Special Correspondence of the New-York Daily Times

Slaves Owning Horses, Guns, and Dogs—The New Code of Alabama—Illicit Trade with Negroes—Pilfering—The Socialistic Aspect of Slavery—The Paternal Aspect of Slavery.

In returning from the “Cracker meeting” to the plantation, we passed a man on horseback, who had the appearance of one of the civilized native East Indian gentlemen; his complexion dark olive, with good features, and a thick moustache. He was well-dressed, and raised his hat in bowing to us with a courteous and well-bred air. I asked who it was.

“He is one of our people—Robert—a very valuable servant. He is the watchman, and has charge of the engine and all the stores.”

We met a wagon with a pleasant family party of common field hand negroes. They also belonged to

Mr. A. I inquired if they usually let them have horses to go to Church.

“Oh, no; that horse belongs to the old man.”

“Belongs to him! Why, do they own horses?”

“Oh, yes; William (the House servant) owns two, and Robert, I believe, has three now that was one of them he was riding.”

“How do they get them?”

“Oh, they buy them.”

“But can they have money enough to buy horses?”

“Oh, yes; William makes a good deal of money; so does Robert. You see he is such a valuable fellow, father makes him a good many presents. He gave him a hundred dollars only a little while ago. The old man was getting infirm, and could not get about very well, so father gave him a horse.”

I afterwards met the man, Robert, at the mill, where he lived as “watchman,” or steward, in a cabin by himself, at a distance from the quarters of the other negroes. His language and manner was confident, frank, and manly; contrasting as much as possible with that of the negroes or mulattoes of ordinary circumstances. He wore a belt, on which were hung a large number of keys, and he walked about with his owner and me, to open the doors of the mill, barns, storehouses, and stables, conversing freely, and explaining a variety of matters with much intelligence.

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I learned that he was employed while a boy as a house-servant, until, at his own request, he was put in the plantation blacksmith’s shop; after acquiring this craft, he learned to make cotton-gins, and then, as he wanted to become a machinist, his master took him to Savannah, where he remained living at his own pleasure for several years. At length his owner, finding that he was acquiring dissipated habits and wasting all his earnings, brought him back to his plantation, and by giving him duties flattering to his self-respect, and allowing him peculiar privileges, made him content to remain there. He had made all the alterations and repairs necessary in running a steam-engine and extensive machinery during seven years, and his work was admirable, both in contrivance and execution.

Elsewhere I saw another negro engineer of remarkable intelligence; the gentleman in whose employment he had been for many years, esteemed him very highly, and desired to make him free. His owner, a large capitalist, a gentleman moving in our best society, and a church-member, resides at the North. He does not think it a good plan to emancipate slaves, and refuses to sell him at even a great price for that purpose. He (the owner) receives two hundred dollars a year as the wages for his services.

Though in reality a slave, being himself the property of another, cannot possess property, yet in the same way that our children and minors have things “for their own,” they acquire many articles which few masters would be mean enough to take from them, except they were of a character to hurt them—such as ardent spirits—or such as they might be afraid of their using to the injury or annoyance of others.

The new code of Alabama, which, in one or two particulars, is less inhumane than the laws of any other Southern State, except Louisiana, in its provisions with regard to the negroes, has one article forbidding slaves to own dogs. As it seemed to me by the incessant yelping at night that every negro in the State must keep half a dozen curs, I asked a legal friend what was the object of the law. He could not tell me, but assured me that it would never be enforced. I presume it was intended to abate the great destruction of sheep by negroes’ dogs (or rather the destruction which the negroes attribute to dogs, to shield a theft of one of themselves), an evil which is everywhere complained of at the South, and which operates to prevent more extensive wool-growing there. It will probably not be enforced except on extraordinary occasions.

Other provisions of this code, enumerated by a writer in the Times a few days since, as examples of the humane amelioration of the laws of the South in favor of the negroes, seem to me of value only as expressing the views of the enactors on certain minor moralities of Slavery, such as that forbidding the separation from their mothers (mothers only) of children, before they are ten years old, in sheriffs sales, unless their owner deems that his interests require it (for this is all it amounts to), and to prevent the separation of relatives in mortgagee’s sales, where they can just as well be sold together in family lots. The gratification which “Walpole” finds in such provisions for the more [184] humane use of negroes, in a State which he considers to be “rapidly advancing in all that constitutes true civilization,” and as “leading the way” by such measures in a glorious work of reformation, well shows with how much smaller a progress than most Northern men would have been apt to suppose safe and practicable, even the most intelligent, liberal, humane, and hopeful Southerners would be content—bearing out the views f have before expressed upon this point.

