, and I have often set them to dancing when their cheeks were wet with tears. As slaves were in good demand at that time, they were all soon disposed of, and we again set out for St. Louis.”

  When traveling on land, Mr. Walker “always put up at the best hotel, and kept his wines in his room, for the accommodation of those who came to negotiate with him for the purchase of slaves. One day, while we were at Vicksburg, several gentlemen came to see him for that purpose, and as usual the wine was called for. I took the tray and started round with it, and having accidentally filled some of the glasses too full, the gentlemen spilled the wine on their clothes as they went to drink. Mr. Walker apologized to them for my carelessness, but looked at me as though he would see me again on the subject.

  “The next morning he gave me a note to carry to the jailer, and a dollar in money to give him. I suspected that all was not right, so I went down near the landing where I met a sailor, and, walking up to him, asked if he would be so kind as to read the note for me.” The sailor did so, and said, “This is a note to have you whipped, and says that you have a dollar to pay for it.” The sailor left and, uncertain what to do, Brown “went up to the jail, took a look at it, and walked off again.”

  “While meditating on the subject, I saw a colored man about my size walk up, and the thought struck me in a moment to send him with my note. I walked up to him, and asked him who he belonged to. He said he was a free man, and had been in the city but a short time. I told him I had a note to go into the jail, and get a trunk to carry to one of the steamboats; but was so busily engaged that I could not do it, although I had a dollar to pay for it. He asked me if I would not give him the job. I handed him the note and the dollar, and off he started for the jail.

  “I watched to see that he went in, and as soon as I saw the door close behind him, I walked around the corner and took my station, intending to see how my friend looked when he came out.” After a while, “the young man made his appearance and looked around for me.” Seeing Brown, he began “complaining bitterly, saying that I had played a trick upon him. I denied any knowledge of what the note contained, and asked him what they had done to him.” He replied that “‘they whipped me and took my dollar, and gave me this note.’”

  “He showed me the note which the jailer had given him, telling him to give it to his master. I told him I would give him fifty cents for it—that being all the money I had. He gave it to me and took his money. He had received twenty lashes on his bare back with the Negro-whip.” Brown went back to the hotel where he asked a stranger to read the note to him. It ran: “‘Dear Sir: By your direction I have given your boy twenty lashes. He is a very saucy boy, and tried to make me believe that he did not belong to you, and I put it on him well for lying to me.’”

  In retrospect, Brown was sorry for what he had done. “Had I entertained the same views of right and wrong which I now do, I am sure I should never have practiced the deception upon that poor fellow. I know of no act committed by me while in slavery which I have regretted more than that.”

  For their third trip Brown and Mr. Walker “took the steamboat and went to Jefferson City, a town on the Missouri River. Here we landed and took a stage for the interior of the state. He bought a number of slaves as he passed the different farms and villages. After getting twenty-two or twenty-three men and women, we arrived at St. Charles, a village on the banks of the Missouri. Here he purchased a woman who had a child in her arms, appearing four or five weeks old.

  “Soon after we left St. Charles the young child grew very cross and kept up a noise during the greater part of the day. Mr. Walker complained of its crying several times, and told the mother to stop the child’s d—d noise, or he would. The woman tried to keep the child from crying, but could not. We put up at night with an acquaintance of Mr. Walker, and in the morning, just as we were about to start, the child again commenced crying. Walker stepped up to her [the mother], and told her to give the child to him. The mother tremblingly obeyed. He took the child by one arm, as you would a cat by the leg, walked into the house, and said to the lady, ‘Madam, I will make you a present of this little nigger; it keeps such a noise that I can’t bear it.’

  “‘Thank you, sir,’ said the lady.

  “The mother, as soon as she saw that her child was to be left, ran up to Mr. Walker, and falling upon her knees begged him to let her have her child; she clung around his legs and cried, ‘Oh, my child! My child! Master, do let me have my child! Oh, do, do, do! I will stop its crying if you will only let me have it again.’ Mr. Walker commanded her to return into the ranks with the other slaves. Women who had children were not chained, but those that had none were. As soon as her child was disposed of she was chained in the gang.”

  They arrived once again in New Orleans, where, while still on board the riverboat, Brown witnessed this incident: “In the evening, between seven and eight o’clock, a slave came running down the levee, followed by several men and boys. The whites were crying out, ‘Stop that nigger! Stop that nigger!’ while the poor panting slave, in almost breathless accents, was repeating, ‘I di
d not steal the meat! I did not steal the meat!’ The poor man at last took refuge in the river. The whites who were in pursuit of him ran on board one of the boats to see if they could discover him. They finally espied him under the bow of the steamboat Trenton. They got a pike-pole and tried to drive him from his hiding place. When they would strike at him he would dive under the water. The water was so cold that it soon became evident that he must come out or be drowned.

