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Wilhelm Reich and the
Function of the Orgasm
Short Biography, Book Reviews, Quotes, and Comments

(Great Minds Series, Vol, 11)

by Peter Fritz Walter

Published by Sirius-C Media Galaxy LLC

113 Barksdale Professional Center, Newark, Delaware, USA

©2015 Peter Fritz Walter. Some rights reserved.

2017 Revised, Updated and Reformatted Kindle Edition.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

This publication may be distributed, used for an adaptation or for derivative works,
also for commercial purposes, as long as the rights of the author are attributed. The
attribution must be given to the best of the user’s ability with the information
available. Third party licenses or copyright of quoted resources are untouched by this
license and remain under their own license.

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Set in Palatino

Designed by Peter Fritz Walter

Publishing Categories

Biography & Autobiography / Scientists / General

 Publisher Contact Information

publisher@sirius-c-publishing.com

http://sirius-c-publishing.com

Author Contact Information

pfw@peterfritzwalter.com

About Dr. Peter Fritz Walter

http://peterfritzwalter.com

About the Author

Parallel to an international law career in Germany, Switzerland and the

United States, Dr. Peter Fritz Walter (Pierre) focused upon fine art,
cookery, astrology, musical performance, social sciences and humanities.

He started writing essays as an adolescent and received a high school

award for creative writing and editorial work for the school magazine.

After finalizing his law diplomas, he graduated with an LL.M. in European

Integration at Saarland University, Germany, and with a Doctor of Law title
from University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 1987.
 He then took courses in psychology at the University of Geneva and
interviewed a number of psychotherapists in Lausanne and Geneva,
Switzerland. His interest was intensified through a hypnotherapy with an
Ericksonian American hypnotherapist in Lausanne. This led him to the
recovery and healing of his inner child.

In 1986, he met the late French psychotherapist and child

psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto (1908-1988) in Paris and interviewed her. A
long correspondence followed up to their encounter which was considered
by the curators of the Dolto Trust interesting enough to be published in a
book alongside all of Dolto’s other letter exchanges by Gallimard
Publishers in Paris, in 2005.

After a second career as a corporate trainer and personal coach, Pierre

retired as a full-time writer, philosopher and consultant.

His nonfiction books emphasize a systemic, holistic, cross-cultural and

interdisciplinary perspective, while his fiction works and short stories focus
upon education, philosophy, perennial wisdom, and the poetic formulation
of an integrative worldview.

Pierre is a German-French bilingual native speaker and writes English as

his 4th language after German, Latin and French. He also reads source
literature for his research works in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and
Dutch. In addition, Pierre has notions of Thai, Khmer, Chinese and
Japanese.

All of Pierre’s books are hand-crafted and self-published, designed by the

author. Pierre publishes via his Delaware company, Sirius-C Media Galaxy
LLC, and under the imprints of IPUBLICA and SCM (Sirius-C Media).

It is sexual energy which governs the structure of human feeling and

thinking.
–—Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution (1945/1962)
Contents

Introduction

About Great Minds Series

Chapter One

A Pioneer in Holistic Science

Chapter Two

The Genius of Wilhelm Reich

Chapter Three

Reich’s Greatest Discoveries

Chapter Four

Orgonomy and Schizophrenia

Chapter Five

Book Reviews

Annex 1

The Functions of the Orgasms

Annex 2

Wilhelm Reich und Orgonomie

Annex 3

Quotes

Bibliography
Contextual Bibliography
 Introduction

About Great Minds Series

We
are currently transiting as a human race a time of great challenge
and adventure that opens to us new pathways for rediscovering and
integrating the perennial holistic wisdom of ancient civilizations into
our modern science paradigm. These civilizations were thriving
before patriarchy was putting nature upside-down.

Currently, with the advent of the networked global society, and

systems theory as its scientific paradigm, we are looking into a
different world, with a rise of ‘horizontal’ and ‘sustainable’ structures
both in our business culture, and in science, and last not least on the
important areas of psychology, medicine, and spirituality.

—A paradigm, from Greek ‘paradeigma,’ is a pattern of things, a configuration

of ideas, a set of dominant beliefs, a certain way of looking at the world, a set of
assumptions, a frame of reference or lens, and even an entire worldview.
 While most of this new and yet old path has yet to be trotted,
we cannot any longer overlook the changes that happen all around
us virtually every day.

Invariably, as students, scientists, doctors, consultants, lawyers,

business executives or government officials, we face problems today
that are so complex, entangled and novel that they cannot possibly
be solved on the basis of our old paradigm, and our old way of
thinking. As Albert Einstein said, we cannot solve a problem on the
same level of thought that created it in the first place— hence the
need for changing our view of looking at things, the world, and our
personal and collective predicaments.

What still about half a decade ago seemed unlikely is happening

now all around us: we are rediscovering more and more fragments
of an integrative and holistic wisdom that represents the cultural and
scientific treasure of many ancient tribes and kingdoms that were
based upon a perennial tradition which held that all in our universe
is interconnected and interrelated, and that humans are set in the
world to live in unison with the infinite wisdom inherent in creation
as a major task for driving evolution forward!

It happens in science, since the advent of relativity theory,

quantum physics and string theory, it happens in neuroscience and
systems theory, it happens in molecular biology, and in ecology, and
as a result, and because science is a major motor in society, it
happens now with increasing speed in the industrial and the
business world, and in the way people earn their lives and manifest
their innate talents through their professional engagement.

And it happens also, and what this book is set to emphasize, in

psychology and psychoanalysis, for Françoise Dolto, while having
been a member of the Freudian psychoanalytic school, has created
an approach to healing psychotic children that was really unknown
to the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

More and more people begin to realize that we cannot honestly

continue to destroy our globe by disregarding the natural law of self-
regulation, both outwardly, by polluting air and water, and inside, by
tolerating our emotions to be in a state of repression and turmoil.

Self-regulation is built into the life function and it can be found

as a consistent pattern in the lifestyle of natives peoples around the
world. It is similar with our immense intuitive and imaginal faculties
that were downplayed in centuries of darkness and fragmentation,
and that now emerge anew as major key stones in a worldview that
puts the whole human
at the frontline, a human who uses their whole brain, and who
knows to balance their emotions and natural passions so as to arrive
at a state of inner peace and synergetic relationships with others
that bring mutual benefit instead of one-sided egotistic satisfaction.

For lasting changes to happen, however, to paraphrase J.

Krishnamurti, we need to change the thinker, we need to undergo a
transformation that puts our higher self up as the caretaker of our
lives, not our conditioned ego.

Hence the need to really look over the fence and get beyond
social, cultural and racial conditioning for adopting an integrative and
holistic worldview that is focused on more than problem-solving.

What this book tries to convey is that taking the example of one
of the greatest child psychoanalysts of our time, we may see that it’s
not too late, be it for our planet and for us humans, our careers, our
science, our collective spiritual advancement, and our scientific
understanding of nature, and that we can thrive in a world that is
surely more different in ten years from now that it was one hundred
years in the past compared to now.

