After a voyage up Red River, and a week spent in some of the cotton plantations of that district, I proceeded to Vicksburg, with the intention of visiting Central Mississippi and the Yazoo cotton region. Owing to long continued rains, however, and the consequent floods which had covered and frequently torn up and removed the bridges and log causeways, ] found traveling entirely interrupted on the route] had intended to pursue, and was obliged to change my purpose and go up the river to Memphis, Thence] returned to the North, along the eastern base of the Appalachian Chain in the upper parts of the States of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, having [216] the intention to make another visit to the South, in which I might examine more thoroughly than I had then been able to, the most important cotton districts and those prospectively the most important.

I shall therefore defer for the present a particular account of the culture and commerce of cotton, as it is that which has come within my personal observation, with regard to the industry of the South which is received with the greatest interest by your readers. I shall occupy my next two or three letters with notes having reference to the condition of the slaves belonging to the proprietors living in circumstances widely different, which will represent the extremes, most favorable and least so, to the well-being and improvement of the laboring class of the South that I encountered.

Other things being equal, the condition of the laborer at the South is least happy, as is that of the free agricultural laborer everywhere, when he is connected with large estates. The evil results from the monopoly of land possession, to the laborer, may be more palpable in a free community, because of the greater mercenary interest of the slave proprietor in the health and adequate physical sustenance of his laborers. The discipline and constant incitement to improvement, however, arising from self—dependence and personal responsibility—constantly calling into action, as it does, industry, patience, and economy—remain much stronger with the free dependent of the large proprietor than with the slave, and greater with the slave of the small proprietor than the large.

At the same time, the benefit arising to the inferior race, from its forced relation to and intercourse with the superior, which is the main advantage claimed for slavery, amounts to nothing on the larger plantations. Each laborer is such an inconsiderable unit in the mass of laborers, that he may even not be known by name, or personally recognizable by his master. At the same time, for the white persons to retain adequate control, and keep the order in so large a body of negroes, necessary to their own personal safety, and the profitable employment of their labor, a discipline which, if applied to the free laborer, would be resisted as barbarously cruel, is necessary. and (the righteousness of slavery as a system being granted) is justifiable. The condition of the slaves under such circumstances will be more apparent from what I shall now relate of my observations upon a very large estate on which I spent several days.

There were on this estate nearly one thousand negroes. living in four settlements, some miles apart. It was divided into four plantations, with an overseer to each, and the whole was directed by a manager. The owner had another. smaller, and more healthful estate, and seldom resided on this. The manager was a gentleman of university education, energetic and thorough in his business, but of generous and poetic temperament, and with an enjoyment of nature and the bucolic life rarely found in an American. The gang of busy negroes were, to him, as natural and requisite an element of the poetry of nature as flocks of peaceful sheep and herds of lowing kine, and he would no more appreciate the aspect in which an Abolitionist would see them than would [217] Virgil have honored the feelings of a vegetarian, who would only sigh at the sight of flocks and herds destined to feed the depraved appetite of the carnivorous savage of modern civilization.

The overseers were superior to most of their class, that I have seen; frank, honest, temperate and industrious, but their feelings towards negroes were such as would naturally result from their employment. They were all married, and lived with their families, each in a cabin or cottage, in the settlement of the negroes of which they had especial charge. Their wages were from $500 to $1,000 each. These five men, each living more than a mile distant from either of the others, were the only white men on the estate, and the only others within ten miles were a few vagabonds, who were looked upon with suspicion as likely to corrupt and demoralize the negroes.

Of course, to secure personal safety and the efficient use of the labor of such a large number of ignorant and indolent vicious negroes, rules, or rather habits and customs of discipline were necessary, that would in particular cases be liable to operate unjustly and cruelly. It will be seen, also, as the testimony, of negroes is not received as evidence in courts, that there was very little probability that any amount of even illegal cruelty would be restrained by regard to the law. A provision of the law intended to secure a certain privilege to slaves was indeed disregarded under my own observation, and such infraction of the law was confessedly customary with one of the overseers, and not interfered with by the manager, because it seemed to him to be, in a certain degree, justifiable and expedient under the circumstances.

