Class Book COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT OUR SLAYE STATES III. Vs. 1i y / A JOURNEY BACK COUNTRY B Y FKEDEKICK LAW OLMSTED, AUTnOU OF "a .TOUKNEY in the SKABOAED slave states," "a journey in TEXAS, '•ATALKS AND TALKS OP AK AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND," ETC. NEW YORK: N s . 5 k 1 >r E R K R S T R K K T . 1 -SCO. •Of 6 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S60, by MASON BROTHERS, In tlie Clerk's Office of tlie District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York STFTBEOTYPED BY SMITH & McDOUGAL, 82 & 84 Beeknian St. C. A. ALVOUD, Pi:;M; P Ft E F A C E This is the third volume of a work, the first of which was a narra- tive of a journey in the sea-board districts of the older slave States ; the second, of a rapid tour west of the Alleghanies, and of a winter spent in Texas. This volume concludes and somewhat focalizes the observations of those, its narrative being, in part, of the hill-country people, and mainly of those who are engaged in, or are most directly affected by, the great business of the South — the production of cotton. The record of facts, except as regards the domestic life of the people, is less elaborate than in the other volumes, because, reference being made to previous observations, less detail is needed to give a full state- ment of tiiat which was seen by the writer. Facts of general observation and conclusions of judgment form a larger part of this volume than of the others, because they are appropriately deduced from all preceding details. It was prepared for the press nearly in its present form and announced for publication three years ago. A chapter was then in- tended to be added upon the natural history of southern politics, before preparing which, I was interrupted by unanticipated duties. Upon re- cent examination it was found that the facts recorded had not lost sig- nificance, and that the volume might be published without revision or addition. As the topic of slave insurrection is considerably discussed, I will here observe that all its narrative portion had been printed, and that all the matter of the last chapter bearing upon that subject had been written, some time before the John Brown plot is supposed to have been formed. The controll-'^g considerations which now induce the publication of the volume are, first, that after publishing the former volumes, to leave untold what is reported in this, would be to leave my story untrue through incompleteness; secondly, that the agitation growing out of the condition of the South is now graver, and the truth more impor- VI PREFACE. tant to be known, than ever before. Before preparing this volume, I had given more than two years' careful study simply to the matter of fact of the condition of the people, especially the white people, living under a great variety of circumstances wdiere slavery is not pro- hibited. There has been no publication of observations made Avith similar advantages, and extended over so large a field. I may add that few men could have been so little inclined to establish pre- viously formed opinions as I was vWien I began my journey in the South. I left a farm in New York to examine farms in Yirginia. The Fillmore compromises had just been accomplished ; a reaction from a state of suspicion and unwholesome excitement was obvious in the public mind. Looking upon slavery as an unfortunate circumstance, for which the people of the South were in no wise to blame, and the abolition of which was no more immediately practicable than the ab- rogation of hospitals, penitentiaries, and boarding-schools, it was with the distinct hope of aiding in this reaction, and of aiding those disposed to consider the subject of slavery in a rational, philosophical, and con- ciliatory spirit, that I undertook, at the suggestion of the editor of the New York Times, to make a personal study of the ordinary condition and habits of the people of the South. I believed that much mischief had resulted from statements and descriptions of occurrences which were exceptional, as if they were ordinary phenomena attending slavery. I had the most unquestioning faith, that while the fact of slavery imposed much unenviable duty upon the people of the South, and occasioned much inconvenience, the clear knowledg^e of v/hich would lead to a disposition of forbearance, and encourage a respectful purpose of assistance (such as soon after this found an expression in the organization of the Southern Aid Society), there was at the same time a moral condition of the human race, in connection with slav- ery — that there was an expression of peculiar virtues in the South, too little known or considered, the setting forth of which would do good. I will not here conceal for a moment that I was disappointed in the actual condition of the people of the South, citizen and slave; that the more thoroughly and the longer I was acquainted with tliat which is ordinary and general, the greater vfas my disappointment. In the present a-'pect of affairs, it would be an affectation of moderation if I refrained from expressing my conviction that the larger part of the people of the South are in a condition which can not be too much de- PREFACE. Vn plored, the extension and aggravation of the causes of which can not be too firmly and persistently guarded against. The subjection of the negroes of the South to the mastership of the whites, I still consider justifiable and necessary, and I fully share the general ill-will of the people of the North toward any suggestion of their interfering politically to accomplish an immediate abolition of slavery. This is not from idolatry of a parchment, or from a romantic attachment to the Avord Union ; it certainly is not from a low estima- tion of the misfortune of slavery, or of the flagrant wrong of the laws and customs of the slave States. It is from a fair consideration of the excellence of our confederate constitution when compared with other instruments of human association, and from a calculation of the chances of getting a better, after any sort of revolution at this time, together with the chances of thereby accomplishing a radical and satisfactory remedy for the evils which must result from slavery. I do not see that a mere setting free of the blacks, if it could be accomplished, would surely remedy these evils. An extraction of the bullet does not at once remedy the injury of a gun-shot wound; it sometimes aggravates it. It does not follow, however, that the evils of slavery must continue to be as great as at present. Nor does it follow that consideration of these evils at the North must be either futile or impertinent, for they are by no means limited in their action to the people of the Slave States, and there are matters in the discussion of which the people of the North have a constitutional right to be heard, the decision of which may greatly help to perpetuate or to limit them. The emancipation of the negroes is evidently not a matter to be ac- complished by this generation, but again it does not follow that even emancipation can not be anticipated, or the way of accomplishing it in some degree prepared. The determination that it shall not be, is much more impracticable, fanatical, and dangerous, than argument for imme- diate abolition. The present agitation of the country results less from the labors of abolitionists than from the conceit, avarice, and foUy of wealthy owners of slaves. These constantly, and by organized action, endeavor to reverse the only line of policy by which safety and peoce can, in the nature of things, be secured to the people of the South ; for there are moral forces, as well as material, in nature, and there is the same folly in expecting to overcome the one as the other. It would be presumptuous in any man to predict when, or in what Vlll • PREFACE. manner, slavery is to end, but, if the owners of slaves were so disposed, it appears to me that there would be no difficulty whatever, politically, financially, or socially, in diminishing the evil of slavery, and in pre- paring the way for an end to it. It is to be hoped that elements will, by-and-by, come into play, the nature of which we can not now im- agine, which will make a peaceful end more practicable than it now appears. Whitney's invention has, to all appearance, strengthened the hold of slavery a thousand times more than all labors directly intended for that purpose. A botanical discovery, a new motive power, the de- cease of some popular fallacy, a physical, or mental, or moral epidemic^ a theological reformation, a religious revival, a Avar, or a great man fortunately placed, may, in a single year, do more to remove difficulties than lias thus far been done in this century. Popular prejudice, if not popular instinct, points to a separation of black from white as a condition of the abolition of slavery. It may h& hoped that something will occur which will force, or encourage and facilitate, a voluntaiy and spontaneous separation. If this is to be considered as a contingency of emancipation, it is equally to be antici- pated that an important emigration of whites to the slave districts will precede it.* I do not now say that it is, or is not, right or desirable, that this should be so, but, taking men as they are, I think a happy and peaceful association of a large negro, with a large white population, can not at present be calculated on as a permanent thing. I think that the emancipation from slavery of such part of the existing actual negro population as shall remain in the country until the white population is sufficiently christianized, and civilized, and properly educated to under- stand that its interests are identical with its duty, will take place grad- ually, and only after an intermediate period of systematic pupilage, restraint, and encouragement, of such a nature as is suggested in this volume. To be more expUcit : it seems to me to be possible that a method of finally emancipating the slaves and of immediately remedying man}'- of the evils of slavery, without an annihilation of that which the State * If gold fields as attractive as those of California should, for instance, be discovered and opened to adventurers in Mississippi, slavery would be practically abolished in tliat State within two years. Cotton culture would be more profitable work than gold digging, but not until something else had once drav.-n free laborers to a cotton district in large numbers. PREFACE. IX has made property, or conceded to be held as property, may be event- ually based on these accepted facts : That a negro's capacities, like a horse's, or a dog's, or a white man's, for all industrial purposes, in- cluding cotton-growing and cotton-picking, must- be enlarged by a voluntary, self-restrained, self-urged, and self-directed exercise of those capacities. That a safely-conducted cultivation and education of the capacities of the slaves will, of necessity, increase the value of the slaves, and that the slaves may thus be made to pay, year by 3^ear, for their own gradual emancipation. I do not suppose that in one generation or two the effects of cen- turies of barbarism and slavery are to be extinguished, I do not thinlv negroes are ever to become Teutons or Celts, but I do suppose that negroes may become thoroughly civilized, thoroughly independent in- dividuals, and thus of tenfold more value in the commonweahh than they are. I know, for a certainty, that the most dogged have a ca- pacity for some improvement, even within their own lives ; that the most valuable cotton-pickers are capable of being made yet more valuable; and I do not believe that even ten years of careful, judicious, and economical cultivation of this capacity, with all the negroes of a large plantation, would fail to earn some pecuniary as well as moral reward. But a vain delusion possesses the South that slavery carries with it certain defined advantages for the master class. (I do believe, after a careful study, that there are no such advantages.) Owing to this delusion, moral forces in nature, as irresistible as the laws of climate, are bhndly disregarded, or held in contempt, and the hope lives that a power, found paramount within the South itself, must yet control the continent. This hope makes hght of all present evils growing out of slavery, or attributes them to causes which it gives the purpose to re- move. ISTot till it is decisively and finally dispelled, can any general policy for remedying the evils of slavery be initiated, or even an indi- vidual slaveholder be permitted to govern his property in a manner consistent with what would otherwise be the requirements of Chris- tianity, civilization, and a sound and far-seeing economy. In the preparation of this book, my conscious first purpose has been to obtain and report facts of ordinary life at the South, not to supply arguments. Lest it should be thought I had some concealed purpose to advocate by my selection of facts, I have here frankly set forth the inner plans and theories for which it might have been agreeable to me X PREFACE. to have gained the approval of its readers. The facts of my personal observation fill the greater part of the book, though I have not neg- lected others obtained at second hand in the South. There are various theories and purposes fur which these facts may be turned to account. Their influence need not be, and should not be, the same with all that it has been with me, but I beheve that there are few who will chance to read to Avhom they will not afford some entertainment and instruction. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE VALLEY OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI. A Cottou Overseer, 11 ; Stupidity of Poor Wliites ; The Landscape ; Kose Hedges, 13 ; Tlie Mississippi Forest ; Plantations of Northern Louisiana ; A Craelc Nect to it upon the large plantations. 72 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. The laborers we see in towns, at work on railroads and steam- boats, about stations and landings ; the menials of our houses and hotels, are less respectable, moral and intelligent than the great majority of the whole laboring class of the North. The traveler at the South has to learn that there the reverse is the case to a degree which can hardly be sufficiently estimated. I have been obliged to think that many amiable travelers who have received impressions with regard to the condition of the slaves very different from mine, have ftiiled to make a sufficient allow- ance for this. The rank-and-file plantation negroes are not to be readily made acquaintance with by chance or through letters of introduction. SLAVE MANAGEMENT ON THE LARGEST SCALE. The estate I am now about to describe, was situated upon a tributary of the Mississippi, and accessible only by occasional steamboats ; even this mode of communication being frequently interrupted at low stages of the rivers. The slaves upon it formed about one twentieth of the whole population of the coun- ty, in which the blacks considerably out-number the whites. At the time of my visit, the owner was sojourning upon it, with his family and several invited guests, but his usual residence was upon a small plantation, of little productive value, situated in a neighborhood somewhat noted for the luxury and hospitality of its citizens, and having a daily mail, and direct railroad and tel- egraphic communication with New York. This was, if I am not mistaken, his second visit in five years. The property consisted of four adjoining plantations, each with its own negro-cabins, stables and overseer, and each worked to a great extent independently of the others, but all contributing THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 73 tlieir crop to one gin-honse and warehouse, and all under tlie gen- eral superintendence of a bailiff or manager, who constantly re- sided upon the estate, and in the absence of the owner, had vice- regal power over the overseers, controlling, so far as he thought fit, the economy of all the plantations. The manager was himself a gentleman of good education, gen- erous and poetic in temperament, and possessing a capacity for the enjoyment of nature and a happiness in the bucolic life, unfortun- ately rare with Americans. I found him a delightful companion, and I have known no man with whose natural tastes and feeliuQ-s I have felt, on so short acquaintance, a more hearty sympathy. The gang of toiling negroes to him, however, was as essential an ele- ment of the poetry of nature as flocks of peaceful sheep and herds of lowing kine, and he would no more appreciate the as- pect in which an Abolitionist would see them than would Virgil have honored the feelings of a vegetarian, who could only sigh at the sight of flocks and herds destined to feed the depraved ap- petite of the carnivorous savage of modern civilization. The overseers were superior to most of their class, and, with one ex- ception, frank, honest, temperate and industrious, but their feel- ings toward negroes were such as naturally result from their oc- cupation. They were all married, and lived with their families, each in a cabin or cottasfe, in the hamlet of the slaves of which he had especial charge. Their wages varied from $500 to $1,000 a year each. These five men, each living more than a mile distant from either of the others, were the only white men on the estate, and the only others within several miles of them were a few skulking vagabonds. Of course, to secure their own personal safety and to efficiently direct the labor of such a large number of ignorant 74 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. indolent, and vicious negroes, rules, or ratlier habits and customs, of discipline, were necessary, whicli would in particular cases be liable to