Chapter X: Legree

As St. Clare and the Shelbys are the representatives of one class of masters, so Legree is the representative of another; and, as all good masters are not as enlightened, as generous, and as considerate, as St. Clare and Mr. Shelby, or as careful and successful in religious training as Mrs. Shelby, so all bad masters do not unite the personal ugliness, the coarseness and profaneness, of Legree.

Legree is introduced not for the sake of vilifying masters as a class, but for the sake of bringing to the minds of honorable Southern men, who are masters, a very important feature in the system of slavery, upon which, perhaps, they have never reflected. It is this: that _no Southern law requires any test of_ CHARACTER _from the man to whom the absolute power of master is granted_.

In the second part of this book it will be shown that the legal power of the master amounts to an absolute despotism over body and soul; and that there is no protection for the slave’s life or limb, his family relations, his conscience, nay, more, his eternal interests, but the CHARACTER of the master.

Rev. Charles C. Jones, of Georgia, in addressing masters, tells them that they have the power to open the kingdom of heaven or to shut it, to their slaves (_Religious Instruction of the Negroes_, p. 158), and a South Carolinian, in a recent article in _Fraser’s Magazine_, apparently in a very serious spirit, thus acknowledges the fact of this awful power: “Yes, we would have the whole South to feel that the _soul_ of the slave is in some sense in the master’s keeping, and to be charged against him hereafter.”

Now, it is respectfully submitted to men of this high class, who are the law-makers, whether this awful power to bind and to loose, to open and to shut the kingdom of heaven, ought to be intrusted to every man in the community, without any other qualification than that of property to buy. Let this gentleman of South Carolina cast his eyes around the world. Let him travel for one week through any district of country either in the South or the North, and ask himself how many of the men whom he meets are fit to be trusted with this power,—how many are fit to be trusted with their own souls, much less with those of others?

Now, in all the theory of government as it is managed in our country, just in proportion to the extent of power is the strictness with which qualification for the proper exercise of it is demanded. The physician may not meddle with the body, to prescribe for its ailments, without a certificate that he is properly qualified. The judge may not decide on the laws which relate to property, without a long course of training, and most abundant preparation. It is only this office of MASTER, which contains the power to bind and to loose, and to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, and involves responsibility for the soul as well as the body, that is thrown out to every hand, and committed without inquiry to any man of any character. A man may have made all his property by piracy upon the high seas, as we have represented in the case of Legree, and there is no law whatever to prevent his investing that property in acquiring this absolute control over the souls and bodies of his fellow-beings. To the half-maniac drunkard, to the man notorious for hardness and cruelty, to the man sunk entirely below public opinion, to the bitter infidel and blasphemer, the law confides this power, just as freely as to the most honorable and religious man on earth. And yet, men who make and uphold these laws think they are guiltless before God, because individually they do not perpetrate the wrongs which they allow others to perpetrate!

To the pirate Legree the law gives a power which no man of woman born, save One, ever was good enough to exercise.

Are there such men as Legree? Let any one go into the low districts and dens of New York, let them go into some of the lanes and alleys of London, and will they not there see many Legrees? Nay, take the purest district of New England, and let people cast about in their memory and see if there have not been men there, hard, coarse, unfeeling, brutal, who, if they had possessed the absolute power of Legree, would have used it in the same way; and that there should be Legrees in the Southern States, is only saying that human nature is the same there that it is everywhere. The only difference is this,—that in free states Legree is chained and restrained by law; in the slave states, the law makes him an absolute, irresponsible despot.

It is a shocking task to confirm by fact this part of the writer’s story. One may well approach it in fear and trembling. It is so mournful to think that man, made in the image of God, and by his human birth a brother of Jesus Christ, can sink so low, can do such things as the very soul shudders to contemplate,—and to think that the very man who thus sinks is our brother,—is capable, like us, of the renewal by the Spirit of grace, by which he might be created in the image of Christ and be made equal unto the angels. They who uphold the laws which grant this awful power have another heavy responsibility, of which they little dream. How many souls of masters have been ruined through it! How has this absolute authority provoked and developed wickedness which otherwise might have been suppressed! How many have stumbled into everlasting perdition over this stumbling-stone of IRRESPONSIBLE POWER!

