The Narrative of William J. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, 1847

The book is dedicated to a guy who helped him and has been proof-read by someone else. It starts by noting Brown was a 'soul-driver', apparently a person who accompanied his master on tasks involving the buying and selling of slaves.

Brown starts out saying he was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and was stolen when a baby by his master. His mother had seven children, all by different men, and his own father was a white man. His master owned around forty slaves and ended up moving from Kentucky to Missouri. He had three brothers and a sister.

You get an idea of how nasty the master was (aside from stealing babies) when the book says the slaves had to get up at 4 in the morning and were given only a half hour to eat breakfast. Work started at 4:30, and any slave not there on time was given ten lashes with the whip. Brown himself was employed as a house-slave which was almost always a much better position to be in then a field-slave. Apparently his mother was also taken by the master since he recounts hearing his own mother being lashed for being late to work.

During the riverboat trip during the employ of his master the boat picked up a shipment of around fifty to sixty slaves that were due to be sold. Think about that. One boat trip out of who knows how many picked up over half a hundred slaves. It gives the reader a glimmer of just how massive the slave trade really was.

He refers to a situation where a slave woman was whipped nearly to death by her master who was a deacon in a Baptist church.

Brown got hired out by his master to another guy to work with him for a year on a riverboat. He writes about numerous times the boat carried slaves and how, one landed, they were kept in slave pens to be sold.

He also engaged in questionable business practices under order of his master. If slaves were old and gray, he was to cut off their beards and blacken their hair so they would look younger than they were.

This is an example of the kind of thing that was done. What makes this actually frightening is that this was a normal practice, not something absurd and unlikely to be repeated. this was standard operating procedure for slavers.

He also writes about one owner that took a good-looking slave and set her up as his mistress (against his will), had children by her, then sold her when he married a white woman.

He was not above playing a trick on a fellow black. He did later regret what he had done to the guy.

He writes about a time he saw a slave killed by a gang of white men who had thought the slave had stolen some meat.

After he leaves the service of the slave trader he returns to his original master, only to be told that the guy had been short of money and sold his mother, brothers and sister, and Brown himself was to go to the city and find a new master.

He and his mother try to escape but are caught and brought back to St. Louis, Brown in chains. He's returned to his master but is then sold to yet another guy, who then proceeds to hire him out to still another guy. His mother is sold and taken elsewhere.

He writes about the type of 'religion' taught blacks. Brown is sold to still another master and becomes a carriage driver. His new mistress keeps trying to arrange a marriage for him (which would help keep him trapped there plus raise the possibility of the marriage producing children which would then become instant slaves, for a profit).

He acts like he's in love with the woman the mistress buys for him. They all end up on a boat bound for Cincinnati. Soon after the boat lands he carries a trunk to the dock then makes his way to the woods to hide out in the day. It was only safe to travel at night.

He gets in bad shape but finds a white couple that is willing to offer him shelter and care for him physically for a short while. He gets help from others, also, and finally makes it to Cleveland and then to Canada. He later helped transport almost seventy runaway slaves from Cleveland to Canada.

This is really a very interesting book, giving the reader a fairly good idea of the perils of slavery and escape, and shows that many slaves did manage to survive both and find their freedom in Canada. (The Fugitive Slave Law did not apply to Canada, of course.)

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