American Slavery as It is: Testimonies. Theodore Dwight Weld
of the year."
It is not only true of the sugar planters, but of the slaveholders generally throughout the far south and south west, that they believe it for their interest to wear out the slaves by excessive toil in eight or ten years after they put them into the field.4
Rev. DOCTOR REED, of London, who went through Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland in the summer of 1834, gives the following testimony:
"I was told confidently and from excellent authority, that recently at a meeting of planters in South Carolina, the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more profitable to the owner, if well fed, well clothed, and worked lightly, or if made the most of at once, and exhausted in some eight years. The decision was in favor of the last alternative. That decision will perhaps make many shudder. But to my mind this is not the chief evil. The greater and original evil is considering the slave as property. If he is only property and my property, then I have some right to ask how I may make that property most available."
"Visit to the American Churches," by Rev. Drs. Reed and Mattheson. Vol. 2. p. 173.
Rev. JOHN O. CHOULES, recently pastor of a Baptist Church at New Bedford, Massachusetts, now of Buffalo, New York, made substantially the following statement in a speech in Boston.
"While attending the Baptist Triennial Convention at Richmond, Virginia, in the spring of 1835, as a delegate from Massachusetts, I had a conversation on slavery, with an officer of the Baptist Church in that city, at whose house I was a guest. I asked my host if he did not apprehend that the slaves would eventually rise and exterminate their masters.
"Why," said the gentleman, "I used to apprehend such a catastrophe, but God has made a providential opening, a merciful safety valve, and now I do not feel alarmed in the prospect of what is coming. 'What do you mean, said Mr. Choules, 'by providence opening a merciful safety valve?' Why, said the gentleman, I will tell you; the slave traders come from the cotton and sugar plantations of the South and are willing to buy up more slaves than we can part with. We must keep a stock for the purpose of rearing slaves, but we part with the most valuable, and at the same time, the most dangerous, and the demand is very constant and likely to be so, for when they go to these southern states, the average existence IS ONLY FIVE YEARS!"
Monsieur C. C. ROBIN, a highly intelligent French gentleman, who resided in Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, and published a volume of travels, gives the following testimony to the over-working of the slaves there:
"I have been a witness, that after the fatigue of the day, their labors have been prolonged several hours by the light of the moon; and then, before they could think of rest, they must pound and cook their corn; and yet, long before day, an implacable scold, whip in hand, would arouse them from their slumbers. Thus, of more than twenty negroes, who in twenty years should have doubled, the number was reduced to four or five."
In conclusion we add, that slaveholders have in the most public and emphatic manner declared themselves guilty of barbarous inhumanity toward their slaves in exacting from them such long continued daily labor. The Legislatures of Maryland, Virginia and Georgia, have passed laws providing that convicts in their state prisons and penitentiaries, "shall be employed in work each day in the year except Sundays, not exceeding eight hours, in the months of November, December, and January; nine hours, in the months of February and October, and ten hours in the rest of the year." Now contrast this legal exaction of labor from CONVICTS with the exaction from slaves as established by the preceding testimony. The reader perceives that the amount of time, in which by the preceding laws of Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, the convicts in their prisons are required to labor, is on an average during the year but little more than NINE HOURS daily. Whereas, the laws of South Carolina permit the master to compelhis slaves to work FIFTEEN HOURS in the twenty-four, in summer, and FOURTEEN in the winter--which would be in winter, from daybreak in the morning until four hours after sunset!--See 2 Brevard's Digest, 243.
The other slave states, except Louisiana, have no laws respecting the labor of slaves, consequently if the master should work his slaves day and night without sleep till they drop dead, he violates no law!
The law of Louisiana provides for the slaves but TWO AND A HALF HOURS in the twenty-four for "rest!" See law of Louisiana, act of July 7, 1806, Martin's Digest 6. 10--12.
3. We do not mean that they are not suffered to speak, but, that, as conversation would be a hindrance to labor, they are generally permitted to indulge in it but little.
4. Alexander Jones, Esq., a large planter in West Feliciana, Louisiana, published a communication in the "North Carolina True American," Nov. 25, 1838, in which, speaking of the horses employed in the mills on the plantations for ginning cotton, he says, they "are much whipped and jaded;" and adds, "In fact, this service is so severe on horses, as to shorten their lives in many instances, if not actually kill them in gear."
Those who work one kind of their "live stock" so as to "shorten their lives," or "kill them in gear," would not stick at doing the same thing to another kind.
III. Clothing
We propose to show under this head, that the clothing of the slaves by day, and their covering by night, are inadequate, either for comfort or decency.
| WITNESSES. | TESTIMONY. |
| Hon. T. T. Bouldin, a slave-holder, and member of Congress from Virginia, in a speech in Congress, Feb. 16, 1835. | Mr. Bouldin said "he knew that many negroes had died from exposure to weather," and added, "they are clad in a flimsy fabric, that will turn neither wind nor water." |
| George Buchanan, M. D., of Baltimore, member of the American Philosophical Society, in an oration at Baltimore, July 4, 1791. | "The slaves, naked and starved, often fall victims to the inclemencies of the weather." |
| Wm. Savery of Philadelphia an eminent Minister of the Society of Friends, who went through the Southern states in 1791, on a religious visit; after leaving Savannah, Ga., we find the following entry in his journal, 6th, month, 28, 1791. | "We rode through many rice swamps, where the blacks were very numerous, great droves of these poor slaves, working up to the middle in water, men and women nearly naked." |
| Rev. John Rankin, of Ripley, Ohio, a native of Tennessee. | "In every slave-holding state, many slaves suffer extremely, both while they labor and while they sleep, for want of clothing to keep them warm." |
| John Parrish, late of Philadelphia, a highly esteemed minister in the Society of Friends, who travelled through the South in 1804. | "It is shocking to the feelings of humanity, in travelling through some of those states, to see those poor objects, [slaves,] especially in the inclement season, in rags, and trembling with the cold." . . . . . "They suffer them, both male and female, to go without clothing at the age of ten and twelve years." |
| Rev. Phineas Smith, Centreville, Allegany, Co., N. Y. Mr. S. has just returned from a residence of several years at the south, chiefly in Virginia, Louisiana, and among the American settlers in Texas. | "The apparel of the slaves, is of the coarsest sort and exceedingly deficient in quantity. I have been on many plantations, where children of eight and ten years old, were in a state of perfect nudity. Slaves are in general wretchedly clad." |