CHAPTER III.

THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS—CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA, ETC.

_Central Mississippi, May 31st._—Yesterday was a raw, cold day, wind

north-east, like a dry north-east storm at home. Fortunately I came

to the pleasantest house and household I had seen for some time. The

proprietor was a native of Maryland, and had travelled in the North;

a devout Methodist, and somewhat educated. He first came South, as I

understood, for the benefit of his health, his lungs being weak.

His first dwelling, a rude log cabin, was still standing, and was

occupied by some of his slaves. The new house, a cottage, consisting of

four rooms and a hall, stood in a small grove of oaks; the family were

quiet, kind, and sensible.

When I arrived, the oldest boy was at work, holding a plough in the

cotton-field, but he left it and came at once, with confident and

affable courtesy, to entertain me.

My host had been in Texas, and after exploring it quite thoroughly,

concluded that he much preferred to remain where he was. He found no

part of that country where good land, timber, and a healthy climate

were combined: in the West he did not like the vicinage of the Germans

and Mexicans; moreover, he didn’t “fancy” a prairie county. Here, in

favourable years, he got a bale of cotton to the acre. Not so much now

as formerly. Still, he said, the soil would be good enough for him

here, for many years to come.

I went five times to the stable without being able to find a servant

there. I was always told that “the boy” would feed my horse, and take

good care of him, when he came; and so at length I had to go to bed,

trusting to this assurance. I went out just before breakfast next

morning, and found the horse with only ten _dry_ cobs in the manger. I

searched for the boy; could not find him, but was told that my horse

had been fed. I said, “I wish to have him fed more—as much as he will

eat.” Very well, the boy should give him more. When I went out after

breakfast the boy was leading out the horse. I asked if he had given

him corn this morning.

“Oh yes, sir.”

“How many ears did you give him?”

“Ten or fifteen—or sixteen, sir; he eats very hearty.”

I went into the stable and saw that he had not been fed; there were

the same ten cobs (dry) in the manger. I doubted, indeed, from their

appearance, if the boy had fed him at all the night before. I fed

him with leaves myself, but could not get into the corn crib. The

proprietor was, I do not doubt, perfectly honest, but the negro had

probably stolen the corn for his own hogs and fowls.

The next day I rode more than thirty miles, having secured a good feed

of corn for the horse at midday. At nightfall I was much fatigued, but

had as yet failed to get lodging. It began to rain, and grew dark, and

I kept the road with difficulty. About nine o’clock I came to a large,

comfortable house.

An old lady sat in the verandah, of whom I asked if I could be

accommodated for the night: “Reckon so,” she replied: then after a

few moments’ reflection, without rising from her chair she shouted,

“Gal!—gal!” Presently a girl came.

“Missis?”

“Call Tom!”

The girl went off, while I remained, waiting for a more definite

answer. At length she returned: “Tom ain’t there, missis.”

“Who is there?”

“Old Pete,”

“Well, tell him to come and take this gentleman’s horse.”

Pete came, and I went with him to the gate where I had fastened my

horse. Here he called for some younger slave to come and take him down

to “the pen,” while he took off the saddle.

All this time it was raining, but any rapidity of movement was out

of the question. Pete continued shouting. “Why not lead the horse to

the pen yourself?” I asked. “I must take care of de saddle and tings,

massa; tote ’em to de house whar dey’ll be safe. Dese niggers is so

treacherous, can’t leave nothin’ roun’ but dey’ll hook suthing off of

it.”

Next morning, at dawn of day, I saw honest Pete come into the room

where I was in bed and go stealthily to his young master’s clothes,

probably mistaking them for mine. I moved and he dropped them, and

slunk out to the next room, where he went loudly to making a fire. I

managed to see the horse well fed night and morning.

There were three pretty young women in this house, of good manners and

well dressed, except for the abundance of rings and jewelry which they

displayed at breakfast. One of them surprised me not a little at the

table. I had been offered, in succession, fried ham and eggs, sweet

potatoes, apple-pie, corn-bread, and molasses; this last article I

declined, and passed it to the young lady opposite, looking to see how

it was to be used. She had, on a breakfast plate, fried ham and eggs

and apple-pie, and poured molasses between them.

* * * * *

_June 1st._—I stopped last evening at the house of a man who was

called “Doctor” by his family, but who was, to judge from his language,

very illiterate. His son, by whom I was first received, followed me to

the stable. He had ordered a negro child to lead my horse, but as I saw

the little fellow couldn’t hold him I went myself. He had no fodder

(corn-leaves), and proposed to give the horse some shucks (corn-husks)

dipped in salt water, and, as it was now too late to go further, I

assented. Belshazzar licked them greedily, but would not eat them, and

they seemed to destroy his appetite for corn, for late in the evening,

having groped my way into the stable, I found seven small ears of corn,

almost untasted, in the manger. I got the young man to come out and

give him more.

The “Doctor” returned from “a hunt,” as he said, with no game but a

turtle, which he had taken from a “trot line”—a line, with hooks at

intervals, stretched across the river.

The house was large, and in a good-sized parlour or common room stood

a handsome centre table, on which were a few books and papers, mostly

Baptist publications. I sat here alone in the evening, straining my

eyes to read a wretchedly printed newspaper, till I was offered a bed.

I was very tired and sleepy, having been ill two nights before. The bed

was apparently clean, and I gladly embraced it.

My host, holding a candle for me to undress by (there was no

candlestick in the house), called to a boy on the outside to fasten

the doors, which he did by setting articles of furniture against them.

When I had got into bed he went himself into an inner room, the door

of which he closed and fastened in the same manner. No sooner was the

light withdrawn than I was attacked by bugs. I was determined, if

possible, not to be kept awake by them, but they soon conquered me.

I never suffered such incessant and merciless persecution from them

before. In half an hour I was nearly frantic, and leaped from bed.

But what to do? There was no use in making a disturbance about it;

doubtless every other bed and resting place in the house was full of

them. I shook out my day clothes carefully and put them on, and then

pushing away the barricade, opened the door and went into the parlour.

At first I thought that I would arrange the chairs in a row and sleep

on them; but this I found impracticable, for the seats of the chairs

were too narrow, and moreover of deerskin, which was sure to be full

of fleas if not of bugs. Stiff and sore and weak, I groaningly lay

down where the light of the moon came through a broken window, for

bugs feed but little except in darkness, and with my saddle-bags for

a pillow, again essayed to sleep. Fleas! instantly. There was nothing

else to be done; I was too tired to sit up, even if that would have

effectually removed the annoyance. Finally I dozed—not long, I think,

for I was suddenly awakened by a large insect dropping upon my eye.

I struck it off, and at the moment it stung me. My eyelid swelled

immediately, and grew painful, but at length I slept in spite of it.

I was once more awakened by a large beetle which fell on me from the

window; once more I got asleep, till finally at four o’clock I awoke

with that feverish dryness of the eyes which indicates a determination

to sleep no more. It was daylight, and I was stiff and shivering; the

inflammation and pain of the sting in my eyelid had in a great degree

subsided. I pushed back the bolt of the outside door-lock, and went to

the stable. The negroes were already at work in the field. Belshazzar

had had a bad night too: that was evident. The floor of the stall,

being of earth, had been trodden into two hollows at each end, leaving

a small rough hillock in the centre. Bad as it was, however, it was

the best in the stable; only one in four of the stalls having a manger

that was not broken down. A wee little black girl and boy were cleaning

their master’s horses—mine they were afraid of. They had managed to

put some fresh corn in his manger, however, and as he refused to eat,

I took a currycomb and brush, and in the next two hours gave him the

first thorough grooming he had enjoyed since I owned him. I could not

detect the reason of his loss of appetite. I had been advised by an

old southern traveller to examine the corn when my horse refused to

eat—if corn were high I might find that it had been greased. From the

actions of the horse, then and subsequently, I suspect some trick of

this kind was here practised upon me. When I returned to the house and

asked to wash, water was given me in a vessel which, though I doubted

the right of my host to a medical diploma, certainly smelt strongly of

the shop—it was such as is used by apothecaries in mixing drugs. The

title of Doctor is often popularly given at the South to druggists and

venders of popular medicines; very probably he had been one, and had

now retired to enjoy the respectability of a planter.

* * * * *

_June 2nd._—I met a ragged old negro, of whom I asked the way, and at

what house within twelve miles I had better stop. He advised me to go

to one more than twelve miles distant.

“I suppose,” said I, “I can stop at any house along the road here,

can’t I? They’ll all take in travellers?”

“Yes, sir, if you’ll take rough fare, such as travellers has to,

sometimes. They’re all damn’d rascals along dis road, for ten or twelve

miles, and you’ll get nothin’ but rough fare. But I say, massa, rough

fare’s good enough for dis world; ain’t it, massa? Dis world ain’t

nothin; dis is hell, dis is, I calls it; hell to what’s a comin’ arter,

ha! ha! Ef you’s prepared? you says. I don’t look much ’s if I was

prepared, does I? nor talk like it, nuther. De Lord he cum to me in my

cabin in de night time, in de year ’45.”

“What?”

“De Lord! massa, de bressed Lord! He cum to me in de night time, in

de year ’45, and he says to me, says he, ‘I’ll spare you yet five year

longer, old boy!’ So when ’50 cum round I thought my time had cum,

sure; but as I didn’t die, I reckon de Lord has ’cepted of me, and I

’specs I shall be saved, dough I don’t look much like it, ha! ha! ho!

ho! de Lord am my rock, and he shall not perwail over me. I will lie

down in green pastures and take up my bed in hell, yet will not His

mercy circumwent me. Got some baccy, master?”

A little after sunset I came to an unusually promising plantation, the

dwelling being within a large enclosure, in which there was a well-kept

southern sward shaded by fine trees. The house, of the usual form, was

painted white, and the large number of neat out-buildings seemed to

indicate opulence, and, I thought, unusual good taste in its owner.

A lad of sixteen received me, and said I could stay; I might fasten

my horse, and when the negroes came up he would have him taken care

of. When I had done so, and had brought the saddle to the verandah,

he offered me a chair, and at once commenced a conversation in the

character of entertainer. Nothing in his tone or manner would have

indicated that he was not the father of the family, and proprietor of

the establishment. No prince royal could have had more assured and

nonchalant dignity. Yet a northern stable-boy, or apprentice, of his

age, would seldom be found as ignorant.

“Where do you live, sir, when you are at home?” he asked.

“At New York.”

“New York is a big place, sir, I expect?”

“Yes, very big.”

“Big as New Orleans, is it, sir?”

“Yes, much bigger.”

“Bigger ’n New Orleans? It must be a bully city.”

“Yes; the largest in America.”

“Sickly there now, sir?”

“No, not now; it is sometimes.”

“Like New Orleans, I suppose?”