  “While they were trying to drive him from under the bow of the boat or drown him, he would, in broken and imploring accents, say, ‘I did not steal the meat! I did not steal the meat! My master lives up the river. I want to see my master. I did not steal the meat. Do let me go home to master.’ After punching him, and striking him over the head for some time, he at last sank in the water, to rise no more alive.

  “On the end of the pike-pole with which they were striking him was a hook, which caught in his clothing, and they hauled him up on the bow of the boat. Some said he was dead; others said he was ‘playing possum;’ while others kicked him to make him get up. But it was of no use—he was dead.

  “As soon as they became satisfied of this they commenced leaving, one after another. One of the hands on the boat informed the captain that they had killed the man, and that the dead body was lying on deck. The captain came on deck and said to those who were remaining, ‘You have killed this nigger; now take him off my boat.’ The dead body was dragged on shore and left there. I went on the boat where our gang of slaves were, and during the whole night my mind was occupied with what I had seen. Early in the morning I went on shore to see if the dead body remained there. I found it in the same position that it was left the night before. I watched to see what they would do with it. It was left there until between eight and nine o’clock when a cart which takes up the trash out of the streets came along, and the body was thrown in, and in a few minutes more was covered with dirt which they were removing from the streets.”

  Mary Reynolds, born in Louisiana, claimed to be one hundred years old when she told the story of her life to a Federal Writers’ interviewer:

  “My paw’s name was Tom Vaughn, and he was from the North, born free man and lived and died free to the end of his days. He wasn’t no educated man, but he was what he calls himself a piano man. He told me once he lived in New York and Chicago and he built the insides of pianos and knew how to make them play in tune. He said some white folks from the South told he if he’d come with them to the South he’d find a lot of work to do with pianos in them parts, and he come off with them.

  “He saw my maw on the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick, my massa, he’d buy my maw and her three children with all the money he had, iffen he’d sell her. But Massa was never one to sell any but the old niggers who was past working in the fields and past their breeding times. So my paw married my maw and works the field, same as any other nigger.

  “I was born the same time as Miss Sara Kilpatrick. Dr. Kilpatrick’s first wife and my maw come to their time right together. Miss Sara’s maw died, and they brung Miss Sara to suck with me. It’s a thing we ain’t never forgot. My maw’s name was Sallie, and Miss Sara always looked with kindness on my maw. We sucked till we was a fair size and played together, which wasn’t no common thing. None the other little niggers played with the white children. But Miss Sara loved me so good.

  “I was just about big enough to start playing with a broom to go about sweeping up and not even half doing it when Dr. Kilpatrick sold me. They was a old white man at Trinity, and his wife died and he didn’t have chick or child or slave or nothing. Massa sold me cheap, ’cause he didn’t want Miss Sara to play with no nigger young-un. That old man bought me a big doll and went off and left me all day, with the door open. I just sat on the floor and played with that doll. I used to cry. He’d come home and give me something to eat and then go to bed, and I slept on the foot of the bed with him. I was scared all the time in the dark. He never did close the door.

  “Miss Sara pined and sickened. Massa done what he could, but they wasn’t no pertness in her. She got sicker and sicker, and Massa brung another doctor. He say, ‘You little gal is grieving the life out of her body, and she sure gwine die iffen you don’t do something about it.’ Miss Sara says over and over, ‘I wants Mary.’ Massa say to the doctor, ‘That a little nigger young-un I done sold.’ The doctor tells him he better get me back iffen he wants to save the life of his child. Massa has to give a big plenty more to get me back than what he sold me for, but Miss Sara plumps up right off and grows into fine health.

  “Then Massa marries a rich lady from Mississippi, and they has chillen for company to Miss Sara, and seems like for a time she forgets me.

  “Massa Kilpatrick wasn’t no piddling man. He was a man of plenty. He had a big house with no more style to it than a crib, but it could room plenty people. He was a medicine doctor, and they was rooms in the second story for sick folks what come to lay in. It would take two days to go over all the land he owned. He had cattle and stock and sheep and more’n a hundred slaves and more besides. He bought the best of niggers near every time the speculators came that way. He’d make a swap of the old ones and give money for young ones what could work.

