Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

Slave Life in Georgia 21
24.03.2006
improved when, the time having come for the ship to sail, he found that the
gaol-fees for John's release had run up enormously high, and with what he had
already paid and would have to pay, made so considerable a sum, that, looking
at the whole matter commercially, to hand over so much money was wholly out
of the question: and considering it humanely, was out of the question too.
Besides he was "only a nigger after all;" so the captain refused to pay the gaolfees:
he set sail without John, leaving him, as yet, in ignorance of his dreadful
fate.
Poor John's wife and children! They were already expecting him home, on the
day he was taken out of the gaol and sold on the auction-block for three hundred
and fifty dollars, to
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Thomas Stevens, of Baldwin County, Georgia. He would have fetched more
than three times as much, but being "a green hand," he was not worth it. Well,
he was marched off to the plantation, and set to work. Here he soon realized the
extent of his misfortune. His "brave look," when spoken to, offended his master,
who swore he "would flog his nigger pride out of him;" and poor John had to
suffer for having the look and carriage of a free man. When he had been some
three or four years on the plantation, his master bade him take a wife. John told
him he had one in England, and two dear children. Then his master flogged him
for saying so, and for insisting upon it that he was free and a British subject. At
last, to save his poor body from the torture of the cowhide and the paddle, he
promised his master never to say as much again, and to look out for a wife. In
Jones County, and about five miles from Stevens' plantation, there lived another
planter named John Ward. John Glasgow, having to go backwards and forwards
on errands, saw and at length selected a young, bright, coloured girl named
Nancy, and they were married, in the way that slaves are; that is, nominally.
This did not please Stevens, because
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Nancy being Ward's property, her children would be Ward's also: so John was
flogged for marrying Nancy, instead of one of Stevens' "likely gals," and was
forbidden to visit her. Still he contrived to do so without his master's
discovering it. The young woman was of a very sweet disposition, it seems, and
knew all about John's misfortunes, and his having a wife and children in
England. She was very kind to him, and would weep over him, as she dressed