Til Death OR DISTANCE Do You Part

"Lewis Hayden remained the property of the Warner family throughout the 1830s.  During this period he was allowed to marry Esther Harvey, a slave owned by a Lexington merchant, Joseph Harvey.  While Lewis and Esther considered themselves married, slave owners only recognized their relationship as a union of convenience.  If slave owners allowed a wedding ceremony, they often used the phrase "till death or distance do you part."  In other words, the couple were married until the owner decided to sell one or the other to a new owner who did not live in the area.  As with many slave couples, Esther and Lewis also had to overcome the barrier of being owned by separate masters.  Whether the slave husband and the slave wife lived together, or whether they even got to see one another, was entirely a decision of their owners."

…Lewis and Esther had a son who was added to Harvey's property.  When Harvey's business failed, his slaves and his other property were sold at auction to pay his creditors.  Esther and her child were purchased by Henry Clay.   …While Clay's slave, Esther gave birth to a second child, but the baby died soon thereafter.  About a month after this, Esther ran crying to her husband.  Clay had sold her and their surviving son to one of the hated slave traders.  Hayden was powerless to stop the sale and could only watch as his wife and child were dragged away, never to be seen again.

   When Hayden asked Clay for a reason for selling Esther and the boy, Clay replied haughtily that "he had bought them and had sold them."  Hayden was devastated.  Slave sales had separated him from his mother, his brothers and sisters, and now from his wife and child.  Years later he wrote, "I have one child who is buried in Kentucky and that grave is pleasant to think of.  I've got another that is sold nobody knows where, and that I can never bear to think of."

~Joel Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery