Negroes and the Gun (5 page)

“The True Remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap.”

—Frederick Douglass, 1854
1

There was no sign of anything special happening when the slave boy Fred Bailey stood up and fought the rawboned Maryland planter they called “Covey the Nigger-breaker.” Negroes had been striking back against the prosaic violence of slavery since the beginning. The nature of that resistance and its impulses are contested today, and these cavils may never be settled. But at the core, the deeds and decisions of earlier generations of slaves, fugitives, and freemen ground Martin Luther King's twentieth-century debate with Robert Williams and frame the black tradition of arms.

Violence in the freedom struggle resonates differently over time. Political nonviolence so dominates the story of the modern civil-rights movement that it obscures the tradition of individual self-defense. And while the folly of political violence seems plain today, the case against it did not always sway black folk. Indeed, luminaries of the nineteenth-century leadership class advocated organized violent resistance against slavery as a matter of considered policy. And before that, cryptic accounts of early American slavery, evidence abundant individual and organized resistance.

Martin King and Robert Williams debated the boundaries of an established tradition. But the roots of that tradition, like births and deaths and black family trees that fade to dust under slavery, are not fully recorded in the fashion of other important American developments. So the early story, we piece together—some of it from rare accounts by black folk and more of it as remnants from the stories of the conquering class.

Partly this yields unsympathetic renderings of quick, violent outbursts and
loosely organized, swiftly quashed revolts—the widely recounted insurrections of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Charles Deslandes, Nat Turner, and an estimated 250 more obscure episodes. In other brief accounts and sterile court records, we see the familiar, unplanned human reflex to meet violence with violence that reflects why philosophers speak of a natural right to self-defense.
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Some scholars argue that early arrivals from Africa were culturally inclined against organized violence and favored individual combat charged with African ritual. Others contend that lingering tribal rivalries and language barriers hindered planning for group resistance. Still others say that organized slave revolts had a clear African base and that it was American-born blacks who adopted practical survival strategies that eschewed suicidal rebellions.

Records of early criminal convictions suggest that direct violence against masters or other whites was more likely from “unseasoned” slaves new to the Americas. “Seasoned” slaves, acclimated to the culture, were more likely to resist surreptitiously. Eighteenth-century prosecutions and executions for arson and poisoning suggest that this was not uncommon.
3
Many acts of resistance defy rigid boundaries, demonstrating both a personal fight against the immediate violence of slavery and a political resistance against the slave system. The black tradition of arms grows out of this milieu.
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Fred Bailey's situation was common. He had been rented out to Edward Covey by his master, Thomas Auld. Bailey was young, just coming into manhood. Some said that the handsome mulatto had been coddled. And Auld perhaps thought that too. A year away with Covey would train him up right.

Covey wrung a living out of the silty loam of Maryland's eastern shore. He drove Negroes hard. With a nod and a knowing smile, men called him “Nigger-breaker,” in earnest respect for his particular talent and general disposition. Like others of his type, Covey was the slavers' medicine for young bucks with too much spirit.

Fred Bailey was not the typical problem, though. Relatively speaking, he was soft, his early life spent in the comparative comfort of the Baltimore home of Hugh Auld, Thomas's brother. It was there, as bonded companion to Hugh and Sophia Auld's young son Tommy, that Bailey learned to read from the Bible at the knee of the kindly Sophia.

Bailey surely was a slave, presented to Tommy as “his Freddy,” and formally charged with serving and protecting the younger boy. But the work of servile big brother was not taxing and often left Bailey free to roam the streets and docks of Baltimore. Fieldwork under Covey's lash was a jolting immersion into the more common experience of American Negro slavery.

One steamy afternoon in 1833, the August heat dragged down the tenderfoot. Part of a team of four assigned to threshing, Bailey lagged, stumbled, and then
passed out. His job was to carry raw, stalked grain to the thresher. When he stopped working, the threshing stopped. The commotion of threshing was profit. Silence was loss. And Covey was quick to investigate.

Bailey was laid out in a shady spot next to the thresher when Covey approached and demanded explanations. Bailey, in a heat daze, mumbled excuses. Covey figured first to kick him back to work and planted a boot hard in his side. Bailey rose partway, fell back, got another kick, and then another. Crab-walking, attempting to stand, then falling again, Bailey was somewhere between up and down when Covey bashed him in the head with an oak-barrel stave. The blood flowed. And this time Bailey stayed down, resigning himself to dying right there if that was his fate.

The beating was having the opposite effect Covey wanted. He was worn out from giving it, and Bailey was no closer to resuming work. Covey stomped off in disgust. Bailey, splayed out on the ground, bleeding from the head, resolved, if he survived the moment, to flee.

At the first clear chance, Bailey crawled off into the woods, barefoot and bleeding. His destination was St. Michaels, seven miles away. There, he imagined finding relief in the self-interest of Master Thomas. It was fair to think that Auld would object to Covey abusing his valuable property. Bailey might even have thought to prevail on whatever advantage rested in the whispers that Auld was actually his father. It was not an unreasonable hope. Auld had twice rescued Bailey from the fate of a field hand, arranging for soft duty in Baltimore with Hugh, Sophia, and Tommy.

The welcome in St. Michaels was disappointing. Bailey looked how you would expect from a kid who had dropped from heatstroke, taken a beating, and then fled barefoot through seven miles of forest and swamp. But Thomas Auld had little sympathy either for Bailey's appearance or for his story. Auld knew Covey. Covey was a good man. Whatever had happened, Bailey must have deserved it. And, of course, as a matter of law, there was really nothing to be done. Covey had leased Bailey for a full year. It would be legally, nay, morally wrong to welsh on the bargain.

