CHAPTER IX.

THE DANGER OF THE SOUTH.

“Before the advent of modern science, any idea of systematic laws of human improvement would have been deemed alike impossible and absurd; but the constant observation of facts, the exact statistics recorded, the progress of science in all departments, has made it possible to conceive of, and probable that there actually exist _uniform laws of social movement_, based upon any given condition of society. If the _elementary social_ condition be different in regard to religion, government, arts, science, industry, the resulting movements of society will be different. Hence, when we have ascertained by accurate observation upon and record of the social phenomena, that the social movement is uniformly in a certain direction, and that certain results uniformly follow, we shall know in what _elements_ the conditions of society must be changed, in order to change the results. Hence, when this law of social movements is ascertained, the philanthropist, legislator, and jurist will know precisely what must be done, and how, in order to remove the evils, or reform the wrongs, or produce the results they desire. They will know that _certain elementary conditions of society_ must be changed, and they well know that by removing temptations, or laying restraints, or enlightening the mind, or changing the course of industry, or producing new arts, they will change the social tendency, and thus change the results. * * * Society, or that part of it which thinks and acts, can change the results by changing the elementary conditions which produce them. When you know exactly what the change ought to be, it is not very difficult to produce it; nor does it follow that because a thousand crimes must be committed in Ohio, that a thousand particular individuals _must_ commit them. It is true that the individual frequently acts from motives, but is it not just as true that the individual frequently seeks these motives, and presents them to himself?”—_From the Report of the Ohio State Commissioner of Statistics_, 1859.

“If there is a first principle in intellectual education it is this—that the discipline which does good to the mind is that in which the mind is active, not that in which it is passive. The secret for developing the faculties is to give them much to do, and much inducement to do it.”—_Mill’s Political Economy._

The field-hand negro is, on an average, a very poor and very bad creature, much worse than I had supposed before I had seen him and grown familiar with his stupidity, indolence, duplicity, and sensuality. He seems to be but an imperfect man, incapable of taking care of himself in a civilized manner, and his presence in large numbers must be considered a dangerous circumstance to a civilized people.

A civilized people, within which a large number of such creatures has been placed by any means not within its own control, has claims upon the charity, the aid, if necessary, of all other civilized peoples in its endeavours to relieve itself from the danger which must be apprehended from their brutal propensities, from the incompleteness of their human sympathies—their inhumanity—from their natural love of ease, and the barbaric want of forethought and providence, which would often induce desperate want among them. Evidently the people thus burthened would have need to provide systematically for the physical wants of these poor creatures, else the latter would be liable to prey with great waste upon their substance. Perhaps the very best thing to do would be to collect them into small herds, and attach each herd to a civilized family, the head of which should be responsible for its safe keeping. Such a superintendent should of course contrive, if possible, to make his herd contribute in some way to the procuring of its necessary sustenance; and if, besides this, he even turned their feeble abilities to such good account by his superior judgment, that they actually procured a considerable surplus of food and clothing for the benefit of others, should not Christendom applaud and encourage his exertions, even if a certain amount of severity and physical constraint had been found necessary to accomplish this success?

* * * * *

Let us endeavour to assume a similar difficulty for ourselves. Let us suppose that a large part—the proportion varying with the locality—of our own community should next year suffer from some new malady, the result of which should in no case be fatal, but which should, like the _goître_ of Savoy, leave all who were affected by it permanently injured in their intellects, with diminished bodily activity, and fiercer animal propensities. (I take this method of stating the case, because some of us who only see the negro as he exists at the North might find it difficult to imagine him as he is known to the planters.)

Suppose, further, that this malady should be confined to certain families, as if its seed had been received hundreds of years ago by numerous individuals, and only their descendants (but all of these to the most distant trace of the blood) now suffered from it. Also, that some of our doctors should be of the opinion that the effects of the malady upon the intellect would descend to the children, and to all descendants of those who suffered. Suppose that these unfortunates should be subject to certain hallucinations, that they should be liable to think themselves sane and able to take care of themselves, and that when possessed with these ideas that they should be quite cunning and dangerous in attempting to exercise the usual prerogatives of sane men.

What should we do with them?

Finding them in a degree tractable; and sensible enough, after all, to yield readily, if not cheerfully, to superior force, we might herd them together on a sort of farm-hospitals, and let them earn their living, giving especially capable men charge of many, and rewarding them with good salaries, and ordinary small farmers, smaller numbers, with smaller compensations for overseeing them?

Of course, we should place every possible legislative guard and check upon these superintendents and overseers to secure fair and honest dealing, to prevent them from making perquisites for themselves at the expense of a reasonable comfort in their institutions. Careful instructions to secure economical sustenance, and how to turn such labour as could be got from the unfortunates to the best account, in defraying the cost of their keeping, would also be framed by talented men and furnished each keeper.

And having regard to national wealth, to the temporal good of the commonwealth, this is about all that common sense would lead us to do, at least through the agency of government.

* * * * *

Is this all, reader?

You have too much overlooked our small matters of State, if you think so. We have a few crazy people, a few fools, not enough to be a matter of much consideration to our statesmen or legislators, yet we have a State system in our dealing with them, such as it is, and such as it is it puts our dealing with them on a little different footing than would the system I have above imagined. What I have imagined is not quite all we have for some time been in the habit of doing when we did anything with this class. And judging from what we have done, it does not seem as if it would be all that we should do in such an emergency as I have supposed, engaging as it would all the talent of the country to diminish as much as possible the necessary results of the calamity.

We should, it appears, call upon our learned doctors eagerly to study; we should each of us eagerly observe for ourselves whether the fearful infirmity by which so many were incapacitated for their former usefulness, were not only absolutely incurable, but also absolutely not possible to be alleviated. And if our observation should satisfy us, if our doctors could not deny that, with judicious treatment, a considerable alleviation could be effected, so much so indeed, that with a very large part a close approximation to the normal condition of sane and capable mankind could be obtained, there are doubtless those amongst us who would think this a dangerous and an infidel presumption. Just as every year some miserable wretch is found in our dark places to have a crazy father or brother whom he keeps in a cage in his garret, and whose estate he takes care of, and who is of the opinion that it will be of no use, but, on the contrary, a manifest defiance of Divine Providence, and most dangerous to life and property to let this unfortunate out of his cage, to surround him with comforts, and contrive for him cheerful occupation, as our State requires shall be done. But would the average common sense and humanity of the people of the Free States allow them to refuse all reduction from their usual annual incomes; refuse to suffer all necessary addition to then usual taxes; refuse to burden their minds with the difficulties of the all-absorbing problem, in order to initiate a remedial system? Our worst and most cowardly legislature would never dare adjourn leaving this duty incompletely performed. There are thousands on thousands of our citizens who would not only spare from their incomes, but would divide their estates for such a purpose. There is not a county that would not submit to the highest war taxes for it.

Suppose that the doctors and that the universal observation of the community should determine that the defective class were not only capable of being improved, but that so far as their limited intellects permitted, the laws of improvement were the same for them as for healthy men; that they were found to be influenced by a liking for food and drink, for the society of each other and of sane men, for the admiration and respect of each other and of sane men, for their ease, for dancing, for music and other amusements; and that their imperfect natures could be acted upon, drawn out, and enlarged by means of these likings. Suppose that it were found that nearly all of them had still some knowledge of religion, that although they were inclined sometimes to consider sane men as their enemies, they were yet, in most cases, by judicious play upon their inclinations and disinclinations, capable of being trained quite beyond the most sagacious of our domestic animals, even to read intelligently. Should we, because there were so many of them, go back two hundred years in our civilization, denying ourselves the addition which this capacity would give to their powers of usefulness, and consequently of economy of maintenance; denying them the advantages for improvement which we now in every State give to our hopelessly insane, to our blind and mute, to our fools, to our worst and most dangerous criminals.

Why do we not pass laws forbidding criminals and maniacs to read? Our fathers did not allow them to read when negroes were introduced in Virginia. But every man among us whom we call well informed, now knows that it is a profitable business for the State, which has so little profitable business, even to provide teachers and books for a portion of her criminals, to allow books and encourage reading with all. To provide books, to provide physicians, to provide teachers, to provide halls and gardens of recreations, as stimulants to healthful thought for our madmen and our fools; to this the State is impelled equally by considerations of safety and of economy. Even Kentucky has its State institution for the development of manhood in fools born of white women.

Does not every such man know, too, that, given an improvable mind with a sound body, possessed of the natural instincts, the usual desires, appetites, aversions, no matter if at starting the being is even what we call an idiot, a drivelling imbecile, disgusting all who see him, a sheer burden upon society, the process of making him clean in his habits, capable of labouring with a good and intelligent purpose, and of associating inoffensively with others, is just as certain in its principles and in its progress—infinite progress—as the navigation of a ship or the building of a house?

This is even so with a cretin, whose body is deformed beyond remedy, whose brain is contracted, whose face is contorted, whose limbs are half paralyzed, whose every organ is defective, and who has inherited these conditions from goitrous parents and grandparents.

Dr. Seguin says: “The idiot wishes for nothing; he wishes only to remain in his vacuity.”

Even so thinks Dr. Cartwright of the negro; and surely nothing worse can be thought of him.

But Dr. Seguin adds: “To treat successfully this ill-will [indisposition to take care of himself], the physician wills that the idiot should act _and think himself, of himself and, finally, by himself_. The incessant volition of the moral physican urges incessantly the idiot into the sphere of activity of thinking, of labour, of duty, and affectionate feelings.”

Is there no such law of progression of capacity for the black imbeciles? All the laws of the South have the contrary aims: to withdraw them as much as possible from the sphere of self-willed activity, thought, labour—to prevent the negro from thinking by himself, of himself, for himself; and the principle on which these laws are based is thus defined by Mr. De Bow:—

“The Almighty has thought well to place certain of His creatures in certain _fixed positions_ in this world of ours, for what cause He has not seen fit to make quite clear to our limited capacities; and why an ass is not a man, and a man is not an ass, will probably for ever remain a mystery.” “God made the world; God gave thee thy place, my hirsute brother, and, according to all earthly possibilities and probabilities, it is thy destiny there to remain, bray as thou wilt. From the same great power have our sable friends, Messrs. Sambo, Cuffee, & Co., received their position also.... Alas, my poor black brother! thou, like thy hirsute friend, must do thy braying in vain.”[66]

Are there laws on our statute-books to prevent asses from being taught to read?

The _Richmond Examiner_ says—

“These immigrants do not, like our ancestors, fly from religious and political persecution; they come merely as animals in search of a richer and fresher pasture. They come to gratify physical want—for moral, intellectual, or religious wants they have not acquired. They will settle in large masses, and, for ages to come, will practise and inculcate a pure (or rather impure) materialism. Mormonism is a fit exponent, proof, and illustration of our theory. The mass of them are sensual, grovelling, low-minded agrarians, and nine-tenths of them would join the Mormons, or some such brutal, levelling sect, if an opportunity offered to do so.

“European writers describe a large class of population throughout England and the Continent as being distinguished by restless, wandering, nomadic habits, and by a peculiar conformation of the skull and face. Animal and sensual nature largely predominates, with them, over the moral and intellectual. It is they who commit crimes, fill prisons, and adorn the gallows. They will not submit to the restraints of law or religion, nor can they be educated. From their restless and lawless habits, we should infer they composed a large part of the northern immigration.”

If all this were true, and were felt by us to be true, should we think it necessary to put the minds of these beings in fetters? Should we hold it to be dangerous if one should undertake to strengthen their intellects, to give them larger ideas?

If all the slaves in the United States were “real Congo niggers,” which not one in a thousand is, and if all real Congo niggers were as incapable, and as beastly, and as savage in their propensities as the very worst of them are asserted to be, would the method of dealing with them which the legislation of the Slave States, and which a large part of the labour of the Congress and Executive of our nation is directed to the purpose of perpetuating, be felt to be strictly in accordance with sound and well-established economico-political principles? The purpose of that legislation is avowed to be merely to secure safety with economy. Would a project for establishing an institution planned upon the principles of the ancient Bedlam and the ancient Bridewell be felt to-day to be completely justified among us, by the statement that highwaymen and maniacs will endanger life and the security of our property if they are not somehow taken care of?

If there had been no Mettray with its Demetz, no Norfolk Island with its Machonochie, no Hanwell with its Connolly, no Abendberg with its Guggenbuhl; if the courage, devotion, and labour of Pinel, Sicard, and Seguin had been in vain; if there had been no progress in the science of civilized society since the days of Howard, we might listen with merely silent sadness to such, an excuse for debilitating the weak, for holding down the fallen; for permitting brutal keepers to exasperate the mad, and mercenary nurses to stupefy the idiotic; we might, if we saw it to be necessary to preserve a civilized community from destruction, even give its object our aid; but with the knowledge which in our time is everywhere else acted upon, it is impossible for us not to feel that such an argument is a specious and a fallacious one, and that no State can long act upon it with safety, much less with economy.

And surely the system by which intellectual demands and ambition are repressed in the negro is as little calculated to produce the security which is its object, as it is to turn his physical abilities to the most profitable use for his owner. How far it fails in this respect, the extra-legal measures of safety and the semi-instinctive habits of unconscious precaution which pervade Southern society evince. I say unconscious precaution, because Southerners themselves seem to have generally a very inadequate idea of the influence of slavery upon their habits in this way, and this is very natural.

“Every habit breeds unconsciousness of its existence in the mind of the man whom it controls, and this is more true of habits which involve our safety than of any others. The weary sailor aloft, on the look-out, may fall asleep; but, in the lurch of the ship, his hands will clench the swaying cordage only the more firmly, that they act in the method of instinct. A hard-hunted fugitive may nod in his saddle, but his knees will not unloose their hold upon his horse. Men who live in powder-mills are said to lose all conscious feeling of habitual insecurity; but visitors perceive that they have acquired a constant softness of manner and of voice.

“If a labourer on a plantation should insolently contradict his master, it may often appear to be no more than a reasonable precaution for his master to kill him on the spot; for, when a slave has acquired such boldness, it may be evident that not merely is his value as property seriously diminished, but that the attempt to make further use of him at all, as property, involves in danger the whole white community. ‘If I let this man live, and permit him the necessary degree of freedom to be further useful to me, he will infect with his audacity all my negro property, which will be correspondingly more difficult to control, and correspondingly reduced in value. If he treats me with so little respect now, what have I to anticipate when he has found other equally independent spirits among the slaves? They will not alone make themselves free, but will avenge upon me, and my wife, and my daughters, and upon all our community, the injustice which they will think has been done them, and their women, and children.’ Thus would he reason, and shudder to think what might follow if he yielded to an impulse of mercy.

“To suppose, however, that the master will pause while he thus weighs the danger exactly, and then deliberately act as, upon reflection, he considers the necessities of the case demand, is absurd. The mere circumstance of his doing so would nourish a hopeful spirit in the slave, and stimulate him to consider how he could best avoid all punishment. Hence the instinct-like habit of precaution with individuals, and hence the frenzy which often seizes whole communities.

“But ‘planters sleep unguarded, and with their bedroom doors open.’ So, as it was boasted, did the Emperor at Biarritz, and with greater bravery, because the assassin of Napoleon would be more sure, in despatching him, that there would be no one left with a vital interest to secure punishment for such a deed: and because, if he failed, Napoleon dare never employ such exemplary punishment for his enemies as would the planters for theirs. The emperors of the South are the whole free society of the South, and it is a society of mutual assurance. Against a slave who has the disposition to become an assassin, his emperor has a bodyguard, which, for general effectiveness, is to the Cent Garde as your right hand is to your right hand’s glove.

“It is but a few months since, in Georgia or Alabama, a man treated another precisely as Mr. Brooks treated Mr. Sumner—coming up behind him, with the fury of a madman, and felling him with a bludgeon; killing him by the first blow, however, and then discharging vengeance by repeated strokes upon his senseless body.[67] The man thus pitifully abused had been the master of the other, a remarkably confiding and merciful master, it was said—too much so. ‘It never does to be too slack with niggers.’ By such indiscretion he brought his death upon him. But did his assassin escape? He was roasted, at a slow fire, on the spot of the murder, in the presence of many thousand slaves, driven to the ground from all the adjoining counties, and when, at length, his life went out, the fire was intensified until his body was in ashes, which were scattered to the winds and trampled under foot. Then ‘magistrates and clergymen’ addressed appropriate warnings to the assembled subjects. It was not thought indiscreet to leave doors open again that night.

“Will any traveller say that he has seen no signs of discontent, or insecurity, or apprehension, or precaution; that the South has appeared quieter and less excited, even on the subject of slavery, than the North; that the negroes seem happy and contented, and the citizens more tranquilly engaged in the pursuit of their business and pleasure? Has that traveller been in Naples? Precisely the same remarks apply to the appearance of things there at this moment [the moment of this writing—it was in 1857].

“The massacre of Hayti opened in a ball-room. Mr. Cobden judged there was not the smallest reason in the French king’s surrounding himself with soldiers the day before the hidden force of insubordination broke forth and cast him forth from his kingdom. It is true, however, that the tranquillity of the South is the tranquillity of Hungary and of Poland, rather than of France or the Two Sicilies; the tranquillity of hopelessness on the part of the subject race. But, in the most favoured regions, this broken spirit of despair is as carefully preserved by the citizens, and with as confident and unhesitating an application of force, when necessary to teach humility, as it is by the army of the Czar, or the omnipresent police of the Kaiser. In Richmond, and Charleston, and New Orleans, the citizens are as careless and gay as in Boston or London, and their servants a thousand times as childlike and cordial, to all appearance, in their relations with them as our servants are with us. But go to the bottom of this security and dependence, and you come to police machinery such as you never find in towns under free government: citadels, sentries, passports, grape-shotted cannon, and daily public whippings for accidental infractions of police ceremonies. I happened myself to see more direct expression of tyranny in a single day and night at Charleston, than at Naples [under Bomba] in a week; and I found that more than half the inhabitants of this town were subject to arrest, imprisonment, and barbarous punishment, if found in the streets without a passport after the evening ‘gun-fire.’ Similar precautions and similar customs may be discovered in every large town in the South.

“Nor is it so much better, as is generally imagined, in the rural districts. Ordinarily there is no show of government any more than at the North: the slaves go about with as much apparent freedom as convicts in a dockyard. There is, however, nearly everywhere, always prepared to act, if not always in service, an armed force, with a military organization, which is invested with more arbitrary and cruel power than any police in Europe. Yet the security of the whites is in a much less degree contingent on the action of the ‘patrols’ than upon the constant, habitual, and instinctive surveillance and authority of all white people over all black. I have seen a gentleman, with no commission or special authority, oblige negroes to show their passports, simply because he did not recognize them as belonging to any of his neighbours. I have seen a girl, twelve years old, in a district where, in ten miles, the slave population was fifty to one of the free, stop an old man on the public road, demand to know where he was going, and by what authority, order him to face about and return to his plantation, and enforce her command with turbulent anger, when he hesitated, by threatening that she would have him well whipped if he did not instantly obey. The man quailed like a spaniel, and she instantly resumed the manner of a lovely child with me, no more apprehending that she had acted unbecomingly, than that her character had been influenced by the slave’s submission to her caprice of supremacy; no more conscious that she had increased the security of her life by strengthening the habit of the slave to the master race, than is the sleeping seaman that he tightens his clutch of the rigging as the ship meets each new billow.

“There is no part of the South in which the people are more free from the direct action of slavery upon the character, or where they have less to apprehend from rebellion, than Eastern Tennessee. Yet, after the burning of a negro near Knoxville, a few years ago, the deed was justified, as necessary for the maintenance of order among the slaves, by the editor of a newspaper (the _Register_), in the following terms:—‘It was,’ he observed, ‘a means of absolute, necessary self-defence, which could not be secured by an ordinary resort to the laws. Two executions on the gallows have occurred in this county within a year or two past, and the example has been unavailing. Four executions by hanging have taken place, heretofore, in Jefferson, of slaves guilty of similar offences, and it has produced no radical terror or example for the others designing the same crimes, and hence any example less horrible and terrifying would have availed nothing here.’

“The other local paper (the _Whig_), upon the same occasion, used the following language:—

“‘We have to say in defence of the act, that it was not perpetrated by an excited multitude, but by one thousand citizens—good citizens at that—who were cool, calm, and deliberate.’