What facts do the judicial trials of slaveholding states occasionally develop! What horrible records defile the pages of the law-book, describing unheard-of scenes of torture and agony, perpetrated in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, by the irresponsible despot who owns the body and soul! Let any one read, if they can, the ninety-third page of Weld’s _Slavery as It Is_, where the Rev. Mr. Dickey gives an account of a trial in Kentucky for a deed of butchery and blood too repulsive to humanity to be here described. The culprit was convicted, and _sentenced_ to death. Mr. Dickey’s account of the finale is thus:

The Court sat—Isham was judged to be guilty of a capital crime in
the affair of George. He was to be hanged at Salem. The day was set.
My good old father visited him in the prison—two or three times
talked and prayed with him; I visited him once myself. We fondly
hoped that he was a sincere penitent. Before the day of execution
came, by some means, I never knew what, Isham was _missing_. About
two years after, we learned that he had gone down to Natchez, and
had married a lady of some refinement and piety. I saw her letters
to his sisters, who were worthy members of the church of which I was
pastor. The last letter told of his death. He was in Jackson’s army,
and fell in the famous battle of New Orleans.

I am, sir, your friend,
WM. DICKEY.

But the reader will have too much reason to know of the possibility of the existence of such men as Legree, when he comes to read the records of the trials and judicial decisions in Part II.

Let not the Southern country be taunted as the only country in the world which produces such men;—let us in sorrow and in humility concede that such men are found everywhere; but let not the Southern country deny the awful charge that she invests such men with absolute, irresponsible power over both the body and the soul.

With regard to that atrocious system of working up the human being in a given time, on which Legree is represented as conducting his plantation, there is unfortunately too much reason to know that it has been practised and is still practised.

In Mr. Weld’s book, “Slavery as It Is,” under the head of Labor, p. 39, are given several extracts from various documents, to show that this system has been pursued on some plantations to such an extent as to shorten life, and to prevent the increase of the slave population, so that, unless annually renewed, it would of itself die out. Of these documents we quote the following:

The Agricultural Society of Baton Rouge, La., in its report,
published in 1829, furnishes a labored estimate of the amount of
expenditure necessarily incurred in conducting “a well-regulated
sugar estate.” In this estimate, the annual net loss of slaves, over
and above the supply by propagation, is set down at TWO AND A HALF
PER CENT.! The late Hon. Josiah S. Johnson, a member of Congress
from Louisiana, addressed a letter to the Secretary of the United
States’ Treasury, in 1830, containing a similar estimate, apparently
made with great care, and going into minute details. Many items in
this estimate differ from the preceding; but the estimate of the
annual _decrease_ of the slaves on a plantation was the same,—TWO
AND A HALF PER CENT.!

In September, 1834, the writer of this had an interview with James
G. Birney, Esq., who then resided in Kentucky, having removed, with
his family, from Alabama, the year before. A few hours before that
interview, and on the morning of the same day, Mr. B. had spent a
couple of hours with Hon. Henry Clay, at his residence, near
Lexington. Mr. Birney remarked that Mr. Clay had just told him he
had lately been led to mistrust certain estimates as to the increase
of the slave population in the far South-west,—estimates which he
had presented, I think, in a speech before the Colonization Society.
He now believed that the births among the slaves in that quarter
were _not equal to the deaths_; and that, of course, the slave
population, independent of immigration from the slave-selling
states, was _not sustaining itself_.

Among other facts stated by Mr. Clay was the following, which we
copy _verbatim_ from the original memorandum made at the time by Mr.
Birney, with which he has kindly furnished us.

“_Sept. 16, 1834._—Hon. H. Clay, in a conversation at his own house
on the subject of slavery, informed me that Hon. Outerbridge
Horsey—formerly a senator in Congress from the State of Delaware,
and the owner of a sugar plantation in Louisiana—declared to him
that his overseer worked his hands so closely that one of the women
brought forth a child whilst engaged in the labors of the field.

“Also that, a few years since, he was at a brick-yard in the
environs of New Orleans, in which one hundred hands were employed;
among them were from _twenty to thirty young women_, in the prime of
life. He was told by the proprietor that there had _not been a child
born among them for the last two or three years, although they all
had husbands_.”

The late Mr. Samuel Blackwell, a highly-respected citizen of Jersey
City, opposite the city of New York, and a member of the
Presbyterian church, visited many of the sugar plantations in
Louisiana a few years since; and having, for many years, been the
owner of an extensive sugar refinery in England, and subsequently in
this country, he had not only every facility afforded him by the
planters for personal inspection of all parts of the process of
sugar-making, but received from them the most unreserved
communications as to their management of their slaves. Mr. B., after
his return, frequently made the following statement to gentlemen of
his acquaintance:—“That the planters generally declared to him that
they were _obliged_ so to over-work their slaves, during the
sugar-making season (from eight to ten weeks), as to _use them up_
in seven or eight years. For, said they, after the process is
commenced, it must be pushed, without cessation, night and day; and
we cannot afford to keep a sufficient number of slaves to do the
_extra_ work at the time of sugar-making, as we could not profitably
employ them the rest of the year.”