operate unjustly and cruelly. It is apparent, also, that, as the testimony of negroes against them would not be received as evidence in court, that there was very little probability that any excessive severity would be restrained by fear of the law. A provision of the law intended to secure a certain privilege to slaves, was indeed disregarded under my own observation, and such infraction of the law was confessedly customary with one of the overseers, and was permitted by the manager, for the rea- son that it seemed to him to be, in a certain degree, justifiable and expedient under the circumstances, and because he did not like to interfere unnecessarily in such matters. In the main, the negroes appeared to be well taken care of and abundantly supplied with the necessaries of vigorous physical ex- istence. A large part of them lived in commodious and well- built cottages, with broad galleries in front, so that each family of five had two rooms on the lower floor, and a loft. The re- mainder lived in log-huts, small and mean in appearance, but those of their overseers were little better, and preparations were being made to replace all of these by neat boarded cottages. Each family had a fowl-house and hog-sty (constructed by the negroes themselves), and kept fowls and swine, feeding the latter during the summer on weeds and fattening them in the autumn on corn stolen (this was mentioned to me by the overseers as if it were a matter of course) from their master's corn-fields. I several times saw gangs of them eating the dinner which they had brought, each for himself, to the field, and observed that they generally had plenty, often more than they could eat, of bacon, corn-bread, and molasses. The allowance of food is weighed THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. YS and measured under the eye of the manager by the drivers, and distributed to the head of each family weekly : consisting of — for each person, 3 pounds of pork, 1 peck of meal ; and from Jan- uary to July, 1 quart of molasses. Monthly, in addition, 1 pound tobacco, and 4 pints salt. No drink is ever served but water, except after unusual exposure, or to ditchers working in water, who get a glass of whisky at night. All hands cook for them- selves after work at night, or whenever they please between night-fall and daybreak, each family in its own cabin. Each family had a garden, the products of which, together with eggs, fowls and bacon, they frequently sold, or used in addition to their regular allowance of food. Most of the families bought a barrel of flour every year. The manager endeavored to encourage this practice, and that they might spend their money for flour instead of liquor, he furnished it to them at rather less than wdiat it cost him at wholesale. There were many poor whites within a few miles who would always sell liquor to the negroes, and encourage them to steal, to obtain the means to buy it of them. These poor whites were always spoken of with anger by the overseers, and they each had a standing ofl"er of much more than the in- trinsic value of their land, from the manager, to induce them to move away. The negroes also obtain a good deal of game. They set traps for raccoons, rabbits and turkeys, and I once heard the stock-tender complaining that he had detected one of the vaga- bond whites stealing a turkey which had been caught in his pen. I several times partook of game while on the plantation, that had been purchased of the negroes. The stock-tender, an old negro, whose business it was to ride about in the woods and keep an eye on the stock cattle that were pastured in them, and who 4* VO A JOURNEY IN" THE BACK COUNTRY. was tlius likely to know where the deer ran, had an ingenious way of supplying himself with venison. lie lashed a scythe blade or butcher's knife to the end of a pole so that it formed a lance ; this he set near a fence or fallen tree which obstructed a path in which the deer habitually ran, and the deer in leaping over the obstacle would leap directly on the knife. In this man- ner he had killed two deer the week before my visit. The manager sent to him for some of this venison for his own use, and justified himself to me for not paying for it on the ground that the stock-tender had undoubtedly taken time which really belonged to his owner to set his spear. Game taken by the field-hands was not looked upon in the same light, because it must have been got at night when they were excused from labor for their owner. The first morning I was on the estate, while at breakfast with the manager, an old negro woman came into the room and said to him, " Dat o-al's bin bleedin' aajin dis mornin'." " How much did she bleed ?" " About a pint, sir." " Very well ; I'll call and see her after breakfast." " I come up for some sugar of lead, master ; I gin her some powdered alum 'fore I come away." " Very well ; you can have some." After breakfast the manager invited me to ride with him on liis usual daily round of inspection through the plantations. PLANTATION WORK-HOUSE. On reaching the nearest " quarters," we stopped at a house, a little larger than the ordinary cabins, which was called the loom-house, in which a dozen negroes were at work making THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 77 shoes, and manufacturing coarse cotton stuff for negro clothing. One of the hands so employed was insane, and most of the oth- ers were cripples, invalids with chronic complaints, or unfitted by age, or some infirmity, for field-work. MEDICAL SURVEY. From this we went to one of the cabins, where we found the sick woman who had been bleedincc at the lunojs, with the old nurse in attendance upon her. The manager examined and pre- scribed for her in a kind manner. When we came out he asked the nurse if any one else was sick. " Oney dat woman Carline." "What do you think is the matter with her?" " Well, I do n't tink dere 's anyting de matter wid her, mas- ser; I mus' answer you for true, I don't tink anyting de matter wid her, oney she 's a little sore from dat whippin' she got." We went to another cabin and entered a room where a wo- man lay on a bed, groaning. It was a very dingy, comfortless room, but a musquito bar, much patched and very dirty, covered the bed. The manager asked the woman several times what was the matter, but could get no distinct reply. She appeared to be suffering great pain. The manager felt her pulse and looked at her tongue, and after making a few more inquiries, to which no intelligible reply was given, told her he did not believe she was ill at all. At this the woman's groans redoubled. "I have heard of your tricks," continued the manager ; " you had a chill when I came to see you yesterday morning ; you had a chill when the mistress came here, and you had a chill when the mas- ter came. I never knew a chill to last the whole day. So 78 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. you'll just get up now and go to the field, and if you don't work smart, you '11 get a dressing ; do you hear ?" We tlien left. The manager said tliat lie rarely — almost never — ^had occasion to employ a physician for the people. Never for accouchements ; the women, from their labor in the field, were not subject to the difficulty, danger, and pain which attended women of the better classes in giving birth to their offspring. Near the first quarters we visited there was a large black- smith's and wheelwright's shop, in which a number of mechanics were at work. Most of them, as we rode up, were eating their breakfast, which they warmed at their fires. Within and around the shop there were some fifty plows which they were putting in order. The manager inspected the work, found some of it faulty, sharply reprimanded the workmen for not getting on faster, and threatened one of them with a whipping for not pay- ing closer attention to the directions which had been given him. He told me that he once employed a white man from the North, v/ho professed to be a first-class workman, but he soon found he could not do nearly as good work'as the negro mechanics on the estate, and the latter despised him so much, and got such high opinions of themselves in consequence of his inferiority, that he had been obliged to discharge him in the midst of his engagement. The overseer of this plantation rode up while we were at the shop, and reported to the manager how all his hands were em- ployed. There were so many at this and so many at that, and they had done so much since yesterday. " There 's that girl, Caroline," said the manager ; "she's not sick, and I told her she must go to work ; put her to the hoeing; there's nothing the matter with her, except she's sore with the whipping she got. You must go and get her out." A woman was passing at the THE PEOPERTT ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 79 time, and the manager told her to go and tell Caroline she must get up and go to work, or the ovbrseer would come and start her. She returned in a few minutes, and reported that Caroline said she could not get up. The overseer and manager rode to- ward the cabin, but before they reached it, the girl, who had probably been watching us from the window, came out and went to the field with her hoe. They then returned to me and con- tinued their conversation. Just before we left the overseer, he said, " I think that girl who ran away last week was in her cabin last night." The riianager told me, as we rode on, that the peo- ple often ran away after they have been whipped, or something else had happened to make them angry.- They hide in the swamp, and come in to the cabins at night to get food. They seldom remain away more than a fortnight, and when they come in they are whipped. The woman, Caroline, he said, had been delivered of a dead child about six weeks before, and had been complaining and getting rid of work ever since. She was the laziest woman on the estate. This shamming illness gave him the most disagreeable duty he had to perform. Negroes were famous for it. " If it was not for her bad character," he con- tinued, " I should fear to make her go to work to-day ; but her pulse is steady, and her tongue perfectly smooth. We have to he sharp with them ; if toe were not, every negro mi the estate luould he ahedP CLOTHES AND CLEANLINESS. We rode on to where the diflferent gangs of laborers were at work, and inspected them one after another. I observed, as we were looking at one of the gangs, that they were very dirty. " Negroes are the filthiest people in the world," .said the man- 80 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. ager ; " there are some of them who would not keep clean twenty-four hours at a time if you gave them thirty suits a year." I asked him if there were any rules to maintain cleanli- ness. There were not, but sometimes the negroes were told at night that any one who came into the field the next morning without being clean would be whipped. This gave no trouble to those who were habitually clean, while it was in itself a pun- ishment to those who were not, as they were obliged to spend the night in washing. They were furnished with two suits of summer, and one of winter clothing each year. Besides which, most of them got presents of some holiday finery (calico dresses, handkerchiefs, etc.), and purchased more for themselves, at Christmas. One of the drivers now in the field had on a splendid uniform coat of an officer of the flying artillery. After the Mexican war, a great deal of military clothing was sold at auction in New Orleans, and much of it was bought by planters at a low price, and given to their negroes, who were greatly pleased with it. HOURS OF LABOR. ^ Each overseer regulated the hours of work on his own planta- tion. I saw the negroes at work before sunrise and after sunset. At about eight o'clock they were allowed to stop for breakfast, and again about noon, to dine. The length of these rests was at the discretion of the overseer or drivers, usually, I should say, from half an hour to an hour. There was no rule. OVERSEERS. The number of hands directed by each overseer was consider- ably over one hundred. The manager thought it would be bet- THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 81 ter economy to have a wliite man over every fifty hands, hut the difficulty of ohtaining trustworthy overseers prevented it. Three of those he then had were the best he had ever known. He described the great majority as being passionate, careless, ineffi- cient men, generally intemperate, and totally unfitted for the duties of the position. The best overseers, ordinarily, are young men, the sons of small planters, who take up the business tem- porarily, as a means of acquiring a little capital with which to purchase negroes for themselves. PLOW-GIRLS. The plowing, both with single and double mule teams, was generally performed by women, and very well performed, too, I watched with some interest for any indication that their sex un- fitted them for the occupation. Twenty of them were plowing together, with double teams and heavy plows. They were su- perintended by a male negro driver, who carried a whip, which he frequently cracked at them, permitting no dawdling or delay at the turning ; and they twitched their plows around on the head-land, jerking their reins, and yelling to their mules, with apparent ease, energy, and rapidity. Throughout the South- west the negroes, as a rule, appear to be Avorked much harder than in the eastern and northern slave States. I do not think they accomplish as much daily, as agricultural laborers at the North usually do, but they certainly labor much harder, and more unremittingly. Tiiey are constantly and steadily driven up to their work, and the stupid, plodding, macliine-like manner in which they labor, is painful to witness. This was especially the case with the hoe-gangs. One of them numbered nearly two hundred hands (for the force of two plantations was work- 82 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. ing together), moving across tlie field in parallel lines, witli a considerable degree of precision. I repeatedly rode through the lines at a canter, with other horsemen, often coming upon them suddenly, without producing the smallest change or inter- ruption in the dogged action of the laborers, or causing one of them to lift an eye from the ground. A very tall and powerful negro walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently crack- ing his whip, and calling out, in the surliest manner, to one and another, " Shove your hoe, there ! shove your hoe !" But I never saw him strike any one with the whip. DISCIPLINE, The whip was evidently in constant use, however. There were no rules on the subject, that I learned ; the overseers and drivers punished the negroes whenever they deemed it necessary, and in such manner, and with such severity, as they thought fit. " If you do n't work faster," or " If you do n't work better," or " If you do n't recollect what I tell you, I will have you flogged," are threats which I have often heard. I said to one of the over- seers, " It must be very disagreeable to have to punish them as much as you do ?" " Yes, it would be to those who are not used to it — but it's my business, and I think nothing of it. Why, sir, I would n't mind killing a nigger more than I would a dog." I asked if he had ever killed a negro ? " Not quite,'' he said, but overseers were often obliged to. Some negroes are determined never to let a white man whip them, and will resist yon, when you attempt it ; of course you must kill them in that case. Once a negro, whom he was about to whip in the field, struck at his head with a hoe. lie parried the blow with his whip, and drawing a pistol tried to shoot him, but the pistol missing fire he THE TKOPERTY ASPECT OP SLAVERY. 83 rushed in and knocked him down with the butt of it. At another time a negro whom he was punishing, insulted and threatened him. He went to the house for his gun, and as he was return- ing, the negro, thinking he would be afraid of spoiling so valua- ble a piece of property by firing, broke for the woods. lie fired at once, and put six buck-shot into his hips. He always carried a bowie-knife, but not a pistol, unless he anticipated some un- usual act of insubordination."