“And the editor, who is a Methodist preacher, presently adds, after explaining the enormity of the offence with which the victim was charged—‘We unhesitatingly affirm that the punishment was unequal to the crime. Had we been there we should have taken a part, and even suggested the pinching of pieces out of him with red-hot pincers—the cutting off of a limb at a time, and then burning them all in a heap. The possibility of his escaping from jail forbids the idea of awaiting the tardy movements of the law.’ [Although one thousand trusty citizens volunteered to guard him at the stake.]

“How much more horrible than the deed are these apologies for it. They make it manifest that it was not accidental in its character, but a phenomenon of general and fundamental significance. They explain the paralytic effect upon the popular conscience of the great calamity of the South. They indicate a necessary tendency of people living under such circumstances to return in their habits of thought to the dark ages of mankind. For who, from the outside, can fail to see that the real reason why men in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in the centre of the United States, are publicly burned at the stake, is one much less heathenish, less disgraceful to the citizens than that given by the more zealous and extemporaneous of their journalistic exponents—the desire to torture the sinner proportionately to the measure of his sin. Doubtless, this reverend gentleman expresses the utmost feeling of the ruling mind of his community. But would a similar provocation have developed a similar avenging spirit in any other nominally Christian or civilized people? Certainly not. All over Europe, and in every Free State—California, for significant reasons, temporarily excepted—in similar cases, justice deliberately takes its course; the accused is systematically assisted in defending or excusing himself. If the law demands his life, the infliction of unnecessary suffering, and the education of the people in violence and feelings of revenge, is studiously avoided. Go back to the foundation of the custom which thus neutralizes Christianity among the people of the South, which carries them backward blindly against the tide of civilization, and what do we find it to be? The editor who still retains moral health enough to be suspected—as men more enlightened than their neighbours usually are—of heterodoxy, answers. To follow the usual customs of civilization elsewhere would not be felt safe. To indulge in feelings of humanity would not be felt safe. To be faithful to the precepts of Christ would not be felt safe. To act in a spirit of cruel, inconsiderate, illegal, violent, and pitiless vengeance, must be permitted, must be countenanced, must be defended by the most conservative, as a ‘means of absolute, necessary self-defence.’ To educate the people practically otherwise would be felt to be suicidal. Hence no free press, no free pulpit, no free politics can be permitted in the South. Hence every white stripling in the South may carry a dirk-knife in his pocket, and play with a revolver before he has learned to swim.”[68]

I happened to pass through Tennessee shortly after this tragedy, and conversed with a man who was engaged in it—a mild, common-sense native of the country. He told me that there was no evidence against the negro but his own confession. I suggested that he might have been crazy. “What if he was?” he asked with a sudden asperity. What if he was, to be sure? The slaves who were brought together to witness his torture were not insane. They were at least capable of instruction. That day they were given a lesson; were taught to know their masters better; were taught that when ordinary and legal discipline failed, resort would be had to more potent means of governing them. A better informed man, having regard to the ignorance of a stranger, might have answered me: “It was of no consequence, practically, whether he were sane or mad. We do not wish our slaves to study the right and the wrong of every exciting occurrence. To say that being mad the negro was not responsible, therefore not guilty of a crime, therefore not to be punished, would be proclaiming to them that only that which is wrong is to be dreaded. Whatever offends us, whatever is against our will and pleasure, is what a slave must be made to dread.”

Constantly, and everywhere throughout the South, are there occurrences of this significance; I do not say as horrible, though I can answer for it, that no year in the last ten has passed without something as bad;[69] but constantly and everywhere of the same nature, of the same impulse, the same reasoning, the same purposes, the same disregard of principles of society, which no people can ever set aside and not have reason to feel their situation insecure. It is false, it is the most dangerous mistake possible to assume that this feeling of insecurity, this annihilation of the only possible basis of security in human society, is, in the slightest degree, the result of modern agitation. It is the fundamental law of slavery, as distinctly appears in the decision of Justice Ruffin, of North Carolina, in the case of the State _v._ Mann.[70] The American system of slavery from its earliest years (as shown p. 496, “Seaboard Slave States”), and without cessation to the present time, has had this accompaniment. Less in the last twenty years, if anything, than before. Would it not be more just to say that this element of the present system was the cause of agitation? Must not the determined policy of the South to deal with slavery on the assumption that it is, in its present form, necessary, just, good, and to be extended, strengthened, and perpetuated indefinitely, involve constant agitation as a necessary incident of the means used to carry it out? I do not say with you or with me, reader, but with a goodly number of any civilized community? Do you not, who wish to think otherwise, consider that it will always require what you must deem a superior mind not to be overcome by incidents necessary to the carrying out of this determination? And will not such agitation give renewed sense of danger, and occasion renewed demands for assurance from us?

I have remarked before that in no single instance did I find an inquiry of the owner or the overseer of a large plantation about the poor whites of its vicinity fail to elicit an expression indicating habitual irritation with them. This equally with the polished and tranquil gentleman of South Carolina and the rude pioneer settler of Texas, himself born a dirt-eating sand-hiller. It was evident in most cases, and in one it was distinctly explained to me by a Louisianian planter, that the reason of this was not merely the bad effect upon the discipline of the plantation, which was had by the intercourse between these people and the slaves, but that it was felt that the contrast between the habits of the former—most of the time idle, and when working, working only for their own benefit and without a master—constantly offered suggestions and temptations to the slaves to neglect their duty, to run away and live a vagabond life, as these poor whites were seen to. Hence, one of the acknowledged advantages of very large and isolated plantations, and hence, in part, the desire of every planter to get possession of the land of any poor non-slaveholding neighbour.

As few Southern writers seem to have noticed this, I suppose that few Southerners are aware how universal with planters is this feeling. My attention being early directed to the causes of the condition of the poor whites, I never failed to make inquiries of planters, and of intelligent men especially, about those in their neighbourhood; and being soon struck by the constant recurrence of similar expressions with regard to them, I was the more careful to introduce the subject at every proper opportunity, and, I repeat, always with the same result. I am afraid that the feeling of the South to the North is (more or less defined in individual minds) of the same nature, and that the contiguity of a people whose labourers take care of themselves, and labour industriously without being owned, can never be felt to be safe by slaveholders. That it must always be looked upon with apprehension, with a sense of danger, more or less vague, more or less well defined, but always sufficient to lead to efforts intended to counteract its natural influence—its influence not so much with slaves, certainly not alone with the slaves, but also with that important element of population which reaps no profit from the good behaviour of the slaves.

In De Bow’s “Review” for January, 1850, will be found the following passage in an article discussing the practicability of employing the non-slaveholding whites in factories, the argument being that there will be less danger of their becoming “Abolitionists” under such circumstances than at present exists:-

“The great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that they have rights, and that they, too, are entitled to some of the sympathy which falls upon the suffering. They are fast learning that there is an almost infinite world of industry opening before them by which they can elevate themselves and their families from wretchedness and ignorance to competence and intelligence. It is this great upheaving of our masses that we have to fear, so far as our institutions are concerned.”

It is, in the nature of things, while slaveholders refuse the slightest concession to the spirit of the age—while, in their legislation, they refuse to recognize, in the slightest degree, the principles of social science under which we live, and must live, and which every civilized people has fully adopted, that they should endeavour to make it appear the fault of others that they do not feel assured of safety and at ease with themselves; that they should try to make their own ignorant people believe that it is from without all danger is to be apprehended—all assurance of safety to be clamoured for—that they should endeavour to make themselves believe it.[71]

Those who seriously propose to stop all agitation on the subject of slavery, by causing the Abolitionists to refrain from proceedings which cause apprehension at the South, by silencing all who entertain sentiments the utterance of which is deemed a source of “danger to Southern institutions,” by refraining themselves from all proceedings which will be looked upon with alarm by their fellow-citizens of the Slave States, can know very little of what would be required before the South were satisfied. The destruction of some million dollars’ cost in school and text books would be one of the first things, and yet but a small item in the undertaking. Books which directly comment upon slavery are considered comparatively safe, because their purpose being defined, they can be guarded against. As is well understood, it is the insidious attacks of a free press that are most feared. But is it well understood what are felt to be “insidious attacks?” Some idea may be formed from the following passages which I take, not from the heated columns of a daily newspaper, but from the cool pages of the deliberate De Bow’s “Review.” The apprehension they express is not of to-day; in the first article from which I quote (which was published in the middle of Mr. Pierce’s presidential term), reference is made to warnings of the same character which have been sounded from time to time before; and this very number of the “Review” contains a testimonial from fifty-five Southern senators and representatives in Congress to the “ability and accuracy” of its “exposition of the working of the system of polity of the Southern States.”

“Our text books are abolition books. They are so to the extent of their capacity.”... “We have been too careless and indifferent to the import of these things.”

“And so long as we use such works as ‘Wayland’s Moral Science,’ and the abolition geographies, readers, and histories, overrunning, as they do, with all sorts of slanders, caricatures, and blood-thirsty sentiments, let us never complain of their [northern Church people’s] use of that transitory romance [Uncle Tom’s Cabin]. They seek to array our children by false ideas, against the established ordinance of God; and it sometimes takes effect. A professor in one of our Southern seminaries, not long since placed in the hands of a pupil ‘Wayland’s Moral Science,’ and informed her that the chapter on slavery was heretical and unscriptural, and that she would not be examined on that chapter, and need not study it. _Perhaps_ she didn’t. But on the day of examination she wished her teacher to tell her ‘if that chapter was heretical how she was to know but they were all so?’ We might enumerate many other books of similar character and tendencies. But we will refer to only one more—it is ‘Gilbert’s Atlas’—though the real author’s name does not appear on the title page. On the title page it is called ‘Appleton’s Complete Guide of the World;’ published by D. Appleton & Co, New York. This is an elegant and comprehensive volume, endorsed by the Appletons and sent South, containing hidden lessons of the most fiendish and murderous character that enraged fanaticism could conceive or indite.[72] It is a sort of literary and scientific infernal machine. And whatever the design may have been, the tendency is as shocking as the imagination can picture.... This is the artillery and these the implements England and our own recreant sister States are employing to overturn the order of society and the established forms of labour that date back beyond the penning of the decalogue.... This book, and many other Northern school-books scattered over the country, come within the range of the statutes of this State, which provide for the imprisonment for life or the infliction of the penalty of death upon any person who shall ‘publish or distribute’ such works; and were I a citizen of New Orleans, this work should not escape the attention of the grand jury. But need I add more to convince the sceptical of the necessity there is for the production of our own text-books, and, may I not add, our own literature? Why should the land of domestic servitude be less productive in the great works of the mind now than when Homer evoked the arts, poetry, and eloquence into existence? Moses wrote the Genesis of Creation, the Exodus of Israel, and the laws of mankind? and when Cicero, Virgil, Horace, St. John, and St. Paul became the instructors of the world?[73]... They will want no cut-throat literature, no fire-brand moral science ... nor Appleton’s ‘Complete Atlas,’ to encourage crimes that would blanch the cheek of a pirate, nor any of the ulcerous and polluting agencies issuing from the hot-beds of abolition fanaticism.”

From an article on educational reform at the South, in the same “Review,” 1856, I take the following indications of what, among other Northern doings, are considered to imperil the South:—

“‘Lovell’s United States Speaker,’ the ‘National Reader,’ the ‘Young Ladies’ Reader,’ ‘Columbian Orator,’ ‘Scott’s Lessons,’ the ‘Village Reader,’ and numerous others, have been used for years, and are all, in some respects, valuable compilations. We apprehend, however, there are few parents or teachers who are familiar with the whole of their contents, or they would demand expurgated editions for the use of their children. _The sickly sentimentality of the poet Cowper_, whose ear became so ‘pained,’ and his soul ‘sick with every day’s report of wrong and outrage,’ that it made him cry out in agony for ‘a lodge in some vast wilderness,’ where he might commune with howling wolves and panthers on the blessings of _liberty_ (?), stamps its infectious poison upon many of the pages of these works.”...

“From the American First Class Book, page 185, we quote another more modern sentiment, which bears no less higher authority than the name of the great Massachusetts statesman, Mr. Webster:”

Having burnt or expurgated Webster and Cowper, is it to be imagined that the leaders of opinion in the South would yet be willing to permit familiar intercourse between themselves and a people who allowed a book containing ‘Such lines as these to circulate freely?—

“What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and Godlike reason, To rust unused.”

What a dangerous sentiment to come by any chance to a slave! Is it not? Are you, then, prepared to burn your Shakespeare? I will not ask if you will have another book “expurgated,” of all passages the tendency of which is to set the bondmen free.

If the security of life and property at the South must for ever be dependent on the thoroughness with which the negro population is prevented from acquiring knowledge; from thinking of themselves and for themselves, it will never be felt to be greater than it is to-day. Efforts made to increase this security will of themselves occasion agitation, and agitation must counteract those efforts. Knowledge, knowledge of what is going on elsewhere, of the condition of men elsewhere, of what is thought elsewhere, must have increased currency with every class of mankind in all parts of this continent, as it increases in population, and the movements of its population increase in activity and importance. No human laws, embargoes, or armies and navies can prevent it. Do our utmost, we cannot go back of the steam-engine, the telegraph, the cotton-gin, and the cylinder press. The South has admitted steamboats and railroads. It was not practicable to stop with these, and bar out all the rest that is peculiar to the nineteenth century. Is it practicable to admit the machinery of modern civilized life, and not stir up its free people? Is it practicable to stir up its intermediate class, and keep its lowest torpid? Assuredly the security which depends upon preventing either of these steps can never be permanently increased; spite of all possible further extension of slave territory, and dispersion and disconnection of plantations, it must gradually lessen. As it lessens, the demand upon the nation to supply new grounds of security must increase—increase continually, until at length, this year, next year, or another, they conclusively and hopelessly fail. It may cost us much or it may cost us little to reach that point, but it is inevitably to be reached. It may be after long and costly civil war, or longer and more costly foreign wars, or it may be peaceably, sensibly, and soon, but it must come. The annexation of Cuba, international fugitive slave laws,[74] the African slave trade, judgments of the Supreme Court, and whatever else may be first asked and given, will not prevent it—nothing the North will do, nothing the North can do, will prevent it. The proximity of a people who cannot hold labour in contempt; who cannot keep labourers in ignorance and permanent dependence each upon another man; who cannot have an effective censorship of the press, or a trustworthy army of _mouchards_, prevents, and must always prevent, the South from standing with the slightest confidence of safety on that policy which it proclaims to be its only ground of safety. Nothing but a reversal of the current of our Northern history for half a century, nothing, in fact, but the enslavement of labour at the North, could in the nature of things, give that security, even temporarily, to the capitalists of labour at the South which they need.[75] Some demand of the South upon the nation, acquiescence in which it holds essential to its safety, must then at length be distinctly refused. And when, ten or twenty years hence, if so be, this shall come to pass, what then is to happen to us?

Dissolution?

This is what many Southern politicians avow, whenever they contemplate such a contingency.

Why?

Because it is known that the people of the North are unwilling that the Union should be dissolved, whereas they have no indisposition to the only course which it will then be possible for the South to adopt, for the sake of increasing the security of its citizens, against insurrectionary movements of its slaves. This plainly would be to arrange a systematic opportunity and method for the slaves to labour, whenever they chose, and as much as they might choose, in an orderly, peaceable, and wise way, for their own release and improvement, each man for himself and those most dear to him; each man by himself, independently, openly, with no occasion for combination, secrecy, plots, or conspiracy. To prepare, for those disposed to avail themselves of it, a field, either here or elsewhere, in which their capability and Godlike reason, such as it may be, little or great, need not be forced by law to rust unused, or brighten _only_ to the material advantage of a master. This I must think to be consciously, even now, the only final course of safety before every reflective Southern mind. This, or——dissolution, and the chances of war.

* * * * *

[The above was written before Mr. Lincoln was spoken of as a candidate for the Presidency.]

APPENDIX (A.)

THE CONDITION OF VIRGINIA.—STATISTICS.

1.

The _Richmond Enquirer_, a strong and influential pro-slavery newspaper of Virginia, in advocating some railroad projects, thus describes the progress of the State relatively to that of some of the Free States, since the Revolution. (Dec. 29, 1852.)

“Virginia, anterior to the Revolution, and up to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, contained more wealth and a larger population than any other State 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 favour of the former of $643,608,134. The unwrought 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.”

The same journal adds, on another occasion:—

“In no State of the Confederacy do the facilities for manufacturing operations exist in greater profusion than in Virginia. Every condition essential to success in these employments is found here in prodigal abundance, and in a peculiarly convenient combination. First, we have a limitless supply of water power—the cheapest of motors—in localities easy of access. So abundant is this supply of water power that no value is attached to it distinct from the adjacent lands, except in the vicinity of the larger towns. On the Potomac and its tributaries; on the Rappahannock; on the James and its tributaries; on the Roanoke and its tributaries; on the Holston, the Kanawha, and other streams, numberless sites may now be found where the supply of water power is sufficient for the purposes of a Lawrence or a Lowell. Nor is there any want of material for building at these localities; timber and granite are abundant; and, to complete the circle of advantages, the climate is genial and healthful, and the soil eminently productive. * * * Another advantage which Virginia possesses, for the manufacture of cotton, is the proximity of its mills to the raw material. At the present prices of the staple, the value of this advantage is estimated at 10 per cent.”

The _Lynchburg Virginian_, another newspaper of respectability, having a similar purpose in hand, namely, to induce capitalists to invest their money in enterprises that shall benefit the State, observes that—

“The coal fields of Virginia are the most extensive in the world, and her coal is of the best and purest quality. Her iron deposits are altogether inexhaustible, and in many instances so pure that it is malleable in its primitive state; and many of these deposits in the immediate vicinity of extensive coal-fields. She has, too, very extensive deposits of copper, lead, and gypsum. Her rivers are numerous and bold, generally with fall enough for extensive water power.

“A remarkable feature in the mining and manufacturing prospects of Virginia is, the ease and economy with which all her minerals are mined; instead of being, as in England and elsewhere, generally imbedded deep within the bowels of the earth, from which they can be got only with great labour and at great cost, ours are found everywhere on the hills and slopes, with their ledges dipping in the direction of the plains below. Why, then, should not Virginia at once employ at least half of her labour and capital in mining and manufacturing? Richmond could as profitably manufacture all cotton and woollen goods as Lowell, or any other town in New England. Why should not Lynchburg, with all her promised facility of getting coal and pig metal, manufacture all articles of iron and steel just as cheaply, and yet as profitably, as any portion of the Northern States? Why should not every town and village on the line of every railroad in the State, erect their shops, in which they may manufacture a thousand articles of daily consumption, just as good and cheap as they may be made anywhere? * * *

“Dependent upon Europe and the North for almost every yard of cloth, and every coat, and boot, and hat we wear; for our axes, scythes, tubs, and buckets—in short, for everything except our bread and meat!—it must occur to the South that if our relations with the North should ever be severed—and how soon they may be, none can know (may God avert it long!)—we would, in all the South, not be able to clothe ourselves. We could not fell our forests, plough our fields, nor mow our meadows. In fact, we would be reduced to a state more abject than we are willing to look at even prospectively. And yet, with all these things staring us in the face, we shut our eyes, and go on blindfold.”

At the Convention for the formation of the Virginia State Agricultural Society, in 1852, the draft of an address to the farmers of the State was read, approved, and once adopted by the Convention. The vote by which it was adopted was soon afterwards reconsidered, and it was again approved and adopted. A second time it was reconsidered; and finally it was rejected, on the ground that there were admissions in it that would feed the fanaticism of the Abolitionists. No one argued against it on the ground of the falsity or inaccuracy of these admissions. Twenty of the most respectable proprietors in the State, immediately afterwards, believing it to contain “matter of grave import,” which should not be suppressed for such a reason, united in requesting a copy of it for publication. In the note of these gentlemen to the author, they express the belief that Virginia now “possesses the richest soil, most genial climate, and cheapest labour on earth.” The author of the address, in his reply, says: “Fanaticism is a fool for whose vagaries I am not responsible. I am a pro-slavery man—I believe it, at this time, impossible to abolish it, and not desirable if it were possible.”