Dr. Demming, a gentleman of high respectability, residing in
Ashland, Richland County, Ohio, stated to Professor Wright, of New
York city,

“That, during a recent tour at the South, while ascending the Ohio
river, on the steamboat Fame, he had an opportunity of conversing
with a Mr. Dickinson, a resident of Pittsburg, in company with a
number of cotton-planters and slave-dealers from Louisiana, Alabama
and Mississippi. Mr. Dickinson stated as a fact, that the
sugar-planters upon the sugar-coast in Louisiana had ascertained
that, as it was usually necessary to employ about _twice_ the amount
of labor during the boiling season that was required during the
season of raising, they could, by excessive driving, day and night,
during the boiling season, accomplish the whole labor _with one set
of hands_. By pursuing this plan, they could afford _to sacrifice a
set of hands once in seven years_! He further stated that this
horrible system was now practised to a considerable extent! The
correctness of this statement was substantially admitted by the
slave-holders then on board.”

The following testimony of Rev. Dr. Channing, of Boston, who resided
some time in Virginia, shows that the over-working of slaves, to
such an extent as to abridge life, and cause a decrease of
population, is not confined to the far South and South-west.

“I heard of an estate managed by an individual who was considered as
singularly successful, and who was able to govern the slaves without
the use of the whip. I was anxious to see him; and trusted that some
discovery had been made favorable to humanity. I asked him how he
was able to dispense with corporal punishment. He replied to me,
with a very determined look, ‘The slaves know that the work _must_
be done, and that it is better to do it without punishment than with
it.’ In other words, the certainty and dread of chastisement were so
impressed on them that they never incurred it.

“I then found that the slaves on this well-managed estate
_decreased_ in number. I asked the cause. He replied, with perfect
frankness and ease, ‘The gang is not large enough for the estate.’
In other words, they were not equal to the work of the plantation,
and yet were _made to do it_, though with the certainty of abridging
life.

“On this plantation the huts were uncommonly convenient. There was
an unusual air of neatness. A superficial observer would have called
the slaves happy. Yet they were living under a severe, subduing
discipline, and were _over-worked_ to a degree that _shortened
life_.”—_Channing on Slavery_, page 162, first edition.

A friend of the writer—the Rev. Mr. Barrows, now officiating as teacher of Hebrew in Andover Theological Seminary—stated the following, in conversation with her:—That, while at New Orleans, some time since, he was invited by a planter to visit his estate, as he considered it to be a model one. He found good dwellings for the slaves, abundant provision distributed to them, all cruel punishments superseded by rational and reasonable ones, and half a day every week allowed to the negroes to cultivate their own grounds. Provision was also made for their moral and religious instruction. Mr. Barrows then asked the planter,

“Do you consider your estate a fair specimen?” The gentleman replied, “There are two systems pursued among us. One is, to make all we can out of a negro in a few years, and then supply his place with another; and the other is, to treat him as I do. My neighbor on the next plantation pursues the opposite system. His boys are hard worked and scantily fed; and I have had them come to me, and get down on their knees to beg me to buy them.”

Mr. Barrows says he subsequently passed by this plantation, and that the woe-struck, dejected aspect of its laborers fully confirmed the account. He also says that the gentleman who managed so benevolently told him, “I do not make much money out of my slaves.”

It will be easy to show that such is the nature of slavery, and the temptations of masters, that such well-regulated plantations are and must be infinitely in the minority, and exceptional cases.

The Rev. Charles C. Jones, a man of the finest feelings of humanity, and for many years an assiduous laborer for the benefit of the slave, himself the owner of a plantation, and qualified, therefore, to judge, both by experience and observation, says, after speaking of the great improvidence of the negroes, engendered by slavery:

And, indeed, once for all, I will here say that the wastes of the
system are so great, as well as the fluctuation in prices of the
staple articles for market, that it is _difficult, nay, impossible_,
to indulge in large expenditures on plantations, and make them
savingly profitable.—_Religious Instruction_, p. 116.

If even the religious and benevolent master feels the difficulty of uniting any great consideration for the comfort of the slave with prudence and economy, how readily must the moral question be solved by minds of the coarse style of thought which we have supposed in Legree!

