Читать книгу Benjamin Drew. The Refugee. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada онлайн

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N–‘s overseer whipped me often – stripped me, and tied me up when he did it, and generally drew blood,– sometimes he would not be so severe as at others, but I have frequently had to pull my shirt from my back with a good deal of misery, on account of its sticking in the blood where I had been lashed. Let daybreak catch me in the house, instead of currying the horses, that was as good for a flogging as any thing else,– if caught standing at the plough, instead of moving, that was good for fifty lashes more or less,– the least of any thing would provoke it. I was whipped once because the overseer said I looked mad.

These examples, among others that proliferate throughout the text, attest to the central role that violence played in maintaining the institution of American slavery and link Drew’s book with the abolitionist crusade against the brutality of slavery. This is best summarised in Harriet Tubman’s lapidary sentence: “I think slavery is the next thing to hell”. Exposing the mistreatment of slave subjects acquires a different meaning here to that one that abounds in classical slave narratives, for, as we shall see, these episodes are strenuously contraposed by the freedom that the ex-slaves relish in Canada. As a good example of abolitionist literature, here the slave never strikes back but rather endures this infamous behavior with patience, determination, and faith. One of the most appalling stories is that of Isaac Williams, who confesses how disturbed he felt when his master forced him to leave his wife’s bed so that he could take the slave’s place. Although it can be inferred that a rape took place, no word about this is mentioned. Williams only voices the way in which he was sold afterwards, showcasing his inability to strike back nor his wish to behave unmorally: “She was crying, you see. He took me to his bedroom, and chained me by one leg to his bedpost, and kept me there, handcuffs on, all night. He slept in the bed. Next morning, he took me in a wagon and carried me to Fredericksburg, and sold me into a slave-pen to George Ayler, for ten hundred and fifty dollars”. With this episode, William reverses the stereotype of the Black salacious man and of the danger his freedom should pose to society and, though with a shortage of words and rather in a subtle way, he demonstrates that the real danger lies in slavery and the masters that embody its practices. In this way, the white readership is presented with the gracious virtues of the Black self against the cruelty of the white masters and overseers. Thus, and despite the catalogue of little biographies that somehow changes the structure of a slave narrative as it were, the collection is modelled following the classic abolitionist genre and serves to open the white readership’s eyes to the America and Canada’s capital sin.