Chapter: I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from
Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my
age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the
larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of
theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep
their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave
who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than
planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A
want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me
even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could
not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not
allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed
all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and
evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me
now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this,
from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen
years old.

My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and
Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker
complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.

My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever
heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my
master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know
nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were
separated when I was but an infant--before I knew her as my mother. It is
a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part
children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the
child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and
hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is
placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For
what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the
development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and
destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the
inevitable result.

I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times
in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at
night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from
my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the
whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was
a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at
sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to
the contrary--a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives
to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not
recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me
in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long
before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place
between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived,
and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about
seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not
allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She
was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to
any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful
care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I
should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.

Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation
of who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or
may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to
my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that
slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children
of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers;
and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and
make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as
pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases
not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and
father.

I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves
invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with,
than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their
mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom
do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she
sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of
showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black
slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his
slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel
as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children
to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to
do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself,
but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few
shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his
naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to
his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for
himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.

Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was
doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great
statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the
inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled
or not, it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of
people are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery,
from those originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their
increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument,
that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the
lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is
certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for
thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe
their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently
their own masters.

I have had two masters. My first master's name was Anthony. I do not
remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony--a title
which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay.
He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms,
and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an
overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable
drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed
with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash
the women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at
his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself.
Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary
barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man,
hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take
great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the
dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine,
whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she
was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from
his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose.
The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran
fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream,
and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would
he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I
ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well
remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was
the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be
a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the
blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which
I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could
commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.

This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old
master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one
night,--where or for what I do not know,--and happened to be absent
when my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go
out evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in
company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to
Colonel Lloyd. The young man's name was Ned Roberts, generally called
Lloyd's Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to
conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions,
having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance,
among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.

Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been
found in company with Lloyd's Ned; which circumstance, I found, from
what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a
man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in
protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not
suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt
Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to
waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then
told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d----d b---h.
After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her
to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He
made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now
stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their
full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said
to her, "Now, you d----d b---h, I'll learn you how to disobey my orders!"
and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy
cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from
her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so
terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a
closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction
was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me.
I had never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my
grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to
raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until
now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the
plantation.

 Douglass begins his Narrative by explaining that he is like many other slaves who don't know when they were born and, sometimes, even who their parents are. From hearsay, he estimates that he was born around 1817 and that his father was probably his first white master, Captain Anthony. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was a field hand who wasn't allowed to see him very often; she died when Douglass was seven years old. Children of mixed-race parentage are always classified as slaves, Douglass says, and this class of mulattos is increasing rapidly. Douglass implies that these mulatto slaves are, for the most part, the result of white masters raping black slaves. He tells about the brutality of his master's overseer, Mr. Plummer, as well as the story of Aunt Hester, who was brutally whipped by Captain Anthony because she fancied another slave. Captain Anthony apparently wanted her for himself exclusively.

