Having been provided by a kind friend with an excellent saddle horse, I rode out one fine morning to see the district in which the sea-island cotton is cultivated, and visit a rice plantation.

Passing a mere belt of “vacant lots” about the town, I again entered the great pine forest that, with only small and widely separated dots of corn and cotton fields and broader blots of malarious marshes, covers the whole country one hundred miles in width from Baltimore to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of the fine silvery, silicious powder, which, south of Virginia, constitutes most of the surface, the soil here bordering the coast varies from a dark brown, sandy loam to a coarse, clean, yellow sand. The long-leafed pine is displaced by a shorter leafed variety, less resinous and close grained, and of more rapid growth, showing that the land has nearly all at some time been under culture, and it thus lost its primeval fertility. At intervals, there are comfortable cabins with small corn or cotton patches in their vicinity, but not more than one mile in twenty of the road is bordered by land that had recently been under tillage.

A stage-coach whirled along in a suffocating cloud of dust, drawn rapidly through the heavy sand by six horses; long teams of mules, driven by a negro on the back of one of them, toiled slowly towards the town with waggons laden with cotton or rice, and twice I met stylish turn-outs that would not have seemed out of place in the Bois de Boulogne, with stiff and primly-dressed black servants in the rumble—gentlemen rice planters heavily bearded and fashionably clad driving in from their country estates; the only other vehicles were the carts of the “crackers”—the poor and uneducated peasantry. I was surprised at the number of these until I learned that my road was a great thoroughfare, in which all the travel and inland commerce of some hundred miles was collected.

Many of the carts had been two days on the road; these generally came several together, a small caravan, for mutual assistance on the way. Women and children—often whole households—traveled with them, camping at night. Once I met two women without any man, one riding in the cart ’tending two babies, the other mounted (not astride as you see women in Italy) on the horse which drew it. Some of the carts coming in had in them a single bale of cotton, but generally they were loaded with corn, sweet potatoes, poultry, game, hides and poultry, with a few bundles of “shucks” to feed the horse, always thrown on top. A low semi-circular cover of white cotton is stretched over the cart on hoops or twigs to protect the load from sun and rain, the wheels are purchased, being made at the North for this market, the rest of the cart seems generally to have been made by the owner in the woods, with no better tools than an ax and a jack-knife; very little iron is used in its construction—pins of wood and thongs [157] of hide holding it together. The harness matches the vehicle, a large part of it commonly being made of ropes and undressed hides; but there is always a riding saddle, high-peaked in the Mexican style, made at the North, in which the driver commonly sits—more commonly he walks by the side of the horse, proceeding at a smart walk, but never trotting. From the axletree of some of the carts there hung a gourd of grease for the wheels, and a kettle for the camp-cooking. One man carried a rifle on the pommel of his saddle, ready to drop any deer or turkey that should chance within range while he was on the road. It is said that turkeys, though the shyest of game to a man approaching on foot, will often allow a cart to be driven very near them.

The household markets of most of the Southern towns seem to be mainly supplied by the poor country people, who, driving in this style bring all sorts of produce to exchange for such small stores and articles of apparel as they must needs obtain from the shops. Sometimes, owing to the great extent of the back country from which the supplies are gathered, they are offered in great abundance and variety; at other times, from the want of regular market men, there will be a scarcity, and prices will be very high.

A stranger can not but express surprise and amusement at the appearance and language of these country traffickers in the market-places. The “wild Irish” hardly differ more from the English gentry than these rustics from the better class of planters and towns-people with whom the traveler more commonly comes in contact. One figure I shall never forget. I was riding into a village with a gentleman who resided in it, when we met a little low cart or truck, having no body, but a few boards nailed into the axle-tree, on which sat

[158] bolt upright, her legs rectangular with her trunk, her feet straight before her, a little brown woman with an old hat on her head and a pipe in her mouth, who turned and bowed to us very elegantly and with the most amiable and self-satisfied expression of face imaginable. She was driving a little black dwarf of a bull, who was buckled between shafts, with a bit in his mouth, and driven with reins like a horse. My companion said that she had been in the habit of coming to town for twenty years, and until lately always on foot, toting in half a bushel of potatoes or a peck of meal, a fowl or two, or half a dozen eggs: she often stopped at his house to light her pipe after she had sold out, and always seemed to be as contented and cheerful, and since she had got the bull and cart, as proud and rich, as it was possible for mortal woman to be.

