My Bondage and My Freedom

Douglass began thinking very early about his condition as an enslaved person, wondering why such a fate had fallen to him. Did God make Black people enslaved? If so, why were there Black people who weren’t enslaved? Why were there never white enslaved people? He realized that men had made these rules and that what one man makes, another can unmake. Thus, Douglass began to imagine life as a free man. Still, the frequent floggings on the plantation terrified him. He saw another shocking one given to Nelly, another person whom Colonel Lloyd enslaved. The charge against her was impudence, which could have meant anything or nothing. Enslavers used the charge of impudence and its punishment “to the caprice of the master or overseer” (99).

Nelly was a very light-skinned multiracial woman and the wife of “a favorite ‘hand’ onboard Col. Lloyd’s sloop” (101). She was the mother of five children and a very spirited woman. Her character made her most likely to face an impudence charge. One day, Douglass saw Mr. Sevier trying to drag Nelly to a tree. She resisted, and her children threw stones at Sevier and bit him on the leg. Douglass figured that Nelly probably saw herself as somewhat superior to the other enslaved people. Her husband, Harry, could not be whipped because he was a sloop hand, meaning that he was a representative of the plantation.

Eventually, Mr. Sevier succeeded in tying Nelly. He beat her in front of her children and covered her back in blood. Still, she cursed the overseer. Her spirit did not break. Not long after he beat Nelly, Sevier got sick and died. Supposedly, on his deathbed, he still wielded his cowskin whip as though he were whipping yet another enslaved person. Mr. Hopkins, a vastly different man, replaced Mr. Sevier. Mr. Hopkins only sometimes whipped enslaved people and seemed to dislike the task. He stayed for only a short while before leaving. Austin Gore, who was just as cruel as Sevier, but “less noisy and less profane” (104), replaced Mr. Hopkins.

Colonel Lloyd’s plantation had a business-like air. Despite this, enslaved people often sang in the fields—not always because they wanted to but because enslavers and overseers wanted to dissuade thoughtfulness among them. This is why the position of sloop hand was so coveted—they could get away from the plantation on their ox carts. The enslaved people’s songs were often cleverer than enslavers and overseers knew. At first, Douglass didn’t always understand the songs. They told tales of woe that he didn’t yet know. Later, he realized that their tones were “[testimonies] against slavery” and prayers to God to deliver them from bondage (106). The singing, which offered white people the illusion of the enslaved people’s happiness, actually helped to relieve their sorrowful hearts. And they had many reasons to feel sorrow, including hunger.

Though enslavers often liked to boast that their enslaved people enjoyed more physical comforts than peasants anywhere else in the world, this wasn’t true. Those on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation ate poorly—tainted pork, meal that wouldn’t even go to pigs, and, of all this, a fraction of what a grown person, working from morning to night, needed to stave off hunger. Their clothing allowance was no better. They wore the coarsest tow-linen shirts and trousers. The children had no shoes and often wore just tow-linen shirts. Some children, ranging in age from five to 10, went around naked year-round. There were no beds either, only blankets—and very coarse ones—given only to men and women. The children stayed warm by sleeping in holes and corners, usually near chimneys. Despite these privations, enslaved people’s duties wore them out, duties they performed from before dawn until dark. If anyone overslept, they received a whipping with a cowskin.

Though the enslaved people had to subsist on meager rations, the Lloyds enjoyed sumptuous meals every day. There was plenty of fowl, all kinds of meats, and the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay. There was also ample dairy, fruits, and vegetables; wines and brandies from France; various teas from China; and Javanese coffee. In attendance at every meal were 15 servants, “men and maidens” (116), selected for their personal appearance, agility, and industriousness. They constituted “a sort of black aristocracy on Col. Lloyd’s plantation” (116). Though they resembled the field hands, their manners, dress, and speech—and even their tastes and habits—were very distinct from their brethren in the fields.

Though Colonel Lloyd was stingy with the enslaved people, he was extraordinarily hospitable to his guests, which seemed to operate like a hotel during the summer. Sometimes, Mas’ Daniel, Douglass’s friend at the time, would bring him a cake from one of the Lloyds’s meals. This immense bounty, Douglass asserts, didn’t mean that the enslavers were at peace. They seemed always to be suffering from some ill, which Douglass attributes to guilty consciences. Enslaved people, he asserts, slept more soundly than their enslavers, despite their overwhelming hunger.

During his boyhood, Douglass indulged his interest in horses. He spent a lot of time at the stables, which were under the care of “old” and “young” Barney—a father and son who looked after the horses (119). Colonel Lloyd was especially particular about the management of his horses, which left Old Barney in a more precarious condition than many other enslaved people. His sons-in-law were equally fastidious and seemed to look for reasons to reprimand Old Barney over the condition of the horses. Old Barney simply stood there listening to the complaints, “hat in hand lips sealed, never answering a word” (119). Once, Colonel Lloyd whipped Old Barney over the matter, forcing the fellow old man to kneel.

There was another instance in which Douglass witnessed Colonel Lloyd whipping an enslaved person. This time, it was a coachman named William, called by his last name, Wilks. William was handsome and as white as his enslavers. He also looked very much like the Colonel’s son, Murray. Rumor had it that Wilks was the son of Colonel Lloyd and “a highly favored slave-woman, who was still on the plantation” (121). Wilks, too, was aware of being something more than just someone whom Colonel Lloyd enslaved. Murray Lloyd loathed Wilks and encouraged his father to sell him. Colonel Lloyd relented and sold Wilks to Austin Woldfolk, a well-known trader of enslaved people. Before selling him, Colonel Lloyd whipped William and then tried to atone for the abuse by giving the young man a gold watch and chain. Though Woldfolk intended to sell William somewhere further south, William somehow “outbid all his purchasers, paid for himself” and moved to Baltimore as a free man (123). Douglass wonders if Colonel Lloyd didn’t also give his rumored son a purse of gold coin to pay for his freedom.

Despite the interest he took in Wilks, Captain Lloyd took none in his other enslaved people and often didn’t know any of them if he saw them. If he found out that an enslaved person found fault with him, he would sell that person. There was a penalty for telling the truth, which many enslaved people knew and, therefore, avoided telling if anyone inquired about their conditions. Douglass, too, never gave a negative response when asked if he had a kind enslaver. After all, he didn’t know better and measured his enslavers alongside the others around him. Some enslaved people became competitive on this matter, wanting to believe that their situation was better than that of others or that their enslavers were kinder than others’. Sometimes, fistfights erupted. Whoever won “gained the point at issue” (124). Some enslaved people seemed to think that whatever greatness their enslavers possessed would also pass down to them. No one wanted to “belong” to a poor man, which they considered disgraceful.