“No, never so bad as New Orleans sometimes is.”

“Right healthy place, I expect, sir?”

“Yes, I believe so, for a place of its size.”

“What diseases do you have there, sir?”

“All sorts of diseases—not so much fever, however, as you have

hereabouts.”

“Measles and hooping-cough, sometimes, I reckon?”

“Yes, ’most all the time, I dare say.”

“All the time! People must die there right smart. Some is dyin’ ’most

every day, I expect, sir?”

“More than a hundred every day, I suppose.”

“Gosh! a hundred every day! Almighty sickly place ’t must be?”

“It is such a large place, you see—seven hundred thousand people.”

“Seven hundred thousand—expect that’s a heap of people, ain’t it?”

His father, a portly, well-dressed man, soon came in, and learning that

I had been in Mexico, said, “I suppose there’s a heap of Americans

flocking in and settling up that country along on the line, ain’t

there, sir?”

“No, sir, very few. I saw none, in fact—only a few Irishmen and

Frenchmen, who called themselves Americans. Those were the only

foreigners I saw, except negroes.”

“Niggers! Where were they from?”

“They were runaways from Texas.”

“But their masters go there and get them again, don’t they?”

“No, sir, they can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The Mexicans are friendly to the niggers, and protect them.”

“But why not go to the Government?”

“The Government considers them as free, and will not let them be taken

back.”

“But that’s stealing, sir. Why don’t our Government make them deliver

them up? What good is the Government to us if it don’t preserve the

rights of property, sir? Niggers are property, ain’t they? and if a

man steals my property, ain’t the Government bound to get it for me?

Niggers are property, sir, the same as horses and cattle, and nobody’s

any more right to help a nigger that’s run away than he has to steal a

horse.”

He spoke very angrily, and was excited. Perhaps he was indirectly

addressing me, as a Northern man, on the general subject of

fugitive slaves. I said that it was necessary to have special

treaty stipulations about such matters. The Mexicans lost their

_peons_—bounden servants; they ran away to our side, but the United

States Government never took any measures to restore them, nor did the

Mexicans ask it. “But,” he answered, in a tone of indignation, “those

are not niggers, are they? They are white people, sir, just as white as

the Mexicans themselves, and just as much right to be free.”

My horse stood in the yard till quite dark, the negroes not coming

in from the cotton-field. I twice proposed to take him to the stable,

but he said, “No: the niggers would come up soon and attend to him.”

Just as we were called to supper, the negroes began to make their

appearance, getting over a fence with their hoes, and the master called

to one to put the horse in the stable, and to “take good care of him.”

“I want him to have all the corn he’ll eat,” said I. “Yes, sir; feed

him well; do you hear there?”

The house was meagrely furnished within, not nearly as well as the most

common New England farm-house. I saw no books and no decorations. The

interior wood-work was unpainted.

At supper there were three negro girls in attendance—two children of

twelve or fourteen years of age, and an older one, but in a few moments

they all disappeared. The mistress called aloud several times, and at

length the oldest came, bringing in hot biscuit.

“Where’s Suke and Bet?”

“In the kitchen, missus.”

“Tell them both to come to me, right off.”

A few minutes afterwards, one of the girls slunk in and stood behind

me, as far as possible from her mistress. Presently, however, she was

discovered.

“You Bet, you there? Come here! come here to me! close to me! (_Slap,

slap, slap._) Now, why don’t you stay in here? (_Slap, slap, slap_, on

the side of the head.) I know! you want to be out in the kitchen with

them Indians! (_Slap, slap, slap._) Now see if you can stay here.”

(_Slap!_) The other girl didn’t come at all, and was forgotten.

As soon as supper was over my hostess exclaimed, “Now, you Bet, stop

crying there, and do you go right straight home; mind you run every

step of the way, and if you stop one minute in the kitchen you’d

better look out. Begone!” During the time I was in the house she was

incessantly scolding the servants, in a manner very disagreeable for me

to hear, though they seemed to regard it very little.

The Indians, I learned, lived some miles away, and were hired to hoe

cotton. I inquired their wages. “Well, it costs me about four bits

(fifty cents) a day,” (including food, probably). They worked well for

a few days at a time; were better at picking than at hoeing. “They

don’t pick so much in a day as niggers, but do it better.” The women

said they were good for nothing, and her husband had no business to

plant so much cotton that he couldn’t ’tend it with his own slave hands.

While at table a young man, very dirty and sweaty, with a ragged

shirt and no coat on, came in to supper. He was surly and rude in his

actions, and did not speak a word; he left the table before I had

finished, and lighting a pipe, laid himself at full length on the floor

of the room to smoke. This was the overseer.

Immediately after supper the master told me that he was in the habit of

going to bed early, and he would show me where I was to sleep. He did

so, and left me without a candle. It was dark, and I did not know the

way to the stables, so I soon went to bed. On a feather bed I did not

enjoy much rest, and when I at last awoke and dressed, breakfast was

just ready. I said I would go first to look after my horse, and did so,

the planter following me. I found him standing in a miserable stall, in

a sorry state; he had not been cleaned, and there were no cobs or other

indications of his having been fed at all since he had been there. I

said to my host—

“He has not been fed, sir!”

“I wonder! hain’t he? Well, I’ll have him fed. I s’pose the overseer

forgot him.”

But, instead of going to the crib and feeding him at once himself, he

returned to the house and blew a horn for a negro; when after a long

time one came in sight from the cotton-fields, he called to him to go

to the overseer for the key of the corn-crib and feed the gentleman’s

horse, and asked me now to come to breakfast. The overseer joined

us as a supper; nothing was said to him about my horse, and he was

perfectly silent, and conducted himself like an angry or sulky man in

all his actions. As before, when he had finished his meal, without

waiting for others to leave the table, he lighted a pipe and lay down

to rest on the floor. I went to the stable and found my horse had been

supplied with seven poor ears of corn only. I came back to ask for

more, but could find neither master nor overseer. While I was packing

my saddle-bags preparatory to leaving, I heard my host call a negro to

“clean that gentleman’s horse and bring him here.” As it was late, I

did not interpose. While I was putting on the bridle, he took off the

musquito tent attached to the saddle and examined it. I explained why I

carried it.

“You won’t want it any more,” said he; “no musquitoes of any account

where you are going now; you’d better give it to me, sir; I should

like to use it when I go a-fishing; musquitoes are powerful bad in the

swamp.” After some further solicitation, as I seldom used it, I gave

it to him. Almost immediately afterwards he charged me a dollar for my

entertainment, which I paid, notwithstanding the value of the tent was

several times that amount. Hospitality to travellers is so entirely a

matter of business with the common planters.

I passed the hoe-gang at work in the cotton-field, the overseer

lounging among them carrying a whip; there were ten or twelve of them;

not one looked up at me. Within ten minutes I passed five who were

ploughing, with no overseer or driver in sight, and each stopped his

plough to gaze at me.

* * * * *

_June 3rd._—Yesterday I met a well-dressed man upon the road, and

inquired of him if he could recommend me to a comfortable place to pass

the night.

“Yes, I can,” said he; “you stop at John Watson’s. He is a real good

fellow, and his wife is a nice, tidy woman; he’s got a good house, and

you’ll be as well taken care of there as in any place I know.”

“What I am most concerned about is a clean bed,” said I.

“Well, you are safe for that, there.”

So distinct a recommendation was unusual, and when I reached the house

he had described to me, though it was not yet dark, I stopped to

solicit entertainment.

In the gallery sat a fine, stalwart man, and a woman, who in size and

figure matched him well. Some ruddy, fat children were playing on the

steps. The man wore a full beard, which is very uncommon in these

parts. I rode to a horse-block near the gallery, and asked if I could

be accommodated for the night. “Oh, yes, you can stay here if you can

get along without anything to eat; we don’t have anything to eat but

once a week.” “You look as if it agreed with you, I reckon I’ll try

it for one night.” “Alight, sir, alight. Why, you came from Texas,

didn’t you? Your rig looks like it,” he said, as I dismounted. “Yes,

I’ve just crossed Texas, all the way from the Rio Grande.” “Have you

though? Well, I’ll be right glad to hear something of that country.” He

threw my saddle and bags across the rail of the gallery, and we walked

together to the stable.

“I hear that there are a great many Germans in the western part of

Texas,” he said presently.

“There are a great many; west of the Guadaloupe, more Germans than

Americans born.”

“Have they got many slaves?”

“No.”

“Well, won’t they break off and make a free State down there, by and

by?”

“I should think it not impossible that they might.”

“I wish to God they would; I would like right well to go and settle

there if it was free from slavery. You see Kansas and all the Free

States are too far north for me; I was raised in Alabama, and I don’t

want to move into a colder climate; but I would like to go into a

country where they had not got this curse of slavery.”

He said this not knowing that I was a Northern man. Greatly surprised,

I asked, “What are your objections to slavery, sir?”

“Objections! The first’s here” (striking his breast); “I never could

bring myself to like it. Well, sir, I know slavery is wrong, and God

’ll put an end to it. It’s bound to come to an end, and when the end

does come, there’ll be woe in the land. And, instead of preparing for

it, and trying to make it as light as possible, we are doing nothing

but make it worse and worse. That’s the way it appears to me, and

I’d rather get out of these parts before it comes. Then I’ve another

objection to it. I don’t like to have slaves about me. Now, I tell a

nigger to go and feed your horse; I never know if he’s done it unless

I go and see; and if he didn’t know I would go and see, and would whip

him if I found he hadn’t fed him, would he feed him? He’d let him

starve. I’ve got as good niggers as anybody, but I never can depend on

them; they will lie, and they will steal, and take advantage of me in

every way they dare. Of course they will, if they are slaves. But lying

and stealing are not the worst of it. I’ve got a family of children,

and I don’t like to have such degraded beings round my house while

they are growing up. I know what the consequences are to children, of

growing up among slaves.”

I here told him that I was a Northern man, and asked if he could

safely utter such sentiments among the people of this district, who

bore the reputation of being among the most extreme and fanatical

devotees of slavery. “I’ve been told a hundred times I should be killed

if I were not more prudent in expressing my opinions, but, when it

comes to killing, I’m as good as the next man, and they know it. I

never came the worst out of a fight yet since I was a boy. I never am

afraid to speak what I think to anybody. I don’t think I ever shall be.”

“Are there many persons here who have as bad an opinion of slavery as

you have?”

“I reckon you never saw a conscientious man who had been brought up

among slaves who did not think of it pretty much as I do—did you?”

“Yes, I think I have, a good many.”

“Ah, self-interest warps men’s minds wonderfully, but I don’t believe

there are many who don’t think so, sometimes—it’s impossible, I know,

that they don’t.”

