Civil War in U. S. A.

JOHN S.. PIERSON,

I

JOURNAL

OF

A RESIDENCE ON A

GEORGIAN PLANTATION

IN 1838—1839. BY FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE.

SLAVERY THE CHIEF CORNER STONE.

'This stone (Slavery), which was rejected by the first builders, ia become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice.' — Speech of ALKXANDKE II. STE- PHENS, nee-President of the Confederate States : delivered March 21, 1861.

NEW YORK:

IT A T! P E R <fe BROTHER?, P TJ B T. T ?! IT K TT fJ,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1803.

F

290

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, by

FRANCIS G. SHAW,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York

TO

ELIZABETH DW1GHT SEDGWICK,

THIS JOURNAL, ORIGINALLY KEPT FOE HEE,

IB MOST AFFECTIONATELY

Dcbiratcb.

PREFACE.

THE following diary was kept in the winter and spring of 1838-9, on an estate consisting of rice and cotton plantations, in the islands at the entrance of the Altamaha, on the coast of Georgia.

The slaves in whom I then had an unfortunate in- terest were sold some years ago. The islands them- selves are at present in the power of the Northern troops. The record contained in the following pages is a picture of conditions of human existence which I hope and believe have passed away.

LONDON, January 16, 1863.

JOURNAL.

Philadelphia, December, 1838.

MY DEAK E , — I return you Mr. 's letter. I do

not think it answers any of the questions debated in our last conversation at all satisfactorily: the right one man has to enslave another, he has not the hardihood to assert ; but in the reasons he adduces to defend that act of injus- tice, the contradictory statements he makes appear to me to refute each other. He says, that to the Continental European protesting against the abstract iniquity of slave- ry, his answer would be, " The slaves are infinitely better off than half the Continental peasantry." To the English- man, "They are happy compared with the miserable Irish." But supposing that this answered the question of original injustice, which it does not, it is not a true reply. Though the negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen— the lordship over his own per- son, the power to choose and will — are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter ; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their full- est enjoyment without them. Ask the thousands of rag- ged destitutes who yearly land upon these shores to seek the means of existence — ask the friendless, penniless foreign emigrant if he will give up his present misery, his future uncertainty, his doubtful and difficult struggle for life at once, for the secure, and, as it is called, fortunate dependence of the slave : the indignation with which ho

8 JOUENAL OF

would spurn the offer will prove that he possesses one good beyond all others, and that his birthright as a man is more precious to him yet than the mess of pottage for which he is told to exchange it because he is starving.

Of course the reverse alternative can not be offered to the slaves, for at the very word the riches of those who own them would make themselves wings and flee away. But I do not admit the comparison between your slaves and even the lowest class of European free laborers, for the former are allowed the exercise of no faculties but those which they enjoy in common with the brutes that perish. The just comparison is between the slaves and the useful animals to whose level your laws reduce them ; and I will acknowledge that the slaves of a kind owner may be as well cared for, and as happy, as the dogs and horses of a merciful master; but the latter condition — i. e., that of happiness — must again depend upon the complete perfection of their moral and mental degradation. Mr.

, in his letter, maintains that they are an inferior race,

and, compared with the whites, " animals, incapable of mental culture and moral improvement :" to this I can only reply, that if they are incapable of profiting by in- struction, I do not see the necessity for laws inflicting heavy penalties on those who offer it to them. If they really are brutish, witless, dull, and devoid of capacity for progress, where lies the danger which is constantly insist- ed upon of offering them that of which they are incapable. We have no laws forbidding us to teach our dogs and horses as much as they can comprehend ; nobody is fined or imprisoned for reasoning upon knowledge and liberty to the beasts of the field, for they are incapable of such truths. But these themes are forbidden to slaves, not because they can not, but because they can and would seize on them with avidity — receive them gladly, com- prehend them quickly ; and the masters' power over them

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 9

•would be annihilated at once and forever. But I have more frequently heard not that they were incapable of re- ceiving instruction, but something much nearer the truth — that knowledge only makes them miserable : the mo- ment they are in any degree enlightened, they become un- happy. In the letter I return to you Mr. says that

the very slightest amount of education, merely teaching them to read, "impairs their value as slaves, for it instant- ly destroys their contentedness, and, since you do not con- template changing their condition, it is surely doing them an ill service to destroy their acquiescence in it;" but this is a very different ground of argument from the other. The discontent they evince upon the mere dawn of an ad- vance in intelligence proves not only that they can acquire, but combine ideas, a process to which it is very difficult to assign a limit ; and there indeed the whole question lies, and there and nowhere else the shoe really pinches. A slave is ignorant ; he eats, drinks, sleeps, labors, and is happy. He learns to read ; 'he feels, thinks, reflects, and becomes miserable. He discovers himself to be one of a debased and degraded race, deprived of the elementary rights which God has granted to all men alike ; every ac- tion is controlled, every word noted ; he may not stir be- yond his appointed bounds, to the right hand or to the left, at his own will, but at the will of another he may be sent miles and miles of weary journeying — tethered, yoked, collared, and fettered — away from whatever he may know as home, severed from all those ties of blood and affection which he alone of all human, of all living creatures on the face of the earth, may neither enjoy in peace nor defend when they are outraged. If he is well treated, if his mas- ter be tolerably humane or even understand his own in- terest tolerably, this is probably all he may have to en- dure : it is only to the consciousness of these evils that knowledge and reflection awaken him. But how is it if

A2

10 JOUENAL OF

his master be severe, harsh, cruel — or even only careless — leaving his creatures to the delegated dominion of some overseer or agent, whose love of power, or other evil dis- positions, are checked by no considerations of personal interest? Imagination shrinks from the possible result

of such a state of things ; nor must you, or Mr. , tell

me that the horrors thus suggested exist only in imagina- tion. The Southern newspapers, with their advertise- ments of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision, insult, menace — the handcuff, the lash — the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives — the weary trudg- ing in droves along the common highways, the labor of body, the despair of mind, the sickness ot heart — these are the realities which belong to the system, and form the* rule, rather than the exception, in the slave's experience. And this system exists here in this country of yours, which boasts itself the asylum of the oppressed, the home of freedom, the one place in all the world where all men may find enfranchisement from all thraldoms of mind, soul, or body — the land elect of liberty.

Mr. lays great stress, as a proof of the natural in-

feriority of the blacks, on the little comparative progress they have made in those states where they enjoy their freedom, and the fact that, whatever quickness of parts they may exhibit while very young, on attaining maturity they invariably sink again into inferiority, or at least me- diocrity, and indolence. But surely there are other causes to account for this besides natural deficiency, which must, I think, be obvious to any unprejudiced person observing the condition of the free blacks in your Northern com- munities. If, in the early portion of their life, they escape the contempt and derision of their white associates — if the blessed unconsciousness and ignorance of childhood

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 11

keeps them for a few years unaware of the conventional proscription under which their whole race is placed (and it is difficult to walk your streets, and mark the tone of insolent superiority assumed by even the gutter-urchins over their dusky contemporaries, and imagine this possi- ble)— as soon as they acquire the first rudiments of knowl- edge, as soon as they begin to grow up and pass from in- fancy to youth, as soon as they cast the first observing glance upon the world by which they are surrounded, and the society of which they are members, they must become conscious that they are marked as the Hebrew lepers of old, and are condemned to sit, like those unfortunates, without the gates of every human and social sympathy. From their own sable color, a pall falls over the whole of God's universe to them, and they find themselves stamped with a badge of infamy of Nature's own devising, at sight of which all natural kindliness of man to man seems to recoil from them. They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs ; debarred from all fellowship save with their own despised race — scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not tolerated as companions even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the ofFscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society ; they are free from the chain, the whip, the enforced task and un- paid toil of slavery ; but they are not the less under a ban. Their kinship with slaves forever bars them from a full share of the freeman's inheritance of equal rights, and equal consideration and respect. All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues — the most vulgar, as well as the self-styled most refined — have learned to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach. How, in the name of all that is natural, probable, possible, should the spirit and energy of any human creature support itself under such

12 JOURNAL OF

an accumulation of injustice and obloquy? Where shall any mass of men be found with power of character and mind sufficient to bear up against such a weight of preju- dice ? Why, if one individual rarely gifted by heaven were to raise himself out of such a slough of despond, he would be a miracle ; and what would be his reward ? Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights ? would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors ? would any of you give your daughter to his son, or your son to his daughter ? would you, in any one particular, admit him to the footing of equality which any man with a white skin would claim, whose ability and worth had so raised him from the lower degrees of the social scale ? You would turn from such propositions with abhorrence, and the servants in your kitchen and stable — the ignorant and boorish refuse of foreign populations, in whose countries no such prejudice exists, imbibing it with the very air they breathe here — would shrink from eating at the same table with such a man, or holding out the hand of common fellowship to him. Under the species of social proscription in which the blacks in your Northern cities exist, if they preserved energy of mind, enterprise of spirit, or any of the best attributes and powers of free men, they would prove ^themselves, instead of the lowest and least of human races, the highest and first, not only of all that do exist, but of all that ever have existed ; for they alone would seek and cultivate knowledge, goodness, truth, science, art, refinement, and all improvement, purely for the sake of their own excellence, and without one of those incentives of honor, power, and fortune, which are found to be the chief, too often the only, inducements which lead white men to the pursuit of the same objects.

You know very well, dear E , that in speaking of

the free blacks of the North I here state nothing but what is true, and of daily experience. Only last week I heard

A RESIDENCE IN GEOKGIA. 13

in this very town of Philadelphia of a family of strict probity and honor, highly principled, intelligent, well-edu- cated, and accomplished, and (to speak in the world's lan- guage) respectable in every way — i. e., rich. Upon an English lady's stating it to be her intention to visit these persons when she came to Philadelphia, she was told that if she did nobody else would visit her ; and she probably would excite a malevolent feeling, which might find vent hi some violent demonstration against this family. All that I have now said of course bears only upon the con- dition of the free colored population of the North, with which I am familiar enough to speak confidently of it. As for the slaves, and their capacity for progress, I can say nothing, for I have never been among them to judge what faculties their unhappy social position leaves to them un- impaired. But it seems to me that no experiment on a sufficiently large scale can have been tried for a sufficient length of time to determine the question of their incurable inferiority. Physiologists say that three successive gen- erations appear to be necessary to produce an effectual change of constitution (bodily and mental), be it for health or disease. There are positive physical defects which produce positive mental ones ; the diseases of the muscu- lar and nervous systems descend from father to son. Upon the agency of one corporal power how much that is not corporal depends ; from generation to generation internal disease and external deformity, vices, virtues, talents, and deficiencies are transmitted, and by the action of the same law it must be long indeed before the offspring of slaves — creatures begotten of a race debased and degraded to the lowest degree, themselves born in slavery, and whose progenitors have eaten the bread and drawn the breath of slavery for years — can be measured, with any show of justice, by even the least favored descendants of Europe- an nations, whose qualities have been for centuries devel-

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oping themselves under the beneficent influences of free- dom, and the ^progress it inspires.

I am rather surprised at the outbreak of violent disgust which Mr. • indulges in on the subject of amalgama- tion, as that formed no part of our discussion, and seems to me a curious subject for abstract argument. I should think the intermarrying between blacks and whites a mat- ter to be as little insisted upon if repugnant, as prevented if agreeable to the majority of the two races. At the same time, I can not help being astonished at the furious and ungoverned execration which all reference to the pos- sibility of a fusion of the races draws down upon those who suggest it, because nobody pretends to deny that, throughout the South, a large proportion of the population is the offspring of white men and colored women. In New Orleans, a class of unhappy females exists whose mingled blood does not prevent their being remarkable for their beauty, and with whom no man, no gentleman, in that city shrinks from associating ; and while the slave- owners of the Southern States insist vehemently upon the mental and physical inferiority of the blacks, they are be- nevolently doing their best, in one way at least, to raise and improve the degraded race, and the bastard popula- tion which forms so ominous an element in the social safe- ty of their cities certainly exhibit in their forms and feat- ures the benefit they derive from their white progenitors. 1 It is hard to conceive that some mental improvement docs not accompany this physical change. Already the finer forms of the European races are cast in these dusky moulds : the outward configuration can hardly thus im- prove without coi-responding progress in the inward ca- pacities. The white man's blood and bones have begot- ten this bronze race, and bequeathed to it, in some degree, qualities, tendencies, capabilities, such as are the inherit- ance of the highest order of human animals. Mr.

A RESIDENCE IN GEOKGIA. 15

(and many others) speaks as if there were a natural re- pugnance in all whites to any alliance with the black race ; and yet it is notorious, that almost every Southern planter has a family more or less numerous of illegitimate colored children. Most certainly, few people would like to assert that such connections are formed because it is the interest of these planters to increase the number of their human property, and that they add to their revenue by the clos- est intimacy with creatures that they loathe, in order to reckon among their wealth the children of their body. Surely that is a monstrous and unnatural supposition, and utterly unworthy of belief. That such connections exist commonly is a sufficient proof that they are not abhorrent to nature ; but it seems, indeed, as if marriage (and not concubinage) was the horrible enormity which can not be tolerated, and against which, moreover, it has been deemed expedient to enact laws.'^N'ow it appears very evident that there is no law in the white man's nature which pre- vents him from making a colored woman the mother of his children, but there is a law on his statute-books forbid- ding him to make her his wife ; and if we are to admit the theory that the mixing of the races is a monstrosity, it seems almost as curious that laws should be enacted to prevent men marrying women toward whom they have an invincible natural repugnance, as" that education should by law be prohibited to creatures incapable of receiving it.Jj As for the exhortation with which Mr. closes his let- ter, that I will not " go down to my husband's plantation prejudiced against what I am to find there," I know not well how to answer it. ^Assuredly I am going prejudiced against slavery, for I am an Englishwoman, in whom the absence of such a prejudice would be disgraceful. Nev- ertheless, I go prepared to find many mitigations in the practice to the general injustice and cruelty of the system_J — much kindness on the part of the masters, much content

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on that of the slaves ; and I feel very sure that you may rely upon the carefulness of my observation, and the accu- racy of my report, of every detail of the working of the thing that comes under my notice ; and certainly, on the plantation to which I am going, it will be more likely that I should some things extenuate, than set down aught in malice. Yours ever faithfully.

Darien, Georgia.

DEAR E , — Minuteness of detail, and fidelity in the

account of my daily doings, will hardly, I fear, render my letters very interesting to you now ; but, cut oif as I am here from all the usual resources and amusements of civ- ilized existence, I shall find but little to communicate to you that is not furnished by my observations on the novel appearance of external nature, and the moral and physical

condition of Mr. 's people. The latter subject is, I

know, one sufficiently interesting in itself to you, and I shall not scruple to impart all the reflections which may occur to me relative to their state during my stay here, where inquiry into their mode of existence will form my chief occupation, and, necessarily also, the staple commod- ity of my letters. I purpose, while I reside here, keeping a sort of journal, such as Monk Lewis wrote during his visit to his West India plantations. I wish I had any prospect of rendering my diary as interesting and amus- ing to you as his was to me.

In taking my first walk on the island, I directed my steps toward the rice mill, a large building on the banks of the river, within a few yards of the house we occupy. Is it not rather curious that Miss Martineau should have mentioned the erection of a steam mill for threshing rice somewhere in the vicinity of Charleston as a singular nov- elty, likely to form an era in Southern agriculture, and to

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 17

produce the most desirable changes in the system of labor by which it is carried on ? Now on this estate alone there are three threshing mills — one worked by steam, one by the tide, and one by horses ; there are two private steam mills on plantations adjacent to ours, and a public one at Savannah, where the planters who have none on their own estates are in the habit of sending their rice to be thresh- ed at a certain percentage ; these have all been in opera- tion for some years, and I therefore am at a loss to un- derstand what made her hail the erection of the one at Charleston as likely to produce such immediate and hap- py results. By-the-by — of the misstatements, or rathet mistakes, for they are such, in her books, with regard to certain facts — her only disadvantage in acquiring infor- mation was not by any means that natural infirmity on which the periodical press, both, here and in England, has commented with so much brutality. She had the misfortune to possess, too, that unsuspecting reliance upon the truth of others which they are apt to feel who them- selves hold truth most sacred ; and this was a sore disad- vantage to her in a country where I have heard it myself repeatedly asserted — and, what is more, much gloried in — that she was purposely misled by the persons to whom she addressed her inquiries, who did not scruple to dis- grace themselves by imposing in the grossest manner upon her credulity and anxiety to obtain information. It is a knowledge of this very shameful proceeding which has made me most especially anxious to avoid fact hunting. 1 might fill my letters to you with accounts received from others, but, as I am aware of the risk which I run in so do- ing, I shall furnish you with no details but those which come under my own immediate observation. To return to the rice mill : it is worked by a steam-engine of thirty horse power, and, besides threshing great part of our own rice, is kept constantly employed by the neighboring plant-

18 JOUENAL OF

ers, who send their grain to it in preference to the more distant mill at Savannah, paying,' of course, the same per- centage, which makes it a very profitable addition to the estate. Immediately opposite to this building is a small shed, which they call the cook's shop, and where the daily allowance of rice and corn grits of the people is boiled and distributed to them by an old woman, whose special busi- ness this is. There are four settlements or villages (or, as the negroes call them, camps) on the island, consisting of from ten to twenty houses, and to each settlement is an- nexed a cook's shop with capacious caldrons, and the old- est wife of the settlement for officiating priestess. Pursu- ing my walk along the river's bank, upon an artificial dike, sufficiently high and broad to protect the fields from in- undation by the ordinary rising of the tide — for the whole island is below high-water mark — I passed the blacksmith's and cooper's shops. At the first all the common iron im- plements of husbandry or household use for the estate are made, and at the latter all the rice barrels necessary for the crop, besides tubs and buckets, large and small, for the use of the people, and cedar tubs, of noble dimensions and ex- ceedingly neat workmanship, for our own household pur- poses. The fragrance of these when they are first made, as well as their ample size, renders them preferable as dress- ing-room furniture, in my opinion, to all the china foot- tubs that ever came out of Staffordshire. After this I got out of the vicinity of the settlement, and pursued my way along a narrow dike — the river on the one hand, and, on the other, a slimy, poisonous-looking swamp, all rattling with sedges of enormous height, in which one might lose one's way as effectually as in a forest of oaks. Beyond this, the low rice-fields, all clothed in their rugged stubble, divided by dikes into monotonous squares, a species of pros- pect by no means beautiful to the mere lover of the pic- turesque. The only thing that I met with to attract my

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 19

attention was a most beautiful species of ivy, the leaf longer and more graceful than that of the common En- glish creeper, glittering with the highest varnish, delicate- ly veined, and of a rich brown-green, growing in profuse garlands from branch to branch of some stunted evergreen bushes which border the dike, and which the people call salt-water bush. My walks are rather circumscribed, in- asmuch as the dikes are the only promenades. On all sides of these lie either the marshy rice-fields, the brim- ming river, or the swampy patches of yet unreclaimed forest, where the hugh cypress-trees and exquisite ever- green undergrowth spring up from a stagnant sweltering pool, that effectually forbids the foot of the explorer.

As I skirted one of these thickets to-day, I stood still to admire the beauty of the shrubbery. Every shade of green, every variety of form, every degree of varnish, and all in full leaf and beauty in the very depth of winter. The stunted dark-colored oak ; the magnolia bay (like our own culinary and fragrant bay), which grows to a very great size ; the wild myrtle, a beautiful and profuse shrub, rising to a height of six, eight, and ten feet, and branch- ing on all sides in luxuriant tufted fullness ; most beauti- ful of all, that pride of the South, the magnolia grandiflo- ra, whose lustrous dark green perfect foliage would alone render it an object of admiration, without the queenly blossom whose color, size, and perfume are unrivaled hi the whole vegetable kingdom. This last magnificent crea- ture grows to the size of a forest tree in these swamps, but seldom adorns a high or dry soil, or suffers itself to be successfully transplanted. Under all these the spiked palmetto forms an impenetrable covert, and from glitter- ing graceful branch to branch hang garlands of evergreen creepers, on which the mocking-birds are swinging and singing even now ; while I, bethinking me of the pinching cold that is at this hour tyrannizing over your region, look

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round on this strange scene — on these green woods, this unfettered river, and sunny sky — and feel very much like one in another planet from yourself.

