were absentees, authority was delegated to their overseers, who were selected usually for their carefulness, forcefulness, knowledge, industry and tact, though in some cases the reverse was true. The treatment of the slaves depended much on the character of the master. One Northern writer, who spent a long time in Virginia, says:

"I visited 14 or 15 counties and spent time enough in each to ascertain the condition of the slave population, and can say with sincerity

that the slaves of that large state are not worked so hard as our own farmers and mechanics work; that in general they are well fed, well clothed, well lodged, treated better than domestics at the north as long as they behave well, provided for when sick and often made the confidential agents of their masters. For instance, John Randolph, of Roanoke, had about 400 slaves. Their value was estimated at $100,000. He gave them clothing enough at Christmas to last them the whole year as coats, hats, bedding, blankets, etc., and all who took care of what they received were well dressed men. He sent food from his kitchen to all the unmarried ones, and plenty of provisions to be cooked by those who had families in their own cabins. He had five or six nurses whose business it was to attend the sick. And his overseer had special directions never to inflict a blow. He punished them as we punish children - by withholding some favor, as sugar from the women and meat from the men." †

One planter said to Olmsted that "his negroes never worked so hard as to tire themselves-always were lively and ready to go off on a frolic at night. He did not think they ever did a hard day's work. They could not be made to work hard; they never

*U. B. Phillips, The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts, in American Historical Review, vol. xi., no. 4, p. 806 (July, 1906). See also Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 271. + Niles' Register, vol. xlvii., p. 59.

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would lay out their strength freely, and it was impossible to make them do it." Some masters succeeded better in making their slaves work, but generally the day's work of a slave was considerably less than that of hired workmen in the North.* Often great concern was felt by the masters for their slaves, as is evidenced by a letter of January 9, 1843, from Mrs. S. R. Cobb to Mrs. Howell Cobb. The Mathilda who is mentioned in this letter was a free negro, and Betty's relatives were slaves, like herself:

"Tell Howell I cannot agree for Betty to be hired to Mathilda. Her character [i. e. Mathilda's] is too bad. I know her of old, she is a drunkard, and is said to be bad in every respect. I should object to her being hired to any colored person, no matter what their character was, and if she cannot get into a respectable family I had rather she came home, and if she can't work put her to spinning and weaving. Her relatives here beg she may not be hired to Mathilda. She would not be worth a cent at the end of the year."†

A writer in the Salem Register says:

"The slaves in Virginia seem to be in better condition, in respect to health, looks, manners, morals, contentment and happiness, than the same of society in the northern states; I think they are less vicious, I know they are more happy, and so free from care that many a master envies them a state in which it does seem that if ignorance is bliss.'”‡

Dr. Avirett, in his delightful and true portrayal of the South in antebellum days, touches the true ulcer of

* Olmstead, Seaboard Slave States, p. 334, and The Back Country, pp. 49, 80-81.

Phillips, Racial Problems, Adjustments and Disturbances, in The South in the Building of the Nation, vol. iv., pp. 205–207.

Niles' Register, vol. xlvii., p. 60.

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slavery in his dedication of the book to the memory of his father and mother, "the only two slaves on the old plantation." He says further: "I discard the vaporing of all sickly maudlin sentimentality when I say that no laboring population was ever better housed, better fed, better clothed, or more humanely employed, as a rule (in which self-interest asserted itself, and where does it not assert itself?) than were the servants on this old estate of my father's."'*

That there were abuses is certain. Indeed, all of the things narrated in Uncle Tom's Cabin doubtless happened, but, like all works of imagination, however realistic, it is more or less a mosaic made up of bits taken here and there and adjusted to form an ideal representation of facts. Negroes were whipped, it is true; so are sensitive children whipped in this Anno Domini; sexual relations among the blacks, and, worst of all, between whites and blacks, were sometimes to be deplored; yet it is to be questioned whether emancipation has solved that problem.† Mackay says that the slave owners as a body were not cruel and that many of them treated their slaves with paternal and patriarchal kindness, but as there was an overseer on many plantations, especially in the Southwest, and as his salary depended upon the number of pounds of sugar

Avirett, The Old Plantation, p. 59.

Rhodes, United States, vol. i., p. 334 et seq. Charles Mackay, Life and Liberty in America, vol. i., p. 314. See also Ballagh, History of Slavery in Virginia, pp. 99–100.

or bales of cotton he could produce by hand, the slaves were sometimes worked with little regard to their health and endurance.* In some cases the overseer was of the lowest social order in the community (perhaps an ex-servant or an ex-slave) and inclined to play the tyrant over those placed under him.† On such plantations the slave who shirked his labor, whether male or female, young or old, not uncommonly felt the lash.‡ Chancellor Harper admits that the slave was driven to labor by stripes.||

Many times slaves were permanently injured, and Southern agricultural journals complained that it was bad policy to waste human property. According to Olmsted, an old Alabama tradesman said that if the overseers produced plenty of cotton, they were not asked how many slaves they killed, but this same man expressed the opinion that the negroes were generally pretty well treated,

*Hammond, The Cotton Industry, pp. 93, 104. See also Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii., P. 187.

104.

Ballagh, History of Slavery in Virginia, p.

Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation, pp. 123 et seq., 174-175, 191; Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii., p. 205; Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 271-272. Yet, as Professor Hart points out, (Slavery and Abolition, p. 114) most of us in the great cry against negro slavery, entirely lose sight of the fact that the white in a subordinate position fared almost as badly. Flogging still prevailed as the normal punishment in the navy and merchant marine, had just disappeared from the army, was still legal toward apprentices, and in some communities, toward wives, and was a common punishment for some of the less serious crimes.

|| Pro-Slavery Argument, p. 34.

"considering.' The overseer who could produce the most cotton, no matter how relentless he was with the slaves under him, could secure almost any wages he desired, since such Overseers were

greatly in demand among a certain class of plantation owners, though the better class of whites abhorred them. The overseers were practically unrestrained by law in their treatment of the negroes, and as a result many of these unfortunates were killed. In most of the Southern States the wilful, malicious and premeditated murder of a slave was a capital offence, but it was considered no offence for a person to kill a slave in the act of resistance to his lawful owner. Where such cases arose it was almost impossible to convict the owner or overseer, since the testimony of a colored person could not be received in court against a white.

There was legislation safeguarding slaves against oppression and injury, but this hardly affected actual affairs. It was the master's interest, comfort, principles, and desire for good repute that mainly determined the nature of the relations of master and slave. The other principal factor in the case was the slave's own character and attitude. If extremely submissive, he might be oppressed; if

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rebellious, he might be flogged or shackled; if an incorrigible runaway or a chronic trouble-maker or hopelessly indolent or stupid, he might be sold to a trader; if disposed to render reasonable service for reasonable sustenance, he was likely to be treated with consideration; if faithful and affectionate (as very many were), he was quite sure to receive indulgence even to the point where it hurt the master's income; and if sick, crippled, or superannuated, he received medical treatment and support for the rest of his life. The fundamental law of slavery was that the slave could not own property, but under a master of average consideration any thrifty slave could lay up what he had acquired by gift or earnings, with the knowledge that he was secure in its possession. † Some slaves even made contracts with their masters to work overtime and buy their freedom on the instalment plan. The plantation records tend to show that the average master realized that the range of possible relationships in the slavery system was very wide, and that it was generally to the master's interest to be indulgent though firm, benevolent though autocratic.]]

The value of the slaves was very high in the decade before the Civil

*Phillips, Racial Problems, Adjustments and Disturbances, p. 201. See also Olmsted, Slave States, pp. 101, 102, 109.

† Ballagh, History of Slavery in Virginia, p. 108.

Bremer, Homes of the New World, vol. i., p. 363; Child, Life of Isaak T. Hopper, pp. 176-179. Phillips, p. 202.

State for other States. * Randolph estimated the exportation of slaves from Virginia during the 20 years prior to 1830 at 8,500 per year. Others estimated that every year from 10,000 to 15,000 slaves were sold from the States of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia and sent to the South. The Maryville (Tennessee) Times said in 1836 that during the previous year 60,000 slaves had passed through a Western town on their way to the Southern market. In the Virginia Times of Wheeling it is stated that during 1835 120,000 slaves had been taken off, of whom 40,000 were sold and the others carried away by their owners who had removed. In the Natchez Courier it is related that during 1836 250,000 slaves from the Northern slave States had been imported into Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.¶

* Pro-Slavery Argument, pp. 378, 399; Collins, The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States, p. 50. Dew says that by adding largely to the revenues of the State the slave trade" becomes an advantage to the State, and does not check the black population as much as at first view we might imagine, because it furnishes every inducement to the master to attend to the negroes to encourage breeding, and to cause the greatest number possible to be raised. Virginia is in fact a negro raising State for other States." -Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, vol. i., p. 100.

* * *

† American Slavery As It Is, p. 182.

Blane, Excursion Through the United States, p. 226; Hodgson, Letters from North America, vol. i., p. 194.

| Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade, p. 17. § Niles' Register, vol. li., p. 83; American Slavery As It Is, p. 184; Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade, P. 13.

¶ Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade, p. 13; American Slavery As It Is, p. 184; Collins, Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States, p. 52.

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At a Fayetteville colonization meeting a speaker told how, in the course of 20 years, more than 300,000 slaves had gone from Virginia and North Carolina to the far Southwest.* Between 1850 and 1860 the average annual importation of slaves from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri into the southernmost States was about 25,000. Many assert that the augmentation of slaves in the cotton States was due primarily to the migration of slave owners. The Virginia Times calculates that not more than one-third of the number of slaves reported during the previous year were sold, the others being taken away by their owners.|| Collins estimates that at least three-fifths of the removals of slaves from the border slave States to those farther South between 1820 and 1850 were due to emigration.§

Slave auctions were common and were due primarily to the death of the owner and the subsequent division of the estate among the heirs, the seizure of the slaves to satisfy a mortgage or a debt, the need of ready money, the worthless character of the negro

* American Slavery As It Is, p. 183.

† Olmsted, Cotton Kingdom, vol. i., p. 58, note; Chambers, Slavery and Color, p. 148; Chase and Sanborn, The North and the South, p. 22.

See DeBow's Review, vol. xxiii., p. 476.

|| Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade, p. 13. § Collins, Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States, p. 62, and the authorities there cited; Andrews, Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade, pp. 117, 167, 171, 174; Cary, Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign, p. 109; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, pp. 48-50.