In the main, the negroes were well taken care of and abundantly supplied with the necessaries of vigorous physical existence. A large part of them lived in commodious and well built cottages, with broad piazzas in front, so that each family of five had two rooms on the lower floor and a loft. The remainder lived in log cabins, contracted and mean in appearance, but their overseers lived in very similar cabins, and preparations were being made to replace all of these by handsome boarded cottages. Each family had a fowl-house and hog-sty (constructed by the negroes themselves) and kept an unlimited number of fowls and swine, feeding the latter during the Summer on weeds and fattening them in the Autumn on corn stolen (this was mentioned by all the overseers as a matter of course) from their master’s corn fields. I saw gangs of them eating their dinner in the field several times, and observed that they generally had plenty, and often some left, of bacon, eggs, corn-bread, and molasses. The following rations were weighed and measured under the eye of the manager by the drivers, and distributed to the head of each family, for each person weekly: 3 lbs. pork, 1 peck meal, and from January to July, 1 quart molasses; monthly, in addition, 1 lb. tobacco, and 4 pints salt. No drink is ever served but water, except after unusual exposure or to ditchers when working in water, who get a glass of whisky at night. All hands cook for themselves after work, at night, each family in its own cabin.

Each family had a garden, the vegetables in which, together with eggs, [218] fowls and bacon, they frequently sold. Most of the families bought a barrel of flour every year. The manager endeavored to encourage this practice, and that they might rather spend their money for flour than for liquor, he furnished it to them at rather less than what it cost him at wholesale, namely, at $4 a barrel. Many poor whites within a few miles would always sell liquor to the negroes and encourage them to steal to obtain the means to buy it of them. These vagabond whites were always spoken of with anger by the overseers, and they had a constant offer of much more than the intrinsic value of their land from the managers to induce them to move away. The negroes also obtain a good deal of game. They set traps for coons, rabbits and turkeys, and I once heard a negro complaining to his overseer, that he had detected one of the vagabond whites in stealing a turkey which had been caught in his pen. I several times partook of excellent game while on the plantation, that had been purchased of the negroes.

The “stock-tender,” an old negro, whose business it was to ride about in the woods to keep an eye on the stock cattle that were pastured in them, and who thus was likely to know where the deer ran, had an ingenious way of supplying himself with venison. He lashed a scythe blade or butchers’ knife to the end of a pole so that it formed a lance: this he set near a fence or fallen tree which obstructed a path in which the deer habitually ran, and the deer in leaping over the obstacle would leap directly on the knife. In this manner he had killed two deer the week before my visit.

The overseers regulated the hours of work, each for his own gang. I saw the negroes at work before sunrise and after sunset; at about 8 o’clock, they were allowed to stop to breakfast, and again about noon to dine. The lengths of these rests were at the discretion of the overseer or drivers, and I should think, were from half an hour to an hour. There was no rule. The number of hands directed by each overseer was from ISO to 250. The manager told me that he thought it would be better economy to have a white man over every fifty hands, but for the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy overseers. Three of those he had, were the best he had ever known. The majority of overseers he described, as they have always been represented to me, to be drunkards, or passionate, careless, inefficient men, totally unfitted for their duties. The best overseers ordinarily are young men, the sons of planters of moderate means—who take up the business with no intention of following it permanently.

