Former Slave Experiences
There are not many former slaves still living. Greencastle seems to have a few and G.E. Black interviewed them for the Banner These stories are interesting in showing what the poor creatures were obliged to undergo in some instances. Of course, there were slave holders who treated their slaves humanely, but there were others who were brutal in their indifference to the sufferings they inflicted by the might of power. Here are the stories:
"Alex Hunter had come over from the Hunter plantation and got into a fight with Noah Billamy. Alex cut Noah in the belly so bad that his insides came out. Then John Savage, the overseer, came running up and whipped Alex until they quit fighting. They tied Alex up and sent word to Alex's massa, old Hunter, and he sent word back to pretty near kill Alex, but not quite. So they whipped him, and then turned the dogs loose on him. They tore him pretty near to pieces and I don't know but what the dogs ate some of what they pulled off. Then they took the dogs off Alex and poured raw alcohol on him. He had been screaming all the time the dogs were tearing him but it was worse than ever when they put the alcohol onto him. I tried to get away from it, but old Savage told me if I didn't stay and see it he would give me some of the same thing. So I had to stay and see poor Alex try to get away from the dogs. He finally died and old Hunter lost $1,000 on account of his death.”
This gruesome experience seems to have been the high point in that phase of Spear Pitman's life as a slave, in Edgecomb County, North Carolina.
"That was on Joseph Bellamy's plantation, but Bellamy was a young fellow and his guardians ran it for him,” he went on. 'I wasn't ever sold but every year I was put up on the block and auctioned off to work for a year for some other plantation owner. Whoever bid the most got me for a year. They was all sorts, some good and some mean as they could be. The bad ones whipped for nothing at all, lots of times. Whenever they would get on a strain about something, they would whip us to work it off. It made them feel better.
There was county offices that was called 'paddle rollers' that rode around the county all the time, stopping niggers and making them show their passes. Any slave that left his quarters had to have a pass from his overseer or the paddle rollers would catch him. If they caught a fellow they whipped him before they took him back home. They sometimes whipped for nothing at all. I've got marks on my back that they put there; growed over by now but still plain. They'd tie us up and go to whipping with big leather whips.”
George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Supplement, Series I, Volume Five: Indiana and Ohio Narratives (Westport: Greenwood, Press, 1977).
Rockville Republican, April 11, 1929, Former Slaves in Greencastle Relate Their Experiences