Henry Box Brown on Slavery in the United States

The Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (1851) is the autobiography of Henry Box Brown (l. c. 1815-1897), who became the most famous fugitive slave of his time when he had himself shipped in a box from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 29 March 1849. The book became a bestseller, and Brown a popular celebrity.

There are two editions of the work, an 1849 edition published in Boston and an 1851 edition brought out in Manchester, England, after Brown had fled there in 1850 after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed by the United States Congress. The 1849 work is thought to have been ghostwritten as an as-told-to autobiography by the abolitionist Charles Stearns of Boston, but there is evidence that the 1851 edition (the best known) was written by Brown or, at least, that he contributed directly to it.

As Brown says in his work, he was never treated badly by his master and was, in fact, so favored by him and his sons that he was never whipped. Still, he was acutely aware that he was regarded as their property with no agency, no autonomy, and completely at their mercy to do with him whatever they pleased whenever they might.

Throughout the first part of his book, Brown describes the conditions under which he lived, beginning with the opening paragraph:

I was born about forty-five miles from the city of Richmond, in Louisa County, in the year 1815. I entered the world a slave – in the midst of a country whose most honoured writings declare that all men have a right to liberty – but I had imprinted upon my body no mark which could be made to signify that my destiny was to be that of a bondman. Neither was there any angel stood by, at the hour of my birth, to hand my body over, by the authority of heaven, to be the property of a fellow man; no, but I was a slave because my countrymen had made it lawful, in utter contempt of the declared will of heaven, for the strong to lay hold of the weak and to buy and sell them as marketable goods.

Thus was I born a slave; tyrants – remorseless, destitute of religion and every principle of humanity – stood by the couch of my mother and, as I entered into the world, before I had done anything to forfeit my right to liberty, and while my soul was yet undefiled by the commission of actual sin, stretched forth their bloody arms and branded me with the mark of bondage, and by such means I became their own property. Yes, they robbed me of myself before I could know the nature of their wicked arts, and ever afterwards – until I forcibly wrenched myself from their hands – did they retain their stolen property.

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Brown had an understanding with his master that, for a sum regularly paid by Brown to him, he would never sell Brown's wife, Nancy, or their children. In early 1849 or late 1848, however, the master, one William Barret, after accepting the payment, sold Brown's family to a minister in North Carolina.

After this, Brown began working on a plan to escape to the north and freedom, finally deciding upon his now-famous plan to have himself mailed to the abolitionists of Philadelphia in a box. He arrived 27 hours later, greeted his liberators, sang a song of praise, and was thereafter known as Henry Box Brown. After fleeing to England in 1850, he spent the rest of his life as a popular entertainer, returning to the United States in 1875 after slavery had been abolished.

In passages below, from the 1851 edition of his autobiography, Brown describes the conditions he and his fellow slaves lived under in Richmond, Virginia and also references the atrocities that took place in the fall of 1831 after Nat Turner's Rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, that August. No longer able to bear the daily cruelties of slavery, Brown took his chances and had himself, literally, mailed to freedom in the north.

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The following is taken from Chapter III (description of the aftermath of the Nat Turner Rebellion) and Chapter IV of the Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, pp. 19-20 and 22-27, as published on the site Documenting the American South. The full narrative is below in the bibliography.

About eighteen months after I came to the city of Richmond, an extraordinary event took place which caused great excitement all over the town. I did not then know precisely what was the cause of this excitement, for I could get no satisfactory information from my master, only he said that some of the slaves had plotted to kill their owners. I have since learned that it was the famous Nat Turner's insurrection.

Many slaves were whipped, hung, and cut down with the swords in the streets; and some that were found away from their quarters after dark, were shot; the whole city was in the utmost excitement, and the whites seemed terrified beyond measure, so true it is that the "wicked flee when no man pursueth."

Great numbers of slaves were loaded with irons; some were half hung as it was termed – that is they were suspended from some tree with a rope about their necks, so adjusted as not quite to strangle them–and then they were pelted by men and boys with rotten eggs. This half-hanging is a refined species of punishment peculiar to slaves!

This insurrection took place some distance from the city and was the occasion of the enacting of that law by which more than five slaves were forbidden to meet together unless they were at work: and also, of that, for the silencing all coloured preachers. One of that class in our city, refused to obey the impious mandate, and in consequence of his refusal, was severely whipped.

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His religion was, however, found to be too deeply rooted for him to be silenced by any mere power of man, and consequently, no efforts could avail to extort from his lips, a promise that he would cease to proclaim the glad tidings of the gospel to his enslaved and perishing fellowmen.

I had now been about two years in Richmond city, and not having, during that time, seen, and very seldom heard from, my mother, my feelings were very much tried by the separation which I had thus to endure. I missed severely her welcome smile when I returned from my daily task; no one seemed at that time to sympathize with me, and I began to feel, indeed, that I really was alone in the world; and worse than all, I could console myself with no hope, not even the most distant, that I should ever see my beloved parents again…

…After the death of our lamented overseer we were placed under the care of one of the meanest and cruelest men that I ever knew; but before alluding particularly to his conduct, it may be interesting to describe the circumstances and condition of the slaves he had to superintend. The building in which I worked was about three hundred feet in length, and three stories high; affording room for two hundred people to work, but only one hundred and fifty were kept. One hundred and twenty of the persons employed were slaves, and the remainder free coloured people.