During my visit, the hands were employed in plowing for corn and cotton, in planting corn, in grubbing newly cleared land, and in ditching. The driver of the ditching gang was an Irishman, who was furnished with a cabin, a cow and pasturage, some vegetables and $10 a month wages. The task of the ditchers was to dig thirty feet a day per man of a drain 5 feet wide at top, 4 feet at bottom, and 4 feet deep, clayey soil, with a few roots, but no picking. Coming to somewhat lighter land, the manager one day directed the task to be increased to 40 feet. The plowing, both with single and double mule team, was generally performed by women, and very well performed. I watched them with some [219] interest to see if there was any indication that their sex unfitted them for the occupation. Twenty of them were plowing together with double teams and heavy plows. They were superintended by a male negro driver, who carried a whip, and allowed no delay or hesitation at the turning, and they twitched their plows around on the head land, jerking the rein and yelling to their mules with surprising ease, energy and rapidity. No man could have excelled them with less apparent exertion.

Generally in the Southwest the negroes appeared to be worked much harder than in the eastern and northern Slave States. ] do not think they accomplish so much, but they certainly labored much harder than agricultural laborers at the North usually do. They are obliged to keep constantly and steadily moving, and the stupid, plodding, machine-like manner in which they move is painful to witness. This was most the case in the corn-planting. A gang of children dropped the corn at suitable distances, and another gang followed covering it with hoes; there would thus be a hundred or two engaged together, moving across the field in two parallel lines with a considerable degree of precision.

I frequently rode at a canter, with several other horsemen, across and between these lines, often coming suddenly upon them without in the slightest degree interrupting or changing the dogged action of the laborers, or causing one of them to lift an eye from the ground. A strong driver walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently cracking his whip and calling out in the surliest manner, to one and another, “Shove your hoe there!” But] never saw him strike anyone with the whip except very lightly, and as a caution to smaller children when they did not move fast enough.

Corporeal punishment was evidently frequent, however, on the estate, and often, I have no doubt, severe. There were no rules about it that I learned; the overseers and the drivers used the whip whenever they deemed there was occasion, and in such manner and in such degree as they thought fit. The discipline of the plantation is precisely the same as that of the army and navy; the negroes are privates, enlisted for their lives in the service of their masters; the lash is constantly held over them as the remedy for all wrong-doing, whether of indolence or indiscretion, while they are subject to be shot for insubordination. “If you don’t work faster,” or “If you don’t work better,” or “If you don’t mind me better—I will have you flogged,” I have heard frequently. I have heard a girl not more than seven years old say to an old negro, “If you don’t do as I bid you, quick, I will tell the overseer to have you flogged, Q and the negro then, sullenly and without an answer, obeyed her.

I said to one of the overseers—“It must be very disagreeable to have to punish them so much as you do?” “Yes, it would be to those who were not used to it-but it’s my business, and I think nothing of it. Why, Sir, I wouldn’t mind killing a negro more than] would a dog.” I asked if he had ever killed a negro? He never had quite killed one, but overseers were often obliged to; he had [220] known of several shot. There are some negroes that are determined never to let a white man whip them, and who will fight when you attempt to whip them; of course, you must kill them in that case. He, himself, was once going to whip a negro in the field, when he struck at his head with his hoe; he guarded off the blow with his whip, and drew a pistol and tried to shoot him, but the pistol missed fire, and he rushed in and knocked him down with it. At another time, a negro that he was punishing, grossly insulted and threatened him; he went to his house to get his gun; when he was coming back, the negro thought he would not fire at him and when he got within a few rods, broke for the woods. He fired at once, and put six buck shot into his hips. He always carried a bowie knife with him, but did not carry a pistol, unless he anticipated unusual insubordination. He always kept a pair of pistols loaded, however, on his mantel piece.

It was only when he first came into a place that he ever had much trouble. There were a great many overseers that were unfit for their business, and who were too easy and slack with the negroes. When he first came into a place after such a man, he had hard work for a time to break the negroes in, but it did not take long to learn them their place.

His conversation on this subject was exactly like what I have heard again and again, ad nauseam, from Northern ship—masters and officers, only he had a less brutal disposition, and more respect for the negroes than those fellows have for the seamen that temporarily subject themselves to the atrocious tyranny and insolence they boast of exercising.

