This giving him a good Christian character caused them to run him up to near two hundred dollars. His poor old companion stood by weeping and pleading that they might not be separated. But the marriage relation was soon dissolved by the sale, and they were separated never to meet again.
Another man was called up whose wife followed him with her infant in her arms, beseeching to be sold with her husband, which proved to be all in vain. After the men were all sold they then sold the women and children. They ordered the first woman to lay down her child and mount the auction block; she refused to give up her little one and clung to it as long as she could, while the cruel lash was applied to her back for disobedience. She pleaded for mercy in the name of God. But the child was torn from the arms of its mother amid the most heart-rending shrieks from the mother and child on the one hand, and bitter oaths and cruel lashes from the tyrants on the other. Finally the poor little child was torn from the mother while she was sacrificed to the highest bidder. In this way the sale was carried on from beginning to end.
There was each speculator with his hand-cuffs to bind his victims after the sale; and while they were doing their writings, the Christian portion of the slaves asked permission to kneel in prayer on the ground before they separated, which was granted. And while bathing each other with tears of sorrow on the verge of their final separation, their eloquent appeals in prayer to the Most High seemed to cause an unpleasant sensation upon the ears of their tyrants, who ordered them to rise and make ready their limbs for the caffles. And as they happened not to bound at the first sound, they were soon raised from their knees by the sound of the lash, and the rattle of the chains, in which they were soon taken off by their respective masters,—husbands from wives, and children from parents, never expecting to meet until the judgment of the great day. Then Christ shall say to the slaveholding professors of religion, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these little ones, my brethren, ye did it unto me.”
Having thus tried to show the best side of slavery that I can conceive of, the reader can exercise his own judgment in deciding whether a man can be a Bible Christian, and yet hold his Christian brethren as property, so that they may be sold at any time in market, as sheep or oxen, to pay his debts.
During my life in slavery I have been sold by professors of religion several times. In 1836 “Bro.” Albert G. Sibley, of Bedford, Kentucky, sold me for $850 to “Bro.” John Sibley; and in the same year he sold me to “Bro.” Wm. Gatewood of Bedford, for $850. In 1839 “Bro.” Gatewood sold me to Madison Garrison, a slave trader, of Louisville, Kentucky, with my wife and child—at a depreciated price because I was a runaway. In the same year he sold me with my family to “Bro.” Whitfield, in the city of New Orleans, for $1200. In 1841 “Bro.” Whitfield sold me from my family to Thomas Wilson and Co., blacklegs. In the same year they sold me to a “Bro.” in the Indian Territory. I think he was a member of the Presbyterian Church. F. E. Whitfield was a deacon in regular standing in the Baptist Church. A. Sibley was a Methodist exhorter of the M. E. Church in good standing. J. Sibley was a class-leader in the same church; and Wm. Gatewood was also an acceptable member of the same church.
Is this Christianity? Is it honest or right? Is it doing as we would be done by? Is it in accordance with the principles of humanity or justice?
I believe slaveholding to be a sin against God and man under all circumstances. I have no sympathy with the person or persons who tolerate and support the system willingly and knowingly, morally, religiously or politically.
Prayerfully and earnestly relying on the power of truth, and the aid of the divine providence, I trust that this little volume will bear some humble part in lighting up the path of freedom and revolutionizing public opinion upon this great subject. And I here pledge myself, God being my helper, ever to contend for the natural equality of the human family, without regard to color, which is but fading matter, while mind makes the man.
NEW YORK CITY, May 1, 1849.
HENRY BIBB.
INDEX.
INTRODUCTION 427
AUTHOR’S PREFACE 439
CHAP. I. Sketch of my Parentage, 441. Early separation from my Mother, 441. Hard Fare, 442. First Experiments at running away, 442. Earnest longing for Freedom, 443. Abhorrent nature of Slavery, 444.
CHAP. II. A fruitless effort for education, 445. The Sabbath among Slaves, 445. Degrading amusements, 445. Why religion is rejected, 446. Condition of poor white people, 446. Superstition among slaves, 447. Education forbidden, 451.
