riverbank will make a very good road,
The dead trees show you the way.
Left foot, peg foot traveling on,
Following the drinking gourd.
The river ends between two hills,
Follow the drinking gourd,
There’s another river on the other side,
Follow the drinking gourd.
When the great big river meets the little river,
Follow the drinking gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
While Harriet’s owner may have been, in comparison to other slave owners, “fair,” he did treat his slaves harshly mainly because he developed financial problems. To raise money, he abruptly sold two of Harriet’s older sisters, Linah and Sophy. This act not only separated the sisters from Ben, Rit, and their other brothers and sisters, but also left two of Linah and Sophy’s children behind. This was the norm for slaves, but it made Harriet decide early on that she would try to take control of her life, that she would be free.
This woodcut shows a heartbreaking scene in which a mother in bondage is wrenched from her baby to be taken to the auction block and sold away. Harriet’s older sister Linah was taken away in this fashion, never to be heard from again.
2
Wedded Bliss
The practice of hiring out slaves to other owners also impacted couples, since legal unions for enslaved people were not allowed. Some “marriages” between slaves amounted to one or two annual visits a year because the partners might be owned by masters living 100 miles or more apart or by masters who had to shift their slaves to those areas where there was work for them to do. Maryland had a law that stated that there were no rights for blacks that a white person had to respect, which included marriage vows. The very ability to choose your own partner and consider yourself married, to “jump over the broom,” was a fortunate position — to live with your partner was less likely unless you were both free or both enslaved on the same plantation.
Harriet Tubman was fortunate to have both of her parents in her life as well as her siblings since each of her parents’ owners had married. Harriet Tubman was hired out to work on other plantations because the economic factors in the north had changed. Where once the crops grown in the Maryland area were highly labour intensive, such as harvesting tobacco, by the nineteenth century the focus shifted to grain and timber for the growing ship-building industry in Baltimore for both local consumption and export. Neither of these products required the ongoing labour of a full complement of slaves.
This economic reality, coupled with the religious imperative to free enslaved people, facilitated a rise in the free black population — formerly enslaved Africans who were manumitted, or given ownership of themselves. They were free to hire themselves out to those planters who had need of temporary assistance. It also made the sale of one’s property, one’s slaves, to the demanding needs of the south in the sugar and cotton plantations, very lucrative. Following the War of 1812, European products increased competition, further pressuring the American economy and making the lure of selling one’s slaves seem even more appealing.
“Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.”
— Harriet Jacobs,
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
The experience of being a slave was different for men and women. Initially, most enslaved Africans were male in order for them to carry out the extremely hard work that required great strength. Over time, African women were included to provide both company for the male slaves and for the potential to have an ongoing supply of slaves. Until 1808, the reliance on American-born enslaved people was small, since up until that time it was possible to obtain robust young slaves directly from a slave auction. Female slaves were sold at a reduced rate, so they were favoured for their ability to do agricultural work in order to make up for the male labour assigned to building and carpentry, blacksmithing, and clearing fields.
Both male and female slaves might be given the same work on a very large plantation, which created another layer of loss for the enslaved person. Traditionally in Africa women would hoe a field. A woman’s work in the field would be for the benefit of her children and her community. What did it mean for a man to hoe a field? How would he have felt in doing this? What did it mean for a woman to assume some of the more demanding work, such as when Tubman would later work with her male relatives cutting and preparing timber? How were the traditional roles of men and women changed during enslavement?
In addition to being subject to the needs of their enslavers in relation to the type of work they had to perform, enslaved African women were subject to having their bodies made available to their owners. It did not matter if the female was only a young girl or a married woman, her body was owned by the enslaver. Enslaved women were forced into premature sexual knowledge due to the advances and rapes made against them by their owners and then subject to abuse by the owner’s wife who would blame the enslaved woman for the advances made on the slave. Marriage was no protection. So common was the rape of married women that many enslaved African men hoped to find a mate on another plantation lest they have to witness the humiliation, harm, or violence perpetuated against their partners should they be fancied by the owner or the object of persecution of the slave owner’s wife.
Enslaved women might be enticed by the promise of freedom for themselves or their children. They also could have threats made against them or their family members if they refused to be willing participants in an emotionless physical relationship. Should the enslaved woman wish to marry someone she did love, it may not be granted by the owner. If an offer came in from a free black to buy her freedom so that she could leave, it might also be refused. In Missouri, one enslaved African teenaged woman’s story centred on her final decision to kill her owner, Robert Newsome. Celia (also known as Margaret Garner) had been sexually abused to the point where she hit her owner in the head, then kept a fire going all night to consume his body. At the time, it was decided that she had “no reason” for killing her master. She was pregnant with her third child by him.
Pregnancy might provide the enslaved woman with additional food or potentially lighter work, but did not free her from being punished should she displease the overseer. Special pits were dug so that the full belly of the pregnant slave would fit into the hole while she lay down with her back exposed so that she could be whipped without harming her growing child. Where motherhood was a positive community event in African societies, during enslavement it was a bit different. The mother might be removed from her child early on, or at some point see her child sold off, perhaps never to be seen again, or might see her own daughter raped. Enslaved women bore a child almost every two years, with lengthy nursing preventing more frequent conception. The mother may have seen several of her children die in infancy due often to poor nutrition, infection, or disease.
From first contact, where African women were captured, examined, and sold, any number of men might rape the potential slave. It was felt to be their right, part of their entitlement in assessing the potential productivity of their purchase.