“Were there any others in this neighbourhood,” I asked, “who avowedly

hated slavery?” He replied that there were a good many mechanics, all

the mechanics he knew, who felt slavery to be a great curse to them,

and who wanted to see it brought to an end in some way. The competition

in which they were constantly made to feel themselves engaged with

slave-labour was degrading to them, and they felt it to be so. He knew

a poor, hard-working man who was lately offered the services of three

negroes for six years each if he would let them learn his trade, but he

refused the proposal with indignation, saying he would starve before

he helped a slave to become a mechanic.[9] There was a good deal of

talk now among them about getting laws passed to prevent the owners of

slaves from having them taught trades, and to prohibit slave-mechanics

from being hired out. He could go out to-morrow, he supposed, and in

the course of a day get two hundred signatures to a paper alleging

that slavery was a curse to the people of Mississippi, and praying

the Legislature to take measures to relieve them of it as soon as

practicable. (The county contains three times as many slaves as whites.)

He considered a coercive government of the negroes by the whites,

forcing them to labour systematically, and restraining them from a

reckless destruction of life and property, at present to be necessary.

Of course, he did not think it wrong to hold slaves, and the profits of

their labour were not more than enough to pay a man for looking after

them—not if he did his duty to them. What was wrong, was making slavery

so much worse than was necessary. Negroes would improve very rapidly,

if they were allowed, in any considerable measure, the ordinary

incitements to improvement. He knew hosts of negroes who showed

extraordinary talents, considering their opportunities: there were a

great many in this part of the country who could read and write, and

calculate mentally as well as the general run of white men who had been

to schools. There were Colonel ——’s negroes, some fifty of them; he did

not suppose there were any fifty more contented people in the world;

they were not driven hard, and work was stopped three times a day for

meals; they had plenty to eat, and good clothes; and through the whole

year they had from Friday night to Monday morning to do what they liked

with themselves. Saturdays, the men generally worked in their patches

(private gardens), and the women washed and mended clothes. Sundays,

they nearly all went to a Sabbath School which the mistress taught,

and to meeting, but they were not obliged to go; they could come and

go as they pleased all Saturday and Sunday; they were not looked after

at all. Only on Monday morning, if there should any one be missing,

or any one should come to the field with ragged or dirty clothes, he

would be whipped. He had often noticed how much more intelligent and

sprightly these negroes all were than the common run; a great many

of them had books and could read and write; and on Sundays they were

smartly dressed, some of them better than he or his wife ever thought

of dressing. These things were purchased with the money they made out

of their patches, working Saturdays.

There were two other large plantations near him, in both of which

the negroes were turned out to work at half-past three every week-day

morning—I might hear the bell ring for them—and frequently they were

not stopped till nine o’clock at night, Saturday nights the same as

any other. One of them belonged to a very religious lady, and on

Sunday mornings at half-past nine she had her bell rung for Sunday

School, and after Sunday School they had a meeting, and after dinner

another religious service. Every negro on the plantation was obliged

to attend all these exercises, and if they were not dressed clean they

were whipped. They were never allowed to go off the plantation, and if

they were caught speaking to a negro from any other place, they were

whipped. They could all of them repeat the catechism, he believed, but

they were the dullest, and laziest, and most sorrowful looking negroes

he ever saw.

As a general rule, the condition of the slaves, as regards their

material comfort, had greatly improved within twenty years. He did not

know that it had in other respects. It would not be a bit safer to turn

them free to shift for themselves, than it would have been twenty years

ago. Of this he was quite confident. Perhaps they were a little more

intelligent, knew more, but they were not as capable of self-guidance,

not as much accustomed to work and contrive for themselves, as they

used to be, when they were not fed and clothed nearly as well as now.

Beyond the excessive labour required of them on some plantations, he

did not think slaves were often treated with unnecessary cruelty. It

was necessary to use the lash occasionally. Slaves never really felt

under any moral obligation to obey their masters. Faithful service was

preached to them as a Christian duty, and they pretended to acknowledge

it, but the fact was that they were obedient just so far as they saw

that they must be to avoid punishment; and punishment was necessary,

now and then, to maintain their faith in their master’s power. He had

seventeen slaves, and he did not suppose that there had been a hundred

strokes of the whip on his place for a year past.

He asked if there were many Americans in Texas who were opposed to

slavery, and if they were free to express themselves. I said that the

wealthy Americans there were all slaveholders themselves; that their

influence all went to encourage the use of slave-labour, and render

labour by whites disreputable. “But are there not a good many northern

men there?” he asked. The northern men, I replied, were chiefly

merchants or speculators, who had but one idea, which was to make money

as fast as they could; and nearly all the little money there was in

that country was in the hands of the largest slaveholders.

If that was the way of things there, he said, there could not be

much chance of its becoming a Free State. I thought the chances were

against it, but if the Germans continued to flock into the country, it

would rapidly acquire all the characteristic features of a free-labour

community, including an abundance and variety of skilled labour, a home

market for a variety of crops, denser settlements, and more numerous

social, educational, and commercial conveniences. There would soon be

a large body of small proprietors, not so wealthy that the stimulus

to personal and active industry would have been lost, but yet able

to indulge in a good many luxuries, to found churches, schools, and

railroads, and to attract thither tradesmen, mechanics, professional

men, and artists. Moreover, the labourers who were not landholders

would be intimately blended with them in all their interests; the

two classes not living dissociated from each other, as was the case

generally at the South, but engaged in a constant fulfilment of

reciprocal obligations. I told him that if such a character of society

could once be firmly and extensively established before the country was

partitioned out into these little independent negro kingdoms, which had

existed from the beginning in every other part of the South, I did not

think any laws would be necessary to prevent slavery. It might be a

slave State, but it would be a free people.

On coming from my room in the morning, my host met me with a hearty

grasp of the hand. “I have slept very little with thinking of what you

told me about western Texas. I think I shall have to go there. If we

could get rid of slavery in this region, I believe we would soon be the

most prosperous people in the world. What a disadvantage it must be to

have your ground all frozen up, and to be obliged to fodder your cattle

five months in the year, as you do at the North. I don’t see how you

live. I think I should like to buy a small farm near some town where I

could send my children to school—a farm that I could take care of with

one or two hired men. One thing I wanted to ask you, are the Germans

learning English at all?” “Oh, yes; they teach the children English

in their schools.” “And have they good schools?” “Wherever they have

settled at all closely they have. At New Braunfels they employ American

as well as German teachers, and instruction can be had in the classics,

natural history, and the higher mathematics.” “Upon my word, I think

I must go there,” he replied. (Since then, as I hear, an educational

institution of a high character, has been established by German

influence in San Antonio, teachers in which are from Harvard.)

When I left he mounted a horse and rode on with me some miles, saying

he did not often find an intelligent man who liked to converse with

him on the question of slavery. It seemed to him there was an epidemic

insanity on the subject. It is unnecessary to state his views at

length. They were precisely those which used to be common among all

respectable men at the South.

As we rode an old negro met and greeted us warmly. My companion

hereupon observed that he had never uttered his sentiments in the

presence of a slave, but in some way all the slaves in the country had,

he thought, been informed what they were, for they all looked to him as

their special friend. When they got into trouble, they would often come

to him for advice or assistance. This morning before I was up, a negro

came to him from some miles distant, who had been working for a white

man on Sundays till he owed him three dollars, which, now that the

negro wanted it, he said he could not pay. He had given the negro the

three dollars, for he thought he could manage to get it from the white

man.

He confirmed an impression I had begun to get of the purely dramatic

character of what passed for religion with most of the slaves. One of

his slaves was a preacher, and a favourite among them. He sometimes

went to plantations twenty miles away—even further—on a Sunday, to

preach a funeral sermon, making journeys of fifty miles a day on foot.

After the sermon, a hat would be passed round, and he sometimes brought

home as much as ten dollars. He was a notable pedestrian; and once when

he had committed some abominable crime for which he knew he would have

to be punished, and had run away, he (Mr. Watson) rode after him almost

immediately, often got in sight of him, but did not overtake him until

the second day, when starting early in the morning he overhauled him

crossing a broad, smooth field. When the runaway parson saw that he

could not escape, he jumped up into a tree and called out to him, with

a cheerful voice, “I gin ye a good run dis time, didn’t I, massa?” He

was the most rascally negro, the worst liar, thief, and adulterer on

his place. Indeed, when he was preaching, he always made a strong point

of his own sinfulness, and would weep and bellow about it like a bull

of Bashan, till he got a whole camp meeting into convulsions.

* * * * *

The night after leaving Mr. Watson’s I was kindly received by a

tradesman, who took me, after closing his shop, to his mother’s house,

a log cabin, but more comfortable than many more pretentious residences

at which I passed a night on this journey. For the first time in many

months tea was offered me. It was coarse Bohea, sweetened with honey,

which was stirred into the tea as it boiled in a kettle over the fire,

by the old lady herself, whose especial luxury it seemed to be. She

asked me if folks ever drank tea at the North, and when I spoke of

green tea said she had never heard of that kind of tea before. They

owned a number of slaves, but the young man looked after my horse

himself. There was a good assortment of books and newspapers at this

house, and the people were quite intelligent and very amiable.

The next day, I passed a number of small Indian farms, very badly

cultivated—the corn nearly concealed by weeds. The soil became poorer

than before, and the cabins of poor people more frequent. I counted

about ten plantations, or negro-cultivated farms, in twenty miles.

A planter, at whose house I called after sunset, said it was not

convenient for him to accommodate me, and I was obliged to ride until

it was quite dark. The next house at which I arrived was one of the

commonest sort of cabins. I had passed twenty like it during the

day, and I thought I would take the opportunity to get an interior

knowledge of them. The fact that a horse and waggon were kept, and that

a considerable area of land in the rear of the cabin was planted with

cotton, showed that the family were by no means of the lowest class,

yet, as they were not able even to hire a slave, they may be considered

to represent very favourably, I believe, the condition of the poor

whites of the plantation districts. The whites of the county, I

observe, by the census, are three to one of the slaves; in the nearest

adjoining county, the proportion is reversed; and within a few miles

the soil was richer, and large plantations occurred.

It was raining, and nearly nine o’clock. The door of the cabin was

open, and I rode up and conversed with the occupant as he stood within.

He said that he was not in the habit of taking in travellers, and his

wife was about sick, but if I was a mind to put up with common fare, he

didn’t care. Grateful, I dismounted and took the seat he had vacated by

the fire, while he led away my horse to an open shed in the rear—his

own horse ranging at large, when not in use, during the summer.