We are free to continue to feel like victims in this new reality,

and wait for being taken care of by the state, or we may accept the
state, and society, as human creations that will never be perfect, and
venture into creating our lives and careers in accordance with our
true mission, and based upon our real gifts and talents.

Let me say a last word about this series of books about great
personalities of our time, which I came to call ‘Great Minds’
Collection. The books within this collection do not just feature books
but authors, you may call them author reviews instead of book
reviews, and they are more extensive also in highlighting the
personal mission and autobiographical details which are to note for
each author, including extensive quotes from their books.
 Chapter One

A Pioneer in Holistic Science

Dr. Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957)

, a medical doctor and psychoanalyst from Austria, was one of the
most interesting authors I had the privilege to read at the time when
I entered law school in Germany, back in 1975. He has had a
scandalous life, full of conflict and strife, was attacked virtually
everywhere and on every front, personally often, or targeting his
scientific discoveries, but always in the most vicious manner,
including his trial and death in an American jail in 1957, where he
died from a heart attack. His biography is so well-known that I don’t
need to further expand on it, and will therefore jump right into the
pioneering and absolutely leading role he has played for the
development of modern medical science and medical health care. In
fact, over the entire course of our scientific history, those who were
the real scientists
were taken as queer freaks, and blamed and plagued to be
charlatans, quacks, make-believes, moonwalkers, daydreamers or
paranoid doctors, while half-baked mediocre and dry academics
without the juice of genius were given laurels and nobel prizes. This
was so from the Middle Ages to modern times and from Paracelsus
to Nikola Tesla, invariably so.

In our postmodern era of political and social rebellion against a

big brother state that is going to be more and more cannibalizing
our children, we seem to find it almost normal that those who do
things officially are the mafia, and those who are thought to be
mafia are the real doers.

We seem to take it for granted that large-scale perversion

has set in somewhere around the times of Hammurabi, which
resulted in things, people and institutions being upside-down.

One result of this sad history is that young people have largely
lost their trust in our governments and are focused upon
conspiracies. It seems to me that conspiracy thinking has replaced
what formerly was called a ‘critical mind.’ I myself have still received
an education that, not because it was called humanistic
, was value-based, one of these values being social criticism
. However, conspiracy thinking is not critical, it is pseudo-critical and
counter-ideological
 , and this is not surprising as humanistic education has almost
completely disappeared and was replaced by standard education.

To become a critical thinker, one needs to be a scientific thinker

first. Without correct reasoning, criticism is dull and superficial, and
can never be convincing. It may even come over as an assault, while
criticism naturally is a positive contribution and as such constructive.
In conspiracy thinking the real penetration of the matter at stake is
missing, as it is largely replaced by speculation
. To put it as a slogan, we could say that science is intellectual
penetration, while conspiracy science is political science fiction
, and can easily lead to absolutist and fascist attitudes and opinions.
And here I must warn the reader against confusion; speculation is
not intuition, it has nothing to do with the gift of genius that
anticipates paradigmatic changes. Speculation comes from a certain
overdrive of thinking, while intuition is like a lighting between
thoughts. In all great scientific novelty, there is intuition. In other
words, speculation leads to circular thought, while intuition leads to
novelty in the form of new thought
.

Einstein intuited the relativity theory in a dream prior to its

formulation as a scientific revolution. His mind was able to perceive
the truth of ‘relativity’ in a holistic vision prior to the logical, critical,
and methodological drafting of the theory in its scientific terms and
vocabulary.

In scientific genius, there is intuition

, not speculation.

The science fiction author speculates, but the science author

intuits
, and here we are facing two worlds that are quite apart. The first
world is popular gimmick that takes the approximation as exact
truth, the second world is scientific isolation that suffers from the
fact that unscientific minds take methodology spiced with intuitive
insight as approximation.
By the same token, the first world is where the mass mind and our
popular science magazines are thriving, the second world is the ivory
tower of our science gurus and saints who, while being meticulously
methodic, know that in a quantum world, the idea of scientific
objectivity is a myth.

When Dr. Wilhelm Reich published his works on orgasmic sanity

and the prevention of sexual pathology through truthful education,
he was suspected to be a paranoid quack, and was defamed and
persecuted over the main part of his scientific career, to end his life
in jail. What is more, the vulgarization of science through the mass
media has added another pitfall, which is to classify scientific
achievement not according to the scientific novelty
it brings, but according to its popularity among those who, for the
most part, don’t even know what they are talking about.

This is really what is called ‘giving pearls for the pigs.’

Confronting the scientist with the mass mind is doing injustice to
science and injury to the sanctified stupidity of the masses.

Our fanatical obsession with democracy is misplaced where it

exposes the novelty bringer to the scribes and pharisaics, the
‘established’ and the common hypocrite as the prototype of Judas in
modern times. This will not make science any better, while it
certainly makes those richer who are eternally second-guessing life.
In the contrary, we have to ask for more protection of scientific
genius, and our governments should provide a safe haven for
scientific novelty that may well shock old virgins, neurotic
churchgoers and the common lot of homo normalis
. We give that space for creative delirium to the artist, why do we
deny it to the scientist? We allow artists to live in a certain protected
space, surrounded by friends and donors, art benefactors and soft-
minded agents, but we expose our best scientists to the tiger-claws
of our ferocious populace, just as in the Roman games.

What is it that makes the masses resent the science genius

while they do not really bother about perversities artistic geniuses
may indulge in? The suspicion, the estrangement and the hatred
that the revolutionary scientist faces comes from the fact that he or
she actually anticipates social change, and often helps trigger it,
while the artist who lives against social and legal rules just satisfies a
personal need for space and freedom. Society fears change because
it confronts established conventions previously thought to be set in
stone or undisputed. Social change is likely to happen for we are
living in the field of all possibilities. Reich had a profound vision for
society and like visionaries before him, he was persecuted.

Jesus of Nazareth was put to death not because he indulged in

personal fancies, but because he was showing a viable way of living
that was in accordance with love
, not with law
alone, thereby subtly suggesting that love is superior to law, or that
all law has to be interpreted in a spirit of love.

That his vision was right and sound, we know it all today, while
at his lifetime the very idea of love being superior to law was
revolutionary!

When we read through the biographies and autobiographies of

outstanding scientists, we see that they all had and have a social
vision
, that they can see and imagine how their scientific novelty will
affect social togetherness, society, and the way people live and
behave in time and space.

I found this especially true for Wilhelm Reich who was building a
long-needed bridge over the gap between natural science and social
sciences.

—Fritjof Capra, in several of his books, writes quite eloquently about Reich
and his achievements, and he especially notes this point, and acknowledges the
pioneering role that Reich played for our modern understanding of science and
social sciences being two parts of one functional whole.

Because of his highly intuitive vision, Reich was then able to see
the functional link between the repression of our natural emotions
and fascism as a social disease.

