Since the exploit of the former hero, they have been forbidden to preach, except
to their fellow slaves, the property of the same owner; to have public funerals,
unless a white person officiates; or to be taught to read and write. Their
funerals formerly gave them great satisfaction, and it was customary here to
furnish the relations of the deceased with bacon, spirit, flour, sugar, and butter,
with which a grand entertainment, in their way, was got up. We were once
much amused by a hearty fellow requesting his mistress to let him have his
funeral during his lifetime, when it would do him some good. The waggish
request was granted; and I venture to say there never was a funeral the subject
of which enjoyed it so much. When permitted, some of our negroes preached
with great fluency. I was present a few years since, when an Episcopal minister
addressed the people, by appointment. On the conclusion of an excellent sermon,
a negro preacher rose and thanked the gentleman kindly for his discourse, but
frankly told him the congregation “did not understand his lingo.” He then
proceeded himself, with great vehemence and volubility, coining words where
they had not been made to his hand, or rather his tongue, and impres-
sing his hearers, doubtless, with a decided opinion of his superiority over
his white co-labourer in the field of grace. My brother and I, who own
contiguous estates, have lately erected a chapel on the line between
them, and have employed an acceptable minister of the Baptist persuasion, to
which the negroes almost exclusively belong, to afford them religious instruc-
tion. Except as a preparatory step to emancipation, I consider it exceedingly
impolitic, even as regards the slaves themselves, to permit them to read and
write: “Where ignorance is bliss, `tis folly to be wise.” And it is certainly
impolitic as regards their masters, on the principle that “knowledge is power.”
My servants have not as long holidays as those of most other persons. I allow
three days at Christmas, and at each of three other periods, besides a little time
to work their patches; or, if very busy, I sometimes prefer to work them myself.
Most of the ancient pastimes have been lost in this neighbourhood, and religion,
mock or real, has succeeded them. The banjo, their national instrument, is
known but in name or in a few of the tunes which have survived. Some of the
younger negroes sing and dance, but the evenings and holidays are usually occu-
pied in working, in visiting, and in praying and singing hymns. The primitive
customs and sports are, I believe, better preserved further south, where slaves were
brought from Africa long after they ceased to come here.
6th. The provision usually made for their food and clothing, for those who are
too young or too old to labour.--My men receive twelve quarts of Indian meal
(the abundant and universal allowance in this State), seven salted herrings,
and two pounds of smoked bacon or three pounds of pork, a-week; the
other hands proportionally less. But, generally speaking, their food is issued
daily, with the exception of meal, and consists of fish or bacon for breakfast,
and meat, fresh or salted, with vegetables whenever we can provide them,
for dinner; or for a month or two in the spring, fresh fish cooked with a
little bacon. This mode is rather more expensive to me than that of weekly
rations, but more comfortable to the servants. Superannuated or invalid
slaves draw their provisions regularly once a-week; and the moment a child
ceases to be nourished by its mother, it receives eight quarts of meal (more
than it can consume) and one half-pound of lard. Besides the food furnished
by me, nearly all the servants are able to make some addition from their
private stores; and there is among the adults hardly an instance of one so
improvident as not to do it. He must be an unthrifty fellow, indeed, who
cannot realise the wish of the famous Henry IV. in regard to the French pea-
santry, and enjoy his fowl on Sunday. I always keep on hand, for the use of
the negroes, sugar, molasses, &c., which, though not regularly issued, are
applied for on the slightest pretexts, and frequently no pretext at all, and are
never refused except in cases of misconduct. In regard to clothing: the men
and boys receive a winter coat and trousers of strong cloth, three shirts, a stout
pair of shoes and socks, and a pair of summer pantaloons, every year; a hat
about every second year, and a great-coat and blanket every third year.
Instead of great-coats and hats, the women have large capes to protect the
bust in bad weather, and handkerchiefs for the head. The articles furnished
are good and serviceable; and, with their own acquisitions, make their
appearance decent and respectable. On Sunday these are even fine. The
aged and invalid are clad as regularly as the rest, but less substantially.
Mothers receive a little raw cotton, in proportion to the number of children,
with the privilege of having the yarn, when spun, woven at my expense. I
provide them with blankets. Orphans are put with careful women, and treated
with tenderness. I am attached to the little slaves, and encourage familiarity
among them. Sometimes, when I ride near the quarters, they come running
after me with the most whimsical requests, and are rendered happy by the dis-
tribution of some little donation. The clothing described is that which is given
to the crop hands. Home-servants, a numerous class in Virginia, are of course
clad in a different and very superior manner. I neglected to mention, in the
proper place, that there are on each of my plantations a kitchen, an oven, and
one or more cooks; and that each hand is furnished with a tin bucket for his
food, which is carried into the field by little negroes, who also supply the
labourers with water.