The house was all comprised in a single room, twenty-eight by

twenty-five feet in area, and open to the roof above. There was a large

fireplace at one end and a door on each side—no windows at all. Two

bedsteads, a spinning-wheel, a packing-case, which served as a bureau,

a cupboard, made of rough hewn slabs, two or three deer-skin seated

chairs, a Connecticut clock, and a large poster of Jayne’s patent

medicines, constituted all the visible furniture, either useful or

ornamental in purpose. A little girl, immediately, without having had

any directions to do so, got a frying-pan and a chunk of bacon from

the cupboard, and cutting slices from the latter, set it frying for my

supper. The woman of the house sat sulkily in a chair tilted back and

leaning against the logs, spitting occasionally at the fire, but took

no notice of me, barely nodding when I saluted her. A baby lay crying

on the floor. I quieted it and amused it with my watch till the little

girl, having made “coffee” and put a piece of corn-bread on the table

with the bacon, took charge of it.

I hoped the woman was not very ill.

“Got the headache right bad,” she answered. “Have the headache a heap,

I do. Knew I should have it to-night. Been cuttin’ brush in the cotton

this arternoon. Knew’t would bring on my headache. Told him so when I

begun.”

As soon as I had finished my supper and fed Jude, the little girl put

the fragments and the dishes in the cupboard, shoved the table into a

corner, and dragged a quantity of quilts from one of the bedsteads,

which she spread upon the floor, and presently crawled among them out

of sight for the night. The woman picked up the child—which, though

still a suckling, she said was twenty-two months old—and nursed it,

retaking her old position. The man sat with me by the fire, his back

towards her. The baby having fallen asleep was laid away somewhere, and

the woman dragged off another lot of quilts from the beds, spreading

them upon the floor. Then taking a deep tin pan, she filled it with

alternate layers of corn-cobs and hot embers from the fire. This she

placed upon a large block, which was evidently used habitually for the

purpose, in the centre of the cabin. A furious smoke arose from it,

and we soon began to cough. “Most _too_ much smoke,” observed the man.

“Hope ’twill drive out all the gnats, then,” replied the woman. (There

is a very minute flying insect here, the bite of which is excessively

sharp.)

The woman suddenly dropped off her outer garment and stepped from

the midst of its folds, in her petticoat; then, taking the baby from

the place where she had deposited it, lay down and covered herself

with the quilts upon the floor. The man told me that I could take

the bed which remained on one of the bedsteads, and kicking off his

shoes only, rolled himself into a blanket by the side of his wife. I

ventured to take off my cravat and stockings, as well as my boots, but

almost immediately put my stockings on again, drawing their tops over

my pantaloons. The advantage of this arrangement was that, although

my face, eyes, ears, neck, and hands, were immediately attacked, the

vermin did not reach my legs for two or three hours. Just after the

clock struck two, I distinctly heard the man and the woman, and the

girl and the dog scratching, and the horse out in the shed stamping

and gnawing himself. Soon afterward the man exclaimed, “Good God

Almighty—mighty! mighty! mighty!” and jumping up pulled off one of

his stockings, shook it, scratched his foot vehemently, put on the

stocking, and lay down again with a groan. The two doors were open, and

through the logs and the openings in the roof, I saw the clouds divide

and the moon and stars reveal themselves. The woman, after having been

nearly smothered by the smoke from the pan which she had originally

placed close to her own pillow, rose and placed it on the sill of the

windward door, where it burned feebly and smoked lustily, like an altar

to the Lares, all night. Fortunately the cabin was so open that it gave

us little annoyance, while it seemed to answer the purpose of keeping

all flying insects at a distance.

When, on rising in the morning, I said that I would like to wash my

face, water was given me for the purpose in an earthen pie-dish. Just

as breakfast, which was of exactly the same materials as my supper, was

ready, rain began to fall, presently in such a smart shower as to put

the fire out and compel us to move the table under the least leaky part

of the roof.

At breakfast occurred the following conversation:—

“Are there many niggers in New York?”

“Very few.”

“How do you get your work done?”

“There are many Irish and German people constantly coming there who are

glad to get work to do.”

“Oh, and you have them for slaves?”

“They want money and are willing to work for it. A great many

American-born work for wages, too.”

“What do you have to pay?”

“Ten or twelve dollars a month.”

“There was a heap of Irishmen to work on the railroad; they was paid a

dollar a day; there was a good many Americans, too, but mostly they had

little carts and mules, and hauled dirt and sich like. They was paid

twenty-five or thirty dollars a month and found.”

“What did they find them?”

“Oh, blanket and shoes, I expect; they put up kind o’ tents like for

’em to sleep in altogether.”

“What food did they find them?”

“Oh, common food; bacon and meal.”

“What do they generally give the niggers on the plantations here?”

“A peck of meal and three pound of bacon is what they call ’lowance, in

general, I believe. It takes a heap o’ meat on a big plantation. I was

on one of William R. King’s plantations over in Alabamy, where there

was about fifty niggers, one Sunday last summer, and I see ’em weighin’

outen the meat. Tell you, it took a powerful heap on it. They had an

old nigger to weigh it out, and he warn’t no ways partickler about the

weight. He just took and chopped it off, middlins, in chunks, and he’d

throw them into the scales, and if a piece weighed a pound or two over

he wouldn’t mind it; he never took none back. Ain’t niggers all-fired

sassy at the North?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Ain’t they all free, there? I hearn so.”

“Yes.”

“Well, how do they get along when they’s free?”

“I never have seen a great many, to know their circumstances very well.

Right about where I live they seem to me to live quite comfortably;

more so than the niggers on these big plantations do, I should think.”

“Oh, they have a mighty hard time on the big plantations. I’d ruther be

dead than to be a nigger on one of these big plantations.”

“Why, I thought they were pretty well taken care of on them.”

The man and his wife both looked at me as if surprised, and smiled.

“Why, they are well fed, are they not?”

“Oh, but they work em so hard. My God, sir, in pickin’ time on these

plantations they start ’em to work ’fore light, and they don’t give ’em

time to eat.”

“I supposed they generally gave them an hour or two at noon.”

“No, sir; they just carry a piece of bread and meat in their pockets

and they eat it when they can, standin’ up. They have a hard life on

’t, that’s a fact. I reckon you can get along about as well withouten

slaves as with ’em, can’t you, in New York?”

“In New York there is not nearly so large a proportion of very rich

men as here. There are very few people who farm over three hundred

acres, and the greater number—nineteen out of twenty, I suppose—work

themselves with the hands they employ. Yes, I think it’s better than it

is here, for all concerned, a great deal. Folks that can’t afford to

buy niggers get along a great deal better in the Free States, I think;

and I guess that those who could afford to have niggers get along

better without them.”

“I no doubt that’s so. I wish there warn’t no niggers here. They are a

great cuss to this country, I expect. But ’twouldn’t do to free ’em;

that wouldn’t do nohow!”

“Are there many people here who think slavery a curse to the country?”

“Oh, yes, a great many. I reckon the majority would be right glad if we

could get rid of the niggers. But it wouldn’t never do to free ’em and

leave ’em here. I don’t know anybody, hardly, in favour of that. Make

’em free and leave ’em here and they’d steal everything we made. Nobody

couldn’t live here then.”

These views of slavery seem to be universal among people of this

class. They were repeated to me at least a dozen times.

“Where I used to live [Alabama], I remember when I was a boy—must ha’

been about twenty years ago—folks was dreadful frightened about the

niggers. I remember they built pens in the woods where they could hide,

and Christmas time they went and got into the pens, ’fraid the niggers

was risin’.”

“I remember the same time where we was in South Carolina,” said his

wife; “we had all our things put up in bags, so we could tote ’em, if

we heerd they was comin’ our way.”

They did not suppose the niggers ever thought of rising now, but could

give no better reason for not supposing so than that “everybody said

there warn’t no danger on ’t now.”

Hereabouts the plantations were generally small, ten to twenty negroes

on each; sometimes thirty or forty. Where he used to live they were

big ones—forty or fifty, sometimes a hundred on each. He had lived

here ten years. I could not make out why he had not accumulated

wealth, so small a family and such an inexpensive style of living as

he had. He generally planted twenty to thirty acres, he said; this

year he had sixteen in cotton and about ten, he thought, in corn.

Decently cultivated, this planting should have produced him five

hundred dollars’ worth of cotton, besides supplying him with bread

and bacon—his chief expense, apparently. I suggested that this was a

very large planting for his little family; he would need some help in

picking time. He ought to have some now, he said; grass and bushes were

all overgrowing him; he had to work just like a nigger; this durnation

rain would just make the weeds jump, and he didn’t expect he should

have any cotton at all. There warn’t much use in a man’s trying to get

along by himself; every thing seemed to set in agin him. He’d been

trying to hire somebody, but he couldn’t, and his wife was a sickly

kind of a woman.

His wife reckoned he might hire some help if he’d look round sharp.

My horse and dog were as well cared for as possible, and a “snack” of

bacon and corn-bread was offered me for noon, which has been unusual

in Mississippi. When I asked what I should pay, the man hesitated and

said he reckoned what I had had, wasn’t worth much of anything; he was

sorry he could not have accommodated me better. I offered him a dollar,

for which he thanked me warmly. It is the first instance of hesitation

in charging for a lodging which I have met with from a stranger at the

South.

* * * * *

_Northern Alabama, June 15th._—I have to-day reached a more distinctly

hilly country—somewhat rocky and rugged, but with inviting dells. The

soil is sandy and less frequently fertile; cotton-fields are seen only

at long intervals, the crops on the small proportion of cultivated land

being chiefly corn and oats. I notice also that white men are more

commonly at work in the fields than negroes, and this as well in the

cultivation of cotton as of corn.

The larger number of the dwellings are rude log huts, of only one

room, and that unwholesomely crowded. I saw in and about one of

them, not more than fifteen feet square, five grown persons, and as

many children. Occasionally, however, the monotony of these huts is

agreeably varied by neat, white, frame houses. At one such, I dined

to-day, and was comfortably entertained. The owner held a number of

slaves, but made no cotton. He owned a saw mill, was the postmaster of

the neighbourhood, and had been in the Legislature.

I asked him why the capital had been changed from Tuscaloosa to

Montgomery. He did not know. “Because Montgomery is more central and

easy of access, probably,” I suggested. “No, I don’t think that had

anything to do with it.” “Is Tuscaloosa an unhealthy place?” “No, sir;

healthier than Montgomery, I reckon.” “Was it then simply because the

people of the southern districts were stronger, and used their power

to make the capital more convenient of access to themselves?” “Well,

no, I don’t think that was it, exactly. The fact is, sir, the people

here are not like you northern people; they don’t reason out everything

so. They are fond of change, and they got tired of Tuscaloosa; the

Montgomery folks wanted it there and offered to pay for moving it, so

they let ’em have it; ’t was just for a change.” “If there really was

no better reason, was it not rather wasteful to give up all the public

buildings at Tuscaloosa?” “Oh, the Montgomery people wanted it so bad

they promised to pay for building a new State House; so it did not cost

anything.”

