Small Landed Proprietors—Slavery
I now, for the first time since I crossed the mountains, found myself
sufficiently at leisure to look deliberately round, and mark the
different aspects of men and things in a region which, though bearing
the same name, and calling itself the same land, was, in many respects,
as different from the one I had left, as Amsterdam from St. Petersburg.
There every man was straining, and struggling, and striving for himself
(heaven knows!) Here every white man was waited upon, more or less, by
a slave. There, the newly-cleared lands, rich with the vegetable manure
accumulated for ages, demanded the slightest labour to return the
richest produce; where the plough entered, crops the most abundant
followed; but where it came not, no spot of native verdure, no native
fruits, no native flowers cheered the eye; all was close, dark,
stifling forest. Here the soil had long ago yielded its first fruits;
much that had been cleared and cultivated for tobacco (the most
exhausting of crops) by the English, required careful and laborious
husbandry to produce any return; and much was left as sheep-walks. It
was in these spots that the natural bounty of the soil and climate was
displayed by the innumerable wild fruits and flowers which made every
dingle and bushy dell seem a garden.
On entering the cottages I found also a great difference in the manner
of living. Here, indeed, there were few cottages without a slave, but
there were fewer still that had their beefsteak and onions for
breakfast, dinner, and supper. The herrings of the bountiful Potomac
supply their place. These are excellent “relish,” as they call it, when
salted, and, if I mistake not, are sold at a dollar and a half per
thousand. Whiskey, however, flows every where at the same fatally cheap
rate of twenty cents (about one shilling) the gallon, and its hideous
effects are visible on the countenance of every man you meet.
The class of people the most completely unlike any existing in England,
are those who, farming their own freehold estates, and often possessing
several slaves, yet live with as few of the refinements, and I think I
may say, with as few of the comforts of life, as the very poorest
English peasant. When in Maryland, I went into the houses of several of
these small proprietors, and remained long enough, and looked and
listened sufficiently, to obtain a tolerably correct idea of their
manner of living.
One of these families consisted of a young man, his wife, two children,
a female slave, and two young lads, slaves also. The farm belonged to
the wife, and, I was told, consisted of about three hundred acres of
indifferent land, but all cleared. The house was built of wood, and
looked as if the three slaves might have overturned it, had they pushed
hard against the gable end. It contained one room, of about twelve feet
square, and another adjoining it, hardly larger than a closet; this
second chamber was the lodging-room of the white part of the family.
Above these rooms was a loft, without windows, where I was told the
“staying company” who visited them, were lodged. Near this mansion was
a “shanty,” a black hole, without any window, which served as kitchen
and all other offices, and also as the lodging of the blacks.
We were invited to take tea with this family, and readily consented to
do so. The furniture of the room was one heavy huge table, and about
six wooden chairs. When we arrived the lady was in rather a dusky
dishabille, but she vehemently urged us to be seated, and then retired
into the closet-chamber above mentioned, whence she continued to
address to us from behind the door, all kinds of “genteel country
visiting talk,” and at length emerged upon us in a smart new dress.