6th. Their treatment when sick.--My negroes go, or are carried, as soon as
they are attacked, to a spacious and well-ventilated hospital, near the mansion-
house. They are there received by an attentive nurse, who has an assortment of
medicine, additional bed-clothing, and the command of as much light food as
she may require, either from the table or the store-room of the proprietor.
Wine, sago, rice, and other little comforts appertaining to such an establishment,
are always kept on hand. The condition of the sick is much better than that of
the poor whites or free coloured people in the neighbourhood.
7th. Their rewards and punishments.--I occasionally bestow little gratuities
for good conduct, and particularly after harvest; and hardly ever refuse a favour
asked by those who faithfully perform their duty. Vicious and idle servants are
punished with stripes, moderately inflicted; to which, in the case of theft, is
added privation of meat, a severe punishment to those who are never suffered to
be without it on any other account. From my limited observation, I think that
servants to the North work much harder than our slaves. I was educated at
a college in one of the free States, and, on my return to Virginia, was struck
with the contrast. I was astonished at the number of idle domestics, and
actually worried my mother, much to my contrition since, to redu
ce the
establishment: I say to my contrition, because, after eighteen years' residence in
the good Old Dominion, I find myself surrounded by a troop of servants about
as numerous as that against which I formerly so loudly exclaimed. While on
this subject it may not be amiss to state a case of manumission which occurred
about three years since. My nearest neighbour, a man of immense wealth,
owned a favourite servant, a fine fellow, with polished manners and excellent
disposition, who reads and writes, and is thoroughly versed in the duties of a
butler and housekeeper, in the performance of which he was trusted without
limit. This man was, on the death of his master, emancipated with a legacy of
6,000 dollars, besides about 2,000 dollars more which he had been permitted to
accumulate, and had deposited with his master, who had given him credit for it.
The use that this man, apparently so well qualified for freedom, and who has had
an opportunity of travelling and of judging for himself, makes of his money and his
time, is somewhat remarkable. In consequence of his exemplary conduct, he has
been permitted to reside in the State, and for very moderate wages occupies the
same situation he did in the old establishment, and will probably continue to oc-
cupy it as long as he lives. He has no children of his own, but has put a little
girl, a relation of his, to school. Except in this instance, and in the purchase of
a few plain articles of furniture, his freedom and his money seem not much to
as happy as he was before his liberation. Several other servants were freed at the
same time, with smaller legacies, but I do not know what has become of them.
I do not regard negro slavery, however mitigated, as a Utopian system, and
have not intended so to delineate it. But it exists, and the difficulty of removing
it is felt and acknowledged by all, save the fanatics, who, like “fools, rush in
where angels dare not tread.” It is pleasing to know that its burdens are not too
heavy to be borne. That the treatment of slaves in this State is humane, and
even indulgent, may be inferred from the fact of their rapid increase and great
longevity. I believe that, constituted as they are, morally and physically, they
are as happy as any peasantry in the world; and I venture to affirm, as the re-
sult of my reading and inquiry, that in no country are the labourers so liberally
and invariably supplied with bread and meat as are the negro slaves of the United
States. However great the dearth of provisions, famine never reaches them.
P.S. It might have been stated above that on this estate there are about one
hundred and sixty blacks. With the exception of infants, there has been, in
eighteen months, but one death, that I remember--that of a man fully sixty-five
years of age. The bill for medical attendance, from the second day of last
November, comprising upwards of a year, is less than forty dollars.
