Moses Roper - Life As A Slave

Life As A Slave

Moses was born around 1815 in Caswell County, North Carolina. His father, Henry Roper,a farmer of English ancestry, was also his master. Nancy, his mother, was a slave of African-American and American Indian descent whose mistress was Henry Roper's new wife. Mrs. Roper sent a relative of Nancy’s to discover if her husband had been unfaithful to her and was informed of the result of Mr. Roper's interaction with her slave (Nancy)—a quite-white little boy who resembled Henry Roper. Upon hearing this information, the mistress was so enraged that she nearly killed Nancy with a knife, but was thwarted at the last minute by the intervention of Nancy's mother. Moses grew up with his mother and was trained as a domestic slave until he was about seven years old when his father exchanged Moses and his mother for other slaves. Mother and son were separated; not to meet again for many years to come.

In his book, Roper mentions that he was a particularly difficult slave for traders to sell because of his almost-white complexion and reminisced that his fair skin tone could have been the cause of the terribly severe torture he endured from his masters. Because he had only worked as a domestic servant, Roper struggled tremendously when he was put to work in the fields and forests of the South—receiving harsher treatment for his inefficiency from his overseers and masters. Roper was passed from one master to another and led throughout the Southern states by slave traders—changing hands 17 or more times. Throughout his time in slavery, he attempted escape on at least 16 occasions, most of them while under his cruelest master, Mr. Gooch. The merciless master made certain to punish Roper with increasing ferocity each time he was recaptured. The cruelty of Mr. Gooch is illustrated in Mr. Roper's book where he recounts been recaptured yet again…

My master gave me a hearty dinner, the best he ever did give me; but it was to keep me from dying before he had given me all the flogging he intended. After dinner he took me to a log-house, stripped me quite naked, fastened a rail up very high, tied my hands to the rail, fastened my feet together, put a rail between my feet, and stood on one end of it to hold me down; the two sons then gave me fifty lashes each, the son-in-law another fifty, and Mr. Gooch himself fifty more.

Roper goes on to say,

This may appear incredible, but the marks which they left at present remain on my body, a standing testimony to the truth of this statement of his severity.

Other punishments Roper received from his various masters (though mostly Mr. Gooch) include lashings and beatings where he was forced to wear 40-plus pound shackles and chains afterwards—further impeding him from performing his set tasks in the fields, having his feet and fingers crushed and fingernails pulled out, being chained to slower-working slaves, and tar poured onto his head and face which was then set on fire.

In west Florida in 1834, Roper made his final escape from a particularly unkind master, Mr. Register, and carefully made his way to New York as a fugitive. To ensure that he was not captured along the way, he obtained a passport which claimed he was a freed slave. He accomplished this by telling a false tale of his past to a few sympathetic farmers in Georgia.

I pretended to show her my passport, feeling for it everywhere about my coat and hat, and not finding it, I went back a little way, pretending to look for it, but came back, saying, I was very sorry, but I did not know where it was… lad sat down and wrote what I told him, nearly filling a large sheet of paper for the passport, and another with recommendations.

After having little luck searching for employment in and around New York, Roper decided to sail to England in 1835 where slavery had been abolished two years prior.