The profusion of birds here is one thing that strikes me as curious, coming from the vicinity of Philadelphia, where even the robin redbreast, held sacred by the humanity of all other Christian people, is not safe from the gunning prowess of the unlicensed sportsmen of your free country. The negroes (of course) are not allowed the use of fire- ai'ms, and their very simply constructed traps do not do much havoc among the feathered hordes that haunt their rice-fields. Their case is rather a hard one, as partridges, snipes, and the most delicious wild ducks abound hei'e, and their allowance of rice and Indian meal would not be the worse for such additions. No day passes that I do not, in the course of my walk, put up a number of the land birds, and startle from among the gigantic sedges the long-necked water-fowl by dozens. It arouses the kill- ing propensity in me most dreadfully, and I really enter- tain serious thoughts of learning to use a gun, for the mere pleasure of destroying these pretty birds as they whirr from their secret coverts close beside my path. How strong an instinct of animal humanity this is, and how strange if one be more strange than another. Reflection rebukes it almost instantaneously, and yet for the life of me I can not help wishing I had a fowling-piece whenev- er I put up a covey of these creatures ; though I suppose, if one were brought bleeding and maimed to me, I should begin to cry, and be very pathetic, after the fashion of Jacques. However, one must live, you know; and here our living consists very mainly of wild ducks, wild geese, wild turkeys, and venison. Now, perhaps, can one imag- ine the universal doom overtaking a creature with less misery than in the case of the bird who, in the very mo- ment of his triumphant soaring, is brought dead to the

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 21

ground. I should like to bargain for such a finis myself amazingly,! know, and have always thought that the death I should prefer would be to break my neck off the back of my horse at a full gallop on a fine day. Of course a bad shot should be hung — a man who shatters his birds' wings and legs ; if I undertook the trade, I would learn of some Southern duelist, and always shoot my bird through the head or heart — as an expert murderer knows how. Besides these birds of which we make our prey, there are others that prey upon their own fraternity. Hawks of every sort and size wheel their steady rounds above the rice-fields ; and the great turkey-buzzards — those most un- sightly carrion birds — spread their broad black wings, and soar over the river like so many mock eagles. I do not know that I ever saw any winged creature of so forbid- ding an aspect as these same turkey-buzzards ; their heavy flight, their awkward gait, their bald -looking head and neck, and their devotion to every species of foul and de- testable food, render them almost abhorrent to me. They abound in the South, and in Charleston are held in espe- cial veneration for their scavenger-like propensities, kill- ing one of them being, I believe, a finable offense by {he city police regulations. Among the Brobdignagian sedges that in some parts of the island fringe the Altamaha, the nightshade (apparently the same as the European creep- er) weaves a perfect matting of its poisonous garlands, and my remembrance of its prevalence in the woods and hedges of England did not reconcile me to its appearance here. How much of this is mere association I can not tell ; but, whether the wild duck makes its nest under its green arches, or the alligators and snakes of the Altamaha have their secret bowers there, it is an evil-looking weed, and I shall have every leaf of it cleared away.

I must inform you of a curious conversation which took place between my little girl and tliojsvoman who

A * .,- .-<* t,4tf> f

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for us the offices of chambermaid here — of course one of

Mr. 's slaves/ What suggested it to the child, or

whence indeed she gathered her information, I know not ; bukchildren are made of eyes and ears, and nothing, how- ever minute, escapes their microscopic observation. '.She suddenly began addressing this woman. " Mary, some persons are free and some are not (the woman made no reply). I am a free person (of a little more than three years old). I say, I am a free person, Mary — do you know that ?" " Yes, missis." " Some persons are free and some are not — do you know that, Mary ?" " Yes, missis., here," was the reply ; " I know it is so here, in this world."w Here my child's white nurse, my dear Margery, who had hither- to been silent, interfered, saying, |" Oh, then you think it will not always be so ?" " Me hope not, missis."^ I am

afraid, E , this woman actually imagines that there

will be no slaves in heaven ; isn't that preposterous, now, when, by the account of most of the Southerners, slavery itself must be heaven, or something uncommonly like it ? Oh, if you could imagine how this title " Missis," addressed to me and to my children, shocks all my feelings ! Several times I have exclaimed, " For God's sake do not call me that !" and only been awakened, by the stupid amazement of the poor creatures I was addressing, to the perfect use- lessness of my thus expostulating with them; once or twice, indeed, I have done more — I have explained to them, and they appeared to comprehend me well, that I had no ownership over them, for that I held such owner- ship sinful, and that, though I was the wife of the man who pretends to own them, I was, in truth, no more their mistress than they were mine. Some of them I know un- derstood me, more of them did not.

Our servants — those who have been selected to wait upon us in the house — consist of a man, who is quite a tol- erable cook (I believe this is a natural gift with them, as

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 23

with Frenchmen); a dairy-woman, who churns for us; a laundry-woman ; her daughter, our housemaid, the afore- said Mary ; and two young lads of from fifteen to twenty, who wait upon us in the capacity of footmen. As, how- ever, the latter are perfectly filthy in their persons and clothes — their faces, hands, and naked feet being literally incrusted with dirt — their attendance at our meals is not, as you may suppose, particularly agreeable to me, and I dispense with it as often as possible. Mary, too, is so in- tolerably offensive in her person that it is impossible to endure her proximity, and the consequence is that, among

Mr. 's slaves, I wait upon myself more than I have

ever done in my life before. About this same personal offensiveness, the Southerners, you know, insist that it is inherent with the race, and it is one of their most cogent reasons for keeping them as slaves.- But, as this very dis- agreeable peculiarity does not prevent Southern women from hanging their infants at the breasts of negresses, nor almost every planter's wife and daughter from having one or more little pet blacks sleeping like puppy-dogs in their very bedchamber, nor almost every planter from admitting one or several of his female slaves to the still closer inti- macy of his bed, it seems to me that this objection to do- ing them right is not very valid. I can not imagine that they would smell much worse if they were free, or come in much closer contact with the delicate organs of their white fellow-countrymen ; indeed, inasmuch as good deeds are spoken of as having a sweet savoy before God, it might be supposed that the freeing of the blacks might prove rather an odoriferous process than the contrary. How- ever this may be, I must tell you that this potent reason for enslaving a whole race of people is no more potent with me than most of the others adduced to support the system, inasmuch as, from observation and some experi- ence, I am strongly inclined to believe that peculiar iguo-

24 JOUENAL OF

ranee of the laws of health and the habits of decent clean- liness are the real and only causes of this disagreeable characteristic of the race, thorough ablutions and change of linen, when tried, having been perfectly successful in removing all such objections ; and if ever you have come into any thing like neighborly proximity with a low Irish- man or woman, I think you will allow that the same causes produce very nearly the same effects. The stench in an Irish, Scotch, Italian, or French hovel are quite as intoler- able as any I ever found in our negro houses, and the filth and vermin which abound about the clothes and persons of the lower peasantry of any of those countries as abom- inable as the same conditions in the black population of the United States. A total absence of self-respect begets these hateful physical results, and in proportion as moral influences are remote, physical evils will abound. Well- being, freedom, and industry induce self-respect, self-re- spect induces cleanliness and personal attention, so that slavery is answerable for all the evils that exhibit them- selves where it exists — from lying, thieving, and adultery, to dirty houses, ragged clothes, and foul smells.

But to return to our Ganymedes. One of them— the eldest son of our laundry-woman, and Mary's brother, a boy of the name of Aleck (Alexander) — is uncommonly bright and intelligent; he performs all the offices of a well-instructed waiter with great efficiency, and any where out of slave land would be able to earn fourteen or fifteen dollars a month for himself; he is remarkably good tem- pered and well disposed. The other poor boy is so stupid that he appears sullen from absolute darkness of intellect ; instead of being a little lower than the angels, he is scarce- ly a little higher than the brutes, and to this condition are reduced the majority of his kind by the institutions under which they live. I should tell you that Aleck's parents and kindred have always been about tho house of the

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 25

overseer, and in daily habits of intercourse with him and his wife ; and wherever this is the case the effect of invol- untary education is evident in the improved intelligence

of the degraded race. In a conversation which Mr.

had this evening with Mr. O , the overseer, the latter

mentioned that two of our carpenters had in their leisure time made a boat, which they had disposed of to some neighboring planter for sixty dollars.

Now, E , I have no intention of telling you a one- sided story, or concealing from you what are cited as the advantages which these poor people possess ; you, who know that no indulgence is worth simple justice, either to him who gives or him who receives, will not thence con- clude that their situation thus mitigated is, therefore, what it should be. On this matter of the sixty dollars earned

by Mr. 's two men much stress was Jaid by him and

his overseer. I look at it thus : If these men were indus- trious enough, out of their scanty leisure, to earn sixty dol- lars, how much more of remuneration, of comfort, of im- provement might they not have achieved were the price of their daily labor duly paid them, instead of being un- justly withheld to support an idle young man and his idle family — i. e., myself and my children.

And here it may be well to inform you that the slaves on this plantation are divided into field-hands and mechan- ics or artisans. The former, the great majority, are the more stupid and brutish of the tribe ; the others, who are regularly taught their trades, are not only exceedingly ex- pert at them, but exhibit a greater general activity of in- tellect, which must necessarily result from even a partial degree of cultivation. There are here a gang (for that is the honorable term) of coopers, of blacksmiths, of brick- layers, of carpenters, all well acquainted with their pecul- iar trades. The latter constructed the wash-hand stands, clothes-presses, sofas, tables, etc., with which our house is

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26 JOUENAL OF

furnished, and they are very neat pieces of workmanship — neither veneered or polished indeed, nor of very costly materials, but of the white pine wood planed as smooth as marble — a species of furniture not very luxurious per- haps, but all the better adapted therefore to the house it- self, which is certainly rather more devoid of the conven- iences and adornments of modern existence than any thing I ever took up my abode in before. Itlconsists of three small rooms, and three still smaller, which would be more appropriately designated as closets, a wooden recess by way of panti'y, and a kitchen detached from the dwelling — a mere wooden out-house, with no floor but the bare earth, and for furniture a congregation of filthy negroes, who lounge in and out of it like hungry hounds at all hours of the day and night, picking up such scraps of food as they can find about, j\vhich they discuss squatting down upon their hams, in which interesting position and occu- pation I generally find a number of them whenever I have sufficient hardihood to venture within those precincts, the sight of which and its tenants is enough to slacken the appetite of the hungriest hunter that ever lost all nice re- gards in the mere animal desire for food. '.Of our three apartments, one is our sitting, eating, and living room, and is sixteen feet by fifteen. The walls are plastered in- deed, but neither painted nor papered ; it is divided from our bedroom (a similarly elegant and comfortable cham- ber) by a dingy wooden partition covered all over with hooks, pegs, and nails, to which hats, caps, keys, etc., etc., are suspended in graceful irregularity. The doors open by wooden latches, raised by means of small bits of pack- thread-J-I imagine, the same primitive order of fastening celebrated in the touching chronicle of Red Riding Hood ; how they shut I will not attempt to des'cribe, as the shut- ting of a door is a process of extremely rare occurrence throughout the whole Southern country. The third room,

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 27

a chamber with sloping ceiling, immediately over our sit- ting-room and under the roof, is appropriated to the nurse

and my two babies. Of the closets, one is]Mr. , the

overseer's, bedroom, the other his office or place of busi- ness ; and the third, adjoining our bedroom, and opening

immediately out of doors, is Mr. 's dressing-room and

cabinet d'affaires, where he gives audiences to the negroes, redresses grievances, distributes red woolen caps (a sin- gular gratification to a slave), shaves himself, and per- forms the other offices of his toilet. Such being our abode, I think you will allow there is little danger of my being dazzled by the luxurious splendors of a Southern slave residence. ( Our sole mode of summoning our attendants is by a pack-thread bell -rope suspended in the sitting- room. From the bedrooms we have to raise the windows and our voices, and bring them by power of lungs, or help ourselves — which, I thank God, was never yet a hardship to me.

I mentioned to you just now that two of the carpenters had made a boat in their leisure time. I must explain this to you, and this will involve the mention of another of Miss Martineau's mistakes with regard to slave labor, at least in many parts of the Southern States. She men- tions that on one estate of which she knew, the proprietor had made the experiment, and very successfully, of ap- pointing to each of his slaves a certain task to be per- formed in the day, which once accomplished, no matter how early, the rest of the four-and-twenty hours were al- lowed to the laborer to employ as he pleased. She men- tions this as a single experiment, and rejoices over it as a decided amelioration in the condition of the slave, and one deserving of general adoption. But in the part of Georgia where this estate is situated, the custom of task labor is universal, and it prevails, I believe, throughout Georgia, South Carolina, and parts of North Carolina; in

28 JOURNAL OF

other parts of the latter state, however — as I was inform- ed by our overseer, who is a native of that state — the es- tates are small, rather deserving the name* of farms, and the laborers are much upon the same footing as the labor- ing men at the North, working from sunrise to sunset in the fields with the farmer and his sons, and coming in with them to their meals, which they take immediately after the rest of the family. In Louisiana and the new south- western slave states, I believe, task labor does not prevail ; but it is in those that the condition of the poor human cattle is most deplorable, as you know it was there that the humane calculation was not only made, but openly and unhesitatingly avowed, that the planters found it, upon the whole, their most profitable plan to work off (kill with labor) their whole number of slaves about once in seven years, and renew the whole stock. By-the-by, the Jew- ish institution of slavery is much insisted upon by the Southern upholders of the system ; perhaps this is their notion of the Jewish jubilee, when the slaves were by Mo- ses's strict enactment to be all set free. Well, this task system is pursued on this estate ; and thus it is that the two carpenters were enabled to make the boat they sold for sixty dollars. These tasks, of course, profess to be graduated according to the sex, age, and strength of the laborer ; but in many instances this is not the case, as I

think you will agree when I tell you that on Mr. 's

first visit to his estates he found that the men and the women who labored in the fields had the same task to perform. This was a noble admission of female equality, was it not ? — and thus it had been on the estate for many

years past. Mr. , of course, altered the distribution

of the work, diminishing the quantity done by the women.

I had a most ludicrous visit this morning from the

midwife of the estate — rather an important personage

both to master and slave, as to her unassisted skill and

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 29

science the ushering of all the young negroes into their existence of bondage is intrusted. I heard a great deal of conversation in the dressing-room adjoining mine while

performing my own toilet, and presently Mr. opened

iny room door, ushering in a dirty, fat, good-humored looking old negress, saying, " The midwife, Rose, wants to make your acquaintance." " Oh massa !" shrieked out the old creature, in a paroxysm of admiration, " where you get this lilly alabaster baby !" For a moment I looked round to see if she was speaking of my baby ; but no, my dear, this superlative apostrophe was elicited by the fairness of my skin : so much for degrees of comparison. Now I Oppose that if I chose to walk arm in arm with the din- giest mulatto through the streets of Philadelphia, nobody could possibly tell by my complexion that I was not his sister, so that the mere quality of mistress must have had a most miraculous effect upon my skin in the eyes of poor Rose. But this species of outrageous flattery is as usual with these people as with the low Irish, and arises from the ignorant desire, common to both the races, of propi- tiating at all costs the fellow-creature who is to them as a Providence — or rather, I should say, a fate — for 'tis a heathen and no Christian relationship. Soon after this visit, I was summoned into the wooden porch or piazza of the house, to see a poor woman who desired to speak to me. This was none other than the tall, emaciated- looking negress who, on the day of our arrival, had em- braced me and my nurse with such irresistible zeal. She appeared very ill to-day, and presently unfolded to me a most distressing history of bodily afflictions. She was the mother of a very large family, and complained to me that, what with childbearing and hard field labor, her back was almost broken in two. "With an almost savage vehemence of gesticulation, she suddenly tore up her scanty clothing, and exhibited a spectacle with which I

30 JOUENAL OP

was inconceivably stocked and sickened. The facts, with- out any of her corroborating statements, bore tolerable witness to the hardships of her existence. I promised to attend to her ailments and give her proper remedies ; but these are natural results, inevitable and irremediable ones, of improper treatment of the female frame ; and, though there may be alleviation, there can not be any cure when once the beautiful and wonderful structure has been thus made the victim of ignorance, folly, and wickedness.

After the departure of this poor woman, I walked down the settlement toward the Infirmary or hospital, calling in at one or two of the houses along the row. These cabins consist of one room, about twelve feet by fif- teen, with a couple of closets smaller and closer than the state-rooms of a ship, divided off from the main room and each other by rough wooden partitions, in which the in- habitants sleep. They have almost all of them a rude bedstead, with the gray moss of the forests for mattress, and filthy, pestilential -looking blankets for covering. Two families (sometimes eight and ten in number) reside in one of these huts, which are mere wooden frames pin- ned, as it were, to the earth by a brick chimney outside, whose enormous aperture within pours down a flood of air, but little counteracted by the miserable spark of fire, which hardly sends an attenuated thread of lingering smoke up its huge throat. A wide ditch runs immedi- ately at the back of these dwellings, which is filled and emptied daily by the tide. Attached to each hovel is a small scrap of ground for a garden, which, however, is for the most part untended and uncultivated. Such of these dwellings as I visited to-day were filthy and wretched in the extreme, and exhibited that most deplorable conse- quence of ignorance and an abject condition, the inability of the inhabitants to secure and improve even such pitiful comfort as might yet be achieved by them. Instead of

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 31

the order, neatness, and ingenuity which might convert even these miserable hovels into tolerable residences, there was the careless, reckless, filthy indolence which even the brutes do not exhibit in their lairs and nests, and which seemed incapable of applying to the uses of existence the few miserable means of comfort yet within their reach. Firewood and shavings lay Uttered about the floors, while the half-naked children were cowering round two or three smouldering cinders. The moss with which the chinks and crannies of their ill-protecting dwellings might have been stuffed was trailing in dirt and dust about the ground, while the back door of the huts, opening upon a most unsightly ditch, was left wide open for %tbfe fowls and ducks, which they are allowed to raise, to travel in and out, increasing the filth of the cabin by what they brought and left in every direction. In the midst of the floor, or squatting round the cold hearth, would be four or five little children from four to ten years old, the latter all with babies in their arms, the care of the infants being taken from the mothers (who are driven afield as soon as they recover from child labor), and devolved upon these poor little nurses, as they are called, whose business it is to watch the infant, and carry it to its mother whenever it may require nourishment. To these hardly human little beings I addressed my re- monstrances about the filth, cold, and unnecessary wretch- edness of their room, bidding the elder boys and girls kindle up the fire, sweep the floor, and expel the poultry. For a long time my very words seemed unintelligible to them, till, when I began to sweep and make up the fire, etc., they first fell to laughing, and then imitating me. The incrustations of dirt on their hands, feet, and faces were my next object of attack, and the stupid negro prac- tice (by-the-by, but a short time since nearly universal in enlightened Europe) of keeping the babies with their feet

32 JOUENAL OP

bare, and their heads, already well capped by nature with their woolly hair, wrapped in half a dozen hot, filthy coverings. Thus I traveled down the " street," in every dwelling endeavoring to awaken a new perception, that of cleanliness, sighing, as I went, over the futility of my own exertions, for how can slaves be improved ? Nath- less, thought I, let what can be done ; for it may be that, the two being incompatible, improvement may yet expel slavery ; and so it might, and surely would, if, instead of beginning at the end, I could but begin at the beginning of my task. If the mind and soul were awakened, instead of mere physical good attempted, the physical good would result, and the great curse vanish away ; but my hands are tied fast, and this corner of the work is all th#t I may do. Yet it can not be but, from my words and actions, some revelations should reach these poor people; and going in and out among them perpetually, I shall teach, and they learn involuntarily a thousand things of deepest import. They must learn, and who can tell the fruit of that knowledge alone, that there are beings in the world, even with skins of a different color from their own, who have sympathy for their misfortunes, love for their vir- tues, and respect for their common nature — but oh ! my heart is full almost to bursting as I walk among these most poor creatures.

