AM the son of a negro, and was born in Maryland in the year 1781. My grandfather, father, and mother were slaves, and I was born in the same hopeless condition. While still a child of four years old, I was separated from the other members of my family, and sold to a planter in a distant part of the country. Being the youngest child of my mother, my forcible separation from her produced a scene of lamentation and distress. Her cry of agony as she got the last look of me has ever since rung in my ears. I was informed that my name was Charles Ball. It is all a chance who a slave is sold to; he may be cruel and avaricious, or he may possess a share of benevolent feelings. Fortunately, I fell into the hands of a humane man, by whom I was designed for a house slave when I should be old enough; but this was frustrated by the death of my proprietor, and I passed into less considerate hands. I was sent to the city of Washington, where I spent about two years as cook on board the Congress frigate, having sufficient to eat, and being pretty well clothed. Still, a spirit of freedom frequently arose within me at the sight of long trains of fellow-negroes, chained together, who were driven through Washington on their way to the southern states; and even at that early age I determined to attempt an escape to Philadelphia, the haven of runaway slaves. A fresh sale of me prevented this, and I next resided with a farmer for three years. While in this man's possession,

I married a girl of colour, house slave to a lady in the neighbourhood. The lot of my wife was easier than my own; for my master was a discontented, ill-tempered man, always ready to find fault, and did not afford his slaves proper clothing or sufficient food. This was bad enough; but there was worse treatment in store for me, for I was told one day that I was sold to a Georgian slave-dealer, and that I was to be marched immediately to the south.

At these words the thoughts of my wife and children rushed across my mind, and my heart sank within me. I saw at once that resistance was vain, as there were upwards of twenty persons present, all of whom were ready to assist the wretch who had seized me. My hands were bound strongly behind me, and I was told that we were to set out that same day for the south. I asked if I could not be allowed to see my wife and children, but I was refused. My new master took me across the Patuxent river, where I joined fifty-one other slaves, whom he had bought in Maryland; thirty-two were men, the rest women. The women were merely tied together by a rope, which was passed like a halter round the neck of each; but the men, of whom I was the stoutest and strongest, were very differently caparisoned. A strong iron collar was closely fastened, by means of a padlock, round each of our necks. A chain of iron, about a hundred feet in length, was passed through the hasp of each padlock, except at the two ends, where the hasps passed through a link of the chain. In addition to this, we were handcuffed in pairs, with iron staples and bolts, with a short chain about a foot long, uniting the handcuffs and their wearers in pairs. In this manner we were chained alternately by the right and left hand; and the poor man to whom I was thus ironed cried like a child when the blacksmith, with his heavy hammer, fastened the ends of the bolts that kept the staples from slipping from our arms. As for myself, I felt indifferent to my fate; it appeared to me that the worst had come that could come, and that no change of fortune could harm me.

Thus was our miserable gang marched away from our home country, the master riding by our side, and hastening our march, sometimes by encouragement, and sometimes with threats. Our food was corn bread, sour milk, and mush, which is Indian meal boiled with water. We were clothed in rags, and slept all together on the floors of such houses as we chanced to stop at. Occasionally we received a salt herring, and on Sunday a quarter of a pound of bacon was allowed to each. We crossed successively the Potomac, the Matepony, and the Anna rivers; and having traversed Virginia, we entered North Carolina, where I first saw a field of cotton in bloom. I was at this time about twenty-five years old, strong and healthy; and the first feeling of despair at having been driven away from my wife and children, gave way to a sense of the necessity of

making the best of my present situation. I had endeavoured through the whole journey to make such observations upon the country and the towns we passed through, as would enable me at some future period to find my way back to Maryland. By repeatedly naming the rivers we came to in the order in which we had reached them, I was able, on my arrival in Georgia, to repeat the name of every considerable stream from the Potomac to the Savannah, and to tell the position and bearing of the ferries by which we had crossed them.

From North Carolina our party passed to South Carolina, where, remembering all I had heard of the dreadful treatment of slaves in that state, I lost all courage, and for the first time felt weary of life. I had now no hope of ever again seeing my wife and children, or the scenes of my youth; and I apprehended long pains from hunger, for I had often heard that in South Carolina the slaves were compelled in times of scarcity to live on cotton seeds. Self-destruction is more frequent among slaves in the cotton region than is generally supposed; but as a certain degree of disgrace falls upon the master whose slave has committed suicide, and as it is a dangerous example, all means are taken to deter the negroes from it; not allowing the suicide the small portion of Christian rites which is awarded to the corpses of other slaves.