The women commonly smoke, and I have seen one while nursing a baby, sitting three rods from a fire, repeatedly take a pipe from her mouth and spit upon a particular brand with a precision and force which was truly wonderful. I am happy to say that I never saw a woman put tobacco in her mouth, but the practice of chewing among men of all classes is nearly universal. I shall never be able to say again that Englishmen exaggerate in their strictures upon this filthy American habit: being much more common, the nuisance it occasions is even less restricted by regard to decency at the South than at the North. No elegance or careful neatness and no conventional sacredness restrains the nauseating expectoration.

The people with the carts were generally dressed in long-skirted homespun coals, heavy boots over the pantaloons and slouched hats. They were thin and gaunt, with very sallow complexion, sunken eyes, sharp high cheek bones, and were of less than the usual stature of the Anglo-Saxon race. The hair of the children was generally white or yellowish, growing darker as they grow older, always remaining dry and towy and commonly allowed to grow so as to cover the neck. Usually they bowed to me as we met, and often made a remark about the weather in a bold but courteous manner, frankly and distinctly, which gave one a good impression of their character and at all events showed that they were free from the servility and self-degradation which speaks in every action of the European peasant to a well-dressed stranger.

I rode slowly, occasionally stopping to sketch, or to satisfy my curiosity with regard to some vegetable novelty, or my admiration of the noble magnolias that stood here and there among the pines. Twice during the day I crossed streams with broad reedy Savannahs and Cypress swamps on their margins some miles in width. At one point on these there were large rice fields; and negroes, men and women, were engaged in burning off the woods and making ditches and dykes, to extend them: on their dryer borders were fields covered with the large black stalks of the sea-island cotton plant.

The feathered inhabitants of these low fields and Savannahs were interesting and wonderfully numerous. Immense clouds of the red-winged black-birds would float down, covering half an acre at once of the rice stubble, as with a black pall. Jackdaws, the first I have seen in this country, and crows [159] occupied by hundreds the top of the trees that had grown upon the causeway, croaking and cawing incessantly. Clear and cheerful through the clamor you would hear the piping of the dapper Mocking-bird, and then he would spring out from the bushes, and with grisette-like vivacity and grace, dance along on the ground before you. The Blue-bird flutters from bush to bush and greets you with his Spring-time notes, and the gay Cardinal flashes in his flaming jacket through the lights and shadows of the foliage. Pearl white cranes lift their heads inquiringly above the rushes and rise with long sweeps of their wings, their plumage glistening in the sun light, as if there were silver in it. Gulls and ospreys with active flight follow the river’s course, and over them poises a watchful, keen-eyed eagle; at a higher elevation, far up, dim and dreary in the upper sky, slow and majestic sail great hawks and buzzards.

Mark the close of the day. I reached a district of rich, dark, fine soil, much of it reclaimed from the swamp, cultivated with rather more than usual care for corn and sea-island cotton. At a distance from the road, white houses could be seen with dark trees about them, and long rows of negro-cabins and large barns, beyond these, in one direction, uninterrupted to the horizon, were flat Holland-like rice-lands, with a silver thread of glistening water winding through them.

After passing several gates and lanes, I entered one, and rode through a narrow grove bordered by cultivated ground. At the end of the grove, a quarter of a mile from the road, was a negro “settlement,” as what is in Virginia termed the “quarters,” and in England would be the laborers’ hamlet. It was an avenue of the Pride of China trees, fifty feet wide, with the approach road to the proprietor’s mansion running through the midst, and thirty neat white-washed cottages on the outside, in the shade of the trees. The cottages were framed buildings, boarded on the exterior, with shingle roofs and brick chimneys; they stood fifty feet apart, with gardens and pig-yards enclosed by palings between them. At one of them, which I knew to be the “sick house” or hospital, there were several negroes of both sexes, wrapped in blankets, and reclining on the door steps or lying on the ground basking in the sunshine. Some of them were evidently ill, but they were all chatting and laughing as I rode up to make an enquiry. I learned from them that this was not the plantation I was intending to visit, and received a direction, as usual so indistinct and incorrect that it led me wrong.