“I used to, when I first begun, have considerable trouble fussin’
with ‘em, and trying to make ‘em hold out,—doctorin’ on ‘em up when
they’s sick, and givin’ on ‘em clothes, and blankets, and what not,
trying to keep ‘em all sort o’ decent and comfortable. Law, ‘twant
no sort o’ use; I lost money on ‘em, and ‘twas heaps o’ trouble.
Now, you see, I just put ‘em straight through, sick or well. When
one nigger’s dead, I buy another; and I find it comes cheaper and
easier every way.”

Added to this, the peculiar mode of labor on the sugar plantation is such that the master, at a certain season of the year, must over-work his slaves, unless he is willing to incur great pecuniary loss. In that very gracefully written apology for slavery, Professor Ingraham’s “Travels in the South-west,” the following description of sugar-making is given. We quote from him in preference to any one else, because he speaks as an apologist, and describes the thing with the grace of a Mr. Skimpole.

When the grinding has once commenced, there is no cessation of labor
till it is completed. From beginning to end a busy and cheerful
scene continues. The negroes,

“—— Whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week,”

work from eighteen to twenty hours,

“And make the night joint laborer with the day;”

though, to lighten the burden as much as possible, the gang is
divided into two watches, one taking the first and the other the
last part of the night; and, notwithstanding this continued labor,
the negroes improve in appearance, and appear fat and flourishing.
They drink freely of cane-juice, and the sickly among them revive,
and become robust and healthy.

After the grinding is finished, the negroes have several holidays,
when they are quite at liberty to dance and frolic as much as they
please; and the cane-song—which is improvised by one of the gang,
the rest all joining in a prolonged and unintelligible chorus—now
breaks, night and day, upon the ear, in notes “most musical, most
melancholy.”

The above is inserted as a specimen of the facility with which the most horrible facts may be told in the genteelest phrase. In a work entitled “Travels in Louisiana in 1802” is the following extract (see Weld’s “Slavery as It Is,” p. 134), from which it appears that this _cheerful_ process of laboring night and day lasts _three months_!

“At the rolling of sugars, an interval of from two to three months,
they (the slaves in Louisiana) work _both night and day_. Abridged
of their sleep, they scarcely retire to rest during the whole
period.”

Now, let any one learn the private history of seven hundred blacks,—men and women,—compelled to work day and night, under the lash of a driver, for a period of three months.

Possibly, if the gentleman who wrote this account were employed, with his wife and family, in this “cheerful scene” of labor,—if he saw the woman that he loved, the daughter who was dear to him as his own soul, forced on in the general gang, in this toil which

“Does not divide the Sabbath from the week,
And makes the night joint laborer with the day,”

—possibly, if he saw all this, he might have another opinion of its cheerfulness; and it might be an eminently salutary thing if every apologist for slavery were to enjoy some such privilege for a season, particularly as Mr. Ingraham is careful to tell us that its effect upon the general health is so excellent that the negroes improve in appearance, and appear fat and flourishing, and that the sickly among them revive, and become robust and healthy. One would think it a surprising fact, if working slaves night and day, and giving them cane-juice to drink, really produces such salutary results, that the practice should not be continued the whole year round; though, perhaps, in this case, the negroes would become so fat as to be unable to labor. Possibly, it is because this healthful process is not longer continued that the agricultural societies of Louisiana are obliged to set down an annual loss of slaves on sugar plantations to the amount of two and a half per cent. This ought to be looked into by philanthropists. Perhaps working them all night for six months, instead of three, might remedy the evil.

But this periodical pressure is not confined to the making of sugar. There is also a press in the cotton season, as any one can observe by reading the Southern newspapers. At a certain season of the year, the whole interest of the community is engaged in gathering in the cotton crop. Concerning this Mr. Weld says (“Slavery as It Is,” page 34):

In the cotton and sugar region there is a fearful amount of
desperate gambling, in which, though money is the ostensible stake
and forfeit, _human life_ is the real one. The length to which this
rivalry is carried at the South and South-west, the multitude of
planters who engage in it, and the recklessness of human life
exhibited in driving the murderous game to its issue, cannot well be
imagined by one who has not lived in the midst of it. Desire of gain
is only one of the motives that stimulates them; the _éclat_ of
having made the largest crop with a given number of hands is also a
powerful stimulant; the Southern newspapers, at the crop season,
chronicle carefully the “cotton brag,” and the “crack
cotton-picking,” and “unparalleled driving,” &c. Even the editors of
professedly religious papers cheer on the _mêlée_, and sing the
triumphs of the victor. Among these we recollect the celebrated Rev.
J. N. Maffit, recently editor of a religious paper at Natchez,
Miss., in which he took care to assign a prominent place and
capitals to “THE COTTON BRAG.”

