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1050 READER RESPONSES, 1881–93

brought her a merciful and comparatively early release from the bitter ignominy and
sorrows of her lot. He knew nothing of his father; for under the brutal system of
slavery, there was no recognition of fathers. Children were generally separated from
their mothers at an early age, often from the birth or nearly so, and were reared as if
they were the young of domestic animals.

There is something of heaven about us all in our infancy, and even the poor
slave-child had some alleviations in its lot. The old grandmother was kind and affec-
tionate; the simple wants of healthy childhood were easily satisfied, and the little
cabin was a palace, and the sunshine and the woods and the birds and the squirrels,
and the numberless sights and sounds of nature, free to all, made a paradise which
the little slave could enjoy. But with the fuller dawn of intelligence and conscious-
ness, black shadows soon came. The little children used to whisper to each other
such hints as they caught up about a certain "old massa," to whom in due time they
would be consigned, and about their impending and inevitable destiny as slaves.
What terror, and anguish. and apprehension, and tears these thoughts cost some of
the quicker and more imaginative of the children; how the idea of slavery brooded
like an awful nightmare over those young hearts; Mr. Douglass's narrative helps us
painfully to realise. At length the day came when the child had to leave his kind old
guardian. He was transferred to the care of a woman, "Aunt Katy," of a very differ-
ent stamp, who lived on the plantation to which he was regarded as belonging. She
was bad-tempered, capricious, and cruel, and under her care, if care it could be
called, the poor child suffered great hardships. He was half starved, scantily covered
by a single garment, often kicked and cuffed, and altogether neglected. He had
opportunities now of seeing something of the actual miseries and diabolical cruelties
of the slave system. The autobiography supplies many illustrations; a brief reference
to one of them is all that we can find space for here. Early one morning the little
fellow was awakened by loud screams and voices in the room adjacent to the one in
which he slept. Peeping through a crevice he saw a slave girl—"tall, light-coloured,
and well formed"—with her arms tightly fastened by a rope around the wrists to a
beam above her head, while her owner, the "old master," who had been the terror of
his childish imagination, stood beside her, administering, with fierce vindictiveness
and many opprobrious epithets, a brutal flogging. The child trembled as he watched
the heavy cowhide lash descending again and again upon the bare delicate flesh of
the girl's back and shoulders, bringing blood and screams at every blow. The vile
wretch who was guilty of this inhuman deed was prompted by the basest motives.
and took this method of trying to put a stop to meetings between the young girl and
a fellow-slave, to whom she was honourably attached. Alas! this was but a typical
instance of experiences with which every slave soon grew familiar, and we dare not
blacken these pages by more than hinting at the revolting cruelties and crimes which
were constantly committed on every slave estate.

Describing the food, clothing, and general condition of the slaves, with whom
he was daily associated in the labours of the field, Mr. Douglass explodes altogether