The way in which Mr. Trewitt came to buy me was this: I had left the boats, and had gone with a schooner collecting lumber in Albemarle Sound for the merchants. Coming to Elizabeth City, I found a new store had been opened by Mr. Grice, which Mr. Sutton was keeping: the latter gentleman was glad to see me, and was desirous that I should return to my old employment with the canal boats, as lumber was in great demand at Norfolk. I did so, and sold some cargoes to Mr. Moses Myers, of Norfolk. As I was waiting at the door of his store for settlement, he came up with Mr. Trewitt, whom I did not then know. Mr. Myers said to Mr. Trewitt, 'Here is a captain doing business for you.' Mr. Trewitt then asked me who had chartered the boats, and to whom I belonged. I told him Mr. Sutton had chartered me, and that I had belonged to Mr. James Grandy, but had bought myself. He said he would buy me; on which Mr. Myers told him he could not, as I had already bought myself, and further said I was one of their old war captains, and had never lost a single thing of the property intrusted to me. Mr. Trewitt said he would buy me, and would see about it as soon as he got to Elizabeth City. I thought no more about it. On my return voyage, I delivered a cargo at Elizabeth City, for Mr. Trewitt. I had been at Mr. Grice's, the owner of the boats; and, on my going away from him to meet Mr. Trewitt for settlement, he said he would go with me, as he wanted money. Opposite the custom house we met Mr. Trewitt, who said, 'Well, captain, I have bought you.' Mr. Grice said, 'Let us have no nonsense; go and settle with him.' Angry words passed between them, one saying he had bought me, and the other denying that he had or could, as I had bought myself already. We all went to Mr. Grice's dwelling house; there Mr. Trewitt settled with me about the freight, and then, jumping up, said, 'Now I will show you, Mr. Grice, whether I am a liar or not.' He fetched the bill of sale; on reading it, Mr. Grice's color changed, and he sent for Mrs. Grice. When she read it, she began to cry; seeing that, I began to cry too. She sent me to her brother, who was at Mr. Wood's boarding house. He was playing at billiards. I said to him, 'Master James, have you sold me?' He said, 'No.' I said he had; when he turned round and went into another room, crying; I followed him. All the gentlemen followed us, saying, 'Captain Grandy, what is the matter?' I told them Master James had sold me again. They asked him why he had done it; he said it was because people had jeered him by saying I had more sense than he had. They would not suffer him to remain in the boarding house, but turned him out, there and then, with all his trunks and boxes. Mrs. Grice, his sister, sued him in my name for my liberty, but he gained the cause. The court maintained that I, and all I could do, belonged to him, and that he had a right to do as he pleased with me and all my earnings, as his own property, until he had taken me to the court house, and given me my free papers, and until, besides that, I had been a year and a day in the Northern States to gain my residence.
So I was forced to go to Mr. Trewitt. He agreed that, if I would pay him the same wages as I paid my late master, and the $600 he gave for me, he would give me my free papers. He bought two canal boats, and, taking me out of Mr. Grice's employment, set me to work them on the same terms as I did for my former master. I was two years and a half in earning $600 to pay for myself the second time. Just when I had completed the payment, he failed. On Christmas eve he gave me a letter to take to Mr. Mews, at Newbegun Creek. I was rather unwilling to take it, wishing to go to my wife; I told him, too, I was going to his office to settle with him. He offered to give me two dollars to take the letter, and said he would settle when I came back: then Mr. Shaw came from another room, and said his vessel was ready loaded, but he had nobody he could trust with his goods; he offered me five dollars to take the vessel down, and deliver the goods to Mr. Knox, who also was at Newbegun Creek. The wind was fair, and the hands on board, so I agreed; it being Christmas eve, I was glad of something to carry to my wife. I ran the vessel down to the mouth of the creek, and anchored; when the moon rose, I went up the river. I reached the wharf, and commenced taking out the goods that night, and delivered them all safely to Mr. Knox next morning. I then took the letter to Mr. Mews, who read it, and, looking up at me, said, 'Well, you belong to me.' I thought he was joking, and said, 'How? What way?' He said, 'Don't you recollect when Trewitt chartered Wilson Sawyer's brig to the West Indies?' I said, I did. He told me Trewitt then came to him to borrow $600, which he would not lend, except he had a mortgage on me: Trewitt was to take it up at a certain time, but never did. I asked him whether he really took the mortgage on me. He replied that he certainly thought Trewitt would have taken up the mortgage, but he had failed, and was not worth a cent, and he, Mews, must have his money. I asked him whether he had not helped me and my young mistress in the court house, when master James fooled me before. He said he did help me all he could, and that he should not have taken a mortgage on me, but that he thought Trewitt would take it up. Trewitt must have received some of the last payments from me, after he had given the mortgage, and knew he should fail; for the mortgage was given two months before this time.