The only instance of very severe corporeal punishment of a negro that I witnessed at the South occurred on this estate. I suppose, however, that equally severe punishment is common—in fact, it must be necessary, to sustain adequate discipline, on every large plantation. The manner of the overseer who inflicted the punishment, and his subsequent conversation with me about it, indicated that it was a common-place occurrence to him.

This overseer was showing me his plantation. In going from one part to the other we had twice crossed a deep gully, in the bottom of which was a thick covert of brush-wood. We were crossing it a third time, and had nearly passed through the brush, when the overseer suddenly stopped his horse, exclaiming, “What’s that? Hallo!—who are you there?” A negro girl was lying at full length on the ground at the bottom of the gully, evidently intending to hide herself from us in the bushes. “Who are you there?” “Sam’s Sail, Sir.” “What are you skulking here for?” The girl half rose, but gave no answer. “Where have you been all day?” Answer unintelligible. After a few more questions, she said her father locked her into the room she slept in, when he went out in the morning, she not having woke up. “How did it happen that he locked you in alone?” “Nobody sleep wid me, Sir, in de room.” “How did you manage to get out?” “Pushed a plank off, Sir, and crawl out.”

The overseer was now silent for a minute, looking at the girl, and then said, “That won’t do—come out here.” The girl rose at once and walked up to [221] him. She was a perfectly black girl, about 18 years old. A bunch of keys hung at her waist. These caught the overseer’s eye, and he said, “Ah! your father locked you in; but you have got the keys.” After a little hesitation the girl replied that those were the keys of some other locks, not of her own room. “That won’t do,” said the overseer: “you must take some—kneel down.” The girl knelt on the ground, he got off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across the shoulders with his rawhide riding whip. They were well laid on, as a man would flog a vicious horse or a thievish dog, or a boatswain would lay it on to a skulking sailor. There was not, however, any appearance of angry excitement in the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed, “Yes, Sir!” or “Ah, Sir!” or “Please, Sir!”—not groaning or screaming.

At length he stopped and said, “Now tell me the truth.” The girl repeated the same story. “You have not got enough yet,” he said; “pull up your clothes—lie down.” The girl, without any hesitation or delay, drew all her garments up to her waist and laid down on the ground upon her side, with her face towards the overseer, and he continued to whip her with the rawhide across her naked back and thigh, with as much strength as before. The girl cried out,“Oh, don’t; Sir, oh, please stop, master; please, Sir, please, Sir! oh, that’s enough, master; oh, Lord! oh, master! master!”

I could not wait to see the end, and after a dozen or twenty blows, I turned my horse’s head, and he burst through the bushes, bounding straight up the steep bank, seemingly as excited and impatient to be doing something as I was. I must say, however, the girl did not seem to suffer the intense pain that I should have supposed she would.

I rode on along the top of the bank until I reached the place where the road came out of the gully, and waited until the overseer joined me. He laughed, and said, “She meant to cheat me out of a day’s work—and she has done it, too.” “Did you succeed in getting another story from her?” “No; she stuck to it.” “It wasn’t true?” “No; she slipped out of the gang when they were going to work, and she’s been dodging about all day, going from one place to another as she saw me coming. She saw us crossing there a little while ago, and thought we had gone to the quarters, but we turned back so quick, we came into the gully before she knew it, and she could do nothing but lay down in the bush.” “suppose they often slip off so.” “No, Sir; never had one do so before—not like this; they often run away to the woods and are gone some time, but’ never had a dodge—off like this before.” “Was it necessary to punish her so hard?” “If’ had not, she would have done the same thing to-morrow, and half the negroes on the plantation would have followed her example, Sir. Oh, you’ve no idea how lazy these negroes are; you Northern people don’t know anything about it. They’d never do any work at all if they were not afraid of being whipped.”

