Three Years in Europe | Page 2

mother was a slave named
Elizabeth, the property of Dr. Young, a physician. His father was
George Higgins, a relative of his master.
The name given to our author at his birth, was "William"--no second or
surname being permitted to a slave. While William was an infant, Dr.
Young removed to Missouri, where, in addition to his profession as a
physician, he carried on the--to European notions--incongruous
avocations of miller, merchant, and farmer. Here William was
employed as a house servant, while his mother was engaged as a field
hand. One of his first bitter experiences of the cruelties of slavery, was
his witnessing the infliction of ten lashes upon the bare back of his
mother, for being a few minutes behind her time at the field--a
punishment inflicted with one of those peculiar whips in the
construction of which, so as to produce the greatest amount of torture,
those whom Lord Carlisle has designated "the chivalry of the South"
find scope for their ingenuity.
Dr. Young subsequently removed to a farm near St. Louis, in the same
State. Having been elected a Member of the Legislature, he devolved
the management of his farm upon an overseer, having, what to his
unhappy victims must have been the ironical name of "Friend Haskall."
The mother and child were now separated. The boy was levied to a
Virginian named Freeland, who bore the military title of Major, and
carried on the plebeian business of a publican. This man was of an
extremely brutal disposition, and treated his slaves with most refined
cruelty. His favourite punishment, which he facetiously called
"Virginian play," was to flog his slaves severely, and then expose their
lacerated flesh to the smoke of tobacco stems, causing the most
exquisite agony. William complained to his owner of the treatment of
Freeland, but, as in almost all similar instances, the appeal was in vain.
At length he was induced to attempt an escape, not from that love of
liberty which subsequently became with him an unconquerable passion,
but simply to avoid the cruelty to which he was habitually subjected.
He took refuge in the woods, but was hunted and "traced" by the
blood-hounds of a Major O'Fallon, another of "the chivalry of the
South," whose gallant occupation was that of keeping an establishment

for the hire of ferocious dogs with which to hunt fugitive slaves. The
young slave received a severe application of "Virginia play" for his
attempt to escape. Happily the military publican soon afterwards failed
in business, and William found a better master and a more congenial
employment with Captain Cilvers, on board a steam-boat plying
between St. Louis and Galena. At the close of the sailing season he was
levied to an hotel-keeper, a native of a free state, but withal of a class
which exist north as well as south--a most inveterate negro hater. At
this period of William's history, a circumstance occurred, which,
although a common incident in the lives of slaves, is one of the keenest
trials they have to endure--the breaking up of his family circle. Her
master wanted money, and he therefore sold Elizabeth and six of her
children to seven different purchasers. The family relationship is almost
the only solace of slavery. While the mother, brothers, and sisters are
permitted to meet together in the negro hut after the hour of labour, the
slaves are comparatively content with their oppressed condition; but
deprive them of this, the only privilege which they as human beings are
possessed of, and nothing is left but the animal part of their nature--the
living soul is extinguished within them. With them there is nothing to
love--everything to hate. They feel themselves degraded to the
condition not only of mere animals, but of the most ill-used animals in
the creation.
Not needing the services of his young relative, Dr. Young hired him to
the proprietor of the _St. Louis Times_, the best master William ever
had in slavery. Here he gained the scanty amount of education he
acquired at the South. This kind treatment by his editorial master
appears to have engendered in the heart of William a consciousness of
his own manhood, and led him into the commission of an offence
similar to that perpetrated by Frederick Douglass, under similar
circumstances--the assertion of the right of self-defence. He gallantly
defended himself against the attacks of several boys older and bigger
than himself, but in so doing was guilty of the unpardonable sin of
lifting his hand against white lads; and the father of one of them,
therefore, deemed it consistent with his manhood to lay in wait for the
young slave, and beat him over the head with a heavy cane till the
blood gushed from his nose and ears. From the effects of that treatment
the