^ He always kept a pair of pistols ready loaded over the mantel-piece, however, in case they should be needed. It was only when he first came upon a plantation that he ever had much trouble. A great many overseers were unfit for their business, and too easy and slack with the negroes. When he succeeded such a man, he had hard work for a time to break the negroes in, but it did not take long to teach them their place. His conversation on this subject was exactly like what I have heard said, again and again, by northern shipmasters and officers, with regar4 to seamen. PUNISHMENT. The severest corporeal punishment of a neorro that I witnessed at the South, occurred while I was visiting this estate. I sup- pose however, that punishment equally severe is common — in fact, it must be necessary to the maintenance of adequate disci- * " On Monday last, as James Allen (overseer on Prothro's plantation at St. Maurice), was punishing a negro boy named Jack, for stealing bogs, the boy ran off before the overseer had chastised him sufficiently for the oft'onse. He was immediately pursued by the overseer, who succeeded in catching him, when the negro drew a l Massaclmsetts 994 514 ^ ^^^ ^J New Hampshire 317 976 626 77 ):^™^t 314120 599 39 Connecticut ^70709 fro^ -,,r ^'-Vr<^ ;;::;;::::;;:: ?1?;5!5 2^2^ 'tl ^^^^^y°^k 3097,394 4,134 1080 Pennsylvania 2,311,786 3,566 302 ^^^^^^^^^ ._J_1.532 'l80 6 '^^^^^ 8,718,383 13,300 "2;T71 ^^^ 583,034 909 ^200 |^|;.ina.:::::::;;:::;;:;;- ^ - f^^':^^m^ 606,526 L016 8^ ^°^"«^^^^^ 517 762 '306 160 ^^""^"^^^y 982,405 1,845 141 '^''^^^ T8;329;i^ •ii;685 i;^ hZ'taJr. r^'"^'''^'^ ^'^ ^'f ^ ™"^^^°' ^^'^ *^" ««^tl^ern States .X-^ohlj A ?"r'^ ^^-^^ '^^^^'^^^ ^^^^ the ten northern States ^^hlch boast loudest of then- morality and enlightenment With an doS^L^n'^ "^' ^r"""" r P^^P^'^*^^-' *^-^-^ free States W slave St^tP. q 1 "^^ 'T'-'"^' '^^^^'"^^ ^"^^- ^^^^'^^ "^ ten corresponding shue States. Such revelations will complete the revolution of publiS opinion in respect to slavery," ^^^^luu ui puuuo This imposing array of figures was originally marshaled, with the comments attached, by the Richmond Enquirer, but has since been repeatedly used to point a similar moral by the journals and orators of the North who are allied with that respectable "Dem- ocratic" organ. The folly of such a display is precisely like that of the Chinese generals who draw up their warriors in a position from which they are expected to throw terror into the ranks of their advancing adversaries, by frightful grimaces and menacing gestures, but in which they are quite unnecessarily exposed to THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 101 the fire of their deadliest artillery. The Commissioner of the Census himself, a most careful, though sincerely loyal partisan of slavery, is at once seized and made to serve the guns of the anti- slavery partisan whenever his attention is called to this bugga- boo of figures. In a work entitled " A Statistical View of the United States" published and extensively given away in the free as well as the slave States, by Congress, Mr. DeBow observes, commenting upon the census returns of churches (p. 133) that they do not undertake to show the number of members of the churches or the number of attendants on their worship ; that in the rural districts there are " thousands of buildings — rude sheds or log houses" — which are enumerated as church edifices, and which aro used both as school houses and places of worship. The northern man knows that there can be but an extremely small proportion of the northern churches which have no bet- ter accommodation for their meetings than a rude shed or log school house. On turning over a few pages he finds the informa- tion set out by Mr. DeBow again that while the average value of the church edifices in New England and the Middle States is over 14000 each, in the Southern Seaboard and Central it is less than $1000 ; that in the Northwestern it is $1200 and in the Southwestern $900, (p. 139) ; that in the ten States above men- tioned (of which it is to be noted that one of the so-called northern is a slave State,) the amount of church accommodation for each square* mile of territory is, in the northern, equal to one hundred and three ; in the southern, to thirty-seven ; while in the north- ern States there are on an average four hundred and thirty-seven church edifices to every thousand square miles, and in the slave States but one hundred and thirty-six. By a very simple calcu- lation he ascertains from the figures furnished by Mr. DeBow, 102 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. that in the ten northern States mentioned, the people have paid for their churches more than three times as much as those of the ten southern, and the former unitedly will accommodate seven hundred and fifty thousand more worshipers than the latter. A little inquiry of travelers, or an examination of the reports of the Southern Aid Society, will satisfy him that while there are few northern churches in which religious instructiou is not regularly given at least once a week, and in the great majority of cases much more frequently, and that by an educated man, engaged and paid for this purpose, this is by no means the case with those edifices in the slave States returned as churches. This indeed might be inferred from the marked absence of comfort in a large proportion of the houses of worship at the South, as also from their remoteness and inaccessibility to a great part of the inhabitants of the district to which they belong. Then as to the " number of criminals," he finds in the census only returns of such as are confined in the prisons, jails, etc., of the difi'erent States. Under these heads he will look in vain for figures corresponding to those arranged by the Virginia Com- missioner Lin. At page 166, however, Mr. DeBow furnishes the following statement respecting the inmates of the prisons of the United States : Colored, inclu- Nativo Whites. Forei^Whites. ding slaves. Slaveholding States, . . . 988 370 323 Free States, 2271 1129 .565 Xn every 10,000 In every 10,000 In every 10,000 , , ,. ^ Wktive white). foreign whiles. colored. Slaveholdmg States, . . . 1/VVo H^V^ 0^3_8_. ^^ee States, IJi^ 5/^Vl 28,^,^, The defense of Lynch law which is so commonly made at the South has made it notorious that the administration of criminal THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 10'? justice in that portion of our country is very imperfect, and that comparatively a small fraction of those offending against the laws can be brought to a regular trial ; and it is also well known to many that in several of the slave States but a small proportion of the criminals couvicted in courts of justice are sentenced to confinement in jails or penitentiaries, but that they are punished by whipping, exposure in the pillory, and branding with a hot iron, modes of correction long ago abandoned in all the free States. And as to the number of colored persons in the jails of the North, as compared with the South, we turn again to Mr. DeBow (Industrial Resources of the South,) and under the head of Negroes (vol. ii., page 249) we find this explanation of the remarkable disproportion between the amount of valuable labor- — capital under lock and key in the former and in the latter part of the country. " On our estates we dispense with the whole machinery of public police, and public courts of justice. Thus we try, decide, and execute the sentences in thousands of cases, which, in other countries, w^ould go into courts." To what efl:cct, then, have those tables been arranged, except to awaken suspicions, in the mind of the careful student, of the solidity of all the foundations of the recent, hastily constructed "Southern Democratic" philosophy? Suspicions which will be abundantly confirmed, as my experience would indicate, if he will observe and investigate honestly, its alleged premises, whether psychological or ethnological, in a sufficient number of instances to warrant any safe and confident deductions. What southern writer has investigated with impartiality^ the subject of emancipation in the British West Indies ? We have in our Democratic journals on the one side, and in the Abolition journals on the other, abundant ('.r ^^ar^e statements of the re- ^^* A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. suits of that act, but I have yet to see an attempt made by an American to form an honest judicial conclusion upon the subject, resulting from any respectable study of evidence, except by per- sons whom southern writers assume to be unworthy of their at- tention. Southern writers and their northern allies utterly ig- nore the position, statements and arguments of their opponents on this subject, and content themselves with repeated displays of evidence which they appear to regard as incontrovertible, when in reality it entirely overshoots the position of those who defend the Emancipation Act. I am not at all willing to be classed with these defenders myself, yet it is my impression that wherever they get the ear of the public in this country, they are having it all their own way, bS^cause their opponents disdain to cope with them. But there is also another class, to which I profess to be- long myself, and which numbers in its ranks, I suspect, most of the thinking men at the North, which holds the opinion that how- ever untimely, and perhaps injudicious and rash in method the act of negro emancipation in the British West Indies may have been, the original design was both right in itself, and reasonable in its anticipations, both philanthropic and economical, and is thus justified in the results. I certainly have seen no evidence drawn from West India emancipation, cited by any of those writers who so delight in parliamentary returns of exports and imports, value of estates, etc., which are not satisfectorily replied to by temper- ately written books (such as Mr. Bigelow's little volume of personal observations in Jamaica,) which are in every tolerable library at the North. On the other hand, I know of no attempt to refute much respectable evidence derived from the English islands, that is favorable to this view, and before the public. Is such evidence unknown and unconsidered at the South ? If so, the alleged THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY, 105 success on the part of the hitter in an issue of fact and argument, will prove fallacious, for the abolitionists will not fail to put it within reach of every candid, thoughtful mind in the free States. RELIGIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SLAVES. The frequency with which the slaves use religious phrases of all kinds, the readiness with which they engage in what are deemed religious exercises, and fall into religious ecstacies, with the crazy, jocular manner in vvhicli they often talk of them, are striking and general characteristics. It is not at all uncommon to hear them refer to conversations which they allege, and appar- ently believe themselves to have had with Christ, the apostles, or the prophets of old, or to account for some of their actions by attributing them to the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, or of the devil. It seems to me that this state of mind is fraught with more danger to their masters than any to which they could possibly have been brouglit by general and systematic education, and by the unrestricted study of the Bible, even though this in- volved what is so much dreaded, but which is, I suspect, an in- evitable accompaniment of moral elevation, the birth of an am- bition to take care of themselves. Grossly ignorant and degraded in mind, with a crude, undefined, and incomplete system of the- ology and ethics, credulous and excitable, intensely superstitious and fanatical, what better field could a cunning monomaniac or a sagacious zealot desire in which to set on foot an appalling cru- sade ? The negro races, compared with the white, at least with the Teutonic, have greater vanity or love of approbation, a stronger dramatic and demonstrative character, more excitability, less ex- act or analytic minds, and a nature mere sensuous, though, (per- 106 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. liaps from want of cultivation,) less refined. They take a real pleasure, for instance, sucli as it is a rare thing for a white man to be able to feel, in bright and strongly contrasting colors, and in music, in which nearly all are proficient to some extent. They are far less adapted for steady, uninterrupted labor than we are, but excel us in feats demanding agility and tempestuous energy. A Mississippi steamboat manned by negro deck-hands will wood up a third quicker than one manned by the same number of whites, but white laborers of equal intelligence and under equal stimulus will cut twice as much wood, split twice as many rails, and hoe a third more corn in a day than negroes. On many plantations, religious exercises are almost the only habitual recre- ation not purely sensual, from steady dull labor, in which the ne- groes are permitted to indulge, and generally all other forms of mental enjoyment are discouraged. Religious exercises are rarely forbidden, and a greater freedom to individual impulses and talent is allowed while engaged in them than is ever tolerated in con- ducting mere amusements or educational exercises. Naturally and necessarily all that part of the negro's nature which is otherwise suppressed, bursts out with an intensity and vehemence almost terrible to witness, in forms of religious wor- ship and communion, and a "profession" of piety which it is nec- essary to make before one can take a very noticeable part in tlic customary social exercises, is almost universal, except on planta- tions where the ordinary tumultuous religious meetings are dis- couraged, or in towns where other recreations are open to the slaves.* * The following newspaper paragraph indicates the wholesale way in which slaves may be nominally Christianized : " Revival amoxg the Slaves. — Rev. J. M. C. Breaker, of Beaufort, S. C, THE mOPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 10*7 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF SLAVES. Witli regard to the religious instruction of slaves, widely dif- ferent practices of course prevail. There are some slaveholders, like Bishop Polk of Louisiana, who oblige, and many others who encourage, their slaves to engage in religious exercises, furnish- ing them certain conveniences for the purpose, as described at page 449 of the " Seaboard Slave States." Among the wealthier slave owners, however, and in all those parts of the country where the enslaved portion of the population outnumbers the whites, there is generally a visible, and often an avowed distrust of the eftect of religious exercises upon slaves, and even the preaching of white clergymen to them is permitted by many with reluctance.* The prevailing impression among us, with re- writes to the Southern Baptist that within the last three mouths he has bap- tized by immersion three hundred and fifty persons, all of them, with a few exceptions, negroes. These conversions were the result of a revival which has been in progress dm-ing the last six months. On tho 12tli inst., he bap- tized two hundred and twenty-three converts— aU blacks but three— and the ceremony, although performed with due deliberation, occupied only one hour and five minutes. This is nearly four a minute, and Mr. Breaker considers it a demonstration that the three thousand converted on the day of Pentecost could easily have been baptized by the twelve apostles— each taking two hundred and fifty — in an hour and thirteen minutes." * » Bishop Polk, of Louisiana, was one of the guests. He assured me that he had been all over the country on Red River, the scene of tho ficti- tious sufferings of ' Uncle Tom,' and that he had found the temporal and spiritual welfare of the negroes well cared for. He had confirmed thirty black persons near the situation assigned to Legree's estate. He is himself the owner of four hundred slaves, whom he endeavors to bring up in a re- Ugious manner. He tolerates no religion on his estate but that of the Church, he baptizes all the children, and teaches thorn the catechism. All, without exception, attend the Church service, and tho chanting is creditably per- formed by them, in the opinion of their owner. Ninety of them are commu- nicants, marriages aro celebrated according to tlie Church ritual, and the state of morals is satisfactory. Twenty infants had been baptized by tho 108 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. ganJ to tlie important influence of slavery in promoting the spread of religion among the blacks, is an erroneous one in my opinion. I ]iave heard northern clergymen speak as if they sup- posed a regular daily instruction of slaves in the truths of Chris- tianity to be general. So far is this from being the case, that al- though family prayers were held in several of the fifty planters' houses in Mississippi and Alabama, in which I passed a night, I never in a single instance saw a field-hand attend or join in the devotion of the family. In South Carolina, a formal remonstrance, signed by over three hundred and fifty of the leading planters and citizens, was pre- sented to a Methodist clergyman who had been chosen by the Conference of that State, as being a cautious and discreet person to preach especially to slaves. It was his purpose, expressly de- clared beforehand, to confine himself to verbal instruction in re- ligious truth. "Verbal instruction," replied the remonstrants, "will increase the desire of the black population to learn. * * * Open the missionary sluice, and the current will swell in its gradual onward advance. We thus expect . progressive system of improvement will be introduced, or will follow from the na- ture and force of circumstances, which, if not checked, (though it may be shrouded in sophistry and disguise,) will ultimately revolutionize our civil institutions:' bishop just before his departure from home, and he had left his whole estate his keys, etc., .n the sole charge of one of his slaves, without the lil esl 'hr ;r^iir/^^^^ °-"^^' *^^ ^^=^"^^^ -^- --t bear ^ .md that by he laws of Louisiana, emancipation has been rendered all but im- pracfcable, and that, if practicable, it would not necessarily be, in all case" anactofmercyorof justice."