We soon after met an old man, who, after being questioned, said that [222] he had seen the girl slip out of the gang as they went to work after dinner. It appeared that she had been at work during the forenoon, but at dinner time the gang moved across the gully, and she slipped out. The driver had not missed her.

The overseer said that when he first took charge of the plantation, the negroes ran away a great deal—they disliked him so much. They used to say ’twas hell to be on his place; but after a few months they got used to his ways, and liked him as well as any of the rest. He had not had any run away now in some time. When they ran away they would generally come in in course of a fortnight. When some of them had been off for some-time, he would make the rest of the force work Sundays, or restrict them in some of their privileges until they returned. The negroes on the plantation could always bring them in if they chose to. They depended on them for their food, and they had only to refuse to supply them, and they would come in.

The first morning I was on the estate, while at breakfast with the manager, an old negro woman came into the room and said to him, “Dat gal’s bin bleedin’ agin dis mornin’.”

“Ah, has she? How much did she bleed?”

“About a pint, Sir.”

“Very well; I’ll call and see her after breakfast.”

“I come up for some sugar of lead, master; I gin her some powdered alum ’fore I come away.”

“Very well; you can have some.”

After breakfast the manager invited me to ride with him on his usual round through the plantations. On reaching the nearest “quarters,” we stopped at a house, a little larger than the ordinary cabins, which was called the loom-house, in which a dozen negroes were at work making shoes, and manufacturing coarse cotton stuff for negro clothing. One of the hands so employed was insane, and most of the others were cripples, or invalids with chronic complaints, unfitting them for field-work. From this we went to one of the cabins-where we found the sick woman that had been bleeding at the lungs, with the old nurse in attendance upon her. The manager examined and prescribed for her in a kind manner. When we came out he asked the nurse if there was anyone else sick.

“Dere’s oney dat woman Caroline.”

“What do you think is the matter with her?”

“Well, I don’t tink dere’s anyting de matter wid her, masser; I mus answer you for true, I don ’t tink anyting de matter wid her, oney she’s a little sore from dat wippin’ she had.”

We went to another cabin and entered a room where a woman lay on a bed, groaning. It was a very dirty, comfortless room, but there was a mosquito bar, much-patched and very dirty, covering the bed. The manager asked several times what was the matter, but could get no distinct reply. The woman appeared to be suffering very great pain. The manager felt of her pulse and looked at her tongue, and after making a few more inquiries, to which no intelligible reply was given, told her he did not believe she was ill at all; at this the woman’s groans redoubled. “I have heard of your tricks,” continued the manager, “you had a chill when I came to see you yesterday morning; you had a chill when the mistress came here, and you had a chill when the master came. I never heard of [225] a chill that lasted a whole day. So you’ll just get up now and go to the field, and if you don’t work smart, you ’ll get a dressing; do you hear?”

The manager said they rarely-almost never-had occasion to employ a physician for the people. Never for accouchements; the women, from their labor in the field, became strong and roomy, and were not subject to the difficulty, danger and pain which attended women of the better classes in child-birth.

Near the first quarters we visited was a large blacksmithing and wheelwright shop, and a number of mechanics at work. Most of them were eating their breakfast, which they warmed at their fires, as we rode up. They had about fifty plows which they were putting in order for cotton-planting. The manager inspected the work, found some of it faulty, reprimanded the workmen for not getting on faster, and threatened one of them with a whipping for not paying closer attention to the directions which had been given him. He told me that he had employed a white man from the North who professed to be a first-class workman, but he soon found he could not do nearly as good work as the negro mechanics on the estate, and the latter despised him so much that he had been obliged to discharge him in the midst of his engagement.