As emotional stuckness and neurosis typically go along with the

person’s denial of complexity
, so do fascist regimes belittle and deny life’s intrinsic patterned
complexity and come up with simplistic formulae for solving social
and political problems. For today’s scientific elite, this link cannot be
unthought, but for generations before Reich, there was simply no
connection to be seen between the two phenomena.
 Another element present in the life stories of revolutionary
scientists is their deep concern for being benefactors to society, their
care for bringing about positive changes for each one of us, which is
often frowned upon as ‘misplaced enthusiasm’ or idealism
.

Really, the painful paradox is that their very zeal to bring good
to the masses lets those masses reject them, and meet them with
afterthoughts and suspicion; it’s the tragic element of purity meeting
an impure mind, or sainthood meeting vulgarity. This was affecting
me personally on an emotional level when I was reading those life
stories, and I was reading them over years and years as my favorite
pastime. Well, this study would probably never have seen the day if
I had not indulged in devouring these biographies, and as it may be
expected, the present study is rather one about the inventor of
orgonomy than about orgonomy itself.
 Seen from the perspective and the insights of quantum physics,
my approach actually comes in handy, as the observer cannot be
separated from the object of observation. As a matter of analogy,
then, the study of science cannot be separated from the study of the
people who do science, the scientists
.

This leads to more coherence, as scientific novelty cannot be

really understood without understanding the one who brought it
about.

When I contemplate the entire life path of a scientist, I can

more soundly and holistically
understand how he or she came to make the discoveries they
made. Then, I can exclude or forebear an element of randomness as
a pitfall in non-scientific thinking.

There simply is no randomness in intelligent people’s

professional lives, but the mass mind suspects it to be present in
order to veil their ignorance of certain facts or relationships between
things
that seem to be unrelated at first sight.

Let me again provide an example from the quite dramatic life

story of Wilhelm Reich.

When Reich was completing his orgasm research, and before he

formulated his theory of orgonotic health, there was an episode that
often is described by biographers as a sort of intermezzo
, and the deep connection is regularly overlooked between Reich’s
orgasm research and his discovery of the orgonotic streaming
 in the subtle energy body. This interlude, as it were, is Reich’s
experiment with what later was called the Sapa Bions
. The event bears an element of randomness, and Reich’s detractors
always played on lacking connectivity between Reich’s discoveries as
a matter of proving him wrong or paranoid where he was simply
lucid. When Reich discovered that desert sand, when burnt and put
in distilled water, was irradiating a blue-green aura that vitalizes
plants, animals and the human body, he discovered that what he
found to be sexual energy
in his orgasm research is actually a manifestation of the cosmic
energy or life force
, which cycles through both living and inanimate substance. The
sunlight filled the sand particles with that force and through burning
those particles and thereby melting them, the energy was freed and
irradiated in the form of orgonotic radiation
or streaming. When we look at the bion experiment as an isolated
event
, it certainly bears an element of randomness, but that is because
our observer perspective is reductionist
and not holistic.

For me it is obvious that destiny helped Reich to find the truth

through the cosmic play of synchronicity
, and on this very line of reasoning, the bion experiments are to be
seen as synchronistic events that led to a further sprocket in the
chain of causality in Reich’s scientific life and in his research on the
cosmic life energy.
Chapter Two

The Genius of Wilhelm Reich

 My reaction to Reich’s research went through a certain pattern;
in other words, it was a journey, starting back in 1975. I just read all
I could get, then learnt about his fate and death in jail, then went
through a revolt and joined the rings of the ‘Reichians’ in Berlin, the
hagiographers, the groupings, then wrote an essay about his
research. Then only was I able to eventually understand Reich as the
person he really was: the scientist, the doctor, the discoverer.

It was a convoluted journey through thesis, antithesis and

synthesis for gaining a somewhat accurate
image about Reich that was backed by facts, not by myths. I should
say that contrary to those who write pamphlets about Reich, I really
have studied his works, not just some of them, but the integrality of
his published and non-published writings, including translations.

Myron Sharaf, author of a famed biography of Wilhelm Reich,

said in a lecture on Orgonotic Functionalism
in Berlin that Reich was always to him like great music.

The wonderful thing about Reich, it’s like great music. If

you haven’t heard great music in a few months, it
sounds like you never heard it before. And when you
read Reich after not having read him for awhile, it feels
like you haven’t read it before.

—Myron Sharaf, Orgonotic Functionalism, Lecture in Berlin, Germany, 22

October 1989, published in: Heretic’s Notebook, ed. by James DeMeo (2002), 45-
54, at 45. See also Myron Sharaf, Fury on Earth (1983).

As uncanny and potentially unscientific as this remark sounds, it

is true. I read Reich upon enrolling in law school in Germany, and I
am still today reading Reich, forty years later. Every time I read him,
it’s as if reading him for the first time—why? Because his diction is
so immediate and his scientific truth so shining and authentic that
you feel reading him for the first time in your life. And every time it’s
a transforming and deeply enlightening experience!

As a research lawyer, I have studied the circumstances of Reich’s

imprisonment, the whole discussion he and his lawyer had with the
authorities. The complete information was only recently released and
the declassified FBI record published.

—Federal Bureau of Investigation, Dr. Wilhelm Reich, BUFILE: 100-14601,

813 pages.
 This extensive dossier contains all the letters he wrote to the
authorities and to his defense attorney. The letters he wrote to the
authorities, especially to FBI Director John Edgar Hoover, bore a
perhaps deliberately offensive tone: the language was rude and
coarse, and some of the allegations seemed absurd. There was a
tendency throughout to dramatize matters, and to blow the
emotional whistle. In fact, the situation was not as dramatic. There
was a simple violation of an FDA injunction by shipping one of his
accumulators interstate to a client.

The FDA had disapproved the orgone accumulator because of

lacking or contradictory evidence of its healing powers. In such a
situation, a wise person would not fight but try to conciliate, get out
of trouble, and then work for a later approval of his medical device
by the FDA. Reich did the contrary, he not only defied the court
action by not entering an appearance with the argument that the
whole procedure was based upon ‘fraud,’ then, arrested, continued
to tell the authorities they were ‘pranking gangsters’ and
‘psychopathic murderers,’ participating in a huge conspiracy that was
intending to ‘destroy mankind.’

Honestly, one wouldn’t think that a serious researcher, facing

contradiction, would act out in such a way; his reaction could only
corroborate negative rumors about him, and give his enemies right
in their assumptions—if those assumptions were true or not is not
even the question in such a case. And as a side remark, I may be
allowed to add here that either his lawyer was incompetent or Reich
overruled his advice by submitting documents to the authorities
without prior approval by his legal counsel.

In addition, he was proclaiming himself throughout this trial as

‘the discoverer of the cosmic life energy.’ He even signed his official
trial correspondence with the title ‘Counsel for the Discovery of the
Cosmic Life Energy.’
 I have demonstrated with my own long-term research that Reich
was certainly not
the discoverer of the human energy field, while he made an
important contribution in a legacy of major scientific novelty that
dozens of scientists from around the world were working on since
times immemorial.

The Wilhelm Reich Trust

in Rangeley, Maine, now reveal on their website an unpublished
statement by Reich, that gives an answer, without however
mentioning with one word the trial correspondence:

I am well aware of the fact that the human race has

known about the existence of a universal energy related
to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural
science consisted of making this energy usable. This is
the sole difference between my work and all preceding
knowledge.