-rAe Western WorU ReviLa. By the S otr. TTl ''• ^'" -^'--f " A-ericaand the American Church 'el' Oxford, John Henry Parker, 1854. ' THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 109 The missionaiy, the Rev. T. Tupper, accordingly retired from the field. The local newspaper, the Greenville Mountaineer, in announcing his withdrawal, stated that the great body of the people were manifestly opposed to the religious instruction of their slaves, even if it were only given orally. Though I do not suppose this view is often avowed, or con- sciously held by intelligent citizens, such a formal, distinct, and effective manifestation of sentiment made by so important an in- tegral portion of the slaveholding body, can not be supposed to represent a merely local or occasional state of mind, and I have not been able to resist the impression, that even where the econ- omy, safety and duty of some sort of religious education of the slaves is conceded, so much caution, reservation and restriction is felt to be necessary in their instruction, that the result in the majority of cases has been merely to furnish a delusive clothing of Christian forms and phrases, to the original vague superstition of the African savage. THE CHURCH RECUMBENT. Upon the value of the statistics of " colored church member- ship," which are often used as evidence that the evils of slavery are fully compensated by its influence in Christianizing the slaves, some light is thrown by the following letter from the white pas- tor of a town church in that part of the Soutb in which the whites are most numerous, and in which the negroes enjoy the most privileges. " To the Editor of the Richmond ( Ya.) Religious Herald. * * * "The truth is, the teachings of the pulpit (at least among Baptists) have nothing to do with the matter. Let me furnish a case in proof. Of two churches which the writer serves, his immediate predecessor was pastor for about twenty-five years. It would be only 110 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. necessary to give his name, to furnish the strongest and most satisfac- tory assurance that nothing which ever fell from his lips could be con- strued into the support of ignorance, superstition, or fanaticism. Dur- ing the five or six years I have served these churches, whatever may have been my errors and failings, (and I am ready to admit that they have been numerous and grievous enough, in all conscience,) I know I have never uttered a sentiment which could be tortured into the sup- port of the superstitions prevailing among the colored people. And yet, in both these churches, the colored members are as superstitious and fanatical as they are elsewhere. Indeed, this was to be expected, for I certainly claim no superiority over my brethren in the ministry, and I am satisfied that many of them are far better qualified than I am to expose error and to root out superstition. This state of things, then, is not due to the teachings of the pulpit. Nor is it the result of private instructions by masters. Indeed, these last have been afforded so sparingly, till within a few years since, that they could produce but little effect of any sort. And, besides, those who OAvn servants, and are willing to teach them, are far too intelligent to countenance super- stition in any way. I repeat the inquiry, then, why is it that so many of our colored members are ignorant, superstitious and fanatical ? It is the effect of instructions received from leading men among them- selves, and the churches are responsible for this effect, in so lar as tliey receive into fellowship those wdio have listened to these instructions, ground their hopes upon them, and guide their lives by them. What- ever we may say against superstition, so long as we receive into our churches those who are its slaves, they will believe that we think them Christians ; and, naturally relying on our judgment as expressed by their reception, they will live deluded, and die but to be lost. •'But some one will sa^'', 'we never receive colored persons when they manifest these supei'Stitions — when they talk of visions, dreams, sounds,' etc. This is right, as far as it goes. In every such case they should be rejected. But superstition of a fatal character often exists where nothing is said about dreams and visions. It is just as fatally superstitious to trust in prayers and feelings, as in dreams and visions. And this is the sort of superstition which now prevails among the col- ored people. They have found that sights and sounds will not answer before the whites, and now, (reserving these, perhaps, for some chosen auditory of their own color,) they substitute ]:>rayers and feelings. In illustration permit me to record, in no spirit of levity, the stereotyped experience which generally passes current, and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, introduces the colored candidate into the church. The pastor is informed, by one of the 'colored deacons,' that a man wishes to offer to the church with a view to baptism. The fact is an- nounced, a meeting of the church called, and the candidate comes for- ward. " Pastor. ' Well, John, tell me in a few words, in your own way, your religious experience. What have been your feelings, and what are your present hopes and purposes ?' THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. HI ^^ Tohn ' I -ee other people trying, and so I thought I would try too T fplt heavy — I felt a weight — and i i^epi oii pi^'^^^o , -, "ht-I feft easy-I felt like I loved all Christian people-I felt like I '"'^;fN:w:Twst-positively the whole of the experience whicli is gener- ally relate! by colored candidates for bapti..^ ^^lllolinin.. brt:al-srrsT^e|tth^i^ the churches-I haTe received many "P°° ' "y'^^'L,^ by my trood Tir i^rTo-duus^tS^J 1 v:r;rnot'rrttnX.'H-e ™;'oTu» rl^ktt r-^ceiving P-- - -1^/^°^ W In the whole of it, there is not "f 7™'%^Lf'Pf^o"e word about questions; and were this not the case i naxe questions may efforts, the colored people will have most oonfidenee. Not the smallest suggestion, I observe, in all the long article from which the above is derived, is ventured, that the negroes are capable of education, or that their religious condition wou d improve if their general enlightenment of mind were not stndi- ously prevented. "I have often heard the remark made," says the Rev. O. O. Jones, in a treatise on the "Religious Instruction of Slaves," printed at Savannah, Georgia, 1842, "by men whose standing and office in the churches afforded them abundant opportumty for observation, that the more they have had to do with colored members, the less confidence they have been compelled to place in their Christian professions." A portion of a letter written for publication by the wife of 12 A JOURNEY IN TETE BACK COUNTKY. the pastor of a clnircli in the capital of Alabama, given below, naively reveals the degree of enlightenment prevailing among the Christianized Africans at a point where their means of in- struction are a thousand times better than they are on an average throughout the country. to '^i^f Ii "" *''""'''? ^"^ ^V"^ seriously, and in the strongest light held ud to hnn the enormity of the crime in forsaking his lawful wif and tnJ-^ mg another, Colly replied, most earnestly, an°d not takl if at all the" Lor, Massa Harry, what was I to do, sir ? She tuk all I ponlrl git and more too, sir, to put on her back ;'and telh ' de truf sir dre s er^Mas'^^ ZtT. ""'^ ^''' ""'1 ?^ ''^^''' ''' ^ '-onsSd wS man cou d do IrT /^'^T ' "^'^^ '''"' '''^ ^^> ^ J^^ '^^'^ ^^' ^ 'lucent made to have; yet, strange to say, they are perfect models of coniu bJlLiriT""""* """ '"°''!"°S in my husband's study by a respecta- can help you!' ' ""^ *'''"S P'"'"''"''"- ^'"^ "'='"' ?-perhaps I r tJ''?' '"^'*™ > i' ''^ Partickler business ivid bisself ' BeholdT/ '"' ^"^^"i^!^ curiosity, after all^his^sho'^of mfste i^ Behold the answer m plam English, or rather nigger Eno-]isl "^ ^* " jLrS'tl '"''-^^^r^n'^'r' ^^ ^ "^^"^^'^^ ^^-^^ anothe husband ' Jus at this crisis, tjie Oracle entered, who, havino- anthoritv hv n few. spoken words, to join together those Whom' no man ma v m^^^^^^ der, hese poor people simply imagine him gifted with eS nowT?; annul the contract Avith a breath of his moudi ^ ^^'' ^^ n. T l.rr '^^, T"''^ '^° ^""'^ ^^'""^ tl^'« ^^oman was reallv no widow THE PKOrERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 1 1 ;3 Conference,' where an amusing scene occurred, which resulted in the discomfiture of the disconsolate petitioner, who returned to her home rather crest-fallen. " These quarterly conference debates, for flights of oratory, and super- lativeness of diction, beggar all description. Be it understood, that negroes, as a class, have more ' business' to attend to than any other people — that is, provided they can thereby get a chance to ' speak 'fore white folks.' To make a speech is glory enough for Sambo, if he happen to have ' the gift of gab ;' and to speak before the preacher is an honor unparalleled. And, by the way, if the preacher have will and wit enough to manage and control the discordant elements of a negro Quarterly Conference, he will be abundantly rewarded with such respect and gratitude as man seldom may lay claim to. They account him but a very little ' lower than the angels ;' and their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, are equally his at command. But wo be to the unfortunate pastor who treats them with undue in- dulgence ; they will besiege him daily and hourly with their petty af- fairs, and their business meetings will be such a monopoly of his time and patience, that but for the farcical character of the same, making them more like dramatic entertainments than sober realities, he would be in despair. Far into the short hours of morning will they speech- ify and magnify, until nothing but the voice of stern authority, in a tone of command not to be mistaken, can stop the torrent." An Alabama gentleman whom I questioned with regard to the chastity of the so-called pious slaves, confessed, that four negro women had borne children in his own house, all of them at the time of delivery members in good standing of the Baptist church, and none of them calling any man husband. The only negi'o man in the house was also a church member, and he believed that he was the father of the four children. He said that he did not know of more than one negro woman whom he could suppose to be chaste, yet he knew hosts who were members of churches.* * " A small farmer." who " has had control of negroes for thirty years and has been pursuing his present system with them for twenty years," and who "owning but few slaves is able," as he observes, "to do better by them" than large planters, writing to Mr. DeBow, says, " I have tried fltith- fully to break up immorality. I have not known an oath to be sworn for a long time. I know of no quarreling, no calling harsh names, and but little 11^ A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. A northern clergyman who had been some years in another town in Alabama, where also the means of instruction offered the slaves were unusually good, answered my inquiry, What pro- portion of the colored members of the churches in the town hai any clear comprehension of the meaning of the articles of faith which they professed ? " certainly not more than one in seven." The acknowledgment that " the colored people will, in spite of all our efforts, have more confidence in the views of leading col- ored members," made by the writer of the letter taken from the " Religious Herald," has been generally made by all clergymen at the South with whom I have conversed. A clergyman of the Episcopal church, of very frank and engaging manners, said in my presence that he had been striving for seven years to gain the confidence of the small number of Africans belonging to his con- gregation, and with extreme humility he had been lately forced to acknowledge that all his apparent success hitherto had been most delusive. When asked how he accounted for it, he at once ascribed it to the negro's habitual distrust of the white race, and in discussing the causes of this distrust he asked how, if he pre- tended to believe that the Bible was the Word of God, addressed equally to all the human race, he could explain to a negro's sat- isfaction why he should fear to put it directly into his hands and instruct him to read it and judge for himself of his duty ? A planter present, a member of his church, immediately observed that these were dangerous views, and advised him to be cautious in the expression of them. The laws of the country forbade the stealing. Habits of amalgamation, I can not stop. I can only check it in name. I am willing to be taught, for I have tried every thing I know." He has his field-negroes attend his own family prayers on Sunday, prayer meetings at four o'clock Sunday mornings, eic—DeBow's Resources, vol il, p. 337. THE PEOPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 115 education of negroes, and the church was, and he trusted always would remain, the bulwark of the laws. The clergyman replied that he had no design to break the laws, but he must say that be considered that the law which withheld the Bible from the negro was unnecessary and papistical in character.* THE RESTRAINT UPON THE WHITE CLERGY. The " Methodist Protestant," a religious newspaper edited by a clergyman, in Maryland, where the olave population is to the free only in the ratio of one to twenty-five, lately printed an ac- count of a slave auction in Java (translated from a Dutch paper), at which the father of a slave family was permitted to purchase his wife and children at a nominal price, owing to the humanity of the spectators. The account concluded as follows : " It would be difficult to describe the joy experienced by these slaves on hearing the fall of the hammer which thus gave them their hberty ; and this joy was further augmented by the presents given them by numbers of the spectators, in order that they might be able to ob- tain a subsistence till such time as they could procure employment. " These are the acts of a noble generosity that deserve to be remem- bered, and which, at the same time, testify that the inhabitants of Java begin to abhor the crying injustice of slavery, and are willing to en- tertain measures for its abolition." To give currency to such ideas, even in Maryland, would be fatal to what clergymen call their " influence," and which they * The "Southern Presbyterian," in reviewing some observations made be- fore a South Carolina Bible Society, in which it had been urged that if slaves were permitted to read the Bible, they would learn from it to be more sub- missive to the authority which the State gives the master over them, says that the speaker " seems to be uninformed of the fact that the Scriptures are read in our churches every Sabbath day, and tliose very passages which in- culcate the relative duties of masters and servants in consequence of their textual, i. e. legally prescribed connections, are imre frequently read than any other portions of the Bible." 116 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. everywhere value at a rather dangerous estimate ; according-ly, in the editorial columns prominence is given to the following salvo to the outraged sensibilities of the subscribers : " SLAVE AUCTION IN JAVA. " A brief article, with this head, appears on the fourth page of our paper this week. It is of a class of articles we never select^ because they are very often manufactured by paragraphists for a purpose, and are not reliable. It was put in by our printer in place of something we had marked out. We did not see this objectionable substitute un- til the outside form was worked off, and are therefore not responsible for it."* THE EDUCATION OF THE WHITE RACR, UXDKR THE NECESSI- TIES OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM. The habitual caution imposed on clergymen and public teach- ers must, and obviously does have an important secondary effect, similar to that usually attributed by Protestants to papacy, upon the minds of all the people, discountenancing and retarding the free and fearless exercise of the mind upon subjects of a religious or ethical nature, and the necessity of accepting and apologizing for the exceedingly low morality of the nominally religious slaves, together with the familiarity with this immorality which all classes acquire, renders the existence of a very elevated standard of mor- als among the whites almost an impossibility .f * Organized action for the abolition of slavery in the island of Java, has since been authentically reported. f Twice it happened to come to my knowledge that sons of a planter, by whom I was lodged while on tliis journey — lads of fourteen or sixteen — who wore supposed to have slept in the same room with me, really spent the niglit, till after daybreak, in the negro cabins. A southern merchant, visiting New York, to whom I expressed the view I had been led to form of the evil of slavery in this way, replied that ho thought I over-estimated the evil to boys on the plantations, but that it was impossible to over-estimate it in THE PEOPEETY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 117 In spite of the constant denunciations by the southern news- papers, of those who continued to patronize northern educational institutions, I never conversed with a cultivated Southerner on the eJ9E*ects of slavery, that he did not express a wish or intention to have his own children educated where they should be free from demoralizing association with slaves. That this association is almost inevitably corrupting and dangerous, is very generally (I may say, excepting by the extremest fanatics of South Caro- lina, universally) admitted. Now, although the children of a few wealthy men may, for a limited period, be preserved from this danger, the children of the million can not be. Indeed, it re- quires a man of some culture, and knowledge of the rest of the world, to appreciate the danger sufficiently to guard at all dili- gently against it. If habitual intercourse with a hopelessly low and immoral class is at all bad in its effects on young minds, the people of the South are, as a people, educated subject to this bad influence, and must bear the consequences. In other words, if the slaves must not be elevated, it would seem to be a necessity that the citizens should steadily degenerate. Change and grow more marked in their peculiarities with every generation, they certainly do, very obviously. " The towns. "I have personal knowledge," he continued, "that there are but two lads, sixteen years old, in our town, [a small market town of Alabamd,] who have not already had occasion to resort to remedies for the penalty of licentiousness." "When on my brother's plantation, just before I came North," said another southern merchant, on his annual visit to New York, " I was informed that each of his family-servants were suffering from , and I ascertained that each of my brother's children, girls and boys, had been in- formed of it and knew how and from whom it had been acquired. The ne- groes being their familiar companions, I tried to get my brother to send them North with me to school. I told liim ho might as well have them educated in a brothel at once, as in the way they were growing up." 118 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. South" has a traditional reputation for qualities and habits in which I think the southern people, as a whole, are to-day more deficient than any other nation in the world. The southern gen- tleman, as we ordinarily conceive him to be, is as rare a phe- nomenon in the South at the present day as is the old squire of Geoffrey Crayon in modern England. But it is unnecessary to argue how great must be the influence, upon people of a higher origin, of habitual association with a race systematically kept at the lowest ebb of intellect and morals. It has been elaborately and convincingly described by Mr. Jefferson, from his personal experience and observation of his neighbors. What he testified to be the effect upon the Virginians, in his day, of owning and associating with slaves, is now to be witnessed to a far greater and more deplorable extent throughout the whole South, but most deplorably in districts where the slave population predom- inates, and where, consequently, the action of slavery has been most unimpeded.