' The Infirmary is a large two-story building, termina- ting the broad orange-planted space between the two rows of houses which form the first settlement; it is

1 built of whitewashed wood, and contains four large-sized rooms. .But^how shall I describe to you the spectacle which was presented to me on entering the first of these ? But half the casements, of which there were six,

i were glazed, and these were obscured with dirt, almost as much as the other windowless ones were darkened by the dingy shutters, which the shivering inmates had fastened

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 33

to in order to protect themselves from the cold. In the enor- mous chimney glimmered the powerless embers of a few sticks of wood, round which, however, as many of the sick women as could approach were cowering, some on wood- en settles, most of them on the ground, excluding those who were too ill to rise ; and these last poor wretches lay prostrate on the floor, without bed, mattress, or pillow, bur- ied in tattered and filthy blankets, which, huddled round them as they lay strewed about, left hardly space to move upon the floor. And here, in their hour of sickness and suffering, lay those whose health and strength are spent in unrequited labor for us — those who, perhaps even yes- terday, were being urged on to their unpaid task — those whose husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were even at that hour sweating over the earth, whose produce was to buy for us all the luxuries which health can revel in, all the comforts which can alleviate sickness. I stood in the midst of them, perfectly unable to speak, the tears pouring from my eyes at this sad spectacle of their misery, myself and my emotion alike strange and incomprehensible to them. Here lay women expecting every hour the terrors and ago- nies of childbirth, others who had just brought their doom- ed offspring into the world, others who were groaning over the anguish and bitter disappointment of miscarriages — here lay some burning with fever, others chilled with cold and aching with rheumatism, upon the hard cold ground, the draughts and dampness of the atmosphere increasing their sufferings, and dirt, noise, and stench, and every ag- gravation of which sickness is capable, combined in their condition — here they lay like brute beasts, absorbed in physical suffering ; unvisited by any of those Divine influ- ences which may ennoble the dispensations of pain and ill- ness, forsaken, as it seemed to me, of all good ; and yet, O God, Thou surely hadst not forsaken them ! Now pray take notice that this is the hospital of an estate where the

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34 JOURNAL OF

owners are supposed to be humane, the overseer efficient and kind, and the negroes remarkably well cared for and comfortable. As soon as I recovered from my dismay, I addressed old Rose the midwife, who had charge of this room, bidding her open the shutters of such windows as were glazed, and let in the light. I next proceeded to make up the fire ; but, upon my lifting a log for that pur- pose, there was one universal outcry of horror, and old Rose, attempting to snatch it from me, exclaimed, " Let alone, missis — let be ; what for you lift wood ? you have nigger enough, missis, to do it !" I hereupon had to ex- plain to them my vigw of the purposes for which hands and arms were appended to our bodies, and forthwith be- gan making Rose tidy up the miserable apartment, remov- ing all the filth and rubbish from the floor that could be removed, folding up in piles the blankets of the patients who were not using them, and placing, in rather more sheltered and comfortable positions, those who were un- able to rise. It was all that I could do, and having en- forced upon them all my earnest desire that they should keep their room swept, and as tidy as possible, I passed on to the other room on the ground floor, and to the two above, one of which is appropriated to the use of the men who are ill. They were all in the same deplorable condi- tion, the upper rooms being rather the more miserable, in- asmuch as none of the windows were glazed at all, and they had, therefore, only the alternative of utter darkness, or killing draughts of air from the unsheltered casements. In all, filth, disorder, and misery abounded ; the floor was the only bed, and scanty begrimed rags of blankets the only covering. I left this refuge for Mr. 's sick de- pendents with my clothes covered with dust, and full of vermin, and with a heart heavy enough, as you will well believe. My morning's work had fatigued me not a little, and I was glad to return to the house, where I gave vent

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 35

to my indignation and regret at the scene I bad just "wit- nessed to Mr. and his overseer, who, here, is a mem- ber of our family. The latter told me that the condition of the hospital had appeared to him, from his first enter- ing upon his situation (only within the last year), to re- quire a reform, and that he had proposed it to the former

manager, Mr. K , and Mr. 's brother, who is part

proprietor of the estate, but, receiving no encouragement from them, had supposed that it was a matter of indiffer- ence to the owners, and had left it in the condition in which he had found it, in which condition it has been for the last nineteen years and upward.

This new overseer of ours has li ved fourteen years with an old Scotch gentleman, who owns an estate adjoining

Mr. 's, on the island of St. Simon's, upon which estate,

from every thing I can gather, and from what I know of the proprietor's character, the slaves are probably treated with as much humanity as is consistent with slavery at all, and where the management and comfort of the hospital in particular had been most carefully and judiciously at- tended to. With regard to the indifference of our former manager upon the subject of the accommodation for the sick,«he was an excellent overseer, videlicet the estate re- turned a full income under his management, and such men have nothing to do with sick slaves : they are tools, to be mended only if they can be made available again ; if not, to be flung by as useless, without farther expense of money, time, or trouble.

I am learning to row here, for circumscribed, as my walks necessarily are, impossible as it is to resort to my favorite exercise on horseback upon these narrow dikes, I must do something to prevent my blood from stagnating ; and this broad brimming river, and the beautiful light canoes which lie moored at the steps, are very inviting persuaders to this species of exercise. My first attempt

36 JOURNAL OF

was confined to pulling an oar across the stream, for which I rejoiced in sundry aches and pains altogether novel, letting alone a delightful row of blisters on each of my hands.

I forgot to tell you that in the hospital were several sick babies, whose mothers were permitted to suspend their field labor in order to nurse them. Upon address- ing some remonstrances to one of these, who, besides hav- ing a sick child, was ill herself, about the horribly dirty condition of her baby, she assured rue that it was impos- sible for them to keep their children clean; that they went out to work at daybreak, and did not get their tasks done till evening, and that then they were too tired and worn out to do any thing but throw themselves down and sleep. This statement of hers I mentioned on my return from the hospital, and the overseer appeared ex- tremely annoyed by it, and assured me repeatedly that it was not true.

In the evening Mr. , who had been over to Darien,

mentioned that one of the storekeepers there had told him that, in the course of a few years, he had paid the negroes of this estate several thousand dollars for moss, which is a very profitable article of traffic with them: they collect it from the trees, dry and pick it, and then sell it to the people in Darien for mattresses, sofas, and all sorts of stuffing purposes, which, in my opinion, it an- swers better than any other material whatever that I am acquainted with, being as light as horse-hair, as springy and elastic, and a great deal less harsh and rigid. It is

now bedtime, dear E , and I doubt not it has been

sleepy time with you over this letter long ere you came thus far. There is a preliminary to my repose, however, in this agreeable residence, which I rather dread, namely, the hunting for, or discovering without hunting, in fine relief upon the whitewashed walls of my bedroom, a most

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 37

hideons and detestable species of reptile called centipedes, which come out of the cracks and crevices of the walls, and fill my very heart with dismay. They are from an inch to two inches long, and appear to have not a hund- red, but a thousand legs. I can not ascertain very cer- tainly from the negroes whether they sting or not, but they look exceedingly as if they might, and I visit my babies every night in fear and trembling, lest I should find one or more of these hateful creatures mounting guard over them. Good-night ; you are well to be free from centipedes — better to be free from slaves.

DEAR E , — This morning I paid my second visit to

the Infirmary, and found there had been some faint at- tempt at sweeping and cleaning, in compliance with my entreaties. The poor woman Harriet, however, whose statement with regard to the impossibility of their attend- ing properly to their children had been so vehemently denied by the overseer, was crying bitterly. I asked her what ailed her, when, more by signs and dumb show than

words, she and old Rose informed me that Mr. O had

flogged her that morning for having told me that the women had not time to keep their children clean. It is part of the regular duty of every overseer to visit the In- firmary at least once a day, which he generally does in

the morning, and Mr. O 's visit had preceded mine

but a short time only, or I might have been edified by seeing a man horsewhip a woman. I again and again made her repeat her story, and she again and 'ffgain affirmed that she had been flogged for what she told me, none of the whole company in the room denying it or contradicting her. I left the room because I was so dis- gusted and indignant that I could hardly restrain my feel- ings, and to express them could have produced no single

38 JOURNAL OF

good result. In the next ward, stretched upon the ground, apparently either asleep or so overcome with sickness as to be incapable of moving, lay an immense woman ; her stature, as she cumbered the earth, must have been, I should think, five feet seven or eight, and her bulk enormous. She was wrapped in filthy rags, and lay with her face on the floor. As I approached, and stooped to see what ailed her, she suddenly threw out her arms, and, seized with violent convulsions, rolled over and over upon the floor, beating her head violently upon the ground, and throwing her enormous limbs about in a horrible manner. Immediately upon the occurrence of this fit, four or five women threw themselves literally upon her, and held her down by main force ; they even proceeded to bind her legs and arms together, to prevent her dashing herself about ; but this violent coercion and tight bandaging seemed to me, in my profound igno- rance, more likely to increase her illness by impeding her breathing and the circulation of her blood, and I bade them desist, and unfasten all the strings and ligatures not only that they had put round her limbs, but which, by tighten- ing her clothes round her body, caused any obstruction. How much I wished that, instead of music, and dancing, and such stuff, I had learned something of sickness and health, of the conditions and liabilities of the human body, that I might have known how to assist this poor creature, and to direct her ignorant and helpless nurses ! The fit presently subsided, and was succeeded by the most deplorable prostration and weakness of nerves, the tears streaming down the poor woman's cheeks in show- ers, without, however, her uttering a single word, though she moaned incessantly. After bathing her forehead, hands, and chest with vinegar, we raised her up, and I sent to the house for a chair with a back (there was no such thing in the hospital), and we contrived to place her

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 39

in it. I have seldom seen finer women than this poor creature and her younger sister, an immense strapping lass called Chloe — tall, straight, and extremely well made — who was assisting her sister, and whom I had re- marked, for the extreme delight and merriment which my cleansing propensities seemed to give her, on my last visit to the hospital. She was here taking care of a sick baby, and helping to nurse her sister Molly, who, it seems, is subject to those fits, about which I spoke to our phy- sician here — an intelligent man residing in Darien, who visits the estate whenever medical assistance is required. He seemed to attribute them to nervous disorder, brought on by frequent childbearing. This woman is young, I sup- pose at the outside not thirty, and her sister informed me

that she had had ten children — ten children, E ! Fits

and hard labor in the fields, unpaid labor, labor exacted with stripes — how do you fancy that ? I wonder if my mere narration can make your blood boil as the facts did mine? Among the patients in this room was a young girl, apparently from fourteen to fifteen, whose hands and feet were literally rotting away piecemeal, from the effect of a horrible disease, to which the negroes are subject here, and I believe in the West Indies, and when it at- tacks the joints of the toes and fingers, the pieces abso- , lutely decay and come off, leaving the limb a maimed and horrible stump ! I believe no cure is known for this dis- gusting malady, which seems confined to these poor crea- tures. Another disease, of which they complained much, and which, of course, I was utterly incapable of account- ing for, was a species of lock-jaw, to which their babies very frequently fall victims in the first or second week after their birth, refusing the breast, and the mouth grad- ually losing the power of opening itself. The horrible diseased state of head, common among their babies, is a mere result of filth and confinement, and therefore, though

40 JOUBNAL OF

I never any where saw such distressing and disgusting ob- jects as some of these poor little woolly skulls presented, the cause was sufficiently obvious. Pleurisy, or a tend- ency to it, seems very common among them ; also peri- pneumouia, or inflammation of the lungs, which is terribly prevalent, and generally fatal. Rheumatism is almost universal ; and as it proceeds from exposure, and want of knowledge and care, attacks indiscriminately the young and old. A great number of the women are victims to falling of the womb and weakness in the spine ; but these are necessary results of their laborious existence, and do not belong either to climate or constitution.

I have ingeniously contrived to introduce bribery, cor- ruption, and pauperism, all in a breath, upon this island, which, until my advent, was as innocent of these pollu- tions, I suppose, as Prospero's isle of refuge. Wishing, however, to appeal to some perception, perhaps a little less dim in their minds than the abstract loveliness of cleanliness, I have proclaimed to all the little baby nurses that I will give a cent to every little boy or girl whose baby's face shall be clean, and one to every individual with clean face and hands of their own. My appeal was fully comprehended by the majority, it seems, for this morn- ing I was surrounded, as soon as I came out, by a swarm of children carrying their little charges on their backs and in their arms, the shining, and, in many instances, wet faces and hands of the latter bearing ample testimony to the ablutions which had been inflicted upon them. How they will curse me and the copper cause of all their woes in their baby bosoms ! Do you know that, little as grown negroes are admirable for their personal beauty (in my opinion, at least), the black babies of a year or two old are very pretty ; they have, for the most part, beautiful eyes and eyelashes, the pearly perfect teeth, which they retain after their other juvenile graces have left them ;

A BESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 41

their skins are all (I mean of blacks generally) infinitely finer and softer than the skins of white people. Perhaps you are not aware that among the white race the finest grained skins generally belong to persons of dark com- plexion. This, as a characteristic of the black race, I think might be accepted as some compensation for the coarse woolly hair. The nose and mouth, which are so peculiar- ly displeasing in their conformation in the face of a negro man or woman, being the features least developed in a baby's countenance, do not at first present the ugliness which they assume as they become more marked; and when the very unusual operation of washing has been per- formed, the blood shines through the fine texture of the skin, giving life and richness to the dingy color, and dis- playing a species of beauty which I think scarcely any body who observed it would fail to acknowledge. I have seen many babies on this plantation who were quite as pretty as white children, and this very day stooped to kiss a little sleeping creature that lay on its mother's knees in the Infirmary — as beautiful a specimen of a sleeping infant as I ever saw. The caress excited the irrepressible de- light of all the women present — poor creatures ! who seem- ed to forget that I was a wornatf, and had children myself, and bore a woman's and a mother's heart toward them and theirs ; but, indeed, the Honorable Mr. Slumkey could not have achieved more popularity by his performances in that line than I by this exhibition of feeling; and, had the question been my election, I am very sure nobody else would have had a chance of a vote through the island. But wisely is it said that use is second nature, and the contempt and neglect to which these poor people are used make the commonest expression of human sympathy ap- pear a boon and gracious condescension. While I am speaking of the negro countenance, there is another beau- ty which is not at all unfrequent among those I see here

42 JOURNAL OF

— a finely-shaped oval face — and those who know (as all painters and sculptors, all who understand beauty do) how much expression there is in the outline of the head, and how very rare it is to see a well-formed face, will be apt to consider this a higher matter than any coloring, of which, indeed, the red and white one so often admired is by no means the most rich, picturesque, or expressive. At first the dark color confounded all features to my eye, and I could hardly tell one face from another. Becom- ing, however, accustomed to the complexion, I now per- ceive all the variety among these black countenances that there is among our own race, and as much difference in features and in expression as among the same number of whites. There is another peculiarity which I have re- marked among the women here — very considerable beau- ty in the make of the hands ; their feet are very generally ill made, which must be a natural, and not an acquired de- fect, as they seldom injure their feet by wearing shoes. The figures of some of the women are handsome, and their carriage, from the absence of any confining or tighten- ing clothing, and the habit they have of balancing great weights on their heads, erect and good.

At the upper end of the row of houses, and nearest to our overseer's residence, is the hut of the head driver. Let me explain, by the way, his office. f_The negroes,' as I before told you^ are divided into troops or gangs, as they arc called ; at the head of each gang is a driver, who stands over them, whip in hand, while they perform their daily , task, who renders an account of each individual slave and his work every evening to the overseer, and receives from him directions for their next day's tasks. Each driver is allowed to inflict a dozen lashes upon any refVactory slave in the field, and at the time of the offense ; they may not, however, extend the chastisement, and if it is found inef- fectual, their remedy lies in reporting the unmanageable

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 43

individual either to the head driver or the overseer, the former of whom has power to inflict three dozen lashes at his own discretion, and the latter as many as he himself sees fit, within the number of fifty; • which limit, however, I must tell you, is an arbitrary one on this plantationjap- -

pointed by the founder of the estate, Major , Mr.

's grandfather, many of whose regulations, indeed I

believe most of them, are still observed in the govern- ment of the plantation, j Limits of this sort, however, ]to • the power of either driver, head driver, or overseer,, may or may not exist elsewhere ; they are, to a certain degree, a check upon the power of these individuals ; but in the absence of the master, the overseer may confine himself within the limit or not, as he chooses ; and as for the mas- ter himself, where is his limit ? He may, if he likes, flog a slave to death, for the laws which pretend that he may not are a mere pretense, inasmuch as the testimony of a * black is never taken against a white ; and upon this plan- tation of ours, and a thousand more, the overseer is the only white man, so whence should come the testimony to any crime of his ? S With regard to the oft-repeated state- . ment that it is not the owner's interest to destroy his hu- man property, it answers nothing ; the instances in which men, to gratify the immediate impulse of passion, sacri- fice not only their eternal, but their evident, palpable, pos- itive worldly interest, are infinite. Nothing is commoner than for a man under the transient influence of anger to disregard his worldly advantage ; and the black slave, whose preservation is indeed supposed to be his owner's interest, may be, will be, and is occasionally sacrificed to the blind impulse of passion.

To return to our head driver, or, as he is familiarly called, head man, Frank — he is second in authority only to the overseer, and exercises rule alike over the drivers and the gangs in the absence of the sovereign white man

44 JOURNAL OF

from the estate, which happens whenever Mr. O visits

the other two plantations at Woodville and St. Simon's. He is sole master and governor of the island, appoints the work, pronounces punishments, gives permission to the men to leave the island (without it they never may do so), and exercises all functions of undisputed mastery over his fellow-slaves, for you will observe that all this while he is just as much a slave as any of the rest. Trustworthy, upright, intelligent, he may be flogged to-morrow if Mr.

O or Mr. so please it, and sold the next day, like

a cart-horse, at the will of the latter. Besides his various other responsibilities, he has the key of all the stores, and gives out the people's rations weekly ; nor is it only the people's provisions that are put under his charge — meat, which is only given out to them occasionally, and provi- sions for the use of the family, are also intrusted to his care. Thus you see, among these inferior creatures, their own masters yet look to find, surviving all their best ef- forts to destroy them, good sense, honesty, self-denial, and all the qualities, mental and moral, that make one man worthy to be trusted by another. From the impercepti- ble but inevitable effect of the sympathies and influences of human creatures toward and over each other, Frank's intelligence has become uncommonly developed by inti- mate communion in the discharge of his duty with the former overseer, a very intelligent man, who has only just left the estate, after managing it for nineteen years ; the effect of this intercourse, and of the trust and responsibil- ity laid upon the man, are that he is clear-headed, well judging, active, intelligent, extremely well mannered, and, being respected, he respects himself. He is as ignorant as the rest of the slaves ; but he is always clean and tidy in his person, with a courteousness of demeanor far re- moved from servility, and exhibits a strong instance of the intolerable and wicked injustice of the system under

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 45

which he lives, having advanced thus far toward improve- ment, in spite of all the bars it puts to progress ; and here being arrested, not by want of energy, want of sense, or any want of his own, but by being held as another man's property, who can only thus hold him by forbidding him farther improvement. When I see that man, who keeps himself a good deal aloof from the rest, in his leisure hours looking, with a countenance of deep thought, as I did to- day, over the broad river, which is to him as a prison wall, to the fields and forest beyond, not one inch or branch of which his utmost industry can conquer as his own, or ac- quire and leave an independent heritage to his children, I marvel what the thoughts of such a man may be. I was in his house to-day, and the same superiority in cleanli- ness, comfort, and propriety exhibited itself in his dwell- ing as in his own personal appearance and that of his wife — a most active, trustworthy, excellent woman, daughter of the oldest, and probably most highly respected of all Mr. 's slaves. To the excellent conduct of this wom- an, and, indeed, every member of her family, both the pres- ent and the last overseer bear unqualified testimony.