The address was accordingly published, and I make the following extracts from it:—

“ADDRESS TO THE FARMERS OF VIRGINIA.

“‘The Southern States stand foremost in agricultural labour, though they hold but the third rank in population.’ At the head of these Southern States, in production, in extent of territory, in climate, in soil, and in population, stands the Commonwealth of Virginia. She is a nation of farmers. Eight-tenths of her industry is expended upon the soil; but less than one-third of her domain is in pasturage, or under the plough.

“Out of somewhat more than thirty-nine millions of acres, she tills but little over ten millions of acres, or about twenty-six and a quarter per cent., whilst New York has subdued about forty-one per cent., or twelve and a quarter out of her twenty-nine and a half millions of acres: and Massachusetts, with her sterile soil and inhospitable climate, has reclaimed from the forest, the quarry, and the marsh, about forty-two and a half per cent., or two and one-eighth out of her little territory of five millions of acres. Yet, according to the census of 1840, only six-tenths of the labour of New York, and four-tenths of that of Massachusetts, or, relatively, one-fifth and two-fifths less than our own, is expended upon agriculture. * * *

“The live stock of Virginia are worth only three dollars and thirty-one cents for every arable acre; but in New York they are worth six dollars and seven cents, and in Massachusetts four dollars and fifty-two cents.

“The proportion of hay for the same quantity of land is, for Virginia, eighty-one pounds; for New York, six hundred and seventy-nine pounds; for Massachusetts, six hundred and eighty-four pounds. * * *

“With access to the same markets, and with hundreds of mechanics of our own, who can vie with the best Northern manufacturers, we find that our implements are inferior, that the New York farmer spends upon his nearly three times as much as we do upon ours, and the Massachusetts farmer more than double. * * *

“Manure is indispensable to good husbandry. Judging from the history of agriculture in all other countries, we may safely say, that farming can never attain to continued perfection where manure is not put on with an unsparing hand. By far the larger part of this can only be made by stock, which should, at the same time, be made the source of profit, at least sufficient to pay the cost of their keep, so that, _other things being equal_, it is a safe rule to estimate the condition of a farming district by the amount of live stock it may possess, and the provision made for their sustenance. Applied in this instance, we see that the New York farmer has invested in live stock two dollars and seventy-six cents, and the Massachusetts farmer one dollar and twenty-one cents per acre more than the Virginia farmer. In pasturage we cannot tell the difference. It is well, perhaps, for the honour of the State, that we cannot. But in hay, New York has five hundred and ninety-eight pounds, and Massachusetts six hundred and three pounds more per acre than we have. This, however, does not present the true state of the case. Land-locked by mountain barriers, as yet impassable for the ordinary agricultural staples, or debarred from their production by distance and prohibitory rates of transportation, most of the wealth and exports of many considerable portions of our State consists of live stock alone. What proportion these parts bear to the whole, we have been unable definitely to ascertain; but it is, no doubt, so great as to warrant us in assuming a much more considerable disparity than the statistics show in the live stock of the whole Atlantic slope, as compared with New York and Massachusetts. And we shall appreciate, still more highly, the skill of the Northern farmer, if we reflect that a readier market for every, the most trivial, product of his farm, operates as a constant temptation to break up his rotation and diminish his stock.

“In the above figures, carefully calculated from the data of authentic documents,[76] we find no cause for self-gratulation, but some food for meditation. They are not without use to those who would improve the future by the past. They show that we have not done our part in the bringing of land into cultivation; that, notwithstanding natural advantages which greatly exceed those of the two States drawn into parallel with Virginia, we are yet behind them both—that with forty and sixty per cent. respectively of their industry devoted to other pursuits, into which it has been lured by prospects of greater gain, they have done more than we have done. * * *

“Whilst our population has increased for the last ten years, in a ratio of 11·66, that of New York has increased in a ratio of 27·52, and that of Massachusetts at the still heavier and more startling rate of 34·81. With a territorial area thirty per cent. larger than New York, we have but little more than one-third of her Congressional representation; and Massachusetts, only one-eighth our size, comes within two of our number of representatives, we being cut down to thirteen, while she rises to eleven. And thus we, who once swayed the councils of the Union, find our power gone, and our influence on the wane, at a time when both are of vital importance to our prosperity, if not to our safety. As other States accumulate the means of material greatness, and glide past us on the road to wealth and empire, we slight the warnings of dull statistics, and drive lazily along the field of ancient customs, or stop the _plough_, to speed the _politician_—should we not, in too many cases, say with more propriety, the _demagogue_?

“State pride is a good thing; it is one mode in which patriotism is manifested. But it is not always a wise one. Certainly not, when it makes us content on small grounds. And when it smothers up improvement in self-satisfaction, it is a most pernicious thing. We have much to be proud of in Virginia. In intellect and fitness to command, in personal and social qualities, in high tone and noble bearing, in loyalty, in generosity, and magnanimity, and disinterestedness, above all, in moral purity, we once stood—let us hope, still stand—preeminent among our sister States. But the possession and practice of these virtues do not comprise our whole duty as men or as citizens. The great decree which has gone forth ordaining that we shall ‘increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth,’ enjoins upon us quite other duties, which cannot be neglected with impunity; so we have found out by experience—for we _have_ neglected these duties. And when we contemplate our field of labour, and the work we have done in it, we cannot but observe the sad contrast between capacity and achievement. With a wide-spread domain, with a kindly soil, with a climate whose sun radiates fertility, and whose very dews distil abundance, we find our inheritance so wasted that the eye aches to behold the prospect.”

2.

The Census of 1850 gives the following values to agricultural land in the adjoining States of Virginia and Pennsylvania.

In Virginia. In Pennsylvania. No. of acres improved land in farms, 10,360,135 8,626,619 ” unimproved, 15,792,176 6,294,728 Cash value of farms, $216,401,543 $407,876,099 —$8 an acre. —$25 an acre.

Considering that, at the Revolution, Virginia had nearly twice the population of Pennsylvania, was in possession of much more wealth or disposable capital, and had much the best natural facilities for external commerce and internal communication, if her political and social constitution had been and had continued equally good, and her people equally industrious and enterprising with those of Pennsylvania, there is no reason why the value of her farms should not have been, at this time, at least equal to those of Pennsylvania. Were it so, it appears that Virginia, in that particular alone, would now be richer than she is by four hundred and thirty millions of dollars.

If it should be thought that this difference between the value of land in Virginia and Pennsylvania is in some degree due to more fertile soils in the latter, a similar comparison may be made with the other adjoining Free State, and old State of New Jersey, the climate of which, owing to its vicinity to the ocean, differs imperceptibly from that of Virginia, while its soil is decidedly less fertile, taking both States on an average. The average value of farming-land in New Jersey is recorded at $44.

Give this value to the Virginia farms, and the difference between it and their present value would buy, at a large valuation, all the slaves now in the State, send them to Africa, provide each family of them five hundred dollars to start with when they reached there, and leave still a surplus which, divided among the present white population of the State, would give between two and three thousand dollars to each family.

Some Southern writers have lately objected to comparisons of density of population, as indications of the prosperity of communities. Between two adjoining communities, however, where there are no restrictions upon the movements of the populations, and when the people are so ready to move as both those of Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and of Virginia have shown themselves to be, the price of land must indicate with considerable exactness the comparative value or desirableness of it, all things considered, to live upon. The Virginians do not admit, and have no occasion to do so, that Pennsylvania and New Jersey have any advantage over Virginia, in soil, in climate, or in any natural quality.

3.

In intellectual productions, the same general comparative barrenness is noticeable.

_From the Richmond Whig._

“We receive nearly all our books from Northern or foreign authors—gotten up, printed by Northern or foreign publishers—while we have among us numberless men of ripe scholarship, profound acquirements, elegant and forcible writers—men willing to devote themselves to such labour, _only a Southern book is not patronized_. The North usually scowls at it, ridicules it, or damns it with faint praise; and the South takes on a like hue and complexion and neglects it. We have printers and publishers able, willing, and competent to publish, but, such is the _apathy_ on the part of Southern people, that it involves hazard to Southern publishers to put them out. Indeed, until recently, almost all the publications, even of Southern books, issued (and that was their only hope of success) from Northern houses. The last chance now of getting a Southern book sold, is to manage to secure the favourable notice of the Northern press, and then the South buys it. Our magazines and periodicals languish for support.”

Mr. Howison, “The Virginia Historian,” observes:

“The question might be asked, Where is the literature of Virginia? and it would not be easily answered. It is a melancholy fact, that her people have never been a reading people. In the mass they have shown an indifference to polite literature and education in general, depressing to the mind that wishes to see them respectable and happy.”

“It is with pain,” says the same authority, “that we are compelled to speak of the horrible cloud of ignorance that rests on Virginia,” and he computes that (1848) there are in the State 166,000 youth, between seven and sixteen years of age, and of these 126,000 attend no school at all, and receive no education except what can be imparted by poor and ignorant parents. Besides these, he reckons 449,087 slaves and 48,852 free negroes, with few exceptions, wholly uneducated.

“The policy which discourages further extension of knowledge among them is necessary: but the fact remains unchanged, that they exist among us, _a huge mass of mind, almost entirely unenlightened_. We fear that the most favourable estimates will leave, in our State, 683,000 rational beings who are destitute of the merest rudiments of knowledge.”

APPENDIX (B.)

THE SLAVE TRADE IN VIRGINIA.

_From Chambers’s Journal._

“The exposure of ordinary goods in a store is not more open to the public than are the sales of slaves in Richmond. By consulting the local newspapers, I learned that the sales take place by auction every morning in the offices of certain brokers, who, as I understood by the terms of their advertisements, purchased or received slaves for sale on commission.

“Where the street was in which the brokers conducted their business, I did not know; but the discovery was easily made. Rambling down the main street in the city, I found that the subject of my search was a narrow and short thoroughfare, turning off to the left, and terminating in a similar cross thoroughfare. Both streets, lined with brick houses, were dull and silent. There was not a person to whom I could put a question. Looking about, I observed the office of a commission agent, and into it I stepped. Conceive the idea of a large shop with two windows, and a door between; no shelving or counters inside; the interior a spacious, dismal apartment, not well swept; the only furniture a desk at one of the windows, and a bench at one side of the shop, three feet high, with two steps to it from the floor. I say, conceive the idea of this dismal-looking place, with nobody in it but three negro children, who, as I entered, were playing at auctioneering each other. An intensely black little negro, of four or five years of age, was standing on the bench, or block, as it is called, with an equally black girl, about a year younger, by his side, whom he was pretending to sell by bids to another black child, who was rolling about the floor.

“My appearance did not interrupt the merriment. The little auctioneer continued his mimic play, and appeared to enjoy the joke of selling the girl, who stood demurely by his side.

“‘Fifty dolla for de gal—fifty dolla—fifty dolla—I sell dis here fine gal for fifty dolla,’ was uttered with extraordinary volubility by the woolly-headed urchin, accompanied with appropriate gestures, in imitation, doubtless, of the scenes he had seen enacted daily on the spot. I spoke a few words to the little creatures, but was scarcely understood and the fun went on as if I had not been present: so I left them, happy in rehearsing what was likely soon to be their own fate.

“At another office of a similar character, on the opposite side of the street, I was more successful. Here, on inquiry, I was respectfully informed, by a person in attendance, that the sale would take place the following morning at half-past nine o’clock.

“Next day I set out accordingly, after breakfast, for the scene of operations, in which there was now a little more life. Two or three persons were lounging about, smoking cigars; and, looking along the street, I observed that three red flags were projected from the doors of those offices in which sales were to occur. On each flag was pinned a piece of paper, notifying the articles to be sold. The number of lots was not great. On the first was the following announcement:—‘Will be sold this morning, at half-past nine o’clock, a Man and a Boy.’

“It was already the appointed hour; but as no company had assembled, I entered and took a seat by the fire. The office, provided with a few deal forms and chairs, a desk at one of the windows, and a block accessible by a few steps, was tenantless, save by a gentleman who was arranging papers at the desk, and to whom I had addressed myself on the previous evening. Minute after minute passed, and still nobody entered. There was clearly no hurry in going to business. I felt almost like an intruder, and had formed the resolution of departing, in order to look into the other offices, when the person referred to left his desk, and came and seated himself opposite to me at the fire.

“‘You are an Englishman,’ said he, looking me steadily in the face; ‘do you want to purchase?’

“‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I am an Englishman; but I do not intend to purchase. I am travelling about for information, and I shall feel obliged by your letting me know the prices at which negro servants are sold.’

“‘I will do so with much pleasure,’ was the answer; ‘do you mean field-hands or house-servants?’

“‘All kinds,’ I replied; ‘I wish to get all the information I can.’

“With much politeness, the gentleman stepped to his desk, and began to draw up a note of prices. This, however, seemed to require careful consideration; and while the note was preparing, a lanky person, in a wide-awake hat, and chewing tobacco, entered, and took the chair just vacated. He had scarcely seated himself, when, on looking towards the door, I observed the subjects of sale—the man and boy indicated by the paper on the red flag—enter together, and quietly walk to a form at the back of the shop, whence, as the day was chilly, they edged themselves towards the fire, in the corner where I was seated. I was now between the two parties—the white man on the right, and the old and young negro on the left—and I waited to see what would take place.

“The sight of the negroes at once attracted the attention of Wide-awake. Chewing with vigour, he kept keenly eyeing the pair, as if to see what they were good for. Under this searching gaze, the man and boy were a little abashed, but said nothing. Their appearance had little of the repulsiveness we are apt to associate with the idea of slaves. They were dressed in a gray woollen coat, pants, and waistcoat, coloured cotton neckcloths, clean shirts, coarse woollen stockings, and stout shoes. The man wore a black hat; the boy was bareheaded. Moved by a sudden impulse, Wide-awake left his seat, and rounding the back of my chair, began to grasp at the man’s arms, as if to feel their muscular capacity. He then examined his hands and fingers; and, last of all, told him to open his mouth and show his teeth, which he did in a submissive manner. Having finished these examinations, Wide-awake resumed his seat, and chewed on in silence as before.

“I thought it was but fair that I should now have my turn of investigation, and accordingly asked the elder negro what was his age. He said he did not know. I next inquired how old the boy was. He said he was seven years of age. On asking the man if the boy was his son, he said he was not—he was his cousin. I was going into other particulars, when the office-keeper approached, and handed me the note he had been preparing; at the same time making the observation that the market was dull at present, and that there never could be a more favourable opportunity of buying. I thanked him for the trouble which he had taken; and now submit a copy of his price-current:

Best Men, 18 to 25 years old 1200 to 1300 dollars. Fair do. do. do. 950 to 1050 ” Boys, 5 feet 850 to 950 ” Do., 4 feet 8 inches 700 to 800 ” Do., 4 feet 5 inches 500 to 600 ” Do., 4 feet 375 to 450 ” Young Women 800 to 1000 ” Girls, 5 feet 750 to 850 ” Do., 4 feet 9 inches 700 to 750 ” Do., 4 feet 350 to 450 ”

(Signed) _________________________

Richmond, Virginia.

“Leaving this document for future consideration, I pass on to a history of the day’s proceedings. It was now ten minutes to ten o’clock, and Wide-awake and I being alike tired of waiting, we went off in quest of sales further up the street. Passing the second office, in which also nobody was to be seen, we were more fortunate at the third. Here according to the announcement on the paper stuck to the flag, there were to be sold, ‘A woman and three children; a young woman, three men, a middle-aged woman, and a little boy.’ Already a crowd had met, composed, I should think, of persons mostly from the cotton-plantations of the South. A few were seated near a fire on the right-hand side, and others stood round an iron stove in the middle of the apartment. The whole place had a dilapidated appearance. From a back window, there was a view into a ruinous court-yard; beyond which, in a hollow, accessible by a side lane, stood a shabby brick house, on which the word _Jail_ was inscribed in large black letters on a white ground. I imagined it to be a depôt for the reception of negroes.

“On my arrival, and while making these preliminary observations, the lots for sale had not made their appearance. In about five minutes afterwards, they were ushered in, one after the other, under the charge of a mulatto, who seemed to act as principal assistant. I saw no whips, chains, or any other engine of force. Nor did such appear to be required. All the lots took their seats on two long forms near the stove; none showed any signs of resistance; nor did any one utter a word. Their manner was that of perfect humility and resignation.

“As soon as all were seated, there was a general examination of their respective merits, by feeling their arms, looking into their mouths, and investigating the quality of their hands and fingers—this last being evidently an important particular. Yet there was no abrupt rudeness in making these examinations—no coarse or domineering language was employed. The three negro men were dressed in the usual manner—in gray woollen clothing. The woman, with three children, excited my peculiar attention. She was neatly attired, with a coloured handkerchief bound around her head, and wore a white apron over her gown. Her children were all girls, one of them a baby at the breast three months old, and the others two and three years of age respectively, rigged out with clean white pinafores. There was not a tear or an emotion visible in the whole party. Everything seemed to be considered as a matter of course; and the change of owners was possibly looked forward to with as much indifference as ordinary hired servants anticipate a removal from one employer to another.

“While intending purchasers were proceeding with personal examinations of the several lots, I took the liberty of putting a few questions to the mother of the children. The following was our conversation:—

“‘Are you a married woman?’

“‘Yes, sir.’

“‘How many children have you had?’

“‘Seven.’

“‘Where is your husband?’

“‘In Madison county.’

“‘When did you part from him?’

“‘On Wednesday—two days ago.’

“‘Were you sorry to part from him?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, with a deep sigh; ‘my heart was a’most broke.’

“‘Why is your master selling you?’

“‘I don’t know—he wants money to buy some land—suppose he sells me for that.’

“There might not be a word of truth in these answers, for I had no means of testing their correctness; but the woman seemed to speak unreservedly, and I am inclined to think that she said nothing but what, if necessary, could be substantiated. I spoke, also, to the young woman who was seated near her. She, like the others, was perfectly black, and appeared stout and healthy, of which some of the persons present assured themselves by feeling her arms and ankles, looking into her mouth, and causing her to stand up. She told me she had several brothers and sisters, but did not know where they were. She said she was a house-servant, and would be glad to be bought by a good master—looking at me, as if I should not be unacceptable.

“I have said that there was an entire absence of emotion in the looks of men, women, and children, thus seated preparatory to being sold. This does not correspond with the ordinary accounts of slave-sales, which are represented as tearful and harrowing. My belief is, that none of the parties felt deeply on the subject, or at least that any distress they experienced was but momentary—soon passed away, and was forgotten. One of my reasons for this opinion rests on a trifling incident which occurred. While waiting for the commencement of the sale, one of the gentlemen present amused himself with a pointer dog, which, at command, stood on its hind legs, and took pieces of bread from his pocket. These tricks greatly entertained the row of negroes, old and young; and the poor woman, whose heart three minutes before was almost broken, now laughed as heartily as any one.

“‘Sale is going to commence—this way, gentlemen,’ cried a man at the door to a number of loungers outside; and all having assembled, the mulatto assistant led the woman and her children to the block, which he helped her to mount. There she stood, with her infant at the breast, and one of her girls at each side. The auctioneer, a handsome, gentlemanly personage, took his place, with one foot on an old deal chair with a broken back, and the other raised on the somewhat more elevated block. It was a striking scene.

“‘Well, gentlemen,’ began the salesman, ‘here is a capital woman and her three children, all in good health—what do you say for them? Give me an offer. (Nobody speaks.) I put up the whole lot at 850 dollars—850 dollars—850 dollars (speaking very fast)—850 dollars. Will no one advance upon that? A very extraordinary bargain, gentlemen. A fine, healthy baby. Hold it up. (Mulatto goes up the first step of the block; takes the baby from the woman’s breast, and holds it aloft with one hand, so as to show that it was a veritable sucking baby.) That will do. A woman, still young, and three children, all for 850 dollars. An advance, if you please, gentlemen. (A voice bids 860.) Thank you, sir, 860; any one bids more? (A second voice says, 870; and so on the bidding goes as far as 890 dollars, when it stops.) That won’t do, gentlemen. I cannot take such a low price. (After a pause, addressing the mulatto): She may go down.’ Down from the block the woman and her children were therefore conducted by the assistant, and, as if nothing had occurred, they calmly resumed their seats by the stove.