* * Jefferson fails to enumerate, among the evils of slavery, one of its influ- ences which I am inclined to think as distinct and as baneful to us nationally as any other. How can men retain the most essential quality of true man- hood who daily, without remonstrance or interference, see men beaten, whose position renders effective resistance totally impracticable — and not only men, but women, too ! Is it not partially the result of this, that self-respect sel- dom seems to suggest to an angry man at the South that he should use any thing like magnanimity ? that ho sliould be careful to secure fair play for his opponent in a quarrel ? A gentleman of veracity, now living in the South, told me that among his friends he had once numbered two young men, who were themselves intimate friends, till one of them, taking offense at some foolish words uttered by the other, challenged him. A large crowd assem- bled to see the duel, which took place on a piece of prairie ground. The combatants came armed with rifles, and at the first interchange of shots the challenged man fell disabled by a ball in the thigh. The other, throwing do"wn his rifle, walked toward him, and kneeling by his side, drew a bowie knife, and deliberately butchered him. The crowd of bystanders not only THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 119 ABSENTEEISM. What proportion of the larger cotton plantations are resided npon by their owners, I am unable to estimate with confidence. Of those having cabin accommodations for fifty slaves each, which came under my observation from the road, while I was traveling through the cotton districts bordering the Mississippi river, I think more than half were unprovided with a habitation which I could suppose to be the ordinary residence of a man of moderate wealth. In the more fertile and less healthy districts, I should judge that the majority of slaves are left by their own- ers to the nearly unlimited government of hireling overseers the greater part of the time. Some of these plantations are owned by capitalists, who reside permanently and constantly in the North or in Europe. Many are owned by wealthy Virginians and Carolinians, who reside on what arc called the " show plan- tations" of those States ; plantations having all the character, though never the name, of mere country-seats, the exhausted soil of which will scarcely produce sufficient to feed and clothe the resident slaves, whose increase is constantly removed to colonize these richer fields of the West. Still a large number are merely occasional sojourning places of their owners, who naturally enough prefer to live, as soon as they can afi'ord to do so, where the conveniences and luxuries belonging to a highly civilized state of society are more easily obtained than they can ever be in a country of large plantations. permitted this, but the execrable assassin still lives ia the community, has since married, and, as far as my informant could judge, his social position has been rather advanced than otherwise, from thus dealing with his enemy. In what other English — in what other civilized or half-civilized community would such cowardly atrocity have been endured ? ^^^ A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. It is rare that a plantation would have a dozen intelhgent famil- ies residing within a day's ride of it. Any society that a planter enjoys on his estate must, thei-efore, consist in a great degree of permanent guests. Hence the name for hospitality of wealthy planters. A large plantation is necessarily a retreat from general society, and is used by its owner, I am inclined to think, in the majority of cases, in winter, as Berkshire villas and farms are in summer by rich people of New York and Boston. I feel assured that this is the case with the plantations upon the Mississippi, and the bayous of Louisiana, upon the Arkansas, the Yazoo, and the Eed rivers, and in the lowlands of Carolina and Georgia. I have never been on a plantation numbering fifty field-hands, the owner of which was accustomed to reside steadily through the year upon it. Still I am aware that there are many such, and possibly it is a minority of them who are regularly absent with their families from their plantations during any considerable part of the year. The summer visitors from the South to our northern water- ing places are, I judge, chiefly of the migratory, wealthy class. Such persons, it is evident, are much less influenced in their character and habits, by association with slaves, than any other at the South. Their household arrangements, and the customs of their house-servants must, of course, assimilate to those of culti- vated families in other parts of the world. The Irish gentleman and the Irish peasant are not more unlike, in their habits and manners, than some of these large planters and the great multi- tude of slave ow^ners. The number of the very wealthy is, of course, small, yet as the chief part of the wealth of these consists in slaves, no inconsid- erable proportion of all the slaves belong to men who deputize THE PROPERTY ASPECT OF SLAVERY. 121 their government in a great measure to overseers. It may be computed, (not however with confidence), from the census of 1850, that al)out one half the slaves of Louisiana and one third those of Mississippi and Arkansas, belong to estates of not less taan fifty slaves each, and of these, I believe, nine tenths live on plantations which their owners reside upon, if at all, but transiently. The number of plantations of this class, and the proportion of those employed upon them to the whole body of negroes in the country, is, as I have said, rapidly increasing. At the present prices of cotton the large grower has such advantages over the small, that the owner of a plantation of fifty slaves, fevorably sit- uated, unless he lives very recklessly, will increase in wealth so rapidly and possess such a credit that he may soon establish or purchase other plantations, so that at his death his children may be provided for without reducing the effective force of negroes on any division of his lauded estate. The excessive credit given to such planters by negro dealers and tradesmen renders this the more practicable. The higher the price of cotton the higher is that of negroes, and the higher the price of negroes the less is it in the power of men of small capital to buy them. Large plantations of course pay a much larger per centage on the capi- tal invested in them than smaller ones ; indeed the only plausible economical defense of slavery is simply an explanation of the ad- vantages of associated labor, advanta^-es which are possessed equally by large manufacturing establishments in which free la- borers are brought together and employed in the most efi"ective manner, and which I can sec no sufficient reason for supposing could not be made available for agriculture did not the good re- sults flowing from small holdings, on the whole, counterbalance them. If the present high price of cotton and the present 122 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. scarcity of labor at the Soiitli continues, the cultivation of cotton on small plantations will by and by become unusual, for the same reason that hand-loom weaving has become unusual in the farm houses of Massachusetts. But whatever advantages large plantations have, they accrue only to their owners and to the buyers of cotton ; the mass of the white inhabitants are dispersed over a greater surface, dis- couraged and driven toward barbarism by them, and the blacks upon them, while rapidly degenerating from all that is redeeming in savage-life, are gaining nothing valuable of civilization. In the Report of the Grand Jury of Richland District, South Carolina, in eighteen hundred and ffty-fouVj calling for a re- establishment of the African slave trade,* it is observed, " as to the morality of this question, it is scarcely necessary for us to al- lude to it ; when the fact is remarked that the plantations of Alabama. Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas have been and are daily settled by the removal of slaves from the more northern of the slave States, and that in consequence of their having been raised in a more healthy climate, and in most cases trained to pursuits totally different, the mortality even on the best-ordered farms is so great that in many instances the entire income is ex- pended in the purchase of more slaves from the same source in order to replenish and keep up those plantations, while in every case the condition of the slave, if his life is spared, is made worse both physically and morally. ^' * * And if you look at the subject in a religious point of view, the contrast is equally strik- ing, for when you remove a slave from the more northern to * Richland District contains seven thousand white, and thirteen thousand slave population. The Report is pubhshed in the Charleston Standard, Oc- tober 12th, 1854. THE PROPERTY ASPECT OP SLAVERY. 123 the more soutliern parts of the slaveliolding States, you thereby diminish his religious opportunities.'" I believe that this statement gives an exaggerated and calum- nious report of the general condition of the slaves upon the plantations of the States referred to, containing, as they did in 1849, one third the whole slave population of the South — but I have not been able to resist the conviction that in the districts where cotton is now grown most profitably to the planters, the oppression and deterioration of the negro race is much more la- mentable than is generally supposed by those who like myself have been constrained, by other considerations, to accept it as a duty to oppose temperately but determinately the modern policy of the South, of Avhich this is an immediate result. Its effect on the white race, I still consider to be infinitely more deplorable. In the important work of Dr. Davy on the West Indies, I find the following description of the poor whites of Barbadoes, who, by a comparison with Sir Charles Lyell's observations, and my own descriptions at pages 414, and 506, of the "Seaboard Slave States," it may be seen correspond not only morally and intel- lectually, but remarkably also, in their physical appearance, with those of the old cotton plantation districts of the South. " Relative to the whites, they may be divided into two classes — the poor laboring portion of them constituting the majority, and the smaller portion of them consisting of those in easy or in affluent circumstances. " The former are in many respects remarkable, and not less so in ap- pearance than in character. Their hue and complexion are not such as might be expected ; their color resembles more that of the Albino than of an Englishman. When exposed a good deal to the sun in a tropical climate, it is commonly of a sickly white, or light red, not often of a healthy brown ; and they have generally light eyes and light-col- ored, sparse hair. In make they bear marks of feebleness, rather tall, loosely jointed, with little muscular development. In brief, their gen- eral appearance denotes degeneracy of corporeal frame, and reminds one of exotic plants vegetating in an uncongenial soil and climate. " In character, morally and intellectually, they show marks also of de- 6* 124 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. generacy, not less tlian physically. They are generally indolent and idle, ignorant and improvident, and often intemperate. Is it surprising, then, that they are poor, and objects of contempt? * * * What they are they have been made undoubtedly by circumstances, and this in the course of a few generations."* Similar phenomena are found in the free race, I believe, wherever large slave-plantations are common. Whether a gradual elevation of the slaves, would prove the entire destruction of the poor whites, as is held at the South, is certainly very doubtful. The effect of emancipation in Barbadoes, upon the whites, after Bome half dozen years only, is thus described by Dr. Davy : "Previous to emancipation, the planters, for every sixty acres of land, had to provide a man for the militia (the cliief purpose of which was to guard against the insurrection of their slaves). * * * He was supplied by his principal with a gun and ammunition, and had a house and two acres of land free of rent, on which he raised some vegetables and kept a cow, or two or three goats. Very idle himself, his wife worked with the needle, and got money for making clothes for the negroes" (p. 66). " Now that they are obhged to support themselves as thej can, they are vaiiously employed. Those who possess a little land, or who rent a few acres, cultivate chiefly those crops which re- quire least labor, and the smallest means, such as ground provisions, arrow-root, aloes, and perhaps a little cotton. I have seen one of them at work in a manner not a little characteristic : a hoe in one hand and umbrella in the other, which he held over his head, and a face- cloth over his face (a relief from reflected heat). Some who have been taught to read and write are employed as book-keepers by the proprietors of the larger estates, with a pa}^ of about six dollars a month and board and lodging, Some are chiefly occupied in fishing, * * * Some gain a livelihood as carters and grooms, and some as field-laborers, a kind of labor which, when slaves were employed as laborers, they would have resisted as insupportable degradation. * * * All of them have the aristocratic feeling in its worst sense, the class pride acquired in time of slavery when they were an important por- tion of the privileged order ; and it is marked in their manners and bearing, h- * * They are not to be considered as altogether irre- claimable" (p. 71). * " The West Indies, * * * founded on notes and observations colleoted during a three years' residence." By John Davy, M. D,, F. E. S., etc., In- spector General of Army Hospitals. CHAPTER III. A TRIP INTO A PART OP NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. VicJcshurg^ March 18. — I arrived at this place last night, about suTivSet, and was told that thei'e was no hotel in the town except on the wharf-boat, the only house used for that purpose having been closed a few days ago on account of a difference of opinion between its owner and his tenant. There are no wharves on the Mississippi, or any of the south- ern rivers. The wharf-boat is an old steamboat, with her paddle boxes and machinery removed and otherwise dismantled, on which steamboats discharge passengers and freight. The main deck is used as a warehouse, and, in place of the furnace, has in this case a dram shop, a chandler's shop, a forwarding agency, and a telegraph office. Overhead, the saloon and state-rooms remain, and with the bar-room and clerk's office, kitchen and barber's shop, constitute a stationary though floating hostelry. Though there were fifty or more rooms, and not a dozen guests, I was obliged, about twelve o'clock, to admit a stranger who had been gambling all the evening in the saloon, to occupy the spare shelf of my closet. If a disposition to enjoy occasional privacy, or to exercise a choice in one's room-mates were a sure sympton of a monomania for incendiarism, it could not be more carefully Ihwarted than it is at all public houses in this part of the world. Meiwplds^ March 20. — I reached here this morning in forty- 12G A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. eight hours by steamboat from Vicksburg ; distance four hundred miles; many stoppages and against the current ; fare $10. Here, at the " Commercial Hotel," I am favored with an un- usually good-natured room-mate. He is smoking on the bed — our bed — now, and wants to know what my business is here, and whether I carry a pistol about me ; also whether I believe that it is n't lucky to play cards on Sundays ; which I do most strenu- ously, especially as this is a rainy Sunday, and his second cigar is nearly smoked out. This is a first-class hotel and has, of course, printed bills of fare, which, in a dearth of other literature, are not to be dropped at the first glance. A copy of to-day's, is presented on the opposite page. Being in a distant quarter of the establishment when a crash of the gong announced dinner, I did not get to the table as early as some others. The meal was served in a large, dreary room exactly like a hospital ward ; and it is a sti'iking illustration of the celerity with which every thing is accomplished in our young country, that beginning with the soup, and going on by the fish to the roasts, the first five dishes I inquired for, when at last I succeeded in arresting one of the negro boys, were " all gone," and as the waiter had to go to the head of the dining-room, or to the kitchen, to ascertain this fact upon each demand, the ma- jority of the company had left the table before I was served at all. At length I said I w^ould take any thing that was still to be had, and thereupon was provided immediately with some grimy bacon, and greasy cabbage. This I commenced eating, but I no sooner paused for a moment, than it was suddenly and surrepti- tiously removed, and its place supplied, without the expression of any desire on my part, with some other Memphitic chef d'oeuvre, A TRIP IlSrrO A PART OF NORTHERN MTSSTSSTPPI. 