"Good Masters and Bad" in The Florida Negro Florida Writers' Project Transcription, encoding and edition Amelia Dixon Edition Laura Heffernan Edition Tru Leverette Edition Clayton McCarl

This document was produced as part of the Viola Muse Digital Edition (violamuse.unfdhi.org), based at the University of North Florida.

 USA Florida Jacksonville The section "Good Masters and Bad" found on pp. 31-35 of the manuscript copy of The Florida Negro housed in the State Archives of Florida (S1585) and available through the Florida Memory website of the State Library and Archives of Florida

Typed, five pages

Document transcribed and encoded following the criteria of the Viola Muse Digital Edition (violamuse.unfdhi.org), based at the University of North Florida.
Good Masters and Bad

Though a slave might know what kind of food and working conditions to expect on the plantation where he worked, he never knew what to expect if he changed masters. On some plantations, there were special privileges given to the slaves, such as dances, visits, and gatherings. On others, they would be forbidden to attend even the usual church meetings. At the hamlet of Sixteen,

-32-

Florida, one slave woman saw her son killed for attending church, and was threatened with death herself if she did not stop crying over the incident.

There seem to have been fewer really "hard" plantations, however, in Florida than in Mississippi, Alabama, and other states where there were more and larger plantations. Some owners, like the Sandersons in Duval County and the Hansons in St. Johns, would carefully avoid separating families when buy–ing or selling slaves; some almost never sold a slave and refused to employ overseers who beat slaves. One slave remembers that he never was forced to do any strenuous work as long as he beat the slaves of other masters at marbles;If this is a reference to the Lindsay Moore Narrative, it would seem to be a misrepresentation of the anecdote provided there: "On the Overtree plantation, the slave children were allowed considerable time for play until their tenth or twelfth years. Lindsay took full advantage of this opportunity and became very skillful at marble–shooting. It was here that he first learned to utilize his talents profitably. 'Massa Overtree' discovered the ability of Lindsay and another urchin to shoot marbles, and began taking them into town to compete with the little slaves of other owners. There would be betting on the winners. Mr. Overtree won some money in this manner, Lindsay and his companion being consistent winners. But Lindsay saw possibilities other than the glory of his victories in this new game With pennies that some of the spectators tossed him, he began making small wagers of his own with his competitors, and soon had amassed quite a small pile of silver for those days" (1-2). another was permitted to earn himself extra money by distilling moonshine. Several recall having been permitted to plant small gardens for themselves near their cabins. In Leon County, one master's two daughters spent each Sunday teach–ing the slaves to read and write. Thomas and Bryant Folsom, in Jefferson County, often staged rival parties to see which could give his slaves the better times.

That some of these kind masters may have been known to the slaves is evi–dent in the fact that there are several instances of persons who voluntarily entered slavery in order to secure the freedom of others. One such instance occurred on the Cone plantationPlantation in Columbia County; another was a three years'three-years' slavery in the vicinity of St. Augustine. In this case, the sum of $850 had to be paid in work.

In Columbia County, Cato Smith, a free Connecticut Negro travelling in Flor–ida out of curiosity, entered into a seven yearseven-year period of slavery in order to free the woman he wanted to marry. He was fortunate, however; within four years, he had his wife together with a small income from his labors.

Slaves reacted differently to cruel masters; some were thoroughly broken, while others resorted to retaliation, not always open, but sometimes quite

-33-

effective. One woman, tiring of the beatings given her by an overseer, hacked him to death with a hoe; another killed the Negro overseer on her master's plantation when he goaded her too far, then went to her master and bade him punish her as he saw fit. She says that he sent her to a cabin by herself and told her to "keep your mouth shut and only do whatever work your mistress has for you to do and behave yourself." These anecdotes separate into two instances a series of events protagonized by one woman in Charles Coates Interview Notes, Irene Coates Narrative (1 of 4), and Irene Coates Narrative (3 of 4), and Irene Coates Narrative (4 of 4), which appears to have taken place in Georgia, not Florida. In that story, an enslaved woman kills the overseer with a hoe, and then goes to the master to inform him. The version of the story found here presents a different the account of the master's response, as in the referenced notes and narratives by Viola Muse, he is impressed by the woman's daring and rewards her with her own home and the freedom to work for his wife only when she chose to do so.

