f her death with no strong emotions of sorrow for her, and with
very little regret for myself on account of her loss. I had to learn the
value of my mother long after her death, and by witnessing the devotion
of other mothers to their children.

There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so
destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers
to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded my
father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in the
world.

My mother died when I could not have been more than eight or nine years
old, on one of old master's farms in Tuckahoe, in the neighborhood of
Hillsborough. Her grave is, as the grave of the dead at sea, unmarked,
and without stone or stake.

CHAPTER IV. _A General Survey of the Slave Plantation_

ISOLATION OF LLOYD S PLANTATION--PUBLIC OPINION THERE NO PROTECTION TO
THE SLAVE--ABSOLUTE POWER OF THE OVERSEER--NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CHARMS
OF THE PLACE--ITS BUSINESS-LIKE APPEARANCE--SUPERSTITION ABOUT THE
BURIAL GROUND--GREAT IDEAS OF COL. LLOYD--ETIQUETTE AMONG SLAVES--THE
COMIC SLAVE DOCTOR--PRAYING AND FLOGGING--OLD MASTER LOSING ITS
TERRORS--HIS BUSINESS--CHARACTER OF AUNT KATY--SUFFERINGS FROM
HUNGER--OLD MASTER'S HOME--JARGON OF THE PLANTATION--GUINEA
SLAVES--MASTER DANIEL--FAMILY OF COL. LLOYD--FAMILY OF CAPT.
ANTHONY--HIS SOCIAL POSITION--NOTIONS OF RANK AND STATION.

It is generally supposed that slavery, in the state of Maryland, exists
in its mildest form, and that it is totally divested of those harsh and
terrible peculiarities, which mark and characterize the slave system,
in the southern and south-western states of the American union. The
argument in favor of this opinion, is the contiguity of the free states,
and the exposed condition of slavery in Maryland to the moral, religious
and humane sentiment of the free states.

I am not about to refute this argument, so far as it relates to slavery
in that state, generally; on the contrary, I am willing to admit that,
to this general point, the arguments is well grounded. Public opinion
is, indeed, an unfailing restraint upon the cruelty and barbarity of
masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it can
reach them; but there are certain secluded and out-of-the-way places,
even in the state of Maryland, seldom visited by a single ray of
healthy public sentiment--where{48} slavery, wrapt in its own congenial,
m