143 Life with a Slave-Breaker (1833)

Master Thomas at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken. And for this purpose he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had it done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year for the sake of the training to which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion — a pious soul — a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a “nigger-breaker.” I was aware of all the facts, having been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless made the change gladly, for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.

I left Master Thomas’s house and went to live with Mr. Covey on the 1st of January, 1833. I was now for the first time in my life a field hand. In my new employment I found myself even more awkward than a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger. The details of this affair are as follows: Mr. Covey sent me very early in the morning of one of our coldest days in the month of January, to the woods to get a load of wood. He gave me a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox and which the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the horns of the in-hand ox and gave me the other end of it and told me, if the oxen started to run that I must hold on upon the rope. I had never driven oxen before and of course I was very awkward. I however succeeded in getting to the edge of the woods with little difficulty, but I had got a very few rods into the woods when the oxen took fright and started full tilt, carrying the cart against trees and over stumps in the most frightful manner. I expected every moment that my brains would be dashed out against the trees. After running thus for a considerable distance, they finally upset the cart, dashing it with great force against a tree and threw themselves into a dense thicket. How I escaped death, I do not know. There I was, entirely alone, in a thick wood, in a place new to me. My cart was upset and shattered, my oxen were entangled among the young trees, and there was none to help me. After a long spell of effort I succeeded in getting my cart righted, my oxen disentangled and again yoked to the cart. I now proceeded with my team to the place where I had the day before been chopping wood, and loaded my cart pretty heavily, thinking in this way to tame my oxen. I then proceeded on my way home. I had now consumed one half of the day. I got out of the woods safely, and now felt out of danger. I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate and just as I did so, before I could get hold of my ox-rope the oxen again started, rushed through the gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of the cart, tearing it to pieces and coming within a few inches of crushing me against the gatepost. Thus twice in one short day I escaped death by the merest chance. On my return, I told Mr. Covey what had happened and how it happened. He ordered me to return to the woods again immediately. I did so and he followed on after me. Just as I got into the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart and that he would teach me how to trifle away my time and break gates. He then went to a large gum tree and with his axe cut three large switches and, after trimming them up neatly with his pocket-knife, he ordered me to take off my clothes. I made him no answer but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my clothes and lashed me till he had worn out his switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for a long time after. This whipping was the first of a number just like it and for similar offenses.

I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months of that year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free from a sore back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for whipping me. We were worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long before day we were up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day we were off to the field with our hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat but scarce time to eat it. We were often less than five minutes taking our meals. We were often in the field from the first approach of day till its last lingering ray had left us. And at saving-fodder time, midnight often caught us in the field binding blades.

Covey would be out with us.  The way he used to stand it was this. He would spend the most of his afternoons in bed. He would then come out fresh in the evening, ready to urge us on with his words, example, and frequently with the whip. Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who could and did work with his hands. He was a hard-working man. He knew by himself just what a man or a boy could do. There was no deceiving him. His work went on in his absence almost as well as in his presence, and he had the faculty of making us feel that he was ever present with us. This he did by surprising us. He seldom approached the spot where we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed at taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning that we used to call him, among ourselves, “the snake”. When we were at work in the cornfield he would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and all at once he would rise nearly in our midst and scream out, “Ha, ha! Come, come! Dash on, dash on!” This being his mode of attack, it was never safe to stop a single minute. His comings were like a thief in the night. He appeared to us as being ever at hand. He was under every tree, behind every stump, in every bush, and at every window on the plantation. He would sometimes mount his horse as if bound to St. Michael’s, a distance of seven miles, and in half an hour afterwards you would see him coiled up in the corner of the wood-fence, watching every motion of the slaves. He would for this purpose leave his horse tied up in the woods. Again, he would sometimes walk up to us and give us orders as though he was upon the point of starting on a long journey, turn his back upon us and make as though he was going to the house to get ready. And before he would get half way thither, he would turn short and crawl into a fence-corner or behind some tree and there watch us till the going down of the sun.

Mr. Covey’s forte consisted in his power to deceive. His life was devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions. Everything he possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made conform to his disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning and a long prayer at night and, strange as it may seem, few men would at times appear more devotional than he. The exercises of his family devotions were always commenced with singing and as he was a very poor singer himself, the duty of raising the hymn generally came upon me. He would read his hymn and nod at me to commence. I would at times do so; at others, I would not. My non-compliance would almost always produce much confusion. To show himself independent of me, he would start and stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner. In this state of mind, he prayed with more than ordinary spirit. Poor man! Such was his disposition and success at deceiving, I do verily believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief that he was a sincere worshipper of the most high God.

If at any one time of my life more than another I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died. The dark night of slavery closed in upon me, and behold a man transformed into a brute!

Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by himself (1845) , 57-63. https://archive.org/details/toldcontemporari03hartrich/page/578/mode/2up