CHAP. III. My Courtship and Marriage, 452. Change of owner, 457. My first born, 458. Its sufferings, 458. My wife abused, 459. My own anguish, 459.
CHAP. IV My first adventure for liberty, 460. Parting Scene, 460. Journey up the river, 461. Safe arrival in Cincinnati, 462. Journey to Canada, 463. Suffering from cold and hunger, 464. Denied food and shelter by some, 464. One noble exception, 464. Subsequent success, 465. Arrival at Perrysburgh, 465. Obtain employment through the winter, 465. My return to Kentucky to get my family, 466.
CHAP. V My safe arrival at Kentucky, 467. Surprise and delight to find my family, 467. Plan for their escape, projected, 468. Return to Cincinnati, 469. My betrayal by traitors, 469. Imprisonment in Covington, Kentucky, 471. Return to slavery, 472. Infamous proposal of the slave catchers, 473. My reply, 473.
CHAP. VI. Arrival at Louisville, Kentucky, 476. Efforts to sell me, 476. Fortunate escape from the man-stealers in the public street, 477. I return to Bedford, Ky., 481. The rescue of my family again attempted, 481. I started alone expecting them to follow, 481. After waiting some months I resolve to go back again to Kentucky, 483.
CHAP. VII. My safe return to Kentucky, 484. The perils I encountered there, 485. Again betrayed, and taken by a mob, ironed and imprisoned, 486. Narrow escape from death, 488. Life in a slave prison, 489.
CHAP. VIII. Character of my prison companions, 491. Jail breaking contemplated, 492. Defeat of our plan, 493. My wife and child removed, 493. Disgraceful proposal to her, and cruel punishment, 493. Our departure in a coffle for New Orleans, 494. Events of our journey, 495.
CHAP. IX. Our arrival and examination at Vicksburg, 496. An account of slave sales, 497. Cruel punishment with the paddle, 497. Attempts to sell myself by Garrison’s direction, 498. Amusing interview with a slave buyer, 499. Deacon Whitfield’s examination, 500. He purchases the family, 501. Character of the Deacon, 501.
CHAP. X. Cruel treatment on Whitfield’s farm, 503. Exposure of the children, 503. Mode of extorting extra labor, 504. Neglect of the sick, 506. Strange medicine used, 506. Death of our second child, 507.
CHAP. XI. I attend a prayer meeting, 508. Punishment therefor threatened, 508. I attempt to escape alone, 508. My return to take my family, 510. Our sufferings, 511. Dreadful attack of wolves, 511. Our recapture, 514.
CHAP. XII. My sad condition before Whitfield, 515. My terrible punishment, 515. Incidents of a former attempt to escape, 517. Jack at a farm house, 518. Six pigs and a turkey, 519. Our surprise and arrest, 520.
CHAP. XIII. I am sold to gamblers, 522. They try to purchase my family, 523. Our parting scene, 524. My good usage, 525. I am sold to an Indian, 526. His confidence in my integrity manifested, 526.
CHAP. XIV Character of my Indian Master, 527. Slavery among the Indians less cruel, 527. Indian carousal, 528. Enfeebled health of my Indian Master, 528. His death, 528. My escape, 529. Adventure in a wigwam, 529. Successful progress toward liberty, 530.
CHAP. XV. Adventure on the Prairie, 532. I borrow a horse without leave, 534. Rapid traveling one whole night, 534. Apology for using other men’s horses, 535. My manner of living on the road, 535.
CHAP. XVI. Stratagem to get on board the steamer, 537. My Irish friends, 538. My success in reaching the Ohio, 539. Reflections on again seeing Kentucky, 539. I get employment in a hotel, 539. My fright at seeing the gambler who sold me, 540. I leave Ohio with Mr. Smith, 541. His letter, 541. My education, 542.
CHAP. XVII. Letter from W. H. Gatewood, 543
. My reply, 544. My efforts as a public lecturer, 545. Singular incident in Steubenville, 545. Meeting with a friend of Whitfield in Michigan, 547. Outrage on a canal packet, 548. Fruitless efforts to find my wife, 550.
CHAP. XVIII. My last effort to recover my family, 552. Sad tidings of my wife, 552. Her degradation, 552. I am compelled to regard our relation as dissolved for ever, 553.