The following accounts are taken from “Ingraham's Travels
in the South-west,” a work which seems to have been written
as much to show the beauties of slavery as anything else. Speak-
ing of the state of things on some Southern plantations, he gives
the following pictures, which are presented without note or com-
ment:
The little candidates for “field honours” are useless articles on a plantation
during the first five or six years of their existence. They are then to take
their first lesson in the elementary part of their education. When they
have learned their manual alphabet tolerably well, they are placed in the
field to take a spell at cotton-picking. The first day in the field is their
proudest day. The young negroes look forward to it with as much restlessness
and impatience as school-boys to a vacation. Black children are not put to work
so young as many children of poor parents in the North. It is often the
case that the children of the domestic servants become pets in the house
and the playmates of the white children of the family. No scene can be
livelier or more interesting to a Northerner, than that which the negro
quarters of a well-regulated plantation present on a Sabbath morning, just before
church hours. In every cabin the men are shaving and dressing; the women,
arrayed in their gay muslins, are arranging their frizzly hair--in which they take
no little pride--or investigating the condition of their children; the old people.
neatly clothed, are quietly conversing or smoking about the doors; and those of the
younger portion who are not undergoing the infliction of the wash-tub are enjoy-
ing themselves in the shade of the trees, or around some little pond, with as
much zest as though slavery and freedom were synonymous terms. When all are
dressed, and the hour arrives for worship, they lock up their cabins, and the
whole population of the little village proceeds to chapel, where divine service is
performed, sometimes by an officiating clergyman, and often by the planter him-
self, if a church member. The whole plantation is also frequently formed into a
Sabbath class, which is instructed by the planter, or some member of his family;
and often, such is the anxiety of the master that they should perfectly under-
stand what they are taught--a hard matter in the present state of their intel-
lect--that no means calculated to advance their progress are left untried. I was
not long since shown a manuscript catechism, drawn up with great care and
judgment by a distinguished planter, on a plan admirably adapted to the compre-
hension of the negroes.
It is now popular to treat slaves with kindness; and those planters who are
known to be inhumanly rigorous to their slaves are scarcely countenanced by the
ever, are very rare; but there are unprincipled men everywhere, who will give
vent to their ill-feelings and bad passions, not with less good-will upon the back
of an indented apprentice than upon that of a purchased slave. Private chapels
are now introduced upon most of the plantations of the more wealthy, which are
far from any church; Sabbath-schools are instituted for the black children, and
Bible-classes for the parents, which are superintended by the planter, a chaplain,
or some of the female members of the family.
Nor are planters indifferent to the comfort of their grey-headed slaves. I have
been much affected at beholding many exhibitions of their kindly feeling towards
them. They always address them in a mild and pleasant manner, as “Uncle,” or
“Aunty,” titles as peculiar to the old negro and negress as “boy” and “girl” to
all under forty years of age. Some old Africans are allowed to spend their last years
in their houses, without doing any kind of labour; these, if not too infirm, cultivate
little patches of ground, on which they raise a few vegetables--for vegetables
grow nearly all the year round in this climate--and make a little money to pur-
chase a few extra comforts. They are also always receiving presents from their
masters and mistresses, and the negroes on the estate, the latter of whom are ex-
tremely desirous of seeing the old people comfortable. A relation of the extra
comforts which some planters allow their slaves would hardly obtain credit at the
North. But you must recollect that Southern planters are men, and men of feeling,
generous and high-minded, and possessing as much of the “milk of human kind-
ness” as the sons of colder climes--although they may have been educated to regard
that as right which a different education has led Northerners to consider wrong.
With regard to the character of Mrs. Shelby, the writer must
say a few words. While travelling in Kentucky, a few years
since, some pious ladies expressed to her the same sentiments
with regard to slavery which the reader has heard expressed by
Mrs. Shelby.
There are many whose natural sense of justice cannot be made
to tolerate the enormities of the system, even though they hear
it defended by clergymen from the pulpit, and see it coun-
tenanced by all that is most honourable in rank and wealth.
A pious lady said to the author, with regard to instructing
her slaves, “I am ashamed to teach them what is right; I know
that they know as well as I do that it is wrong to hold them as
slaves, and I am ashamed to look them in the face.” Pointing
to an intelligent mulatto woman who passed through the room,
she continued, “Now, there's B--: she is as intelligent and
capable as any white woman I ever knew, and as well able to
have her liberty and take care of herself; and she knows it isn't
right to keep her as we do, and I know it too; and yet I cannot
get my husband to think as I do, or I should be glad to set
them free.”
A venerable friend of the writer, a lady born and educated a
slaveholder, used to the writer the very words attributed to Mrs.
Shelby: “I never thought it was right to hold slaves. I always
thought it was wrong when I was a girl, and I thought so still
more when I came to join the church.” An incident related by
this friend of her examination for the church, shows in a striking
manner what a difference may often exist between theoretical and
practical benevolence.
A certain class of theologians in New England have advocated
the doctrine of disinterested benevolence with such zeal, as to