Her female slave set out the great table, and placed upon it cups of
the very coarsest blue ware, a little brown sugar in one, and a tiny
drop of milk in another, no butter, though the lady assured us she had
a “_deary_” and two cows. Instead of butter, she “hoped we would fix a
little relish with our crackers,” in ancient English, eat salt meat and
dry biscuits. Such was the fare, and for guests that certainly were
intended to be honoured. I could not help recalling the delicious
repasts which I remembered to have enjoyed at little dairy farms in
England, not _possessed_, but rented, and at high rents too; where the
clean, fresh-coloured, bustling mistress herself skimmed the delicious
cream, herself spread the yellow butter on the delightful brown loaf,
and placed her curds, and her junket, and all the delicate treasures of
her dairy before us, and then, with hospitable pride, placed herself at
her board, and added the more delicate “relish” of good tea and good
cream. I remembered all this, and did not think the difference atoned
for, by the dignity of having my cup handed to me by a slave. The lady
I now visited, however, greatly surpassed my quondam friends in the
refinement of her conversation. She ambled through the whole time the
visit lasted, in a sort of elegantly mincing familiar style of gossip,
which, I think, she was imitating from some novel, for I was told she
was a great novel reader, and left all household occupations to be
performed by her slaves. To say she addressed us in a tone of equality,
will give no adequate idea of her manner; I am persuaded that no
misgiving on the subject ever entered her head. She told us that their
estate was her divi-_dend_ of her father’s property. She had married a
first cousin, who was as fine a gentleman as she was a lady, and as
idle, preferring hunting (as they called shooting) to any other
occupation. The consequence was, that but a very small portion of the
dividend was cultivated, and their poverty was extreme. The slaves,
particularly the lads, were considerably more than half naked, but the
air of dignity with which, in the midst of all this misery, the lanky
lady said to one of the young negroes, “Attend to your young master,
Lycurgus,” must have been heard to be conceived in the full extent of
its mock heroic.
Another dwelling of one of these landed proprietors was a hovel as
wretched as the one above described, but there was more industry within
it. The gentleman, indeed, was himself one of the numerous tribe of
regular whiskey drinkers, and was rarely capable of any work; but he
had a family of twelve children, who, with their skeleton mother,
worked much harder than I ever saw negroes do. They were, accordingly,
much less elegant and much less poor than the heiress; yet they lived
with no appearance of comfort, and with, I believe, nothing beyond the
necessaries of life. One proof of this was, that the worthless father
would not suffer them to raise, even by their own labour, any garden
vegetables, and they lived upon their fat pork, salt fish, and corn
bread, summer and winter, without variation. This, I found, was
frequently the case among the farmers. The luxury of whiskey is more
appreciated by the men than all the green delicacies from the garden,
and if all the ready money goes for that and their darling chewing
tobacco, none can be spent by the wife for garden seeds; and as far as
my observation extended, I never saw any American _menage_ where the
toast and no toast question, would have been decided in favour of the
lady.
There are some small farmers who hold their lands as tenants, but these
are by no means numerous: they do not pay their rent in money, but by
making over a third of the produce to the owner; a mode of paying rent,
considerably more advantageous to the tenant than the landlord; but the
difficulty of obtaining _money_ in payment, excepting for mere retail
articles, is very great in all American transactions. “I can pay in
pro-_duce_,” is the offer which I was assured is constantly made on all
occasions, and if rejected, “Then I guess we can’t deal,” is the usual
rejoinder. This statement does not, of course, include the great
merchants of great cities, but refers to the mass of the people
scattered over the country; it has, indeed, been my object, in speaking
of the customs of the people, to give an idea of what they are
_generally_.
The effect produced upon English people by the sight of slavery in
every direction is very new, and not very agreeable, and it is not the
less painfully felt from hearing upon every breeze the mocking words,
“All men are born free and equal.” One must be in the heart of American
slavery, fully to appreciate that wonderfully fine passage in Moore’s
Epistle to Lord Viscount Forbes, which describes perhaps more
faithfully, as well as more powerfully, the political state of America,
than any thing that has ever been written upon it.
Oh! Freedom, Freedom, how I hate thy cant!
Not eastern bombast, nor the savage rant
Of purpled madmen, were they numbered all
From Roman Nero, down to Russian Paul,
Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base,
As the rank jargon of that factious race,
Who, poor of heart, and prodigal of words,
Born to be slaves, and struggling to be lords,
But pant for licence, while they spurn controul,
And shout for rights, with rapine in their soul!
Who can, with patience, for a moment see
The medley mass of pride and misery,
Of whips and charters, manacles and rights,
Of slaving blacks, and democratic whites,
Of all the pyebald polity that reigns
In free confusion o’er Columbia’s plains?
To think that man, thou just and gentle God!
