The Slave Who Grew Up Feeding His Master’s Hounds — One Night, He Fed Them Something Else | HO

In the winter of 1852, Bowford County, South Carolina, froze beneath a cruel sky. Frost crept along the wooden fences of the Harding Plantation, an empire of cotton and cruelty where even the dogs were instruments of terror. Among them lived Simon, a quiet, observant slave who had spent his life tending the master’s prized bloodhounds — the same beasts used to rip apart runaways.

But one December night, the hounds tasted something different.

This is the story of the slave who turned his master’s own weapons against him — a chilling tale of patience, vengeance, and justice carried out in the cold silence of a Southern winter.

The Plantation That Breathed Fear

The Harding Plantation stretched over 800 acres along the Combe River. Cotton grew thick and white, masking the blood that nourished its soil. Its owner, Ernest Harding, was a man who believed fear was the only language worth speaking to those he enslaved. His son, Jasper, had inherited both his father’s fortune and his cruelty.

But the Hardings’ most potent tools weren’t their whips or chains — they were their hounds. Six enormous bloodhounds, each trained to track human scent and tear flesh on command.

Their kennels sat behind the main house, downwind from the slave quarters. Their howls were a nightly reminder: escape was hopeless.

Among the slaves was Simon, born on the plantation in 1832. At 14, Ernest chose him to care for the dogs — a “reward” that made Simon both feared and pitied. He fed them, cleaned their cages, and trained them for the chase. He learned their rhythms, their hunger, and the savage joy that came with the hunt.

The Hardings saw him as obedient — even loyal. What they didn’t see was the slow, calculating fire growing behind his silence.

A Sister’s Scream

Simon’s hatred had a name.

Ellenora, his sister, worked in the main house — young, kind, and radiant in a place that crushed light. When she caught the eye of the overseer, Morris Thorne, her fate was sealed.

Thorne was known for his brutality, but his true cruelty lived behind closed doors. When Ellenora resisted his assaults, he threatened to feed Simon to the bloodhounds alive. She submitted — not from weakness, but to protect her brother.

By late summer 1849, Ellenora was pregnant. The plantation’s whisper network knew what that meant. Ernest saw her condition as an inconvenience — and a chance for profit. Within a week, she was sold to a Savannah trader for $800.

Simon watched as she was chained to a wagon. Their eyes met one last time. By nightfall, she was gone.

Six months later, their mother Derinda died of grief.

Simon buried her in the slave cemetery behind the swamp, then returned to the kennels and stared at the dogs. Their eyes gleamed red in the torchlight. He fed them scraps and whispered, “One day, you’ll eat for me.”

The First Death

Two months later, overseer Morris Thorne was found dead in the woods.

The official story: an “accident” while hunting. He had “tripped” and “fallen” onto a rock. But his body told another tale — deep lacerations, teeth marks not quite animal, not quite human.

The Hardings buried him without ceremony. Simon was never questioned.

The hounds howled for three nights straight.

The Daughter Who Saw Too Much

By 1852, the Harding family had a new overseer — Linus Garrett, cruel but disciplined, a man who treated violence as business. The plantation ran like a machine. The bloodhounds were more feared than ever, and Simon was still their keeper.

Then Adelaide Harding returned home.

At 19, she had spent three years at the Charleston Female Seminary, where she had been exposed to abolitionist ideas. She returned to Bowford a changed woman — curious, compassionate, and increasingly horrified by her family’s brutality.

Her father tried to “re-educate” her through exposure. He forced her to witness a whipping — a young man named Joshua, accused of stealing bacon.

When the whip tore flesh from Joshua’s back, Adelaide vomited. Ernest held her down and made her watch the remaining fifteen lashes.

That night, Simon saw Adelaide crying behind the stables. Their eyes met — two people from opposite worlds, bound by disgust for the same evil.

What neither knew was that the tension within the Harding family — between father, son, and daughter — was creating the perfect distraction for what Simon had planned for years.

The Winter of Revenge

December came early that year, cold and merciless. The Hardings prepared for their annual business trip to Charleston — a journey that would take them through miles of forested back roads before reaching the main highway.