I fear many of your readers will have been surprised to find such a man touching upon it as a great thing—a reformation to be pointed to as an honor to the civilization of the good people of Alabama—that the law does not violently separate, for the fault or indiscretion of another person (their owner, as it deems him), a child under five years of age from its mother, under any circumstances, nor remove a child under ten years old from its mother, unless the said owner will make and deliver to an officer in charge an affidavit that his (the said owner’s) interests will be materially prejudiced by the sale of them together. The law does not even propose to hinder, by so much as requiring an affidavit to be made that he will make money by it, the owner of a mother and child who pays his debts, from selling one to go to Texas, and retaining the other. This would be thought exceeding the appropriate duties of legislation---too great an interference with the natural laws of commerce.

I have often suggested the propriety of such laws as “Walpole” refers to, to prevent the internal slave trade, and have been answered that it was impossible to make such laws efficient. In Georgia, I was told, there is a law forbidding the introduction of slaves from abroad to be sold within the State; but it is constantly evaded. The law does not forbid persons without the State selling to those within, nor the transfer of slave property between resident citizens. The slave trader, therefore, has merely to have a partner, or confederate resident, execute bills of sale of his Virginia importation to him, and the latter may then resell without let or hindrance. I entirely agree with “Walpole” in his views of the principles on which Southern Statesmanship should be guided on this subject, and if I had the least ability to influence the South, I would not wish to use it in any other direction than that in which his enthusiasm flows.

If I err in my statement of facts, or if I have misapprehended public sentiment at the South, on this or any other subject, I shall consider it a favor to be corrected by those whose residence at the South gives them means of more reliable information and better judgment, than I can hope to have enjoyed. But I ask you, Southern readers, to remember, that a stranger to their habits and proceedings in connection with Slavery, must reflect from so different and distant a standpoint from that in which familiarity places them, that it will not be strange if what appears light to them, sometimes remains dark to him, and that a movement which to them is great and important, is to him almost imperceptible.

The watchman, Robert, besides owning three horses, had in his [185]possession three guns—one of them a valuable fowling piece of a noted London make. Upon further inquiry, I found that several of the field hands also owned guns, which they kept in their cabins. Nothing could show better than this how small is the fear of insurrection where the negroes are managed discreetly, and treated with a moderate degree of confidence and kindness. I have not examined the laws of the State upon the subject, but it was probably illegal, as I know it would be in Alabama and Louisiana for them to be possessed of these weapons. The negroes had purchased them or, in some cases, received them as presents from their owner.

On inquiring of him what were their privileges in buying and selling, he informed me that during a large part of the year all the industrious hands finish the regular tasks required of them by one or two o’ clock in the afternoon, and during the remainder of the day are at liberty, if they choose, to labor for themselves. Each family has a half-acre of land allotted to it, for a garden, besides which there is a large vegetable garden, cultivated by a gardener for the plantation, from which they are supplied, to a greater or lesser extent. They are at liberty to sell whatever they choose from the products of their own garden, and to make what they can by keeping swine and fowls. His family had no other supply of poultry and eggs, except what was obtained by purchase from his own negroes; they frequently, also purchase game from them.

The only restriction upon their traffic was a “liquor law.” They were not allowed to buy or sell ardent spirits. This prohibition, like liquor laws elsewhere, unfortunately could not be enforced, and of late years, Irishmen moving into the country and opening small shops, buying stolen goods from the negroes, and selling them poisonous washes under the name of grog, had become a very great evil; and the planters, although it was illegal, were not able to prevent it. They had combined to do so, and had brought several offenders to trial; but as it was a penitentiary offence, the culprit would spare no pains or expense to save himself from it, and it was almost impossible, in a community constituted as theirs was, to find a jury that would convict.

A remarkable illustration of this evil had just occurred. A planter, discovering that a considerable quantity of cotton had been stolen from him, and suspecting one of his negroes to have taken it, from finding him drunk and very sick from the effects of liquor soon after, informed the patrol of the neighboring planters of it. A lot of cotton was prepared by mixing hair with it, and put in a tempting place. The negro was seen to take it, and was followed to a grog-shop, several miles distant, where he sold it, its real value being nearly ten dollars, for ten cents, taking his pay in liquor. The man was arrested, and the theft being made to appear, by the hair, before a justice, obtained bail in $2,000 to answer at the higher Court.

In a community where the greater number of families live miles apart, and have but rare intercourse with one another, where occasion for Law and Government is almost unknown, where one part of the people, poor, untrained, illiterate, recklessly and improvidently live almost from day to day on the bounty [186] of Nature, making rude log huts, every man for himself; of restless disposition, and frequently, from mere caprice, leaving them and moving away to make new homes; habitually a law to themselves, while they are accustomed, from childhood, to the use of the most certain deadly weapon; and where, in the other part of the people, a barbarous, patriarchal system of government exists, within another Government—as far as possible, with this circumstance, of the most republican and enlightened form—it is really wonderful that Law has so much power, and its deliberate movements and provisions for justice to accused parties are so much respected, as, spite of calumny and occasional exceptions, is usually the case in our Slave States. Why are not these villainous scamps scourged out of the district, and their dens burned, where the Law is so slow and uncertain with them?

This evil of the grog shops, and other illicit and criminal business with negroes, is a great and increasing one at the South. Everywhere that I have been, I have found the planters provoked and angry about it. A great swarm of Jews, within the last ten years, has settled in nearly every Southern town, many of them men of no character, opening cheap clothing and trinket shops, ruining or driving out of business many of the old retailers, and engaging in a clandestine trade with the simple negroes, which is found very profitable. The law which prevents the reception of the evidence of a negro in Courts, here strikes back with a most annoying force upon the dominant power itself. In the mischief thus arising, we see a striking illustration of the danger which stands before the South, whenever its prosperity shall invite extensive immigration, and lead what would otherwise be a healthy competition to flow through its channels of industry.

Mr. A. remarked that his arrangements allowed his servants no excuse for dealing with these fellows. He made it a rule to purchase everything they had to sell, and to give them a high price for it himself. Eggs constituted a circulating medium on the plantation; their par value was considered to be twelve for a dime, at which they would be exchanged for cash or taken on deposit at his kitchen.

Whatever he took of them that he could not use in his own family, or had not occasion to give to others of his servants, was sent to town to be resold. The negroes would not commonly take money for the articles he had of them, but would have the value of them put to their credit, and a regular account was kept with them. He had a store, well supplied with ’articles that they most wanted, which were purchased in large quantities and sold to them at wholesale prices; thus giving them a great advantage in dealing with him rather than with the grog shops. His slaves were sometimes his creditors to large amounts; at the present time he owed them about five hundred dollars. A woman had charge of the store, and when there was anything called for that she could not supply, it was usually ordered by the next conveyance of his factors in town.

Here you see an illustration of what, I believe, I have before suggested:

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Slavery is a grand, practical, working system of Socialism. It brings up, too, another aspect of Slavery—its happiest and best.

The negroes came to us from barbarism as from a cradle, with a confused, half-developed mind, with strong and simple appetites and impulses, but whimsical and unreliable; forming attachments quickly, and cleaving closely to their protectors and superiors; but, if removed from one, forming the same relations quickly, and with equal strength, with another; subject to violent and uncontrollable passions, and altogether undisciplined, uneducated, unchristianized.

Here I see their master, dealing with them as a father might with such children; guarding them sedulously against dangerous temptations, forbidding them to indulge in bad practices, rewarding the diligent and obedient, and chastising the perverse and indolent; anticipating and providing for their wants; encouraging them in the provident use of their little means of amusement, and comfort, and luxury; all the time furnishing them the necessary support of life; caring diligently for them in sickness; and only when they are of good age and strength, so long as he is their guardian, demanding of them a certain amount of their labor and assistance, to increase his own comforts, provide for his age.

Were but all Slavery this, and were but this all of Slavery!

It may appear, to those of your readers who have had the patience to follow me thus far in this series of letters, that I have dwelt at an unwarrantable length upon the industry of the Atlantic tier of the Southern States, while there remains before me the so much greater field of the Southwest, with its so much greater fertility and promise of consequence, industrial and political; but it should be considered that the application of labor—the means of wealth—are at present much less diversified and interesting in details in the latter, than in the former; being confined entirely—so far, at least, as they will come within the range of my observation—to the production of cotton and sugar. I will, [190] however, in my next, proceed westward in an account of my traveling observations, and return to the Atlantic States only as I have occasion to in describing the culture of and commerce in cotton. In this letter I will write of the economy of slave labor, as observed more especially in the district lately described, and add a few miscellaneous notes illustrating the general condition and habits of the negroes.

I have shown the advantages of the “task” system of working slaves, which is generally followed on the Atlantic plantations south of Virginia. It evidently has the effect to make the negroes ordinarily more active and energetic in their work than I represented them to be in my earlier letters, and probably tends to encourage a high degree of skill within certain narrow limits. Could the hope of reward for faithfulness, instead of the fear of punishment for negligence, be added to it, and some encouragement be given to the application of the mind of the laborer, to a more distant and elevated result than the release from his clay’s toil—as, it seems to me, there easily might be—it would, inevitably, have an improving effect upon his character. But, on the contrary, the tasked laborer is always watched as closely as possible—a driver standing by, often with a whip in his hand, that he may be afraid to do work slightingly. He is trusted as little as possible to use his own discretion, and it is taken for granted that he will never do anything that he dares avoid. In short, he is treated as a slave—the body of a man, moved only by outward force; a mind, acted upon only by fear; a soul, without responsibility.

Take men of any original character of mind, and use them as mere animal machines, to be driven by the motive-power of base fear; provide the necessities of animal life in such a way that the want of them shall afford no stimulus to contrivance, labor and providence; work them mechanically under a task-master, so that they shall have no occasion to use discretion, except to avoid the imposition of additional labor, or other punishment; deny them as much as possible the means of enlarged information and of high mental culture—and would they not, as a matter of course, be stupid, indolent, wasteful and treacherous—and constantly become of less and less value as producers, and more and more expensive as consumers? Put the best race of men under heavens into the land where all industry was obliged to bear the weight of such a system, and inevitably their ingenuity, enterprise and skill would be paralyzed, the land would be impoverished, its resources of wealth would remain undeveloped, or they would be wasted; and only by the favor of some extraordinary advantage, could it compare in prosperity with countries adjoining, in which a more simple, natural and healthy system of labor prevailed.

Such is the case with the Slave States. On what does their wealth and prosperity, such as it is, depend? On certain circumstances of topography, climate and soil, that give them almost a monopoly of the supply of the most important article of the world’s commerce.

Conventions of planters, met to consider preposterous propositions for “regulating the Cotton Market,” annually confess that if the price of this [191] staple should be very greatly reduced by its extended culture in other parts of the world, or by any cause greatly diminishing its consumption, every proprietor at the South would be ruined. If this humiliating state of things, extending over so large a region, and yet so distinctly defined by the identical lines that separate the Slave from the free States, is not caused by the unfortunate system of labor which distinguishes the former, I know not what it can be attributed to.

That such is the effect of Slavery, is the opinion of every foreigner or Northern man, of respectable powers of observation and impartial judgment, who has resided long at the South, that I have met. An eminent merchant of New-York, who has long had intimate commercial and friendly relations with all parts of the South, and who has spent weeks on some of the best plantations, lately expressed his conviction of this to me, in the strongest manner. I know a gentleman in Georgia, a slaveholder himself, and a man of great and increasing wealth, who is so well convinced of the fallacious basis of all Southern schemes of improvement, that he invests his capital wholly in Northern securities, and who is educating his children at the North, especially to free them from the influence of slavery; and has expressed to them his wish that they should determine never to own a slave. I have heard of more than one wealthy Georgian who has sent his son to spend several years in some Northern manufacturing establishment, that he might acquire Northern habits of industry, self-discipline, and quiet energy.