127 COMMERCIAL HOTEL IB¥ (D(D)(DE^miiI.ILo Ml^^RCHC SO. SOUP. FRUIT. Almonds. Oyster. Rasins. Pecans. FISH. Red. VEGETABLES. Boiled Cabbage. Turnips. BOILED. Cold Slaugh. Hot slaugh. Jole and green. Pickled beets. Ham, Creole hominy. Corned beef. Crout cabbage, Bacon and turnips. Oyster plant fried. Codfish egg sauce. Parsneps gravied. Beef heart egg sauce. Stewed parsneps. Leg of mutton caper sauce. Fried cabbage. Barbecued rabits. Sweet potatoes spiced. Boiled tongue. Carrot. Sweat potatoes baked. ROAST. Cabbage stuffed. Onions, boiled. Veal. Irish potatoes creamed and mashed. Roast pig. Irish potatoes browned. Mnscovie Ducks. Boiled Shellots. Kentucky beef. Scolloped carrots. Mutton. Boiled turnips drawn butter. Barbecued shoat. White beans. Roast bear meat. Roast pork. PASTRY. Currant pies. ENTREES. Lemon custard. Rice pudding. Fricasee pork. Cocoanut pie. Calf-feet mushroom sauce. Cranberry pies. Bear sausages. Sliced potato pie. Harricane tripe. Chess cake. Stewed mutton. Irish pudding. Browned Kice. Orange custard. Calf feet madeira sauce. Cranberry shapes. Stewed turkey wine sauce. Greon peacli tarts. Giblets volivon. Green peach puff paste. Mutton omelett. Grape tarts. Beef's heart fricasecd. llucklc berry pies. Clieese macaroni. Pound Cake. Cliicken choi)s robert sauce. Rheubarb tarts. Breast chicken madeira sauce. Plum tarts. Beef kidney pickle sauce. Calves feet jelly. Cod fish bak(!d. Blamongc. Calf head wine sauce. Oranga jelly. 128 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. a close investigation of whicli left me in doubt whether it was that denominated " sliced potato pie," or " Irish pudding." I congratulate myself that I have lived to see the day in which an agitation for reform in our great hotel system has been com- menced, and I trust that a Society for the Revival of Village Inns will ere long form one of the features of the May anniversaries. A stage coach conveyed the railroad passengers from the hotel to the station, which was a mile or two out of town. As we were entering the coach the driver observed with a Mephisto- phelean smile that we " need n't calculate we were gwine to ride very fur " and accordingly, as soon as we had got into the country he stopped and asked all the men passengers to get out and walk, for, he added, " it was as much as his hoses could do to draw the ladies and the baggage." It was quite true ; the road was so bad that the horses were obliged to stop frequently with the diminished load, and as there was a contract between myself and the proprietors by which, for a stipulated sum of money by me to them in hand duly paid, they promised to convey me, as well as my little baggage, I thought it would have been no more than honest if they had looked out beforehand to have either a stronger team, or a better road, provided. As is the custom of our country, however, we allowed ourselves to be thus robbed and forced to tiresome labor with great good nature, and waded along through mud ankle-deep, joking with the driver and ready to put our shoulders to the wheels if it should be necessary. Two pieces of our baggage were jerked oft' in heavy lurches of the coach ; the owners picked them up and carried them on their shoulders till the horses stopped to ])reathe again. The train of course had waited for us, and it continued to wait until another coach arrived, when it started twenty minutes behind time. A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSirPT. 129 After some forty miles of rail, nine of iis were stowed away in another stage coach. The road was bad, the weather foul. We proceeded slowly, were often in imminent danger of being upset, and once were all obliged to get out and help the horses draw the coach out of a slough ; but with smoking, and the occasional circulation of a small black bottle, and a general disposition to be as comfortable as circumstances would allow, four hours ot stage coaching proved less fatiguing than one of the smoky rail- cars. Among the passengers was a " Judge," resident in the vicinity, portly, dignified and well informed ; and a young man, who was a personal friend of the member of Congress from the district, and who, as he informed me, had, through the influence of this friend, a promise from the President of honorable and lucrative employment under government. He was known to all the other passengers, and hailed by every one on the road-side, by the title of Colonel. The Judge was ready to converse about the country through wliich we were passing, and wliile perfectly aware, as no one else seemed to be, that it bore any thing but an appearance of prosperity or attractiveness to a stranger, he assured me that it was really improving in all respects quite rap- idly. There were few large plantations, but many small planters or rather farmers, for cotton, though the principal source of cash income, was much less exclusively an object of attention than in the more southern parts of the State. A larger space vras occu- pied by the maize and grain crops. There were not a few small fields of wheat. In the afternoon, when only the Colonel and myself were with him, the Judge talked about slavery in a can- did and liberal spirit. At present prices, he said, nobody could afford to own slaves, unless he could engage them almost exclu- ISO A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. sively in cotton-gro"\ving. It was nndoubtedly a great injury to a region like this, v.liich was not altogether well adapted to cotton, to be in the midst of a slaveholding country, for it pre- vented efficient free labor. A good deal of cotton was neverthe- less grown hereabouts by white labor — by poor men who plant- ed an acre or two, and worked it themselves, getting the planters to gin and press it for them. It was not at all uncommon for men to begin in this way and soon purchase negroes on credit, and eventually become rich men. Most of the plantations in this vicinity, indeed, belonged to men who had come into the country with nothing within twenty years. Once a man got a good start with negroes, unless the luck was much against him, nothing but his own folly could prevent his becoming rich. The increase of his negro property by births, if he took good care of it, must, in a few years, make him independent. The worst thing, and the most difficult to remedy, was the deplorable ignorance which prevailed. Latterly, however, people were taking more pride in the education of their children. Some excellent schools had been established, the teachers generally from the North, and a great many children were sent to board in the villages — coun- ty-seats — to attend them. This was especially true of girls, who liked to live in the villages rather than on the plantations. There was more difficulty in making boys attend school, until, at least, they were too old to get much good from it. The " Colonel" was a rough, merry, good-hearted, simple- minded man, and kept all the would-be sober-sides of our coach body, in irrepressible laughter with queer observations on pass- ing occurrences, anecdotes and comic songs. It must be con- fessed that there is no charge which the enemies of the theater bring against the stage, that was not duly illustrated, and tliat A TRIP INTO XORTIIERX MISSISSIPPI. 131 with a broadness which the taste of a metropolitan audience would scarcely peniiit. Had Doctor and Doctor been with me they would thereafter for ever have denied themselves, and dis- countenanced in others, the use of such a meaus of travel. The Colonel, notwithstanding, was of a most obliging disposition, and having ascertained in what direction I was going, enumerated at least a dozen families on the road, within some hundred miles, whom he invited me to visit, assuring me that I should find pretty girls in all of them, and a warm welcome, if I mentioned his name. He told the Judge that his bar-bill on the boat, coming up from New Orleans, was forty dollars — seventeen dollars the first niofht. But he had made money — had won forty dollars of one gentleman. He confessed, however, that he had lost fifteen by another, " but he saw how he did it. He did not want to accuse him publicly, but he saw it and he purposed to write to him and tell him of it. He did not mean to insult the gentleman, only he did not want to have him think that he was so green as not to know how he did it." While stopping for dinner at a village inn, a young man came in to the room where we all were, and asked the coachman what was to be paid for a trunk which had been brought for him The coachman said the charge would be a dollar, which the young man thought excessive. The coachman denied that it was so, said that it was what he had often been paid ; he should not take less. The young man finally agreed to wait for the de- cision of the proprietor of the line. There was a woman in the room ; I noticed no loud words or angry tones, and had not sup- posed that there was the slightest excitement. I observed, how- ever, that there was a profound silence for a minute afterwards. 132 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. which was interrupted by a jocose remark of the coachman about the dehay of our dinner. Soon after we reentered the coach, the Colonel referred to the trunk owner, in a contemptuous manner. The Judge replied in a similar tone. " If I had been in the driver's place, I should have killed him, sure," said the Colonel. With great surprise, I ventured to ask for what reason. " Did not you see the fellow put his hand to his breast when the driver denied that he had ever taken less than a dollar for bringing a trunk from Memphis ?" " No, I did not ; but what of it ?" " AVhy, he meant to frighten the driver, of course." ■ " You think he had a knife in his breast ?" " Of course he had, sir." " But you would n't kill him for that, I suppose ?" "When a man threatens to kill me, you wouldn't have me wait for him to do it, would you, sir ?" The roads continued very heavy ; some one remarked, " There's been a heap of rain lately," and rain still kept falling. We passed a number of cotton wagons which had stopped in the road ; the cattle had been turned . out and had strayed off into the woods, and the drivers lay under the tilts asleep on straw. The Colonel said this sight reminded him of his old 'camp- meeting days, lie used to be very fond of going to camp meet- ings. " I used to go first for fun, and oh ! Lord, haint I had some fun at camp meetings ? But after a while I got a convic- tion — need n't laugh, gentlemen. I tell you it was sober business for me. I'll never make fun of that. The truth just is, I am a melancholy case ; I thought I was a pious man once, I did — I'm damned if I did n't. Do n't langh at what I say, now ; I do n't want fun made of that ; I give you my word I experienced re- A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 133 ligion, and I used to go to the meetings with as much sincerity and soberness as anybody could. That was the time 1 learned to sing — learned to pray too, I did ; could pray right smart. I did think I was a converted man, but of course, I aint, and I 'spose 'twarnt the right sort, and I do n't reckon I shall have another chance. A gentleman has a right to make the most of this life, when he can't calculate on any thing better than roasting in the next. Aint that so Judge ? I reckon so. You must n't think hard of me, if I do talk wicked some. Can't help it." So common is this sort of effervescing mixture of impiety and theology at the South, I doubt if the Colonel was not perfectly sincere, though probably not wholly unconscious of drollery, in these remarks. At a Sunday dinner-table, at a village inn, two or three men took seats, who had, as they said, " been to the preachin'." A child had been baptized, and the pi'caching had been a defense of infant baptism. " I'm damned," said one, " ef he teched on the primary signif- icance of baptism, at all — buryin' with Jesus.'' " They wus the weakest arguments for sprinklin' that ever I heerd," said another — a hot, red-faced, corpulent man — " and his sermon was two hours long, for when he stopped I looked at my watch. I thought it should be a lesson to me, for I could n't help going to sleep. Says I to Uncle John, says I — he sot next to me, and I whispered to him — says I, ' When he gits to Buidcer Hill, you wake me up,' for I see he was bound to go clean back to the beginnin' of things." "Uncle John is an Episcopalian, aint he ?" " Yes." " Well, there aint no religion in that, no how." " No there aint." 134 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " Well now, you would n't think it, but I've studied into re- ligion a heap in my life." " Do n't seem to have done you much good." " No it haint, not yet, but I've studied into it, and I know what it is." " There aint but one way, Benny." " I know it." " Repent of your sins, and believe in Christ, and be immersed, that's all." " I know it." " Well, I hope the Lord '11 bring you to it, 'fore you die." " Reckon he will — hope so, sure." *' You would n't hardly think that fat man was a preacher himself, would you ?" said the landlady to me, after they left. " Certainlf not." " He is, though, but I do n't think much of that sort," and the landlady immediately began to describe to me the religious his- tory of the neighborhood. It was some different here, she said, she reckoned, in reply to a remark of mine, from what it was at the North. Most respectable people became pious here before they got to be very old, especially ladies. Young ladies were always gay and went to balls till they were near twenty years old, but from eighteen to twenty-five they generally got religion, and then they stopped right short and never danced or carried on any after that. Sometimes it was n't till after they were mar- ried, but there were n't many ladies who had children that warn't pious. She herself was an exception, for she had three children and had not got religion yet ; sometimes she was frightened to think how old she was — her children growing up about her ; but she did so like dancing — she hoped her turn would come — she A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 135 knew it would — slie had a pious and praying mother, and she reckoned her prayers must be heard, and so on. I was forced by the stage arrangements to travel night and day. The Colonel told me that I should be able to get a good supper at a house where the coach was to stop about midnight—" good honest fried bacon, and hot Christian corn-bread— nothing like it to fill a man up and make him feel righteous. You get a heap bet- ter living up in this country than you can at the St. Charles, for all the fuss they make about it. It's lucky you'll have something better to travel on to-night than them French friterzeed Dutch flabbergasted hell-fixins : for you'll have the " (another most extraordinary series of imprecations on the road over which I was to travel). Before dark all my companions left me, and in their place I had but one, a young gentleman with whom I soon became very intimately acquainted. He was seventeen years old, so he said ; he looked older; and the son of a planter in the "Yazoo bot- toms." The last year he had " follered overseein' " on his fath- er's plantation, but he was bound for Tennessee, now, to go to an academy, where he could learn geography. There was a school near home at which he had studied reading and writing and ci- phering, but he thought a gentleman ought to have some knowl- edge of geography. At ten o'clock the next morning the stage coach having progressed at the rate of exactly two miles and a half an hour, for the previous sixteen hours, during which time we had been fasting, the supper-house, which we should have reached before midnight, was still ten miles ahead, the driver sulky and refusing to stop until we reached it. We had been pounded till we ached in every muscle. I had had no sleep since I left Memphis. We were passing over a hill country 136 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. wliicli sometimes appeared to be quite thickly inhabited, yet mainly still covered with a pine forest, through which the wind moaned lugubriously. I had been induced to make this trip, in no slight degree by reading the following description in a statistical article of DeBow's Review : '' The settling of this region is one among the many remarkable events in the history of tlie rise of the western States. Fifteen years ago it w^as an Indian wilderness, and now it has reached and passed in its population other portions of the State of ten times its age, and this population, too, one of the finest in all the West. Great attention has been given to schools and educatiow, and here, [at Memphis,] has been located the University of Mississippi ; so amply endow'ed by the State, and now just going into operation under the auspices of some of the ablest professors from the eastern colleges. There is no overgrown wealth among them, and yet no squahd poverty ; the people being generally comfortable, substantial, and independent farmers. Con- sidering its climate, soil, wealth, and general character of its inhab- itants, I should think no more desn^able or delightful residence could be found than among the hills and sunny valleys of the Chickasaw Cession."