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148 From Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb Henry Bibb Henry Bibb was a notable figure in the antislavery movement. Even before he published the story of his escape from slavery, he was well known as an abolitionist orator. His Narrative remains one of the most remarkable slave autobiographies, not least because of the centrality of Bibb’s wife and child to his account. He experiences a variety of hardships in his numerous (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to free them from slavery, including the incidents found in the following account of his time with a group of gamblers who become sympathetic to his plight. Bibb’s portrait of these “Southern sportsmen” is unlike anything else to be found in nineteenth-century literature. In 1850, Bibb left America for Canada. There, he founded an anti­ slavery newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive, in which he advocated emigration to Canada for all black Americans. The most thorough analysis of Bibb’s narrative can be found in Charles H. Heglar, Rethinking the Slave Narrative: Slave Marriage and the Narratives of Henry Bibb and William and Ellen Craft (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2001). See also Roger W. Hite, “Voice of a Fugitive: Henry Bibb and Ante-bellum Black Separatism,” Journal of Black Studies 4.3 (March 1974): 269–84. The reader will remember that this brings me back to the time the Deacon had ordered me to be kept in confinement until he got a chance to sell me, and that no negro should ever get away from him and live. Some days after this we were all out at the gin house ginning cotton, which was situated on the road side, and there came along a company of men, fifteen or twenty in number, who were Southern sportsmen. Their attention was attracted by the load of iron which was fastened about my neck with a bell attached. They stopped and asked the Deacon what that bell was put on my neck for? and he said it was to keep me from running away, &c. They remarked that I looked as if I might be a smart negro, and asked if he wanted to sell me. The reply was, yes. They then got off their horses and struck a bargain with him for me. They bought me at a reduced price for speculation. After they had purchased me, I asked the privilege of going to the house to take leave of my family before I left, which was granted by the sportsmen. From Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb 149 But the Deacon said I should never again step my foot inside of his yard; and advised the sportsmen not to take the irons from my neck until they had sold me; that if they gave me the least chance I would run away from them, as I did from him. So I was compelled to mount a horse and go off with them as I supposed, never again to meet my family in this life. We had not proceeded far before they informed me that they had bought me to sell again, and if they kept the irons on me it would be detrimental to the sale, and that they would therefore take off the irons and dress me up like a man, and throw away the old rubbish which I then had on; and they would sell me to some one who would treat me better than Deacon Whitfield. After they had cut off the irons and dressed me up, they crossed over Red River into Texas, where they spent some time horse racing and gambling; and although they were wicked black legs of the basest character, it is but due to them to say, that they used me far better than ever the Deacon did. They gave me plenty to eat and put nothing hard on me to do. They expressed much sympathy for me in my bereavement; and almost every day they gave me money more or less, and by my activity in waiting on them, and upright conduct , I got into the good graces of them all, but they could not get any person to buy me on account of the amount of intelligence which they supposed me to have; for many of them thought that I could read and write. When they left Texas, they intended to go to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, to attend a great horse race which was...

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