  “Slavery was the worst days was ever seed in the world. They was things past telling, but I got the scars on my old body to show to this day. I seed worse than what happened to me. I seed them put the men and women in the stock with they hands screwed down through holes in the board and they feets tied together and they naked behinds to the world. Solomon the overseer beat them with a big whip and Massa look on. The niggers better not stop in the fields when they hear them yelling. They cut the flesh ’most to the bones, and when they taken some of them out of the stock and put them on the beds, they never got up again.

  “The conch shell blowed afore daylight, and all hands better get out for roll call, or Solomon bust the door down and get them out. It was work, get beatings, and half-fed. They brung the victuals and water to the fields on a slide pulled by a old mule. Plenty times they was only a half barrel water, and it stale and hot, for all us niggers on the hottest days. Mostly we ate pickled pork and corn bread and peas and beans and ’taters. They never was as much as we needed.

  “The times I hated most was picking cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands get sore and crack open and bleed. We’d have a little fire in the fields, and iffen the ones with tender hands couldn’t stand it no longer we run and warm our hands a little bit. When I could steal a ’tater, I used to slip it in the ashes, and when I’d run to the fire I’d take it out and eat it on the sly.

  “In the cabins it was nice and warm. They was built of pine boarding, and they was one long row of them up the hill back of the big house. Near one side of the cabins was a fireplace. They’d bring in two, three big logs and put on the fire, and they’d last near a week. The beds was made out of puncheons fitted in holes bored in the wall, and planks laid ’cross them poles. We had ticking mattresses filled with corn chucks. Sometimes the men build chairs at night. We didn’t know much ’bout having nothing, though.

  “Sometimes Massa let niggers have a little patch. They’d raise ’taters or goobers. They liked to have them to help fill out on the victuals. ’Taters roasted in the ashes was the best-tasting eating I ever had. I could die better satisfied to have just one more ’tater roasted in hot ashes. The niggers had to work the patches at night, and dig the ’taters and goobers at night. Then if they wanted to sell any in town, they’d have to get a pass to go.”

  “On Saturday evenings the niggers which sold they goobers and ’taters brung fiddles and guitars and come out and play. The others clap they hands and stomp they feet and we young-uns cut a step round. I was plenty biggity and liked to cut a step.

  “We was scared of Solomon and his whip, though, and he didn’t like frolicking. He didn’t like for us niggers to pray, either. We never heard of no church, but us have praying in the cabins. We’d set on the floor and p
ray with our heads down low and sing low, but if Solomon heared he’d come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He’d say, ‘I’ll come in there and tear the hide off you backs.’ But some the old niggers tell us we got to pray to God, that He don’t think different of the blacks and the whites. I know that Solomon is burning in hell today, and it pleasures me to know it.

  “Once my maw and paw taken me and Katherine after night to slip to another place to a praying and singing. A nigger man with white beard told us a day am coming when niggers only be slaves of God. We prays for the end of tribulation and the end of beatings and for shoes that fit our feet. We prayed that us niggers could have all we wanted to eat, and special for fresh meat. Some the old ones say we have to bear all, ’cause that all we can do. Some say they was glad to the time they’s dead, ’cause they’d rather rot in the ground than have the beatings.

  “In them days I weared shirts, like all the young-uns. They had collars and come below the knees and was split up the sides. That’s all we weared in hot weather. The men weared jeans and the women gingham. Shoes was the worstest trouble. We weared rough russets when it got cold, and it seem powerful strange they’d never get them to fit. Once when I was a young gal they got me a new pair and all brass studs in the toes. They was too little for me, but I had to wear them. The brass trimmings cut into my ankles and them places got miserable bad. I rubs tallow in them sore places and wraps rags round them, and my sores got worser and worser. The scars are there to this day …

  “I wasn’t sick much, though. Some niggers had chills and fevers a lot, but they hadn’t discovered so many diseases then as now. Dr. Kilpatrick give sick niggers ipecac and asafetida and oil and turpentine and black fever pills.

  “Once Massa goes to Baton Rouge and brung back a yaller gal dressed in fine style. She was a seamster nigger. He builds her a house ’way from the quarters, and she done fine sewing for the whites. Us niggers knowed the doctor took a black woman quick as he did a white, and took any on his place he wanted, and he took them often. But mostly the chillen born on the place looked like niggers. Aunt Cheney always say four of hers was Massa’s, but he didn’t give them no mind. But this yaller gal breeds so fast and gets a mess of white young-uns. She learned them fine manners and combs out they hair.