“The next lot brought forward was one of the men. The assistant beckoning to him with his hand, requested him to come behind a canvas screen, of two leaves, which was standing near the back window. The man placidly rose, and having been placed behind the screen, was ordered to take off his clothes, which he did without a word or look of remonstrance. About a dozen gentlemen crowded to the spot while the poor fellow was stripping himself, and as soon as he stood on the floor, bare from top to toe, a most rigorous scrutiny of his person was instituted. The clear black skin, back and front, was viewed all over for sores from disease; and there was no part of his body left unexamined. The man was told to open and shut his hands, asked if he could pick cotton, and every tooth in his head was scrupulously looked at. The investigation being at an end, he was ordered to dress himself; and having done so, was requested to walk to the block.

The ceremony of offering him for competition was gone through as before, but no one would bid. The other two men, after undergoing similar examinations behind the screen, were also put up, but with the same result. Nobody would bid for them, and they were all sent back to their seats. It seemed as if the company had conspired not to buy anything that day. Probably some imperfections had been detected in the personal qualities of the negroes. Be this as it may, the auctioneer, perhaps a little out of temper from his want of success, walked off to his desk, and the affair was so far at an end.

“‘This way, gentlemen—this way!’ was heard from a voice outside, and the company immediately hived off to the second establishment. At this office there was a young woman, and also a man, for sale. The woman was put up first at 500 dollars; and possessing some recommendable qualities, the bidding for her was run as high as 710 dollars, at which she was knocked down to a purchaser. The man, after the customary examination behind the screen, was put up at 700 dollars; but a small imperfection having been observed in his person, no one would bid for him; and he was ordered down.

“‘This way, gentlemen, this way—down the street, if you please!’ was now shouted by a person in the employment of the first firm, to whose office all very willingly adjourned—one migratory company, it will be perceived, serving all the slave-auctions in the place. In going in the crowd, I went to see what should be the fate of the man and boy, with whom I had already had some communication.

“There the pair, the two cousins, sat by the fire, just where I had left them an hour ago. The boy was put up first.

“‘Come along, my man—jump up; there’s a good boy!’ said one of the partners, a bulky and respectable looking person, with a gold chain and bunch of seals; at the same time getting on the block. With alacrity the little fellow came forward, and, mounting the steps, stood by his side. The forms in front were filled by the company; and as I seated myself, I found that my old companion, Wide-awake, was close at hand, still chewing and spitting at a great rate.

“‘Now, gentlemen,’ said the auctioneer, putting his hand on the shoulder of the boy, ‘here is a very fine boy, seven years of age, warranted sound—what do you say for him? I put him up at 500 dollars—500 dollars (speaking quick, his right hand raised up, and coming down on the open palm of his left)—500 dollars. Any one say more than 500 dollars? (560 is bid.) 560 dollars. Nonsense! Just look at him. See how high he is. (He draws the lot in front of him, and shows that the little fellow’s head comes up to his breast.) You see he is a fine, tall, healthy boy. Look at his hands.’

“Several step forward, and cause the boy to open and shut his hands—the flexibility of the small fingers, black on the one side, and whitish on the other, being well looked to. The hands, and also the mouth, having given satisfaction, an advance is made to 570, then to 580 dollars.

“‘Gentlemen, that is a very poor price for a boy of this size. (Addressing the lot)—Go down, my boy, and show them how you can run.’

“The boy, seemingly happy to do as he was bid, went down from the block, and ran smartly across the floor several times; the eyes of every one in the room following him.

“‘Now that will do. Get up again. (Boy mounts the block, the steps being rather deep for his short legs; but the auctioneer kindly lends him a hand.) Come, gentlemen, you see this is a first-rate lot. (590—600—610—620—630 dollars are bid.) I will sell him for 630 dollars. (Right hand coming down on left.) Last call. 630 dollars, once—630 dollars, twice. (A pause; hand sinks.) Gone!’

“The boy having descended, the man was desired to come forward; and after the usual scrutiny behind a screen, he took his place on the block.

“‘Well, now, gentlemen,’ said the auctioneer, ‘here is a right prime lot. Look at this man; strong, healthy, able-bodied; could not be a better hand for field-work. He can drive a waggon or anything. What do you say for him? I offer the man at the low price of 800 dollars—he is well worth 1200 dollars. Come, make an advance, if you please. 800 dollars said for the man (a bid); thank you; 810 dollars—810 dollars—810 dollars (several bids)—820—830—850—860—going at 860—going. Gentlemen, this is far below his value. A strong-boned man, fit for any kind of heavy work. Just take a look at him. (Addressing the lot): Walk down. (Lot dismounts, and walks from one side of the shop to the other. When about to reascend the block, a gentleman, who is smoking a cigar, examines his mouth with his fingers. Lot resumes his place.) Pray, gentlemen, be quick (continues the auctioneer); I must sell him, and 860 dollars are only bid for the man—860 dollars. (A fresh run of bids to 945 dollars.) 945 dollars, once—945 dollars, twice (looking slowly round, to see if all were done), 945 dollars. Going—going—(hand drops)—gone!’

“Such were a forenoon’s experiences in the slave-market of Richmond. Everything is described precisely as it occurred, without passion or prejudice. It would not have been difficult to be sentimental on a subject which appeals so strongly to the feelings, but I have preferred telling the simple truth. In a subsequent chapter I shall endeavour to offer some general views of slavery in its social and political relations.”

APPENDIX (C.)

COST OF LABOUR IN THE BORDER STATES.

From a native Virginian, who has resided in New York:

“_To the Editor of the N. Y. Daily Times._

“SIR—You will not object, I think, to receive an endorsement from a Southern man, of the statements contained in number seven of ‘Letters on the Productions, Industry, and Resources of the Southern States’ [by Mr. Olmsted], published in your issue on Thursday last * * *

“Where you would see one white labourer on a Northern farm, scores of blacks should appear on the Virginian plantation, _the best of them only performing each day one-fourth a white man’s daily task, and all requiring an incessant watch to get even this small modicum of labour_. Yet they eat as much again as a white man, must have their two suits of clothes and shoes yearly, and although the heartiest, healthiest looking men and women anywhere on earth, actually lose for their owners or employers one-sixth their time on account of real or pretended sickness. Be assured, our model Virginia farmer has his hands full, and is not to be envied as a jolly fox-hunting idler, lording it over ‘ranks of slaves in chains.’ No, sir; he must be up by ‘the dawn’s early light,’ and head the column, direct in person the commencing operations, urging, and coaxing; must praise and punish—but too glad to reward the meritorious, granting liberty (_i. e._ leave of absence) often to his own servant, that he dare not take himself, because he must not leave home for fear something will go wrong ere his return. Hence but too many give up, to overseers or other irresponsible persons, the care and management of their estates, rather than undergo such constant annoyance and confinement. Poor culture, scanty crops, and worn-out land, is the inevitable result; and yet, harassed and trammeled as they are, no one but a Southerner regards them with the slightest degree of compassion or even forbearance; and our good friends, the Abolitionists, would have ‘all the rest of mankind’ rank them with pirates and cut-throats. But my object in this communication is not to sympathize with nor ask sympathy on behalf of slaveholders. For, however sinning or sinned against, they seem quite able to take their own part, if molested; and are remarkably indifferent, withal, as to the opinions expressed by ignorant ranters concerning them.

“If I have the ability, my desire is to draw a parallel between the state and condition of Northern and Southern farmers and farming. The Northern farmer does undoubtedly experience a full share of those troubles and cares attendant even upon the most easy and favourable system of farming; but, sir, can he have any such responsibility as that resting upon the owner of from 50 to 300 ignorant, lazy negroes?

* * * * *

“You must plough deep, follow up quickly, and sow with powerful fertilizers, attend closely to the growing crop, gather in rapidly before blight or mildew can come and destroy, says our Northern farmer. On a farm of three hundred acres, thus managed with five hands, two extra during harvest, I can raise thirty bushels of wheat to the acre. Now picture the condition of him South, and hear his answer. With from three to fifteen hundred acres of land, and a host of negroes great and small, his cares and troubles are without end. ‘The hands,’ able men and women, to say nothing of children, and old ones laid by from age or other infirmity, have wants innumerable. Some are sick, others pretend to be so, many obstinate, indolent, or fractious—each class requires different treatment; so that without mentioning the actual daily wants, as provisions, clothing, etc., etc., the poor man’s time, and thoughts—indeed, every faculty of mind—must be exercised on behalf of those who have no minds of their own.

“His answer, then, to the Northern farmer is: ‘I have not one hand on my place capable and willing to do the work you name.’ They tell me that ‘five of them could not perform the task required of one.’ They have never been used to do it, and no amount of force or persuasion will induce them to try. Their task is so much per day; all over that I agree to pay them for, at the same rate I allow free labourers—but ’tis seldom they make extra time, except to get money enough to buy tobacco, rum, or sometimes fine clothes. Can it be wondered at that systematic farming, such as we see North and East, is unknown or not practised to any great degree South? The two systems will not harmonize.

“R. J. W.”

From a native New Yorker, who has resided in Virginia:

“_To the Editor of the New York Daily Times._

“I have read with deep interest the series of letters from the South, published in your columns. Circumstances have made me quite familiar with the field of your correspondent’s investigation, much more familiar than he is at present, and yet I am happy to say, that his letters are more satisfactory than any I have ever seen relating to the South. It is now about ten years since, going from this State, I first became familiar with those facts in regard to the results of slave labour, etc., that your correspondent and his readers are so much surprised at. I have talked those subjects over as he is doing, with the planters along the shores of the Chesapeake, and on both sides of the James River, through the Tidewater, the middle and the mountainous districts east of the Blue Ridge, and in many of those rich counties in the Valley of Virginia. I may add that, subsequently, spending my winters at the South for my health, I have become well nigh as familiar with the States of North and South Carolina, and Georgia, as I am with Virginia. I have, therefore, almost of necessity, given not a little thought to the questions your correspondent is discussing.

“His statement, in regard to the comparative value of slave and free-labour, will surprise those who have given little or no attention to the subject. I wish to confirm his statements on this subject. In Eastern Virginia I have repeatedly been told that the task of one cord of wood a day, or five cords a week, rain or shine, is the general task, and one of the most profitable day’s work that the slave does for his master. And this, it should be remembered, is generally pine wood, cut from trees as straight and beautiful as ever grew. The reason of this ‘profitableness’ is the fact that the labour requires so little mental effort. The grand secret of the difference between free and slave labour is, that the latter is without intelligence, and without motive. If the former, in Western New York, has a piece of work to perform, the first thought is, how it can be done with the least labour, and the most expeditiously. He thinks, he plans, before he commences, and while about his labour. His mind labours as much as his body, and this mental labour saves a vast deal of physical labour. Besides this, he is urged on by the strongest motives. He enjoys the products of his labour. The more intelligent and earnest his labours, the richer are his rewards. Slave labour is exactly the opposite of this. It is unintelligent labour—labour without thought—without plan—without motive. It is little more than brute force. To one who has not witnessed it, it is utterly inconceivable how little labour a slave, or a company of slaves, will accomplish in a given time. Their awkwardness, their slowness, the utter absence of all skill and ingenuity in accomplishing the work before them, are absolutely painful to one who has been accustomed to seeing work done with any sort of spirit and life. Often they spend hours in doing what, with a little thought, might be despatched in a few moments, or perhaps avoided altogether. This is a necessary result of employing labour which is without intelligence and without motive. I have often thought of a remark made to me by a planter, in New Kent County, Virginia. We were riding past a field where some of his hands were making a sort of wicker-work fence, peculiar to Eastern Virginia. ‘There,’ said he, in a decidedly fretted tone, ‘those “boys” have been —— days in making that piece of fence.’ I expressed my astonishment that they could have spent so much time, and yet have accomplished so very little. He assured me it was so—and after a slight pause, the tones of his voice entirely changed, said: ‘Well, I believe they have done as well as I would in their circumstances!’ And so it is. The slave is without motive, without inducement to exertion. His food, his clothing, and all his wants are supplied as they are, without care on his part, and when these are supplied he has nothing more to hope for. He can make no provision for old age, he can lay up nothing for his children, he has no voice at all in the disposal of the results of his earnings. What cares he whether his labour is productive or unproductive. His principal care seems to be to accomplish just as little as possible. I have said that the slaves were without ingenuity—I must qualify that remark. I have been amused and astonished at their exceeding ingenuity in avoiding and slighting the work that was required of them. It has often seemed to me that their principal mental efforts were in this direction, and I think your correspondent will find universal testimony that they have decided talent in this line.

“H. W. P.”

In a volume entitled “Notes on Uncle Tom’s Cabin; being a Logical Answer to its Allegations and Inferences against Slavery as an Institution,” by the Rev. E. J. Stearns, of Maryland (much the most thorough review of that work made from the Southern stand-point), the author, who is a New-Englander by birth, shows, by an elaborate calculation, that in Maryland, the cost of a negro, at twenty-one years of age, has been, to the man who raised him, eight hundred dollars. Six _per cent._ interest on this cost, with one and three-quarters per cent. for life insurance, per annum, makes the lowest wages of a negro, under the most favourable circumstances, sixty-two dollars a year (or five dollars a month), _paid in advance_, in the shape of food and clothing. The author, whose object is to prove that the slaveholder is not guilty, as Mrs. Stowe intimates, of _stealing_ the negroes’ labour, proceeds, as follows, to show that he pays a great deal more for it than Mrs. Stowe’s neighbours in New England do, for the labour they hire:—

“If now we add to this (what every New-Englander who has lived at the South _knows_), that Quashy does not do more than one-third, or, at the very utmost, one-half as much work as an able-bodied labourer on a farm at the North; and that, for this he receives, besides the five dollars above mentioned, his food, clothing, and shelter, with medical attendance and nursing when sick, and no deduction for lost time, even though he should be sick for years, while the ‘farm-hand’ at the North gets only ten or twelve dollars, and has to clothe himself out of it, and pay his own doctor’s and nurse’s bill in sickness, to say nothing of lost time, I think we shall come to the conclusion if there has been stealing anywhere, it has not been from Quashy.”—P. 25.

“I recollect, the first time I saw Quashy at work in the field, I was struck by the lazy, listless manner in which he raised his hoe. It reminded me of the working-beam of the engine on the steam-boat that I had just landed from—fifteen strokes a minute; but there was this difference: that, whereas the working-beam kept steadily at it, Quashy, on the contrary, would stop about every five strokes and lean upon his hoe, and look around, apparently congratulating himself upon the amount of work he had accomplished.

“Mrs. Stowe may well call Quashy ‘shiftless.’ One of my father’s hired men—who was with him seven years—did more work in that time than an average negro would do in his whole life. Nay, I myself have done more work in a day,—and followed it up, too—than I ever saw a negro do, and I was considered remarkably lazy with the plough or hoe.”—P. 142.

APPENDIX (D.)

STATISTICS OF THE GEORGIA SEABOARD.

The notes here following are derived from a volume entitled “White’s Statistics of Georgia,” a large octavo of seven hundred pages, compiled and published in the State. A special section of the book is devoted to the condition of the trade of each county, while a comparison is also attempted to be given, from the personal observation of the compiler, of the comparative social, moral, and religious properties of the people. Thus, so far as the plan has been thoroughly executed, an estimate is presented, not only of the ordinary commercial demand of the citizens, but, so to speak, of the state of their intellectual and moral market.

The counties referred to by Mr. Gregg are in the second tier from the sea in South Carolina. I shall give statistics from Mr. White, and other authorities named in the note,[77] with regard to all the second tier counties of Georgia. What of good soil to be brought into cultivation, without a heavy expenditure at starting, there was originally in these counties begun to be first occupied by whites about 1740. It was not till nearly twenty years after this that slavery obtained the slightest footing in them, and it was not till about thirty years ago that they had begun to seriously deteriorate in production. There is yet some rich land upon the alluvial bottoms of the numerous rivers, which, rising above, pass through these counties toward the ocean; and here many wealthy planters still remain, owning a large number of slaves, and there has been recently a considerable increase of production of some parts owing to the employment of capital in draining marshes, the riches of which have previously been considered impregnable.[78] In general, however, this whole range of country is now quite barren, and most of the land at present cultivated will not probably yield one third as large a crop for the same expenditure of labour as would fair Mississippi cotton land. The slaves formerly owned here have therefore been very largely transferred westward, and the land they have worn out is left for the non-slaveholding whites to make the best of.

As an instructive contrast, I place in an adjoining column with the statistics of these counties those of the counties which bound each of them on the east. In these there is a much larger proportion of rich alluvial soil, and they contain the famous “sea island” cotton plantations, as well as the Georgian rice plantations. The valuable soil is still entirely possessed, as will be evident, by large planters and slave owners, the usual monopolizing effect of slavery being in this instance increased by the peculiar local insalubrity of the coast.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Bullock County._—(The Central Railroad, the best conducted road in all the South, passes either through this county or close beside its northern boundary, for a distance of fifty miles. It is watered by the Ogeechee and Connauchee and a number of smaller rivers. On the larger rivers there is yet a considerable amount of productive land.)

COAST COUNTIES.

_Bryan County_, adjoining Bullock county, on the coast.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Population._—Whites, 2,000; slaves, 1,000. Average amount of property to each white family, $1,570. State tax for each white family, $2.95.

Mr. White omits his usual statistics of trade. Both in this and the adjoining coast county of Bryan, the poor people, as well as the planters, are in the habit of dealing directly with Savannah, as described in “Seaboard Slave States,” p. 414, and there are probably no established tradesmen in either.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Population._—Whites, 1,000; slaves, 2,400. Average amount of property to each white family, $5,302 (fourfold what it is in Bullock county). State tax to each white family, $7.

No statistics of trade, again.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Soil._The _soil_ is described by Mr. White as generally poor, with some productive “hummock” and river tracts.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Soil._—“The soil, under the present system of culture, cannot, without rest and manure, be made to produce more than one half as much as when new.” This appears to refer particularly to the rice plantations.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Education._—“No newspapers are taken, and few books read. The school fund was once sufficient to educate many poor children, but owing to bad management it has become exhausted.” Thus says Mr. White. The census returns show, however, a public school expenditure of $150 per annum, and a private expenditure of $3,000, divided among fifteen schools, which is one for eighty square miles. This is so much better than usual, that, with Mr. White’s remarks, I am inclined to think it an error.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Education._—There is no academy, and there are no schools, except those supported by the “Poor School Fund” (a State provision for the children of indigent parents). “The children of the wealthy are either educated by private teachers or sent to school in the more favoured portions of the country; [the vicinity of Savannah, where there is a celebrated and well endowed academy, and of Liberty, where there are others, accounts for this;] the population is too sparse to furnish pupils enough to sustain a regular school” (large tracts of land being held by the planters, though wholly unproductive, to prevent the settlement of poor whites near their negroes, as one in this county informed me). According to the census returns, there were eight schools (one to twenty-five square miles) of all kinds, with an average of twelve pupils each. Total expenditure for each school, $38 per annum.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—“By industry and economy, they manage to supply their wants, which, however, are few. Many rely a great deal on game. * * * As far as temperance is concerned, they are behind the times. Whiskey has its votaries. Those who have attempted to show the citizens the folly and ill consequences of intemperance have been insulted and threatened. Even ministers of our holy religion have publicly denounced the motives and efforts of those who have attempted to form temperance societies.”

COAST COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—No remarks.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Religion._—“The most numerous [sects] are the Anti-Missionary [hard shell?] Baptists.” Ten church edifices; average value, $145. No Sunday school or other public libraries.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Religion._—The county contains eleven church edifices; average value, $500. No Sunday school or other public libraries.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Tatnall County._

_Population._—Whites, 2,000; slaves, 600. Average amount of property to each white family, $901.

Capital invested in trade, 4,200.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Liberty County._

_Population._—Whites, 2,000; slaves, 6,000. Average amount of property to each white family, $6,330.

State tax to each white family, $10.

Capital invested in trade, $3,850.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Soil._—“Light and sandy, except on the streams, which is stiff.”

COAST COUNTIES.

_Soil._—“The practice has been to wear out the virgin soils, and clear new lands. * * * Much waste land.”