Quite on a par with the economics of southern commercial conventions.

I passed the night at the second framed house that I saw during the

day, stopping early in order to avail myself of its promise of comfort.

It was attractively situated on a hilltop, with a peach orchard

near it. The proprietor owned a dozen slaves, and “made cotton,” he

said, “with other crops.” He had some of his neighbours at tea and

at breakfast; sociable, kindly people, satisfied with themselves and

their circumstances, which I judged from their conversation had been

recently improving. One coming in, remarked that he had discharged a

white labourer whom he had employed for some time past; the others

congratulated him on being “shet” of him; all seemed to have noticed

him as a bad, lazy man; he had often been seen lounging in the field,

rapping the negroes with his hoe if they didn’t work to suit him. “He

was about the meanest white man I ever see,” said a woman; “he was a

heap meaner ’n niggers. I reckon niggers would come somewhere between

white folks and such as he.” “The first thing I tell a man,” said

another, “when I hire him, is, ‘if there’s any whippin’ to be done on

this place I want to do it myself.’ If I saw a man rappin’ my niggers

with a hoe-handle, as I see him, durned if I wouldn’t rap him—the lazy

whelp.”

One of the negroes complimented my horse. “Dar’s a heap of genus in dat

yar hoss’s head!” The proprietor looked after the feeding himself.

These people were extremely kind; inquiring with the simplest good

feeling about my domestic relations and the purpose of my journey. When

I left, one of them walked a quarter of a mile to make sure that I

went upon the right road. The charge for entertainment, though it was

unusually good, was a quarter of a dollar less than I have paid before,

which I mention, not as Mr. De Bow would suppose,[10] out of gratitude

for the moderation, but as an indication of the habits of the people,

showing, as it may, either closer calculation, or that the district

grows its own supplies, and can furnish food cheaper than those in

which attention is more exclusively given to cotton.

_June 17th._—The country continues hilly, and is well populated by

farmers, living in log huts, while every mile or two, on the more level

and fertile land, there is a larger farm, with ten or twenty negroes at

work. A few whites are usually working near them, in the same field,

generally ploughing while the negroes hoe.

About noon, my attention was attracted towards a person upon a ledge,

a little above the road, who was throwing up earth and stone with a

shovel. I stopped to see what the purpose of this work might be, and

perceived that the shoveller was a woman, who, presently discovering

me, stopped and called to others behind her, and immediately a stout

girl and two younger children, with a man, came to the edge and

looked at me. The woman was bareheaded, and otherwise half-naked, as

perhaps needed to be, for her work would have been thought hard by

our stoutest labourers, and it was the hottest weather of the summer,

in the latitude of Charleston, and on a hill-side in the full face of

the noon sun. I pushed my horse up the hill until I reached them, when

another man appeared, and in answer to my inquiries told me that they

were getting out iron ore. One was picking in a vein, having excavated

a short adit; the other man picked looser ore exterior to the vein.

The women and children shovelled out the ore and piled it on kilns of

timber, where they roasted it to make it crumble. It was then carted to

a forge, and they were paid for it by the load. They were all clothed

very meanly and scantily. The women worked, so far as I could see, as

hard as the men. The children, too, even to the youngest—a boy of eight

or ten—were carrying large lumps of ore, and heaving them into the

kiln, and shovelling the finer into a screen to separate the earth from

it.

Immediately after leaving them I found a good spot for nooning. I

roped my horse out to graze, and spread my blanket in a deep shade.

I noticed that the noise of their work had ceased, and about fifteen

minutes afterwards, Jude suddenly barking, I saw one of the men peering

at me through the trees, several rods distant. I called to him to come

up. He approached rather slowly and timidly, examined the rope with

which my horse was fastened, eyed me vigilantly, and at length asked

if I was resting myself. I replied that I was; and he said that he did

not know but I might be sick, and had come to see me. I thanked him,

and offered him a seat upon my blanket, which he declined. Presently he

took up a newspaper that I had been reading, looked at it for a moment,

then he told me he couldn’t read. “Folks don’t care much for edication

round here; it would be better for ’em, I expect, if they did.” He

began then to question me closely about my circumstances—where I came

from, whither I was going, etc.

When his curiosity was partially appeased he suddenly laughed in a

silly manner, and said that the people he had been working with had

watched me after I left them; they saw me ride up the hill and stop,

ride on again, and finally take off my saddle, turn my horse loose and

tote my saddle away, and they were much frightened, thinking I must

be crazy at least. When he started to come toward me they told him he

wouldn’t dare to go to me, but he saw how it was, well enough—I was

just resting myself.

“If I should run down hill now,” said he, “they’d start right off and

wouldn’t stop for ten mile, reckoning you was arter me. That would be

fun; oh, we have some good fun here sometimes with these green folks.

There’s an amazin’ ignorant set round here.”

I asked if they were foreigners.

“Oh, no; they are common, no account people; they used to live over the

hill, here; they come right nigh starvin’ thar, I expect.”

They had not been able to get any work to do, and had been “powerful

poor,” until he got them to come here. They had taken an old cabin,

worked with him, and were doing right well now. He didn’t let them work

in the vein—he kept that for himself—but they worked all around, and

some days they made a dollar and a half—the man, woman, and children

together. They had one other girl, but she had to stay at home to take

care of the baby and keep cattle and hogs out of their “gardien.” He

had known the woman when she was a girl; “she was always a good one to

work. She’d got a voice like a bull, and she was as smart as a wild

cat; but the man warn’t no account.”

He had himself followed this business (mining) since he was a young

man, and could earn three dollars a day by it if he tried; he had a

large family and owned a small farm: never laid up anything, always

kept himself a little in debt at the store.

He asked if I had not found the people “more friendly like” up in this

country to what they were down below, and assured me that I would find

them grow more friendly as I went further North, so at least he had

heard, and he knew where he first came from (Tennessee) the people were

more friendly than they were here. “The richer a man is,” he continued,

pursuing a natural association of ideas, “and the more niggers he’s

got, the poorer he seems to live. If you want to fare well in this

country you stop to poor folks’ housen; they try to enjoy what they’ve

got, while they ken, but these yer big planters they don’ care for

nothing but to save. Now, I never calculate to save anything; I tell my

wife I work hard, and I mean to enjoy what I earn as fast as it comes.”

Sometimes he “took up bee-huntin’ for a spell,” and made money by

collecting wild honey. He described his manner of finding the hives and

securing the honey, and, with a hushed voice, told me a “secret,” which

was, that if you carried three leaves, each of a different tree (?) in

your hand, there was never a bee would dare to sting you.

I asked about his children. He had one grown-up son, who was doing very

well; he was hired by the gentleman who owned the forge, to cart ore.

He had nothing to do but to drive a team; he didn’t have to load, and

he had a nigger to take care of the horses when his day’s teaming was

done.

His wages were seven dollars a month, and board for himself and wife.

They ate at the same table with the gentleman, and had good living,

beside having something out of the store, “tobacco and so on—tobacco

for both on ’em, and two people uses a good deal of tobacco you know;

so that’s pretty good wages—seven dollars a month besides their keep

and tobacco.” Irishmen, he informed me, had been employed occasionally

at the forge. “They do well at first, only they is apt to get into

fights all the time; but after they’ve been here a year or two, they

get to feel so independent and keerless-like, you can’t get along with

’em.” He remained about half an hour, and not till he returned did I

hear again the noise of picking and shovelling, and cutting timber.

At the forges, I was told, slave labour is mainly employed—the slaves

being owned by the proprietors of the forges.

I spent that night at a large inn in a village. In the morning as I sat

waiting in my room, a boy opened the door. Without looking up I asked,

“Well?”

“I didn’t say nuthin’, sar,” with a great grin.

“What are you waiting there for?” “Please, massa, I b’leve yours owin’

me suthin’, sar.” “Owing you something? What do you mean?” “For drying

yer clothes for yer, sar, last night.” I had ordered him immediately

after tea to go up stairs and get my clothes, which had been drenched

in a shower, and hang them by the kitchen fire, that they might be

dry if I should wish to leave early in the morning. When I went to my

bedroom at nine o’clock I found the clothes where I had left them. I

went down and reported it to the landlord, who directly sent the boy

for them. In the morning, when I got them again I found they were not

dry except where they were burned. I told him to be gone; but with the

door half open, he stood putting in his head, bowing and grinning.

“Please, sar, massa sent me out of an errand, and I was afeard you

would be gone before I got back; dat’s the reason why I mention it,

sar; dat’s all, sar; I hope you’ll skuse me, sar.”

During the afternoon I rode on through a valley, narrow and apparently

fertile, but the crops indifferent. The general social characteristics

were the same that I met with yesterday.

At night I stopped at a large house having an unusual number of negro

cabins and stables about it. The proprietor, a hearty old farmer,

boasted much of his pack of hounds, saying they had pulled down five

deer before he had had a shot at them. He was much interested to hear

about Texas, the Indians and the game. He reckoned there was “a heap of

big varmint out thar.”

His crop of cotton did not average two bales to the hand, and corn not

twenty bushels to the acre.

He amused me much with a humorous account of an oyster supper to which

he had been invited in town, and his attempts to eat the “nasty things”

without appearing disconcerted before the ladies.

An old negro took my horse when I arrived, and half an hour afterward,

came to me and asked if I wanted to see him fed. As we walked toward

the stables, he told me that he always took care not to forget

gentlemen’s hosses, and to treat them well; “then,” he said, bowing and

with emphasis, “they looks out and don’t forget to treat me well.”

The same negro was called to serve me as a candlestick at bedtime. He

held the candle till I got into bed. As he retired I closed my eyes,

but directly afterward, perceiving the light return, I opened them.

Uncle Abram was bending over me, holding the candle, grinning with

his toothless gums, winking and shaking his head in a most mysterious

manner.

“Hush! massa,” he whispered. “You hain’t got something to drink, in

dem saddle-bags, has you, sar?”

The farmer told me something about “nigger dogs” they didn’t use

foxhounds, but bloodhounds—not pure, he thought, but a cross of the

Spanish bloodhound with the common hounds, or curs. There were many

men, he said, in the country below here, who made a business of

nigger-hunting, and they had their horses trained, as well as the dogs,

to go over any common fence, or if they couldn’t leap it, to break it

down. Dogs were trained, when pups, to follow a nigger—not allowed to

catch one, however, unless they were quite young, so that they couldn’t

hurt him much, and they were always taught to hate a negro, never being

permitted to see one except to be put in chase of him. He believed that

only two of a pack were kept kenneled all the time—these were old,

keen ones, who led the rest when they were out; they were always kept

coupled together with a chain, except when trailing. He had seen a

pack of thirteen who would follow a trail two days and a half old, if

rain had not fallen in the mean time. When it rained immediately after

a negro got off, they had to scour the country where they supposed he

might be, till they scented him.

