Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

Slave Life in Georgia 27
to to say, during the whole of this time, though my bodily strength failed daily.
Stevens always kept me employed: at hard work as long as I could do it, and at
lighter labour, as my strength went away. At last, finding that the Doctor's
experiments had so reduced me that I was useless in the field, he put me to his
old trade of carpentering and joinery, which I took too very readily, and soon
got a liking for.
I do not know what made Stevens so cruel-hearted to us poor slaves. We all led
a dreadful
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life; I did, I know; and this made me more and more anxious to get away. In this
I was encouraged by one Buck Hurd, who was what is called a nigger-stealer.
He belonged to a club, the head of which was a man of the name of Murrell, in
Tenessee.This club was a company of "nigger and pony-stealers," and was
composed of a great many persons. They had stations in various parts of the
country, at convenient distances, and when a member of the club succeeded in
stealing away a negro or a pony, he would pass him on as quickly as he could to
the nearest stations, from which point he would be forwarded to another, and so
on, till the negro or the horse was quite safely disposed of. By this system of
stations they would run off a "nigger or a pony," three hundred miles
sometimes, without stopping. The partners, or agents, belonging to this club,
were always on the lookout for negroes and horses, and Buck Hurd used
frequently to come round to our quarters of a night, and try to entice some of us
away. I heard him say, more than once, that Murrell had got slaves to run from
one master, and after selling them to another, would induce them to run from
him, and then sell them to a third; and that he had been known to sell the same
"nigger"
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three or four times over. One of them, whom he had so sold, he was like to get
into trouble about. The masters heard about it, and Murrell became alarmed. He
did not know what to do with the stolen man--though he kept him closely
concealed--fearing that the various masters should claim their property, and the
facts come out. So he got the poor fellow to go down to the spring, in the
woods, after some water, and there shot him.
But although I heard all these things, I was so hard used, that I gave in, and
24.03.2006