One of the overseers rode up while we were at the shop, and reported to the manager how all his hands were employed. There were so many at this and so many at that, and they had done so much since yesterday. “There’s Caroline,” said the manager; “she’s not sick, and I told her she must go to work; put her to the hoeing; there’s nothing the matter with her, except she’s sore from the whipping she got;-you must go and get her out.” The overseer did not seem to like the job. A woman was passing at the time, and the manager told her to go and tell Caroline she must get up and go to work, or the overseer should come and start her. She returned in a few minutes, and reported that Caroline said she could not get up. The overseer and manager rode towards the cabin, but before they reached it the girl came out and went to the field with her hoe. They then returned to me and continued their conversation. Just before we left the overseer, he said, “That girl that ran away last week was in her cabin last night.”

The manager told me as we rode on that their people often ran away after they have been whipped, or something else has happened to make them angry. They hide in the swamp and come into the cabins at night to get food. They seldom staid off longer than a fortnight. When they returned they were punished. The woman, Caroline, he said, had been delivered of a dead child about six weeks before, and had been complaining and getting rid of work ever since. She was the laziest woman on the estate. This shamming illness occasioned him the most disagreeable duty he had to perform. Negroes were famous for it. “If it was not for her bad character,” he continued, “) should not make her go to work to-day; but her pulse is steady and her tongue perfectly smooth. We have to be sharp with them; if we were not, every negro in the estate would be abed.”

[226]

I was afterwards told that there had been a girl on one of the plantations that cheated her owner out of nearly two years’ work as she was supposed all the time to by dying of consumption. At length, there being some reason to suspect her, she was watched in her cabin, and it was ascertained that she was constantly employed as a milliner and dress-maker, working for pay for the other negroes. She had always previously to her supposed illness, been employed as a field hand, but she was now taken to the house and employed as a seamstress, and it was found that she had acquired a very wonderful degree of skill; so that without further instruction she was able to cut dresses for her mistress with nicety and taste. She was soon after hired out to a fashionable dress-maker in the city at high wages (to be paid, of course, to her owner).

We rode on to where the different gangs of laborers were at work, and inspected them one after another. The manner in which they worked and the way they were driven I have previously described. I observed, as we were looking at one of the gangs, that they were very dirty. “The negroes are the filthiest people in the world,” said the manager; “there are some of them that would never look clean twenty-four hours at a time if you gave them thirty suits a year.”

I ascertained that they were furnished with two suits of Summer clothing, and one of Winter each year. Besides which most of them get presents of some fine clothing, and purchase more for themselves, at Christmas. It is not unfrequent to see negroes dressed in military clothing. One of the drivers had on a splendid coat of an officer of the flying artillery. I was told that after the Mexican war, a great deal of military clothing was sold at auction in New-Orleans, and much of it was bought by planters at a low price, and given to their negroes, who were greatly pleased with it.

I asked if there were any plantation rules to maintain cleanliness. There were not, but sometimes the negroes were told at night that anyone who came into the field the next morning without being clean would be whipped. This gave no trouble to those who were habitually clean, while it was in itself a punishment to those who were not, as they were obliged to spend the night in washing.

Afterwards, as we were sitting near a gang with an overseer, he would occasionally call out to one and another by name. I asked if he knew them all by name. He did, but the manager did not know one-fifth of them. The overseer said he generally could call most of the negroes by their names in two weeks after he came on to a plantation, but it was difficult to learn them on account of their being so many of the same name, distinguished from each other by a prefix. “There’s a big Jim here, and a little Jim, and Eliza’s Jim, and Jim Bob, and Jim Clarisy.”

“What’s Jim Clarisy!-how does he get that name?”

“He’s Clarisy’s child, and Bob is Jim Bob’s father. That fellow’s name is Swamp; he always goes by that name, but his real name is Abraham, I believe, is it not, Mr. (Manager)?”

[227]

“His name is Swamp on the plantation register-that’s all I know of him.”

“I believe his name is Abraham,” said the overseer; “he told me so. He was bought of Judge _____, and he told me his master called him Swamp because he ran away so much. He is the worst run-away on the place.”