My head seemed to turn round and round; I was quite out of my senses; I went away towards the woods; Mr. Mews sent his waiter after me to persuade me to go back. At first I refused, but afterwards went. He told me he would give me another chance to buy myself, and I certainly should have my freedom that time. He said Mr. Enoch Sawyer wanted to buy me, to be his overseer in the Swamp. I replied I would never try again to buy myself, and that they had already got $1,200 from me. My wife[1] (this was my second wife) belonged to Mr. Sawyer; he told me that her master would not allow me to go to see her, if I would not consent to what he now proposed; for any colored person going on the grounds of a white man, after being warned off, is liable to be flogged, or even shot. I thus found myself forced to go, although no colored man wishes to live at the house where his wife lives, for he has to endure the continual misery of seeing her flogged and abused, without daring to say a word in her defence.
In the service of Mr. Sawyer, I got into a fair way of buying myself again; for I undertook the lightering of shingles or boards out of the Dismal Swamp, and hired hands to assist me. But my master had become security for his two sons-in-law at Norfolk, who failed; in consequence of which he sold eighteen colored people, his share of the Swamp, and two plantations. I was one of the slaves he kept, and after that had to work in the corn-field the same as the rest. The overseer was a bad one; his name was Brooks. The horn was blown at sunrise; the colored people had then to march before the overseer to the field, he on horseback. We had to work, even in long summer days, till twelve o'clock, before we tasted a morsel, men, women, and children all being served alike. At noon the cart appeared with our breakfast. It was in large trays, and was set on the ground. There was bread, of which a piece was cut off for each person; then there was small hominy boiled, that is, Indian-corn, ground in the hand-mill, and besides this two herrings for each of the men and women, and one for each of the children. Our drink was the water in the ditches, whatever might be its state; if the ditches were dry, water was brought to us by the boys. The salt fish made us always thirsty, but no other drink than water was ever allowed. However thirsty a slave may be, he is not allowed to leave his employment for a moment to get water; he can only have it when the hands in working have reached the ditch, at the end of the rows. The overseer stood with his watch in his hand, to give us just an hour; when he 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 the $230 I had already paid him, if, beside them, he would take for my freedom the $600 he had given for me. He drove me away, saying I had no way to get the money. I sat down for a time, and went to him again. I repeated my offer to procure the $690, and he again said I could not. He called his wife out of the room to the porch, and said to her, 'Don't you think Moses has taken to getting drunk?' She asked me if it was so; I denied it, when she inquired what was the matter. Master replied, 'Don't you think he wants me to sell him?' She said, 'Moses, we would not take any money for you. Captain Cormack put a thousand dollars for you on the supper table last Friday night, and Mr. Sawyer would not touch it; he wants you to be overseer in the Dismal Swamp.' I replied, 'Captain Cormack never said any thing to me about buying me; I would cut my throat from ear to ear rather than go to him. I know what made him say so; he is courting Miss Patsey, and he did it to make himself look big.' Mistress laughed and turned away, and slammed to the door; master shook himself with laughing, and put the paper he was reading before his face, knowing that I spoke the truth. Captain Cormack was an old man who went on crutches. Miss Patsey was the finest of master's daughters. Master drove me away from him again.
On Monday morning, Mr. Brooks, the overseer, blew the horn as usual for all to go to the field. I refused to go. I went to master, and told him that if he would give me a paper, I would go and fetch the $600; he then gave me a paper, stating that he was willing to take that sum for my freedom: so I hired an old horse and started for Norfolk, fifty miles off.