At the next plantation I entered I found the “settlement” arranged the same way, the cabins being only a slightly different form. In the middle of one row was a well-house and opposite it, on the other row was a mill-house, with stones, at which the negroes grind their corn. It is a kind of pestle and mortar, and I learned afterwards that the negroes prefer to take their allowance of corn and “crack” it for themselves, rather than to receive meal, because they think the mill-ground meal does not make as sweet bread.

At the head of the settlements, in a garden looking down the street, was an overseer’s house, and here the road divided, running each way at right [160]

angles; on one side to the barns and the landing on the river, on the other toward the mansion of the proprietor. A negro boy opened the gate of this and I entered.

On the other side, at fifty feet distant were rows of old live oak trees, their branches and twigs slightly hung with a delicate fringe of grey moss, and their dark, shining, green foliage meeting and intermingling naturally but densely overhead. The sunlight streamed through and played aslant the lustrous leaves and waving, fluttering, quivering, palpitating, pendulous moss: the arch was low and broad; the trunks were huge and gnarled, and there was a heavy groining of strong, dark, rough, knotty branches. I stopped my horse, bowed my head, and held my breath. I have hardly in all my life seen anything so impressively grand and beautiful: “Light, shade, shelter, coolness, freshness, music, dew, and dreams dropping through their unbrageous twilight—dropping direct, soft, sweet, soothing, and restorative from heaven.”

Alas! there were no fairies, only little black babies toddling about with an older child or two to watch them. At the upper end of the avenue was the house, with a circular court-yard around it, and surrounded by an irregular plantation of great trees, one of the oaks, as I afterwards learned, seven feet in diameter of trunk, and covering with its branches a circle of one hundred and twenty feet in diameter. As I approached it, a servant came out to take my horse. I obtained from him a direction to the residence of the gentleman I was searching for, and rode away, thankful that I had stumbled into so charming a place.

At the next plantation I entered I reached my destination. The approach [161] to the house was a quarter of a mile long, and very broad, with the pine forest on either side lined with a dense screen of water oaks, wild olives and cedars. This led to a grove of large evergreen oaks and magnolias, in the middle of which, surrounded by a little court of japonicas, oranges, wild olives and roses, stood the mansion. It was a structure of wood, with double roof, dormers and belvedere gallery; the principal apartments on the second floor, with the doors and windows opening upon broad piazzas. In a rear court was a detached kitchen, servants’ house and other offices, of brick, and behind this a garden. A little way one side were the stables. The negro settlement was at no great distance, at the end of a cedar avenue, but could not be seen from the house.

About a quarter of a mile from the house, but entirely hidden from it by the grove, were rice-fields, subject to be irrigated from a large sewer, which, a few miles below, mingled its waters with those of the ocean.

It was the residence of a gentleman who was born and bred on a New-England farm, and who had been a very successful merchant, and was still largely interested in manufactures at the North. His wife was a Southern lady, and this plantation had been for several generations the property of her family. She had inherited with it the slaves upon it; her children had been born

[162] and brought up with them; so that all the happy influences which attend early domestic association existed between them. The gentleman brought to the management of the estate all the keen talent for organization and administration, and the exact business habits of a man trained in the rugged fields of New-Hampshire, among the looms of Lowell and in the counting rooms of Boston. He was also a religious, generous and humane-minded man. As was to be anticipated, I here found Slavery under its most favorable circumstances, and the agriculture with which it was conducted under the most economical and profitable management.

As I remarked in my last letter, the largest part of the negroes making a religious profession are classed under the denomination of Baptists. They insist upon immersion as necessary to salvation; and I have heard one of them argue the point with his master with no less confidence, wit and pertinacity than doctors of divinity commonly employ in theological discussions; it will not be disrespectful to those who intelligently embrace this doctrine, to nevertheless suppose that the mass of negroes accept it because it makes more of an event of the baptismal ceremony, thus gratifying their passionate fondness for excitement. All who write upon this dogma, and act upon it, are considered to be within the reach of God’s mercy, and are held in fellowship by them, but within this they also split into numerous parties or sects, each designated by a [165] title which is generally expressive of the degree of loyalty to some standard of orthodoxy attributed to each, such as “Hard Shell,” “Soft Shell,” &c.