As I was returning toward the house after my long morning's lounge, a man rushed out of the blacksmith's shop, and, catching me by the skirt of my gown, poured forth a torrent of self-gratulations on having at length found the " right missis." They have no idea, of course, of a white person performing any of the offices of a serv- ant, and as throughout the whole Southern country the owner's children are nursed and tended, and sometimes suckled by their slaves (I wonder how this inferior milk agrees with the lordly ichite babies?), the appearance of

M with my two children had immediately suggested

the idea that she must be the missis. Many of the poor negroes flocked to hei¥, paying their profound homage under this impression ; and when she explained to them

46 JOURNAL OF

that she was not their owner's wife, the confusion in their minds seemed very great — Heaven only knows whether they did not conclude that they had two mistresses, and

Mr. two wives ; for the privileged race must seem,

in their eyes, to have such absolute masterdom on earth, that perhaps they thought polygamy might be one of the sovereign white men's numerous indulgences. The ec- stasy of the blacksmith on discovering the "right missis" at last was very funny, and was expressed with such ex- traordinary grimaces, contortions, and gesticulations, that I thought I should have died of laughing at this raptur- ous identification of my most melancholy relation to the poor fellow.

Having at length extricated myself from the group which forms round me whenever I stop but for a few minutes, I pursued my voyage of discovery by peeping into the kitchen garden. I dared do no more ; the aspect of the place would have rejoiced the very soul of Solo- mon's sluggard of old — a few cabbages and weeds innu- merable filled the neglected-looking inclosure, and I ven- tured no farther than the entrance into its most uninviting precincts. You are to understand that upon this swamp island of ours we have quite a large stock of cattle, cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry in the most enormous and incon- venient abundance. The cows are pretty miserably off for pasture, the banks and pathways of the dikes being their only grazing ground, which the sheep perambulate also, in earnest search of a nibble of fresh herbage ; both the cows and sheep are fed with rice flour in great abun- dance, and are pretty often carried down for change of

air and more sufficient grazing to Hampton, Mr. 's

estate, on the island of St. Simon's, fifteen miles from this place, farther down the river — or rather, indeed, I should say in the sea, for 'tis salt water all round, and one end of the island has a noble beach open to the vast Atlantic.

A BESIDEXCE IX OtOIiGIA. 47

The pigs thrive admirably here, and attain very great per- fection of size and flavor, the rice flour upon which they are chiefly fed tending to make them very delicate. As for the poultry, it being one of the few privileges of the poor blacks to raise as many as they can, their abundance is literally a nuisance — ducks, fowls, pigeons, turkeys (the two latter species, by-the-by, are exclusively the master's property), cluck, scream, gabble, gobble, crow, cackle, fight, fly, and flutter in all directions, and to their im- mense concourse, and the perfect freedom with which they intrude themselves even into the piazza of the house, the pantry, and kitchen, I partly attribute the swarms of fleas, and other still less agreeable vermin, with which we are most horribly pestered.

My walk lay to-day along the bank of a canal, which has been dug through nearly the whole length of the island, to render more direct and easy the transportation of the rice from one end of the estate to another, or from the va- rious distant fields to the principal mill at Settlement No. 1. It is of considerable width and depth, and opens by various locks into the river. It has, unfortunately, no trees on its banks, but a good foot-path renders it, in spite of that deficiency, about the best walk on the island. I passed again to-day one of those beautiful evergreen thick- ets, which I described to you in my last letter ; it is call- ed a reserve, and is kept uncleared and uncultivated in its natural swampy condition, to allow of the people's pro- curing their firewood from it. I can not get accustomed, so as to be indifferent to this exquisite natural ornament- al growth, and think, as I contemplate the various and beautiful foliage of these watery woods, how many of our finest English parks and gardens owe their chiefest adorn- ments to plantations of these shrubs, procured at immense cost, reared with infinite pains and care, which are here basking in the winter's sunshine, waiting to be cut down

48 JOURNAL OF

for firewood ! These little groves are peopled with wild pigeons and birds, which they designate here as black- birds. These sometimes rise from the rice fields with a whirr of multitudinous wings that is almost startling, and positively overshadow the ground beneath like a cloud.

I had a conversation that interested me a good deal, during my walk to-day, with my peculiar slave Jack.

This lad, whom Mr. has appointed to attend me in

my roamings about the island, and rowing expeditions on the river, is the son of the last head driver, a man of very extraordinary intelligence and faithfulness — such, at least, is the account given of him by his employers (in the buri- al-ground of the negroes is a stone dedicated to his mem- ory, a mark of distinction accorded by his masters, which his son never failed to point out to me when we passed that way). Jack appears to inherit his quickness of ap- prehension ; his questions, like those of an intelligent child, are absolutely inexhaustible ; his curiosity about all things beyond this island, the prison-house of his exist- ence, is perfectly intense ; his countenance is very pleas- ing, mild, and not otherwise than thoughtful ; he is, in common with the rest of them, a stupendous flatterer, and, like the rest of them, also seems devoid of physical and moral courage. To-day, in the midst of his torrent of in- quiries about places and things, I suddenly asked him if he would like to be free. A gleam of light absolutely shot over his whole countenance, like the vivid and in- stantaneous lightning ; he stammered, hesitated, became excessively confused, and at length replied, " Free, missis ! what for me wish to be free ? Oh no, missis, me no wish to be free, if massa only let we keep pig !" The fear of offending by uttering that forbidden wish — the dread of admitting, by its expression, the slightest discontent with his present situation — the desire to conciliate my favoi-, even at the expense of strangling the intense natural long-

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 49

ing that absolutely glowed in his every feature — it was a sad spectacle, and I repented my question. As for the pitiful request, which he reiterated several times, adding, "No, missis, me no want to be free; me work till me die for missis and massa," with increased emphasis ; it amounted only to this, that negroes once were, but no longer are, permitted to keep pigs. The increase of filth and foul smells consequent upon their being raised is, of

course, very great ; and, moreover, Mr. told me,

when I preferred poor Jack's request to him, that their allowance was no more than would suffice their own ne- cessity, and that they had not the means of feeding the animals. With a little good management they might very easily obtain them, however ; their little " kail-yard" alone would suffice to it, and the pork and bacon would prove a most welcome addition to their farinaceous diet. You perceive at once (or, if you could have seen the boy's face, you would have perceived at once) that his situation

was no mystery to him ; that his value to Mr. , and, as

he supposed, to me, was pei'fectly well known to him, and that he comprehended immediately that his expressing even the desire to be free might be construed by me into an offense, and sought, by eager protestations of his de- lighted acquiescence in slavery, to conceal his soul's nat- ural yearning, lest I should resent it. 'Twas a sad pas- sage between us, and sent me home full of the most pain- ful thoughts. I told Mr. , with much indignation, of

poor Harriet's flogging, and represented that if the peo- ple were to be chastised for any thing they said to me, I must leave the place, as I could not but hear their com- plaints, and endeavor, by all my miserable limited means, to better their condition while I was here. He said he

would ask Mr. O about it, assuring me, at the same

time, that it was impossible to believe a single word any of these people said. At dinner, accordingly, the inquiry

C

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was made as to the cause of her punishment, and Mr.

O then said it was not at all for what she had told

me that he had flogged her, but for having answered him impertinently; that he had ordered her into the field, whereupon she had said she was ill and could not work ; that he retorted he knew better, and bade her get up and go to work ; she replied, " Very well, I'll go, but I shall just come back again !" meaning that when in the field she would be unable to work, and obliged to return to the

hospital. " For this reply," Mr. O said, " I gave her

a good lashing ; it was her business to have gone into the field without answering me, and then we should have soon seen whether she could work or not ; I gave it to Chloe too for some such impudence." I give you the words of the conversation, which was prolonged to a great length, the overseer complaining of the sham sicknesses of the slaves, and detailing the most disgusting struggle which is going on the whole time, on the one hand to in- flict, and on the other to evade oppression and injustice. With this sauce I ate my dinner, and truly it tasted bit- ter.

Toward sunset I went on the river to take my rowing lesson. A darling little canoe, which carries two oars and a steersman, and rejoices in the appropriate title of the " Dolphin," is my especial vessel ; and with Jack's help and instructions, I contrived this evening to row upward of half a mile, coasting the reed-crowned edge of the isl- and to another very large rice mill, the enormous wheel of which is turned by the tide. A small bank of rnud and sand, covered with reedy coarse grass, divides the river into two arms on this side of the island ; the deep chan- nel is on the outside of this bank, and as we rowed home this evening, the tide having fallen, we scraped sand al- most the whole way. Mr. 's domain, it seems to me,

will presently fill up this shallow stream, and join itself to

A BESUXENCE IN GEOKGIA. 51

*

the above-mentioned mud-bank. The whole course of this most noble river is full of shoals, banks, mud, and sand-bars, and the navigation, which is difficult to those who know it well, is utterly baffling to the inexperienced. The fact is, that the two elements are so fused hereabouts that there are hardly such things as earth or water proper; that which styles itself the former is a fat, muddy, slimy sponge, that, floating half under the turbid river, looks yet saturated with the thick waves which every now and then reclaim their late dominion, and cover it almost entirely ; the water, again, cloudy and yellow, like pea-soup, seems but a solution of such islands, rolling turbid and thick with alluvium, which it both gathers and deposits as it sweeps along with a swollen, smooth rapidity, that almost deceives the eye. Amphibious creatures, alligators, ser- pents, and wild-fowl haunt these yet but half-formed re- gions, where land and water are of the consistency of hasty-pudding — the one seeming too unstable to walk on, the other almost too thick to float in. But then the sky — if no human chisel ever yet cut breath, neither did any human pen ever write light ; if it did, mine should spread out before you the unspeakable glories of these Southern heavens, the saffron brightness of morning, the blue in- tense brilliancy of noon, the golden splendor and the rosy softness of sunset. Italy and Claude Lorraine may go hang themselves together ! Heaven itself does not seem brighter or more beautiful to the imagination than these surpassing pageants of fiery rays, and piled-up beds of or- ange, golden clouds, with edges too bright to look on, scattered wreaths of faintest rosy bloom, amber streaks and pale green lakes between, and amid sky all mingled blue and rose tints, a spectacle to make one fall over the side of the boat, with one's head broken off with looking adoringly upward, but which, on paper, means nothing. At six o'clock our little canoe grazed the steps at the

52 JOUKNAL OF

landing. These were covered with young women, and boys, and girls, drawing water for their various household, purposes. A very small cedar pail — a piggin as they termed it — serves to scoop up the river water ; and hav- ing, by this means, filled a large bucket, they transfer this to their heads, and, thus laden, march home with the puri- fying element — what to do with it I can not imagine, for evidence of its ever having been introduced into their dwellings I saw none. As I ascended the stairs, they sur- rounded me with shrieks and yells of joy, uttering excla- mations of delight and amazement at my rowing. Con- sidering that they dig, delve, carry burdens, and perform many more athletic exercises than pulling a light oar, I was rather amused at this ; but it was the singular fact of seeing a white woman stretch her sinews in any toil- some exercise which astounded them, accustomed as they are to see both men and women of the privileged skin es- chew the slightest shadow of labor as a thing not only painful, but degrading. They will learn another lesson from me, however, whose idea of heaven was pronounced by a friend of mine, to whom I once communicated it, to be "devilish hard work!" It was only just six o'clock, and these women had all done their tasks. I exhorted them to go home and wash their children, and clean their houses and themselves, which they professed themselves ready to do, but said they had no soap. Then began a chorus of mingled requests for soap, for summer clothing, and a variety of things, which, if " Missis only give we, we be so clean forever !"

This request for summer clothing, by-the-by, I think a very reasonable one. The allowance of clothes made year- ly to each slave by the present regulations of the estate is a certain number of yards of flannel, and as much more of what they call plains — an extremely stout, thick, heavy woolen cloth, of a dark gray or blue color, which resem-

A RESIDENCE IX GEORGIA. 53

bles the species of carpet we call drugget. This, and two pair of shoes, is the regular ration of clothing ; but these plains would be intolerable to any but negroes, even in winter, in this climate, and are intolerable to them in the summer. A far better ai-raugement, in my opinion, would be to increase their allowance of flannel and under cloth- ing, and to give them dark chintzes instead of these thick carpets, which are very often the only covering they wear at all. I did not impart all this to my petitioners, but, disengaging myself from them, for they held my hands and clothes, I conjured them to offer us some encourage- ment to better their condition by bettering it as much as they could themselves — enforced the virtue of washing themselves and all belonging to them, and at length made good my retreat. As there is no particular reason why such a letter as this should ever come to an end, I had bet- ter spare you for the present. You shall have a faithful journal, I promise you, henceforward, as hitherto, from yours ever.

DEAR E , — "We had a species of fish this morning

for our breakfast which deserves more glory than I can bestow upon it. Had I been the ingenious man who wrote a poem upon fish, the white mullet of the Altamaha should have been at least my heroine's cousin. 'Tis the heaven- liest creature that goes upon fins. I took a long walk this morning to Settlement No. 3, the third village on the island. My way lay along the side of the canal, beyond which, and only divided from it by a raised narroAV cause- way, rolled the brimming river, with its girdle of glitter- ing evergreens, while on my other hand a deep trench marked the line of the rice fields. It really seemed as if the increase of merely a shower of rain might join all these waters together, and lay the island under its original cov-

54 JOURNAL OP

ering .again. I visited the people and houses here. I found nothing in any respect different from what I have described to you at Settlement No. 1. During the course of my walk, I startled from its repose in one of the rice fields a huge blue heron. You must have seen, as I often have, these creatures stuffed in museums ; but 'tis another matter, and far more curious, to see them stalking on their stilts of legs over a rice field, and then, on your near ap- proach, see them spread their wide heavy wings, and throw themselves upon the air, with their long shanks flying after them in a most grotesque and laughable manner. They fly as if they did not know how to do it very well ; but standing still, their height (between four and five feet) and peculiar color, a dusky, grayish blue, with black about the head, render their appearance very beautiful and strik- ing.

In the afternoon I and Jack rowed ourselves over to Darien. It is Saturday — the day of the week on which the slaves from the island are permitted to come over to the town to purchase such things as they may require and can afford, and to dispose, to the best advantage, of their poultry, moss, and eggs. I met many of them paddling themselves singly in their slight canoes, scooped out of the trunk of a tree, and parties of three and four rowing boats of their own building, laden with their purchases, singing, laughing, talking, and apparently enjoying their holiday to the utmost. They all hailed me with shouts of delight as I pulled past them, and many were the in- junctions bawled after Jack to " mind and take good care of missis !" We returned home through the glory of a sunset all amber-colored and rosy, and found that one of

the slaves, a young lad for whom Mr. has a particular

regard, was dangerously ill. Dr. II was sent for; and

there is every probability that he, Mr. , and Mr. O

will be up all night with the poor fellow. I shall write

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 55

more to-morrow. To-day being Sunday, dear E , a

large boat fullof Mr. 's people from. Hampton came

up, to go to church at Darien, and to pay their respects to their master, and see their new " missis." The same scene was acted over again that occurred on our first ar- rival. A crowd clustered round the house door, to whom I and my babies were produced, and with every individ- ual of whom we had to shake hands some half a dozen times. They brought us up presents of eggs (their only wealth), beseeching us to take them; and one young lad, the son of head man Frank, had a beautiful pair of chick- ens, which he offered most earnestly to S . We took

one of them, not to mortify the poor fellow, and a green ribbon being tied round its leg, it became a sacred fowl, " little missis's chicken." By-the-by, this young man had so light a complexion, and such regular straight features, that, had I seen him any where else, I should have taken him for a southern European, or, perhaps, in favor of his tatters, a gipsy ; but certainly it never would have occur- red to me that he was the son of negro parents. I ob- served this to Mr. , who merely replied, " He is the

son of head man Frank and his wife Betty, and they are both black enough, as you see." The expressions of de- votion and delight of these poor people are the most fer- vent you can imagine. One of them, speaking to me of

Mr. , and saying that they had heard that he had not

been well, added, " Oh ! we hear so, missis, and we not know what to do. Oh lf missis, massa sick, all him people broken r

Dr. H came again to-day to see the poor sick boy,

who is doing much better, and bidding fair to recover. He entertained me with an account of the Darien society, its aristocracies and democracies, its little grandeurs and smaller pettinesses, its circles higher and lower, its social jealousies, fine invisible lines of demarkation, impercepti-

56 JOURNAL OF

ble shades of different respectability, and delicate divisions of genteel, genteeler, genteelest. " For me," added the worthy doctor, " I can not well enter into the spirit of these nice distinctions ; it suits neither my taste nor my interest, and my house is, perhaps, the only one in Darien where you would find all these opposite and contending elements combined." The doctor is connected with the aristocracy of the place, and, like a wise man, remembers, notwithstanding, that those who are not are quite as lia- ble to be ill, and call in'medical assistance, as those who are. He is a shrewd, intelligent man, with an excellent knowledge of his profession, much kindness of heart, and apparent cheerful good temper. I have already severely tried the latter by the unequivocal expression of my opin- ions on the subject of slavery, and, though I perceived that it required all his self-command to listen with any thing like patience to my highly incendiary and inflamma- tory doctrines, he yet did so, and though he was, I have no doubt, perfectly horror-stricken at the discovery, lost nothing of his courtesy or good-humor. By-the-by,I must tell you that, at an early period of the conversation, upon my saying, " I put all other considerations out of the ques- tion, and first propose to you the injustice of the system alone," " Oh," replied my friend the doctor, " if you put it upon that ground, you stump the question at once ; I have nothing to say to that whatever, but," and then fol- lowed the usual train of pleadings — happiness, tenderness, care, indulgence, etc., etc., etc. — all the substitutes that may or may not be put in the place of justice, and which these slaveholders attempt to persuade others, and per- haps themselves, effectually supply its want. After church hours the people came back from Darien. They are only permitted to go to Darien to church once a month. On the intermediate Sundays they assemble in the house of London, Mr. 's head cooper, an excellent and pious

A EESIDJENCE IN GEOKGIA. 57

man, who, Heaven alone knows how, has obtained some little knowledge of reading, and who reads prayers and the Bible to his fellow-slaves, and addresses them with ex- temporaneous exhortations. I have the greatest desire to attend one of these religious meetings, but fear to put the people under any, the slightest restraint. However, I shall see by-and-by how they feel about it themselves.

You have heard, of course, many and contradictory statements as to the degree of religious instruction af- forded to the negroes of the South, and their opportuni- ties of worship, etc. Until the late abolition movement, the spiritual interests of the slaves were about as little re- garded as their physical necessities. The outcry which has been raised with threefold force within the last few years against the whole system has induced its upholders and defenders to adopt, as measures of personal extenua- tion, some appearance of religious instruction (such as it is), and some pretense at physical indulgences (such as they are), bestowed apparently voluntarily upon their de- pendents. At Darien a church is appropriated to the especial use of the slaves, who are almost all of them Baptists here ; and a gentleman officiates in it (of course white), who, I understand, is very zealous in the cause of their spiritual well-being. He, like most Southern men, clergy or others, jump the present life in their charities to the slaves, and go on to furnish them with all requisite conveniences for the next. There were a short time ago two free black preachers in this neighborhood, but they have lately been ejected from the place. I could not clearly learn, but one may possibly imagine, upon what grounds.