The answer is that Reich was emotionally entangled

with his work, to a point to perceive adverse reactions to his
research as targeting his person. While it is documented that Reich
was a walking tempest, known for his ‘explosions’ of rage, he could
not forgive others any intellectual mediocrity, or the slightest lack of
understanding of his daringly novel research topics. When facing a
discussion, he would not quietly explain matters from the
perspective of his research, but become absolute and personal in his
responses, thereby transforming people who were merely critical or
skeptical into lifelong enemies.
 Interestingly, and symptomatically so, I have been in touch with
people who were close to Reich, and who work on the lines of his
research, such as Mary Boyd Higgins, trustee of his foundation and
curator of the Wilhelm Reich Trust in Rangeley, Maine, and others,
and was wondering about their categorical, unfriendly and
aggressive tone,
while I was doing non-funded research work on Reich to write an
essay on his merits as a maverick researcher on the human energy
field.

I will now shortly explain why and how Reich was a true
scientific genius—while as a simple human, he was certainly not up
to the same standard of excellence!

However, it is important to remember that research on the life

force, the secret of life
, was considered heresy under the Church’s definition of science.
That is why great scientists like Paracelsus, Swedenborg, or Mesmer
who knew about the ether and observed the moving and alternating
current of our emotional body had a hard time to survive times of
utter darkness and superstition. Paracelsus had to appear before the
ecclesiastical court several times in his life for defending his
miraculous healing successes against the Inquisition’s allegation he
had used witchcraft to bring them about. At that time, according to
the Church’s doctrine only recognized saints were allowed to do
miracles, while the Inquisition in all other cases generally subsumed
miracles and healing miracles under the witchcraft definition
contained in the The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer)
, first published in 1486.

Franz Anton Mesmer equally was slandered and persecuted,

once famous, for his research on what he called animal magnetism
. And yet these men seem to have discovered something for the
West which was never disputed in the East, that is, a bioplasmatic
energy as functional catalyzer of life in that it penetrates all,
animates all, fills all, vitalizes all and destroys all again when a
natural life cycle is at its end. The Chinese speak of ch’i
, the Japanese of ki
, the Germans of Lebensenergie
or Vitalkraft
, the French of élan vital
or force
nerveuse
, Anglo-Saxons of bioenergy
or the human energy field
, the Indians of kundalini
or prana
and most tribal peoples of mana
or wakonda
.

Also the old Egyptians knew the vital energy. We can suppose
that their notion of ka
, a term often to be found in Pharaonic hieroglyphs denotes that
same universal energy.

Among tribal populations, the Kahunas from Hawaii, within their

Huna
religion, have extensively and systematically studied the life force
that they call mana
. This teaching about mana
, the vital force, and aka
, a protruding bioplasmatic substance that is known as ectoplasm
, forms an integral part of their religion that, for this reason, may be
called a scientific religion.

—See, for example, Max Freedom Long, The Secret Science at Work: The
Huna Method as a Way of Life, Marina del Rey: De Vorss Publications, 1995,
Another random document with
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the only real Canaan of the American bondman, simply as a country
to which the wild goose and the swan repaired at the end of winter to
escape the heat of summer, but not as the home of man. I knew
something of Theology, but nothing of Geography. I really did not
know that there was a state of New York or a state of
Massachusetts. I had heard of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New
Jersey, and all the southern states, but was utterly ignorant of the
free states. New York City was our northern limit, and to go there and
to be forever harassed with the liability of being hunted down and
returned to slavery, with the certainty of being treated ten times
worse than ever before, was a prospect which might well cause
some hesitation. The case sometimes, to our excited visions, stood
thus: At every gate through which we had to pass we saw a
watchman; at every ferry a guard; on every bridge a sentinel, and in
every wood a patrol or slave-hunter. We were hemmed in on every
side. The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in
the balance and weighed against each other. On the one hand stood
slavery, a stern reality glaring frightfully upon us, with the blood of
millions in its polluted skirts, terrible to behold, greedily devouring our
hard earnings and feeding it upon our flesh. This was the evil from
which to escape. On the other hand, far away, back in the hazy
distance, where all forms seemed but shadows under the flickering
light of the north star, behind some craggy hill or snow-capped
mountain, stood a doubtful freedom, half frozen, beckoning us to her
icy domain. This was the good to be sought. The inequality was as
great as that between certainty and uncertainty. This in itself was
enough to stagger us; but when we came to survey the untrodden
road and conjecture the many possible difficulties we were appalled,
and at times, as I have said, were upon the point of giving over the
struggle altogether. The reader can have little idea of the phantoms
which would flit, in such circumstances, before the uneducated mind
of the slave. Upon either side we saw grim death, assuming a variety
of horrid shapes. Now it was starvation, causing us, in a strange and
friendless land, to eat our own flesh. Now we were contending with
the waves and were drowned. Now we were hunted by dogs and
overtaken, and torn to pieces by their merciless fangs. We were
stung by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes, and
worst of all, after having succeeded in swimming rivers, encountering
wild beasts, sleeping in the woods, suffering hunger, cold, heat, and
nakedness, overtaken by hired kidnappers, who in the name of law
and for the thrice-cursed reward would, perchance, fire upon us, kill
some, wound others, and capture all. This dark picture, drawn by
ignorance and fear, at times greatly shook our determination, and not
unfrequently caused us to

“Rather bear the ills we had,

Than flee to others which we knew not of.”