In another era, biographers, speculating about the blood connection and Auld's multiple rescues, would claim that there had been something like love binding Fred Bailey and Thomas Auld. Maybe this exaggerates things. But whatever affection there was, Auld's refusal to intervene with Covey was the end of it for Bailey. Bailey's later depictions of Auld exhibit only disdain.

Early the next morning, ordered to return to Covey or be whipped and returned by force, Fred Bailey reversed course and trudged seven miles back to the scene of his escape. Climbing over the rail fence into the front pasture, he encountered Covey charging toward him, bullwhip in hand. Whatever impulse had moved Bailey to run off, Covey intended to beat out of him. But he had to catch him first.

Bailey fled to the high corn and crawled down low. Covey lost the scent. Exhausted and hungry, Bailey spent the day in the woods, at the edge of the fields, deciding whether to run back to St. Michaels to a whipping, surrender to Covey for a whipping, or stay in the woods and starve.

That night, Bailey roamed the fields and woodlots until he came to the little cabin of Sandy Jenkins, who is recorded either as a free black or a slave who enjoyed a degree of independence, living in his own place with a free black woman. Sandy let Bailey wash up and shared his simple dinner as they talked about what to do.

Sandy was at least a generation older than Bailey. He had longer experience with the violence of slavery. He also was the keeper of secrets. While Sandy's wife cleaned up, man and boy walked out into the darkness. Sandy said Bailey must surrender to Covey. He also promised Bailey something that seems fanciful today, but less so then.

Deep into the woods, where the light from the cabin fire was lost, Sandy worked under the moonglow, scratching and probing. Then, on his knees, clawing into the black loam, he tugged up a root from the breathing forest.

Years later, after he had escaped from slavery, thrown off the name Bailey, and become what the
New York Times
called the “foremost man of his race,”
Frederick Douglass
recounted how wise old Sandy had bestowed on him “a certain root, which, if I would take some of it with me, carrying it always on my right side, would render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to whip me.”

Looking back, it is pleasing to speculate about the magic of the root and the forces of destiny that were taking hold. What we can say for sure is that the next encounters between the “Nigger-breaker” and the nascent abolitionist, orator, writer, publisher, and freedom-movement pioneer Frederick Douglass were to be profoundly different from what had passed before.

Away for several days now, with only a brief appearance and a retreat into the corn, Douglass returned to the Covey farm early on the Sunday, buoyed gingerly by the promise of Sandy's root magic. Walking toward the main house, he spied Covey, dressed for church. His temperament reflecting his destination, Covey acknowledged Douglass calmly and gave him instructions for a bit of work that would not take long. Douglass finished the work and spent the remainder of the day contemplating the magic of the root, the wonder of the Sabbath, and the other mysteries that had pacified Covey since their last meeting.

Like countless Mondays before and since, the warmth and charity of the Sabbath had faded by the next morning. It was not yet daylight when Douglass was lured into the stable with instructions to tend the horses. He was climbing down from the loft when Covey entered with a rope, lassoed him, and yanked him to the floor. Douglass later recounted it this way:

Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment—from whence came the spirit I don't know—I resolved to fight; and suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected, that Covey seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf. This gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of my fingers.

Covey called out to his cousin, Hughes, for help. Hughes waded in just long enough to get a strong kick in the ribs from Douglass and was out of the fight. Covey went for a stick, but Douglass intercepted him and flung him by the neck back to the ground. Covey yelled for help to Bill, another rented slave. Bill objected that he was a valuable working man whose master would not want busted up.

From there, it was just Douglass and Covey, fighting like men until they were spent. And like most episodes of violence, the aftermath was crucial. Here, the odds shifted sharply against Douglass. Violence against whites, even in self-defense, was a hazardous bet for slaves. With the legal status of mules, they were treated accordingly by American courts. And it is a compelling intuition that, except for self-defense in the course of a successful escape, violence against whites would more likely just delay injury or death than prevent it.
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Douglass himself wondered why Covey did not have him taken to the constable and “whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a white man in defence of myself.” The answer, he thought, was that Covey had a reputation as a breaker of Negroes, and his brand would suffer if he were forced to send a defiant sixteen-year-old to the public whipping post.

Whether it was this or something grander and preordained that accounted for Covey's reticence, is impossible to know. What we do know is that Douglass was transformed. Filthy and sweating, Covey dragged himself up out of the mud and admonished that he “would not have whipped him half so much” if Fred had not resisted. Douglass saw it differently. “
He had not whipped me at all
. I considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him.”

For Douglass this was the turning point in his life as a slave that kindled his quest for freedom, and marked his passage into manhood. “I was nothing before. I was a man now. . . . And determined to be a FREEMAN! . . . I resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.”
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Frederick Douglass was far from the first to fight. And given the danger that even vaguely suspected aggression might trigger severe punishment, it is evidence of the
power of the self-defense impulse that slaves fought back with some frequency. A study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century criminal convictions shows that violence against masters lead the next closest category of slave crimes (theft) by a factor of three.
7

For episodes that made it to the courts, slave self-defenders typically met quick, severe punishment. This is illustrated in early Missouri court records, where the aftermath of slave violence was predictable. Punishment was swift in 1818 for a St. Louis slave who stabbed and killed his owner in order to avoid a whipping. He was tried, in a fashion, and quickly hanged. It happened again in 1828, when John Tanner's slave, Moses, somehow acquired a gun and shot and killed Tanner. Missouri courts were unsympathetic to Moses's claim that Tanner had “acted disgracefully” toward Moses's wife. Denied the prerogatives of honor that might be extended to a white man, Moses was summarily tried and hanged.