London
John Warren
I was born in Wilson Co., Tenn., lived there twelve and a half years, and was then carried to Mississippi, by my owners who settled in Marshall Co. Two of us, brothers, went down with the young man, to whom we fell on settlement of estate. Then he sold us to his brother who was a regular speculator, buying and selling all the time—kept from eighteen to twenty on the place. I went right to work on the cotton farm, under an overseer. The overseers changed every year I stayed there. There was pretty hard work and many kinds of it on the cotton plantations. The overseers were generally cruel, hard men, but some had more consideration than others. Four o’clock was rising time. We blew but one horn—when that sounded we all got up, fed the stock, hogs, horses, etc., and went to work. The farm contained 645 acres. We took a little breakfast with us, which we cooked generally over night: but at picking cotton time we had a cook to cook for us. Every man took his little bucket of breakfast to the field, where fifteen minutes was allowed for breakfast, sometimes with water, and sometimes without,—no coffee nor tea in the field. The provision was corn bread and pork—sometimes enough, and sometimes not. After breakfast we worked until one. The overseer generally stayed with the hoe-gang—women and children. He could see from one field to another. We had no drivers on our farm—plenty in the neighborhood. On the big farms they fared worse than we did.
The overseer walked to and fro behind to see that they did not cut out too much cotton with the hoe, and that they took up the grass; if they did not, he would whip generally with a long bull whip, sometimes with a bunch of six or eight black-gum switches, generally laying on hard. There are marks on me made soon after I went there. The only way I got shut of the whip was when I got stouter, to fight them and run away. I was always watching, and they hated to lose my time. Twenty-five acres of cotton and corn together were allowed to a hand, and if one goes, it makes it hard for them. Before I was twenty years old, I was tied up and received two hundred lashes. Generally, they give fifty, and then stop a little—then give fifty more. They sometimes tie round a tree, sometimes to four stakes, and sometimes gammon them. Gambrel is meant here: the wrists are bound together—the arms made to embrace the lower limbs, and a gambrel is thrust through under the knees.] I have seen a man receive five hundred and fifty lashes for running away. The overseer and boss drank brandy, and went at him. They gave him brandy for devilment,—making fun with him: then they would leave him tied a while, and then go and put it on again. I have seen men on the next farm, whipped with a handsaw flatwise: the teeth would cut when the blow was put on. The saw was used after the bull whip.
I learned to spell and read some in Tennessee, among the children. The owners knew I could read. I bought a copy of the letters in writing