I am not disposed to magnify this circumstance in my experience,

and yet I think I shall seem to be so disposed to the reader, but no
man can tell the intense agony which was felt by the slave when
wavering on the point of making his escape. All that he has is at
stake, and even that which he has not is at stake also. The life which
he has may be lost, and the liberty which he seeks may not be
gained.
Patrick Henry, to a listening senate which was thrilled by his
magic eloquence and ready to stand by him in his boldest flights,
could say, “Give me liberty or give me death,” and this saying was a
sublime one, even for a freeman; but incomparably more sublime is
the same sentiment when practically asserted by men accustomed
to the lash and chain, men whose sensibilities must have become
more or less deadened by their bondage. With us it was a doubtful
liberty, at best, that we sought, and a certain lingering death in the
rice swamps and sugar fields if we failed. Life is not lightly regarded
by men of sane minds. It is precious both to the pauper and to the
prince, to the slave and to his master; and yet I believe there was not
one among us who would not rather have been shot down than pass
away life in hopeless bondage.
In the progress of our preparations Sandy (the root man)
became troubled. He began to have distressing dreams. One of
these, which happened on a Friday night, was to him of great
significance, and I am quite ready to confess that I felt somewhat
damped by it myself. He said, “I dreamed last night that I was roused
from sleep by strange noises like the noises of a swarm of angry
birds that caused a roar as they passed, and which fell upon my ear
like a coming gale over the tops of the trees. Looking up to see what
it could mean I saw you, Frederick, in the claws of a huge bird,
surrounded by a large number of birds of all colors and sizes. These
were all pecking at you, while you, with your arms, seemed to be
trying to protect your eyes. Passing over me, the birds flew in a
southwesterly direction, and I watched them until they were clean out
of sight. Now I saw this as plainly as I now see you; and furder,
honey, watch de Friday night dream; dare is sumpon in it shose you
born; dare is indeed, honey.” I did not like the dream, but I showed
no concern, attributing it to the general excitement and perturbation
consequent upon our contemplated plan to escape. I could not,
however, shake off its effect at once. I felt that it boded no good.
Sandy was unusually emphatic and oracular, and his manner had
much to do with the impression made upon me.
The plan which I recommended, and to which my comrades
consented, for our escape, was to take a large canoe owned by Mr.
Hamilton, and on the Saturday night previous to the Easter holidays
launch out into the Chesapeake bay and paddle for its head, a
distance of seventy miles, with all our might. On reaching this point
we were to turn the canoe adrift and bend our steps toward the north
star till we reached a free state.
There were several objections to this plan. In rough weather the
waters of the Chesapeake are much agitated, and there would be
danger, in a canoe, of being swamped by the waves. Another
objection was that the canoe would soon be missed, the absent
slaves would at once be suspected of having taken it, and we should
be pursued by some of the fast-sailing craft out of St. Michaels. Then
again, if we reached the head of the bay and turned the canoe adrift,
she might prove a guide to our track and bring the hunters after us.
These and other objections were set aside by the stronger ones,
which could be urged against every other plan that could then be
suggested. On the water we had a chance of being regarded as
fishermen, in the service of a master. On the other hand, by taking
the land route, through the counties adjoining Delaware, we should
be subjected to all manner of interruptions, and many disagreeable
questions, which might give us serious trouble. Any white man, if he
pleased, was authorized to stop a man of color on any road, and
examine and arrest him. By this arrangement many abuses
(considered such even by slaveholders) occurred. Cases have been
known where freemen, being called upon to show their free papers
by a pack of ruffians, and on the presentation of the papers, the
ruffians have torn them up, and seized the victim and sold him to a
life of endless bondage.
The week before our intended start, I wrote a pass for each of
our party, giving them permission to visit Baltimore during the Easter
holidays. The pass ran after this manner:

“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the

bearer, my servant John, full liberty to go to Baltimore to spend
the Easter holidays.
W. H.
Near St. Michaels, Talbot Co., Md.”