I do not think that a residence on a slave plantation is likely to be peculiarly advantageous to a child like my eldest. I was observing her to-day among her swarthy worshipers, for they follow her as such, and saw, with dis-

C2

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may „ the universal eagerness with which they sprang to obey her little gestures of command. She said something about a swing, and in less than five minutes head man Frank had erected it for her, and a dozen young slaves were ready to swing little "missis." , think of learn- ing to rule despotically your fellow-creatures before the first lesson of self-government has been well spelt over ! It makes me tremble ; but I shall find a remedy, or re- move myself and the child from this misery and ruin.

You can not conceive any thing more grotesque than the Sunday trim of the poor people, their ideality, as Mr. Combe would say, being, I should think, twice as big as any rational bump in their head. Their Sabbath toilet really presents the most ludicrous combination of incon- gruities that you can conceive — frills, flounces, ribbons ; combs stuck in their woolly heads, as if they held up any portion of the stiff and ungovernable hair ; filthy finery, every color in the rainbow, and the deepest possible shades blended in fierce companionship round one dusky visage ; head-handkerchiefs, that put one's very eyes out from a mile off; chintzes with sprawling patterns, that might be seen if the clouds were printed with them ; beads, bugles, flaring sashes, and, above all, little fanciful aprons, which finish these incongruous toilets with a sort of airy grace, which I assure you is perfectly indescribable. One young man, the eldest son and heir of our washerwoman Hannah, came to pay his respects to me in a magnificent black satin waistcoat, shirt gills which absolutely ingulfed his black visage, and neither shoes nor stockings on his feet.

Among our visitors from St. Simon's to-day was Han- nah's mother (it seems to me that there is not a girl of sixteen on the plantations but has children, nor a woman of thirty but has grandchildren). Old House Molly, as she is called, from the circumstance of her having been one of the slaves employed in domestic offices during Ma-

A RESIDENCE IN GEOBGIA. 59

jor 's residence on the island, is one of the oldest and

most respected slaves on the estate, and was introduced

to me by Mr. with especial marks of attention and

regard ; she absolutely embraced him, and seemed unable sufficiently to express her ecstasy at seeing him again. Her dress, like that of her daughter, and all the servants who have at any time been employed about the family, bore witness to a far more improved taste than the half savage adornment of the other poor blacks, and upon my observing to her how agreeable her neat and cleanly ap- pearance was to me, she replied that her old master (Ma- jor ) was extremely particular in this respect, and

that in his time all the house servants were obliged to be very nice and careful about their persons.

She named to me all her children, an immense tribe ;

and, by-the-by, E -, it has occurred to me that whereas

the increase of this ill-fated race is frequently adduced as a proof of their good treatment and well being, it really and truly is no such thing, and springs from quite other causes than the peace and plenty which a rapidly increas- ing population are supposed to indicate. If you will re- flect for a moment upon the overgrown families of the half-starved Irish peasantry and English manufacturers, you will agree with me that these prolific shoots by no means necessarily spring from a rich or healthy soil. Peace and plenty are certainly causes of human increase, and so is recklessness ; and this, I take it, is the impulse in the instance of the English manufacturer, the Irish peas- ant, and the negro slave. Indeed here it is more than recklessness, for there are certain indirect premiums held out to obey the early commandment of replenishing the earth which do not fail to have their full effect. In the first place, none of the cares — those noble cares, that holy thoughtfulness which lifts the human above the brute parent, are ever incurred here by either father or mother.

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The relation indeed resembles, as far as circumstances can possibly make it do so, the short-lived connection between the animal and its young. The father, having neither au- thority, power, responsibility, or charge in his children, is of course, as among brutes, the least attached to his off- spring ; the mother, by the natural law which renders the infant dependent on her for its first year's nourishment, is more so ; but as neither of them is bound to educate or to support their children, all the unspeakable tenderness and solemnity, all the rational, and all the spiritual grace and glory of the connection, is lost, and it becomes mere breeding, bearing, suckling, and there an end. But it is not only the absence of the conditions which God has af- fixed to the relation which tends to encourage the reckless increase of the race ; they enjoy, by means of numerous children, certain positive advantages. In the first place, every woman who is pregnant, as soon as she chooses to make the fact known to the overseer, is relieved of a cer- tain portion of her work in the field, which lightening of labor continues, of course, as long as she is so burdened. On the birth of a child certain additions of clothing and an additional weekly ration are bestowed on the family ; and these matters, small as they may seem, act as power- ful inducements to creatures who have none of the restrain- ing influences actuating them which belong to the parent- al relation among all other people, whether civilized or savage. Moreover, they have all of them a most distinct and perfect knowledge of their value to their owners as « property ; and a woman thinks, and not much amiss, that the more frequently she adds to the number of her mas- ter's live-stock by bringing new slaves into the world, the more claims she will have upon his consideration and good-will. This was perfectly evident to me from the meritorious air with which the women always made haste to inform me of the number of children they had borne,

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 61

and the frequent occasions on which the older slaves would direct my attention to their children, exclaiming, " Look, missis ! little niggers for you and massa ; plenty little nig- gers for you and little missis !" A very agreeable apos- trophe to me indeed, as you will believe.

I have let this letter lie for a day or two, dear E ,

from press of more immediate avocations. I have noth- ing very particular to add to it. On Monday evening I

rowed over to Darien with Mr. to fetch over the

doctor, who was coming to visit some of our people. As I sat waiting in the boat for the return of the gentlemen, the sun went down, or rather seemed to. dissolve bodily into the glowing clouds, which appeared but a fusion of the great orb of light ; the stars twinkled out in the rose- colored sky, and the evening air, as it fanned the earth to sleep, was as soft as a summer's evening breeze in the north. A sort of dreamy stillness seemed creeping over the world and into my spirit as the canoe just tilted against the steps that led to the wharf, raised by the scarce perceptible heaving of the water. A melancholy, monotonous boat-horn sounded from a distance up the stream, and presently, floating slowly down with the cur- rent, huge, shapeless, black, relieved against the sky, came one of those rough barges piled with cotton, called, here- abouts, Ocone boxes. The vessel itself is really nothing but a monstrous square box, made of rough planks, put together in the roughest manner possible to attain the necessary object of keeping the cotton dry. Upon this great tray are piled the swollen, apoplectic-looking cotton- bags, to the height often, twelve, and fourteen feet. This huge water-wagon floats lazily down the river, from the upper country to Darien. They are flat-bottomed, and, of course, draw little water. The stream from whence they are named is an up-country river, which, by its junction with the Ocmulgee, forms the Altamaha. Here at least,

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you perceive, the Indian names remain, and long may they do so, for they seem to me to become the very character of the streams and mountains they indicate, and are in- deed significant to the learned in savage tongues, which is more than can be said of such titles as Jones's Creek, Onion Creek, etc. These Ocone boxes are broken up at Darien, where the cotton is shipped either for the Savan- nah, Charleston, or Liverpool markets, and the timber of which they are constructed sold.

We rowed the doctor over to see some of his patients on the island, and before his departure a most animated discussion took place upon the subject of the President of the United States, his talents, qualifications, opinions — above all, his views with regard to the slave system. Mr. , who you know is no abolitionist, and is a very de- voted Van Buren man, maintained with great warmth the President's straightforwardness, and his evident and ex- pressed intention of protecting the rights of the South. The doctor, on the other hand, quoted a certain speech of the President's upon the question of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, which his fears interpreted into a mere evasion of the matter, and an indication that at some future period he (Mr. Van Buren) might take a dif- ferent view of the subject. I confess, for my own part, that if the doctor quoted the speech right, and if the Presi- dent is not an honest man, and if I were a Southern slave- holder, I should not feel altogether secure of Mr. Van Bu- ren's present opinions or future conduct upon this subject. These three ifs, howevei', are material points of consider- ation. Our friend the doctor inclined vehemently to Mr. Clay as one on whom the slaveholders could depend. Georgia, however, as a state, is perhaps the most demo- cratic in the Union ; though here, as well as in other places that you and I know of, a certain class, calling themselves the first, and honestly believing themselves the best, set

A RESIDENCE IN GEOKGIA. 63

their faces against the modern fashioned republicanism, professing, and, I have no doubt, with great sincerity, that their ideas of democracy are altogether of a different kind. I went again to-day to the Infirmary, and was happy to perceive that there really was an evident desire to conform to my instructions, and keep the place in a better condi- tion than formerly. Among the sick I found a poor wom- an suffering dreadfully from the earache. She had done nothing to alleviate her pain but apply some leaves, of what tree or plant I could not ascertain, and tie up her head in a variety of dirty cloths, till it was as large as her whole body. I removed all these, and found one side of her face and neck very much swollen, but so begrimed with filth that it was really no very agreeable task to ex- amine it. The first process, of course, was washing, which, however, appeared to her so very unusual an operation, that I had to perform it for her myself. Sweet oil and laudanum, and raw cotton, being then applied to her ear and neck, she professed herself much relieved, but I be- lieve in my heart that the warm water sponging had done her more good than any thing else. I was sorry not to ascertain what leaves she had applied to her ear. These simple remedies resorted to by savages, and people as ig- norant, are generally approved by experience, and some- times condescendingly adopted by science. I remember

once, when Mr. was suffering from a severe attack of

inflammatory rheumatism, Dr. C desired him to bind

round his knee the leaves of the tulip-tree — poplar I be- lieve you call it — saying that he had leamed that remedy from the negroes in Virginia, and found it a most effectual one. My next agreeable office in the Infirmary this morn- ing was superintending the washing of two little babies, whose mothers were nursing them with quite as much ig- norance as zeal. Having ordered a large tub of water, I desired Rose to undress the little creatures and give them

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a warm bath ; the mothers looked on in unutterable dis- may; and one of them, just as her child was going to be put into the tub, threw into it all the clothes she had just taken off it, as she said, to break the unusual shock of the warm water. I immediately rescued them ; not but what they were quite as much in want of washing as the baby, but it appeared, upon inquiry, that the woman had none others to dress the child in when it should have taken its bath ; they were immediately wrung and hung by the fire to dry ; and the poor little patients, having undergone this novel operation, were taken out and given to their moth- ers. Any thing, however, much more helpless and ineffi- cient than these poor ignorant creatures you can not con- ceive ; they actually seemed incapable of drying or dress- ing their own babies, and I had to finish their toilet my- self. As it is only a very few years since the most absurd and disgusting customs have become exploded among ourselves, you will not, of course, wonder that these poor people pin up the lower part of their infants, bodies, legs, and all, in red flannel as soon as they are born, and keep them in the self-same envelope till it literally falls off.

In the next room I found a woman lying on the floor in a fit of epilepsy, barking most violently. She seemed to excite no particular attention or compassion ; the women said she was subject to these fits, and took little or no no- tice of her, as she lay barking like some enraged animal on the ground. Again I stood in profound ignorance, sickening with the sight of suffering which I knew not how to alleviate, and which seemed to excite no commis- eration merely from the sad fact of its frequent occur- rence. Returning to the house, I passed up the " street." It was between eleven o'clock and noon, and the people

wrere taking their first meal in the day! By-the-by, E ,

how do you think Berkshire county farmers would relish laboring hard all day upon two meeds of Indian corn or

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 65

hominy ? Such is the regulation on this plantation, how- ever, and I beg you to bear in mind that the negroes on

Mr. 's estate are generally considered well off. Th"ey

go to the fields at'daybreak, carrying with them their al- lowance of food for the day, which toward noon, and not till then, they eat, cooking it over a fire, which they kin- dle as best they can, where they are working. Their sec- ond meal in the day is at night, after their labor is over, having worked, at the very least, six hours without inter- mission of rest or refreshment since their noonday meal (properly so called, for 'tis meal, and nothing else). Those that I passed to-day, sitting on their door-steps, or on the ground round them eating, were the people employed at the mill ,and threshing-floor. As these are near to the settlement, they had time to get their food from the cook- shop. Chairs, tables, plates, knives, forks, they had none ; they sat, as I before said, on the earth or door-steps, and ate either out of their little cedar tubs or an iron pot, some few with broken iron spoons, more with pieces of wood, and all the children with their fingers. A more complete sample of savage feeding I never beheld. At one of the doors I saw three young girls standing, who might be between sixteen and seventeen years old ; they had evidently done eating, and were rudely playing and romping with each other, laughing and shouting like wild things. I went into the house, and such another specta- cle of filthy disorder I never beheld. I then addressed the girls most solemnly, showing them that they were wasting in idle riot the time in which they might be ren- dering their abode decent, and told them that it was a shame for any woman to live in so dirty a place and so beastly a condition. They said they had seen buckree (white) women's houses just as dirty, and they could not be expected to be cleaner than white women. I then told them that the only difference fcfetween themselves and

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buckree women was, that the latter were generally better informed, and, for that reason alone, it was more disgrace- ful to them to be disorderly and dirty. They seemed to listen to me attentively, and one of them exclaimed, with great satisfaction, that they saw I made no diiference be- tween them and white girls, and that they never had been so treated before. I do not know any thing which strikes me as a more melancholy illustration of the degradation of these people than the animal nature of their recreations in their short seasons of respite from labor. You see them, boys and girls, from the youngest age to seventeen and eighteen, rolling, tumbling, kicking, and wallowing in the dust, regardless alike of decency, and incapable of any more rational amusement ; or lolling, with half- closed eyes, like so many cats and dogs, against a wall, or upon a bank in the sun, dozing away their short leisure hour, until called to resume their labors in the field or the mill. After this description of the meals of our laborers, you will, perhaps, be curious to know how it fares with our house servants in this respect. Precisely in the same manner, as far as regards allowance, with the exception of what is left from our table, but, if possible, with even less comfort, in one respect, inasmuch as no time whatever is set apart for their meals, which they snatch at any hour, and in any way that they can — generally, however, stand- ing, or squatting on their hams round the kitchen fire. They have no sleeping-rooms in the house, but when their work is over, retire, like the rest, to their hovels, the dis- comfort of which has to them all the addition of compar- ison with our mode of living. Now, in all establishments whatever, of course some disparity exists between the comforts of the drawing-room and best bedrooms, and the servants' hall and attics, but here it is no longer a mat- ter of degree. The young woman who performs the of- fice of lady's-maid, an^the lads who wait upon us at ta-

A BESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 6V

ble, have neither table to feed at nor chair to sit clown upon themselves. The boys sleep at night on the hearth by the kitchen fire, and the women upon a rough board bedstead, strewed with a little tree moss. All this shows how very torpid the sense of justice is apt to lie in the breasts of those who have it not awakened by the per- emptory demands of others.

In the North we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discom- fort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live. I received a visit this morning from some of the Darien people. Among them was a most interesting young person, from whose acquaintance, if I have any op- portunity of cultivating it, I promise myself much pleas- ure. The ladies that I have seen since I crossed the Southern line have all seemed to me extremely sickly in their appearance — delicate in the refined term, but unfor- tunately sickly in the truer one. They are languid in their deportment and speech, and seem to give themselves up, without an effort to counteract it, to the enervating effect of their warm climate. It is undoubtedly a most relaxing and unhealthy one, and therefore requires the more imperatively to be met by energetic and invigor- ating habits both of body and mind. Of these, however, the Southern ladies appear to have, at present, no very

positive idea. Doctor told us to-day of a comical

application which his negro man had made to him for the coat he was then wearing. I forget whether the fellow wanted the loan, or the absolute gift of it, but his argu- ment was (it might have been an Irishman's) that he knew his master intended to give it to him by-and-by, and that he thought he might as well let him have it at once as keep him waiting any longer for it. This story the doc- tor related with great glee, and it furnishes a very good sample of what the Southerners are fond of exhibiting,

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the degree of license to which they capriciously permit their favorite slaves occasionally to carry their familiarity. They seem to consider it as an undeniable proof of the general kindness with which their dependents are treated. It is as good a proof of it as the maudlin tenderness of a fine lady to her lapdog is of her humane treatment of ani- mals iii general. Servants whose claims to respect are properly understood by themselves and their employers, are not made pets, playthings, jesters, or companions of, and it is only the degradation of the many that admits of this favoritism to the few — a system of favoritism which, as it is perfectly consistent with the profoundest contempt and injustice, degrades the object of it quite as much, though it oppresses him less, than the cruelty practiced upon his fellows. I had several of these favorite slaves presented to me, and one or two little negro children, who their owners assured me were quite pets. The only real service which this arbitrary good-will did to the ob- jects of it was quite involuntary and unconscious on the part of their kind masters — I mean the inevitable improve- ment in intelligence which resulted to them from being more constantly admitted to the intercourse of the favor- ed white race.

I must not forget to tell you of a magnificent bald- headed eagle which Mr. called me to look at early

this morning. I had never before seen alive one of these national types of yours, and stood entranced as the noble creature swept, like a black cloud, over the river, his bald white head bent forward and shining in the sun, and his fierce eyes and beak directed toward one of the beautiful wild ducks on the water, which he had evidently marked for his prey. The poor little duck, who was not ambitious of such a glorification, dived, and the eagle hovered above the spot. After a short interval, its victim rose to the surface several yards nearer shore. The great king of

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 69

birds stooped nearer, and again the watery shield was in- terposed. This went on until the poor water-fowl, driven by excess of fear into unwonted boldness, rose, after re- peatedly diving, within a short distance of where we stood. The eagle, who, I presume, had read how we were to have dominion over the fowls of the air (bald-headed eagles included), hovered sulkily a while over the river, and then, sailing slowly toward the woods on the opposite shore, alighted and furled his great wings on a huge cy- press limb, that stretched itself out against the blue sky, like the arm of a giant, for the giant bird to perch upon.

I am amusing myself by attempting to beautify, in some sort, this residence of ours. Immediately at the back of it runs a ditch, about three feet wide, which empties and fills twice a day with the tide. This lies like a moat on two sides of the house. The opposite bank is a steep dike, with a footpath along the top. One or two willows droop over this very interesting ditch, and I thought I would add to their company some magnolias and myrtles, so as to make a little evergreen plantation round the house. I went to the swamp reserves I have before mentioned to you, and chose some beautiful bushes — among others, a very fine young pine, at which our overseer and all the ne- groes expressed much contemptuous surprise; for, though the tree is beautiful, it is also common, and with them, as with wiser folk, 'tis "nothing pleases .but rare accidents." In spite of their disparaging remarks, however, I persisted in having my pine-tree planted, and I assure you it formed a very pleasing variety among the broad, smooth-leaved evergreens about it. While forming my plantation, I had a brand thrown into a bed of tall yellow sedges which screen the brimming waters of the noble river from our parlor window, and which I therefore wished removed. The small sample of a Southern conflagration which en- sued was very picturesque, the flames devouring the light

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growth, absolutely licking it off the ground, while the curling smoke drew off in misty wreaths across the river. The heat was intense, and I thought how exceedingly and unpleasantly warm one must feel in the midst of such a forest burning as Cooper describes. Having worked my appointed task in the garden, I rowed over to Darien and back, the rosy sunset changing mean time to starry even- ing, as beautiful as the first the sky ever was arrayed in. I saw an advertisement this morning in the paper which

occasioned me much thought, Mr. J C and a Mr.

