The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 28
It is customary in South Carolina, to allow the slaves the week from Christmas to the new year, as a sort of holiday. This indulgence is extended so far, that during that week, they are, for the most part, allowed to leave the plantations, the scenes of their daily labors and sufferings, and to wander about in the neighborhood, pretty much at their own will and pleasure. The high-ways present at that season, a singular appearance. The slaves of every age and sex, collected from the populous plantations of the tidewaters, and dressed in the best attire they have been able to muster, assemble in great numbers, swarming along the road, and clustering about the little whiskey-shops, producing a scene of bustle and confusion, witnessed only at the Christmas holidays.
Those shops are principally supported by a traffic with the slaves for stolen rice and cotton, — a traffic which all the vindictive fury of the planters, backed by an abundant legislation, has not been able to eradicate. They are the chief support, in fact, the only means of livelihood, open to a considerable portion of the lower order of the white aristocracy of the country. It is the same in Carolina as in Lower Virginia. The poor whites are extremely rude and ignorant, and acquainted with but few of the comforts of civilized life. They are idle, dissipated, and vicious; with all that vulgar brutality of vice, which poverty and ignorance render so conspicuous and disgusting. Without land, or at best, possessing some little tract of barren and exhausted soil, which they have neither skill nor industry to render productive; without any trade or handicraft art; and looking upon all manual labor as degrading to freemen, and fit only for a state of servitude, — these poor white men have become the jest of the slaves, and are at once, feared and hated by the select aristocracy of rich planters. It is only the right of suffrage which they possess, that preserves them the show of consideration and respect with which they are yet treated. This right of suffrage, of which the select aristocracy are extremely anxious to deprive them, is the only safeguard of the poor whites. But for this, they would be trampled under foot without mercy; and by force of law and legislation, would soon be reduced to a condition little superior to that of the very slaves themselves.
On the Christmas holidays which succeeded my becoming an inhabitant of Loosahachee, a great number of slaves, of whom, I was one, were assembled about a little store on the neighboring high road, laughing, talking, drinking whiskey, and making merry after our several fashions. While we were thus employed, I observed riding along the road, a mean looking fellow, shabbily dressed, with a face of that disagreeable cadaverous hue that makes the inferior order of whites in Lower Carolina look so much like walking, corpses. He was mounted on a lean scraggy horse, whose hips seemed just bursting through the skin, and he carried in his hand an enormous whip, which he handled with a familiar grace, seldom acquired except by an American slave-driver. As he passed us, I noticed that all the slaves who had hats, pulled them off to him; but as I did not see any thing in the fellow's appearance that demanded any particular respect, and as I was ignorant of the Carolina etiquette, which requires from every slave an obsequious bearing towards every freeman, seldom expected in Virginia, I let my hat remain upon my head. The fellow noticed it; reimed up his jaded beast, and eyed me sharply. My complexion made him doubt whether I might not be a freeman; my dress and the company I was in, gave him equal grounds for supposing me a slave. He inquired who I was; and being told that I was one of general Carter's people, he rode towards me with his upraised whip, demanding why I did not take off my hat to him; and without waiting for an answer, he began to lay the lash over my shoulders. The fellow was evidently drunk, and my first impulse was to take the whip away from him. Luckily I did not yield to this impulse; for any attempt to resist even a drunken white man, though that resistance was only in repelling the most unprovoked attack, according to the just and equal laws of Carolina, might have cost me my life.
I learned upon inquiry that this fellow had been an overseer; but some time previous had been discharged by his employer for suspected dishonesty. Not long after, he had set up a whiskey shop about half a mile distant. From what he said to the owner of the store where we were assembled, it would seem that his shop had not been so much frequented during the holidays as he had expected; and in beating me, he had vented his drunken spite and ill humor on the first object that gave him any thing like a pretence to exercise it. I learned too, that this fellow whose name was Christie, was a cousin of Mr Martin, our overseer. They had been close friends; but had lately had a violent quarrel. Christie had stabbed Martin; and Martin had shot at Christie with his double-barrelled gun. He had taken a still more effectual revenge by doing his best to stop the trade from Loosahachee to Christie's shop, which he had formerly winked at, and which had been carried on. much to Christie's benefit, by the exchange of well watered whiskey for general Carter's rice and cotton.
I no sooner heard this account of Mr Christie, than it occurred to me that I had him in my power; and at once, I resolved to make him smart in his turn, for the lashes he had inflicted upon me. _ It is true, I was obliged to play the part of a spy and an informer; but such low means are the only resource which the condition of servitude allows. As soon as I got home, I hastened to the overseer, and with an abundance of hypocritical pretences and professions of zeal for my master's service, I communicated to him as a great secret, the fact that Mr Christie was in the habit of trading with the hands, and buying whatever they brought him, without asking any questions.
Mr Martin said that he was well aware of it; and he would give me fiye dollars, if I would help him to detect Christie in the fact.
We quickly struck up a bargain. The overseer furnished me with a quantity of cotton; and I set off, one moon-light night, to pay a visit to Mr Christie's shop.
He recognized me at once, and jested a good deal, about the whipping he had given me. He thought it an excellent joke; and it best answered my purpose to appear very much of the same opinion. I found him not at all disinclined to trade, provided I would exchange my cotton for his whiskey, at the nominal price of a dollar a quart. It was not long before I paid him a second visit. That time, Mr Martin and one of his friends were posted outside the shop, at a place where they could peep between the logs and see and overhear the whole transaction.