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Education._—“Education is neglected.” Eight public schools (1 to 148 square miles), with sixteen pupils each. Annual cost of maintenance of each school, $150. No other schools; no Sunday school or other libraries.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Education._—“Excellent schools are found. * * * And it is believed that a greater number of young men from Liberty county graduate from our _colleges_ than from any other section of Georgia.” There are five “academies,” with an average of nineteen pupils each. Five public schools (1 to 160 square miles), maintained at an average expenditure of $15.40 per annum each. No libraries found in the census canvass of 1849. Mr. White states that the Medway and Newport Library Society had, in 1845, “about seven hundred volumes, in a very bad state of preservation.” This library was established by some New England immigrants before the prohibition of slavery was annulled in the province. The early settlers of the county were chiefly from Massachusetts.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—“Sober, industrious and hospitable” (phrases applied to every county not specially noted as conspicuous for some vice or virtue of its inhabitants.)

COAST COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—“Generally upright and virtuous, and they are unsurpassed for the great attention paid to the duties of religion.”

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Religion._—Sixteen church edifices, valued at 938 each. According to Mr. White, however, there are “about thirty churches” in the county.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Religion._—Ten church edifices; average value, $1,200.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Wayne County._

_Population._—Whites, 930; slaves, 350. Average amount of property for each white family, $898.

State tax, $1.23.

Capital invested in trade, $4,200.

COAST COUNTIES.

_McIntosh County_, broadest on the sea.

_Population._—Whites, 1,300; slaves, 4,400. Average amount of property for each white family, $7,287, or eight times as much as in Wayne.

State tax, $2.77.

Capital invested in trade, $1,200.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Soil._—“Generally poor, barren pine land; when manured, will produce about twenty bushels of corn per acre.”

COAST COUNTIES.

_Soil._—Poor turpentine pine land in the rear; on the Altamaha, “of inexhaustible fertility.”

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Education._—“Few schools;” two academies (one Baptist, and the other Methodist, probably), with thirteen pupils between them. Four public schools (1 to 148 square miles), averaging ten pupils each; expense of maintenance not returned.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Education._—One academy, with thirty-eight scholars; four public schools, twelve and a half miles apart, averaging twenty pupils each. Expense of maintaining each school, $78 per annum. “The wealthier classes are highly educated; but, generally, little interest is felt in the subject of education.”

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—“High for morality and hospitality;” “poor, but honest.” At the seat of justice “are many beautiful pine hills, affording delightful summer residences to the wealthy planters of Glynn” (hence the academical advantages).

COAST COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—“Like all parts of Lower Georgia, the citizens of McIntosh are generally intelligent and hospitable.”

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Religion._—Eight church edifices; average value, $240.

COAST COUNTIES. _Religion._—Twelve church edifices; average value, $1,041.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Ware County._—(About one fifth of this county is occupied by the Okefenokee Swamp.)

_Population._—Whites, 2,000; slaves, 300. Average amount of personal property for each white family, $480.

State tax, $4.05.

Stock in trade, $2,200.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Camden County._—Much the largest part of this county, which is L shaped, with but one arm on the sea, is inland, and unfertile.

_Population._—Whites, 3,000; slaves, 4,000. Average amount of personal property for each white family, $4,428.

State tax, $13.

“Amount of business done at St. Mary’s is about $30,000 per annum,” nearly all in lumber, and done by New Englanders. No other trade statistics.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Soil._—“Light and tolerably productive.”

COAST COUNTIES.

_Soil._—“Of celebrated fertility.”

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Education._—“Very little interest is taken in the subject of education.” No academies; six public schools (1 to 485 square miles), sixteen pupils each. Wages of teachers, etc., yearly, $41 each school. No Sunday school or other libraries.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Education._—No remarks on education or character by Mr. White. Four public schools (1 to 280 square miles), with seventeen pupils each, maintained at an average expenditure of $290 per annum. Two academies, with forty-five pupils. Five Sunday school libraries, with one hundred and ten volumes each.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—“The citizens are said to be hardy, industrious, and honest.” “Much good might be done by the organization of temperance societies.”

COAST COUNTIES.

_Character of the people._—No remarks.

SECOND TIER COUNTIES.

_Religion._—Fifteen church edifices, fourteen miles apart, each accommodating one hundred sitters, and valued at $56 each.

COAST COUNTIES.

_Religion._—Ten churches (five of which are in the town of St. Mary’s, a beautiful and healthy village, resorted to by consumptives); average value, $850.

I have purposely omitted Effingham county in the above arrangement, because the adjoining coast county of Chatham contains the city of Savannah, an aggregate agency of northern and foreign merchants, through which is effected the commercial exchanges of a great extent of back country, the population of which can therefore afford no indication as to the point under consideration. Effingham, the county above Chatham, and one of the second tier, is worthy of notice, from some other important exceptional features of its constitution. Owing to the amount of rich soil in the county, along the Savannah river, there is a larger proportion of slaves to the whole population than is usual in the second tier, their number being sixteen hundred against only eighteen hundred whites; the non-slaveholders, however, appear to possess unusual privileges. There is an academy, with fifty pupils, which Mr. White describes as “a fine school.” The public schools, eight in number, are less than eight miles apart, with an average attendance of sixteen pupils. Each school costs one hundred and twelve dollars a year. There are twenty-one churches, less than five miles apart, and valued at over twelve hundred dollars a-piece. Mr. White says that honesty and industry are leading characteristics of the people, who, notwithstanding the poverty of the soil, are generally in comfortable circumstances.

The reason of this is partially the close vicinity of Savannah, affording a cash market for a variety of productions and household manufactures, among which, as distinguishing the county from any other in the State, are mentioned fruits, silk, fishing lines, and cow-bells, “the latter,” Mr. White is told, “superior to any manufactured in the North or in Europe.” But an equally important reason for the better character and condition of the people is to be found in the fact that a majority of them[79] are descendants and heirs of the land of those very early settlers who most strenuously and to the last resisted the introduction of slaves into the colony, being convinced that, if permitted, it would, as they said in their memorials, “prove a scourge” to the poor people who were persuaded to petition for it.[80] It is most gratifying to perceive that all traces of the habits of industry, honesty, and manly self-reliance, in which they thus educated their children, are not wholly lost in the lapse of a century.

INDEX.

_Abolition_, effect of low prices of cotton in promoting, i., 201; extent of the agitation to remote districts, ii., 37; abolitionist sentiments of a slaveowner in Mississippi, 98; feeling in favour of, in North Carolina, 131.

_Abolitionists_, danger of poor whites becoming, ii., 357; literature of, 358.

_Advantage_ (supposed) of slave-labour in cultivating cotton and tobacco, ii., 252.

_Advertisements_ for runaway negroes, i., 157; of slaves for sale, ii., 22.

_Acadians_, or poor French _habitans_ in Louisiana, i., 338; ii., 33.

_Adams, Governor_, on the want of education for the poor, ii., 293.

_African races_, character of, compared with the Teutonic, ii., 221.

_Agriculture_, scientific, on a farm on James River, i., 52; wretched implements used in North Carolina, 172; successful cultivation of the sugar-cane, 322; on a Mississippi plantation, ii., 201; decay of, in Virginia, 303; in Slave and Free States, 367.

_Alabama_, appearance of the country, i., 274; “reasons” for making Montgomery the capital, ii., 112; women getting out iron ore, 115; picture of decay by one of her statesmen, 297.

_Alabama River_, voyage down the, i., 275; number of so-called landings, 275; mode of loading cotton, 275; Irishmen cheaper than niggers, 276.

_Albemarle_, proportion of slaves to whites, i., 116.

_Alexandria_ (Louisiana), yellow fever at, i., 357; unenviable reputation of, 357.

_Alligators_, ii., 24; dangers of their holes, 29.

_Amalgamation_, i., 307.

_Americans_ in Texas, ii., 101.

‘_American Agriculturist_,’ quoted, i., 116.

_Annexation_ of Cuba, its effect on the sugar manufacture of Louisiana, ii., 50; on the African slave-trade, 51.

_Apparatus_ used in sugar manufacture, i., 329.

_Aptness_ of negroes for learning, ii., 70; for mechanical occupations, 78.

_Association_ of whites with coloured people, i., 168, 169, _note_; the quadroon society of New Orleans, 305.

_Aristocrats_, “swell heads,” of Mississippi, ii., 156, 166.

_Auction_, sale of slaves by, at Richmond, i., 50; ii., 372.

_Aversion_ to labour, difficulty in overcoming the negro’s, ii., 192.

_Bacon_ raising, ii., 176.

_Bals masqués_ at New Orleans, i., 304.

_Barton, Dr._, on the advantages of slavery, ii., 277, _note_.

_Bee-hunting_, ii., 117.

_Big woods_, ii., 29.

_Bill of fare_ of an hotel at Memphis, ii., 57.

_Blacksmith_, an independent, ii., 8.

_Boarding-house_ at Washington, i., 28.

_Boat-songs_ of the negroes on the steamboats, i., 347.

_Books_, dangerous, ii., 358.

_Brazos_ bottoms, cotton plantations on the, i., 14.

_Breeding_ slaves for sale in Virginia, i., 57; early period at which they have children, ii., 80.

_Brooks, P. S._, ii., 348.

_Burning alive_ of a negro in Eastern Tennessee, ii., 349, 351; frequency of such cases, 354.

_Calcasieu River_ (Texas), ii., 30.

_Canada_, running of slaves into, ii., 362; loss to the South by, 362.

_Cape Fear River_, a type of the navigable streams of the cotton States, i., 191; passage from Fayetteville to Wilmington, 191; panic of a steamer’s crew, 192; taking in wood, 193; description of the passengers, 194; features of the river-banks, 196.

_Capital_ transferred, ii., 299; with Northern men, 301.

_Carolina, North_, fisheries, i., 149; desolate aspect of the country, 171; want of means of communication, 181; degraded condition of white labourers, 188; general ignorance and torpidity of the people, 190; their causes, 190; aspect of slavery more favourable than in Virginia, 191; cultivation of forage crops neglected, 200; wages of labourers, ii., 132.

_Carolina, South_, appearance of the country, i., 204, 215; thinly peopled, 206; log cabins, 206; negro-quarters, 207; repulsive appearance of field-hands, 208; conversation with an elderly countryman in, 217; his ignorance and good-nature, 218, 221; conduct of two negro-girls, 222; plantations, 233; negro settlements, 233, 237.

_Cartwright, Dr._, on the peculiar diseases of negroes, i., 122.

_Carts_, primitive style of, in Georgia, i., 231.

_Cavaliers_, English, Virginia partly colonized by, ii., 335.

_Cemeteries_, negro, i., 224.

‘_Chambers’ Journal_,’ on the Virginia slave-trade, ii., 372.

_Character_, difference of, in North and South, how accounted for, ii., 332, _et seq._

‘_Charleston Mercury_,’ quoted, ii., 362.

‘_Charleston Standard_,’ the, on dishonest trading with slaves, i., 253.

_Charleston_ (S. C.), average mortality of whites and negroes at, ii., 259.

_Chastity_ of so-called pious slaves, ii., 226.

_Children_, bad effects on, from intercourse with slaves, i., 222.

_Christmas_ holidays of the negroes, i., 97; serenade in San Augustin, 375; presents to slaves, ii., 180.

_Church_ edifices, value of, in Georgia, ii., 388.

_Churches_ of coloured people in Washington, i., 36; description of a religious service in New Orleans, 308.

_Claiborne_ (Alabama), curious mode of loading cotton at, i., 275.

_Clay, Mr. Cassius_, ii., 281.

_Climate_ of cotton lands, reckoned unsuitable for white labourers, ii., 256.

_Clothing of slaves_, i., 46, 105; ii., 200; fondness for finery, 201.

_Coal_, beds of, in Virginia, i., 55; extensive fields of, ii., 365.

_Coloured Church_ members, statistics of, ii., 222; hollowness of their professions, 225.

_Columbus_ (Georgia), i., 273; extensive manufactures, 274; frequent distress of white labourers, 274; wretched hotel accommodation, 274.

_Conspiracy_ to overawe the North, i., 6.

_Comparison_ of the moral and social condition of the negro, in Slave and Free States, ii., 238.

_Corporeal punishment_, severe instance of, witnessed, ii., 205.

_Cottage_ in Louisiana, a night spent in, ii., 38; superior manners of the inmates, 39.

_Cotton_, fallacies with respect to its influence, i., 5; the monopoly not beneficial to the Slave States, 8; neglected resources of the so-called cotton States, 12; profitable cultivation, 15; number of slaves engaged in cotton culture, 17; profits of large and small planters, 18; limited area devoted to its growth, 24; effect of low prices on abolition, 201; reckless loading on steamboats, 275; chiefly produced in the valley of the Mississippi, 342; expense of raising, ii., 182; planting and tillage the chief items, 253; advantages of free labour, 262, 268; possibility of greatly increasing the cotton supply, 269.

‘_Cotton Planter_,’ the, extract from, ii., 186.

_Cotton-planters_, general characteristics of, i., 18, 276, 343; their want of the comforts of civilized life, 19, 137; their hospitality generally a matter of business, ii., 95; sudden acquisition of wealth by, 158.

_Counties_ of Georgia, statistics of, ii., 385.

“_Crackers_” of Georgia, religious service among the, i., 265; at Columbus, 275.

_Creoles_, French, i., 338; ii., 33; their passion for gambling, 45; general character and mode of life, 46.

_Crockett_ (Eastern Texas), scarcity of provisions at, ii., 2.

_Cruelty_ of negro slaveholders, i., 336.

_Cuba_, emancipation law of, i., 257; probable effect of its annexation on sugar-planting in Louisiana, ii., 50.

‘_Daily News, the London_,’ extracts from, ii., 189, 190; letter in, 322.

_Dancing_, fondness of negroes for, ii., 72.

_Danger_ of the South, ii., 338.

_Darby, Mr._, on the effects of climate, ii., 257.

_De Bow, Mr._, his ‘Compendium of the Census,’ quoted, i., 19, 20, 24; his ‘Review,’ quoted, on the valley of the Mississippi, ii., 63; on the want of education, 293; ‘Resources of the South,’ 182, 227, 265, 310; his charges against the author, 311; on negro capacity, 345; on abolitionist books, 360.

_Deep River_, extensive fisheries, i., 149; mode of fishing described, 150; expenditure of gunpowder, 151; removal of stumps of trees from the bottom, 151; mode of operation, 151; negro divers, 152; cheerful and willing to work, 153.

_Deer_, ingenious mode of killing, ii., 197.

_Deserted plantations_ in Texas, ii., 1.

_Diseases_ peculiar to negroes, i., 122; malaria, 235; yellow fever, 259; ii., 260.

_Dismal Swamp_, i., 144; importance of the lumber trade, 144; character and mode of life of slaves employed as lumbermen, 146; their superiority over field-hands generally, 148; a refuge for runaway negroes, 155.

_Distances_, discrepancies in estimating, ii., 31.

_Distress_, in 1855, in New York, ii., 243; in the Southern States, 248.

_Divers_, skill and perseverance of slaves employed as, i., 151.

_Dogs_ used for hunting negroes, i., 156; ii., 120, 122, 178, 184.

_Domestic servants_, their great value in the South, i., 125; their cost in proportion to white domestics, 125; a Southern lady’s description of her household, 126; their carelessness, 131; in Eastern Texas, ii., 12; indifference to scolding, 93.

_Douglas, Mrs._, on Amalgamation, i., 307.

_Drapetomania_, a disease peculiar to negroes, i., 122.

_Drivers_, selection of, i., 249; their qualifications and duties, 249; their general character, 250.

“_Driving_,” i., 135; ii., 178, 201.

_Duel_, savage conduct and termination of, ii., 231.

_Dutch-French_ farmer, conversation with a, ii., 39.

_Dysæsthesia Æthiopica_, a disease peculiar to negroes, i., 122.

_Economy_, political, of Virginia, i., 108.

_Eggs_, negroes well supplied with, i., 103, 281; a circulating medium, 254.

_Education_, want of provision for, in the South, ii., 292.

_Educational_ projects in Mississippi, ii., 156; statistics of Northern and Southern States, 331.

_Ellison, Mr._, on ‘Slavery and Secession,’ i., 58, _note_.

_Engineers_, slaves employed as, i., 240.

_English_ mechanic at New Orleans, conversation with, i., 296.

_Enlightenment_ of Christianized Africans, specimens of the, ii., 89, 225; a “pious” negro, 89.

_Epidemic_ of 1820, in the Southern States, i., 258; admirable conduct of the slaves, 259.

_Epitaphs_ in negro burial-ground, i., 226.

_Excitement_ of blacks, at their religious meetings, i., 259, 309.

_Extravagance_ and wastefulness of the blacks, i., 98.

“_Eyebreaker_,” black gnat so called, its attacks on cattle, ii., 41.

_False assertion_ of the superior material condition of Southern slaves to that of Northern and European labourers, ii., 242.

_Famine_ of 1855, its effect in New York, ii., 243; extracts from Southern newspapers during, 248; how felt in the Slave States, 248.

_Farm_, in Maryland, described, i., 32; on James River, 52; description of a, cultivated by free labour, 92; employment of Irishmen, 95.

_Farm-lands_, comparative value in Slave and Free States, i., 11, 35, 114.

_Farmer_, conversation with a free-labour, in Tennessee, on slavery, ii., 140.

“_Fast man_” in Mississippi, ii., 154.

_February_ weather in Georgia, i., 227.

_Feliciana_, beauty of the region, ii., 143.

_Field-hands_ on a rice plantation, classification of, i., 246.

_Filthiness_ of negroes, ii., 200.

_Fires_ in the open air, negro fondness for, i., 215.

_Fisheries_ in North Carolina, i., 149; interesting and novel operations, 150.

_Fleas_, mode of destroying by an ingenious negro, i., 104, _note_.

_Food_, supplied to the slaves in Virginia, i., 101; on a Georgia rice plantation, 244; on a Mississippi plantation, ii., 179, 195; generally in the South, 240, 241.

_Frambœsia_, or Yaws, slaves peculiarly subject to, i., 123.

_Free Labour_, plantation in Virginia cultivated by, i., 92.

_Fruit-trees_, supplied by a peddler, ii., 74.

_Funeral_, negro, in Richmond, i., 43; ludicrous features of, 44.

‘_General Gabriel’s_’ rebellion, i., 42.

_Georgia_, winter climate of, i., 227; “show plantations,” 230; strange appearance and language of the rustics, 231; statistics of seaboard district of, ii., 295, 385; worn-out cotton lands, 296.

_Germans_, their patient industry and docility as labourers, i., 33, 195; in Eastern Texas, ii., 19; in Western Texas, 96; immigration to Texas, 102; their influence, 102; schools, 103; conversation with a persevering German, 164; at Natchez, 171; superior quality of the cotton picked by, 263; cultivation of cotton by, in Texas, 266.

_Glue-manufacturer_, his reasons for employing whites, i., 194.

_Grades_ of coloured people, i., 294.

_Graniteville_ Manufacturing Company, of South Carolina, improvement in the condition of their operatives, ii., 286.

_Grave-yard_ for negroes, i., 224.

_Gregg, Mr. W. H._, quoted, ii., 286, 287, 301.

_Griscom, Mr. T. R._, on slave labour, i., 133, 135.

_Grog-shops_, their evil effects on the slaves, i., 251; homicide of a negro, 253, _note_.

_Guano_, the Hon. W. Newton on the beneficial effects resulting from its introduction, i., 101.

_Hammond, Governor_, on the influence of cotton, i., 7; on slavery, ii., 228.

_Handbill_ of a North Carolina innkeeper, i., 163.

_Harper, Chancellor_, on the tendency of slavery to elevate the female character, i., 222; his ‘Address,’ quoted, ii., 278.

‘_Harper’s Weekly_,’ quoted, ii., 158.

‘_Hernando Advance_,’ quoted ii., 147.

_Highlands_, feelings of inhabitants of, with regard to slavery, ii., 129, 131, 135; their dislike of negro competition, 137; their manners and phraseology, 137; general ignorance, 138.

_Hiring_ a saddle-horse, i., 61; lucid directions for an intricate journey, 62.