Simon knew their route. He knew the bends, the shadows, and the patch of road where the trees grew thick enough to swallow sound.

He had been preparing for three years.

In the abandoned barn, he gathered what he needed: two butcher knives, a woodsman’s axe, a coil of rope, and an old bear trap he had found rusting behind the kennels. He cleaned and tested the trap. It snapped shut with a metallic scream.

His accomplice was Joshua, the same man Adelaide had tried to protect during the whipping. Together, they waited.

On December 10th, Ernest and Jasper Harding left before dawn in their carriage, bound for Charleston. They never made it past the forest.

At the ambush site, Simon and Joshua buried the trap under leaves and frost. When the carriage wheel rolled over it, the jaws snapped shut around Ernest’s leg. The horses screamed and bolted, flipping the carriage.

Before Jasper could rise, Simon struck him with the axe handle. Within minutes, both men were bound, gagged, and lying in the frozen dirt.

Simon knelt beside them. His voice was calm.

“You took my blood. You fed your dogs my family’s screams. Now they’ll feed on yours.”

The killings were not quick. They were deliberate. Ernest died first. Jasper second. The dogs would do the rest.

Feeding Time

Simon and Joshua dragged the dismembered remains back to the barn, working through the night in silence. The winter cold preserved the flesh.

Over the next two days, Simon fed the bloodhounds small portions mixed with their usual food. The beasts devoured everything. The evidence — bones, tissue, scent — vanished into their bellies.

The irony was perfect. The masters who once hunted men had become the meat that sustained their hunters.

When the feeding was done, Simon stared at the empty troughs. The hounds licked their lips and wagged their tails, awaiting their next meal.

The Investigation

Ten days passed. No word from Charleston. Concern turned to panic.

Overseer Linus Garrett rode out in search of the Hardings. He found nothing — until a local tracker discovered the wreckage of the carriage, the crushed trap, and blood in the snow.

Within days, Sheriff Thomas Whitmore arrived, bringing deputies and dogs of his own. The investigation uncovered fragments of clothing, scattered bones, and a discovery that froze even seasoned lawmen: human remains buried near the hound kennels.

The implication was horrifying — that the very dogs used to enforce the Hardings’ power had consumed their masters.

Simon was interrogated repeatedly. He denied everything. When investigators found blood on his clothes, he calmly explained it was from slaughtering a pig — a claim corroborated by others.

The slave quarters were silent. No one spoke. No one betrayed him.

Then, one night in January, Simon and Joshua vanished.

They were never seen again.

Aftermath of the Blood Hounds

Adelaide Harding, now alone, collapsed under the weight of the horror. When she learned what the dogs had eaten, she ordered all six to be shot.

On January 20, 1853, she signed documents freeing all twenty-two remaining slaves of the Harding Plantation. Her act scandalized the South — a young woman freeing her entire inheritance in the name of conscience.

She left Bowford County soon after, moving north and joining the abolitionist movement. She never returned.

The plantation fell into ruin. The hound kennels rotted first. The main house collapsed decades later, consumed by vines and silence.

What Remained

Years later, whispers of the Harding murders resurfaced in freedmen’s communities across the South. Elderly voices told the same tale: a slave who waited years, watched patiently, and fed his master’s sins to the beasts he once served.

In 1895, one of the last survivors of the Harding plantation — an old woman named Ruth — told her grandchildren:

“Simon did what all of us wanted to do. He gave those devils to the same mouths they used to hunt us.”

To this day, Bowford locals say the land where the kennels once stood feels colder than the rest. Hunters claim that on freezing nights, they still hear the faint echo of hounds — not barking, but chewing.

A Legacy of Fire and Frost

The story of Simon is more than vengeance — it’s a study in the human cost of oppression. It reminds us that systems built on cruelty create the very monsters they fear most.

Simon didn’t just kill two men. He dismantled a hierarchy, if only for a moment, proving that fear, once reversed, is the most potent weapon of all.

The Hardings believed their hounds would keep men in chains. They never imagined that one day, those same dogs would be fed by the hands of the man they enslaved.

And in that frozen December of 1852, the screams that once echoed through Bowford’s forests were finally — hauntingly — silenced.