Besides, this was, in fact, my
first introduction to the realities of slavery.
CHAPTER III
_Parentage_
MY FATHER SHROUDED IN MYSTERY--MY MOTHER--HER PERSONAL
APPEARANCE--INTERFERENCE OF SLAVERY WITH THE NATURAL AFFECTIONS
OF MOTHER AND CHILDREN--SITUATION OF MY MOTHER--HER NIGHTLY
VISITS TO HER BOY--STRIKING INCIDENT--HER DEATH--HER PLACE OF
BURIAL.
If the reader will now be kind enough to allow me time to grow
bigger, and afford me an opportunity for my experience to become
greater, I will tell him something, by-and-by, of slave life, as
I saw, felt, and heard it, on Col. Edward Lloyd's plantation, and
at the house of old master, where I had now, despite of myself,
most suddenly, but not unexpectedly, been dropped. Meanwhile, I
will redeem my promise to say something more of my dear mother.
I say nothing of _father_, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have
never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as
it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either
fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their
existence in the social arrangements of the plantation.
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