When hard pushed, a negro always took to a tree; sometimes, however,

they would catch him in an open field. When this was the case the

hunter called off the dogs as soon as he could, unless the negro

fought—“that generally makes ’em mad (the hunters), and they’ll let ’em

tear him a spell. The owners don’t mind having them kind o’ niggers

tore a good deal; runaways ain’t much account nohow, and it makes the

rest more afraid to run away, when they see how they are sarved.”

If they caught the runaway within two or three days, they got from

$10 to $20; if it took a longer time, they were paid more than that;

sometimes $200. They asked their own price; if an owner should think it

exorbitant, he supposed, he said in reply to an inquiry, they’d turn

the nigger loose, order him to make off, and tell his master to catch

his own niggers.

* * * * *

_Sunday._—I rode on, during the cool of the morning, about eight miles,

and stopped for the day, at a house pleasantly situated by a small

stream, among wooded hills. During the forenoon, seven men and three

women, with their children, gathered at the house. All of them, I

concluded, were non-slaveholders, as was our host himself; though, as

one told me, “with his five boys he makes a heap more crop than Mrs.

——, who’s got forty niggers.” “How is that?” “Well, she’s a woman, and

she can’t make the niggers work; she won’t have a overseer, and niggers

won’t work, you know, unless there’s somebody to drive ’em.”

Our host, when I arrived, had just been pulling weeds out of his potato

patch, which he mentioned as an apology for not being a little clean,

like the rest.

Beside the company I have mentioned, and the large family of the house,

there was another traveller and myself to dinner, and three bountiful

tables were spread, one after another.

The traveller was said to be a Methodist preacher, but gave no

indication of it, except that he said grace before meat, and used the

Hebrew word for Sunday. He was, however, a man of superior intelligence

to the others, who were ignorant and stupid, though friendly and

communicative. He asked me “what a good nigger man could be bought for

in New York;” he didn’t seem surprised, or make any further inquiry,

when I told him we had no slaves there. Some asked me much about crops,

and when I told them that my crops of wheat for six years had averaged

twenty-eight bushels, and that I had once reaped forty from a single

acre, they were amazed beyond expression, and anxious to know how I

“put it in.” I described the process minutely, which astonished them

still more; and one man said he had often thought they might get more

wheat if they put it in differently; he had thought that perhaps more

wheat would grow if more seed were sown, but he never tried it. The

general practice, they told me, was to sow wheat on ground from which

they had taken maize, without removing the maize stumps, or ploughing

it at all; they sowed three pecks of wheat to the acre, and then

ploughed it in—that was all. They used the cradle, but had never heard

of reaping machines; the crop was from five to ten bushels an acre;

ten bushels was extraordinary, six was not thought bad. Of cotton,

the ordinary crop was five hundred pounds to the acre, or from one to

two bales to a hand. Of maize, usually from ten to twenty bushels to

the acre; last year not over ten; this year they thought it would be

twenty-five on the best land.

The general admiration of Jude brought up the topic of negro dogs

again, and the clergyman told a story of a man who hunted niggers near

where he lived. He was out once with another man, when after a long

search, they found the dogs barking up a big cottonwood tree. They

examined the tree closely without finding any negro, and concluded that

the dogs must have been foiled, and they were about to go away, when

Mr. ——, from some distance off, thought he saw a negro’s leg very high

up in the tree, where the leaves and moss were thick enough to hide

a man lying on the top of a limb with his feet against the trunk. He

called out, as if he really saw a man, telling him to come down, but

nothing stirred. He sent for an axe, and called out again, saying he

would cut the tree to the ground if he didn’t come down. There was no

reply. He then cut half through the tree on one side, and was beginning

on the other, when the negro halloed out that if he would stop he would

come down. He stopped cutting, and the negro descended to the lowest

limb, which was still far from the ground, and asked the hunter to take

away his dogs, and promise they shouldn’t tear him. But the hunter

swore he’d make no conditions with him after having been made to cut

the tree almost down.

The negro said no more, but retained his position until the tree was

nearly cut in two. When it began to totter, he slid down the trunk, the

dogs springing upon him as soon as he was within their reach. He fought

them hard, and got hold of one by the ear; that made them fiercer, and

they tore him till the hunter was afraid they’d kill him, and stopped

them.

“Are dogs allowed to tear the negroes when they catch them?”

“When the hunters come up they always call them off, unless the nigger

fights. If the nigger fights ’em that makes ’em mad, and they let ’em

tear him good,” said the clergyman.

There were two or three young women present, and the young men were

sparking with them in the house, sitting on the beds for want of sofas,

the chairs being all in use outside; the rest of the company sat on the

gallery most of the time, but there was little conversation. It was

twice remarked to me, “Sunday’s a dull day—nothing to do.”

As the Methodist and I were reading after dinner, I noticed that two

or three were persuading the others to go with them somewhere, and I

asked where they purposed to go. They said they wanted to go over the

mountain to hunt a bull.

“To shoot him?”

“Oh, no, it’s a working bull; they got his mate yesterday. There ain’t

but one pair of cattle in this neighbourhood, and they do all the

hauling for nine families.” They belonged, together with their waggon,

to one man, and the rest borrowed of him. They wanted them this week to

cart in their oats. The stray bull was driven in toward night, yoked

with another to a waggon, and one of the women, with her family, got

into the waggon and was carried home. The bulls were fractious and had

to be led by one man, while another urged them forward with a cudgel.

Last night by the way a neighbour came into the house of Uncle Abram’s

master, and in the course of conversation about crops, said that on

Sunday he went over to John Brown’s to get him to come out and help him

at his harvesting. He found four others there for the same purpose, but

John said he didn’t feel well, and he reckoned he couldn’t work. He

offered him a dollar and a half a day to cradle for him; but when he

tried to persuade him, John spoke out plainly and said, “he’d be d—d if

he was going to work anyhow;” so he said to the others, “Come, boys,

we may as well go; you can’t make a lazy man work when he’s determined

he won’t.” He supposed that remark made him mad, for on Thursday John

came running across his cotton patch, where he was ploughing. He didn’t

speak a word to him, but cut along over to his neighbour’s house, and

told him that he had shot two deer, and wanted his hounds to catch ’em,

promising to give him half the venison if he succeeded. He did catch

one of them, and kept his promise.

This man Brown, they told me, had a large family, and lived in a

little cabin on the mountain. He pretended to plant a corn patch, but

he never worked it, and didn’t make any corn. They reckoned he lived

pretty much on what corn and hogs he could steal, and on game. The

children were described as pitiably, “scrawny,” half-starved little

wretches. Last summer his wife had come to one of them, saying they had

no corn, and she wanted to pick cotton to earn some. He had let her go

in with the niggers and pick. She kept at it for two days, and took her

pay in corn. Afterward he saw her little boy “toting” it to the mill to

be ground—much too heavy a load for him.

I asked if there were many such vagabonds.

“Yes, a great many on the mountain, and they make a heap of trouble.

There is a law by which they might be taken up [if it could be proved

that they have no ‘visible means of support’] and made to work to

support their families; but the law is never used.”

Speaking of another man, one said: “He’ll be here to breakfast, at your

house to dinner, and at Dr. ——’s to supper, leaving his family to live

as best they can.” They “reckoned” he got most of his living in that

way, while his family had to get theirs by stealing. He never did any

work except hunting, and they “reckoned” he killed about as many shoats

and yearlings as deer and turkeys.

They said that this sort of people were not often intemperate; they had

no money to buy liquor with; now and then, when they’d sold some game

or done a little work to raise money, they’d have a spree; but they

were more apt to gamble it off or spend it for fine clothes and things

to trick out their wives.

* * * * *

_June —._ To-day, I am passing through a valley of thin, sandy soil,

thickly populated by poor farmers. Negroes are rare, but occasionally

neat, new houses, with other improvements, show the increasing

prosperity of the district. The majority of dwellings are small log

cabins of one room, with another separate cabin for a kitchen; each

house has a well, and a garden inclosed with palings. Cows, goats,

mules and swine, fowls and doves are abundant. The people are more

social than those of the lower country, falling readily into friendly

conversation with a traveller. They are very ignorant; the agriculture

is wretched and the work hard. I have seen three white women hoeing

field crops to-day. A spinning-wheel is heard in every house, and

frequently a loom is clanging in the gallery, always worked by women;

every one wears homespun. The negroes have much more individual freedom

than in the rich cotton country, and are not unfrequently heard singing

or whistling at their work.

* * * * *

_Tennessee, June 29th._—At nightfall I entered a broader and more

populous valley than I had seen before during the day, but for some

time there were only small single room log cabins, at which I was loath

to apply for lodging. At length I reached a large and substantial log

house with negro cabins. The master sat in the stoop. I asked if he

could accommodate me.

“What do you want?”

“Something to eat for myself and horse, and room to sleep under your

roof.”

“The wust on’t is,” he said, getting up and coming toward me, “we

haven’t got much for your horse.”

“You’ve got corn, I suppose.”

“No, hain’t got no corn but a little that we want for ourselves, only

just enough to bread us till corn comes again.”

“Well, you have oats?”

“Hain’t got an oat.”

“Haven’t you hay?”

“No.”

“Then I must go further, for my horse can’t travel on fodder.”

“Hain’t got nary fodder nuther.”

Fortunately I did not have to go much farther before I came to the

best house I had seen during the day, a large, neat, white house, with

negro shanties, and an open log cabin in the front yard. A stout,

elderly, fine-looking woman, in a cool white muslin dress sat upon the

gallery, fanning herself. Two little negroes had just brought a pail of

fresh water, and she was drinking of it with a gourd, as I came to the

gate. I asked if it would be convenient for her to accommodate me for

the night, doubtingly, for I had learned to distrust the accommodations

of the wealthy slaveholders.

“Oh yes, get down; fasten your horse there, and the niggers will take

care of him when they come from their work. Come up here and take a

seat.”

I brought in my saddle-bags.

“Bring them in here, into the parlour,” she said, “where they’ll be

safe.”

The interior of the house was furnished with unusual comfort. “The

parlour,” however, had a bed in it. As we came out, she locked the door.

We had not sat long, talking about the weather (she was suffering much

from the heat), when her husband came. He was very hot also, though

dressed coolly enough in merely a pair of short-legged, unbleached

cotton trousers, and a shirt with the bosom spread open—no shoes nor

stockings. He took his seat before speaking to me, and after telling

his wife it was the hottest day he ever saw, squared his chair toward

me, threw it back so as to recline against a post, and said gruffly,

“Good evening, sir; you going to stay here to-night?”

I replied, and he looked at me a few moments without speaking. He was,

in fact, so hot that he spoke with difficulty. At length he got breath

and asked abruptly: “You a mechanic, sir, or a dentist, eh—or what?”