It was long after midnight before I fell asleep; but the most pleasant dreams succeeded to these sorrowful forebodings. I thought that, after dreadful sufferings, I had made my way back to Maryland, and was again in my wife's cabin, with two of my little children on my lap, while their mother prepared supper. This dream was so vivid, that I awoke, convinced that it would one day be realised; although at starting the next morning the master addressed us, telling us that we might now give up all hope of returning to our native places, as escape through North Carolina and Virginia was quite impossible; that we had better be contented, as he would take us to Georgia, a fine country, where we might live in the greatest abundance. He also sold two of the women for a thousand dollars, with the condition that the purchaser should pay a blacksmith for taking the chains off the rest of us. Before this could be done, a dispute arose, and the stranger declared that all the "niggers in the drove were Yankee niggers," adding, that he once had two Yankee niggers, who were running away every day. He gave them a hundred lashes, he said, more than a dozen times, but they never quitted running away till he fastened them together with iron collars round their necks, and chained them to spades, and made them do nothing but dig ditches to drain the rice swamps. They could not run away then, unless they went together, and carried their chains and spades with them. In this dreadful state he kept them two years, and said he never had better niggers; but one of them died, and the other

was never good for anything after he lost his mate. He never ran away afterwards, but he also died after a while. The man then told the two women he had bought, that if ever they ran away, he would serve them the same. Our irons were taken off; the women parted from us in tears and despair; and we proceeded on our way, having ten miles more to go that evening. When first relieved from my iron collar and chains, which I had worn for four weeks and five days, I felt a kind of giddiness in my head, from which I recovered after the first night. The next day we passed by cotton and rice fields, and crossed the Catawba river. The rice swamps were covered with water, having causeways raised through them; and they swarmed with frogs and thousands of snakes. The day before we arrived at Columbia we had for breakfast corn meal boiled in water, with a small piece of bacon to give the soup a taste of meat. For dinner we had boiled Indian peas, with a small allowance of bacon; which unusual liberality was no doubt to make us look fat and hearty, as we were to be sold at Columbia.

About three miles from the town, we stopped at the house of a kind of tavern-keeper, who invited my master to remain a few days with him, in order to be introduced to the gentlemen of the neighbourhood as a merchant of respectability. In Maryland my master had been called a negro buyer or Georgia trader, sometimes a negro driver; but here I found that he was elevated to the rank of a merchant of the first order-no branch of trade being more honourable than the traffic in us poor slaves-or servants, as the negroes are called by people of fashion in the slaveholding states. We remained here two weeks, and I saw a great deal of the customs of South Carolina. We also washed our skins and our clothes; and soap not being allowed us, we used a kind of oily clay resembling fullers' earth, which entirely cleaned us. We lived and slept all together in an old decayed building about forty feet square, without either doors or windows, and with no other floor than the earth. Our provisions were regularly distributed-a pint of corn and a pint of rice to each, and about three or four pounds of rancid butter divided amongst The rice we boiled, the corn we ground, and made the meal into bread. The butter was to recruit us after our long march, and give us a healthy appearance at our sale. We did no work; but gentlemen and ladies came every day to look at us, with a view to our purchase. We were minutely examined as to ages and capacity for labour, and our persons were inspected, espe cially the hands, to see if all the fingers were perfect, and capable of the quick motions necessary in picking cotton. Our master visited us once a-day, and declared to all visitors that he had purchased us in Virginia, either of ruined masters, or at public auctions, assuring them that not one had been known to steal or run away—the highest crimes of which a slave can be guilty.

us.

II.

It was about the middle of June, the weather excessively warm, and from eleven o'clock A.M. till late in the afternoon, the sand about our residence was so hot, that we could not stand on it with our bare feet in one posture more than one or two minutes. I went into the cotton field, to see the labour in which I was to pass the remainder of my life; but I found that the slaves were not allowed to speak to me, as the master was present. After having been at this place between two or three weeks, we were marched to Columbia one morning before sunrise, and drawn up in a long line in a street opposite the court-house. After having been kept here about an hour to be looked at, we were removed into the jail-yard, where we were fed, and slept in the jail that night. The next day the town was extremely full; and about ten o'clock the jailor came to us, and after a long address to the crowd, he announced the most valuable lot of slaves that had ever been offered in Columbia-young, of good habits, healthy, and all purchased of tobacco planters in Virginia. A young lad was first sold for three hundred and fifty dollars, and he was led away, weeping bitterly. A young girl was the next sold, to a lady who attended the sales in her carriage, and made the biddings out of the window. In this manner the sales were continued throughout the day. The next was the 4th of July, and a day of general rejoicing. Cannon were fired, drums and fifes were played in the streets, and a great crowd of people gathered round the jail, many of whom were intoxicated, and sang and shouted in honour of free government and the rights of man. A table was spread in the street, at which several hundred people sat down to dinner at noon, and continued to eat, drink, and sing songs in honour of liberty for more than two hours. Gentlemen made speeches, in which they said it was an acknowledged principle of our free government that all men were born free and equal. About five o'clock the jailor proclaimed the sale of the slaves; and in a few minutes the whole dinner party, and hundreds of others, being assembled round the jail door, the jailor proceeded with his auction. The best of us had been kept back till the last, and the prices were higher this day. In three hours all were sold except three, of whom I was one. An old gentleman bought me, and desired me to follow him to a tavern, where I was left standing before the door, or sitting upon a log of wood, till ten o'clock at night, while my master and his companions were drinking toasts in honour of liberty and independence. Having sat down on a bench, I was driven from it by a gentleman in military clothes, who imperiously demanded how I dared to sit there. "Did you not see white people sit upon that bench, you saucy rascal?" said he. I excused myself