A more loathsome and disgusting place cannot be imagined, than the
huts in a negro yard of a plantation. They are generally about twenty
feet square, and the hands on a plantation are divided into families,
each of which occupies one of these pens. These families number from
five to twenty, and the arrangements for sleeping are miserable in the
extreme, and what is used for their beds is seldom if ever washed, or
cleansed in any manner, and is used until rotted or worn into shreds.
The same practice is pursued with their clothing. It consists of a
coarse wrought fabric, of cotton and wool, and also of linen. The men
wear pantaloons, and a heavy stout frock. The women who work in the
field, wear only a long frock, without under clothes of any kind.
These are put on and never changed or cleansed, or taken off night or
day, until they are worn out. The provision for clothing the slaves,
is usually one suit a year to each negro, and they are generally
obliged to make this last or go without. But many cannot, and you will
often see negroes with only the tattered and torn rags remaining on
them, as evidence of a slight degree of modesty and shame, that is
manifest in keeping them around him. And thus they live in the most
filthy, degraded and beastly condition that can be conceived, and
there is not a single provision of any kind, either in food, clothing
or cleanliness, or for beds, or dwellings, or labor, but what is
calculated to debilitate, exhaust and destroy the physical powers, and
produce disease and death; and I make the assurance without the fear of
contradiction, that there is scarcely a plantation in the whole range
of the Sugar and Cotton growing districts, if examined by a competent
board of health, that would not excite their astonishment, that human
beings could live, even an average of seven years. In the first place,
it will be found that many herds of slaves are kept on short rations,
having allowed to each one, from three to three and a half pounds of
meat a week, with only corn meal, which they wet with water, and roast
on the fire. This is their regular daily food, and the meat is often
the most loathsome, disgusting, rotten mass that can be imagined. On
this point, I am aware it will also be said, there are but few, very
few indeed, of such cases. But it is not true, and every produce dealer
in the city of New Orleans, if he has not the fear of the planter
before his eyes, will bear testimony to this fact, for I have seen it
myself, and know that they sell thousands of packages, weighing from
eight to ten hundred each, of smoked hams and sides of pork, that were
so rotten that the bones had become loose and separated from the meat,
and when they were opened for the examination of the Planter, the
maggots would roll over the side of the cask upon the floor.
An instance of this kind I saw in the store of a produce dealer in
the winter of 1837. A planter from Mississippi bought eleven casks of
smoked meat from a merchant in Lafayette street, which he had purchased
the day before for one and a half cents per pound. He sold it to the
planter for one and three fourth cents, and when the casks were opened
they were literally alive with maggots. After the purchase was made,
the clerk, a fine honest New Jersey-man, being astonished at what he
had done in selling such stuff to be eaten by human beings, for he knew
that a dog in New Jersey could not be found but what would turn from
it, asked the planter why he bought such food for his negroes? The
planter replied, that it was pretty hard times and cotton was low, and
the _boys_ do about as well on it as any. Now in view of this, I know
it will be said again, that “such are rare cases;” but the reports of
sales of meat in New Orleans tell a different account; for there are
hundreds and thousands of such packages of rotten putrid meat sold to
planters every year, and the negroes are obliged to eat it or starve,
and at the same time the planters tell you “the boys do about as well
on it.”
And yet in full knowledge of all these facts, we can find men who will
speak of such things as trivial matters, and have some very _cogent_
apology to offer as an excuse to justify the outrage. But with many
who practice this treatment with their slaves there is some show
for excuse, and that is in their extreme ignorance; for there are a
large number of planters, overseers, and drivers, who know nothing
of the influence and effect of such food on the system, and that it
has a tendency to produce disease and death. Hence for the reason the
planters do not know their own interest, the loss to them annually by
death is ten fold greater than the expense would be to give the slaves
good comfortable quarters, with good wholesome fare, and treat them as
human beings. But there are plantations on which these worst features
are not found; yet in almost every case the slaves are over-worked, at
least one-third beyond what is possible for the physical powers of any
human being to endure. They are usually driven out soon as daylight,
and often before, and work from fourteen to eighteen hours a day, and
in the other part of the time, they are obliged to prepare their food,
eat and sleep. This time of excessive hard work is only about _five_
months in the year, during the gathering of the crops. The other part
of the season they are only worked from light in the morning until
darkness at night. I know it is said they are obliged to work thus
to save the crops from perishing. Very true. But why force such an
immense crop into existence that will require so much labor to secure
it? Cannot avarice be checked nor satisfied without working men and
women into a premature grave? As well may it be said, that a farmer
of the north is _obliged_ to work night and day to tend his crop of
corn, having planted with his cultivator twenty acres in four days;
consequently he is _obliged_ to work night and day for forty days to
hoe and keep it in good condition that he may get a large yield. And
in view of the condition of slaves on plantations generally, without
taking into account the whipping, beating and cruelties that are
imposed upon them, their treatment from beginning to end is an open
violation and outrage upon the laws of animal life, and every thing
by which they are surrounded is calculated directly to undermine the
constitution and engender disease, and thus destroy them. And I make
the assertion without the fear of contradiction from any apologist for
slavery who knows any thing about it, from its great champion John
C. Calhoun down to the most brutal driver that can be found, they
cannot show one plantation in five hundred where the proper provisions
necessary for the health and comfort of human beings are made. I know
this to be a fact, and so does every man who has looked in upon a
plantation in the sugar and cotton growing States of the South. And
there is no excuse or apology with the planter for this, for he can
do better if he would gamble less, drink and carouse less, and spend
less money in sports and horse racing, and not trust these matters to
overseers and drivers.