Supper was cooked by two young women, daughters of the master of the

house, assisted by the two little negro boys. The cabin in front of the

house was the kitchen, and when the bacon was dished up, one of the

boys struck an iron triangle at the door. “Come to supper,” said the

host, and led the way to the kitchen, which was also the supper-room.

One of the young ladies took the foot of the table, the other seated

herself apart by the fire, and actually waited on the table, though

the two negro boys stood at the head and foot, nominally waiters, but

always anticipated by the Cinderella, when anything was wanted.

A big lout of a youth who came from the field with the negroes, looked

in, but seeing me, retired. His father called, but his mother said, “’t

wouldn’t do no good—he was so bashful.”

Speaking of the climate of the country, I was informed that a majority

of the folks went barefoot all winter, though they had snow much of the

time four or five inches deep, and the man said he didn’t think most of

the men about here had more than one coat, and they never wore any in

winter except on holidays. “That was the healthiest way,” he reckoned,

“just to toughen yourself and not wear no coat; no matter how cold it

was, he didn’t wear no coat.”

The master held a candle for me while I undressed, in a large room

above stairs; and gave me my choice of the four beds in it. I found

one straw bed (with, as usual, but one sheet), on which I slept

comfortably. At midnight I was awakened by some one coming in. I

rustled my straw, and a voice said, “Who is there in this room?”

“A stranger passing the night; who are you?”

“All right; I belong here. I’ve been away and have just come home.”

He did not take his clothes off to sleep. He turned out to be an older

son who had been fifty miles away, looking after a stray horse. When I

went down stairs in the morning, having been wakened early by flies,

and the dawn of day through an open window, I saw the master lying

on his bed in the “parlour,” still asleep in the clothes he wore at

supper. His wife was washing her face on the gallery, being already

dressed for the day; after using the family towel, she went into the

kitchen, but soon returned, smoking a pipe, to her chair in the doorway.

Yet everything betokened an opulent and prosperous man—rich land,

extensive field crops, a number of negroes, and considerable herds of

cattle and horses. He also had capital invested in mines and railroads,

he told me. His elder son spoke of him as “the squire.”

A negro woman assisted in preparing breakfast (she had probably been

employed in the field labour the night before), and both the young

ladies were at the table. The squire observed to me that he supposed

we could buy hands very cheap in New York. I said we could hire them

there at moderate wages. He asked if we couldn’t buy as many as we

wanted, by sending to Ireland for them and paying their passage. He

had supposed we could buy them and hold them as slaves for a term of

years, by paying the freight on them. When I had corrected him, he

said, a little hesitatingly, “You don’t have no black slaves in New

York?” “No, sir.” “There’s niggers there, ain’t there, only they’re all

free?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, how do they get along so?” “So far as I know,

the most of them live pretty comfortably.” (I have changed my standard

of comfort lately, and am inclined to believe that the majority of the

negroes at the North live more comfortably than the majority of whites

at the South.) “I wouldn’t like that,” said the old lady. “I wouldn’t

like to live where niggers was free, they are bad enough when they are

slaves: it’s hard enough to get along with them here, they’re so bad.

I reckon that niggers are the meanest critters on earth; they are so

mean and nasty” (she expressed disgust and indignation very strongly in

her face). “If they was to think themselves equal to we, I don’t think

white folks could abide it—they’re such vile saucy things.” A negro

woman and two boys were in the room, as she said this.

* * * * *

_North Carolina, July 13th._—I rode late last night, there being no

cabins for several miles in which I was willing to spend the night,

until I came to one of larger size than usual, with a gallery on the

side toward the road and a good stable opposite it. A man on the

gallery was about to answer (as I judged from his countenance), “I

reckon you can,” to my inquiry if I could stay, when the cracked voice

of a worryful woman screeched out from within, “We don’t foller takin’

in people.”

“No, sir,” said the man, “we don’t foller it.”

“How far shall I have to go?”

“There’s another house a little better than three quarters of a mile

further on.”

To this house I proceeded—a cabin of one room and a loft, with a

kitchen in a separate cabin. The owner said he never turned anybody

away, and I was welcome. He did not say that he had no corn, until

after supper, when I asked for it to feed my horse. The family were

good-natured, intelligent people, but very ignorant. The man and his

wife and the daughters slept below, the boy and I in the cock-loft.

Supper and breakfast were eaten in the detached kitchen. Yet they were

by no means poor people. The man told me that he had over a thousand

acres of rich tillable land, besides a large extent of mountain range,

the most of which latter he had bought from time to time as he was

able, to prevent the settlement of squatters near his valley-land.

“There were people who would be bad neighbours, I knew,” he said, “that

would settle on most any kind of place, and everybody wants to keep

such as far away from them as they can.” (When I took my bridle off, I

hung it up by the stable-door; he took it down and said he’d hang it in

a safer place. “He’d never had anything stolen from here, and he didn’t

mean to have—it was just as well not to put temptation before people,”

and he took it into the house and put it under his bed.)

Besides this large tract of land here, he owned another tract of two

hundred acres with a house upon it, rented for one-third the produce,

and another smaller farm, similarly rented; he also owned a grist mill,

which he rented to a miller for half the tolls. He told me that he had

thought a good deal formerly of moving to new countries, but he had

been doing pretty well and had stayed here now so long, he didn’t much

think he should ever budge. He reckoned he’d got enough to make him a

living for the rest of his life, and he didn’t know any use a man had

for more’n that.

I did not see a single book in the house, nor do I think that any of

the family could read. He said that many people here were talking about

Iowa and Indiana; “was Iowa (Hiaway) beyond the Texies?” I opened my

map to show him where it was, but he said he “wasn’t scollar’d enough”

to understand it, and I could not induce him to look at it. I asked

him if the people here preferred Iowa and Indiana to Missouri at all

because they were Free States. “I reckon,” he replied, “they don’t

have no allusion to that. Slavery is a great cuss, though, I think,

the greatest there is in these United States. There ain’t no account

of slaves up here in the west, but down in the east part of this State

about Fayetteville there’s as many as there is in South Carolina.

That’s the reason the West and the East don’t agree in this State;

people out here hates the Eastern people.”

“Why is that?”

“Why you see they vote on the slave basis, and there’s some of them

nigger counties where there ain’t more’n four or five hundred white

folks, that has just as much power in the Legislature as any of our

mountain counties where there’ll be some thousand voters.”

He made further remarks against slavery and against slaveholders. When

I told him that I entirely agreed with him, and said further, that poor

white people were usually far better off in the Free than in the Slave

States, he seemed a little surprised and said, “New York ain’t a Free

State, is it?”

Labourers’ wages here, he stated, were from fifty cents to one dollar

a day, or eight dollars a month. “How much by the year?” “They’s never

lured by the year.”

“Would it be $75 a year?”

“’Twouldn’t be over that, anyhow, but ’tain’t general for people to

hire here only for harvest time; fact is, a man couldn’t earn his

board, let alone his wages, for six months in the year.”

“But what do these men who hire out during harvest time do during the

rest of the year; do they have to earn enough in those two or three

months to live on for the other eight or nine?”

“Well, they gets jobs sometimes, and they goes from one place to

another.”

“But in winter time, when you say there’s not work enough to pay their

board?”

“Well, they keeps a goin’ round from one place to another, and gets

their living somehow.”

“The fact on’t is,” he said at length, as I pressed the inquiry, “there

ain’t anybody that ever means to work any in this country, except just

along in harvest—folks don’t keep working here as they do in your

country, I expect.”

“But they must put in their crops?”

“Yes, folks that have farms of their own, they do put in their craps

and tend ’em, but these fellows that don’t have farms, they won’t work

except in harvest, when they can get high wages [$8 a month]. I hired

a fellow last spring for six months; I wanted him to help me plant and

tend my corn. You see I had a short crap last year, and this spring I

had to pay fifty cents a bushel for corn for bread, and I didn’t want

to get caught so again, not this year, so I gin this fellow $6 a month

for six months—$36 I gin him in hard silver.”

“Paid it to him in advance?”

“Yes, he wouldn’t come ’less I’d pay him right then. Well, he worked

one month, and maybe eight days—no, I don’t think it was more than six

days over a month, and then he went away, and I hain’t seen a sight on

him since. I expect I shall lose my money—reckon he don’t ever intend

to come back; he knows I’m right in harvest, and want him now, if ever

I do.”

“What did he go away for?”

“Why, he said he was sick, but if he was, he got well mighty easy after

he stopped working.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Oh, yes, he’s going round here.”

“What is he doing?”

“Well, he’s just goin’ round.”

“Is he at work for any one else?”

“Reckon not—no, he’s just goin’ round from one place to another.”

At supper and breakfast surprise was expressed that I declined coffee,

and more still that I drank water instead of milk. The woman observed,

“’twas cheap boarding me.” The man said he must get home a couple more

cows; they ought to drink milk more, coffee was so high now, and he

believed milk would be just as healthy. The woman asked the price of

coffee in New York; I could not tell her, but said I believed it was

uncommonly high; the crops had been short. She asked how coffee grew.

I told her as well as I was able, but concluded by saying I had never

seen it growing. “Don’t you raise coffee in New York?” she asked; “I

thought that was where it came from.”

The butter was excellent. I said so, and asked if they never made any

for sale. The woman said she could make “as good butter as any ever was

made in the yarth, but she couldn’t get anything for it; there warn’t

many of the merchants would buy it, and those that did, would only take

it at eight cents a pound for goods.” The man said the only thing he

could ever sell for ready money was cattle. Drovers bought them for the

New York market, and lately they were very high—four cents a pound. He

had driven cattle all the way to Charleston himself, to sell them, and

only got four cents a pound there. He had sold corn here for twelve and

a half cents a bushel.

Although the man could not read, he had honoured letters by calling one

of his children “Washington Irving;” another was known as Matterson

(Madison?). He had never tried manuring land for crops, but said, “I do

believe it is a good plan, and if I live I mean to try it sometime.”

* * * * *

_July 16th._—I stopped last night at the pleasantest house I have

yet seen in the highlands; a framed house, painted white, with a log

kitchen attached. The owner was a man of superior standing. I judged

from the public documents and law books on his table, that he had

either been in the Legislature of the State, or that he was a justice

of the peace. There were also a good many other books and newspapers,

chiefly of a religious character. He used, however, some singularly

uncouth phrases common here. He had a store, and carried on farming

and stock raising. After a conversation about his agriculture, I

remarked that there were but few slaves in this part of the country.

He wished that there were fewer. They were not profitable property

here, I presumed. They were not, he said, except to raise for sale;

but there were a good many people here who would not have them if

they were profitable, and yet who were abundantly able to buy them.