Although we were not going to Baltimore, and were intending to

land east of North Point, in the direction I had seen the Philadelphia
steamers go, these passes might be useful to us in the lower part of
the bay, while steering towards Baltimore. These were not, however,
to be shown by us, until all other answers failed to satisfy the
inquirer. We were all fully alive to the importance of being calm and
self-possessed when accosted, if accosted we should be; and we
more than once rehearsed to each other how we should behave in
the hour of trial.
Those were long, tedious days and nights. The suspense was
painful in the extreme. To balance probabilities, where life and liberty
hang on the result, requires steady nerves. I panted for action, and
was glad when the day, at the close of which we were to start,
dawned upon us. Sleeping the night before was out of the question. I
probably felt more deeply than any of my companions, because I
was the instigator of the movement. The responsibility of the whole
enterprise rested on my shoulders. The glory of success, and the
shame and confusion of failure, could not be matters of indifference
to me. Our food was prepared, our clothes were packed; we were all
ready to go, and impatient for Saturday morning—considering that
the last of our bondage.
I cannot describe the tempest and tumult of my brain that
morning. The reader will please bear in mind that in a slave State an
unsuccessful runaway was not only subjected to cruel torture, and
sold away to the far South, but he was frequently execrated by the
other slaves. He was charged with making the condition of the other
slaves intolerable by laying them all under the suspicion of their
masters—subjecting them to greater vigilance, and imposing greater
limitations on their privileges. I dreaded murmurs from this quarter. It
was difficult, too, for a slave-master to believe that slaves escaping
had not been aided in their flight by some one of their fellow-slaves.
When, therefore, a slave was missing, every slave on the place was
closely examined as to his knowledge of the undertaking.
Our anxiety grew more and more intense, as the time of our
intended departure drew nigh. It was truly felt to be a matter of life
and death with us, and we fully intended to fight, as well as run, if
necessity should occur for that extremity. But the trial hour had not
yet come. It was easy to resolve, but not so easy to act. I expected
there might be some drawing back at the last; it was natural there
should be; therefore, during the intervening time, I lost no opportunity
to explain away difficulties, remove doubts, dispel fears, and inspire
all with firmness. It was too late to look back, and now was the time
to go forward. I appealed to the pride of my comrades by telling them
that if after having solemnly promised to go, as they had done, they
now failed to make the attempt, they would in effect brand
themselves with cowardice, and might well sit down, fold their arms,
and acknowledge themselves fit only to be slaves. This detestable
character all were unwilling to assume. Every man except Sandy
(he, much to our regret, withdrew) stood firm, and at our last meeting
we pledged ourselves afresh, and in the most solemn manner, that
at the time appointed we would certainly start on our long journey for
a free country. This meeting was in the middle of the week, at the
end of which we were to start.
Early on the appointed morning we went as usual to the field, but
with hearts that beat quickly and anxiously. Any one intimately
acquainted with us might have seen that all was not well with us, and
that some monster lingered in our thoughts. Our work that morning
was the same as it had been for several days past—drawing out and
spreading manure. While thus engaged, I had a sudden
presentiment, which flashed upon me like lightning in a dark night,
revealing to the lonely traveler the gulf before and the enemy behind.
I instantly turned to Sandy Jenkins, who was near me, and said:
“Sandy, we are betrayed! something has just told me so.” I felt as
sure of it as if the officers were in sight. Sandy said: “Man, dat is
strange; but I feel just as you do.” If my mother—then long in her
grave—had appeared before me and told me that we were betrayed,
I could not at that moment have felt more certain of the fact.
In a few minutes after this, the long, low, and distant notes of the
horn summoned us from the field to breakfast. I felt as one may be
supposed to feel before being led forth to be executed for some
great offense. I wanted no breakfast, but I went with the other slaves
toward the house for form’s sake. My feelings were not disturbed as
to the right of running away; on that point I had no misgiving
whatever, but from a sense of the consequences of failure.
In thirty minutes after that vivid impression came the
apprehended crash. On reaching the house, and glancing my eye
toward the lane gate, the worst was at once made known. The lane
gate to Mr. Freeland’s house was nearly half a mile from the door,
and much shaded by the heavy wood which bordered the main road.
I was, however, able to descry four white men and two colored men
approaching. The white men were on horseback, and the colored
men were walking behind, and seemed to be tied. “It is indeed all
over with us; we are surely betrayed,” I thought to myself. I became
composed, or at least comparatively so, and calmly awaited the
result. I watched the ill-omened company entering the gate.
Successful flight was impossible, and I made up my mind to stand
and meet the evil, whatever it might be, for I was not altogether
without a slight hope that things might turn differently from what I had
at first feared. In a few moments in came Mr. William Hamilton, riding
very rapidly and evidently much excited. He was in the habit of riding
very slowly, and was seldom known to gallop his horse. This time his
horse was nearly at full speed, causing the dust to roll thick behind
him. Mr. Hamilton, though one of the most resolute men in the whole
neighborhood, was, nevertheless, a remarkably mild-spoken man,
and, even when greatly excited, his language was cool and
circumspect. He came to the door, and inquired if Mr. Freeland was
in? I told him that Mr. Freeland was at the barn. Off the old
gentleman rode toward the barn, with unwonted speed. In a few
moments Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Freeland came down from the barn
to the house, and just as they made their appearance in the front-
yard three men, who proved to be constables, came dashing into the
lane on horseback, as if summoned by a sign requiring quick work. A
few seconds brought them into the front-yard, where they hastily
dismounted and tied their horses. This done, they joined Mr.
Freeland and Mr. Hamilton, who were standing a short distance from
the kitchen. A few moments were spent as if in consulting how to
proceed, and then the whole party walked up to the kitchen door.
There was now no one in the kitchen but myself and John Harris;
Henry and Sandy were yet in the barn. Mr. Freeland came inside the
kitchen door, and with an agitated voice called me by name, and told
me to come forward, that there were some gentlemen who wished to
see me. I stepped toward them at the door, and asked what they
wanted; when the constables grabbed me, and told me that I had
better not resist; that I had been in a scrape, or was said to have
been in one; that they were merely going to take me where I could
be examined; that they would have me brought before my master at
St. Michaels, and if the evidence against me was not proved true I
should be acquitted. I was now firmly tied, and completely at the
mercy of my captors. Resistance was idle. They were five in number,
armed to the teeth. When they had secured me, they turned to John
Harris, and in a few moments succeeded in tying him as firmly as
they had tied me. They next turned toward Henry Harris, who had
now returned from the barn. “Cross your hands,” said the constable
to Henry. “I won’t,” said Henry, in a voice so firm and clear, and in a
manner so determined, as for a moment to arrest all proceedings.
“Won’t you cross your hands?” said Tom Graham, the constable.
“No, I won’t,” said Henry, with increasing emphasis. Mr. Hamilton, Mr.
Freeland, and the officers now came near to Henry. Two of the
constables drew out their shining pistols, and swore, by the name of
God, that he should cross his hands or they would shoot him down.
Each of these hired ruffians now cocked their pistols, and, with
fingers apparently on the triggers, presented their deadly weapons to
the breast of the unarmed slave, saying, if he did not cross his
hands, they would “blow his d——d heart out of him.” “Shoot me,
shoot me,” said Henry; “you can’t kill me but once. Shoot, shoot, and
be damned! I won’t be tied!” This the brave fellow said in a voice as
defiant and heroic in its tone as was the language itself; and at the
moment of saying this, with the pistols at his very breast, he quickly
raised his arms, and dashed them from the puny hands of his
assassins, the weapons flying in all directions. Now came the
struggle. All hands rushed upon the brave fellow, and after beating
him for some time they succeeded in overpowering and tying him.
Henry put me to shame; he fought, and fought bravely. John and I
had made no resistance. The fact is, I never saw much use of
fighting where there was no reasonable probability of whipping
anybody. Yet there was something almost providential in the
resistance made by Henry. But for that resistance every soul of us
would have been hurried off to the far South. Just a moment
previous to the trouble with Henry, Mr. Hamilton mildly said,—and
this gave me the unmistakable clue to the cause of our arrest,
—“Perhaps we had now better make a search for those protections,
which we understand Frederick has written for himself and the rest.”
Had these passes been found, they would have been point-blank
proof against us, and would have confirmed all the statements of our
betrayer. Thanks to the resistance of Henry, the excitement
produced by the scuffle drew all attention in that direction, and I
succeeded in flinging my pass, unobserved, into the fire. The
confusion attendant on the scuffle, and the apprehension of still
further trouble, perhaps, led our captors to forego, for the time, any
search for “those protections which Frederick was said to have
written for his companions;” so we were not yet convicted of the
purpose to run away, and it was evident that there was some doubt
on the part of all whether we had been guilty of such purpose.
Just as we were all completely tied, and about ready to start
toward St. Michaels, and thence to jail, Mrs. Betsey Freeland
(mother to William, who was much attached, after the Southern
fashion, to Henry and John, they having been reared from childhood
in her house) came to the kitchen door with her hands full of biscuits,
for we had not had our breakfast that morning, and divided them
between Henry and John. This done, the lady made the following
parting address to me, pointing her bony finger at me: “You devil!
you yellow devil! It was you who put it into the heads of Henry and
John to run away. But for you, you long-legged, yellow devil, Henry
and John would never have thought of running away.” I gave the lady
a look which called forth from her a scream of mingled wrath and
terror, as she slammed the kitchen door and went in, leaving me,
with the rest, in hands as harsh as her own broken voice.
 Driven to Jail for Running Away.
Could the kind reader have been riding along the main road to or
from Easton that morning, his eye would have met a painful sight. He
would have seen five young men, guilty of no crime save that of
preferring liberty to slavery, drawn along the public highway—firmly
bound together, tramping through dust and heat, bare-footed and
bare-headed—fastened to three strong horses, whose riders were
armed with pistols and daggers, on their way to prison like felons,
and suffering every possible insult from the crowds of idle, vulgar
people, who clustered round, and heartlessly made their failure to
escape the occasion for all manner of ribaldry and sport. As I looked
upon this crowd of vile persons, and saw myself and friends thus
assailed and persecuted, I could not help seeing the fulfilment of
