I did not intend when I commenced writing these letters to give much attention to the subject of Slavery; but the truth is, the character of the whole agriculture of the country depends upon it. In every department of industry I see its influence, vitally affecting the question of profit, and I must add that everywhere, and constantly, the conviction is forced upon me, to a degree entirely unanticipated, that its effect is universally ruinous. My first impression upon crossing the country was, that to account for the general superior prosperity asserted of the North, we need go no further than to examine the soil; the main source of wealth at the South being agriculture, no cheapness of labor could make profitable the culture of such poor soil as that which at first fell under my observation. It did, indeed, occur to me that only by the low value of slave labor, could such land have been so long retained in cultivation. Would you think it possible that a man could live by cultivating ground that only produced three bushels of wheat to the acre? The very slightest possible cultivation of the soil, and the mere seed and sowing of it without the slightest tillage, would cost a northern farmer as much as the value of the crop. Such crops are common in Virginia. I do not exaggerate in saying so. I have heard of repeated instances where the crop of a whole, large plantation was not over three bushels to the acre! Without asserting, as, however, I am much inclined to think, and [104] as many Virginians confess to me they are themselves convinced, that the system of slavery is responsible, by its enervating effects upon the minds of the superior race, for this beggarly farming; there is not room for the shadow of a doubt across my mind, that slave labor makes the cost of cultivating such lands greater, and the profit (!) less, than it would be under free labor.

But the soils from which I derived the impression I have spoken of, are by no means to be taken as a criterion of the ordinary lands of this country; I have since seen large tracts of as fine wheat land, deep and rich upland of clayey loam; or alluvial meadows of the best description of soil for general cropping, that I ever saw in any country, and even on the same old piney land—or worn out tobacco fields—under a system of agriculture of moderate enterprise and skill, I have found that fair crops of all sorts can be made. And under free labor, and the direction of men exercising the ordinary intelligence and skill applied to Northern farms, I am wholly convinced that there is not in all the Northern States, or in all of Europe, a district of country where the business of farming would be so profitable, as in Eastern Virginia. I shall hereafter discuss the inducements offered under present circumstances to emigration. As to the capability of the soil, I heard this morning that a Northern man last year purchased a farm in Southern Virginia, but a few miles from a railroad, and but twenty from a seaport, for which he paid $5 an acre. It had not ordinarily produced wheat at the rate of five bushels the acre, and had never been plowed over four inches in depth; upon which, by plowing eight inches, turning up not only virgin soil, but clay to mix with the sand of the surface, and applying 150 barrels of guano, costing $3.75 to the acre, he obtained a crop averaging twenty bushels an acre, and from which he realized much more than sufficient money to pay for the cost of the land it grew upon, and the expense of growing it. I have seen land of a similar description, which has been sold, with its improvements, during the last year, for $2.25 an acre.

As I may hereafter wish sometimes to assume the superior cheapness or economy of free labor, I will in addition to the reasons I have before given for it, state here a few more.

I have compared notes with several farmers, planters and manufacturers, capitalists and contractors, and I arrive at the conclusion to which they have without one exception conceded, that the wages of laborers, measuring them merely by power of muscle, or brute force, without regard to energy or will, are at this time at least 25 per cent. higher in Eastern Virginia, than in the State of New-York.

In addition to this difference there is to be deducted from the profit of the slave the loss of time occasioned by his sickness (or absence from any cause); which loss does not fall upon the proprietor under the free labor system, and the temptation to counterfeit which is not offered to the laborer. The loss of this to the slave farmer is of various consequence, sometimes small, often excessively embarrassing, always a subject of anxiety and suspicion. A farmer told me for the purpose of showing me the weakness of the family tie and the [105] promiscuous intercourse among slaves, that having allowed one of his men, a mechanic, to work some time in a shipyard at a city, soon after his return, and at a time when he was pressed for labor, he suddenly found twelve hands, male and female, and all of them married parties, laid up with a disgusting disease, and was obliged to procure, at a great expense, a physician to come from town twice a week to examine the whole force, to prevent its spread among them. After all, an old “nigger doctor,” a slave in the neighborhood, was more successful in curing them with an empirical remedy, than the regular practitioner. I mention this as indicating that this complaint is not unfrequent among them. A decoction of pine leaves is one of the negro remedies.