N , two planters of this neighborhood, have contract- ed to dig a canal, called the Brunswick Canal, and, not having hands enough for the work, advertise at the same time for negroes on hire and for Irish laborers. Now the Irishmen are to have twenty dollars a month wages, and to be " found" (to use the technical phrase), which finding means abundant food, and the best accommodations which can be procured for them. The negroes are hired from their masters, who will be paid, of course, as high a price as they can obtain for them — probably a very high one, as the demand for them is urgent — they, in the mean time, receiving no wages, and nothing more than the miserable negro fare of rice and corn grits. Of course the Irishmen and these slaves are not allowed to work together, but are kept at separate stations on the canal. This is every way politic, for the low Irish seem to have the same sort of hatred of negroes which sects, differing but little in their tenets, have for each other. The fact is, that a condition in their own country nearly similar has made the poor Irish almost as degraded a class of beings as the negroes are here, and their insolence toward them, and hatred of them, are precisely in proportion to the resemblance be- tween them. This hiring out of negroes is a horrid ag- gravation of the miseries of their condition ; for if, on the plantations, and under the masters to whom they belong,

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 71

their labor is severe and their food inadequate, think what it must be when they are hired out for a stipulated sum to a temporary employer, who has not even the interest which it is pretended an owner may feel in the welfare of his slaves, but whose chief aim it must necessarily be to get as much out of them, and expend as little on them, as possible. Ponder this new form of iniquity, and believe me ever your most sincerely attached.

DEAREST E , — After finishing my last letter to you,

I went out into the clear starlight to breathe the delicious mildness of the air, and was surprised to hear rising from one of the houses of the settlement a hymn sung appar- ently by a number of voices. The next morning I inquired the meaning of this, and was informed that those negroes on the plantation who were members of the Church were holding a prayer-meeting. There is an immensely strong devotional feeling among these poor people. The worst of it is, that it is zeal without understanding, and profits them but little ; yet light is light, even that poor portion that may stream through a keyhole, and I welcome this most ignorant profession of religion in Mr. 's depend- ents as the herald of better and brighter things for them. Some of the planters are entirely inimical to any such pro- ceedings, and neither allow their negroes to attend wor- ship, or to congregate together for religious purposes, and truly I think they are wise in their own generation. On other plantations, again, the same rigid discipline is not observed ; and some planters and overseers go even farther than toleration, and encourage these devotional exercises and professions of religion, having actually dis- covered that a man may become more faithful and trust- worthy, even as a slave, who acknowledges the higher influences of Christianity, no matter in how small a de-

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gree. Slaveholding clergymen, and certain piously in- clined planters, undertake, accordingly, to enlighten these poor creatures upon these matters, with a safe under- standing, however, of what truth is to be given to them, and what is not; how much they may learn to become better slaves, and how much they may not learn, lest they cease to be slaves at all. The process is a very ticklish one, and but for the Northern public opinion, which is now pressing the slaveholders close, I dare say would not be attempted at all. As it is, they are putting their own throats and their own souls in jeopardy by this very en- deavor to serve God and Mammon. The light that they are letting in between their fingers will presently strike them blind, and the mighty flood of truth which they are straining through a sieve to the thirsty lips of their slaves sweep them away like straws from their cautious moor- ings, and overwhelm them in its great deeps, to the wa- ters of which man may in nowise say, thus far shall ye come and no farther. The community I now speak of, the white population of Darien, should be a religious one, to judge by the number of churches it maintains. How- ever, we know the old proverb, and, at that rate, it may not be so godly after all. Mr. • and his brother have been called upon at various times to subscribe to them all ; and I saw this morning a most fervent appeal, ex- tremely ill spelled, from a gentleman living in the neigh- borhood of the town, and whose slaves are notoriously

ill treated, reminding Mr. of the precious souls of his

human cattle, and requesting a farther donation for the Baptist Church, of which most of the people here are members. Now this man is known to be a hard master ; his negro houses are sheds not fit to stable beasts in ; his slaves are ragged, half naked, and miserable ; yet he is urgent for their religious comforts, and writes to Mr. about " their souls — their precious souls." He was

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over here a few days ago, and pressed me very much to attend his church. I told him I would not go to a church where the people who worked for us were parted off from us as if they had the pest, and we should catch it of them. I asked him, for I was curious to know, how they managed to administer the sacrament to a mixed congregation? He replied, Oh, very easily; that the white portion of the assembly received it first, and the blacks afterward. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you." Oh, what a shocking mockery ! However, they show their faith, at all events, in the declaration that God is no respecter of persons, since they do not pretend to exclude from His table those whom they most certainly would not admit to their own.

I have, as usual, allowed this letter to lie by, dear

E , not in the hope of the occurrence of any event —

for that is hopeless — but until my daily avocations al- lowed me leisure to resume it, and afforded me, at the same time, matter wherewith to do so. I really never was so busy in all my life as I am here. I sit at the re- ceipt of custom (involuntarily enough) from morning till night — no time, no place, affords me ,a respite from my innumerable petitioners; and whether I be asleep or awake, reading, eating, or walking — in the kitchen, my bedroom, or the parlor, they flock in with urgent entrea- ties and pitiful stories, and my conscience forbids my ever postponing their business for any other matter ; for, with shame and grief of heart I say it, by their unpaid labor I live — their nakedness clothes me, and their heavy toil maintains me in luxurious idleness. Surely the least I can do is to hear these, my most injured benefactors ; and, indeed, so intense in me is the sense of the injury they receive from me and mine, that I should scarce dare re- fuse them the very clothes from my back, or food from

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my plate, if they asked me for it. In taking my daily walk round the banks yesterday, I found that I was walk- ing over violet roots. The season is too little advanced for them to be in bloom, and I could not find out whether they were the fragrant violet or not.

Mr. has been much gratified to-day by the arrival

of Mr. K , who, with his father, for nineteen years was

the sole manager of these estates, and discharged his la- borious task with great ability and fidelity toward his em- ployers. How far he understood his duties to the slaves, or whether, indeed, an overseer can, in the nature of things, acknowledge any duty to them, is another question. He is a remai'kable man, and is much respected for his integ- rity and honorable dealing by every body here. His ac- tivity and energy are wonderful ; and the mere fact of his having charge of for nineteen years, and personally gov- erning, without any assistance whatever, seven hundred people scattered over three large tracts of land, at a con- siderable distance from each other, certainly bespeaks ef- ficiency and energy of a very uncommon order. The char- acter I had heard of him from Mr. had excited a great

deal of interest in me, and I was very glad of this oppor- tunity of seeing a man who for so many years had been sovereign over the poor people here. I met him walking

on the banks with Mr. as I returned from my own

ramble, during which nothing occurred or appeared to interest me, except, by-the-by, my unexpectedly coming quite close to one of those magnificent scarlet birds which abound here, and which dart across your path like a wing- ed flame. Nothing can surpass the beauty of their plum- age, and their voice is excellently melodious — they are lovely.

My companions, when I do not request the attendance of my friend Jack, are a couple of little terriers, who are endowed to perfection with the ugliness and the inteUi-

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 75

gence of their race ; they are of infinite service on the plantation, as, owing to the immense quantity of grain, and chaff, and such matters, rats and mice abound in the mills and store-houses. I crossed the threshing-floor to- day— a very large square, perfectly level, raised by arti- ficial means about half a foot from the ground, and cover- ed equally all over, so as to lie quite smooth, with some preparation of tar. It lies immediately between the house and the steam mill, and on it much of the negroes' work is done — the first threshing is given to the rice, and other labors are carried on. As I walked across it to-day, pass- ing through the busy groups, chiefly of women, that cov- ered it, I came opposite to one of the drivers, who held in his hand his whip, the odious insignia of his office. I took it from him ; it was a short stick of moderate size, with a thick square leather thong attached to it. As I held it in my hand, I did not utter a word ; but I conclude, as is oft- en the case, my face spoke what my tongue did not, for the driver said, " Oh, missis, me use it for measure ; me seldom strike nigger with it." For one moment I thought I must carry the hateful implement into, the house with me. An instant's reflection, however, served to show me how useless such a proceeding would be. The people are not mine, nor their drivers, nor their whips. I should but have impeded, for a few hours, the man's customary office, and a new scourge would have been easily provided, and I should have done nothing, perhaps worse than noth- ing.

After dinner I had a most interesting conversation with

Mr. K . Among other subjects, he gave me a lively

and curious description of the Yeomanry of Georgia, more properly termed pine-landers. Have you visions now of well-to-do farmers with comfortable homesteads, decent habits, industrious, intelligent, cheerful, and thrifty ? Such, however, is not the Yeomanry of Georgia. Labor being

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here the especial portion of slaves, it is thenceforth de- graded, and considered unworthy of all but slaves. No white man, therefore, of any class puts hand to work of any kind soever. This is an exceedingly dignified way of proving their gentility for the lazy planters who prefer an idle life of semistarvation and barbarism to the degrada- tion of doing any thing themselves ; but the effect on the poorer whites of the country is terrible. I speak now of the scattered white population, who, too poor to possess land or slaves, and having no means of living in the towns, squat (most appropriately is it so termed) either on other men's land or government districts — always here swamp or pine barren — and claim masterdom over the place they invade till ejected by the rightful proprietors. These wretched creatures will not, for they are whites (and la- bor belongs to blacks and slaves alone here), labor for their own subsistence. They are hardly protected from the weather by the rude shelters they frame for them- selves in the midst of these dreary woods. Their food is chiefly supplied by shooting the wild -fowl and venison, and stealing from the cultivated patches of the plantations nearest at hand. Their clothes hang about them in filthy tatters, and the combined squalor and fierceness of their appearance is really frightful.

This population is the direct growth of slavery. The planters are loud in their execrations of these miserable vagabonds; yet they do not see that so long as labor is considered the disgraceful portion of slaves, these free men will hold it nobler to starve or steal than till the earth, with none but the despised blacks for fellow-labor- ers. The blacks themselves — such is the infinite power of custom — acquiesce in this notion, and, as I have told you, consider it the lowest degradation in a white to use any exertion. I wonder, considering the burdens they have seen me lift, the digging, the planting, the rowing,

A EESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 77

and the walking I do, that they do not utterly contemn me, and, indeed, they seem lost in amazement at it.

Talking of these pine-landers — gipsies, without any of the romantic associations that belong to the latter people — led us to the origin of such a population, slavery ; and you may be sure I listened with infinite interest to the opinions of a man of uncommon shrewdness and sagacity, who was born in the very bosom of it, and has passed his whole life among slaves. If any one is competent to judge of its effects, such a man is the one ; and this was his ver- dict: "I hate slavery with all my heart; I consider it an absolute curse wherever it exists. It will keep those states where it does exist fifty years behind the others in im- provement and prosperity." Farther on in the conversa- tion he made this most remarkable observation : "As for its being an irremediable evil — a thing not to be helped or got rid of — that's all nonsense ; for, as soon as people become convinced that it is their interest to get rid of it, they will soon find the means to do so, depend upon it." And undoubtedly this is true. This is not an age, nor yours a country, where a large mass of people will long endure what they perceive to be injurious to their for- tunes and advancement. Blind as people often are to their highest and truest interests, your country folk have generally shown remarkable acuteness in finding out where their worldly progress suffered let or hinderance, and have- removed it with laudable alacrity. Now the fact is not at all as we at the North are sometimes told, that the Southern slaveholders deprecate the evils of slavery quite as much as we do ; that they see all its miseries ; that, moreover, they are most anxious to get rid of the whole thing, but want the means to do so, and submit most un- willingly to a necessity from which they can not extricate themselves. All this I thought might be true before I went to the South, and often has the charitable supposi-

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tion checked the condemnation which was indignantly rising to my lips against these murderers of their breth- ren's peace. A little reflection, however, even without personal observation, might have convinced me that this could not be the case. ; If the majority of Southerners were satisfied that slavery was contrary to their worldly fortunes, slavery would be at an end from that very mo- ment ; but the fact is — and I have it not only from obser- vation of my own, but from the distinct statement of some of the most intelligent Southern men that I have conversed with — the only obstacle to immediate abolition through- out the South is the immense value of the human property, and, to use the words of a very distinguished Carolinian, who thus ended a long discussion we had on the subject, " I'll tell you why abolition is impossible : because every healthy negro can fetch a thousand dollars in the Charles- ton market at this moment." > And this opinion, you see,

tallies perfectly with the testimony of Mr. K .

He went on to speak of several of the slaves on this es- tate as persons quite remarkable for their fidelity and in- telligence, instancing old Molly, N«4 the engineer, who has the superintendence of the steam-engine in the rice mill, and head man Frank, of whom, indeed, he wound up the eulogium by saying he had quite the principles of a white man, which I thought most equivocal praise, but he •did not intend it as such. As I was complaining to Mr.

of the terribly neglected condition of the dikes, which

are in some parts so overgrown with gigantic briers that 'tis really impossible to walk over them, and the trench on one hand, and river on the other, afford one extremely

disagreeable alternatives, Mr. K cautioned me to be

particularly on my guard not to step on the thorns of the orange-tree. These, indeed, are formidable spikes, and, he assured me, were peculiarly poisonous to the flesh. Some of the most painful and tedious wounds he had ever

A "RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 79

seen, he said, were incurred by the negroes running these large green thorns into their i'eet.

This led him to speak of the glory and beauty of the orange-trees on the island before a certain uncommonly severe winter, a few years ago, destroyed them all. For five miles round the banks grew a double row of noble orange-trees, as large as our orchard apple-trees, covered with golden fruit and silver flowers. It must have been

a most magnificent spectacle, and Captain F , toof told

me, in speaking of it, that he had brought Basil Hall here in the season of the trees blossoming, and he had said it was as well worth crossing the Atlantic to see that as to see the Niagara. Of all these noble trees nothing now remains but the roots, which bear witness to their size, and some young sprouts shooting up, aflbrding some hope that, in the course of years, the island may wear its bridal garland again. One huge stump close to the door is all that remains of an enormous tree that overtopped the house, from the upper windows of which oranges have been gathered from off its branches, and which, one year,

bore the incredible number of 8542 oranges. Mr. K

assured me of this as a positive fact, of which he had at the time made the entry in his journal, considering such a

crop from a single tree well worthy of record. Mr.

was called out this evening to listen to a complaint of overwork from a gang of pregnant women. I did not stay to listen to the details of their petition, for I am un- able to command myself on such occasions, and Mr.

seemed positively degraded in my eyes as he stood enforc- ing upon these women the necessity of their fulfilling their appointed tasks. How honorable he would have appeared to me begrimed with the sweat and soil of the coarsest manual labor, to what he then seemed, setting forth to these wretched, ignorant women, as a duty, their unpaid exacted labor ! I turned away in bitter disgust. I hope

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this sojourn among Mr. 's slaves may not lessen my

respect for him, but I fear it ; for the details of slavehold- ing are so unmanly, letting alone every other considera- tion, that I know not how any one with the spirit of a man can condescend to them.

I have been out again on the river, rowing. I find noth- ing new. Swamps crowned with perfect evergreens are the only land (that's Irish !) about here, and, of course, turn which way I will, the natural features of river and shore are the same. I do not weary of these most exqui- site watery woods, but you will of my mention of them, I fear. Adieu.

DEAEEST E , — Since I last wrote to you I have

been actually engaged in receiving and returning visits ; for even to this ultima thule of all civilization do these polite usages extend. I have been called upon by several families residing in and about Darien, and rowed over in due form to acknowledge the honor. How shall I de- scribe Darien to you ? The abomination of desolation is but a poor type of its forlorn appearance, as, half buried in sand, its straggling, tumble-down wooden houses peer over the muddy bank of the thick slimy river. The whole town lies in a bed of sand : side-walks, or mid-walks, there be none distinct from each other; at every step I took my feet were ankle deep in the soil, and I had cause to rejoice that I was booted for the occasion. Our worthy doctor, whose lady I was going to visit, did nothing but regret that I had not allowed him to provide me a carriage, though the distance between his house and the landing is not a quarter of a mile. The magnitude of the exertion seemed to fill him with amazement, and he over and over again repeated how impossible it would be to prevail on any of the ladies there to take such a walk. The houses

A BESIDENCE IN GEOEGIA. 81

seemed scattered about here and there, apparently without any design, and looked, for the most part, either unfinished or ruinous. One feature of the scene alone recalled the villages of New England — the magnificent oaks, which seemed to add to the meanness and insignificance of the human dwellings they overshadowed by their enormous size and grotesque forms. They reminded me of the elms of New Haven and Stockbridge. They are quite as large, and more picturesque, from their sombre foliage an4 the infinite variety of their forms — a beauty wanting in the New England elm, which invariably rises and spreads in a way which, though the most graceful in the world, at length palls on the capricious human eye, which seeks, above all other beauties, variety. Our doctor's wife is a New England woman ; how can she live here ? She had the fair eyes and hair, and fresh complexion of your part of the country, and its dearly beloved snuffle, which seemed actually dearly beloved when I heard it down here. She gave me some violets and narcissus, already blossoming profusely — in January — and expressed, like her husband, a thousand regrets at my having walked so far.

A transaction of the most amusing nature occurred to- day with regard to the resources of the Darien Bankvand the mode of carrying on business in that liberal and en- lightened institution, the funds of which I should think quite incalculable — impalpable, certainly, they appeared by our experience this morning.

The river, as we came home, was covered with Ocone boxes. It is well for them they are so shallow-bottomed, for we rasped sand all the way home through the cut and in the shallows of the river.

I have been over the rice mill, under the guidance of the overseer and head man Frank, and have been made acquainted with the whole process of threshing the rice, which is extremely curious ; and here I may again men-

D2

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tion another statement of Miss Martineau's, which I am told is, and I should suppose, from what I see here, must be a mistake. She states that the chaff of the husks of the rice is used as a manure for the fields, whereas the people have to-day assured me that it is of so hard, stony, and untractable a nature as to be literally good for noth- ing. Here I know it is thrown away by cart-loads into the river, where its only use appears to be to act like ground-bait, and attract a vast quantity of small fish to its vicinity. The number of hands employed in this thresh- ing mill is very considerable, and the whole establishment, comprising the fires, and boilers, and machinery of a pow- erful steam-engine, are all under negro superintendence and direction. After this survey I occupied myself with my infant plantation of evergreens round the dike, in the midst of which interesting pursuit I was interrupted by a

visit from Mr. B , a neighboring planter, who came to

transact some business with Mr. about rice which he

had sent to our mill to have threshed, and the price to be paid for such threshing. The negroes have presented a petition to-day that they may be allowed to have a ball in honor of our arrival, which demand has been acceded to, and furious preparations are being set on foot.

On visiting the Infirmary to-day, I was extremely pleased with the increased cleanliness and order observa- ble in all the rooms. Two little filthy children, however, seemed to be still under the ancien regime of non-ablu- tion ; but upon my saying to the old nurse Molly, in whose ward they were, " Why, Molly, I don't believe you have bathed those children to-day," she answered, with infinite dignity, " Missis no b'lieve me wash um pickaninny ! and yet she 'tress me wid all um niggar when 'em sick." The injured innocence and lofty conscious integrity of this speech silenced and abashed me ; and yet I can't help it, but I don't believe to this present hour that those chil-

A EESIDENCE IN GEOEGIA. 83

dren had had any expedience of water, at least not wash- ing water, since they first came into the world.

