Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America | Page 7

said, 'Rise,' we had to rise and go to work again. The women who
had children laid them down by the hedge-row, and gave them straws
and other trifles to play with; here they were in danger from snakes; I
have seen a large snake found coiled round the neck and face of a child,

when its mother went to suckle it at dinner-time. The hands work in a
line by the side of each other; the overseer puts the swiftest hands in the
fore row, and all must keep up with them. One black man is kept on
purpose to whip the others in the field; if he does not flog with
sufficient severity, he is flogged himself; he whips severely, to keep the
whip from his own back. If a man have a wife in the same field with
himself, he chooses a row by the side of hers, that, with extreme labor,
he may, if possible, help her. But he will not be in the same field if he
can help it; for, with his hardest labor, he often cannot save her from
being flogged, and he is obliged to stand by and see it; he is always
liable to see her taken home at night, stripped naked, and whipped
before all the men. On the estate I am speaking of, those women who
had sucking children suffered much from their breasts becoming full of
milk, the infants being left at home; they therefore could not keep up
with the other hands. I have seen the overseer beat them with raw hide,
so that blood and milk flew mingled from their breasts. A woman who
gives offence in the field, and is large in the family way, is compelled
to lie down over a hole made to receive her corpulency, and is flogged
with the whip, or beat with a paddle, which has holes in it; at every
hole comes a blister. One of my sisters was so severely punished in this
way, that labor was brought on, and the child was born in the field.
This very overseer, Mr. Brooks, killed in this manner a girl named
Mary; her father and mother were in the field at the time. He killed,
also, a boy about twelve years old. He had no punishment, or even trial,
for either.
There was no dinner till dark, when he gave the order to knock off and
go home. The meal then was the same as in the morning, except that we
had meat twice a week.
On very few estates are the colored people provided with any bedding:
the best masters give only a blanket; this master gave none; a board,
which the slave might pick up any where on the estate, was all he had
to lie on. If he wished to procure bedding, he could only do so by
working at nights. For warmth, therefore, the negroes generally sleep
near a large fire, whether in the kitchen, or in their log huts; their legs
are often in this way blistered and greatly swelled, and sometimes
badly burnt: they suffer severely from this cause.
When the water-mill did not supply meal enough, we had to grind with

the hand-mill. The night was employed in this work, without any thing
being taken from the labor of the day. We had to take turn at it, women
as well as men; enough was to be ground to serve for the following
day.
I was eight months in the field. My master, Mr. Sawyer, agreed to
allow me eight dollars a month, while so employed, towards buying
myself; it will be seen he did not give me even that. When I first went
to work in the corn-field, I had paid him $230 towards this third buying
of my freedom. I told him, one night, I could not stand his field work
any longer; he asked, why; I said I was almost starved to death, and had
long been unaccustomed to this severe labor. He wanted to know why I
could not stand it as well as the rest. I told him he knew well I had not
been used to it for a long time; that his overseer was the worst that had
ever been on the plantation, and that I could not stand it. He said he
would direct Mr. Brooks to give each of us a pint of meal or corn every
evening, which we might bake, and which would serve us next morning,
till our breakfast came at noon. The black people were much rejoiced
that I got this additional allowance for them. But I was not satisfied; I
wanted liberty.
On Sunday morning, as master was sitting in his porch, I went to him,
and offered to give him