Rumsfeld Possessed

The name is well deserved. Edward Covey was not just a slave owner. He was a “Negro breaker,” to whom other slave owners handed over rebellious slaves. The most famous slave Covey tried to break was Frederick Douglass, who later escaped and wrote “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” one of the era’s most important anti-slavery tracts.

“Covey succeeded in breaking me,” Douglass wrote. “I was broken in body, soul and spirit.” On a hot day in August 1833, Douglass collapsed in the field. Covey “was at the house,” about 100 yards from where Douglass had been toiling. Seeing Douglass crawling along the yard, Covey kicked him savagely and beat him. Douglass, covered with blood, escaped and went back to his owner, Thomas Auld, to “ask for his protection.” Auld sent him back to Covey.

In a stable, Covey tried to tie Douglass up to administer a beating. “At that moment – from whence came the spirit I don’t know – I resolved to fight. I seized Covey hard by the throat, and as I did so, I rose.” The two men fought for two hours until Covey gave up. Covey lawfully could have killed Douglass for striking a white man, but, not wanting to risk his reputation as a “Negro breaker,” left him alone. As Douglass later wrote, the fight “revived within me a sense of my manhood and inspired me with a determination to be free,” a dream that Douglass realized four years later.

Most of the slaves sent to Covey were not so fortunate.

It’s an uncomfortable thought, to say the least, to imagine Rumsfeld relaxing in a house of horrors built by a man whose occupation was ended only by our great national catastrophe, the Civil War, in which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers died. And what about the sensitivities of the descendants of slaves such as those sent to Covey?

Had Mount Misery been turned into a museum, it would fulfill the New-York Historical Society’s goal to use slavery to teach “spiritual, moral and political lessons,” through the triumph of Douglass’ spirit.

Instead, we are left with the image of the defense secretary sitting in a lounge chair, surrounded by the ghosts of brutally tormented slaves and their vicious master, savoring a drink and enjoying a sunset over the bay.

Originally published on January 9, 2006. Wallance, a New York City lawyer, is the author of “Two Men Before the Storm: Arba Crane’s Recollection of Dred Scott and the Supreme Court Case That Started The Civil War.”

Elizabeth Bumiller has also covered this story, in a way that makes her look like a truly awful reporter.

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