On almost every large plantation, and in every neighborhood of small ones, there is one man who has come to be considered the head or pastor of the local church. The office among the negroes, as among all other people, confers a certain importance and power. A part of the reverence attaching to the duties is given to the person; vanity and self-confidence is cultivated, and a higher ambition aroused than usually can enter the mind of a slave. The self-respect of the preacher is also increased by the consideration in which he is held by his masters as well as his fellows; thus, the preachers generally have an air of superiority to other negroes; they acquire a remarkable memory of words, phrases and forms---a sort of curious poetic talent is developed---a habit is obtained of rhapsodizing and exciting furious emotions, to a great degree spurious and temporary, in themselves and others, through the imagination. I was once introduced to a preacher, who was represented to be quite distinguished among them. I took his hand respectfully, and said I was happy to meet him. He seemed to take this for a joke, and laughed heartily. He was a “driver,” and my friend said, “He drives the negroes at the cotton all the week, and Sundays he drives them at the Gospel-don’t you, John?” He commenced to reply in some Scriptural phrase, soberly, but before he could say three words, began to laugh again, and reeled off like a drunken man-entirely overcome with merriment. He recovered himself in a moment and came up to us again. “They say he preaches very powerfully, too.” “Yah, Massa! ’kordin to der grace-yah! yah!” and he staggered off again with the peculiar hearty negro guffaw. My friend’s tone was, I suppose, slightly humorous, but I was grave, and really meant to treat him respectfully, wishing to draw him into conversation; but he had started upon a merry mood, and I found it impossible to get the better of it.

There is no element in the difficult problem of Slavery which we of the North so little comprehend and leave out of view in our theorizing, as the exceedingly low moral and intellectual condition of the slaves. In one of my earliest letters after entering Virginia, I conveyed to you the impressions which I had received on this point from the general appearance, language, and conversation of the negroes. These impressions have been strengthened and confirmed by further observation of them as I have proceeded South. I described to you the influences which, by destroying ambition and elevated aims, and by cultivating improvidence and carelessness, and by stimulating only the lowest impulses of a man, combine to keep the negro in a condition of mental childishness and moral debasement.

In considering a great system, we cannot be too careful not to be deceived by its exceptional appearances. Individual instances, in which various Christian virtues and graces are beautifully exhibited by slaves, are constantly cited on both sides, by Southerners as well as Northerners, which can only properly be considered as eddies in the general current of slave life. Give the system fair play, where no sheltering point of an unusually indulgent and [166] sensible master, or a peculiar natural drift of mind (such as in a higher class, according to the proverb, produces the poet), and you see only a dark, deep tide of stupidity and superstitution. Mungo Park found exquisite benevolence touchingly displayed among the negroes of the darkest wilds of Africa. I can say myself of a certain heathen I have known, that I scarce ever saw evidence of a character more full of meekness, patience and affection, and I have had an East Indian idolator preach to me with an earnestness, candor and logical ability that deserved my gratitude and respect.

Such cases are to Paganism what such a character as “Uncle To” is to slavery, or the religion of slaves. “Such a character is impossible in a negro” (slave) is the most common criticism on “the greatest story of the age,” by Southerners, though once or twice, when I remarked that this was evidence unfavorable to slavery, I have been assured by others that they had known slaves wonderfully like“Uncle Tom.” I confess the character does not seem to me to be altogether consistent or natural under the circumstances.