_Hogs_, raising of, ii., 176; large plantations not suited to, 177.

_Homochitto_ ferry, ii., 164.

_Honesty_, instances of, among slaves, i., 148, 259; ii., 213, _note_.

_Horses_ in Natchez, ii., 167; objections of a Texas drover to “iron on their feet,” 54.

_Hospitality_, reputation of the South for, generally unwarranted, ii., 282; instances of its refusal, 315.

_Hotels_, at Washington, i., 28; Richmond, 51, 55; Norfolk, 160; Gaston, 168; Fayetteville, 183; specimen of, in Eastern Texas, ii., 5; first-class, at Memphis, 56; bill of fare and its result, 57; at Woodville, dress-etiquette and wretched arrangements, 148.

‘_Household Words_,’ extract from, ii., 258.

_Houses_ of slave population in Virginia, i., 87, 104; in South Carolina, 207; Georgia, 233, 237; Mississippi, ii., 68.

_Houston County_, ii., 1; deserted plantations, 1; scarcity of provisions, 2; runaway mulatto captured by a negro, 21.

_Hunting_ a runaway slave in the back country, ii., 161.

“_Idee of Potasun_,” extraordinary composition of “the best medicine,” i., 169.

_Ignorance_ of a planter’s son, ii., 90; of the father, 91; of a respectable farmer, 130.

_Illinois_, a farmer of, on the condition of South-western Slave States, ii., 308.

_Immersion_, fondness of religious negroes for, ii., 72.

_Impetuosity_ of the Southerners, ii., 327.

_Improvement_ in the condition of slaves within the last twenty years, ii., 101.

_Indian_ farms in Mississippi, ii., 105.

_Indians_, in Louisiana, ii., 38; costume of Choctaws and Alabamas, 38; hired to hoe cotton, 93.

_Intelligence_ and industry of negroes on a Mississippi plantation, ii., 79.

_Irishmen_, employment of, i., 95; the best labourers to be obtained, 95; too self-confident and quarrelsome, 195; Germans preferred to them, 195; labourers to negro masons, 297.

_Iron-mining_ in Alabama, ii., 115; conversation with a miner, 116; wages earned, 117.

_Italians_ at Natchez, ii., 169; their character by one of themselves, 170.

_James River_, i., 52, 142.

_Jefferson_, on the moral sense of negroes, i., 106; on the evils of slavery, ii., 231.

_Jerked beef_, preparation of, ii., 25.

_Jews_, settlement of, in Southern towns, i., 252.

“_Jodel_,” the musical yell of the South Carolina negro, i., 214.

_Jones, Rev. C. C._, quoted, ii., 225.

‘_Journal of Commerce_,’ letter to, by a Virginian, on the scarcity of labourers, i., 111.

_Kentucky_, negro-trader of, ii., 44.

_Killing_ negroes, viewed merely as an offence against property, ii., 190.

_Labour_ of slaves, compared with that of labourers in Free States, i., 10, 137; ii., 382; influence of the association in labour of slaves and free-men, i., 300; cost of, in the Border States, ii., 380; difference between slave and free, 382.

_Land_, value of, i., 114; in Virginia and Pennsylvania, ii., 369.

_Liberation_ of slaves on a plantation in Virginia, happy results of, i., 92.

_Liberia_, emigration to, i., 149, 335.

_Liberty_, county of (Georgia), interest of the planters in the well-being of their slaves, ii., 215; statistics of, 388.

_Licentiousness_, comparative, of North and South, i., 307.

_Liquor_, traffic with slaves, evils of, i., 251; habit of pilfering to procure it, 252.

_Log-cabin_ in North Carolina, i., 180; in South Carolina, 206, 213; in Eastern Texas, 367.

_Log-roads_ in the swamp, i., 145.

_Longstreet_, Judge, his ‘Georgia Scenes,’ quoted, ii., 297.

_Lorettes_, the, of New Orleans, i., 302; a quasi-marriage, 303; economy of the system, 306.

_Louisiana_, laws of, favourable to negroes, i., 101; a negro’s opinion of, compared with Virginia, 334; contrast of manners in, and in Texas, ii., 31; good-nature of the people, 31; miserable condition of the poorer planters, 44; disregard of slave-laws in, 47; Sunday-work, 47; insecurity of slaveholding interest, 51.

_Lumberers_, slave, habits and mode of life in the swamp, i., 146; superior to most slaves, 148.

_Lumber-trade_ in the Dismal Swamp, i., 145.

_Lying_, almost universal among slaves, i., 105.

_Maine Law_, arguments for, in the South, i., 253.

_Malaria_ of rice-fields, i., 235.

_Management_ of slaves, increasing difficulty of the, i., 252.

_Manchac Spring_, a well-ordered plantation, ii., 15.

_Manufactures_, beneficial effect of, on the community, i., 25; ii., 286.

_Marriage_, indifference of negroes to, ii., 80.

_Maury, Lieutenant_, on the advantageous situation for commerce of Norfolk (Virginia), i., 143.

_Medical survey_, ii., 197.

_Memphis_, ii., 55.

‘_Methodist Protestant_,’ the, quoted, ii., 228.

_Methodists_, their opinion on slavery, ii., 140; their five ‘Christian Advocates,’ 140, _note_.

_Mexicans_, dislike of Americans to, ii., 19.

_Mill’s_ ‘Political Economy,’ quoted, ii., 338.

_Miner_, conversation with a, ii., 115.

_Mineral_ treasures of Virginia, ii., 365.

_Misrepresentation_, charge of, against the author, ii., 311.

_Missionary_ system, slavery as a, ii., 215.

_Mississippi River_, cotton plantations on the, i., 13, 17, _note_; ii., 59; rich planters, 158; number of slaves on a plantation, 159.

_Mississippi_, feeling in, against slavery, ii., 98, 109; condition of the slaves, 101.

_Mississippi, Northern_, remarkable plantation in, ii., 67; all the negroes able to read, 70; their religion and morals, 71.

_Mobile_ (Alabama), description of, i., 282; scarcity of tradesmen and mechanics, 283; chief business of the town, 283; English merchants, owners of slaves, 284.

_Montgomery_ (Alabama), i., 274.

_Morals_ of white children suffer from association with slaves, i., 222; ii., 229.

‘_Morehouse Advocate_,’ the, quoted, i., 298.

_Mulatto_, a runaway, captured by a negro, ii., 21; their value compared with pure blacks, 82, 211.

_Murder_ of a young lady by a negro girl, i., 125, _note_.

_Music_, negro fondness for, ii., 73, 221.

_Nachitoches_ (Louisiana), i., 358.

_Nacogdoches_ (E. Texas), ii., 1; difficulty of procuring needful supplies for our journey, 2.

_Names_ of blacks, ii., 208.

_Natchez_, gambling at, ii., 154; beauty of the neighbouring country, 165; the town described, 166; view of the Mississippi from the Bluff, 168; conversation with an Italian at, 169.

‘_National Intelligencer_,’ the, quoted, i., 143.

_Nebraska Bill_, opinions of, ii., 135, 141.

_Negroes_, numbers engaged in cotton culture, i., 17; their increased value, 26; appearance of, in Virginia, 33; an illegal meeting at Washington, 36; problem of Southern gentlemen with respect to, 61; their Christmas holidays, 74; how they live in the swamp, 96, 155; their cunning to avoid working for their masters’ profit, 99; alleged incapacity of exercising judgment, 100; kind treatment in Louisiana, 101, 328, 338; proverbial habit of lying, 105; agrarian notions, 106; universally pilferers, 106; their simulation of illness, 118; Dr. Cartwright’s work on their diseases, 122; runaways in the swamp, 155; mode of hunting them, 156; superior character of those employed in the turpentine forest, 188; repulsive appearance of, on a Carolina plantation, 208; their love for fires in the open air, 215; occasional instances of trustworthiness and intelligence, 240; employed in the cultivation of rice, 243; field-hands, 245; effect of organization of labour, 248; permission to labour for themselves after working hours, 251; evil effects of grog-shops, 251; excitement at religious meetings, 259, 315; their jocosity, 281; engaged, in cultivation of sugar, 319, 328; their thoughts of being free, 334, 339; capacity for learning, ii., 70, 99; mode of working in Mississippi, 178; treated as mere property on large plantations, 192; general character of, 221. See _Slaves_.

_Negro consumption_, i., 123.

_Negro_ slaveowners in Louisiana, i., 336; their cruelty, 336.

_Negro-traders_ in Louisiana and Kentucky, ii., 44.

_New Orleans_, arrival at, i., 290; first impressions, 291; the French quarter, 291; cathedral, 293; mixture of races, 294; a lot of twenty-two negroes, 295; number of free labourers, 299; manners and morals of the citizens, 302; association with mulatto and quadroon females, 302.

‘_New Orleans Crescent_,’ quoted, i., 300, 301.

‘_New Orleans Delta_,’ on justice to slaves, ii., 185.

_Newton_, the Hon. Willoughby, on the introduction of guano, i., 101.

‘_New York Times_,’ letters to, on slave and free labour, i., 134, 135; ii., 268.

_Norfolk_ (Virginia), its filthy condition, i., 142; natural advantages for trade and commerce, 143; market gardens, 153; hotel accommodation, 159.

‘_Norfolk Argus_,’ the, quoted, i., 154.

“_Norther_,” a, ii., 6; disinclination to labour caused by, 9.

_Nott, Dr._, his ‘Essay on the Value of Life in the South,’ quoted, ii., 257.

_Oak-woods_, near Natchez, ii., 165.

_Ohio_, produce per acre compared with that of Virginia, ii., 255.

“_Old Family_,” the traditional, of Virginia or South Carolina, ii., 335.

“_Old Man Corse_,” an Italian-French emigrant, ii., 32; his house and family, 32; conversation with a negro, 34.

_Old Settler’s_, a night at an, in Eastern Texas, ii., 4.

_Opelousas_ (Louisiana), ii., 30.

_Overseers_, character of, i., 53, 94; ii., 184, 189; a kind and efficient one on a Carolina plantation, i., 208; stringent terms of contract, 250; precaution against undue corporeal punishment, 251; surly behaviour of one in Mississippi, ii., 94; another specimen, 143; a night in an overseer’s cabin, 175; wages of, 185, 195; their want of consideration for slaves, 189.

_Passes_ to negroes, forged, i., 301.

_Patent Medicines_, ii., 175.

_Patent Office Reports_ for 1847 and 1852, quoted, i., 115.

“_Patriarchal Institution_,” a favourable aspect of the, i., 236.

_Peddlers_ of tobacco, i., 209; of cheap literature, 345.

_Peripneumonia notha_, or cold plague, i., 123.

_Phillips, Mr. M. W._, on plantation economy, ii., 186.

_Physical_ power, necessary to maintain discipline among slaves, i., 124.

‘_Picayune, The_,’ quoted, i., 343; ii., 211.

“_Plank-dancing_,” ii., 73.

_Plantations_ in South Carolina described, i., 207, 233; in Georgia, 243; in Louisiana, 317; Creole plantation, 340; in Eastern Texas, 372; ii., 9, 14; in Mississippi, 67, 90; ignorance of proprietor, 90; the most profitable one visited, described, 193; the manager and overseers, 194; arrangements for the slaves, 195; their rate of increase, 209; indiscriminate intercourse, 209; statistics of, 236.

_Planters_, characteristics of, i., 18, 19, 137, 276, 343; comfortless living of, in Eastern Texas, ii., 10, 14; Creole, in Louisiana, 46; their passion for increasing their negro stock, 48; life of, compared with that of men of equal property in New York, 48; conversation with a nervous planter, 152; hospitality of, in Mississippi, 163; general character of those of the South, 230, 272.

_Plough-girls_, ii., 201.

_Polk, Bishop_, his description of slavery in the Red River county, ii., 213, _note_.

_Poor whites_ in Virginia, i., 81, 95; their condition worse than that of the slaves, 83; their reluctance to do the work of slaves, 112; degraded condition of, in the turpentine forest, 188; their belief in witchcraft, 189; of South Carolina, 231; trading with them injurious to the negroes, 252; girls employed in the cotton-mills at Columbia, 273; in Eastern Texas, their dishonesty, 372; engaged in iron mining, ii., 115; in Mississippi, 196; feeling of irritation against, 355.

_Preacher_, Methodist, tales of “nigger” hunting by, ii., 122.

_Preachers_, negro, i., 309.

_Presbyterian minister_, employed by Georgia planters to instruct the blacks, ii., 215; his opinions on slavery, 216 _et seq._

_Price-current_ of slaves at Richmond, Virginia, ii., 374.

_Progress_, comparative, of North and South, i., 25.

_Pronunciation_, effect of, on names, ii., 32.

_Property_ aspect of slavery, ii., 183.

_Privileged classes_ of the South, their condition and character, ii., 272; their assertion of the beneficence of slavery, 273; their two methods of vindicating it, 276; their claims to high-breeding and hospitality generally unwarranted, 282; instances of the opposite qualities, 315 _et seq._; their revengeful disposition, 327.

_Public worship_ in the South, provisions for, i., 259, 261.

_Purchase_ of a plantation, a gambling operation, i., 321.

_Quadroons_ at New Orleans, their beauty and healthiness, i., 294, 303; their cultivated tastes, 305; peculiar characteristics of their association with whites, 305.

_Quakers_, negro opinion of, ii., 37.

_Racing_ on the Red River, i., 351.

_Railroads_, in Virginia, i., 38, 55; want of punctuality, 56, 141; in North Carolina, 161; disregard of advertised arrangements, 167; desirable improvements, 170; in South Carolina, 216; their superiority in Georgia, 272.

_Raleigh_ (North Carolina), described, i., 170; desolate aspect of the country around, 171.

_Rations_ of U. S. Army, compared with allowances to slaves, ii., 240.

_Red River_, cotton plantations on the, i., 13; preparations for a voyage up the, 343; supper and sleeping arrangements, 350; a good shot, 352.

_Religion_, want of reverence for, i., 262; ii., 89, 104, 220.

_Religious condition_ of the South, i., 261; proportion of ministers to people, 261; rivalry and jealousy of different sects, 262; religious instruction to slaves objected to, ii., 214; general remarks on religious professions in the slaves, 220.

_Religious service_ in a meeting-house in Georgia, i., 205; in a negro chapel at New Orleans, 308.

_Remonstrance_ by South Carolina planters against religious instruction to negroes, ii., 214.

_Revival_ among the slaves, ii., 222.

_Rice plantation_, a model one visited, i., 235; house servants and field-hands, 236; negro-quarters, 237; nursery for black children, 238; a rice-mill, 239; burning stubble, 243; ploughing, 244; food of the slaves, 244; field gangs, 245; task-work, 247; important duties of drivers, 249; limitation of power of punishment, 251; trade on the plantation, 254.

_Richmond_, Virginia, described, i., 40; railway economy, 42; negro funeral, 43; ludicrous oratory, 44; Sunday appearance of coloured people, 45; their demeanour to whites, 47; “Slaves for sale or hire,” 50; farm on James River, 52; coal-pit, 54.

‘_Richmond American_,’ the, quoted, i., 125, _note_; ‘Enquirer,’ ii., 364; ‘Whig,’ 370.

_Ruffin, Mr. Edmund_, quoted, ii., 303.

_Runaway slaves_, i., 119, 155; ii., 7; advertisements of, 157; cure for, ii., 6; pursuit of one, 20; hunting with dogs, 120, 122, 178; stocks for punishment of, 161; conflict with a runaway, 161, _note_; favourite lurking-ground for, 183.

_Russell, Mr._, his ‘North America: its Agriculture, &c.,’ quoted, ii., 176, _note_, 182, 252, 256; mistaken views of, with respect to free and slave labour, 252 _et seq._

_Sabine River_, country on each side described, ii., 24; coarseness of the inhabitants, 25; a night with a gentleman of the country, 25; “figures of speech,” 27.

_San Augustin_ (Eastern Texas), i., 374; Presbyterian and Methodist universities merged in a “Masonic Institute,” 375.

_St. Francisville_, ii., 143; neighbouring country described, 145; appearance of the slaves, 146.

_Savannah_ (Georgia), commerce and prospects of, i., 273.

_Scripture_ expressions, their familiar use by the negroes, i., 262; a dram-seller’s advertisement, 263.

_Seguin, Dr._, on the capacity of the negro, ii., 344.

_Separation_ of North and South inconsistent with the welfare of either, i., 1.

_Sermons_ by negroes, i., 311.

_Settlement_, negro, described, i., 237.

“_Show Plantations_,” i., 230.

_Sickness_, real and feigned, of slaves, i., 96, 118; ii., 198, 199.

_Skilled_ labour, negroes employed in, i., 240.

_Slavery_, Jefferson’s opinion on, i., 92; practicability of rapidly extinguishing, 255; cruelty a necessity of, 355; strong opinion against, of a Mississippi planter, ii., 98; of a Tennessee farmer, 140; necessary to produce cheap cotton, ii., 252.

_Slaveholders_, opinions of, on slavery, i., 53, 60, 332, 354; ii., 92; American, French, and negro slaveowners, 336, 337.

_Slave-mart_, at Richmond, i., 50; at Houston, ii., 22.

_Slaves_, liberated, doing well in Africa, i., 92; prospects of those going North, 93.

_Slaves_, their value as labourers, i., 16, 94; as domestic servants, 125; causes of the high prices given for them, 16; number engaged in cultivating cotton, 17; number annually exported from slave-breeding to cotton States, 58; proportion of workers to slaves maintained, 59; improvement in their conditions, 94; their food and lodging in Virginia, 102, 104; their clothing, 105; subject to peculiar diseases, 122; necessity of humouring them, 128; have no training as children, 131; work accomplished in a given time, 133; “driving,” 135; increasing difficulties in their management, 252; instance of their trustworthiness, 259; best method of inducing them to exert themselves, 328; bad effect of their association with white labourers, 330; and of their dealings with petty traders, 331; condition of, on a profitable plantation in Mississippi, ii., 195; worked hardest in the South-west, 202; some nearly white, 210; their religious instruction, 222;

impolicy of allowing them to cultivate patches, 238; auction at Richmond described, 372. See _Negroes_.

_Slave States_, condition of the people, i., 8; not benefited by their cotton monopoly, 8; dearness of slave-labour, 10, 94; antipathy of the whites to work, 22; small proportion of the area devoted to cotton cultivation, 24; their small contribution to the national treasury, 27; general characteristics and features of the country, 85.

_Slave trade_, activity of, in Virginia, i., 57; difficulty of obtaining statistics, 58.

_Sleeping-quarters_, unpleasant, ii., 87, 106; abundance of insect vermin, 87; mode of keeping away gnats, 107.

‘_South Carolinian_,’ the, on planters and overseers, ii., 188.

_South_, danger of the, ii., 338; condition of the negro, 339; Southern method of treatment dangerous, 344; unconscious habits of precaution, 346; apparent tranquillity deceptive, 348; police machinery, 350; abolitionist literature, 358; cause of agitation, 361; impossibility of acceding to the demands of the South, 362; threat of dissolution, 363; probable result, 363.

‘_Southern Agriculturist_,’ the, quoted, ii., 182, 188.

‘_Southern Cultivator_,’ the, on the effect of the society of negroes on their masters’ children, i., 222, _note_; on allowing negroes to cultivate “patches,” 239, _note_.

_Stage-coach_ rides in North Carolina, i., 163, 174, 201; a swindling driver, 163; cruelty to horses, 175; unexpected comforts of a piny-wood stage-house, 177; in Mississippi, ii., 64.

_Stage-house_ at Fayetteville, described, i., 183.

_Steam-boats_: on Cape Fear River, i., 191; on the Alabama River, 275; passengers, 276; wastefulness and joviality of the crew, 281; description of one on the Red River, 347; sleeping arrangements, 349; life of the firemen, 350; deck-passengers, 350; a race, 351; gambling on board, 353.

_Street-fights_ in Louisiana, ii., 53.

_Steward_, negro, on a rice plantation, importance of his office, i., 240; privileges enjoyed by, 242.

_Subjugation_ of the South, its alleged impossibility, i., 2.

_Suffering_, occasional, different effect of, on the slave and free labourer, ii., 251.