As a specimen, of recent date, of this kind of affair, we subjoin the following from the _Fairfield Herald_, Winsboro’, S. C., Nov. 4, 1852.

COTTON-PICKING.

We find in many of our southern and western exchanges notices of the
amount of cotton picked by hands, and the quantity by each hand;
and, as we have received a similar account, which we have not seen
excelled, so far as regards the quantity picked by one hand, we with
pleasure furnish the statement, with the remark that it is from a
citizen of this district, overseeing for Maj. H. W. Parr.

“_Broad River, Oct. 12, 1852._

“MESSRS. EDITORS:—By way of contributing something to your variety
(provided it meets your approbation), I send you the return of a
day’s picking of cotton, not by picked hands, but the fag end of a
set of hands on one plantation, the able-bodied hands having been
drawn out for other purposes. Now for the result of a day’s picking,
from sun-up until sun-down, by twenty-two hands,—women, boys, and
two men:—four thousand eight hundred and eighty pounds of clean
picked cotton, from the stalk.

“The highest, three hundred and fifty pounds, by several; the
lowest, one hundred and fifteen pounds. One of the number has picked
in the last seven and a half days (Sunday excepted), eleven hours
each day, nineteen hundred pounds clean cotton. When any of my
agricultural friends beat this, in the same time, and during
sunshine, I will try again.

JAMES STEWARD.”

It seems that this agriculturist professes to have accomplished all these extraordinary results with what he very elegantly terms the “fag end” of a set of hands; and, the more to exalt his glory in the matter, he distinctly informs the public that there were no “able-bodied” hands employed; that this whole triumphant result was worked out of women and children, and two disabled men; in other words, he boasts that out of women and children, and the feeble and sickly, _he_ has extracted four thousand eight hundred and eighty pounds of clean picked cotton in a day; and that one of these same hands has been made to pick nineteen hundred pounds of clean cotton in a week! and adds, complacently, that, when any of his agricultural friends beat this, in the same time, and during sunshine, he “will try again.”

Will any of our readers now consider the forcing up of the hands on Legree’s plantation an exaggeration? Yet see how complacently this account is quoted by the editor, as a most praiseworthy and laudable thing!

“BEHOLD THE HIRE OF THE LABORERS WHO HAVE REAPED DOWN YOUR FIELDS, WHICH IS OF YOU KEPT BACK BY FRAUD, CRIETH! AND THE CRIES OF THEM WHICH HAVE REAPED ARE ENTERED INTO THE EARS OF THE LORD OF SABAOTH.”

That the representations of the style of dwelling-house, modes of housekeeping, and, in short, the features of life generally, as described on Legree’s plantation, are not wild and fabulous drafts on the imagination, or exaggerated pictures of exceptional cases, there is the most abundant testimony before the world, and has been for a long number of years. Let the reader weigh the following testimony with regard to the dwellings of the negroes, which has been for some years before the world, in the work of Mr. Weld. It shows the state of things in this respect, at least up to the year 1838.

Mr. Stephen E. Maltby, Inspector of Provisions, Skaneateles, N. Y.,
who has lived in Alabama.—“The huts where the slaves slept generally
contained but _one_ apartment, and that _without floor_.”

Mr. George A. Avery, elder of the 4th Presbyterian Church,
Rochester, N. Y., who lived four years in Virginia.—“Amongst all the
negro cabins which I saw in Virginia, _I cannot call to mind one_ in
which there was any other floor than the _earth_; anything that a
Northern laborer, or mechanic, white or colored, would call a _bed_,
nor a solitary _partition_, to separate the sexes.”

William Ladd, Esq., Minot, Maine, President of the American Peace
Society, formerly a slave-holder in Florida.—“The dwellings of the
slaves were palmetto huts, built by themselves of stakes and poles,
thatched with the palmetto-leaf. The door, when they had any, was
generally of the same materials, sometimes boards found on the
beach. They had _no floors_, no separate apartments; except the
Guinea negroes had sometimes a small enclosure for their ‘god
houses.’ These huts the slaves built themselves after task and on
Sundays.”

Rev. Joseph M. Sadd, pastor Presbyterian Church, Castile, Greene
Co., N. Y., who lived in Missouri five years previous to 1837.—“The
slaves live _generally_ in _miserable huts_, which are _without
floors_; and have a single apartment only, where both sexes are
herded promiscuously together.”