The mind and higher faculties of the negro are less disciplined and improved in slavery than in the original barbarism of the race, because in the latter state he has at least to exercise them under the necessity of contriving to procure food, raiment, and habitation; in providing for his offspring, in the consequently necessary acquisition of property, exciting cautious enterprise, having reference to the chances of the future, and in the defence of personal liberty. I do not believe there is a body of men in the world that have so stupid, unmanly, and animal an existence as the rank and file plantation negroes of our Southern States. I have never been on the Slave Coast of Africa, but I have been among the essentially savage natives of the Malay Archipelago, and the latter, according to my observation, were as fully developed men by the side of babes compared with the mass of these plantation slaves. The agricultural laborer in those districts of England in which land is held in the largest parcels, such as Wiltshire, being in a large degree dependent on their immediate employer, more nearly resemble the negroes in this respect than any other people I have known. The number of these is small, their condition is improving, and so far as it is the result of a system of government or law, this is being yearly modified favorably to their elevation. This condition of the negro, which it seems to me is the main, and sufficient reason, against unconditional, immediate abolition of the relation of master and dependent, is not simply a circumstance attending his perpetual slavery, but is its result. I cannot see how this conclusion is avoidable by a candid and sensible observer. I therefore take ground against the writer of a recent article in Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine, who maintains that slavery is the (only) true, speedy, and successful method for civilizing and christianizing the heathen; and am constrained to say that my judgment, and my observation of facts, a priori, would by no means lead me to recommend any such scheme for preaching the Gospel as he favors.

I do not admit, in evidence upon this subject, the statistics that are usually cited, of the number of slaves counted as religious by their owners or by [167] themselves. A profession or name for a religious character among them appears to be founded upon the exhibition of certain phrensied states of the imagination, excitable at will in any mind not habitually disciplined to the control of reason, and in the direction of words and actions according to certain precepts and formulas.

Delirium, madness, and even catalepsy, are often produced by the excited imagination in certain sects of the Mahometans, and in many idolaters, at their festivals and meetings for public worship; and blind obedience to certain rules of conduct which they have been taught to consider of supernatural importance, and slavish reverence to certain days and words and things, are as habitual among the Fetish worshippers of Africa as among their transplanted cousins, the baptized and enrolled church-members of America. That the morality and the superstition of these latter is in all cases better than theirs, that it is much more like what Christianity prompts a man to, is very true, but it is no more the same thing than a rush light is a sunbeam.

On two of the rice plantations that I visited there were neat buildings set apart and fitted up as chapels, (called by the negroes “Prayer houses”). In one of these were rows of seats with backs to them, and I was told that the negroes objected to these because they did not leave them room enough to pray. It was explained to me that it was their custom in social worship to work themselves up to a great pitch of excitement, in which they yell and cry aloud, and finally shriek and leap up, clapping their hands and dancing, as it is done at heathen festivals—the seats were too close together to admit of this exercise. Mr. A., the rice planter spoken of in a previous letter, told me that he had forbidden his negroes this shouting and jumping at their plantation meeting, from a conviction that there was not the slightest element of religious sentiment in it. He considered it to be engaged in more as an exciting amusement than from any really religious impulse. In the town churches, except, perhaps, those managed and conducted almost exclusively by negroes, they commonly engage in religious exercises in a sober and decorous manner, yet a member of a Presbyterian Church in a Southern city told me that he had seen the negroes in his own house of worship, during “a season of revival,” leap from their seats, throw their arms wildly in the air, shout vehemently and unintelligibly, cry, groan, rend their clothes, and fall into cataleptic trances.

In conversation with a very worthy and intelligent gentleman on this subject, I asked if he had often known religion to effect any very great elevation of character among slaves. He replied that he had, and mentioned the following as a case in point. A cook came into his possession, who was generally a very good and valuable servant, but who would sometimes get intoxicated, and then do and say a great deal that was wrong. He several times expostulated with her, but effected no good; at length, knowing that she was a member of a colored church (it was in a city), he threatened to complain to the officers of it of her conduct. This threat had more effect upon her than all the previous means he had used, but, at length, she had a drunken fit again, and he did call on the [168] officers of her church, and told them her conduct was such as was inconsistent with the professions of a church-member, and they ought to warn her. He found the officers—colored men—very respectable, intelligent and obliging persons. They thanked him for advising them of the case, and forthwith called upon the cook, and threatened her with suspension or excommunication if she did not reform. She was very much frightened and mortified, and since that time she had been constantly sober, and her moral character in every respect excellent. Now, such a case as this plainly shows the power for good (or evil) of an ecclesiastical inquisition, not the power of religion.