* And here among the hills of this Paradise of the South-Wcst, we were, Yazoo and I — he, savagely hungry, as may be guessed from his observations upon " the finest people of the AVcst," among whose cabins in the pine-w^ood, toiled our stage-coach. The whole art of driving was directed to the discovery of a pas- sage for the coach among the trees and through the fields, where there were fields, adjoining the road — the road itself being impass- able. Occasionally, when the coachman, during the night, found it necessary, owing to the thickness of the forest on each side, to take to the road, he would first leave the coach and make a survey with his lantern, sounding the ruts of the cotton-wagons, and finally marking out a channel by guiding-stakes which he cut from the * See "Resources;" article, " Mississippi," eto. A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 137 underwood with a hatchet, usually carried in the holster. If after diligent sounding, he found no passage sufficiently shallow, he would sometimes spend half an hour in preparing one, bring- ing rails from the nearest fence, or cutting bruslnvood for the purpose. We were but once or twice during the night called upon to leave the coach, or to assist in road-making, and my companion frequently expressed his gratitude for this — gratitude not to the driver, but to Providence, who had made a country, as he thought, so unusually well adapted for stage coaching. The night before, he had been on a much worse road, and was half the time, with numerous other passengers, engaged in bringing rails, and prying the coach out of sloughs. They had been obliged to keep on the track, because the water was up over the adjoining country. Where the wooden causeway had floated off, they had passed through w^ater so deep that it entered the coach body. With our road of to-day, theu, he could only express satis- faction ; not so with the residents upon it. " Look at 'em", he would say, "Just look at 'em ! AVhat's the use of such people's living ? 'pears to me I'd die if I could n't live better 'n that. When I get to be representative, I'm going to have a law made that all such kind of men shall be took up by the State and sent to the penitentiary, to make 'em work and earn something to support their families. I pity the women ; I haint nuthin agin them ; they work hard enough, I know ; but the men — I know how 'tis. They just hang around groceries and spend all the money they can get — ^just go round and live on other people, and play keerds, a-nd only go home to nights ; and the poor women, they hev to live how they ken." "Do you think it's so ? It is strange we see no men — only women and children." 138 A. JOUT7NEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " Tell you they 're oft", gettin' a dinner out o' somebody. Tell you, I know it 's so. It 's the way all these people do. Why, there's one poor man I know, that lives in a neighborhood of poor men, down our way, and he's right industrious, but he can't get rich and he never ken, cause all these other poor men live on him." " What do you mean ? Do they all drop in about dinner time ?" " No, not all on 'em, but some on 'em every day. And they keep borrowin' things of him. He haint spunk enough to in- sult 'em. If he 'd just move into a rich neighborhood and jest be a little sassy and not keer so much about what folks said of him, he'd get rich ; never knew a man that was industrious and sassy in this country that did n't get rich, quick, and get niggers to do his work for him. Anybody ken that 's smart. Thar 's whar they tried to raise some corn. Warn't no corn grew thar ; that 's sartin. Wonder what they live on ? See the stalks. They never made no corn. Plowed right down the hill ! Did you ever see any thing like it ? As if this sile warn't poor enough al- ready. There now. Just the same. Only look at 'em ! 'Pears like they never see a stage afore. This ain't the right road, the way they look at us. No, sartin, they never see a stage. Lord God ! see the babies. They never see a stage afore. No, the stage never went by here afore, I know. This damned driver 's just taken us round this way to show off" what he can do and pass away the time before breakfast. Could n't get no breakfast here if he would stop — less we ate a baby. That's right! step out where you ken see her good ; prehaps you'll never see a stage again ; better look now, right sharp. Yes, oh yes, sar- tin ; fetch out all the babies. Haint you go no more ? Well, I A TKIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 139 should hope not. Now, what is the use of so many babies ? That 's the worst on 't. I'd get married to-morrow if I was n't sure I'd hcv babies. I hate babies, can't bear 'em round me and won't hev 'em. I would like to be married. I know several gals I'd many if 'twarn't for that. AVell, it 's a fact. Just so. I hate the squalling things. I know I was born a baby, but I could n't help it, could I ? I wish I had n't been. I hate the squallin' things. If I had to hev a baby round me I should kill it." " If you had a baby of your own, you 'd feel differently about it." " That 's what they tell me. I s'pose I should, but I do n't want to feel differently. I hate 'em. I hate 'em." The coach stopped at length. We got out and found our- selves on the bank of an overflowed brook. A part of the bridge was broken up, the driver declared it impossible to ford the stream, and said he should return to the shanty, four miles back, at which we had last changed horses. We persuaded him to take one of his horses from the team and let us see if we could not get across. I succeeded in doing this without diflBculty, and turning the horse loose he returned. The driver, however, was still afraid to try to ford the stream with the coach and mails, and after trying our best to persuade him, I told him if he re- turned he should do it without me, hoping he would be shamed out of his pusillanimity. Yazoo joined me, but the driver having again recovered the horse upon which he had forded the stream, turned about and drove back. We pushed on, and after walking a few miles, came to a neat, new house, with a cluster of old cabins about it. It was much the most comfortable establish- ment we had seen during the day. Truly a " sunny valley" home of northern Mississippi. We entered quietly, and were re- 140 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. ceived hj two women who were spinning in a room with three outside doors all open, though a fine fire was burning, merely to warm the room, in a large fireplace, within. Upon our asking if we could have breakfast prepared for us, one of the women went to the door and gave orders to a negro, and in a moment after, we saw six or seven black boys and girls chasing and club- bing a hen round the yard for our benefit. I regret to add that they did not succeed in making her tender. At twelve o'clock we breakfasted, and were then accommodated with a bed, upon which we slept together for several hours. When I awoke I walked out to look at the premises. The house was half a dozen rods from the liigh road, with a square yard all about it, in one corner of which was a small enclosure for stock, and a log stable and corn-crib. There were also three negro cabins ; one before the house, and two behind it. The house was a neat building of logs, boarded over and painted on the outside. On the inside, the logs were neatly hewn to a plane face, and exposed. One of the lower rooms contained a bed, and but little other furniture ; the other was the common family apartment, but also was furnished with a bed. A door opened into another smaller log house in the rear, in which Avere two rooms — one of them the family dining-room ; the other the kitchen. Behind this was still another log erec- tion, fifteen feet square, which was the smoke-house, and in which a great store of bacon was kept. The negro cabins were small, dilapidated and dingy ; the walls were not chinked, and there were no windows — which, indeed, would have been a superfluous luxury, for there were spaces of several inches between the logs, through which there was unobstructed vision. The furniture in the cabins was of the simplest and rudest imaginable kind, tw^o or A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 141 three beds with dirty clothing upon them, a chest, a wooden stool or two, made with an ax, and some earthenware and cook- ing apparatus. Every thing within the cabins was colored black by smoke. The chimneys of both the house and the cabins w^ere built of splinters and clay, and on the outer side of the walls. At the door of each cabin were literally "heaps" of babies and puppies, and behind or beside it a pig-stye and poultry coop, a ley-tub and quantities of home-carded cotton placed upon boards to bleach. Within each of them was a woman or two, spinning with the old-fashioned great wheel, and in the kitchen another woman was weaving coarse cotton shirtings with the an- cient rude hand-loom. The mistress herself was spinning in the living-room, and asked, when we had grown acquainted, what women at the North could find to do, and how they could ever pass the time, when they gave up spinning and weaving. She made the common every-day clothing for all her family and her servants. They only bought a few " store-goods" for their " dress-up" clothes. She kept the negro girls spinning all through the winter, and at all times when they were not needed in the field. She supposed they would begin to plant corn now in a few days, and then the girls would go to work out of doors. I noticed that all the bed-clothing, the towels, curtains, etc., in the house, were of homespun. The proprietor, who had been absent on a fishing excursion, during the day, returned at dusk. He was a man of the fat, slow-and-easy style, and proved to be good-natured, talkative and communicative. lie had bought the tract of land he now occu- pied, and moved upon it about ten years before. lie had made a large clearing, and could now sell it for a good deal more than he cave for it. He intended to sell whenever he could get a 142 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. good offer, and move on West. It was the best land in this part of the country, and he had got it well fenced, and put up a nice house : there were a great many people that like to have these things done for them in advance — and he thought he should not have to wait long for a purchaser. He liked himself to be clear- ing land, and it was getting too close settled about here to suit him. He did not have much to do but to hunt and fish, and the game was getting so scarce it was too much trouble to go after it. He did not think there were so many cat in the creek as there used to be either, but there were more gar-fish. When he first bought this land he was not worth much — had to run in debt — had n't but three negroes. Now, he was pretty much out of debt and owned twenty negroes, seven of them prime field- hands, and he reckoned I had not seen a better lot anywhere. During the evening, all the cabins were illuminated by great fires, and, looking into one of them, I saw a very picturesque family group ; a man sat on the ground making a basket, a wo- man lounged on a chest in the chimney corner smoking a pipe, and a boy and two girls sat in a bed which had been drawn up opposite to her, completing the fireside circle. They were talk- ing and laughing cheerfully. The next morning when I turned out I found Yazoo looking with the eye of a connoisseur at the seven prime field-hands, who at half past seven were just starting ofl' with hoes and axes for their day's work. As I approached him, he exclaimed with enthusiasm : " Are n't them a right keen lookin' lot of niggers ?" And our host soon after coming out, he immediately walked up to him, saying : " Why, fri'^.nd, them yer niggers o' yourn would be good for A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 143 seventy bales of cotton, if you 'd move down into our conn- try." Their owner was perfectly aware of their vakie, and said every thing good of them. " There 's something ruther singlar, too, about my niggers ; I do n't know as I ever see any thing like it anywhere else." " How so, sir ?" " Well, I reckon it »s my way o' treatin' 'em, much as any thing. I never hev no difficulty with 'em. Hen't licked a nigger in five year, 'cept maybe sprouting some of the young ones sometimes. Fact, my niggers never want no lookin' arter ; they jus tek ker o' themselves. Fact, they do tek a greater interest in the crops than I do myself. There 's another thing — I 'spose 'twill sur- prise you — there ent one of my niggers but what can read ; read good, too — better 'n I can, at any rate." " How did they learn ?" " Tauo-ht themselves. I b'lieve there was one on 'em that I bought, that could read, and he taught all the rest. But niggers is mighty apt at larnin', a heap more 'n white folks is." I said that this was contrary to the generally received opin- ion. " Well, now, let me tell you," he continued ; " I had a boy to work, when I was buildin', and my boys jus teachin' him night times and such, he waru't here more 'n three months, and he larned to read as well as any man I ever hecrd, and I know he did n't know his letters when he come here. It did n't seem to me any white man could have done that ; does it to you, now ?" "How old was he?" " Warn't more'n seventeen, I reckon." "How do they get books — do you get them for them ?" 144 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY " Oh, no ; get 'em for tliemselves." " How ?" *' Buy 'em." " How do they get the mouey ?" " Earn it." " How ?" " By their own work. I tell you my niggers have got more money 'n I hev." " What kind of books do they get ?" "Religious kind a books ginerally — these stories ; and some of them will buy novels, I believe. They wou't let on to that, but I expect they do it." They bought them of peddlers. I inquired about the law to prevent negroes reading, and asked if it allowed books to be sold to negroes. He had never heard of any such law — did n't be- lieve there was any. The Yazoo man said there was such a law in his country. Negroes never had any thing to read there. I asked our host if his negroes were religious, as their choice of works would have indicated. "Yes; all on 'em, I reckon. Don't s'pose you'll believe it, but I tell you it 's a fact ; I haint heerd a swear on this place for a twelvemonth. They keep the Lord's day, too, right tight, in gineral." " Our niggers is mighty wicked down in Yallerbush county," said my companion ; " they dance ." " Dance on Sunday ?" I asked. " Oh, no, we do n't allow that." "What do they do then — go to meeting?" "Why, Sundays they sleep mostly; they've been at work hard all the week, you know, and Sundays they stay in their A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 145 cabins and sleep and talk to eacli other. There 's so many of 'em together they do n't \vant to go visiting off the place."' "Are your negroes Baptists or Methodists ?" I inquired of our host. " All Baptists ; nigo-ers allers want to be ducked, you know. They ain't content to be just titch'd with water; they must be ducked in all over. There was two niggers jined the Methodists up here last summer, and they made the minister put 'em into the branch ; they would n't jine 'less he 'd duck 'em." " The Bible says baptize, too," observed Yazoo. " AVell, they think they must be ducked all under, or 't ain't no good." " Do they go to meeting ?" " Yes, they hev a meeting among themselves." " And a preacher ?" " Yes ; a nigger preacher." " Our niggers is mighty wicked ; they dance !" repeated Ya- zoo. "Do you consider dancing so very wicked, then ?" I asked. " Well, I do n't account so myself, as I know on, but they do you know — the pious people, all kinds, except the 'Piscopers ; some o' them, they do dance themselves, I believe. Do you dance in your country ?" "Yes." " What sort of dances — cotillions and reels ?" " Yes ; what do you ?" " Well, we dance cotillions and reels too, and we dance on a plank; that's the kind of dancin' I like best." " How is it done ?" " Why, do n't you know that ? You stand face to face with 146 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. your partner on a plank and keep a dancin'. Put the plank up on two barrel heads, so it 'Jl kind o' spring. At some of our parties — that 's among common kind o' people, jou know — it 's great fun. They dance as fast as they can, and the folks all stand round and holler, * Keep it up^ John P ' Go it, Nance /' * Do nH give it up so /' ' Old Virginny never tii-e P ' Heel and toe, ketch a fire P and such kind of observations, and clap and stamp 'em." " Do your negroes dance much ?" " Yes, they are mighty fond on 't. Saturday night they dance all night, and Sunday nights too. Daytime they sleep and rest themselves, and Sunday nights we let 'em dance and sing if they want. It does 'em good, you know, to enjoy theirselves." ''They dance to the banjo, I suppose ?" " Banjos and violins ; some of 'em has got violins." " I like to hear negroes sing," said I. " Niggers is allers good singers nat'rally," said our host. " I reckon they got better lungs than white folks, they hev such powerful voices." We were sitting at this time on the rail fence at the corner of a hog-pen and a large, half-cleared field. In that part of this field nearest the house, among the old stumps, twenty or thirty small fruit trees had been planted. I asked what sorts they were. " I do n't know— good kinds tho', I expect ; I bought 'em for that at any rate." " Where did you buy them ?" " I bought 'em of a feller that came a peddlin' round here last fall ; he said I'd find 'em good." " What did you pay for them ?" " A bit apiece." A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 147 " That 's very cheap, if they 're good for any thing ; you arc sure they 're grafted, arn't you ?" " Only by what he said — he said they was grafted kinds. I've got a paper in the housen he gin me, tells about 'em ; leastways, he said it did. They 's the curosest kinds of trees printed into it you ever heerd on. But I did not buy none, only the fruit kinds.'