_Sugar_ plantation, in Louisiana, i., 317; the owner’s popularity, 318; mansion and offices, 319; arrangements for the slaves, 320; usual expenses of carrying on, 321; ii., 236; mode of cultivation, i., 323; planting the cane, 325; tillage, 327; grinding the cane, 328; increased labour in grinding season willingly performed by the slaves, 328; late improvements in the manufacture, 329.

_Suggestions_ for improving the condition of the negro, and preparing him for freedom, i., 255.

_Sumner_ and Brooks, ii., 348.

_Sunday_, slave labour on, ii., 47, 181.

_Sweep-seines_, the largest in the world, used in the North Carolina fisheries, i., 149.

“_Swell-heads_,” ii., 156, 166.

_Task-work_ general in Georgia and South Carolina, i., 247.

_Texas_, its prospect of becoming a Free State, ii., 102; influence of the Germans, 102, 103.

_Texas, Eastern_, route across, i., 359; a day in the woods, 359; plantation described, 359; a sick child, 361; the emigrant road, 365, 374; appearance of the emigrants, 365; the Red Lands, 373; Christmas serenade, 375; a planter’s residence, ii., 9; his comfortless mode of living, 10; promising sons, 10; literary dearth, 10; interest taken in foreign affairs, 11; domestic servants, 13; a night, with another planter, 14; his habits of life, 14, 15; determination of inhabitants to conceal unfavourable facts, 18; hatred of Mexicans, 19. _Texas, South-eastern_, district described, ii., 23; imperfect drainage, 23; sparsely settled, 24; not a desirable place of abode, 24.

_Tennessee, North-eastern_, contrast between the homes of a slaveholder and a farmer without slaves, ii., 138.

_Tennessee_ squire, a night with, ii., 128; his notion of buying Irishmen, 129.

_Tobacco_, plantation in Eastern Virginia, i., 88; reasons for growing, 88; negroes not able to cultivate the finer sorts, 89; ii., 254; their mode of payment, i., 98, 140.

_Tobacco-peddling_ in South Carolina, i., 209.

_Treating_ in Mississippi, ii., 155.

_Tree-peddler_, his catalogue of “curosest trees,” ii., 75.

_Trinity Bottom_, ii., 2; fertility of surrounding lands, 3.

_Turpentine_ forest, character of slaves employed in, i., 188.

_Umbrellas_ carried by Alabama Indians on horseback, ii., 38.

‘_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_,’ conversation on, i., 345, 354; ii., 135.

_Vicksburgh_, ii., 55.

_Virginia_, characteristics of the population, i., 39; association of blacks and whites, 40; the Public Guard, 41; rebellion of coloured people in 1801, 42; mode of living of Virginia gentlemen at home, 89; treatment of negroes in, 101; Economy of Virginia, 108; an Englishman’s impressions on landing in the United States, 108; apparent indifference to shabby living, 108; its causes, 108; difference of means required to procure the same result, 108; a similar analogy between the North and South, 109; an exceptional case, 109; high price paid for skilled labour, 110; state of the community as a whole, 111; complaints of scarcity of hands, 111; the employment of whites in occupations usually performed by slaves distasteful both to master and labourer, 112; land most valuable, where proportion of slaves to whites is least, 114; comparative cost of slave and free labour, 117; advantages of the latter in wages paid, 118; in freedom from loss by disability, 118; frequency of feigned illness, 118; peculiar diseases of negroes, 122; means of maintaining discipline, 124; want of the motives to exertion possessed by free labourers, 131; influence of slave system on the habits of the whole community, 131; general want of civilized comforts, 137; waste of natural resources, 138, 143; rule of make-shift, 138; exceptional instances, 139; decay of its agriculture, ii., 303; mineral wealth, 365; want of means of education, 371.

_Virginia, Eastern_, its resources neglected, i., 8; poverty of its inhabitants, 10; description of a ride, 64; a strange vehicle, 65; the school-house, 65; “Old Fields,” 66; desolate appearance of the country, 66; a farm-house, 70; a country “grosery,” 72; the court-house, 74; a night at an old plantation with a churlish host, 76; the “supper-room” and “sitting-room,” 79; precarious existence of poor white labourers, 81; the “bed-room,” 84; the planter’s charge for his “hospitality,” 85; sparse population, 86; the meeting-house, 86; negro quarters, 87; a tobacco plantation, 88.

_Voyage_ from Mobile to New Orleans, i., 285.

_Washington_, number of visitors at, i., 28; a boarding-house, 28; the market-place, 34; price of land in the neighbourhood, 35; number of white labourers, 35; character of the coloured population, 36; an illegal meeting, 36.

_Watchman_, the, on a Carolina plantation, i., 240, 242.

_Water-snakes_, numbers of, ii., 24, 29.

‘_West Feliciana Whig_,’ account of slaughter of a runaway, ii., 161.;

_Wharves_, absence of, on the Southern rivers, ii., 55.

_Whip_, constant use of the, ii., 202.

_Whipping_, of coloured preachers of the Gospel, i., 226; of a slave girl, ii., 205.

_Wise, Governor_, on the decay of Virginia, ii., 303.

_Whites_, some slaves hardly to be distinguished from pure-blooded, ii., 210.

_White’s_ ‘Statistics of Georgia,’ ii., 385.

_Wilmington_ (North Carolina), i., 97; destruction of a building at, because erected by negroes, ii., 98.

‘_Wilmington Herald_,’ quoted, ii., 99, _note_.

_Witchcraft_, belief in, by poor whites, i., 189.

_Women_ employed in ploughing, ii., 201.

“_Wooding_” on Cape Fear River, i., 193.

_Woodville_ (Mississippi), ii., 148; dress etiquette, 148; neighbourhood described, 149; robberies, 149.

_Yazoo Bottoms_, the son of a planter in, ii., 63; journey with him in Northern Mississippi, 64; his dislike to babies, 66.

_Yellow Fever_, good conduct of negroes at Savannah during its raging, i., 259; at Natchez, ii., 160.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Many freemen have been kidnapped in Illinois and sold into slavery.

[2] Evidently an allusion to the “underground railroad,” or smuggling of runaway slaves, which is generally supposed to be managed mainly by Quakers. This shows how knowledge of the abolition agitation must be carried among the slaves to the most remote districts.

[3] Creole means simply native of the region, but in Louisiana (a vast region purchased, by the United States, of France, for strategic reasons, and now proposed to be filibustered away from us), it generally indicates French blood.

[4] I also saw slaves at work every Sunday that I was in Louisiana. The law permits slaves to be worked, I believe, on Sunday; but requires that some compensation shall be made to them when they are—such as a subsequent holiday.

[5] The following resolutions were proposed (I am not sure that they were adopted) in the Southern Commercial Convention, at New Orleans, in 1855:

“_Resolved_,—That this Convention strongly recommends the Chambers of Commerce and Commission Merchants of our Southern and South-western cities to adopt such a system of laws and regulations as will put a stop to the dangerous practice, heretofore existing, of making advances to planters, in anticipation of their crops—a practice entirely at variance with everything like safety in business transactions, and tending directly to establish the relations of master and slave between the merchant and planter, by bringing the latter into the most abject and servile bondage.

“_Resolved_,—That this Convention recommend, in the most urgent manner, that the planters of the Southern and South-western States patronize exclusively our home merchants, and that our Chambers of Commerce, and merchants generally, exert all their influence to exclude foreign agents from the purchase and sale of produce in any of our Southern and South-western cities.

“_Resolved, further_,—That this Convention recommend to the legislatures of the Southern and South-western States to pass laws, making it a penitentiary offence for the planters to ask of the merchants to make such pecuniary advances.”

[6] The Junta was a filibustering conspiracy against Cuba.

[7] Cocoa is a grass much more pernicious, and more difficult of extirpation when it once gets a footing upon a sugar plantation, than the Canada thistle, or any other weed known at the North. Several plantations have been ruined by it, and given up as worthless by their owners.

[8] See “Resources;” article, “Mississippi,” etc.

[9] At Wilmington, North Carolina, on the night of the 27th of July (1857), the frame-work of a new building was destroyed by a number of persons, and a placard attached to the disjointed lumber, stating that a similar course would be pursued in all cases, against edifices that should be erected by negro contractors or carpenters, by one of which class of men the house had been constructed. There was a public meeting called a few days afterwards, to take this outrage into consideration, which was numerously attended. Resolutions were adopted, denouncing the act, and the authorities were instructed to offer a suitable reward for the detection and conviction of the rioters. “The impression was conveyed at the meeting,” says the _Wilmington Herald_, “that the act had been committed by members of an organized association, said to exist here, and to number some two hundred and fifty persons, and possibly more, who, as was alleged, to right what they considered a grievance in the matter of negro competition with white labour, had adopted the illegal course of which the act in question was an illustration.” Proceedings of a similar significance had occurred at various points, especially in Virginia.

[10] See De Bow’s Review, for August, 1857 p. 117.

[11] RELIGION IN VIRGINIA.—A mass meeting of citizens of Taylor county, Virginia, was held at Boothesville recently, at which the following, among other resolutions, was passed unanimously:

“That the five _Christian Advocates_, published in the cities of New York, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago, having become Abolition sheets of the rankest character, we ask our commonwealth’s attorneys and post-masters to examine them, and, if found to be of an unlawful character, to deal with them and their agents as the laws of our State direct.”—_Washington Republic._

[12] “This latter received its beautiful and expressive name from its beautifully variegated surface of hills and valleys, and its rare combination of all the qualities that are most desired in a planting country. It is a region of almost fairy beauty and wealth. Here are some of the wealthiest and most intelligent planters and the finest plantations in the State, the region of princely taste and more than patriarchal hospitality,” etc.—_Norman’s New Orleans._

[13] “FINE PROSPECT FOR HAY.—While riding by a field the other day, which looked as rich and green as a New England meadow, we observed to a man sitting on the fence, ‘You have a fine prospect for hay, neighbour.’ ‘Hay! that’s _cotton, sir_,’ said he, with an emotion that betrayed an excitement which we cared to provoke no further; for we had as soon sport with a rattlesnake in the blind days of August as a farmer at this season of the year, badly in the grass. * * *

“All jesting aside, we have never known so poor a prospect for cotton in this region. In some instances the fields are clean and well worked, but the cotton is diminutive in size and sickly in appearance. We have seen some fields so foul that it was almost impossible to tell what had been planted.

“All this backwardness is attributable to the cold, wet weather that we have had almost constantly since the planting season commenced. When there was a warm spell, it was raining so that ploughs could not run to any advantage; so, between the cold and the rain, the cotton crop is very unpromising. * * *

“The low, flat lands this year have suffered particularly. Thoroughly saturated all the time, and often overflowed, the crops on them are small and sickly, while the weeds and grass are luxurious and rank.

“A week or two of dry hot weather will make a wonderful change in our agricultural prospects, but we have no idea that any sort of seasons could bring the cotton to more than an average crop.”—_Hernando (Miss.) Advance, June 22, 1854._

[14] “Sectional excitement” had given a great impetus to educational projects in the South, and the Mississippi newspapers about this time contained numerous advertisements of a similar character to the following:

“CALHOUN INSTITUTE—FOR YOUNG LADIES; MAÇON, NOXUBEE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI.—W. R. POINDEXTER, A.M., Principal and Proprietor.—The above School, formerly known as the ‘Maçon Female Institute,’ will be reopened on the first of October, 1855, with an entirely new corps of teachers from Principal down. Having purchased the property at public sale, and thus become _sole proprietor_, the Principal has determined to use all means he can now command, as well as he may realize for several years yet to come, in building, refitting and procuring such appurtenances as shall enable him to contribute his full quota, as a professional man, to the progress of the great cause of ‘SOUTHERN EDUCATION.’”

[15] As “A SOUTHERN LAWYER,” writing for _Harper’s Weekly_ (February, 1859), observes: “The sudden acquisition of wealth in the cotton-growing region of the United States, in many instances by planters commencing with very limited means, is almost miraculous. Patient, industrious, frugal, and self-denying, nearly the entire amount of their cotton-crops is devoted to the increase of their capital. The result is, in a few years large estates, as if by magic, are accumulated. The fortunate proprietors then build fine houses, and surround themselves with comforts and luxuries to which they were strangers in their earlier years of care and toil.”

[16] The following is a characteristic newspaper item of this vicinity:—

From the _West Feliciana Whig_.—“On Saturday last, a runaway negro was killed in the parish of East Baton Rouge, just below the line of this parish, under the following circumstances: Two citizens of Port Hudson, learning that a negro was at work on a flat boat, loading with sand, just below that place, who was suspected of being a runaway, went down in a skiff for the purpose of arresting him.

“Having seized him and put him into the skiff they started back, but had not proceeded far when the negro, who had been at the oars, seized a hatchet and assaulted one of them, wounding him very seriously. A scuffle ensued, in which both parties fell overboard. They were both rescued by the citizen pulling to them with the skiff. Finding him so unmanageable, the negro was put ashore, and the parties returned to Port Hudson for arms and a pack of negro dogs, and started again with the intention to capture him. They soon got on his trail, and when found again he was standing at bay upon the outer edge of a large raft of drift wood, armed with a club and pistol.

“In this position he bade defiance to men and dogs—knocking the latter into the water with his club, and resolutely threatening death to any man who approached him. Finding him obstinately determined not to surrender, one of his pursuers shot him. He fell at the third fire, and so determined was he not to be captured, that when an effort was made to rescue him from drowning he made battle with his club, and sunk waving his weapon in angry defiance at his pursuers. He refused to give the name of his owner.”

[17] This may be compared with the town of Springfield, county of Sangammon, Illinois, in which, with a population of 19,228 (nearer to that of Natchez than any other town I observe in the Free States), the number of registered school children is 3,300, the public libraries contain 20,000 volumes, and the churches can accommodate 28,000 sitters.

[18] “THE WASHINGTON REMEDIES—TO PLANTERS AND OTHERS.—These Remedies, now offered to the public under the title of the Washington Remedies, are composed of ingredients, many of which are not even known to Botany. No apothecary has them for sale; they are supplied to the subscriber by the native red-men of Louisiana. The recipes by which they are compounded have descended to the present possessor, M. A. MICKLEJOHN, from ancestors who obtained them from the friendly Indian tribes, prior to and during the Revolution, and they are now offered to the public with that confidence which has been gained from a knowledge of the fact that during so long a series of years there has never been known an instance in which they have failed to perform a speedy and permanent cure. The subscribers do not profess these remedies will cure _every_ disarrangement of the human system, but in such as are enumerated below they feel they cannot fail. The directions for use have only to be strictly followed, and however despairing the patient may have been he will find cause for blissful _hope_ and renewed _life_.

“_These preparations are no Northern patent humbug_, but are manufactured in New Orleans by a Creole, who has long used them in private practice, rescuing many unfortunate victims of disease from the grave, after they have been given up by their physicians as incurable, or have been tortured beyond endurance by laceration and painful operations.”

[19] “The bacon is almost entirely imported from the Northern States, as well as a considerable quantity of Indian corn. This is reckoned bad management by intelligent planters. * * * On this plantation as much Indian corn was raised as was needed, but little bacon, which was mostly imported from Ohio. The sum annually paid for this article was upwards of eight hundred pounds. Large plantations are not suited to the rearing of hogs; for it is found almost impossible to prevent the negroes from stealing and roasting the pigs.” Mr. Russell, visiting the plantation of a friend near Natchez.—_North America: its Agriculture_, etc., p. 265.

[20] This would give at this season hardly less than sixteen hours of plodding labour, relieved by but one short interval of rest, during the daylight, for the hoe-gang. It is not improbable. I was accustomed to rise early and ride late, resting during the heat of the day, while in the cotton district, but I always found the negroes in the field when I first looked out, and generally had to wait for the negroes to come from the field to have my horse fed when I stopped for the night. I am told, however, and I believe, that it is usual in the hottest weather, to give a rest of an hour or two to all hands at noon. I never happened to see it done. The legal limit of a slave’s day’s work in South Carolina is fifteen hours.

[21] I was told by a gentleman in North Carolina, that the custom of supplying molasses to negroes in Mississippi, was usually mentioned to those sold away from his part of the country, to reconcile them to going thither.

[22] In De Bow’s ‘Resources of the South,’ vol. i., p. 150, a table is furnished by a cotton-planter to show that the expenses of raising cotton are “generally greatly underrated.” It is to be inferred that they certainly are not underrated in the table. On “a well improved and properly organized plantation,” the expense of feeding one hundred negroes, “as deduced from fifteen years’ experience” of the writer, is asserted in this table to be $750 per annum, or seven dollars and a half each; in this sum is included, however, the expenses of the “hospital and the overseer’s table.” This is much less than the expense for the same purposes, if the overseer’s account was true, of the plantation above described. Clothing, shoes, bedding, _sacks for gathering cotton, and so forth_, are estimated by the same authority to cost an equal sum—$7.50 for each slave. I have just paid on account of a day labourer on a farm in New York, his board bill, he being a bachelor living at the house of another Irish labourer with a family. The charge is twenty-one times as large as that set down for the slave.

[23] “I was informed that some successful planters, who held several estates in this neighbourhood [Natchez] made it a rule to _change their overseers every year_, on the principle that the _two_ years’ service system is sure to spoil them.”—_Russell’s North America: its Agriculture_, etc., p. 258.

“Overseers are changed every year; a few remain four or five years, but the average time they remain on the same plantation does not exceed two years.”—_Southern Agriculturist_, vol. iv., p. 351.

[24] “On Monday last, as James Allen (overseer on Prothro’s plantation at St. Maurice) was punishing a negro boy named Jack, for stealing hogs, the boy ran off before the overseer had chastised him sufficiently for the offence. He was immediately pursued by the overseer, who succeeded in catching him, when the negro drew a knife and inflicted a terrible gash in his abdomen. The wounds of the overseer were dressed by Dr. Stephens, who pronounces it a very critical case, but still entertains hope of his recovery.”—_Nachitoches Chronicle._

[25] Mr. Russell makes an observation to the same effect with regard to the Cuba plantations, p. 230. On these large cotton plantations there are frequently more men than women, men being bought in preference to women for cotton picking.

The contrary is usually the case on the small plantations, where the profits of breeding negroes are constantly in view.

[26] “A woman, calling herself Violet Ludlow, was arrested a few days ago, and committed to jail, on the supposition that she was a runaway slave belonging to A. M. Mobley, of Upshur county, Texas, who had offered through our columns a reward of fifty dollars for her apprehension. On being brought before a justice of the peace, she stated that she was a white woman, and claimed her liberty. She states that she is a daughter of Jeremiah Ludlow, of Pike county, Alabama, and was brought from that country in 1853, by George Cope, who emigrated to Texas. After arriving in Texas, she was sold by George Cope to a Doctor Terry, in Upshur county, Texas, and was soon after sold by him to a Mrs. Hagen, or Hagens, of the same county. Violet says that she protested against each sale made of her, declaring herself a free woman. She names George Gilmer, Thomas Rogers, John Garret, and others, residents of Pike county, Alabama, as persons who have known her from infancy as the daughter of one Jeremiah Ludlow and Rene Martin, a widow at the time of her birth, and as being a free white woman, and her father a free white man. Violet is about instituting legal proceedings for her freedom.”—_Shreveport Southwestern._

“Some days since, a woman named Pelasgie was arrested as a fugitive slave, who has lived for more than twelve years in this city as a free woman. She was so nearly white that few could detect any traces of her African descent. She was arrested at the instance of a man named Raby, who claimed her as belonging to an estate of which he is heir-at-law. She was conveyed to the First District guard-house for safe keeping, and while there she stated to Acting Recorder Filleul that she was free, had never belonged to Raby, and had been in the full and unquestioned enjoyment of her freedom in this city for the above-mentioned period. She also stated that she had a house, well furnished, which she was in the habit of letting out in rooms.”—_New Orleans Picayune._

[27] “Bishop Polk, of Louisiana, was one of the guests. He assured me that he had been all over the country on Red River, the scene of the fictitious sufferings of ‘Uncle Tom,’ and that he had found the temporal and spiritual welfare of the negroes well cared for. He had confirmed thirty black persons near the situation assigned to Legree’s estate. He is himself the owner of four hundred slaves, whom he endeavours to bring up in a religious manner. He tolerates no religion on his estate but that of the Church. He baptizes all the children, and teaches them the Catechism. All, without exception, attend the Church service, and the chanting is creditably performed by them, in the opinion of their owner. Ninety of them are communicants, marriages are celebrated according to the Church ritual, and the state of morals is satisfactory. Twenty infants had been baptized by the bishop just before his departure from home, and he had left his whole estate, his keys, &c., in the sole charge of one of his slaves, without the slightest apprehension of loss or damage. In judging of the position of this Christian prelate as a slave-owner, the English reader must bear in mind that, by the laws of Louisiana, emancipation has been rendered all but impracticable, and, that, if practicable, it would not necessarily be, in all cases, an act of mercy or of justice.”—_The Western World Revisited._ By the Rev. Henry Caswall, M.A., author of “America and the American Church,” etc. Oxford, John Henry Parker, 1854.