I inquired about the increase of the negroes on the estate, and the manager having told me the number of deaths and births the previous year, I asked if the negroes began to have children at a very early age. “Sometimes at sixteen,” said the manager. “Yes, and at fourteen,” said the overseer; “that girl’s had a child”-pointing to a girl that did not appear older than fourteen.

“Is she married?”

“No. You see,” said the manager, “negro girls are not remarkable for chastity; and it rather hinders them from having children. They’d have them younger than they do, if they would marry and live with but one man sooner than they do. They often do not have children till they are 25 years old.”

“Are these that are married true to each other?” I asked. The overseer laughed heartily at the idea, and described the state of things.

“Do you not try to discourage this?”

“No, not unless they quarrel. They get quarreling among themselves sometimes about it,” the manager explained, “or come to the overseer and complain, and he has them punished.

“Give all hands a d_____d good hiding,” said the overseer.

“You punish for adultery, then, but not for fornication?”

“Yes,” answered the manager.

“No, “replied the overseer,”I punish them for quarreling; if they don’t quarrel I don’t mind anything about it. But if they make a muss about it, I give all four of ’em a warming.”

Riding through a gang afterwards, with two of the overseers in company, I observed that a large proportion of those before us were thorough-bred Africans. Both of them thought that the proportion of pure-blooded negroes was about three to four of the whole number, and that this would hold as an average in Mississippi and Louisiana. One of them pointed out a girl-“That one is pure white; you see her hair?” (it was straight and sandy.) “She is the only one we have got.”

I t was not uncommon to see slaves as white as that; so white that they could not be distinguished from pure-blooded whites. He had never been on a plantation before, that had not more than one on it.

“Now,” said I, “If that girl should dress herself well, and run away, would she be suspected of being a slave?”

“Oh, yes; you might not know her if she got to the North, but any of us would know her.”

.. By her language and manners.”

“But if she had been brought up as a house-servant?”

[228]

“Perhaps not in that case.”

I asked if they thought the mulattoes or white slaves were weaker, or less valuable than the pure negroes.

“Oh, no; I’d rather have them a great deal,” said one.

“Well, I had not,” said the other; “the blacker the Letter for me.” “The white ones,” added the first, “are more active, and know more, and I think do a good deal the most work.”

“Are they more subject to illness, or do they appear to be of weaker constitution ?”

One said they were not, the other that they did not seem to bear the heat so well.

The first thought that this might be so, but that, nevertheless, they would do more work. I asked the manager’s opinion. He thought they did not stand excessive heat as well as the pure negroes, but that, from their greater activity and willingness, they would do more work. He was confident they were equally strong, and no more liable to illness; had never had reason to think them of weaker constitution. They often had large families, and he had not noticed that their children were weaker or more subject to disease than others. He thought that perhaps they did not have so many children as the pure negroes, but the reason evidently was that they did not begin bearing so young as the others, and this was because they were more attractive to the men, and perhaps more amorous themselves. He knew a great many mulattoes married together, and they generally had large and healthy families.

Afterwards, at one of the plantation nurseries, where there were some twenty or thirty infants and young children, a number of which were mulattoes. I asked the nurse to point out the healthiest children to me, and she indicated more of the pure than of the mixed breed. I then asked her to show me which were the sickliest, and she did not point to any of these. I then asked her if she had noticed any difference in this respect between the black and the yellow children. “Well, dey do say, master, dat de yellow ones is de sickliest, but J can’t tell for true dat I ever see as dey were.” I shall endeavor to investigate this subject further before giving the result of my own observations upon it.

In the evening I met the proprietor, and being seated with him and the manager, I asked about the religious condition of the slaves. There were “preachers” on the plantations, and they had some religious observances on a Sunday; but the preachers and the religious negroes were the worst characters among them, and, they thought, only made their religion a cloak to hide their greater immorality of life. They were, at all events, the most deceitful and dishonest slaves on the plantation, and oftenest required punishment. They had some negroes who called themselves Roman Catholics, but were so only in name. They paid no respect to the ordinances of the Church. The negroes of all denominations would join together in exciting religious observances, and even those who ordinarily made no religious pretensions.