We were obliged to work fourteen hours a day in the summer, and sixteen in the winter. One week consisted in separating the stems from the leaves of Tobacco; the leaves were then moistened with a fluid made from Liquorice and Sugar, which renders it not perfectly abhorrent to the taste of those who work it. These operations were performed by the women and boys and, after being thus moistened, the leaves were then taken by the men and with the hands pressed into lumps and then twisted; it was then sent to what is called the machine house, and pressed into boxes and casks, whence it went to the sweat house and after lying about thirty days there, are taken out and shipped for the market.

The name of our overseer was John F. Allen, he was a thorough-going villain in all his modes of doing business; he was a savage looking sort of man; always apparently ready for any work of barbarity or cruelty to which the most depraved despot might call him. He understood how to turn a penny for his own advantage as well as any man.

No person could match him in making a bargain; but whether he had acquired his low cunning from associating with that clan or had it originally as one of the inherent properties of his diabolical disposition, I could not discover, but he excelled all I had ever seen in low mean trickery and artifice. He used to boast that by his shrewdness in managing the slaves, he made enough to support himself and family–and he had a very large family which I am sure consumed not less than one hundred dollars per annum–without touching one farthing of his own salary, which was fifteen hundred dollars per annum.

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Mr. Allen used to rise very early in the morning, not that he might enjoy sweet communion with his own thoughts, or with his God; nor that he might further the legitimate interest of his master, but in order to look after matters which principally concerned himself; that was to rob his master and the poor slaves that were under his control by every means in his power.

His early rising was looked upon by our master as a token of great devotedness to his business; and as he was withal very pious and a member of the Episcopalian Church, my master seemed to place great confidence in him. It was therefore no use for any of the workmen to complain to the master of anything the overseer did, for he would not listen to a word they said, but gave his sanction to his barbarous conduct in the fullest extent, no matter how tyrannical or unjust that conduct, or how cruel the punishments which he inflicted; so that that demon of an overseer was in reality our master.

As a specimen of Allen's cruelty, I will mention the revolting case of a coloured man, who was frequently in the habit of singing. This man was taken sick, and although he had not made his appearance at the factory for two or three days, no notice was taken of him; no medicine was provided nor was there any physician employed to heal him. At the end of that time, Allen ordered three men to go to the house of the invalid and fetch him to the factory; and of course, in a little while the sick man appeared; so feeble was he, however, from disease, that he was scarcely able to stand.

Allen, notwithstanding, desired him to be stripped and his hands tied behind him; he was then tied to a large post and questioned about his singing; Allen told him that his singing consumed too much time, and that it hurt him very much, but that he was going to give him some medicine that would cure him; the poor trembling man made no reply and immediately the pious overseer Allen, for no other crime than sickness, inflicted two-hundred lashes upon his bare back; and even this might probably have been but a small part of his punishment, had not the poor man fainted away: and it was only then the blood-thirsty fiend ceased to apply the lash!

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I witnessed this transaction myself, but I durst not venture to say that the tyrant was doing wrong, because I was a slave and any interference on my part, would have led to a similar punishment upon myself. This poor man was sick for four weeks afterwards, during which time the weekly allowance, of seventy cents, for the hands to board themselves with, was withheld, and the poor man's wife had to support him in the best way she could, which in a land of slavery is no easy matter.

The advocates of slavery will sometimes tell us that the slave is in better circumstances than he would be in a state of freedom, because he has a master to provide for him when he is sick; but even if this doctrine were true it would afford no argument whatever in favor of slavery; for no amount of kindness can be made the lawful price of any man's liberty, to infringe which is contrary to the laws of humanity and the decrees of God.

But what is the real fact? In many instances the severe toils and exposures the slave has to endure at the will of his master, brings on his disease, and even then he is liable to the lash for medicine, and to live, or die by starvation as he may, without any support from his owner; for there is no law by which the master may be punished for his cruelty–by which he may be compelled to support his suffering slave.

My master knew all the circumstances of the case which I have just related, but he never interfered, nor even reproved the cruel overseer for what he had done; his motto was, Mr. Allen is always right, and so, right or wrong, whatever he did was law, and from his will there was no appeal.

I have before stated that Mr. Allen was a very pious man–he was also a church member, but was much addicted to the habit of profane swearing–a vice which is, in slave countries, not at all uncommon in church members. He used particularly to expend his swearing breath in denunciation of the whole race of negroes– using more bad terms than I could here employ, without polluting the pen with which I write. Amongst the best epithets, were; "hogs," "dogs," "pigs," &c., &c.

At one time, he was busily engaged in reading the Bible, when a slave came in who had been [a few] minutes behind his time–precious time! Allen depended upon the punctuality of his slaves, for the support of his family, in the manner previously noticed: his anxiety to provide for his household, led him to indulge in a boisterous outbreak of anger; so that when the slave came in, he said, “what are you so late for, you black scamp?”

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The poor man endeavored to apologize for his lateness, but it was to no purpose. This professing Christian proceeded to try the effects of the Bible on the slave's body, and actually dealt him a heavy blow in the face with the sacred book!

But that not answering his purpose, and the man standing silent, he caught up a stick, and beat him with that. The slave afterwards complained to the master of the overseer's conduct but was told that Mr. Allen would not do anything wrong.