Should stand before thee with a tyrant’s rod,
O’er creatures like himself, with soul from thee,
Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty:
Away, away, I’d rather hold my neck
By doubtful tenure from a Sultan’s beck,
In climes where liberty has scarce been named,
Nor any right, but that of ruling, claimed,
Than thus to live, where bastard freedom waves
Her fustian flag in mockery o’er slaves;
Where (motley laws admitting no degree
Betwixt the vilely slaved, and madly free)
Alike the bondage and the licence suit,
The brute made ruler, and the man made brute!
The condition of domestic slaves, however, does not generally appear to
be bad; but the ugly feature is, that should it be so, they have no
power to change it. I have seen much kind attention bestowed upon the
health of slaves; but it is on these occasions impossible to forget,
that did this attention fail, a valuable piece of property would be
endangered. Unhappily the slaves, too, know this, and the consequence
is, that real kindly feeling very rarely can exist between the parties.
It is said that slaves born in a family are attached to the children of
it, who have grown up with them. This may be the case where the petty
acts of infant tyranny have not been sufficient to conquer the kindly
feeling naturally produced by long and early association; and this sort
of attachment may last as long as the slave can be kept in that state
of profound ignorance which precludes reflection. The law of Virginia
has taken care of this. The State legislators may truly be said to be
“wiser in their generation than the children of light,” and they ensure
their safety by forbidding light to enter among them. By the law of
Virginia it is penal to teach any slave to read, and it is penal to be
aiding and abetting in the act of instructing them. This law speaks
volumes. Domestic slaves are, generally speaking, tolerably well fed,
and decently clothed; and the mode in which they are lodged seems a
matter of great indifference to them. They are rarely exposed to the
lash, and they are carefully nursed in sickness. These are the
favourable features of their situation. The sad one is, that they may
be sent to the south and sold. This is the dread of all the slaves
north of Louisiana. The sugar plantations, and more than all, the rice
grounds of Georgia and the Carolinas, are the terror of American
negroes; and well they may be, for they open an early grave to
thousands; and to _avoid loss_ it is needful to make their previous
labour pay their value.
There is something in the system of breeding and rearing negroes in the
Northern States, for the express purpose of sending them to be sold in
the South, that strikes painfully against every feeling of justice,
mercy, or common humanity. During my residence in America I became
perfectly persuaded that the state of a domestic slave in a gentleman’s
family was preferable to that of a hired American “help,” both because
they are more cared for and valued, and because their condition being
born with them, their spirits do not struggle against it with that
pining discontent which seems the lot of all free servants in America.
But the case is widely different with such as, in their own persons, or
those of their children, “loved in vain,” are exposed to the dreadful
traffic above mentioned. In what is their condition better than that of
the kidnapped negroes on the coast of Africa? Of the horror in which
this enforced migration is held I had a strong proof during our stay in
Virginia. The father of a young slave, who belonged to the lady with
whom we boarded, was destined to this fate, and within an hour after it
was made known to him, he sharpened the hatchet with which he had been
felling timber, and with his right hand severed his left from the
wrist.
But this is a subject on which I do not mean to dilate; it has been
lately treated most judiciously by a far abler hand.[10] Its effects on
the moral feelings and external manners of the people are all I wish to
observe upon, and these are unquestionably most injurious. The same man
who beards his wealthier and more educated neighbour with the bullying
boast, “I’m as good as you,” turns to his slave, and knocks him down,
if the furrow he has ploughed, or the log he has felled, please not
this stickler for equality. There is a glaring falsehood on the very
surface of such a man’s principles that is revolting. It is not among
the higher classes that the possession of slaves produces the worst
effects. Among the poorer class of landholders, who are often as
profoundly ignorant as the negroes they own, the effect of this plenary
power over males and females is most demoralising; and the kind of
coarse, not to say brutal, authority which is exercised, furnishes the
most disgusting moral spectacle I ever witnessed. In all ranks,
however, it appeared to me that the greatest and best feelings of the
human heart were paralyzed by the relative positions of slave and
owner. The characters, the hearts of children, are irretrievably
injured by it. In Virginia we boarded for some time in a family
consisting of a widow and her four daughters, and I there witnessed a
scene strongly indicative of the effect I have mentioned. A young
female slave, about eight years of age, had found on the shelf of a
cupboard a biscuit, temptingly buttered, of which she had eaten a
considerable portion before she was observed. The butter had been
copiously sprinkled with arsenic for the destruction of rats, and had
been thus most incautiously placed by one of the young ladies of the
family. As soon as the circumstance was known, the lady of the house
came to consult me as to what had best be done for the poor child; I
immediately mixed a large cup of mustard and water (the most rapid of
all emetics) and got the little girl to swallow it. The desired effect
was instantly produced, but the poor child, partly from nausea, and
partly from the terror of hearing her death proclaimed by half a dozen
voices round her, trembled so violently that I thought she would fall.