[229]

These gentlemen considered the public religious exercises of the negroes to be exactly similar, in their intellectual and moral character, to the Indian feasts and war-dances, and did not encourage them. Neither did they like to have a white man preach on the estate, because the negroes were good for nothing for a week afterwards. It excited them so much as to greatly interfere with the subordination and order which was necessary to obtain the profitable use of their labor. They would be singing and dancing every night in their cabins, and so utterly unfit themselves for work.

I remarked that I had been told that a religious negro was considered to be worth a third more, because of his greater honesty and reliability. “Quite the contrary,” they both assured me, for a religious negro generally made mischief and trouble, and they were glad to get rid of him. Though there were, to be sure, some negroes who were truly religious, and who were orderly, obedient and industrious. But these were seldom found among the field-hands. They were more common in the town negroes, or among house-servants, such as from their position had acquired better habits and more intelligence than were often found on the plantations.

The proprietor believed the negro race was expressly designed by Providence for servitude, and in discussing the subject referred to the condition of the negroes where they were allowed their freedom. Everywhere at the North and in the West Indies they were in a most melancholy condition, except where they were employed as servants, while on the other hand their condition when in Slavery he thought to be superior to that of any white laboring class in the world. Everywhere the laborer was degraded, stupid, unable to take care of himself. In Slavery he had a master, who, unlike a free laborer’s master, had a direct pecuniary interest in taking care of him, in protecting him and supporting him in his rights.

In England, he said, the laborer was entirely at the mercy of any bad man who chose to obtain his own emolument or secure his private ends by his ruin, and no matter how much he was defrauded, outraged or ill-used, owing to his own stupidity and poverty, he could obtain no redress or satisfaction, and no one else had any interest to obtain it for him.

At the North, owing to the general prosperity, the evil might not appear so prominently as in England, but in the constitution of society it was worse, because the laborer, being less dependent on his master, the interest of the latter was less like that of an owner. In fact, in the good old times in England, when the relation between master and laborer, or the landlord and his tenants, was more nearly similar to that of master and slave, there was a much more kindly and happy condition of things than at present. In Russia, he had seen his own Russian servant throw one of the laboring class upon the ground and whip him severely, because he had not got horses ready for them when they arrived. No man would dare do so to a slave in the South. His owner would resent it at law as an injury and outrage upon his property.

As to the moral condition of the slaves, he asked me who there was to [230] throw a stone. Look at the condition of things in New-York, where thousands of virtuously disposed women were forced by the state of society and their inability to take care of themselves. to most loathsome prostitution-a state of things that had no parallel. and never could have. in a slave country. In England laborers of all sorts were forced to crime and then punished for it. For a breach of the law to which they were most excusably driven by the destitution in which their master allowed them to live-for a crime, often. that could not be deemed an immorality-their whole future was irretrievably blighted. Even without the action of the law and for no crime. and while their masters were possessed of most sumptuous abundance. millions of them were driven into a dreary exile, voluntarily destroying their social happiness by sundering their family ties. and withdrawing themselves from all they loved. to gratify the meanest and most material wants. What kind of morality was such a state of society likely to produce?

A slave was rarely separated from his family, or deprived of those comforts which he most valued-not even for a crime. When he did wrong. his punishment did not degrade him or lead him to a worse life than before: it did not destroy the happiness of his innocent family and friends. and did not in the least remove their means of support. As to the licentiousness of slaves, it was, at all events, voluntary with them. It was not attended with the horrid consequences which resulted from the pestilential and destructive system into which the laboring class were forced in the North and in England. and it was no worse than the licentiousness which existed. as he asserted that he knew from his personal observation during several years’ intercourse with them. among the higher classes of the Continent.