As to sham-sickness or “playing ’possum” I heard much complaint of it, and it is said to be nearly as hard to treat negroes in sickness as it is children, because they use their imagination so much, greatly puzzle the doctors by lying as to their symptoms, and from their neglect or refusal to take the remedies left for them. They will generally conceal pills in their mouth, declare they have swallowed them, and it is only discovered that they have not by their failing to have any effect. This is a general custom, but probably arose from the fact that unless very disagreeably ill they are loth to recover from that which exempts them from labor.

Amusing incidents illustrating this difficulty I have heard, showing that the slave rather enjoys getting a severe wound that lays him up. He has his hand smashed by accident, and says: “Bless de Lord—de hand b’long to massa. I don’t reckon I’se got no more corn to hoe dis year, for sartin.”

On the other hand the suspicion that when a hand complains he is “playing possum” and the refusal to allow him to “knock off’ often aggravates what might be otherwise a slight and temporary indisposition, into a long and serious illness. From this reason, the labor of women on a plantation, as a large planter assured me, “actually does not pay for their salt.” After they get to the “breeding age” they do no more work of any account. “They are forever complaining of ’irregularities.’ They don’t come to the field, and you ask what’s the matter, and the old nurse always nods her head and says, ’Oh, she’s not well, sir; she’s not fit to work, sir,’—and you have to take her word for it.”

I believe that the slaves are generally very kindly and considerately treated in sickness, but the profit of slave labor is all the less from this, from the encouragement to the slave to make the most of sickness and so to withdraw his labor and be a mere “bill of expense” to his master.

Then the slaves sometimes refuse to labor, or “balk,” from mere “rascality,” which, as I have before shown, is sufficiently common and inexplicable as to be considered a disease. They are then inconceivably stubborn, and can barely be driven to work by the lash, and in no way restrained from recklessly or malevolently doing much injury to their master’s property.

“How do you manage, then, when a man misbehaves, or is sick?” I have been asked at this point of the discussion.

“If he is sick, I simply charge against him every half day of the time he [106] is off work, and deduct it from his wages. If he is careless, or refuses to do what in reason I demand of him, I discharge him, paying him wages to the time he leaves. With new men in whom I have not confidence, I make a written agreement, before witnesses, on engaging them, that will permit me to do this. As for“rascality,” I never had but one case of anything approaching to what you call so. A man contradicted me in the field; I told him to leave his job and go to the house, took hold and finished it myself; then went to the house, made out a written statement of account, counted out the balance in money due him, gave him the statement and the money, and told him he must go, and had not another word with him. I’ve no doubt he was a good and respectful man to his next employer.”

The slave master, in case he finds he has a “tartar” on his hands, has no remedy, if he has hired him, but to ask a deduction of what he has paid from his owner, on the same ground that you would if you had hired a vicious horse, and instead of helping you on your journey he had broken your leg; or, if he is an owner, to sell him “to go South.”

That the slaves have to be “humored” a great deal, and often cannot be made to do their master’s will, is very evident,—I do not think they will do from fear nearly as much as Northern laborers will simply from respect to their contract or regard to their duty. The gentleman I before spoke of as employing white laborers on a farm, had been especially struck with this. A dam had given way, and it was necessary to do a good deal of work very promptly in the water. He was greatly surprised to find how much more readily than negroes his white men would obey his orders. jumping into the water waist deep in the midst of winter without the slightest hesitation or grumbling. He had noticed the same on all emergencies, when it was desirable to work late at night, &c., or to do any very disagreeable job. A farmer in England told me that he had once, in a very bad harvest season, had laborers at work without a wink of sleep for sixty hours, himself heading them, and eating and drinking with them.

