a single day in the wretched discomfort 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 opportunity of cultivating it, I
promise myself much pleasure. 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 unfortunately 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 invigorating 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
argument 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 Doctor related with great glee, and it furnishes a very
good sample of what the Southerners are fond of exhibiting, the degree
of licence to which they capriciously permit their favourite 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 lap-dog is of her humane treatment of animals in 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 favouritism to the few--a system of favouritism 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 practised upon his fellows. I had several of these
favourite 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 goodwill did to the objects of it was quite involuntary
and unconscious on the part of their kind masters--I mean the inevitable
improvement in intelligence, which resulted to them from being more
constantly admitted to the intercourse of the favoured 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 towards 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 birds stooped nearer, and again the
watery shield was interposed. This went on until the poor water-fowl,
driven by excess of fear into unwonted boldness, rose, after repeatedly
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 awhile over the river, and
then sailing slowly towards the woods on the opposite shore, alighted and
furled his great wings on a huge cypress 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 dyke,
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, and so 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 negroes 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 parlour window, and which I therefore
wished removed. The small sample of a southern conflagration which ensued
was very picturesque, the flames devouring the light 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
meantime to starry evening, 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
neighbourhood, have contracted to dig a canal, called the Brunswick canal,
and not having hands enough for the work, advertise at the same time for
negroes on hires and for Irish labourers. 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 meantime, 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 towards them, and
hatred of them, are precisely in proportion to the resemblance between
them. This hiring out of negroes is a horrid aggravation of the miseries
of their condition, for, if on the plantations, and under the masters to
whom they belong, their labour 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 apparently by a number of voices. The next morning I enquired 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 key-hole, and I welcome this most ignorant profession of
religion in Mr. ----'s dependents, as the herald of better and brighter
things for them. Some of the planters are entirely inimical to any such
proceedings, and neither allow their negroes to attend worship, 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 discovered that a man may become
more faithful and trustworthy even as a slave, who acknowledges the
higher influences of Christianity, no matter in how small a degree.
Slave-holding clergymen, and certain piously inclined planters, undertake,
accordingly, to enlighten these poor creatures upon these matters, with a
safe understanding, 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 endeavour 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 moorings, and overwhelm them in its great deeps, to
the waters 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. However, 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, extremely ill-spelled, from a gentleman living in the
neighbourhood of the town, and whose slaves are notoriously ill-treated;
reminding Mr. ---- of the precious souls of his human cattle, and
requesting a further 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 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 afterwards. '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 allowed 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 receipt 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 bed-room, or the parlour, they
flock in with urgent entreaties, 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 labour 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 refuse them the very
clothes from my back, or food from my plate, if they asked me for it. In
taking my daily walk round the banks yesterday, I found that I was walking
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 laborious task with great ability and
fidelity towards his employers. 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 remarkable man
and is much respected for his integrity and honourable dealing by
everybody here. His activity and energy are wonderful, and the mere fact
of his having charge of for nineteen years, and personally governing,
without any assistance whatever, seven hundred people scattered over
three large tracts of land, at a considerable distance from each other,
certainly bespeaks efficiency and energy of a very uncommon order. The
character I had heard of him from Mr. ---- had excited a great deal of
interest in me, and I was very glad of this opportunity 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
winged flame. Nothing can surpass the beauty of their plumage, 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 intelligence 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 storehouses. I
crossed the threshing floor to-day--a very large square, perfectly level,
raised by artificial means, about half a foot from the ground, and covered
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 labours are carried on. As I walked across it to-day, passing
through the busy groups, chiefly of women, that covered 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 often 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 nothing.
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. Labour being here the especial portion of slaves, it
is thenceforth degraded, 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 semi-starvation and barbarism to
the degradation of doing anything 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 labour belongs to blacks and slaves alone here), labour for
their own subsistence. They are hardly protected from the weather by the
rude shelters they frame for themselves 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 labour 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-labourers. 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 burthens they have
seen me lift, the digging, the planting, the rowing, 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--gypsies, 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 verdict, '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 improvement
and prosperity.' Further on in the conversation, 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
fortunes 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
hindrance, 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
unwillingly to a necessity from which they cannot extricate themselves.
All this I thought might be true, before I went to the south, and often
has the charitable supposition checked the condemnation which was
indignantly rising to my lips against these murderers of their brethren'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 moment; but the fact
is--and I have it not only from observation 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 throughout
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 Charleston 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 estate, as persons
quite remarkable for their fidelity and intelligence, instancing old
Molly, Ned 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 dykes,
which are in some parts so overgrown with gigantic briars 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 seen, he said, were incurred by the negroes
running these large green thorns into their feet.
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----, too, 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, affording
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 8,542 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 over
work, from a gang of pregnant women. I did not stay to listen to the
details of their petition, for I am unable to command myself on such
occasions, and Mr. ---- seemed positively degraded in my eyes, as he stood
enforcing 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 labour, to what he then seemed,
setting forth to these wretched, ignorant women, as a duty, their unpaid
exacted labour! I turned away in bitter disgust. I hope this sojourn among
Mr. ----'s slaves may not lessen my respect for him, but I fear it; for
the details of slave holding are so unmanly, letting alone every other
consideration, that I know not how anyone, with the spirit of a man, can
condescend to them.
I have been out again on the river, rowing. I find nothing 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 exquisite watery
woods, but you will of my mention of them, I fear. Adieu.
* * * * *