CHAP. XIX. Comments on S. Gatewood’s letter about slaves stealing, 556. Their conduct vindicated, 557. Comments on W. Gatewood’s letter, 558.
CHAP. XX. Review of my narrative, 560. Licentiousness a prop of Slavery, 560. A case of mild slavery given, 561. Its revolting features, 561. Times of my purchase and sale by professed Christians, 562. Concluding remarks, 563.
NARRATIVE
OF
SOJOURNER TRUTH,
A
NORTHERN SLAVE,
EMANCIPATED FROM BODILY SERVITUDE BY THE STATE OF NEW YORK, IN 1828.
WITH A PORTRAIT.
Sweet is the virgin honey, though the wild bee store it in a reed;
And bright the jewelled band that circleth an Ethiop’s arm;
Pure are the grains of gold in the turbid stream of the Ganges;
And fair the living flowers that spring from the dull cold sod.
Wherefore, thou gentle student, bend thine ear to my speech,
For I also am as thou art; our hearts can commune together;
To meanest matters will I stoop, for mean is the lot of mortal;
I will rise to noblest themes, for the soul hath a heritage of glory.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR.
1850.
PREFACE.
THE following is the unpretending narrative of the life of a remarkable and meritorious woman—a life which has been checkered by strange vicissitudes, severe hardships, and singular adventures. Born a slave, and held in that brutal condition until the entire abolition of slavery in the State of New York in 1827, she has known what it is to drink to the dregs the bitterest cup of human degradation. That one thus placed on a level with cattle and swine, and for so many years subjected to the most demoralizing influences, should have retained her moral integrity to such an extent, and cherished so successfully the religious sentiment in her soul, shows a mind of no common order, while it heightens the detestation that is felt in every humane bosom, of that system of oppression which seeks to cripple the intellect, impair the understanding, and deprave the hearts of its victims—a system which has subjected to its own foul purposes, in the United States, all that is wealthy, talented, influential, and reputedly pious, in an overwhelming measure!
O the ‘fantastic tricks’ which the American people are ‘playing before high Heaven!’ O their profane use of the sacred name of Liberty! O their impious appeals to the God of the oppressed, for his divine benediction, while they are making merchandise of his image! Do they not blush? Nay, they glory in their shame! Once a year, they take special pains to exhibit themselves to the world, in all their republican deformity and Christian barbarity, insanely supposing that they thus excite the envy, admiration and applause of mankind. The nations are looking at the dreadful spectacle with disgust and amazement. However sunken and degraded they may be, they are too elevated, too virtuous, too humane to be guilty of such conduct. Their voice is heard, saying—‘Americans! we hear your boasts of liberty, your shouts of independence, your declarations of hostility to every form of tyranny, your assertions that all men are created free and equal, and endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to liberty, the merry peal of your bells, and the deafening roar of your artillery; but, mingling with all these, and rising above them all, we also hear the clanking of chains! the shrieks and wailings of millions of your own countrymen, whom you wickedly hold in a state of slavery as much more frightful than the oppression which your fathers resisted unto blood, as the tortures of the Inquisition surpass the stings of an insect! We see your banner floating proudly in the breeze from every flag-staff and mast-head in the land; but its blood-red stripes are emblematical of your own slave-driving cruelty, as you apply the lash to the flesh of your guiltless victim, even the flesh of a wife and mother, shrieking for the restoration of the babe of her bosom, sold to the remorseless slave speculator! We catch the gleam of your illuminated hills, every where blazing with bonfires; we mark your gay processions; we note the number of your orators; we listen to the recital of your revolutionary achievements; we see you kneeling at the shrine of Freedom, as her best, her truest, her sincerest worshippers! Hypocrites! liars! adulterers! tyrants! men-stealers! atheists! Professing to believe in the natural equality of the human race—yet dooming a sixth portion of your immense population to beastly servitude, and ranking them among your goods and chattels! Professing to believe in the existence of a God—yet trading in his image, and selling those in the shambles for whose redemption the Son of God laid down his life! Professing to be Christians—yet withholding the Bible, the means of religious instruction, even the knowledge of the alphabet, from a benighted multitude, under terrible penalties! Boasting of your democracy—yet determining the rights of men by the texture of their hair and the color of their skin! Assuming to be “the land of the free and the home of the brave,”—yet keeping in chains more slaves than any other nation, not excepting slave-cursed Brazil! Prating of your morality and honesty—yet denying the rites of marriage to three millions of human beings, and plundering them of all their hard earnings! Affecting to be horror-struck in view of the foreign slave-trade—yet eagerly pursuing a domestic traffic equally cruel and unnatural, and reducing to slavery not less than seventy thousand new victims annually! Vaunting of your freedom of speech and of the press—your matchless Constitution and your glorious Union—yet denouncing as traitors, and treating as outlaws, those who have the courage and fidelity to plead for immediate, untrammelled, universal emancipation! Monsters that ye are! how can ye expect to escape the scorn of the world, and the wrath of Heaven? Emancipate your slaves, if you would redeem your tarnished character—if you would obtain forgiveness here, and salvation hereafter! Until you do so, “there will be a stain upon your national escutcheon, which all the waters of the Atlantic cannot wash out!”’