I rowed over to Darien again, to make some purchases, yesterday, and, inquiring the price of various articles, could not but wonder to find them at least three times as dear as in your Northern villages. The profits of these Southern shopkeepers (who for the most part are thor- oughbred Yankees, with the true Yankee propensity to trade, no matter on how dirty a counter, or in what- man- ner of wares) are enormous. The prices they ask for ev- ery thing, from colored calicoes for negro dresses to pi- ano-fortes (one of which, for curiosity sake, I inquired the value of), are fabulous, and such as none but the laziest and most reckless people in the world would consent to afford. On our return we found the water in the cut so extremely low that we were obliged to push the boat through it, and did not accomplish it without difficulty. The banks of this canal, when they are thus laid bare, pre- sent a singular appearance enough — two walls of solid mud, through which matted, twisted, twined, and tangled, like the natural veins of wood, runs an everlasting net of indestructible roots, the thousand toes of huge cypress feet. The trees have been cut down long ago from the soil, but these fangs remain in the earth without decaying for an incredible space of time. This long endurance of immersion is one of the valuable properties of these cy- press roots ; but, though excellent binding stuff for the sides of a canal, they must be pernicious growth in any land used for cultivation that requires deep tillage. On entering the Altamaha, we found the tide so low that we were much obstructed by the sand-banks, which, but for their constant shifting, would presently take entire pos- session of this noble stream, and render it utterly impass- able from shore to shore, as it already is in several parts of the channel at certain seasons of the tide. On landing,

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I was seized hold of by a hideous old negress, named Sin- da, who had come to pay me a visit, and of whom Mr.

told me a strange anecdote. She passed at one time

for a prophetess among her fellow-slaves on the planta- tion, and had acquired such an ascendency over them that, having given out, after the fashion of Mr. Miller, that the world was to come to an end at a certain time, and that not a very remote one, the belief in her assertion took such possession of the people on the estate that they re- fused to work, and the rice and cotton fields were threat- ened with an indefinite fallow in consequence of this strike

on the part of the cultivators. Mr. K , who was then

overseer of the property, perceived the impossibility of ar- guing, remonstrating, or even flogging this solemn panic out of the minds of the slaves. The great final emancipa- tion which they believed at hand had stripped even the lash of its prevailing authority, and the terrors of an over- seer for once were as nothing, in the terrible expectation of the advent of the universal Judge of men. They were utterly impracticable ; so, like a very shrewd man as he was, he acquiesced in their determination not to work ; but he expressed to them his belief that Sinda was mis- taken, and he warned her that if, at the appointed time, it proved so, she would be severely punished. I do not know whether he confided to the slaves what he thought likely to be the result if she was in the right ; but poor Sinda was in the wrong. Her day of judgment came in- deed, and a severe one it proved, for Mr. K had her

tremendously flogged, and her end of things ended much like Mr. Miller's ; but whereas he escaped unhanged in spite of his atrocious practices upon the fanaticism and credulity of his country people, the spirit of false proph- ecy was mercilessly scourged out of her, and the faith of her people of course reverted from her to the omnipotent lash again. Think what a dream that must have been

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 85

while it lasted for those infinitely oppressed people — free- dom without entering it by the grim gate of death, brought down to them at once by the second coming of Christ, whose first advent has left them yet so far from it ! Farewell ; it makes me giddy to think of having been a slave while that delusion lasted and after it vanished.

DEAREST E , — I received early this morning a visit

from a young negro called Morris, who came to request permission to be baptized. The master's leave is neces- sary for this ceremony of acceptance into the bosom of the Christian Church ; so all that can be said is, that it is to be hoped the rite itself may not be indispensable for

salvation, as, if Mr. had thought proper to refuse

Morris's petition, he must infallibly have been lost, in spite of his own best wishes to the contrary. I could not, in discoursing Avith him, perceive that he had any very dis- tinct ideas of the advantages he expected to derive from the ceremony ; but perhaps they appeared all the greater for being a little vague. I have seldom seen a more pleasing appearance than that of this young man ; his fig- ure was tall and straight, and his face, which was of a per- fect oval, rejoiced in the grace, very unusual among his people, of a fine high forehead, and the much more fre- quent one of a remarkably gentle and sweet expression. He was, however, jet black, and certainly did not owe these personal advantages to any mixture in his blood. There is a certain African tribe from which the West In- dian slave - market is chiefly recruited, who have these same characteristic features, and do not at all present the ignoble and ugly negro type, so much more commonly seen here. They are a tall, powerful people, with remark- ably fine figures, regular features, and a singularly warlike and fierce disposition, in which respect they also differ

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from the race of negroes existing on the American planta- tions. I do not think Morris, however, could have be- longed to this tribe, though perhaps Othello did, which would at once settle the difficulties of those commentators who, abiding by lago's very disagreeable suggestions as to his purely African appearance, are painfully compelled to forego the mitigation of supposing him a Moor and not a negro. Did I ever tell you of my dining in Boston,

at the H 's, on my first visit to that city, and sitting

by Mr. John Quincy Adams, who, talking to me about Desdemona, assured me, with a most serious expression of sincere disgust, that he considered all her misfortunes as a very just judgment upon her for having married a " nigger ?" , I think, if some ingenious American actor of the present day, bent upon realizing Shakspeare's finest conceptions, with all the advantages of modern enlighten- ment, could contrive to slip in that opprobrious title, with a true South Carolinian anti-Abolitionist expression, it might really be made quite a point for lago, as, for in- stance, in his first soliloquy — " I hate the nigger," given in proper Charleston or Savannah fashion,! am sure would

tell far better than " I hate the Moor." Only think, E ,

what a very new order of interest the whole tragedy might receive, acted throughout from this stand-point, as the Germans call it in this country, and called " Amalga- mation, or the Black Bridal."

On their return from their walk this afternoon the chil- dren brought home some pieces of sugar-cane, of which a small quantity grows on the island. When I am most inclined to deplore the condition of the poor slaves on these cotton and rice plantations, the far more intolerable existence and harder labor of those employed on the sug- ar estates occurs to me, sometimes producing the effect of a lower circle in Dante's " Hell of Horrors," opening beneath the one where he seems to have reached the

A RESIDENCE IN GEOEGIA. 87

climax of infernal punishment. You may have seen this vegetable, and must at any rate, I should think, be fa- miliar with it by description. It is a long green reed, like the stalk of the maize, or Indian corn, only it shoots up to a much more considerable height, and has a consis- tent pith, which, together with the rind itself, is extremely sweet. The principal peculiarity of this growth, as per- haps you know, is that they are laid horizontally in the earth when they are planted for propagation, and from each of the notches or joints of the recumbent cane a young shoot is produced at the germinating season.

A very curious and interesting circumstance to me just now in the neighborhood is the projection of a canal, to be called the Brunswick Canal, which, by cutting through the lower part of the main land, toward the southern ex- tremity of Great St. Simon's Island, is contemplated as a probable and powerful means of improving the prosper- ity of the town of Brunswick, by bringing it into imme- diate communication with the Atlantic. The scheme, which I think I have mentioned to you before, is, I be- lieve, chiefly patronized by your States' folk — Yankee enterprise and funds being very essential elements, it ap- pears to me, in all Southern projects and achievements. This speculation, however, from all I hear of the difficul- ties of the undertaking, from the nature of the soil, and the impossibility almost of obtaining efficient labor, is not very likely to arrive at any very satisfactory result ; and, indeed, I find it hard to conceive how this part of Georgia can possibly produce a town which can be worth the dig- ging of a canal, even to Yankee speculators. There is one feature of the undertaking, however, which more than all the others excites my admiration, namely, that Irish laborers have been advertised for to work upon the canal, and the terms offered them are twenty dollars a month per man and their board. Now these men will have for

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fellow-laborers negroes who not only will receive nothing at all for their work, but who will be hired by the con- tractors and directors of the works from their masters, to whom they will hand over the price of their slaves' labor ; while it will be the interest of the person hiring them not only to get as much work as possible out of them, but also to provide them as economically with food, combin- ing the two praiseworthy endeavors exactly in such judi- cious proportions as not to let them neutralize each other. You will observe that this case of a master hiring out his slaves to another employer, from whom he receives their rightful wages, is a form of slavery which, though ex- tremely common, is very seldom adverted to in those ar- guments for the system which are chiefly founded npon the master's presumed regard for his human property. People who have ever let a favorite house to the tempo- rary occupation of strangers can form a tolerable idea of the difference between one's own regard and care of one's goods and chattels and that of the most conscientious tenant ; and whereas I have not yet observed that own- ership is a very effectual protection to the slaves against ill usage and neglect, I am quite prepared to admit that it is a vastly better one than the temporary interest which a lessee can feel in the live-stock he hires, out of whom it is his manifest interest to get as much, and into whom to put as little, as possible. Yet thousands of slaves throughout the Southern states are thus handed over by the masters who own them to masters who do not ; and it does not require much demonstration to prove that their estate is not always the more gracious. Now you must not suppose that these same Irish free laborers and negro slaves will be permitted to work together at this Brunswick Canal. They say that this would be ut- terly impossible ; for why ? there would be tumults, and risings, and broken heads, and bloody bones, and all the

A RESIDENCE IN GEOEGIA. 89

natural results of Irish intercommunion with their fellow- creatures, no doubt — perhaps even a little more riot and violence than merely comports with their usual habits of Milesian good fellowship ; for, say the masters, the Irish hate the negroes more even than the Americans do, and there would be no bound to their murderous animosity if they were brought in contact with them on the same por- tion of the works of the Brunswick Canal. Doubtless there is some truth in this ; the Irish laborers who might come hither would be apt enough, according to a univer- sal moral law, to visit upon others the injuries they had received from others. They have been oppressed enough themselves to be oppressive whenever they have a chance; and the despised and degraded condition of the blacks, presenting to them a very ugly resemblance of their own home, circumstances naturally excite in them the exer- cise of the disgust and contempt of which they them- selves are very habitually the objects ; and that such cir- cular distribution of wrongs may not only be pleasant, but have something like the air of retributive right to very ignorant folks, is not much to be wondered at. Certain is the fact, however, that the worst of all tyrants is the one who has been a slave; and, for that matter (and I wonder if the Southern slaveholders hear it with the same ear that I do, and ponder it with the same mind?), the command of one slave to another is alto- gether the most uncompromising utterance of insolent truculent despotism that it ever fell to my lot to witness or listen to. " You nigger — I say, you black nigger — you no hear me call you — what for you no run quick?"

All this, dear E , is certainly reasonably in favor of

division of labor on the Brunswick Canal ; but the Irish are not only quarrelers, and rioters, and fighters, and drinkers, and despisers of niggers — they are a passionate, impulsive, warm-hearted, generous people, much given to

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powerful indignations, which break out suddenly when not compelled to smoulder sullenly — pestilent sympa- thizers too, and with a sufficient dose of American atmos- pheric air in their lungs, properly mixed with a right pro- portion of ardent spirits, there is no saying but what they might actually take to sympathy with the slaves, and I leave you to judge of the possible consequences. You perceive, I am sure, that they can by no means be allowed to work together on the Brunswick Canal.

I have been taking my daily walk round the island, and visited the sugar mill and the threshing mill again.

Mr. has received another letter from Parson S

upon the subject of more church building in Darien. It seems that there has been a very general panic in this part of the slave states lately, occasioned by some injudicious missionary preaching, which was pronounced to be of a decidedly abolitionist tendency. The offensive preachers, after sowing God only knows what seed in this tremen- dous soil, where one grain of knowledge may spring up a gigantic upas-tree to the prosperity of its most unfortu- nate possessors, were summarily and ignominiously ex- pulsed ; and now some shortsighted, uncomfortable Chris- tians in these parts, among others this said Parson S ,

are possessed with the notion that something had better be done to supply the want created by the cessation of these dangerous exhortations, to which the negroes have

listened, it seems, with complacency. Parson S seems

to think that, having driven out two preachers, it might be well to build one church, where, at any rate, the negroes might be exhorted in a safe and salutary manner, "qui ne leur donnerait point d'idees," as the French would say.

Upon my word, E , I used to pity the slaves, and I do

pity them with all my soul ; but, oh dear ! oh dear ! their case is a bed of roses to that of their owners, and I would go to the slave-block in Charleston to-morrow cheerfully

A KESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 91

to be purchased if ray only option was to go thither as a purchaser. I was looking over this morning, with a most indescribable mixture of feelings, a pamphlet published in the South upon the subject of the religious instruction of the slaves, and the difficulty of the task undertaken by these reconcilers of God and Mammon really seems to me nothing short of piteous. " We must give our involun- tary servants" (they seldom call them slaves, for it is an ugly word in an American mouth, you know) " Christian enlightenment," say they ; and where shall they begin ? " Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them ?" No ; but " Servants, obey your mas- ters ;" and there, I think, they naturally come to a full stop. This pamphlet forcibly suggested to me the neces- sity for a slave Church Catechism, and also, indeed, if it were possible, a slave Bible. If these heaven-blinded ne- gro enlighteners persist in their pernicious plan of making Christians of their cattle, something of the sort must be done, or they will infallibly cut their own throats with this, two-edged sword of truth, to which they should in no wise have laid their hand, and would not, doubtless, but that it is now thrust at them so threateningly that they have no choice. Again and again, how much I do pity them-!

I have been walking to another cluster of negro huts, known as Number Two, and here we took a boat and rowed across the broad brimming Altamaha to a place called Woodville, on a part of the estate named Hammer- smith, though why that very thriving suburb of the great city of London should have been selected as the name of the lonely plank house in the midst of the pine woods which here enjoys that title I can not conceive, unless it was suggested by the contrast. This settlement is on the main land, and consists apparently merely of this house (to which the overseer retires when the poisonous mala- ria of the rice plantations compels him to withdraw from

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it), and a few deplorably miserable hovels, which appeared to me to be chiefly occupied by the most decrepid and in- firm samples of humanity it was ever my melancholy lot to behold.

The air of this pine barren is salubrious compared with that of the rice islands, and here some of the oldest slaves who will not die yet, and can not work any more, are sent, to go, as it were, out of the way. Remote recollections of former dealings with civilized human beings in the shape of masters and overseers seemed to me to be the only idea not purely idiotic in the minds of the poor old tottering creatures that gathered to stare with dim and blear eyes at me and my children.

There were two very aged women, who had seen differ- ent, and, to their faded recollections, better times, who

spoke to me of Mr. 's grandfather, and of the early

days of the plantation, when they were young and strong, and worked as their children and grandchildren were now working, neither for love nor yet for money. One of these old crones, a hideous, withered, wrinkled piece of woman- hood, said that she had worked as long as her strength had lasted, and that then she had still been worth her keep, for, said she, " Missus, tho' we no able to work, we make little niggers for massa." Her joy at seeing her present owner was unbounded, and she kept clapping her horny hands together and exclaiming, " While there is life there is hope ; we seen massa before we die." These de- monstrations of regard were followed up by piteous com- plaints of hunger and rheumatism, and their usual requests for pittances of food and clothing, to which we responded by promises of additions in both kinds ; and I was extri- cating myself as well as I could from my petitioners, with the assurance that I would come by-and-by and visit them again, when I felt my dress suddenly feebly jerked, and a shrill cracked voice on the other side of me exclaimed,

A EESIDENCE IN GEOBGIA. 93

" Missus, no go yet — no go away yet ; you no see me, missus, when you come by-and-by ; but," added the voice, in a sort of wail, which seemed to me as if the thought was full of misery, "you see many, many of my offspring." These melancholy words, particularly the rather unusual one at the end of the address, struck me very much. They were uttered by a creature which was a woman, but looked like a crooked, ill-built figure set up in a field to scare crows, with a face infinitely more like a mere animal's than any human countenance I ever beheld, and with ^hat peculiar, wild, restless look of indefinite and, at the same time, intense sadness that is so remarkable in the counte- nance of some monkeys. It was almost with an effort that I commanded myself so as not to withdraw my dress from the yellow, crumpled, filthy claws that griped it, and it was not at last without the authoritative voice of the overseer that the poor creature released her hold of me.

We returned home certainly in the very strangest vehi- cle that ever civilized gentlewoman traveled in — a huge sort of cart, made only of some loose boards, on which I lay, supporting myself against one of the four posts which indicated the sides of my carriage ; six horned creatures, cows or bulls, drew this singular equipage, and a yelping, howling, screaming, leaping company of half-naked negroes ran all round them, goading them with sharp sticks, fran- tically seizing hold of their tails, and inciting them by every conceivable and inconceivable encouragement to quick motion : thus, like one of the ancient Merovingian monarchs,! was dragged through the deep sand from the settlement back to the river, where we re-embarked for the island.

As we crossed the broad flood, whose turbid waters al- ways look swollen as if by a series of freshets, a flight of birds sprang from the low swamp we were approaching, and literally, as it rose in the air, cast a shadow like that

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of a cloud, which might be said, with but little exaggera- tion, to darken the sun for a few seconds. How well I remember my poor Aunt Whitelock describing such phe- nomena as of frequent occurrence in America, and the scornful incredulity with which we heard, without accept- ing, these legends of her Western experience ! How lit- tle I then thought that I should have to cry peccavi to her memory from the bottom of such ruts, and under the shadow of such flights of winged creatures as she used to describe from the muddy ways of Pennsylvania and the muddy waters of Georgia.

The vegetation is already in an active state of demon- stration, sprouting into lovely pale green and vivid red- brown buds and leaflets, though 'tis yet early in January.

After our return home we had a visit from Mr. C ,

one of our neighbors, an intelligent and humane man, to whose account of the qualities and characteristics of the slaves, as he had observed and experienced them, I listened with great interest. The Brunswick Canal was again the subject of conversation, and again the impossibility of al- lowing the negroes and Irish to work in proximity was stated, and admitted as an indisputable fact. It strikes me with amazement to hear the hopeless doom of incapac- ity for progress pronounced upon these wretched slaves, when in my own country the very same order of language is perpetually applied to these very Irish, here spoken of as a sort of race of demigods by negro comparison. And it is most true that in Ireland nothing can be more sav- age, brutish, filthy, idle, and incorrigibly "and hopelessly helpless and incapable than the Irish appear; and yet, transplanted to your Northern states, freed from the evil influences which surround them at home, they and their children become industrious, thrifty, willing to learn, able to improve, and foi'ming, in the course of two generations, a most valuable accession to your laboring population.

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. . 95

How is it that it never occurs to these emphatical de- nouncers of the whole negro race that the Irish at home are esteemed much as they esteem their slaves, and that the sentence pronounced against their whole country by one of the greatest men of our age, an Irishman, was pre- cisely that nothing could save, redeem, or regenerate Ire- land unless, as a preparatory measure, the island were sub- merged and all its inhabitants drowned off?

I have had several women at the house to-day asking for advice and help for their sick children : they all came from No. 2, as they call it, that is, the settlement or clus- ter of negro huts nearest to the main one, where we may be said to reside. In the afternoon I went thither, and found a great many of the little children ailing : there had been an unusual mortality among them at this particular settlement this winter. In one miserable hut I heard that the baby was just dead ; it was one of thirteen, many of whom had been, like itself, mercifully removed from the life of degradation and misery to which their birth ap- pointed them ; and whether it was the frequent repetition of similar losses, or an instinctive consciousness that death was indeed better than life for such children as theirs, I know not, but the father and mother, and old Rose, the nurse, who was their little baby's grandmother, all seemed apathetic, and apparently indifferent to the event. The mother merely repeated over and over again, "I've lost a many ; they all goes so ;" and the father, without word or comment, went out to his enforced labor.

As I left the cabin, rejoicing for them at the deliverance out of slavery of their poor child,! found myself suddenly surrounded by a swarm of young ragamuffins in every stage of partial nudity, clamoring from out of their filthy remnants of rags for donations of scarlet ribbon for the ball, which was to take place that evening. The melan- choly scene I had just witnessed, and the still sadder re-

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flection it had given rise to, had quite driven all thoughts of the approaching festivity from my mind ; but the sud- den demand for these graceful luxuries by Mr. 's half- naked dependents reminded me of the grotesque mask which life wears on one of its mysterious faces ; and with as much sympathy for rejoicing as my late sympathy for sorrow had left me capable of, I procured the desired or- naments. I have considerable fellow-feeling for the pas- sion for all shades of red which prevails among these dusky fellow-creatures of mine, a savage propensity for that same color in all its modifications being a tendency of my own.