To buy rice, cotton, or in fact any thing else of a slave, unless he produces a written permit from his master to sell it, according to the Carolina statute-book, is one of the most enormous crimes a. man can commit. Mr Christie was indicted at the next court. He was found guilty on the express testimony of Mr Martin and his companion; and was fined a thousand dollars, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment. The fine swept away what little property he had; and how his imprisonment ended I never heard. More than one of the jurymen who convicted him, were grievously suspected of the very same practices; but the dread of incurring fresh suspicion, or perhaps the jealous rivalry of trade, made those very fellows the most clamorous for his condemnation. Mr Martin was so well pleased with my services in this affair, — in which he fancied I had put myself forward merely to be used as his cat's paw, — that he took mg quite into favor, and began to employ me as one of his regular spies and informers. Tyranny, whether on the great scale or the little, can only be sustained through a system of espionage and betrayal, in which the most mean-spirited of the oppressed are turned into the tools and instruments of oppression. There are many alleviations of the wretchedness of servitude to be expected from the favor and indulgence of an overseer. Let it be remembered also, that so strong are the allurements which power holds out, that even among freemen, there are hundreds of thousands always to be found, who are ready to assist in sacrificing the dearest rights of their neighbors, by volunteering to be the instruments of superior tyrants. What then can be reasonably expected from those who have been studiously and systematically degraded? What wonder, if among the oppressed, are found the readiest and most relentless instruments of oppression?
As I knew I could turn Mr Martin's favor to good account, I took care not to let him suspect, with what scorn and loathing I regarded the office in which he sought to employ me. But while he imagined that I was engaged heart and hand in his service, I counter-worked him more than once, by communicating his plans and stratagems to those whom he sought to entrap. This same Mr Martin, though he was absolute viceroy over more than three hundred people, was a very ignorant and a very stupid fellow. Several circumstances occurred, which with a shrewd person would have betrayed me; but I succeeded so completely in blinding Mr Martin's eyes, that he still continued to place an unlimited confidence in my fidelity. Of this, he soon gave me a new proof; for riding one day, into the field, where I was at work, and not finding matters going on just to suit him, he called out the driver of the gang, and took from him the whip, which he carried as the badge and principal instrument of his office. He then called for me; and having given me twenty or thirty lashes, according to the custom in such cases, he put the whip into my hand; appointed me driver of the gang, and bade me do the first duty of my new office upon the fellow to whose place I had succeeded.
It is under the inspection of drivers, who are appointed from among the slaves, at the will of the overseer, that the culture of a Carolina plantation is carried on. The overseers have learned too much of the airs and the luxurious indolence of their employers, to be willing to be riding about all day, in the hot sun, looking after the laborers. The slaves are divided into gangs, and each gang is put under the charge of a driver, who is generally selected for his cowardly and mean-spirited subserviency, and his readiness to tyrannize over and to betray his companions. The driver is entrusted with all the unlimited and absolute authority of the master himself. He receives a double allowance; he has no task; — his sole business is to look after his gang and see that they perform the work assigned them; and for this purpose he takes his station in the midst of them, whip in hand. When the overseer makes his appearance in the field, all the drivers collect about him to receive his orders. For the performance of the work assigned to his gang, each driver is himself responsible; and that he may perfectly understand by what means he is to enforce its performance, the overseer usually inducts him into office by giving him a severe castigation with the very whip which he afterwards puts into his hand to be used upon his companions.
The absolute power of an overseer, is often, I ought rather to say, always shockingly abused; but the absolute power of drivers is yet one step higher towards the perfection of tyranny. The driver faithfully copies all the arrogance and insolence of the overseer from whom hé receives his commission; and as he is always among his gang, the aggravating weight of his authority is so much the heavier. He is but one of themselves; and the slaves are naturally more impatient of his rule, than they would be of the same dominion, exercised by one belonging to what they have been taught to regard as a superior race; and whom, being a freeman, they are ready to acknowledge as actually their superior. Besides, the drivers are far from limiting their demands, as the overseer himself generally would do, to the performance of the field labor. They have a thousand little spites to gratify; a thousand purposes of their own to accomplish. They are in fact, the absolute masters of every thing which any of their gang may happen to possess; and the persons of the women are as much at their disposal as at that of the overseer, or the master. Even, if by chance, a driver should happen not to be disposed to abuse his authority, the dread of losing his situation, and the knowledge that all the deficiencies of any of his subordinates will be visited upon his head, makes him of necessity, hasty, harsh, and cruel.
Heaven is my witness that while I held the office of driver, my great object was, to use the authority which it gave me, to alleviate as far as I could, the misery of my companions. My gang consisted of the Carleton bands, with whom I had long been connected, and whom I looked upon as friends and fellow sufferers. Many is the time, when I have seen one and another fainting under his task, and unable to finish it, that I have dropped the whip, seized the hoe, and instead of the stimulus of the lash, have used the encouragement of aid and assistance. This I did repeatedly; though Mr Martin, more than once, when he found me so employed, expressed his disapprobation, and told me it was no way, and would only bring the station of driver into contempt.
But it is no part of my purpose to write an eulogium on myself; and I shall not hesitate to confess the whole truth. There were times that I abused my office; — and I verily believe that no man ever exercised an unlimited authority who did not abuse it. The consciousness of my power, made me insolent and impatient; — and with all my hatred, my hearty, experimental hatred of tyranny, the whip had not long been placed in my hands, before I caught myself in the act of playing the tyrant.
Power is ever dangerous and intoxicating. Human. nature cannot bear it. It must be constantly checked, controlled and limited, or it declines inevitably into tyranny. Even all the endearments of the family connection; the tenderness of connubial love, and the heart-binding ties of paternity, seconded as they always are by the strong influence of habit and opinion, have not made it safe to entrust the head of a family with absolute power even over his own household. What terms then are strong enough in which to denounce the vain, ridiculous, and wanton folly of expecting any thing but abuse where power is totally unchecked, by either moral, or legal control?