It is thus that, as a people, we are justly subjected to the reproach, the execration, the derision of mankind, and are made a proverb and a hissing among the nations. We cannot plead not guilty; every accusation that is registered against us is true; the act of violence is in our hands; the stolen property is in our possession; our fingers are stained with blood; the cup of our iniquity is full.
Just God! and shall we calmly rest,
The Christian’s scorn—the Heathen’s mirth—
Content to live the lingering jest
And by-word of a mocking earth?
Shall our own glorious land retain
That curse which Europe scorns to bear?
Shall our own brethren drag the chain,
Which not even Russia’s menials wear?
It is useless, it is dreadful, it is impious for this nation longer to contend with the Almighty. All his attributes are against us, and on the side of the oppressed. Is it not a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? Who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth as ‘a swift witness against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right?’ Wo to this bloody land! it is all full of lies and robbery—the prey departeth not, and the sound of a whip is heard continually. ‘Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil, maketh himself a prey.’ The Lord sees it, and is displeased that there is no judgment; and he hath put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and is clad with zeal as a cloak,—and, unless we repent by immediately undoing the heavy burdens and letting the oppressed
go free, according to our deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies. ‘The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.’ ‘O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever. And overthrew Pharaoh and his hosts in the Red sea: for his mercy endureth for ever.’ ‘Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.’ ‘Even so, Lord God Almighty, for so it seemeth good in thy sight.’ ‘Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?’
In this great contest of Right against Wrong, of Liberty against Slavery, who are the wicked, if they be not those, who, like vultures and vampyres, are gorging themselves with human blood? if they be not the plunderers of the poor, the spoilers of the defenceless, the traffickers in ‘slaves and the souls of men’? Who are the cowards, if not those who shrink from manly argumentation, the light of truth, the concussion of mind, and a fair field? if not those whose prowess, stimulated by whiskey potations, or the spirit of murder, grows rampant as the darkness of night approaches; whose shouts and yells are savage and fiend-like; who furiously exclaim, ‘Down with free discussion! down with the liberty of the press! down with the right of petition! down with constitutional law!’—who rifle mail-bags, throw types and printing-presses into the river, burn public halls dedicated to ‘Virtue, Liberty and Independence,’ and assassinate the defenders of inalienable human rights? And who are the righteous, in this case, if they be not those who will ‘have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them;’ who maintain that the laborer is worthy of his hire, that the marriage institution is sacred, that slavery is a system accursed of God, that tyrants are the enemies of mankind, and that immediate emancipation should be given to all who are pining in bondage! Who are the truly brave, if not those who demand for truth and error alike, free speech, a free press, an open arena, the right of petition, AND NO QUARTERS? if not those, who, instead of skulking from the light, stand forth in the noon-tide blaze of day, and challenge their opponents to emerge from their wolf-like dens, that, by a rigid examination, it may be seen who has stolen the wedge of gold, in whose pocket are the thirty pieces of silver, and whose garments are stained with the blood of innocence?
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