Chapter 3 - Page 2

separated, according to the
common custom, when I was but an infant, and, of course, before I
knew my mother from any one else.

The germs of affection with which the Almighty, in his wisdom and
mercy, arms the hopeless infant against the ills and vicissitudes
of his lot, had been directed in their growth toward that loving
old grandmother, whose gentle hand and kind deportment it was in
the first effort of my infantile understanding to comprehend and
appreciate. Accordingly, the tenderest affection which a
beneficent Father allows, as a partial compensation to the mother
for the pains and lacerations of her heart, incident to the
maternal relation, was, in my case, diverted from its true and
natural object, by the envious, greedy, and treacherous hand of
slavery. The slave-mother can be spared long enough from MOTHER>the field to endure all the bitterness of a mother's
anguish, when it adds another name to a master's ledger, but
_not_ long enough to receive the joyous reward afforded by the
intelligent smiles of her child. I never think of this terrible
interference of slavery with my infantile affections, and its
diverting them from their natural course, without feelings to
which I can give no adequate expression.

I do not remember to have seen my mother at my grandmother's at
any time. I remember her only in her visits to me at Col.
Lloyd's plantation, and in the kitchen of my old master. Her
visits to me there were few in number, brief in duration, and
mostly made in the night. The pains she took, and the toil she
endured, to see me, tells me that a true mother's heart was hers,
and that slavery had difficulty in paralyzing it with unmotherly
indifference.

My mother was hired out to a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve
miles from old master's, and, being a field hand, she seldom had
leisure, by day, for the performance of the journey. The nights
and the distance were both obstacles to her visits. She was
obliged to walk, unless chance flung into her way an opportunity
to ride; and the latter was sometimes her good luck. But she
always had to walk one way or the other. It was a greater luxury
than slavery could afford, to allow a black slave-mother a horse
or a mule, upon which to travel twenty-four miles, when she could
walk the distance. Besides, it is deemed a foolish whim for a
slave-mother to manifest concern to see her children, and, in one
point of view, the case is made out--she can do nothing for them.
She has no control over them; the master is even more than the
mother, in all matters touching the fate of her child. Why,
then, should she give herself any concern? She has no
responsibility. Such is the reasoning, and such the practice.
The iron rule of the