Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/169

 and smarted under the lash of a stern and relentless overseer, she attempted to drown the remembrance of their wrongs, in, the dissipations and gaieties of Saratoga or New York.

But she was obliged to spend a part of the year at Poplar-Grove; and with all her care, she could not always save her feelings from some rude brushes. Of this I had a striking instance on my first visit. One of her plantation hands 'had been so far indulged by the overseer, who, by the way, was a very rigid presbyterian, as to receive a pass to attend Mr Carleton's meeting. After the meeting was over, his mistress happened to see him there; and as she wished to send a message to one of her neighbors, she called him to her, and sent him with it. It so happened that Mrs Montgomery's overseer, was at this neighbor's, when the servant arrived there with his mistress's message. The overseer no sooner saw him, than he inquired what business he had to come there, when his pass only allowed him to go to the meeting and back again. It was in vain that he pleaded his mistress's orders. The overseer said that made no difference whatever; for Mrs Montgomery had nothing at all to do with the plantation hands; and to impress this fact upon his memory, he gave him a dozen lashes on the spot.

The poor fellow was bold enough to come to the House, and make his complaint to Mrs Montgomery. Nothing could exceed her anger and vexation. But her agreement with her brother left her without a remedy. She made the servant a handsome present; told him that he had been very unjustly punished; and begged him to go home and say nothing about it to any body. She submitted to the mortification of making this request, in hopes of saving the poor fellow from a second punishment. But by some means or other, as I learned afterwards, the overseer found out what had been going on; and to vindicate his supreme authority, and keep up the discipline of the plantation, he inflicted a second whipping more severe than the first.

Such is the malignant nature and disastrous operation of the slave-holding system, that in too many instances, the sincerest good will, and best intended efforts in the slave's behalf, end only in plunging him into deeper miseries. It