Finally, to come to the point of the amount of work which will be done under the Northern and the Southern system. I regret that I cannot get more exact data here. The only close observation of the work done in a day by slaves that can be fairly compared with that by free laborers, that I have been able to obtain, was made by Mr. T. R. Griscom, of Petersburg; a man remarkable for the accuracy and preciseness of his information on all subjects. I was recommended to call upon him, as a man possessing very intimate knowledge with regard to the agriculture of the district in which he lives, by as strong a pro-Slavery man as I have met. He formerly resided in New-Jersey, and has had the superintendence of very extensive and varied agricultural operations in Virginia.

He tells me he once very carefully observed how much labor was expended in securing a crop of very thin wheat, and found that it took four negroes one day to cradle, rake, and bind one acre. (That is, this was the rate at [107] which the field was harvested.) In the wheat-growing districts of Western New-York, four men would be expected to do five acres of a similar crop.

Mr. Griscom further states, as his opinion, that four negroes do not, in the ordinary agricultural operations of this State, accomplish as much as one laborer in New-Jersey. Upon my expressing my astonishment, he repeated it, as his deliberately formed opinion.

I have since, again called on Mr. Griscom, and obtained permission to give his name with the above statement. He also wishes me to add, that the ordinary waste in harvesting, by the carelessness of the negroes, above that which occurs in the hands of Northern laborers, is large enough to equal what a Northern farmer would consider a satisfactory profit on the crop.

I do not think there is a man in Virginia whose information on this point would be more reliable or whose opinion would be formed with less prejudice to either side and is entitled to greater respect than Mr. Griscom’s.

I have at second hand the result of the experience of another man who has superintended extended labors of a similar character, both at the North and in Virginia, which precisely agrees with Mr. Griscom’s. I am not able now to see him and obtain the facts directly, but have been promised a statement of them by him in writing.

In a late article by H. M. Brackenridge, in the National Intelligencer, copied in the New-York Times of Dec. 29, reproving the spirit of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and containing many very sensible observations on Slavery, the result, the writer says, of ten years observation and much reflection, it is stated that “the day’s labor of the slave is notoriously not more than half that of the white man; and if left to himself (it would be) not more than half that.”

Another gentleman here, who formerly resided in Connecticut, told me that he believed that a Northern laborer would finish a negro’s day’s work by 11 o’clock in the forenoon.

I have stated that I had met no farmer that was not convinced of the superior economy of free-labor (if the slaves were not on their hands and in some way to be provided for), but few however are willing to concede or can believe the difference to be as great as the above opinions would indicate. On mentioning them to one, he remarked, that although the four men might not have done more than at the rate of an acre a day, it must have been because they were not well driven. He thought that if driven hard enough, threatened with punishment, and punished if necessary, they would do as’ much work as it was possible for any white man to do. The same man, however, has told me that slaves were very rarely punished—he thought not more than apprentices were at the North—that the driving was almost always left to overseers, who were the laziest and most inefficient dogs in the world—frequently not worth half so much as the slaves they pretended to manage—and that the wages of an overseer were often not more than half as much as one of the negroes put under his control could be hired out for.

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A planter on the coast, whom I asked to examine these statements, and my conclusions with regard to this subject, that he might, if he could, refute them, or give me any facts of an opposite character, replied: “Why, I have no doubt you are right, Sir; in general, a slave does not do half the work he easily might, and which, by being harsh enough with him, he can be made to do. When I came into possession of my plantation, I found the overseer was good for nothing, and I soon told him I had no further occasion for his services, and I went to driving the negroes myself. In the morning, when I went out one of them came up to me saying, ’Well, massa, what’ll you hab me go at dis mornin’?’ ’Well, ole man,’ said I, ’you may go to the swamps and cut wood.’ ’Well, massa,’ said he, ’s’pose you wants me to do kordins we’s been use to doin’ here: ebery niggar cut a cord o’ wood a day.’ ’A cord! that’s what you have been used to doing, is it?’ said I. ’Yes, massa, dat’s wot dey always makes a niggar do roun’ heah—a cord a day, dat’s allers de job.’ ’Well, now, ole man,’ said I, ’you go and cut me two cords to-day.’ ’Oh, massa! two cords! Nobody couldn do dat. Oh! massa, dat’s too hard! Nebber heard nobody’s cuttin’ more ’n a cord in a day roun’ heah. No niggar couldn do it.’ ’Well, ole man, you have two cords of wood cut to-night, or to-morrow morning you shall get two hundred lashes. Now, go off and be about it.’ And he did it, and ever since no negro has ever cut less than two cords a day for me, though my neighbors never get but one cord. It was just so with a great many other things—mauling rails—I always have twice as many rails mauled in a day as it is the custom of the country to expect of a negro, and just twice as many as my negroes always had been made to do before I managed them myself.”