"Parson" Andrews, nearing his hundredth birthday and full of reminiscences about early days in Florida, describes the attempt of "paterollers" to round up a group of slaves and return them to their plantations. The slaves, he says, were on their way back to their cabins anyway, but had stopped at the home of another slave for a brief visit. As they started to leave, several of the dread paterollers burst in. One of the slaves reached into a pile of hot ashes, with which a hide was being cured, and threw them into the faces of the patrols. In the resulting confusion, all the slaves escaped and returned to their cabins.

Escapes were much more numerous than reprisals. In describing the news of emancipation, one westWest Florida Negro states that when the gun sounded— the signal they were to get as news of their freedom—slaves came out from all parts of the woods. Some of them had been in hiding for over a year.

Some of the escapes were dramatic. One slave was pursued by several blood–hounds, and when they had tracked him to his hiding place in a creek, one by one the bodies of the hounds who entered the water after him came floating to the surface. He was not captured.

Some masters dealt summarily with slaves who attempted to escape; others regarded the desire to seek liberation as natural, and even forbade the pate–rollers to punish their escaped slaves before or upon returning them. One slave escaped three times as a boy, returned voluntarily twice, and remained on his -34- plantation as the most dutiful servant of his mistress when his master went to war. Another escaped, was captured, severely beaten, and buried alive; other slaves surreptitiously exhumed him, revived him, and sent him on his way again. He was not recaptured.

The use of bloodhounds is recorded as early as 1837, when several of them were imported from Cuba and loosened in the St. Johns River area to regain a number of Indians who had escaped into the country occupied jointly by Seminole and free Negroes. On that occasion, the bloodhounds did not succeed in locating a single refugee.

Despite the fact that escapes were blamed on whatever free Negroes could be found in a section, many of them were aided or engineered by white people who were either abolition–minded or desired slaves for purposes of traffic and used the escape method of securing them.

In Leon County, near the Campbell plantationPlantation, were several of the aboli–tionists, and they assisted many of the slave of the vicinity to gain freedom. In Jefferson and Madison countiesCounties, surrounding the Penoll and Lenton plantationsPlantations, were poorer slave owners who would assist in the liberation of slaves from the larger plantations and sell them to itinerant slave traders who came through the section around the first of the year.

Among the abolitionists, the case of the Hanson brothers in St. Augustine is interesting. Both brothers came to the State during the early days of the Seminole War to fight the Indians. One of them returned to his native New Eng–land, thoroughly convinced of the iniquity of the institution of human bondage, the other remained in the State and established a large plantation worked by slaves about three miles southwest of St. Augustine. Paradoxically, slaves would escape from one Hanson to be aided in reaching Canada by the other. The -35- old Hanson plantation is now the site of a large Negro school.

Due to the friendliness of the Seminole Indians, the relative inexper–ience of Florida slave owners in practices of slavery, the number of Negroes who escaped or attempted escape was still high in the State by about 1835–40;. afterAfter that time, however, it was not unusual to see plantations employing the "buck–and–gag" rule for runaway slaves, a punishment where in the slave was double about a hoe, shovel or board, tied, and allowed to lie in the sun part of the day. The "bell–and–stocks" system, where an iron halter was placed around the waist and neck of the slave and a loud bell attached to it, was another favorite method of punishment. And, of course, recalcitrant slaves could always be sold to masters outside the state.

"Slave raiders" were another product of these escapes. Florida Clayton, daughter of a white father and a free Negro mother, relates that a large cover–ed wagon used to come periodically to her section near Tallahassee and remain for weeks sometimes;. unfortunateUnfortunate escaped Negroes and, sometimes Negroes kid–napped from plantations, would be rounded up, bound, and placed inside it. Eventually it would drive away, after decreasing the Negro population in the vicinity. Florida recalls the names of “Mister Nimroad” and "Mister Sheehee" as the leaders of this enterprise, which employed a number of hounds. She thinks the slaves were sold in Alabama.