Mr. George W. Westgate, member of the Congregational church in
Quincy, Illinois, who has spent a number of years in slave
states.—“On old plantations the negro quarters are of frame and
clapboards, seldom affording a comfortable shelter from wind or
rain; their size varies from eight by ten to ten by twelve feet, and
six or eight feet high; sometimes there is a hole cut for a window,
but I never saw a sash, or glass, in any. In the new country, and in
the woods, the quarters are generally built of logs, of similar
dimensions.”

Mr. Cornelius Johnson, a member of a Christian church in Farmington,
Ohio. Mr. J. lived in Mississippi in 1837–8.—“Their houses were
commonly built of logs; sometimes they were framed, often they had
no floor; some of them have two apartments, commonly but one; each
of those apartments contained a family. Sometimes these families
consisted of a man and his wife and children, while in other
instances persons of both sexes were thrown together, without any
regard to family relationship.”

The _Western Medical Reformer_, in an article on the Cachexia
Africana, by a Kentucky physician, thus speaks of the huts of the
slaves: “They are _crowded_ together in a _small hut_, and sometimes
having an imperfect and sometimes no floor, and seldom raised from
the ground, ill ventilated, and surrounded with filth.”

Mr. William Leftwich, a native of Virginia, but has resided most of
his life in Madison Co., Alabama.—“The dwellings of the slaves are
log huts, from ten to twelve feet square, often without windows,
doors or floors; they have neither chairs, table, or bedstead.”

Reuben L. Macy, of Hudson, N. Y., a member of the religious society
of Friends. He lived in South Carolina in 1818–19.—“The houses for
the field-slaves were about fourteen feet square, built in the
coarsest manner, with one room, _without any chimney or flooring,
with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out_.”

Mr. Lemuel Sapington, of Lancaster, Pa., a native of Maryland,
formerly a slave-holder.—“The descriptions generally given of negro
quarters are correct; the quarters are _without floors, and not
sufficient to keep off the inclemency of the weather_; they are
uncomfortable both in summer and winter.”

Rev. John Rankin, a native of Tennessee.—“When they return to their
miserable huts at night, they find not there the means of
comfortable rest; but _on the cold ground they must lie without
covering, and shiver while they slumber_.”

Philemon Bliss, Esq., Elyria, Ohio, who lived in Florida in
1835.—“The dwellings of the slaves are usually small _open_ log
huts, with but one apartment, and very generally _without floors_.”

_Slavery as It Is_, p. 43.

The Rev. C. C. Jones, to whom we have already alluded, when taking a survey of the condition of the negroes considered as a field for missionary effort, takes into account all the conditions of their external life. He speaks of a part of Georgia where as much attention had been paid to the comfort of the negro as in any part of the United States. He gives the following picture:

Their _general mode of living_ is coarse and vulgar. Many negro
houses are small, low to the ground, blackened with smoke, often
with dirt floors, and the furniture of the plainest kind. On some
estates the houses are framed, weather-boarded, neatly white-washed,
and made sufficiently large and comfortable in every respect. The
improvement in the size, material and finish, of negro houses, is
extending. Occasionally they may be found constructed of tabby or
brick.

_Religious Instruction of the Negroes_, p. 116.

Now, admitting what Mr. Jones says, to wit, that improvements with regard to the accommodation of the negroes are continually making among enlightened and Christian people, still, if we take into account how many people there are who are neither enlightened nor Christian, how unproductive of any benefit to the master all these improvements are, and how entirely, therefore, they must be the result either of native generosity or of Christian sentiment, the reader may fairly conclude that such improvements are the exception, rather than the rule.

A friend of the writer, travelling in Georgia during the last month, thus writes:

Upon the long line of rice and cotton plantations extending along
the railroad from Savannah to this city, the negro quarters contain
scarcely a single hut which a Northern farmer would deem fit shelter
for his cattle. They are all built of poles, with the ends so
slightly notched that they are almost as open as children’s
cob-houses (which they very much resemble), without a single glazed
window, and with only one mud chimney to each cluster of from four
to eight cabins. And yet our fellow-travellers were quietly
expatiating upon the negro’s strange inability to endure cold
weather!