I sat down in the court where we were standing, and, as a matter of
course, took the little sufferer in my lap. I observed a general titter
among the white members of the family, while the black stood aloof, and
looked stupified. The youngest of the family, a little girl about the
age of the young slave, after gazing at me for a few moments in utter
astonishment, exclaimed “My! If Mrs. Trollope has not taken her in her
lap, and wiped her nasty mouth! Why I would not have touched her mouth
for two hundred dollars!”
[10] See Captain Hall’s Travels in America.
The little slave was laid on a bed, and I returned to my own
apartments; some time afterwards I sent to enquire for her, and learnt
that she was in great pain. I immediately went myself to enquire
farther, when another young lady of the family, the one by whose
imprudence the accident had occurred, met my anxious enquiries with
ill-suppressed mirth—told me they had sent for the doctor—and then
burst into uncontrollable laughter. The idea of really sympathising in
the sufferings of a slave appeared to them as absurd as weeping over a
calf that had been slaughtered by the butcher. The daughters of my
hostess were as lovely as features and complexion could make them; but
the neutralizing effect of this total want of feeling upon youth and
beauty, must be witnessed, to be conceived.
There seems in general a strong feeling throughout America, that none
of the negro race can be trusted, and as fear, according to their
notions, is the only principle by which a slave can be actuated, it is
not wonderful if the imputation be just. But I am persuaded that were a
different mode of moral treatment pursued, most important and
beneficial consequences would result from it. Negroes are very sensible
to kindness, and might, I think, be rendered more profitably obedient
by the practice of it towards them, than by any other mode of
discipline whatever. To emancipate them entirely throughout the Union
cannot, I conceive, be thought of, consistently with the safety of the
country; but were the possibility of amelioration taken into the
consideration of the legislature, with all the wisdom, justice, and
mercy, that could be brought to bear upon it, the negro population of
the Union might cease to be a terror, and their situation no longer be
a subject either of indignation or of pity.
I observed every where throughout the slave States that all articles
which can be taken and consumed are constantly locked up, and in large
families, where the extent of the establishment multiplies the number
of keys, these are deposited in a basket, and consigned to the care of
a little negress, who is constantly seen following her mistress’s steps
with this basket on her arm, and this, not only that the keys may be
always at hand, but because, should they be out of sight one moment,
that moment would infallibly be employed for purposes of plunder. It
seemed to me in this instance, as in many others, that the close
personal attendance of these sable shadows, must be very annoying; but
whenever I mentioned it, I was assured that no such feeling existed,
and that use rendered them almost unconscious of their presence.
I had, indeed, frequent opportunities of observing this habitual
indifference to the presence of their slaves. They talk of them, of
their condition, of their faculties, of their conduct, exactly as if
they were incapable of hearing. I once saw a young lady, who, when
seated at table between a male and a female, was induced by her modesty
to intrude on the chair of her female neighbour to avoid the indelicacy
of touching the elbow of a man. I once saw this very young lady lacing
her stays with the most perfect composure before a negro footman. A
Virginian gentleman told me that ever since he had married, he had been
accustomed to have a negro girl sleep in the same chamber with himself
and his wife. I asked for what purpose this nocturnal attendance was
necessary? “Good heaven!” was the reply, “if I wanted a glass of water
during the night, what would become of me?”