[28] In White’s ‘Statistics of Georgia’ (page 377), the citizens of Liberty county are characterized as “unsurpassed for the great attention paid to the duties of religion.”—Dr. Stevens, in his ‘History of Georgia,’ describes them as “worthy of their sires,” who were, “the moral and intellectual nobility of the province,” “whose accession was an honour to Georgia, and has ever proved one of its richest blessings.”—In the biography of General Scrivens the county of Liberty is designated “proud spot, of Georgia’s soil!”—Dr. J. M. B. Harden, in a medical report of the county, says: “The use of intoxicating drinks has been almost entirely given up” by its people.—White says (‘Statistics,’ p. 373), “The people of Liberty, from their earliest settlement, have paid much attention to the subject of education. Excellent schools are found in different portions of the county, and it is believed a greater number of young men from Liberty graduate at our colleges than from any [other] section of Georgia. Indeed, it has been proverbial for furnishing able ministers and instructors.”

[29] The following newspaper paragraph indicates the wholesale way in which slaves may be nominally Christianized:—

“REVIVAL AMONG THE SLAVES.—Rev. J. M. C. Breaker, of Beaufort, S.C., writes to the _Southern Baptist_, that within the last three months he has baptized by immersion three hundred and fifty persons, _all of them, with a few exceptions, negroes_. These conversions were the result of a revival which has been in progress during the last six months. On the 12th inst., he baptized two hundred and twenty-three converts—all blacks but three—and the ceremony, although performed with due deliberation, occupied only one hour and five minutes. This is nearly four a minute, and Mr. Breaker considers it a demonstration that the three thousand converted on the day of Pentecost could easily have been baptized by the twelve apostles—each taking two hundred and fifty—in an hour and thirteen minutes.”

[30] “A small farmer,” who “has had control of negroes for thirty years and has been pursuing his present system with them for twenty years,” and who “owning but a few slaves is able,” as he observes, “to do better by them” than large planters, writing to Mr. De Bow, says: “I have tried faithfully to break up immorality. I have not known an oath to be sworn for a long time. I know of no quarrelling, no calling harsh names, and but little stealing. _Habits of amalgamation, I cannot stop._ I can only check it in name. I am willing to be taught, for I have tried everything I know.” He has his field-negroes attend his own family prayers on Sunday, prayer meetings at four o’clock Sunday mornings, etc.—_De Bow’s Resources_, vol. ii., p. 337.

[31] The “Southern Presbyterian,” in reviewing some observations made before a South Carolina Bible Society, in which it had been urged that if slaves were permitted to read the Bible, they would learn from it to be more submissive to the authority which the State gives the master over them, says that the speaker “seems to be uninformed of the fact that the Scriptures are read in our churches every Sabbath day, and those very passages which inculcate the relative duties of masters and servants in consequence of their textual, _i. e._ legally prescribed connections, are _more frequently read_ than any other portions of the Bible.”

[32] Organized action for the abolition of slavery in the island of Java, has since been authentically reported.

[33] Twice it happened to come to my knowledge that sons of a planter, by whom I was lodged while on this journey—lads of fourteen or sixteen—who were supposed to have slept in the same room with me, really spent the night, till after daybreak, in the negro cabins. A southern merchant, visiting New York, to whom I expressed the view I had been led to form of the evil of slavery in this way, replied that he thought I over-estimated the evil to boys on the plantations, but that it was impossible to over-estimate it in towns. “I have personal knowledge,” he continued, “that there are but two lads, sixteen years old, in our town, [a small market town of Alabama,] who have not already had occasion to resort to remedies for the penalty of licentiousness.” “When on my brother’s plantation, just before I came North,” said another Southern merchant, on his annual visit to New York, “I was informed that each of his family-servants were suffering from ——, and I ascertained that each of my brother’s children, girls and boys, had been informed of it, and knew how and from whom it had been acquired. The negroes being their familiar companions, I tried to get my brother to send them North with me to school. I told him he might as well have them educated in a brothel at once, as in the way they were growing up.”

[34] Jefferson fails to enumerate, among the evils of slavery, one of its influences which I am inclined to think as distinct and as baneful to us nationally as any other. How can men retain the most essential quality of true manhood who daily, without remonstrance or interference, see men beaten, whose position renders effective resistance totally impracticable—and not only men, but women, too! Is it not partially the result of this, that self-respect seldom seems to suggest to an angry man at the South that he should use anything like magnanimity? that he should be careful to secure fair play for his opponent in a quarrel? A gentleman of veracity, now living in the South, told me that among his friends he had once numbered two young men, who were themselves intimate friends, till one of them, taking offence at some foolish words uttered by the other, challenged him. A large crowd assembled to see the duel, which took place on a piece of prairie ground. The combatants came armed with rifles, and at the first interchange of shots the challenged man fell disabled by a ball in the thigh. The other, throwing down his rifle, walked toward him, and kneeling by his side, drew a bowie knife, and deliberately butchered him. The crowd of bystanders not only permitted this, but the execrable assassin still lives in the community, has since married, and, as far as my informant could judge, his social position has been rather advanced than otherwise, from thus dealing with his enemy. In what other English—in what other civilized or half-civilized community would such cowardly atrocity have been endured?

[35] Richland District contains seven thousand white, and thirteen thousand slave population. The Report is published in the _Charleston Standard_, October 12th, 1854.

[36] “Most persons allow their negroes to cultivate a small crop of their own. For a number of reasons the practice is a bad one. It is next to impossible to keep them from working the crop on the Sabbath. They labour at night when they should be at rest. There is no saving more than to give them the same amount; for, like all other animals, the negro is only capable of doing a certain amount of work without injury. To this point he may be worked at his regular task, and any labour beyond this is an injury to both master and slave. They will pilfer to add to what cotton or corn they have made. If they sell the crop and trade for themselves, they are apt to be cheated out of a good portion of their labour. They will have many things in their possession, under colour of purchases, which we know not whether they have gained honestly.”—_Southern Cultivator._

[37] P. W. Fraser, p. 574, Pub. Doc. VI., 1846.

[38] Among the thousands of applicants for soup, and bread, and fuel, as charity, I never saw, during “the famine” in New York, one negro. Five Points Pease said to me, “The negro seems to be more provident than the Celt. The poor blacks always manage to keep themselves more decent and comfortable than the poor whites. They very rarely complain, or ask for charity; and I have often found them sharing their food with white people, who were too poor to provide for themselves.” A great deal of falsehood is circulated and accredited about the sufferings of the free negroes at the North. Their condition is bad enough, but no worse than that of any men educated and treated as they are, must be; and it is, on an average, far better than that of the slave.

[39] In the obscure country papers of Northern Alabama and Georgia, and Western South Carolina, I have seen many more descriptions, similar to these, of this famine; but I cannot now lay my hand on them. These I have by accident, not having taken pains to collect them for this purpose. In a district of the Slave States, where it is boasted that more than a hundred bushels of maize to the acre has been raised, and where not one out of five hundred of the people is engaged in any other than agricultural industry, I have myself bought maize, which had been raised by free labour, in Ohio, at two dollars a bushel.

[40] “North America, its Agriculture and Climate,” by Robert Russell, Kilwhiss. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1857.

[41] De Bow, vol. iii., p. 342.

[42] See De Bow’s “Resources,” art. Tobacco.

[43] Vol. i., p. 175, “Resources.”

[44] In my Notes on Eastern Virginia, it was mentioned that a tobacco planter informed me that he could not raise the finer sorts of tobacco with profit, because he could not make his slaves take pains enough with it; and in certain localities in Ohio, having a favourable soil for the production of fine or high-priced tobacco, it appears that free labour is engaged more profitably in the cultivation of tobacco than in the cultivation of corn. It is the same in parts of Connecticut and of Massachusetts. Except in these limited districts, however, it is found that the labour of Ohio, as of Connecticut and Massachusetts, is more profitably directed to the cultivation of Indian corn and other crops than of tobacco.

[45] “Resources,” p. 175.

[46] Virginia, with 10,360,135 acres of improved land, produced, according to the last census returns,

35,254,319 bushels of corn, 56,803,227 pounds of tobacco.

Ohio, with 9,851,493 acres of improved land, produced

59,078,695 bushels of corn, 10,454,449 pounds of tobacco.

The aggregate value of these two products alone, at present New York prices, would be

Ohio $5,127,223,565 Virginia $3,564,639,385

Actual crops per acre, on the average, as returned by the marshals for 1849-50 (Census Compilation, p. 178):

Corn. Tobacco. Ohio 36 bushels 730 pounds. Virginia 18 ” 630 ”

[47] “North America, its Climate,” etc., p. 286.

[48] De Bow’s “Resources.” See “Seaboard Slave States,” pp. 463 and 586, for further southern evidence.

[49] A writer in “Household Words,” speaking of the “popular fallacy that a man cannot do a hard day’s work in the climate of India,” says:—

“I have seen as hard work, real bone and muscle work, done by citizens of the United Kingdom in the East, as was ever achieved in the cold West, and all upon rice and curry—not curry and rice—in which the rice has formed the real meal, and the curry has merely helped to give it a relish, as a sort of substantial Kitchener’s zest, or Harvey’s sauce. I have seen, likewise, Moormen, Malabars, and others of the Indian labouring classes, perform a day’s work that would terrify a London porter, or coal-whipper, or a country navvy, or ploughman; and under the direct rays of a sun that has made a wooden platform too hot to stand on in thin shoes, without literally dancing with pain, as I have done many a day, within six degrees of the line.”

[50] Dr. Barton, of New Orleans, in a paper read before the Academy of Science of that city, says: “The class of diseases most fatal in the South are mainly of a ‘_preventible_ nature,’ and embraces fevers and intestinal diseases, and depends mostly on conditions under the control of man, as drainage, the removal of forest growth—of personal exposure and private hygiene. The climate further north is too rigid the greater part of the year for personal exposure to the open air, so essential to the enjoyment of health, and when the extremes are great and rapid, another class of maladies predominate—the pulmonary, as well as others arising from crowding, defective ventilation and filth—exacting preventive measures from the public authorities with as much urgency as the worst fevers of the South.”

[51] Indian corn has been considered an exception, and there are probably larger corn fields in Indiana than cotton fields in Mississippi.

[52] I believe that plantations or agricultural operations devoted to a single crop are, as a general rule, profitable in proportion to their size in the Free States, unless, indeed, the market is a small one and easily overstocked, which is never the case with the cotton market.

[53] Vol. i., p. 175, “Resources.”

[54] Some one can render a service to civilization by publishing precisely what feudal rights, so called, were abolished in large parts of Germany and Hungary in 1848, and what results to the commerce of the districts affected the greater freedom and impulse to industry arising therefrom has had. If I am rightly informed, trade, in many cases, both export and import, has already much more than quadrupled in value, thousands of peasants now demanding numerous articles and being able to pay for them, which before only a few score or hundred proprietors were expected to buy.

[55] From an “_Address on Climatology_,” before the Academy of Science, by Dr. Barton, of New Orleans:—

“The institution of slavery operates by contrast and comparison; it elevates the tone of the superior, adds to its refinement, allows more time to cultivate the mind, exalts the standard in morals, manners, and intellectual endowments; operates as a safety-valve for the evil disposed, leaving the upper race purer, while it really preserves from degradation, in the scale of civilization, the inferior, which we see is their uniform destiny when left to themselves. The slaves constitute essentially the lowest class, and society is immeasurably benefitted by having this class, which constitutes the offensive fungus—the great cancer of civilized life—a vast burthen and expense to every community, under surveillance and control; and not only so, but under direction as an efficient agent to promote the general welfare and increase the wealth of the community. The history of the world furnishes no institution under similar management, where so much good actually results to the governors and the governed as this in the Southern States of North America.”

“It is by the existence of slavery, exempting so large a portion of our citizens from labour, that we have leisure for intellectual pursuits.”—_Governor Hammond, in South. Literary Mess._

“Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox, by giving him a cultivated understanding, or fine feelings? So far as the _mere labourer_ has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspirations of a free man, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are sordid, servile, and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to perform them?”—_Chancellor Harper; Address to South Carolina Institute._

“The relations between the North and the South are very analogous to those which subsisted between Greece and the Roman Empire, after the subjugation of Achaia by the Consul Mummius. The dignity and energy of the Roman character, conspicuous in war and in politics, were not easily tamed and adjusted to the arts of industry and literature. The degenerate and pliant Greeks, on the contrary, excelled in the handicraft and polite professions. We learn from the vigorous invective of Juvenal, that they were the most useful and capable of servants, whether as pimps or professors of rhetoric. Obsequious, dexterous, and ready, the versatile Greeks monopolized the business of teaching, publishing, and manufacturing in the Roman Empire—allowing their masters ample leisure for the service of the State, in the Senate or in the field.”—_Richmond Enquirer._

[56] The business committee of the South Carolina State Agricultural Society reported, Aug. 9, 1855:—

“Our old fields are enlarging, our homesteads have been decreasing fearfully in number. * * * We are not only losing some of our most energetic and useful citizens to supply the bone and sinew of other States, but we are losing our slave population, which is the true wealth of the State, our stocks of hogs, horses, mules, and cattle are diminishing in size and decreasing in number, and our purses are strained for the last cent to supply their places from the North-western States.”

[57] De Bow’s “Review,” vol. xviii. p. 790.

[58] “Georgia Scenes,” by the Rev. and Hon. Judge Longstreet, now President of the University of Mississippi. Harper’s edition, p. 76.

[59] Address before the South Carolina Institute.

[60] Fifth Annual Report to Directors of Graniteville Company.

[61] Mr. Russell uses the language of England. There are several collections of houses on this river bank, the inhabitants of which would consider it an insult if they should hear such a humble term as “village” applied to their pseudo towns and cities.

[62] “North America; its Agriculture and Climate,” p. 290.

[63] It was not long since estimated in the Legislature of Kentucky as seven to one in that State.

[64] I fear that it must be confessed that this general rule has now a multitude of exceptions in our large towns, where, in New York, especially, we seem taking some pains to form a permanent lower class. With the present great and apparently permanent falling off in the European emigration it can hardly last, however.

[65] The ratio of white illiterate to white population, per cent., as returned, is,

{Free States, 3.36 {Slave States 8.27

of the native population, over twenty years old, it is,

{Free States, 4.12 {Slave States 17.23

(Census Compendium, pp. 152, 153). The ability to merely read and write may itself be of little value, but the fact of a child’s having had the painstaking necessary to so far instruct him is in some degree a means of measuring his other inherited wealth, and thus his breeding.

[66] “Resources,” vol. ii., pp. 197, 198.

[67] The late Mr. Brooks’ character should be honestly considered, now that personal enmity toward him is impossible. That he was courteous, accomplished, warm-hearted, and hot-blooded, dear as a friend and fearful as an enemy, may be believed by all; but, in the South, his name is yet never mentioned without the term gallant or courageous, spirited or noble, is also attached to it; and we are obliged to ask, why insist on this? The truth is, we include a habit of mind in these terms which slavery has rendered, in a great degree, obsolete in the South. The man who has been accustomed from childhood to see men beaten when they have no chance to defend themselves; to hear men accused, reproved, vituperated, who dare not open their lips in self-defence or reply; the man who is accustomed to see other men whip women without interference, remonstrance, or any expression of indignation, must have a certain quality, which is an essential part of personal honour with us, greatly blunted, if not entirely destroyed. The same quality which we detest in the assassination of an enemy, is essentially constant in all slavery. It is found in effecting one’s will with another, when he cannot, if he would, defend himself. Accustomed to this in every hour of their lives. Southerners do not feel magnanimity and the “fair-play” impulse to be a necessary part of the quality of “spirit,” courage, and nobleness. By spirit they apparently mean only passionate vindictiveness of character, and by gallantry mere intrepidity.

[68] From the Introduction to “The Englishman in Kansas,” (by the author of this work).

[69] That slaves have ever been burned alive has been indignantly denied. The late Judge Jay told me that he had evidence in his possession of negro burnings every year in the last twenty.

[70] 2 Devereaux’s North Carolina Reports, 263.

[71] The real object of the systematic mail robbery which is maintained throughout the South, and of the censorship of the press which is otherwise attempted, was once betrayed by a somewhat distinguished Southern editor, Duff Green, in the _United States Telegraph_, in the following words:—

“The real danger of this [slave insurrection] is remote. We believe we have most to fear from the organized action upon the consciences and fears of the slaveholders themselves; from the insinuation of their dangerous heresies into our schools, our pulpits, and our domestic circles. It is only by alarming the consciences of the weak and feeble, and diffusing among our people a morbid sensibility on the question of slavery, that the Abolitionists can accomplish their object.”

[72] Elsewhere the Messrs. Appleton are spoken of as “the great Abolition publishers of New York.”

[73] Note the argument, I pray you, reader. Why, indeed? Why is there not a Feejee Iliad? Are not the Feejees heathen, as Homer was? Why should not the Book of Mormon be as good a thing as the Psalms of David? Was not Joseph Smith also a polygamist?

[74] From the _Columbia_ (S. C.) _Times_, quoted without dissent in the conservative South Carolina paper, the _Charleston Mercury_:—

“The loss that the South annually sustains by the running of slaves into Canada, is of sufficient importance to justify her public men in insisting upon some action of the Government of the United States in the premises. And we confess our surprise that Southern statesmen have submitted with so much patience to the annual robbery of thousands of dollars’ worth of property to which she has as good a right as the land they cultivate. The time is propitious for the acquisition of all disputed rights from European powers. They cannot afford to break just now with the United States. Let our public men move in the matter, and we question not but that the President and the American Minister at St. James’s will give the movement a cordial support. Besides, this is a golden moment which may never return. Before we get another sound man in the presidential chair, peace may be made in Europe, and the European powers be less inclined to look with favour upon the demands of America.”

[75] “While it is far more obvious that negroes should be slaves than whites, for they are only fit to labour, not to direct; yet the principle of slavery is itself right, and does not depend upon difference of complexion. Difference of race, lineage, of language, of habits, and customs, all tend to render the institution more natural and durable; and although slaves have been generally whites, still the masters and slaves have generally been of different national descent. Moses and Aristotle, the earliest historians, are both authorities in favour of this difference of race, but not of colour.”—_Richmond Enquirer._

[76] Abstract of the Seventh Census, and the able work of Professor Tucker, on the “Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth.”

[77] The population, following Mr. White, is given in round numbers, from the State Census of 1845; average personal estate, per family of citizens, reckoned from an official return, published in the “Soil of the South” (Columbus, Georgia, 1852, p. 210), the amount given for each county being divided by one-fifth the number of its population (for families). Observations on education and the character of the people, from “White’s Statistics of Georgia” (generally in quotations). School, library, and church statistics, in figures from official United States Census, 1850.

[78] The presence of these few planters, with their valuable human property, makes the average nominal wealth of each white family, at first sight, appear large. If, however, the slaves had been appraised at only $500 each, which would be low, they would alone amount in value in some counties to the sum assigned for the whole personal property of the citizens. This item is not, therefore, trustworthy, but, in comparing the coast and second tier counties, it serves to show the great difference in the average wealth of the citizens of each. A similar division of personal estate, as officially returned for the city of New York, would give $4,660 to each family.

[79] “White’s Statistics,” p. 224.

[80] Hewitt, —; “Seaboard Slave States,” p. 528.