Let this modern picture be compared with the account given by the Rev. Horace Moulton, who spent five years in Georgia between 1817 and 1824, and it will be seen, in that state at least, there is some resemblance between the more remote and more recent

The huts of the slaves are mostly of the poorest kind. They are not
as good as those temporary shanties which are thrown up beside
railroads. They are erected with posts and crotches, with but little
or no frame-work about them. They have no stoves or chimneys; some
of them have something like a fireplace at one end, and a board or
two off at that side, or on the roof, to let off the smoke. Others
have nothing like a fireplace in them; in these the fire is
sometimes made in the middle of the hut. These buildings have but
one apartment in them; the places where they pass in and out serve
both for doors and windows; the sides and roofs are covered with
coarse, and in many instances with refuse boards. In warm weather,
especially in the spring, the slaves keep up a smoke, or fire and
smoke, all night, to drive away the gnats and mosquitos, which are
very troublesome in all the low country of the South; so much so
that the whites sleep under frames with nets over them, knit so fine
that the mosquitos cannot fly through them.

_Slavery as It Is_, p. 19.

The same Mr. Moulton gives the following account of the food of the slaves, and the mode of procedure on the plantation on which he was engaged. It may be here mentioned that at the time he was at the South he was engaged in certain business relations which caused him frequently to visit different plantations, and to have under his control many of the slaves. His opportunities for observation, therefore, were quite intimate. There is a homely matter-of-fact distinctness in the style that forbids the idea of its being a fancy sketch:

It was a general custom, wherever I have been, for the master to
give each of his slaves, male and female, _one peck of corn per
week_ for their food. This, at fifty cents per bushel, which was all
that it was worth when I was there, would amount to twelve and a
half cents per week for board per head.

It cost me, upon an average, when at the South, one dollar per day
for board;—the price of fourteen bushels of corn per week. This
would make my board equal in amount to the board of _forty-six
slaves_! This is all that good or bad masters allow their slaves,
round about Savannah, on the plantations. One peck of gourd-seed
corn is to be measured out to each slave once every week. One man
with whom I labored, however, being desirous to get all the work out
of his hands he could, before I left (about fifty in number), bought
for them every week, or twice a week, a beef’s head from market.
With this they made a soup in a large iron kettle, around which the
hands came at meal-time, and dipping out the soup, would mix it with
their hominy, and eat it as though it were a feast. This man
permitted his slaves to eat twice a day while I was doing a job for
him. He promised me a beaver hat, and as good a suit of clothes as
could be bought in the city, if I would accomplish so much for him
before I returned to the North; giving me the entire control over
his slaves. Thus you may see the temptations overseers sometimes
have, to get all the work they can out of the poor slaves. The above
is an exception to the general rule of feeding. For, in all other
places where I worked and visited, the slaves had _nothing from
their masters but the corn_, or its equivalent in potatoes or rice;
and to this they were not permitted to come but _once a day_. The
custom was to blow the horn early in the morning, as a signal for
the hands to rise and go to work. When commenced, they continue work
until about eleven o’clock A. M., when, at the signal, all hands
left off, and went into their huts, made their fires, made their
corn-meal into hominy or cake, ate it, and went to work again at the
signal of the horn, and worked until night, or until their tasks
were done. Some cooked their breakfast in the field while at work.
Each slave must grind his own corn in a hand-mill after he has done
his work at night. There is generally one hand-mill on every
plantation for the use of the slaves.

Some of the planters have no corn; others often get out. The
substitute for it is the equivalent of one peck of corn, either in
rice or sweet potatoes, neither of which is as good for the slaves
as corn. They complain more of being faint when fed on rice or
potatoes than when fed on corn. I was with one man a few weeks who
gave me his hands to do a job of work, and, to save time, one cooked
for all the rest. The following course was taken:—Two crotched
sticks were driven down at one end of the yard, and, a small pole
being laid on the crotches, they swung a large iron kettle on the
middle of the pole; then made up a fire under the kettle, and boiled
the hominy; when ready, the hands were called around this kettle
with their wooden plates and spoons. They dipped out and ate
standing around the kettle, or sitting upon the ground, as best
suited their convenience. When they had potatoes, they took them out
with their hands, and ate them.

_Slavery as It Is_, p. 18.

Thomas Clay, Esq., a slave-holder of Georgia, and a most benevolent man, and who interested himself very successfully in endeavoring to promote the improvement of the negroes, in his address before the Georgia Presbytery, 1833, says of their food, “The quantity allowed by custom is a _peck of corn a week_.”

The _Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser_, May 30, 1788, says, “A single peck of corn, or the same measure of rice, is the ordinary provision for a hard-working slave, to which a small quantity of meat is occasionally, though rarely, added.”

Captain William Ladd, of Minot, Maine, formerly a slave-holder in Florida, says, “The usual allowance of food was a quart of corn a day to a full-task hand, with a modicum of salt; _kind_ masters allowed a peck of corn a week.”