Sandy’s dream. I was in the hands of moral vultures, and held in
their sharp talons, and was being hurried away toward Easton, in a
southeasterly direction, amid the jeers of new birds of the same
feather, through every neighborhood we passed. It seemed to me
that everybody was out, and knew the cause of our arrest, and
awaited our passing in order to feast their vindictive eyes on our
misery.
Some said “I ought to be hanged;” and others, “I ought to be
burned;” others I ought to have the “hide” taken off my back; while no
one gave us a kind word or sympathizing look, except the poor
slaves who were lifting their heavy hoes, and who cautiously glanced
at us through the post-and-rail fences, behind which they were at
work. Our sufferings that morning can be more easily imagined than
described. Our hopes were all blasted at one blow. The cruel
injustice, the victorious crime, and the helplessness of innocence,
led me to ask in my ignorance and weakness: Where is now the God
of justice and mercy? and why have these wicked men the power
thus to trample upon our rights, and to insult our feelings? and yet in
the next moment came the consoling thought, “the day of the
oppressor will come at last.” Of one thing I could be glad: not one of
my dear friends upon whom I had brought this great calamity, either
by word or look, reproached me for having led them into it. We were
a band of brothers, and never dearer to each other than now. The
thought which gave us the most pain was the probable separation
which would now take place in case we were sold off to the far
South, as we were likely to be. While the constables were looking
forward, Henry and I, being fastened together, could occasionally
exchange a word without being observed by the kidnappers who had
us in charge. “What shall I do with my pass?” said Henry. “Eat it with
your biscuit,” said I; “it won’t do to tear it up.” We were now near St.
Michaels. The direction concerning the passes was passed around,
and executed. “Own nothing,” said I. “Own nothing” was passed
round, enjoined, and assented to. Our confidence in each other was
unshaken, and we were quite resolved to succeed or fail together; as
much after the calamity which had befallen us as before.
On reaching St. Michaels we underwent a sort of examination at
my master’s store, and it was evident to my mind that Master
Thomas suspected the truthfulness of the evidence upon which they
had acted in arresting us, and that he only affected, to some extent,
the positiveness with which he asserted our guilt. There was nothing
said by any of our company which could, in any manner, prejudice
our cause, and there was hope yet that we should be able to return
to our homes, if for nothing else, at least to find out the guilty man or
woman who betrayed us.
To this end we all denied that we had been guilty of intended
flight. Master Thomas said that the evidence he had of our intention
to run away was strong, enough to hang us in a case of murder.
“But,” said I, “the cases are not equal; if murder were committed,—
the thing is done! but we have not run away. Where is the evidence
against us? We were quietly at our work.” I talked thus, with unusual
freedom, to bring out the evidence against us, for we all wanted,
above all things, to know who had betrayed us, that we might have
something tangible on which to pour our execrations. From
something which dropped, in the course of the talk, it appeared that
there was but one witness against us, and that that witness could not
be produced. Master Thomas would not tell us who his informant
was, but we suspected, and suspected one person only. Several
circumstances seemed to point Sandy out as our betrayer. His entire
knowledge of our plans, his participation in them, his withdrawal from
us, his dream and his simultaneous presentiment that we were
betrayed, the taking us and the leaving him, were calculated to turn
suspicion toward him, and yet we could not suspect him. We all
loved him too well to think it possible that he could have betrayed us.
So we rolled the guilt on other shoulders.
We were literally dragged, that morning, behind horses, a
distance of fifteen miles, and placed in the Easton jail. We were glad
to reach the end of our journey, for our pathway had been full of
insult and mortification. Such is the power of public opinion that it is
hard, even for the innocent, to feel the happy consolations of
innocence when they fall under the maledictions of this power. How
could we regard ourselves as in the right, when all about us
denounced us as criminals, and had the power and the disposition to
treat us as such.
In jail we were placed under the care of Mr. Joseph Graham, the
sheriff of the county. Henry and John and myself were placed in one
room, and Henry Bailey and Charles Roberts in another by
themselves. This separation was intended to deprive us of the
advantage of concert, and to prevent trouble in jail.
Once shut up, a new set of tormentors came upon us. A swarm
of imps in human shape,—the slave-traders and agents of slave-
traders—who gathered in every country town of the state watching
for chances to buy human flesh (as buzzards watch for carrion),
flocked in upon us to ascertain if our masters had placed us in jail to
be sold. Such a set of debased and villainous creatures I never saw
before and hope never to see again. I felt as if surrounded by a pack
of fiends fresh from perdition. They laughed, leered, and grinned at
us, saying, “Ah, boys, we have got you, haven’t we? So you were
about to make your escape? Where were you going to?” After
taunting us in this way as long as they liked they one by one
subjected us to an examination, with a view to ascertain our value,
feeling our arms and legs and shaking us by the shoulders, to see if
we were sound and healthy, impudently asking us, “how we would
like to have them for masters?” To such questions we were quite
dumb (much to their annoyance). One fellow told me, “if he had me
he would cut the devil out of me pretty quick.”
These negro-buyers were very offensive to the genteel southern
Christian public. They were looked upon in respectable Maryland
society as necessary but detestable characters. As a class, they
were hardened ruffians, made such by nature and by occupation.
Yes, they were the legitimate fruit of slavery, and were second in
villainy only to the slaveholders themselves who made such a class
possible. They were mere hucksters of the slave produce of
Maryland and Virginia—coarse, cruel, and swaggering bullies,
whose very breathing was of blasphemy and blood.
Aside from these slave-buyers who infested the prison from time
to time, our quarters were much more comfortable than we had any
right to expect them to be. Our allowance of food was small and
coarse, but our room was the best in the jail—neat and spacious,
and with nothing about it necessarily reminding us of being in prison
but its heavy locks and bolts and the black iron lattice work at the
windows. We were prisoners of state compared with most slaves
who were put into that Easton jail. But the place was not one of
contentment. Bolts, bars, and grated windows are not acceptable to
freedom-loving people of any color. The suspense, too, was painful.
Every step on the stairway was listened to, in the hope that the
comer would cast a ray of light on our fate. We would have given the
hair of our heads for half a dozen words with one of the waiters in
Sol. Lowe’s hotel. Such waiters were in the way of hearing, at the
table, the probable course of things. We could see them flitting about
in their white jackets in front of this hotel, but could speak to none of
them.
Soon after the holidays were over, contrary to all our
expectations, Messrs. Hamilton and Freeland came up to Easton;
not to make a bargain with the “Georgia traders,” nor to send us up
to Austin Woldfolk, as was usual in the case of runaway-slaves, but
to release Charles, Henry Harris, Henry Bailey, and John Harris from
prison, and this, too, without the infliction of a single blow. I was left
alone in prison. The innocent had been taken and the guilty left. My
friends were separated from me, and apparently forever. This
circumstance caused me more pain than any other incident
connected with our capture and imprisonment. Thirty-nine lashes on
my naked and bleeding back would have been joyfully borne, in
preference to this separation from these, the friends of my youth.
And yet I could not but feel that I was the victim of something like
justice. Why should these young men, who were led into this scheme
by me, suffer as much as the instigator? I felt glad that they were
released from prison, and from the dread prospect of a life (or death
I should rather say) in the rice swamps. It is due to the noble Henry
to say that he was almost as reluctant to leave the prison with me in
it as he had been to be tied and dragged to prison. But he and we all
knew that we should, in all the likelihoods of the case, be separated,
in the event of being sold; and since we were completely in the
hands of our owners they concluded it would be best to go
peaceably home.
Not until this last separation, dear reader, had I touched those
profounder depths of desolation which it is the lot of slaves often to
reach. I was solitary and alone within the walls of a stone prison, left
to a fate of life-long misery. I had hoped and expected much, for
months before, but my hopes and expectations were now withered
and blasted. The ever dreaded slave life in Georgia, Louisiana, and
Alabama,—from which escape was next to impossible—now in my
loneliness stared me in the face. The possibility of ever becoming
anything but an abject slave, a mere machine in the hands of an
owner, had now fled, and it seemed to me it had fled forever. A life of
living death, beset with the innumerable horrors of the cotton field
and the sugar plantation, seemed to be my doom. The fiends who
rushed into the prison when we were first put there continued to visit
me and ply me with questions and tantalizing remarks. I was
insulted, but helpless; keenly alive to the demands of justice and
liberty, but with no means of asserting them. To talk to those imps
about justice or mercy would have been as absurd as to reason with
bears and tigers. Lead and steel were the only arguments that they
were capable of appreciating, as the events of the subsequent years
have proved.
After remaining in this life of misery and despair about a week,
which seemed a month, Master Thomas, very much to my surprise
and greatly to my relief, came to the prison and took me out, for the
purpose, as he said, of sending me to Alabama with a friend of his,
who would emancipate me at the end of eight years. I was glad
enough to get out of prison, but I had no faith in the story that his
friend would emancipate me. Besides, I had never heard of his
having a friend in Alabama, and I took the announcement simply as
an easy and comfortable method of shipping me off to the far south.
There was a little scandal, too, connected with the idea of one
Christian selling another to the Georgia traders, while it was deemed
every way proper for them to sell to others. I thought this friend in
Alabama was an invention to meet this difficulty, for Master Thomas
was quite jealous of his religious reputation, however unconcerned
he might have been about his real Christian character. In these
remarks it is possible I do him injustice. He certainly did not exert his
power over me as he might have done in the case, but acted, upon
the whole, very generously, considering the nature of my offense. He
had the power and the provocation to send me, without reserve, into
the very everglades of Florida, beyond the remotest hope of
emancipation; and his refusal to exercise that power must be set
down to his credit.
After lingering about St. Michaels a few days and no friend from
Alabama appearing, Master Thomas decided to send me back again
to Baltimore, to live with his brother Hugh, with whom he was now at
peace; possibly he became so by his profession of religion at the
camp-meeting in the Bay side. Master Thomas told me he wished
me to go to Baltimore and learn a trade; and that if I behaved myself
properly he would emancipate me at twenty-five. Thanks for this one
beam of hope in the future. The promise had but one fault—it
seemed too good to be true.
 CHAPTER XX.
APPRENTICESHIP LIFE.