Allowing that the opinions of the practical men who have had experience at the North and the South, that I have given, somewhat exaggerate the difference in the amount of work accomplished by a slave and a Northern free laborer (though I did not give them because they were extreme, but because they were the only exact statements that I could obtain)—allowing that I have been unfortunate in this way, and that a longer residence in the State would give me information that would much modify these estimates, there still remains, beyond a doubt, a very great loss in using the labor of the slave. These statements would make the loss between three and four hundred per cent. Now although they were the calculations and deliberate estimates of men who had enjoyed a liberal education, and who had unusual facilities for observing both at the North and South—men who employ slaves, and who sustain Southern opinions on the political questions arising from slavery—I am not disposed to insist upon full credit for them. Cut them down one-half, and we still have a loss of nearly one hundred per cent. Even if you will have them to be utterly mistaken, and calculate that the slaves accomplish equally as much—man for man—as Irishmen under wages contract, yet consider how large a sum would pay for clothes, time lost by sickness or otherwise—five or more additional holidays, which custom gives them, and for all that they pilfer or damage and destroy through carelessness, improvidence, recklessness and rascality!

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Can there be a reasonable doubt that the State of Virginia loses fifty per cent. on the cost of labor, in employing slaves in preference to freemen!

Suppose that half the cost of a crop is expended in the human labor given to it, the profits of the farmers of Virginia would then be increased 25 per cent. per annum, if they could substitute the labor of freemen for that of slaves.

Labor is the creator of wealth. There can be no honest wealth, no true prosperity without it, and in exact proportion to the economy of labor is the cost of production and the accumulation of profit.

Remembering this, I cannot but ask the people of Virginia to read again the facts that follow, which I extract from the leading article of the Richmond Enquirer of this date (Dec. 29), and seriously and candidly reflect for themselves with regard to them.

Virginia, anterior to the Revolution and up to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, contained more wealth and a larger population than other States of this Confederacy.

* * *

Virginia, from being first in point of wealth and political power, has come down to the fifth in the former, and the fourth in the latter. New-York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Ohio stand above her in wealth, and all, but Massachusetts, in population and political power. Three of these States are literally chequered over with Railroads and canals, and the fourth (Massachusetts) with Railroads alone.

But when we find that the population of the single city of New-York and its environs exceeds the whole free population of Eastern Virginia, and the valley between the Blue Ridge and Alleghany, we have cause to feel deeply for our situation. Philadelphia herself contains a population far greater than the whole free population of Eastern Virginia.

—The little State of Massachusetts has an aggregate wealth exceeding that of Virginia by more than one hundred and twenty-six millions of dollars—a State, too, which is incapable of subsisting its inhabitants from the production of its soil. And New-York, which was as much below Massachusetts, at the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in wealth and power, as the latter was below Virginia, now exceeds the wealth of both. While the aggregate wealth of New-York, in 1850, amounted to $1,080,309,216, that of Virginia was $436,701, 082—a difference in favor of the former of $643,608,134. The un-wrought mineral wealth of Virginia exceeds that of New-York. The climate and soil are better; the back country, with equal improvements, would contribute as much.

All true, and facts and contrasts more striking and far more humiliating might have been shown you. Why be driven by fanaticism and bigotry to shut your eyes to the most simple and evident explanation of them?

I shall next show why it is not possible for any Single farmer or manufacturer to relieve himself of his proportion of this tax to support slavery and increase his products and profits in a corresponding ratio, and make it [110] evident that only by the general action of the people, their “commercial vassal-age” can be remedied.