The law of North Carolina provides that the master shall give his slave a quart of corn a day, which is less than a peck a week by one quart.—_Haywood’s Manual_, 525; _Slavery as It Is_, p. 29. The master, therefore, who gave a peck a week would feel that he was going beyond the law, and giving a quart for generosity.

This condition of things will appear far more probable in the section of country where the scene of the story is laid. It is in the south-western states, where no provision is _raised_ on the plantations, but the supply for the slaves is all purchased from the more northern states.

Let the reader now imagine the various temptations which might occur to retrench the allowance of the slaves, under these circumstances;—scarcity of money, financial embarrassment, high price of provisions, and various causes of the kind, bring a great influence upon the master or overseer.

At the time when it was discussed whether the State of Missouri should be admitted as a slave state, the measure, like all measures for the advancement of this horrible system, was advocated on the good old plea of humanity to the negroes; thus Mr. Alexander Smyth, in his speech on the slavery question, Jan. 21, 1820, says:

By confining the slaves to the Southern States, where crops are
raised for exportation, and bread and meat are purchased, you _doom
them to scarcity and hunger_. It is proposed to hem in the blacks
where they are ILL FED.

_Slavery as It Is_, p. 28.

This is a simple recognition of the state of things we have adverted to. To the same purport, Mr. Asa A. Stone, a theological student, who resided near Natchez, Miss., in 1834–5, says:

On almost every plantation, the hands suffer more or less from
hunger at some seasons of almost every year. There is always a _good
deal of suffering_ from hunger. On many plantations, and
particularly in Louisiana, the slaves are in a condition of _almost
utter famishment_, during a great portion of the year.—_Ibid._

Mr. Tobias Baudinot, St. Albans, Ohio, a member of the Methodist Church, who for some years was a navigator on the Mississippi, says:

The slaves down the Mississippi are _half-starved_. The boats, when
they stop at night, are constantly boarded by slaves, begging for
something to eat.

_Ibid._

On the whole, while it is freely and cheerfully admitted that many individuals have made most commendable advances in regard to the provision for the physical comfort of the slave, still it is to be feared that the picture of the accommodations on Legree’s plantation has as yet too many counterparts. Lest, however, the author should be suspected of keeping back anything which might serve to throw light on the subject, she will insert in full the following incidents on the other side, from the pen of the accomplished Professor Ingraham. How far these may be regarded as exceptional cases, or as pictures of the general mode of providing for slaves, may safely be left to the good sense of the reader. The professor’s anecdotes are as follows:

“What can you do with so much tobacco?” said a gentleman,—who
related the circumstance to me,—on hearing a planter, whom he was
visiting, give an order to his teamster to bring two hogsheads of
tobacco out to the estate from the “Landing.”

“I purchase it for my negroes; it is a harmless indulgence, which it
gives me pleasure to afford them.”

“Why are you at the trouble and expense of having high-post
bedsteads for your negroes?” said a gentleman from the North, while
walking through the handsome “quarters,” or village, for the slaves,
then in progress on a plantation near Natchez—addressing the
proprietor.

“To suspend their ‘bars’ from, that they may not be troubled with
mosquitos.”

“Master, me would like, if you please, a little bit gallery front my
house.”

“For what, Peter?”

“‘Cause, master, the sun too hot [an odd reason for a negro to give]
that side, and when he rain we no able to keep de door open.”

“Well, well, when a carpenter gets a little leisure, you shall have
one.”

A few weeks after, I was at the plantation, and riding past the
quarters one Sabbath morning, beheld Peter, his wife and children,
with his old father, all sunning themselves in the new gallery.

“Missus, you promise me a Chrismus gif’.”

“Well, Jane, there is a new calico frock for you.”

“It werry pretty, Missus,” said Jane, eying it at a distance without
touching it, “but me prefer muslin, if you please: muslin de fashion
dis Chrismus.”

“Very well, Jane, call to-morrow, and you shall have a muslin.”

The writer would not think of controverting the truth of these anecdotes. Any probable amount of high-post bedsteads and mosquito “bars,” of tobacco distributed as gratuity, and verandas constructed by leisurely carpenters for the sunning of fastidious negroes, may be conceded, and they do in no whit impair the truth of the other facts. When the reader remembers that the “gang” of some opulent owners amounts to from five to seven hundred working hands, besides children, he can judge how extensively these accommodations are likely to be provided. Let them be safely thrown into the account, for what they are worth.

At all events, it is pleasing to end off so disagreeable a chapter with some more agreeable images.