They were horrid things, he thought; he would not take one to keep

it if it should be given to him. ’Twould be a great deal better for

the country, he believed, if there was not a slave in it. He supposed

it would not be right to take them away from those who had acquired

property in them, without any remuneration, but he wished they could

all be sent out of the country—sent to Liberia. That was what ought

to be done with them. I said it was evident that where there were no

slaves, other things being equal, there was greater prosperity than

where slavery supplied the labour. He didn’t care so much for that, he

said; there was a greater objection to slavery than that, in his mind.

He was afraid that there was many a man who had gone to the bad world,

who wouldn’t have gone there if he hadn’t had any slaves. He had been

down in the nigger counties a good deal, and he had seen how it worked

on the white people. It made the rich people, who owned the niggers,

passionate and proud, and ugly, and it made the poor people mean.

“People that own niggers are always mad with them about something; half

their time is spent in swearing and yelling at them.”

“I see you have ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ here,” said I; “have you read it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what do you think of it?”

“Think of it? I think well of it.”

“Do most of the people here in the mountains think as you do about

slavery?”

“Well, there’s some thinks one way and some another, but there’s hardly

any one here that don’t think slavery’s a curse to our country, or who

wouldn’t be glad to get rid of it.”

I asked what the people about here thought of the Nebraska Bill. He

couldn’t say what the majority thought. Would people moving from here

to Nebraska now, be likely to vote for the admission of slavery there?

He thought not; “most people would much rather live in a Free State.”

He told me that he knew personally several persons who had gone to

California, and taken slaves with them, who had not been able to bring

them back. There were one or two cases where the negroes had been

induced to return, and these instances had been made much of in the

papers, as evidence that the slaves were contented.

“That’s a great lie,” he said; “they are not content, and nine-tenths

of ’em would do ’most anything to be free. It’s only now and then that

slaves, who are treated unusual kind, and made a great deal of, will

choose to remain in slavery if freedom is put in their way.” He knew

one man (giving his name) who tried to bring two slaves back from

California, and had got started with them, when some white people

suspecting it, went on board the ship and told him it was against the

law to hold negroes as slaves in California, and his negroes shouldn’t

go back with him unless they were willing to. Then they went to the

slaves and told them they need not return if they preferred to stay,

and the slaves said they had wanted very much to go back to North

Carolina, yet they would rather remain in California, if they could

be free, and so they took them ashore. He had heard the slave owner

himself relating this, and cursing the men who interfered. He had told

him that they did no more than Christians were obliged to do.

I overtook upon the road, to-day, three young men of the poorest class.

Speaking of the price of land and the profit of farming, one of them

said, believing me to be a southerner—

“We are all poor folks here; don’t hardly make enough to keep us in

liquor. Anybody can raise as much corn and hogs on the mountains as

he’ll want to live on, but there ain’t no rich people here. Nobody’s

got any black ones—only three or four; no one’s got fifty or a hundred,

like as they have down in the East.” “It would be better,” interrupted

another, somewhat fiercely, “there warn’t any at all; that’s my mind

about it; they’re no business here; they ought to be in their own

country and take care of themselves, that’s what I believe, and I

don’t care who hears it.” But let the reader not be deceived by these

expressions; they indicate simply the weakness and cowardice of the

class represented by these men. It is not slavery they detest; it is

simply the negro competition, and the monopoly of the opportunities to

make money by negro owners, which they feel and but dimly comprehend.

* * * * *

If you meet a man without stopping, the salutation here always is, “How

d’ye do, sir?” never “Good morning;” and on parting it is, “I wish you

well, sir,” more frequently than “Good-bye.” You are always commanded

to appear at the table, as elsewhere throughout the South, in a rough,

peremptory tone, as if your host feared you would try to excuse

yourself.

“Come in to supper.” “Take a seat.” “Some of the fry?” “Help yourself

to anything you see that you can eat.”

They ask your name, but do not often call you by it, but hail you

“Stranger,” or “Friend.”

Texas is always spoken of in the plural—“the Texies.” “Bean’t the

Texies powerful sickly?”

“Ill” is used for “vicious.” “Is your horse ill?” “Not that I am aware

of. Does he appear so?” “No; but some horses will bite a stranger if he

goes to handling on ’em.”

“Is your horse ill?” “No, I believe not.” “I see he kind o’ drapt his

ears when I came up, ’zif he was playful.”

Everybody I’ve met in the last three counties—after ascertaining

what parts I came from, and which parts I’m going to, where I got my

horse, what he cost, and of what breed he is, what breed the dog is,

and whether she’s followed me all the way from the Texies, if her feet

ain’t worn out, and if I don’t think I’ll have to tote her if I go much

further, and if I don’t want to give her away, how I like the Texies,

etc.—has asked me whether I didn’t see a man by the name of Baker in

the Texies, who was sheriff of —— county, and didn’t behave exactly

the gentleman, or another fellow by the name of ——, who ran away from

the same county, and cut to the Texies. I’ve been asked if they had

done fighting yet in the Texies, referring to the war with Mexico,

which was ended ten years ago. Indeed the ignorance with regard to

everything transpiring in the world outside, and the absurd ideas and

reports I hear, are quite incredible. It cannot be supposed that having

been at home in New York, there should be any one there whom I do not

personally know, or that, having passed through Texas, I should be

unable to speak from personal knowledge of the welfare of every one in

that State.

* * * * *

_North-eastern Tennessee_,——.—Night before last I spent at the

residence of a man who had six slaves; last night, at the home of a

farmer without slaves. Both houses were of the best class common in

this region; two-story framed buildings, large, and with many beds,

to accommodate drovers and waggoners, who, at some seasons, fill the

houses which are known to be prepared with stabling, corn, and beds for

them. The slaveholder was much the wealthier of the two, and his house

originally was the finer, but he lived in much less comfort than the

other. His house was in great need of repair, and was much disordered;

it was dirty, and the bed given me to sleep in was disgusting. He and

his wife made the signs of pious people, but were very morose or sadly

silent, when not scolding and re-ordering their servants. Their son,

a boy of twelve, was alternately crying and bullying his mother all

the evening till bed-time, because his father had refused to give him

something that he wanted. He slept in the same room with me, but did

not come to bed until after I had once been asleep, and then he brought

another boy to sleep with him. He left the candle burning on the floor,

and when, in five minutes after he had got into bed, a girl came after

it, he cursed her with a shocking volubility of filthy blackguardism,

demanding why she had not come sooner. She replied gently and

entreatingly, “I didn’t think you’d have more ’n got into bed yet,

master John.” The boys were talking and whispering obscenity till I

fell asleep again. The white women of the house were very negligent and

sluttish in their attire; the food at the table badly cooked, and badly

served by negroes.

The house of the farmer without slaves, though not in good repair,

was much neater, and everything within was well-ordered and unusually

comfortable. The women and girls were clean and neatly dressed;

every one was cheerful and kind. There was no servant. The table was

abundantly supplied with the most wholesome food—I might almost say the

first wholesome food—I have had set before me since I was at the hotel

at Natchez; loaf bread for the first time; chickens, stewed instead of

fried; potatoes without fat; two sorts of simple preserved fruit, and

whortleberry and blackberry tarts. (The first time I have had any of

these articles at a private house since I was in Western Texas.) All

the work, both within and without the house, was carried on regularly

and easily, and it was well done, because done by parties interested

in the result, not by servants interested only to escape reproof or

punishment.

Doubtless two extreme cases were thus brought together, but similar,

if less striking, contrasts are found the general rule, according to

my experience. It is a common saying with the drovers and waggoners of

this country, that if you wish to be well taken care of, you must not

stop at houses where they have slaves.

The man of the last described house was intelligent and an ardent

Methodist. The room in which I slept was papered with the “Christian

Advocate and Journal,” the Methodist paper of New York.[11] At the

slaveholder’s house, my bed-room was partially papered with “Lottery

Schemes.”

The free labouring farmer remarked, that, although there were few

slaves in this part of the country, he had often said to his wife that

he would rather be living where there were none. He thought slavery

wrong in itself, and deplorable in its effects upon the white people.

Of all the Methodists whom he knew in North-eastern Tennessee and

South-western Virginia, he believed that fully three fourths would be

glad to join the Methodist Church North, if it were “convenient.” They

generally thought slavery wrong, and believed it the duty of the church

to favour measures to bring it to an end. He was not an Abolitionist,

he said; he didn’t think slaves could be set free at once, but they

ought to be sent back to their own country, and while they were here

they ought to be educated. He had perceived that great injustice was

done by the people both of the North and South, towards each other. At

the South, people were very apt to believe that the Northerners were

wanting not only to deprive them of their property, but also to incite

the slaves to barbarity and murder. At the North, people thought that

the negroes were all very inhumanely treated. That was not the case, at

least hereabouts, it wasn’t. If I would go with him to a camp meeting

here, or to one of the common Sunday meetings, I would see that the

negroes were generally better dressed than the whites. He believed that

they were always well fed, and they were not punished severely. They

did not work hard, not nearly as hard as many of the white folks; they

were fat and cheerful. I said that I had perceived this, and it was so

generally, to a great degree, throughout the country; yet I was sure

that on the large plantations it was necessary to treat the slaves

with great severity. He “expected” it was so, for he had heard people

say, who had been on the great rice and cotton plantations in South

Carolina, that the negroes were treated very hard, and he knew there

was a man down here on the railroad, a contractor, who had some sixty

hands which he had hired in Old Virginny (“that’s what we call Eastern

Virginia here”), and everybody who saw them at work, said he drove them

till they could hardly stand, and did not give them half what they

ought to have to eat. He was opposed to the Nebraska Bill, he said, and

to any further extension of slavery, on any pretext; the North would

not do its Christian duty if it allowed slavery to be extended; he

wished that it could be abolished in Tennessee. He thought that many

of the people who went hence to Kansas would vote to exclude slavery,

but he wasn’t sure that they would do it generally, because they would

consider themselves Southerners, and would not like to go against

other Southerners. A large part of the emigration from this part of

the country went to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa; those States being

preferred to Missouri, because they were Free States. There were fewer

slaves hereabouts now, than there were when he was a boy. The people

all thought slavery wrong, except, he supposed, some slaveholders

who, because they had property in slaves, would try to make out to

themselves that it was right. He knew one rich man who had owned a

great many slaves. He thought slavery was wrong, and he had a family of

boys growing up, and he knew they wouldn’t be good for anything as long

as he brought them up with slaves; so he had told his slaves that if

they wanted to be free, he would free them, send them to Liberia, and

give them a hundred dollars to start with, and they had all accepted

the offer. He himself never owned a slave, and never would own one for

his own benefit, if it were given to him, “first, because it was wrong;

and secondly, because he didn’t think they ever did a man much good.”

I noticed that the neighbours of this man on each side owned slaves;

and that their houses and establishments were much poorer than his.