I have described at length the rice plantation of a gentleman born at the North, and with the business habits of a large and successful Northern manufacturing proprietor. I do not believe there is a plantation at the South managed more discreetly and judiciously with reference to profit, at the same time with Christian humanity towards the negroes; nevertheless I saw, during my visit of a few days, repeated instances of the waste and loss that must be connected with an extensive employment of slave labor: gates left open and bars left down, against standing orders; rails removed from fences, supposed to be to kindle fires with; mules lamed, and implements broken carelessly; a flat-boat, carelessly secured, going adrift into the river; men ordered to cart rails for a new fence, depositing them so that a double expense of labor would be required to lay them, more than would have been needed if they had been placed as they might almost as easily have been, by a slight exercise of forethought; men ordered to fill up holes made by alligators or craw-fish, in an important embankment, discovered to have merely patched over the outside, having taken pains only to make it appear that they had executed their task, not having been overlooked by a driver; men not having performed duties that were entrusted to them, making statements which their master was obliged to receive as sufficient excuse, though he believed them to be false—all going to show the carelessness, indolence, and mere eye-service of the slave.

The habitual misapplication and waste of labor on many of the rice plantations, is inconceivably great. Owing to the proverbial stupidity and dogged prejudice of the negro (but peculiar to him only as he is more carefully [192] poisoned with ignorance than the laborer of other countries), it is exceedingly difficult to introduce new and improved methods of applying his labor. He always strongly objects to all new-fashioned implements, and if they are forced into his hands, will contrive to break them, or make them only do such work as shall compare unfavorably with what he has been accustomed to do without them. It is a common thing to see a large gang of negroes, each carrying about four shovelsfull of earth upon a board balanced on his head, walking slowly along on the embankment, so as to travel around two sides of a large field, perhaps for a mile, to fill a breach—a job which an equal number of Irishmen would accomplish, by laying planks across the field and running wheelbarrows upon them, in a tenth of the time. The clumsy iron hoe is everywhere made to do the work of pick, spade, shovel and plow. I have seen it used to dig a grave. On many plantations a plow has never been used, the land being prepared for the crop by chopping with the hoe, as I described in my last. There is reason for this on the newly-cleared rice-ground, perhaps, encumbered as it is with the close-standing stumps and strong roots and protuberances of the late cypress swamps,though I should suppose it would be more economical to grub these by hand sufficiently to admit of the use of a strong plow, before attempting to get a crop. On old plantations, where the stumps have been removed, the surface is like a garden-bed, the soil a dark, rich, mellow, and exceedingly fine loam, the proportion of sand varying very much in different districts, but always considerable, and sufficient, I should suppose, to prevent an injurious glazing from the plow, unless the land was very poorly drained. Yet even on these the plow is not in general use.

Trials have been made on some of the South Carolina plantations of English horse-drills, I understood, without satisfactory success; but I can hardly doubt that some modification of them might be substituted advantageously for the very laborious hoe and hand process of planting. I should think, too, the horse-hoe, now coming into use in England, for cleaning wheat, which is drilled nearly or quite one-half closer than rice usually is, might be adapted to rice-culture with much saving of labor over the present method of hand-hoeing. Half an acre a day is the usual task of a negro at this operation. Garrett’s horse-hoe, on light land, will easily go over ten acres, employing one horse and one man and a boy. The Judges of the Royal Agricultural Society, at a trial in 1851, reported that the work done by it was far superior to any hand-hoeing. It requires to be guided, of course, with great carefulness, and, perhaps, could not be entrusted to ordinary negro field-hands.

I am not aware that any application of the reaping machines, now in use on every large grain farm at the North, has been made in the rice harvest. By the use of a portable tramway for them to run upon, I should think they might be substituted for the present exceedingly slow and toilsome method of reaping with the sickle, with economy and great relief to the laborers. Such portable tramways are in use in England for removing the turnip crop from moist fields in Winter, and it is found that men can earn 60 cents a day [193] contracting to remove heavy crops at the rate of $1. 50 an acre, shifting the trams themselves. It is probable, therefore, that the rice crop might be taken out of the wet ground and carried much more rapidly, and at less expense, to the stack-yard, in this way, than by the really cruel method now employed.

Could these, and other labor-saving appliances, in general use elsewhere, be introduced, and competition of labor be obtained by the introduction of coolies, laboring freely, as they may be had, accustomed to labor in their native rice-fields, at exceedingly low wages, the price of rice might be very greatly reduced without diminishing the profit of its culture.

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