Twelve Years a Slave

mistress, who, standing unobserved on the piazza at the time, was listening to our conversation.
    “Well, Aunt Phebe,” said I, “I’m glad of it. I’m tired of scraping cotton, and would rather be a tanner. I hope he’ll buy me.”
    O’Niel did not effect a purchase, however, the parties differing as to price, and the morning following his arrival, departed homewards. He had been gone but a short time me, when Epps made his appearance in the field. Now nothing will more violently enrage a master, especially Epps, than the intimation of one of his servants that he would like to leave him. Mistress Epps had repeated to him my expressions to Aunt Phebe the evening previous, as I learned from the latter afterwards, the mistress having mentioned to her that she had overheard us. On entering the field, Epps walked directly to me.
    “So, Platt, you’re tired of scraping cotton, are you? You would like to change your master, eh? You’re fond of moving round — traveler — ain’t ye? Ah, yes — like to travel for your health, may be? Feel above cotton-scraping, I ‘spose. So you’re going into the tanning business? Good business — devilish fine business. Enterprising nigger! B’lieve I’ll go into that business myself. Down on your knees, and strip that rag off your back! I’ll try my hand at tanning.”
    I begged earnestly, and endeavored to soften him with excuses, but in vain. There was no other alternative; so kneeling down, I presented my bare back for the application of the lash.
    “How do you like tanning?” he exclaimed, as the rawhide descended upon my flesh. “How do you like tanning?” he repeated at every blow. In this manner he gave me twenty or thirty lashes, incessantly giving utterance to the word “tanning,” in one form of expression or another. When sufficiently “tanned,” he allowed me to arise, and with a half-malicious laugh assured me, if I still fancied the business, he would give me further instruction in it whenever I desired. This time, he remarked, he had only given me a short lesson in “tanning “ — the next time he would “curry me down.”
    Uncle Abram, also, was frequently treated with great brutality, although he was one of the kindest and most faithful creatures in the world. He was my cabin-mate for years. There was a benevolent expression in the old man’s face, pleasant to behold. He regarded us with a kind of parental feeling, always counseling us with remarkable gravity and deliberation.
    Returning from Marshall’s plantation one afternoon, whither I had been sent on some errand of the mistress, I found him lying on the cabin floor, his clothes saturated with blood. He informed me that he had been stabbed! While spreading cotton on the scaffold, Epps came home intoxicated from Holmesville. He found fault with every thing, giving many orders so directly contrary that it was impossible to execute any of them. Uncle Abram, whose faculties were growing dull, became confused, and committed some blunder of no particular consequence. Epps was so enraged thereat, that, with drunken recklessness, he flew upon the old man, and stabbed him in the back. It was a long, ugly wound, but did not happen to penetrate far enough to result fatally. It was sewed up by the mistress, who censured her husband with extreme severity, not only denouncing his inhumanity, but declaring that she expected nothing else than that he would bring the family to poverty — that he would kill all the slaves on the plantation in some of his drunken fits.
    It was no uncommon thing with him to prostrate Aunt Phebe with a chair or stick of wood; but the most cruel whipping that ever I was doomed to witness — one I can never recall with any other emotion than that of horror — was inflicted on the unfortunate Patsey.
    It has been seen that the jealousy and hatred of Mistress Epps made the daily life of her young and agile slave completely miserable. I am happy in the belief that on numerous occasions I was the means of averting punishment from the inoffensive girl. In Epps’ absence the mistress often ordered me to whip her without the remotest provocation. I would refuse, saying that I feared my master’s displeasure, and several times ventured to remonstrate with her against the treatment Patsey received. I endeavored to impress her with the truth that the latter was not responsible for the acts of which she complained, but that she being a slave, and subject entirely to her