At our own settlement (No. 1) I found every thing in a high fever of preparation for the ball. A huge boat had just arrived from the cotton plantation at St. Simon's, la- den with the youth and beauty of that portion of the es- tate who had been invited to join the party ; and the greet- ings among the arrivers and welcomers, and the heaven- defying combinations of color in the gala attire of both, surpass all my powers of description. The ball, to which of course we went, took place in one of the rooms of the Infirmary. As the room had, fortunately, but few occu- pants, they were removed to another apartment, and, with- out any very tender consideration for their not very re- mote, though invisible sufferings, the dancing commenced,

and was continued. Oh, my dear E , I have seen Jim

Crow — the veritable James : all the contortions, and springs, and flings, and kicks, and capers you have been beguiled into accepting as indicative of him are spurious, faint, feeble, impotent — in a word, pale Northern repro- ductions of that ineffable black conception. It is impossi- ble for words to describe the things these people did with their bodies, and, above all, with their faces, the whites of their eyes, and the whites of their teeth, and certain out- lines which either naturally and by the grace of heaven,

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 97

or by the practice of some peculiar artistic dexterity, they bring into prominent and most ludicrous display. The languishing elegance of some — the painstaking laborious- ness of others — above all, the feats of a certain enthusias- tic banjo-player, who seemed to me to thump his instru- ment with every part of his body at once, at last so ut- terly overcame any attempt at decorous gravity on my part that I was obliged to secede ; and, considering what the atmosphere was that we inhaled during the exhibi- tion, it is only wonderful to me that we were not made ill by the double effort not to laugh, and, if possible, not to breathe.

Monday, 20th.

MY DEAREST E , — A rather longer interval than

usual has elapsed since I last wrote to you, but I must beg you to excuse it. I have had more than a usual amount of small daily occupations to fill my time ; and, as a mere enumeration of these would not be very interesting to you, I will tell you a story which has just formed an ad- mirable illustration for my observation of all the miseries of which this accursed system of slavery is the cause, even under the best and most humane administration of its laws and usages. Pray note it, my dear friend, for you will find, in the absence of all voluntary or even conscious cruelty on the part of the master, the best possible com- ment on a state of things which, without the slightest de- sire to injure and oppress, produces such intolerable re- sults of injury and oppression.

(_We have, as a sort of under nursemaid and assistant of

my dear M: , whose white complexion, as I wrote you,

occasioned such indignation to my Southern fellow-trav- elers, and such extreme perplexity to the poor slaves on our arrival here, a much more orthodox servant for these

E

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-

parts, a young woman named Psyche, but commonly call- ed Sack,jnot a very graceful abbreviation of the divine heathen appellation : she can not be much over twenty, has a very pretty figure, a graceful, gentle deportment, and a face which, but for its color (she is a dingy mulat- to), would be pretty, and is extremely pleasing, from the perfect sweetness of its expression ; she is always serious, not to say sad and silent, and has always an air of melan- choly and timidity, that has frequently struck me very much, and would have made me think some special anxi- ety or sorrow must occasion it, but that God knows the whole condition of these wretched people naturally pro- duces such a deportment, and there is no necessity to seek for special or peculiar causes to account for it. Just in, proportion as I have found the slaves on this plantation intelligent and advanced beyond the general brutish level of the majoi'ity, I have observed this pathetic expression of countenance in them, a mixture of sadness and fear, the involuntary exhibition of the two feelings, which I sup- pose must be the predominant experience of their whole lives, regret and apprehension, not the less heavy, either of them, for being, in some degree, vague and indefinite — a sense of incalculable past loss and injury, and a dread of incalculable future loss and injury.

I have never questioned Psyche as to her sadness, be- cause, in the first place, as I tell you, it appears to me most natural, and is observable in all the slaves whose superior natural or acquired intelligence allows of their filling situations of trust or service about the house and family ; and, though I can not and will not refuse to hear any and every tale of suffering which these unfortunates bring to me, I am anxious to spare both myself and them the pain of vain appeals to me for redress and help, which, alas ! it is too often utterly out of my power to give them. It is useless, and, indeed, worse than useless, that they

A RESIDENCE IN GEOKGIA. 09

should see my impotent indignation and unavailing pity, and hear expressions of compassion for them, and horror at their condition, which might only prove incentives to a hopeless resistance on their part to a system, under the hideous weight of whose oppression any individual or par- tial revolt must be annihilated and ground into the dust. Therefore, as I tell you, I asked Psyche no questions ; but,

to my great astonishment, the other day M asked me

if I knew to whom Psyche belonged, as the poor woman had inquired of her with much hesitation and anguish if she could tell her who owned her and her children. She has two nice little children under six years old, whom she keeps as clean and tidy, and who are sad and as silent as herself. My astonishment at this question was, as you will readily believe, not small, and I forthwith sought out Psyche for an explanation. She was thrown into extreme perturbation at finding that her question had teen refer- red to me, and it was some time before I could sufficient- ly reassure her to be able to comprehend, in the midst of her reiterated entreaties for pardon, and hopea that she had not offended me, that she did not know herself who owned her. [ She was, at one time, the property of Mr. K , the former overseer, of whom I have already spo- ken to you, and who has just been paying Mr. a vis- it. He, like several of his predecessors in the manage- ment, has contrived to make a fortune upon it (though it yearly decreases in value to the owners, but this is the in- evitable course of things in the Southern states), and has purchased a plantation of his own in Alabama, I believe, or one of the Southwestern states. Whether she still be- longed to Mr. K or not she did not know, and en- treated me, if she did, to endeavor to persuade Mr.

to buy her. Now you must know that this poor woman

is the wife of one of Mr. B 's slaves, a fine, intelligent,

active, excellent young man, whose whole family are

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among some of the very best specimens of character and capacity on the estate. I was so astonished at the (to me) extraordinary state of things revealed by poor Sack's petition, that I could only tell her that I had supposed all

the negroes on the plantation were Mr. 's property,

but that I would certainly inquire, and find out for her, if I could, to whom she belonged, and if I could, endeavor

to get Mr. to purchase her, if s'he really was not his. ^

Now, E , just conceive for one moment the state of

mind of this woman, believing herself to belong to a man who in a few days was going down to one of those ab- horred and dreaded Southwestern states, and who would then compel her, with her poor little children, to leave her husband and the only home she had ever known, and all the ties of affection, relationship, and association of her former life, to follow him thither, in ail human probability never again to behold any living creature that she had seen before; and this was so completely a matter of course that it was not even thought necessary to apprise her positively of the fact, and the only thing that inter- posed between her and this most miserable fate was the

faint hope that Mr. might have purchased her and

her children. But if he had, if this great deliverance had been vouchsafed to her, the knowledge of it was not thought necessary; and with this deadly dread at her heart she was living day after day, waiting upon me and seeing me, with my husband beside me, and my children in my arms in blessed security, safe from all separation but the one reserved in God's great providence for all His creatures. Do you think I wondered any more at the wo-begone expression of her countenance, or do you think it was easy for me to restrain within prudent and proper limits the expression of my feelings at such a state of things ? And she had gone on from day to day enduring this agony, till I suppose its own intolerable pressure and

A RESIDENCE IN GEOEGIA. 101

M 's sweet countenance and gentle sympathizing voice

and manner had constrained her to lay down this great burden of sorrow at our feet. I did not see Mr. un- til the evening ; but, in the mean time, meeting Mr. O ,

the overseer, with whom, as I believe I have already told you, we are living here, I asked him about Psyche, and who was her proprietor, when, to my infinite surprise, he told me that he had bought her and her children from Mr.

K , who had oifered them to him, saying that they

would be rather troublesome to him than otherwise down

where he was going ; " and so," said Mr. O , " as I

had no objection to investing a little money that way, I bought them." With a heart much lightened, I flew to tell poor Psyche the news, so that, at any rate, she might be relieved from the dread of any immediate separation from her husband. You can imagine better than I can tell you what her sensations were ; but she still renewed

her prayer that I would, if possible, induce Mr. to

purchase her, and I promised to do so.

Early the next morning, while I was still dressing, I was suddenly startled by hearing voices in loud tones in

Mr. 's dressing-room, which adjoins my bedroom, and

the noise increasing until there was an absolute cry of de- spair uttered by some man. I could restrain myself no longer, but opened the door of communication and saw Joe, the young man, poor Psyche's husband, raving almost in a state of frenzy, and in a voice broken with sobs and almost inarticulate with passion, reiterating his determin- ation never to leave this plantation, never to go to Ala- bama, never to leave his old father and mother, his poor wife and children, and dashing his hat, which he was wringing like a cloth in his hands, upon the ground, he declared he would kill himself if he was compelled to fol- low Mr. K . I glanced from the poor wretch to Mr.

, who was standing, leaning against a table with his

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arms folded, occasionally uttering a few words of counsel to his slave to be quiet and not fret, and not make a fuss about what there was no help for. I retreated immedi- ately from the horrid scene, breathless with surprise and dismay, and stood for some time in my own room, with my heart and temples throbbing to such a degree that I could hardly support myself. As soon as I recovered

myself I again sought Mr. O , and inquired of him if

he knew the cause of poor Joe's distress. He then told

me that Mr. , who is highly pleased with Mr. K 's

past administration of his property, wished, on his depart- ure for his newly-acquired slave plantation, to give him some token of his satisfaction, and had made Mm a pres- ent of the man Joe, who had just received the intelligence that he was to go down to Alabama with his new owner the next day, leaving father, mother, wife, and children behind. You will not wonder that the man required a little judicious soothing under such circumstances, and you will also, I hope, admire the humanity of the sale of his wife and children by the owner who was going to take him to Alabama, because they would be encum- brances rather than otherwise down there. If Mr. K

did not do this after he knew that the man was his, then

Mr. gave him to be carried down to the South after

his wife and children were sold to remain in Georgia. I do not know which was the real transaction, for I have not had the heart to ask; but you will easily imagine which of the two cases I prefer believing.

When I saw Mr. after this most wretched story

became known to me in all its details, I appealed to him, for his own soul's sake, not to commit so great a cruelty. Poor Joe's agony while remonstrating with his master was hardly greater than mine while arguing with him upon this bitter piece of iuhumanity-Vhow I cried, and how I adjured, and how all my sense of justice, and of

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 103

mercy, and of pity for the poor wretch, and of wretched- ness at finding myself implicated in such a state of things, broke in torrents of words from my lips and tears from my eyes ! God knows such a sorrow at seeing any one I belonged to commit such an act was indeed a new and terrible experience to me, and it seemed to me that I was

imploring Mr. to save himself, more than to spare

these wretches. He gav-e me no answer whatever, and I have since thought that the intemperate vehemence of my entreaties and expostulations perhaps deserved that he should leave me as he did without one single word of re- ply ; and miserable enough I remained. ^Toward evening, as I was sitting alone, my children having gone to bed, Mr. O — — came into the room. I had but one subject in my mind ;j I had not been able to eat for it. I could hard- ly sit still for the nervous distress which every thought of these poor people filled me with. As he sat down look- ing over some accounts, I said to him, " Have you seen Joe this afternoon, Mr. O ?" (I give you our con- versation as it took place.) " Yes, ma'am ; he is a great deal happier than he was this morning." " Why, how is that ?" asked I, eagerly. " Oh, he is not going to Ala- bama. Mr. K heard that he had kicked up a fuss

about it (being in despair at being torn from one's wife and children is called kicking up a fuss / this is a sample of overseer appreciation of human feelings), and said that if the fellow wasn't willing to go with him, he did not wish to be bothered with any niggers down there who were to be troublesome, so he might stay behind." "And does Psyche know this?" "Yes, ma'am, I suppose so." I drew a long breath ; and whereas my needle had stum- bled through the stuff I was sewing for an hour before, as if my fingers could not guide it, the regularity and rapid- ity of its evolutions were now quite edifying. The man was for the present safe, and I remained silently ponder-

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ing his deliverance and the whole proceeding, and the conduct of every one engaged in it, and, above all, Mr.

's share in the transaction, and I think, for the first

time, almost a sense of horrible personal responsibility and implication took hold of my mind, and I felt the weight of an unimagined guilt upon my conscience ; and yet, God knows, this feeling of self-condemnation is very gratuitous on my part, since when I married Mr, I knew noth- ing of these dreadful possessions of his, and even if I had I should have been much puzzled to have formed any idea of the state of things in which I now find myself plunged, together with those whose well-doing is as vital to me al- most as my own. "

With these agreeable reflections I went to bed. Mr.

said not a word to me upon the subject of these

poor people all the next day, and in the mean time I be- came very impatient of this reserve on his part, because I was dying to prefer my request that he would purchase Psyche and her children, and so prevent any future sep- aration between her and her husband, as I supposed he would not again attempt to make a present of Joe, at least to any one who did not wish to be bothered with his wife and children. In the evening I was again with Mr.

O alone in the strange, bare, wooden-walled sort of

shanty which is our sitting-room, and revolving in my mind the means of rescuing Psyche from her miserable suspense, a long chain of all my possessions, in the shape of bracelets, necklaces, brooches, earrings, etc., wound in glittering procession through my brain, with many hypo- thetical calculations of the value of each separate orna- ment, and the very doubtful probability of the amount of the whole being equal to the price of this poor creature and her children ; and then the great power and privilege I had foregone of earning money by my own labor oc- curred to me, and I think, for the first time in my life, my

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 105

past profession assumed an aspect that arrested my thoughts most seriously. For the last four years of my life that preceded my marriage I literally coined money, and never until this moment, I think, did I reflect on the great means of good, to myself and others, that I so glad- ly agreed to give up forever for a maintenance by the un- paid labor of slaves — people toiling not only unpaid, but under the bitter conditions the bare contemplation of which was then wringing my heart. You will not won- der that when, in the midst of such cogitations, I sudden- ly accosted Mr. O , it was to this effect : " Mr. O ,

I have a particular favor to beg of you. Promise me that you will never sell Psyche and her children without first letting me know of your intention to do so, and giving me the option of buying them." Mr. O is a remark- ably deliberate man, and squints, so that, when he has taken a little time in directing his eyes to you, you are still unpleasantly unaware of any result in which you are concerned ; he laid down a book he was reading, and di- rected his head and one of his eyes toward me and an- swered, " Dear me, ma'am, I am very sorry — I have sold them." My work fell down on the ground, and my mouth opened wide, but I could utter no sound, I was so dis- mayed and surprised ; and he deliberately proceeded : " I didn't know, ma'am, you see, at all, that you entertained any idea of mating an investment of that nature ; for I'm sure, if I had, I would willingly have sold the woman to you; but I sold her and her children this morning to

Mr. ." My dear E , though had resented my

unmeasured upbraidings, you see they had not been with- out some good effect, and though he had, perhaps justly, punished iny violent outbreak of indignation about the miserable scene I witnessed by not telling me of his hu- mane purpose, he had bought these poor creatures, and so, I trust, secured them from any such misery in future. I

E2

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jumped up and left Mr. O still speaking, and ran to

find Mr. , to thank him for what he had done, and

with that will now bid you good-by. Think, E , how

it fares with slaves on plantations where there is no crazy Englishwoman to weep, and entreat, and implore, and up- braid for them, and no master willing to listen to such ap- peals.

DEAR E , — There is one privilege which I enjoy

here which I think few Cockneynesses have ever had ex- perience of, that of heai-ing my own extemporaneous praises chanted bard-fashion by our negroes in rhymes as rude and to measures as simple as ever any illustrious fe- male of the days of King Brian Boroihme listened to. Rowing yesterday evening through a beautiful sunset into a more beautiful moonrise, my two sable boatmen en- tertained themselves and me with alternate strophe and antistrophe of poetical description of my personal at- tractions, in which my " wire waist" recurred repeatedly, to my intense amusement. This is a charm for the pos- session of which M (my white nursemaid) is also in- variably celebrated; and I suppose that the fine round natural proportions of the uncompressed waists of the sable beauties of these regions appear less symmetrical to eyes accustomed to them than our stay-cased figures, since " nothing pleaseth but rare accidents." Occasion- ally I am celebrated in these rowing chants as " Massa's

darling," and S comes in for endless glorification on

account of the brilliant beauty of her complexion ; the other day, however, our poets made a diversion from the personal to the moral qualities of their small mistress, and after the usual tribute to her roses and lilies came the fol- lowing rather significant couplet :

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 107

"Little Missis Sally, That's a ruling lady."

At which all the white teeth simultaneously lightened from the black visages, while the subject of this equivocal commendation sat with infantine solemnity (the profound- est, I think, that the human countenance is capable of), surveying her sable dependents with imperturbable gray- ity.

Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women. My education in France — where, in some important respects, I think girls are better trained than with us — had sent me home to England, at sixteen, an adept in the female mystery of needle-work. Not only owing to the Saturday's disci- pline of clothes-mending by all the classes — while l'A"bb6 Millet's history (of blessed boring memory) was being read aloud, to prevent "vain babblings," and insure wholesome mental occupation the while — was I an expert patcher and mender, darner and piecer (darning and mark- ing were my specialties), but the white cotton embroidery of which every French woman has always a piece under her hand pour les m omens perclus, which are thus any thing but perdus, was as familar to us as to the Irish cottagers of the present day, and cutting out and making my dresses was among the more advanced branches of the female ac- complishment to which I attained.* The luxury of a lady's

* Some of onr great English ladies are, I know, exquisite needle- women ; but I do not think, in spite of these exceptional examples, that young English ladies of the higher classes are much skilled in this respect at the present day ; and as for the democratic daughters of America, who for many reasons might he supposed likely to be well up in such housewifely lore, they are, for the most part, so ignorant of it that I have heard the most eloquent preacher of the city of New

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maid of my own, indulged in ever since the days of my "coming out," has naturally enough caused my right hand to forget its cunning, and regret and shame at having lost any useful lore in my life made me accede, for my own sake, to the request of one of our multitudinous Dianas and innumerable Chloes to cut out dresses for each of them, especially as they (wonderful to relate) declared themselves able to stitch them if I would do the cutting. Since I have been on the plantation I have already spent considerable time in what the French call "confection- ing" baby bundles, i. e., the rough and very simple tiny habiliments of coarse cotton and scarlet flannel which form a baby's layette here, and of which I have run up some scores; but my present task was far more difficult. Chloe was an ordinary mortal negress enough, but Diana might have been the Huntress of the Woods herself, done intg the African type. Tall, large, straight, well made, profoundly serious, she stood like a bronze statue, while I, mounted on a stool (the only way in which I could attain to the noble shoulders and bust of my lay figure), pinned and measured, and cut and shaped, under the superintend- ence of M , and had the satisfaction of seeing the fine

proportions of my black goddess quite becomingly clothed in a high, tight-fitting body of the gayest chintz, which she really contrived to put together quite creditably. I was so elated with my own part of this performance

York advert to their incapacity in this respect as an impediment to their assistance of the poor, and ascribe to the fact that the daughters of his own parishioners did not know how to sew, the impossibility of their giving the most valuable species of help to the women of the needier classes, whose condition could hardly be more effectually im- proved than by acquiring such useful knowledge. I have known young American school-girls duly instructed in the nature of the par- allaxes of the stars, but, as a rule, they do not know how to darn their stockings. Les Dames du Sacre Cceur do better for their high-born and well-bred pupils than this.

A RESIDENCE IN GEORGIA. 109

that I then and there determined to put into execution a plan I had long formed of endowing the little boat in which I take what the French call my walks on the water with cushions for the back and seat of the benches usual- ly occupied by myself and Mr. ; so, putting on my

large straw hat, and plucking up a paper of pins, scissors, and my brown holland, I walked to the steps, and, jump- ing into the little canoe, began piecing, and measuring, and cutting the cushions, which were to be stuffed with the tree moss by some of the people who understand making a rough kind of mattress. My inanimate subject, however, proved far more troublesome to fit than my liv- ing lay figure, for the little cockle-shell ducked, and dived, and rocked, and tipped, and courtesied, and tilted, as I knelt first on one