My Bondage and My Freedom

Douglass’s own personal experiences at Colonel Lloyd’s plantation were not extraordinarily cruel, relatively. During his boyhood, his only chore was to drive the cattle in the evening, maintain the front yard, and run minor errands for his mistress, Lucretia Auld.

One day, another enslaved boy named Ike hit Douglass “directly in the forehead with a sharp piece of cinder, fused with iron” (134). The object’s impact formed a cross on Douglass’s forehead which remained with him during his lifetime. Aunt Katy ignored both Douglass’s wound and his crying. Instead, she admonished him, saying that he would now know better than to involve himself with “dem Lloyd niggers” (136). Miss Lucretia, however, called Douglass into the parlor, which was an unusual thing to do, and washed the blood from his face. After this episode, he knew that he had a friend in his young mistress.

When he was hungry, Douglass played under Lucretia’s window and sang, which she knew was a signal to give him a piece of bread. Without this treat, Douglass would have had to fight for his portion of cornmeal mush, which he received either on a tray or in a trough. The children, when summoned, could devour as much as they could. Douglass was less aggressive than the other children and, if he showed aggression, Aunt Katy punished him. His hunger and growing feeling of wretchedness made him wish that he had never been born. When Douglass was 10, he left Colonel Lloyd’s plantation and moved to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld, the brother of Thomas Auld, Captain Anthony’s son-in-law. Douglass was excited to leave and Lucretia delighted in preparing him for his journey. Douglass had heard stories about Baltimore from his cousin Tom, a boy several years older than Douglass who had visited the city.

On a Saturday morning, Douglass sailed out of Miles River and toward his new home. He looked at Colonel Lloyd’s plantation for what he had hoped would be the last time. Late that afternoon, he reached Annapolis—the capital at the time. It was the first big city he had ever visited. From there, Douglass went by ferry to his new home near Gardiner’s shipyard on Fell’s Point—the house of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld. They met him at the door along with their cherubic son, Thomas. Douglass learned that he was a present to Little Tommy. Sophia quickly charged Douglass with looking after her son and encouraged a friendship between the boys. Douglass was fond of Tommy and happy in his new home. Though it may seem irrational or ridiculous, Douglass believed that divine providence may have been responsible for placing him in this comfortable home. 

Though comfortably installed in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld, not all was peaceful in Baltimore. Douglass suffered frequent bullying by local boys, but Sophia Auld’s kindness assuaged even this nuisance. She treated him like a child and Douglass came to regard her as a surrogate mother. Douglass’s only duties were to run errands and look after Tommy.

One day, while finding his mistress reading the Bible, Douglass asked if she would teach him to read. She began to do so, without hesitation. Soon, Douglass learned the alphabet and was spelling short words. When her husband found out about this, however, he demanded that she discontinue these lessons, fearing that learning would make Douglass work less hard. Obediently, Sophia stopped the lessons.

Meanwhile, Douglass began to notice the differences between people enslaved in the city and the country. Enslaved people in Baltimore behaved almost like free citizens. They are “much better fed and clothed” (150), enjoy more privileges, and seem less hopeless. In Baltimore, starving an enslaved person was a horrid crime. Some enslavers, however, conducted cruelties better suited to the country while living in the city. One such enslaver, Mrs. Hamilton, enslaved two female workers—one around 22, the other 14—whom she starved and routinely beat. Mrs. Hamilton was a sweet-voiced woman who sat in a large rocking chair, from which she wielded her heavy cowskin. Whenever the girls, named Henrietta and Mary passed the chair, Mrs. Hamilton hit them. She would then continue singing religious hymns. Mary was so hungry that Douglass once observed her fighting with pigs over offal. Her skin looked pecked to pieces, leading to her nickname, “pecked.” While the citizens of Baltimore would have condemned Mrs. Hamilton’s cruelty, they would have also condemned any attempt to interfere with the woman’s supposed right to do as she wished with her property.