I had to learn the value of my mother long
after her death, and by witnessing the devotion of other mothers
to their children.
There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so
destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters
strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a
myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an
intelligible beginning in the world.
My mother died when I could not have been more than eight or nine
years old, on one of old master's farms in Tuckahoe, in the
neighborhood of Hillsborough. Her grave is, as the grave of the
dead at sea, unmarked, and without stone or stake.
CHAPTER IV
_A General Survey of the Slave Plantation_
ISOLATION OF LLOYD S PLANTATION--PUBLIC OPINION THERE NO
PROTECTION TO THE SLAVE--ABSOLUTE POWER OF THE OVERSEER--NATURAL
AND ARTIFICIAL CHARMS OF THE PLACE--ITS BUSINESS-LIKE
APPEARANCE--SUPERSTITION ABOUT THE BURIAL GROUND--GREAT IDEAS OF
COL. LLOYD--ETIQUETTE AMONG SLAVES--THE COMIC SLAVE DOCTOR--
PRAYING AND FLOGGING--OLD MASTER LOSING ITS TERRORS--HIS
BUSINESS--CHARACTER OF AUNT KATY--SUFFERINGS FROM HUNGER--OLD
MASTER'S HOME--JARGON OF THE PLANTATION--GUINEA SLAVES--MASTER
DANIEL--FAMILY OF COL.
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