Nothing lost in my attempt to run away—Comrades at home—Reasons for

sending me away—Return to Baltimore—Tommy changed—Caulking in
Gardiner’s ship yard—Desperate fight—Its causes—Conflict between
white and black labor—Outrage—Testimony—Master Hugh—Slavery in
Baltimore—My condition improves—New associations—Slaveholder’s
right to the slave’s wages—How to make a discontented slave.

WELL, dear reader, I am not, as you have probably inferred, a loser

by the general upstir described in the foregoing chapter. The little
domestic revolution, notwithstanding the sudden snub it got by the
treachery of somebody, did not, after all, end so disastrously as
when in the iron cage at Easton I conceived it would. The prospect
from that point did look about as dark as any that ever cast its gloom
over the vision of the anxious, out-looking human spirit. “All’s well
that ends well!” My affectionate friends, Henry and John Harris, are
still with Mr. Freeland. Charles Roberts and Henry Bailey are safe at
their homes. I have not, therefore, anything to regret on their
account. Their masters have mercifully forgiven them, probably on
the ground suggested in the spirited little speech of Mrs. Freeland
made to me just before leaving for the jail. My friends had nothing to
regret, either: for while they were watched more closely, they were
doubtless treated more kindly than before, and got new assurances
that they should some day be legally emancipated, provided their
behavior from that time forward should make them deserving. Not a
blow was struck any one of them. As for Master Freeland, good soul,
he did not believe we were intending to run away at all. Having given
—as he thought—no occasion to his boys to leave him, he could not
think it probable that they had entertained a design so grievous.
This, however, was not the view taken of the matter by “Mas’ Billy,”
as we used to call the soft-spoken but crafty and resolute Mr. William
Hamilton. He had no doubt that the crime had been meditated, and
regarding me as the instigator of it, he frankly told Master Thomas
that he must remove me from that neighborhood or he would shoot
me. He would not have one so dangerous as “Frederick” tampering
with his slaves. William Hamilton was not a man whose threat might
be safely disregarded. I have no doubt he would have proved as
good as his word, had the warning given been disregarded. He was
furious at the thought of such a piece of high-handed theft as we
were about to perpetrate—the stealing of our own bodies and souls.
The feasibility of the plan, too, could the first steps have been taken,
was marvelously plain. Besides, this was a new idea, this use of the
Bay. Slaves escaping, until now, had taken to the woods; they had
never dreamed of profaning and abusing the waters of the noble
Chesapeake by making them the highway from slavery to freedom.
Here was a broad road leading to the destruction of slavery, which
had hitherto been looked upon as a wall of security by the
slaveholders. But Master Billy could not get Mr. Freeland to see
matters precisely as he did, nor could he get Master Thomas excited
as he was. The latter, I must say it to his credit, showed much
humane feeling, and atoned for much that had been harsh, cruel,
and unreasonable in his former treatment of me and of others. My
“Cousin Tom” told me that while I was in jail Master Thomas was
very unhappy, and that the night before his going up to release me
he had walked the floor nearly all night, evincing great distress; that
very tempting offers had been made to him by the negro-traders, but
he had rejected them all, saying that money could not tempt him to
sell me to the far south. I can easily believe all this, for he seemed
quite reluctant to send me away at all. He told me that he only
consented to do so because of the very strong prejudice against me
in the neighborhood, and that he feared for my safety if I remained
there.
Thus after three years spent in the country, roughing it in the
field, and experiencing all sorts of hardships, I was again permitted
to return to Baltimore, the very place of all others, short of a free
State, where I most desired to live. The three years spent in the
country had made some difference in me, and in the household of
Master Hugh. “Little Tommy” was no longer little Tommy; and I was
not the slender lad who had left the Eastern Shore just three years
before. The loving relations between Master Tommy and myself were
broken up. He was no longer dependent on me for protection, but felt
himself a man, with other and more suitable associates. In childhood
he had considered me scarcely inferior to himself,—certainly quite as
good as any other boy with whom he played—but the time had come
when his friend must be his slave. So we were cold to each other,
and parted. It was a sad thing to me, that loving each other as we
had done, we must now take different roads. To him a thousand
avenues were open. Education had made him acquainted with all the
treasures of the world, and liberty had flung open the gates
thereunto; but I, who had attended him seven years, had watched
over him with the care of a big brother, fighting his battles in the
street, and shielding him from harm to an extent which induced his
mother to say, “Oh, Tommy is always safe when he is with Freddy”—
I must be confined to a single condition. He had grown and become
a man: I, though grown to the stature of manhood, must all my life
remain a minor—a mere boy. Thomas Auld, junior, obtained a
situation on board the brig Tweed, and went to sea. I have since
heard of his death.
There were few persons to whom I was more sincerely attached
than to him.
Very soon after I went to Baltimore to live, Master Hugh
succeeded in getting me hired to Mr. William Gardiner, an extensive
ship-builder on Fell’s Point. I was placed there to learn to calk, a
trade of which I already had some knowledge, gained while in Mr.
Hugh Auld’s ship-yard. Gardiner’s, however, proved a very
unfavorable place for the accomplishment of the desired object. Mr.
Gardiner was that season engaged in building two large man-of-war
vessels, professedly for the Mexican government. These vessels
were to be launched in the month of July of that year, and in failure
thereof Mr. Gardiner would forfeit a very considerable sum of money.
So when I entered the ship-yard, all was hurry and driving. There
were in the yard about one hundred men; of these, seventy or eighty