There was an improved morality, or rather, here was an improved self-control, a better degree of self—government, arising not from an elevated moral sense and love of the All Good, but from little better than a base, irreligious, and unmanly principle of heart—the fear or worship of man; or, if it be deemed rather the worship or fear of God, manifested in reverence and obedience to his human representatives or ministers, you simply elevate it from Infidelity to Idolatry. I make these observations with reference to a subject of frequent discussion—how far compensation for the evils, or palliation for the wrong of the perpetual Slavery of the Negroes of the South is to be found in the good it is doing in the way of christianizing them. Christianity can only be practically defined, in considering this question, as a principle of the heart which manifests itself in the constantly progressive, moral elevation of the individual. In my judgment, the general degradation of manhood, the training to cowardice and imbecility, or duplicity of mind, the constraint upon the free development of individuality of character, and the destruction of the sense of high individual responsibility, which is demanded by an established system of perpetual Slavery, is most strongly opposed to the reception in the hearts of its subjects of anything that can be reverently dignified with the holy name of Christianity.

I do not question, that there are many slaves whose lives are radiant with the light of the simple and pure faith of Christianity, nor that there has been a considerable improvement in their moral condition, as a people, since they have been removed from the savage and cannibal state of society and been held in the restraint of American civilization and law; but I think this improvement limited and restricted by the necessities of Slavery; that Slavery, in its effects on slaves, is at war with progress, with enlightenment, with Christianity.

I think the native manly spirit and capacity of the savage is but poorly compensated for by the pseudo-religion and civilization of the slave.

This opinion is not common or popular, but my very first observation of the manners, language and conversation of the slaves in Virginia, as I then expressed to you, favored it, and my continued investigation of this subject has surprisingly established it in my mind. I, therefore, wish to state it frankly and distinctly.

Out of respect to the generous spirit of the correspondent of the Daily Times, “A Native Southerner,” I will refer especially to his views. In my [169] judgment, Slavery as it is intended to be perpetuated at the South, in its general and legitimate operations upon the character of the slaves, is “inconsistent with a beautiful type of humanity.” He admits that the South is not faithful to the task of regenerating the slaves, but thinks that it is not for want of anxious solicitude and much steady, earnest labor on the part of the whites. So far as my knowledge extends, there is very little of such earnest, steady labor; the labor is isolated, intermittent, and, in the minds of most sensible men engaged in it that I have met, is far from encouraging in its results.

It is always difficult for us to distinctly understand the moral effect of institutions to which we are accustomed, and with which our whole lives are associated, but I think it is because it is felt how impracticable it is to free the slave’s mind without freeing his body, and how little he can be improved morally while his mind is left fettered in darkness, that so little is attempted; that so much is by law forbidden at the South in this field of Christian and benevolent labor. A clergyman confessed to me that after seven years’ daily intercourse with and labors among slaves, he was deeply grieved to find how little hold upon them he had gained, how small his influence was, and how little real confidence they had in him. He said they seemed to be always suspicious of his motives and to be unable to repose an unfeigned trust in him. A Northern clergyman who had resided for two years in a Southern city, told me that he thought that not more than one in seven of the negroes who were members of the churches in it had a sensible understanding of what they professed.

When “A Native Southerner” speaks of “the largest and most effective missionary operation in the world in steady earnest action on the negro mind,” I suppose he uses a figure of speech. There are no associated, systematic, special operations to improve the religious or moral character of the slaves, worth mentioning. Very rarely the planters of a small district may unite to support a missionary or white clergyman to preach in circuit, on their plantations, on Sundays. I have heard of three such, and I also know of one very large slave owner who keeps a white preacher employed upon his own property alone. I have been on plantations where Sunday-schools were formerly kept, and I presume they are not uncommon. In these the children are taught to repeat catechisms, creeds, hymns, and passages of scripture. A lady from Kentucky, on attending such a school while on a visit in Georgia, remarked that she had never seen a Sabbath-school for colored children before. But I will continue this subject in another letter.