* Getting off the fence I began to pick about the roots of one of them with my pocket-knife. After exposing the trunk for five or six inches below the surface, I said, "You've planted these too deep, if they 're all like this. You should have the ground dished about it or it won't grow\" I tried another, and after picking some minutes without finding any signs of the " collar," I asked if they had all been planted so deeply. " I do n't know — I told the boys to put 'em in about two feet, and I expect they did, for they fancied to have apple-trees growin'." The catalogue of the tree-peddler, which afterwards came into my possession, quite justified the opinion my host expressed of the kinds of trees described in it. The reader shall judge for himself, and I assure him that the following is a literal transcript of it, omitting the sections headed "Ancebus new," "Camelias," " Rhododendrums," " Bubbs Paeony," "Rosicrs," " Wind's flowers of the greatest scarcity," " Bulbous Roots, and of various kinds of graines." 7* 148 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. iIPB(BniiIL, (Dii^iiIL(n)(BI!JE OF THE PLANTS, FLOWERS, SHRUBS IMPORTED BY K O U S S E T MEMBER OF SEVERAL SOCIETIES. At PARIS (France), boulevard of Hopital, and at CHAMBERY, faubourg de Mac he. Mr Rousset beg to inform they are arrived in this town , with a large as- sortment of the most rare vegetable plants, either flowerd on fruit bearer, onion bulbous, seeds, &c, &c. Price very moderate. Their stoi-e is situated CHOIX D'AliBRKS A FllUr Choice of Fruit Trees. Pear Trees. 1 Good Louisa from Avranche. 2 "Winter's Perfume. 8 Saint-John-in-Iron. 4 Leon-the-Clcrc. 5 Bergamot from Ensland. 6 Duchess of Angouleme. 7 Goulu-Morceaii. 8 Tarquiii Pear. 9 Summer's Good (large) Christian. 10 Good Turkisk Christian. 11 Grey (large) Beurre. 12 Eo/al Beurre from England. 1 Bon-Chretien d'ete. 2 — d"hiver. 3 — dc Paque. 4 Doyenne blanc. 5 Duchesse d' Angora-New. 6 Belle Angevine'. fondante. 7 Crassane d hiver. 8 Louise dOrleans. sucre. 9 Double fleur h'ltif. 10 Augulique de Tour. 1 Borgamotte de Milan, gros. 2 — d'Aiencon, tres-gros. 8 Beurre gris d'hiver. 4 — Amanlis. 5 — d'llardenpont, precoce. 6 Fortune, fondant. 7 Josephine, chair fine. 8 Martin-sec. sucre. 9 Mcssire, gris. 10 Muscat d'ete, 11 Doyenne d'automne. 12 — d'hiver, sucrfe. 18 Virgouleuse foudonte. 14 Bezy-Lamotte. 15 Gro's-Blanquet. Apples 1 Kenetto of Spain. 2 — Green. 8 Apple Coin. 4 — Friette. 5 Calville, white, winter's fruit. 6 — red, autumn's fruit. 7 — rod, winter's fruit. 8 Violet or of the Four-Taste. 9 Penette from England, or Gold Apple. 1 Golded Renette, yellow, backwards plant. 11 White — of a L;reat perfume. 12 Eenette, red, winter's fruit. 1 Renette, yellow, hearly fruit. 2 — grey, very delicate. 8 — Princess noble. 4 Apple d'Api. 5 — d'Eve. 6 "Winter's Postophe. 7 Plein gney fenouillet. 8 Eenette franc. 9 — of St. Laurent. 10 Sammers Numbourg. 11 Belle du Havre. 12 Belle HolJandaise. 1 Yiolet Apple or of the 4 taste; the fruit. may by preserved 2 years. 2 Princess Renette, of a gold yellow, spotted with red of a delicious taste. 3 "White Renette from Canada, of which the skin is lite scales strange by its size. 4 The Cythere Apple. 5 The Caynoite Apple. 6 Apple Trees with double flowers. Blooms twice a year, Camtlia's flowers like. 106 others kinds of Apples of the newest choice. Apricots. 1 The Ladie's Apricots. 2 The Peack Apricots. 8 The Royal Apricots. 4 The Gros Muscg Apricots. 5 The Pourret Apricots. 6 Portugal Apricots. A TRIP INTO NOUTTIERX TiriSSISSIPPI. 149 7 Apricats monstruous from America, of a gold yellow, of an enormous size, and of the pine's apple taste Peach Tuee3. 1 Peach Grossc Mignonne. 2 — Bcllo Beauty. 3 — Godess. 4 _ Beautv of Paris. 5 _ from Naples ! said without stone. 6 Brugnon, muse taste. 7 Admirable; Belle of Yitry. 8 The Large Koyal. ]S[<)ustruousPavie. 10 The Cardinal, very forward. 11 Goosherr!i Tree from Fastolff, red fruit, very good of an extraordinary size, very hearly forward plant. Cherr'i Currant Tree, with large bunches, it has a great production. Its numerous and long bunches cover entirely the old wood and looks like grapes; the fruit of a cherry pink colour is very large and of the best quality. Aspara^uf^ from Africa, new kinds, good to eat the same year of their planting (seeds of two voar-s). 1000 varieties ol annual and perpetual tlower'3 grains also of kitchen garden grains. 150 A JOURNEY IN THE KACK COUNTRY. PAULNOYIA INPERIAT.IS. Magnificeut hardy plant from 12 to p yards of hi?th; its leave come to the size of 75 to 80 centimeter and its fine and larg flowers of a fine blue, gives when the spring comes, a soft and agri-able perfume. Besides these plants the amateur irill fiar. at M. Eousset, stores, a great number o/ other Plants and Fruit Trees of which would be to long to describe. NOTICE. The admirable and strange plant called Tromj^ette dti Jugement (The Judgment Trompette), of that name having not yet found its classification. This marvellous plant was send to us from China by the cleuer and courageous bot- anist collector M. Fortune, from ITIimalaya, near sunimetof the Chamalari Macon. This splendid plant deserves the first rank among all kinds of plant wich the botan- ical science bas produce till now in spite of all the new discoveries. This bulbous plant gives several stems on the same subject. It grows to the height of 6 feet. It is furnished with flowers from bottom to top. 'ihe bud looks by his from like a big cannon ball of a heavenly blue. The center is of an aurora yellewish colour. The vegetation of that plant is to fonitfall that when it is near to blossom it gives a great heat when tassing it in hand and when the bud opens it produces a naitc similar to a pistole shot. Immediately the vegetation takes fire and burns like alcohol about an hour and half. The flowers succeeding one to the other gives the satisfaction of having flowers during 7 or S months. The most intense cold can not hurt this plant and can be culvivated in pots, in ap. partments or gpeen houses. Wa call the public attention to this plant as a great curiosity. Havre— Printed by F. HUE, rue de Faris, 89. "But come," said the farmer, " go in ; take a drink. Break- fast '11 be ready right smart." " I do n't want to drink before breakfast, thank you." "Why not?" " I'm not accustomed to it, and I do n't think it 's wholesome." Not wholesome to drink before breakfast I That was "a new kink" to our jolly host, and troubled him as much as a new "ism" would an old fogy. Not wholesome? He had always reckoned it warn't very wholesome not to drink before breakfast, He did not expect I had seen a great many healthier men than he was, had I ? and he always took a drink before breakfast. If a man just kept himself well strung up, without ever stretching himself right tight, he did n't reckon damps or heat would ever do him much harm. He had never had a sick day since he came to this place, and he reckoned that this was owin' considerable to the good rye whiskey he took. It was a healthy trac' of land, though, he believed, a mighty healthy trac' ; every thing seemed A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 151 to thrive here. We must see a nigger-gal that he was raisin' ; she was just coming five, and would pull up nigh upon a hundred weight. " Two year ago," he continued, after taking his dram, as we sat by the fire in the north room, " when I had a carpenter here to finish oft* this house, I told one of my boys he must come in and help him. I reckoned he would larn quick, if he was a mind to. So he come in, and a week arterwards he fitted the plank and laid this floor, and now you just look at it ; I do n't believe any man could do it better. That was tw^o year ago, and now he 's as good a carpenter as you ever sec. I bought him some tools after the carpenter left, and he can do any thing with 'em — make a table or a chest of drawers or any thing. I think niggers is somehow nat'rally ingenious ; more so 'n white folks. They is wonderful apt to any kind of slight." I took out my pocket-map, and while studying it, asked Yazoo some questions about the route East. Not having yet studied geo2,raphy, as he observed, he could not answer. Our host inquired where I was going, that way. I said I should go on to Carolina. " Expect you 're going to buy a rice-farm, in the Carolinies, aiat you ? and I reckon you 're up here speckylating arter nigger stock, aint you now ?" " Well," said I, " I would n't mind getting that fat girl of yours, if we can make a trade. IIow much a pound wnll you sell her at r " We do n't sell niggers by the pound in this country." " Well, how much by the lump ?" " AVell, I do n't know ; reckon I do n't keer about sellin' her just yet." 152 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. After breakfast, I inquired about the mauagement of the farm. He said that he purchased negroes, as he was able, from time to time. He grew rich by the improved salable value of his laud, arising in part from their labor, and from their natural increase and improvement, for he bought only such as would be likely to increase in value on his hands. He had been obliged to spend but little money, being able to live and provide most of the food and clothing for his family and his people, by the production of his farm. He made a little cotton, which he had to send some distance to be ginned and baled, and then wagoned it seventy miles to a market; also raised some wheat, which he turned into flour at a neighboring mill, and sent to the same market. This transfer engaged much of the winter labor of his man-slaves. I said that I supposed the Memphis and Charleston railroad, as it progressed east, would shorten the distance to which it would be necessary to draw his cotton, and so be of much service to him. He did not know that. He did not know as he should ever use it. He expected they w^ould charge pretty high for carrying cotton, and his niggers had n't any thing else to do. It did not really cost him any thing now to send it to Memphis, be- cause he had to board the niggers and the cattle anyhow, and they did not want much more on the road than they did at home. He made a large crop of corn, which, however, was mainly consumed by his own force, and he killed annually about one Iiundred and fifty hogs, the bacon of wdiich was all consumed in his own family and by his people, or sold to passing travelers. In the fall, a great many drovers and slave-dealers passed over the road with their stock, and they frequently camped against his house, so as to buy corn and bacon of him. This they cooked themselves. A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 153 There were sometimes two himdred negroes brought along to- gether, going South. He did n't always have bacon to spaie for them, though he killed one hundred and fifty swine. The} were generally bad characters, and had been sold for fault by their owners. Some of the slave-dealers were high-minded, honorable men, he thought; "high-toned gentlemen, as ever he saw, some of 'em, was." Niggers were great eaters, and wanted more meat than white folks ; and he always gave his as much as they wanted, and more too. The negro cook always got dinner for them, and took what she liked for it ; his wife did n't know much about it. She got as much as she liked, and he guessed she did n't spare it. When the field-hands were anywhere within a reasonable distance, they always came up to the house to get their dinner. If they were going to work a great way off, they would carry their dinner with them. They did as they liked about it. When they had n't taken their dinner, the cook called them at twelve o'clock with a conch. They ate in the kitchen, and he had the same dinner that they did, right out of the same frying-pan — it Avas all the same, only they ate in the kitchen, and he ate in the room we were in, with the door open between them. I brought up the subject of the cost of labor, North and South. He had no apprehension that there would ever be any want of laborers at the South, and could not understand that the ruling price indicated the state of the demand for them. He thought negroes would increase more rapidly than the need for their labor. "Niggers," said he, "breed faster than white folks, a 'mazin' sight, you know ; they begin younger." " Ho\^ young dp they begin ?" 154 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " Sometimes at fourteen ; sometimes at sixteen, and sometimes at eigliteen." " Do yon let tliera marry so young as that ?" I inquired. He laughed, and said, "they do n't very often wait to be married." " When they marry, do they have a minister to marry them ?" " Yes, generally one of their own preachers." " Do they with you ?" I inquired of Yazoo. "Yes, sometimes they hev a white minister, and sometimes a black one, and if there ar n't neither handy, they get some of the pious ones to marry 'em. But then very often they only just come and ask our consent, and then go ahead, without any more ceremony. They just call themselves married. But most nig- gers likes a ceremony, you know, and they generally make out to hev one somehow. They do n't very often get married for good, though, without trying each other, as they say, for two or three weeks, to see how they are going to like each other." I afterwards asked how far it was to the post office. It was six miles. " One of my boys," said our host, " always gets the paper every week. He goes to visit his wife, and passes by the post office every Sunday. Our paper haint come, though, now, for three weeks. The mail do n't come very regular." All of his negroes, who had wives off the place, left an hour before sun- set on Saturday evening. One of them, who had a wife twenty miles away, left at twelve o'clock Saturday, and got back at twelve o'clock Monday. " AVe had a nigger once," said Yazoo, " that had a wife fifteen miles away, and he used to do so ; but he did some rascality once, and he was afraid to go again. He told us his wife was so far off, 't was too much trouble to go there, and he believed he 'd a:ive her up. We was glad of it. He was a darned rascally nig- A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 155 ger — allers getting into scrapes. One time we sent him to mill, and he went round into town and sold some of the meal. The storekeeper would n't pay him for 't, 'cause he had n't got an order. The next time we were in town, the storekeeper just showed us the bag of meal ; — said he reckoned 't was stole ; so when we got home we just tied him up to the tree and licked him. He 's a right smart nigger ; rascally niggers allers is smart. I 'd rather have a rascally nigger than any other — they 's so smart allers. He is about the best nigger we 've got." " I have heard," said I, "that religious negroes were generally the most valuable. I have been told that a third more would be given for a man if he were religious. " Well, I never heerd of it before," said he. Our host thought there was no difference in the market value of sinners and saints. " Only," observed Yazoo, " the rascalier a nigger is, the better he'll work. Now that yer nigger I was tellin' you on, he's Avorth more 'n any other nigger we 've got. He 's a yaller nig- ger." I asked their opinion as to the comparative vahie of black and yellow negroes. Our host had two bright mulatto boys among his— didn't think there was much difference, "but allers reck- oned yellow fellows was the best a little ; they worked smarter. He would rather have them." Yazoo would not ; he " did n't think but what they 'd work as well ; but he did n't fancy yellow neoToes 'round him ; would rather have real black ones." I asked our host if he had no foreman or driver for his negroes, or if he gave his directions to one of them in particular for all the rest. He did not. They all did just as they pleased, and arranged the work among themselves. They never needed driv- 156 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. "If I ever notice one of 'em getting a little slack, I just talk to liini ; tell him we must get out of the grass, and I want to hev him stir himself a little more, and theu, maybe, I slip a dol- lar into his hand, and when he gits into the field he '11 go ahead, and the rest seeing him, won't let themselves he distanced by him. Mv nio;<^'ers never want no lookin' arter. They tek more interest in the crop than I do myself, every one of 'em." Religious, instructed, and seeking further enlightenment ; in- dustrious, energetic, and self directing ; well fed, respected, and trusted by their master, and this master an illiterate, indolent and careless man ! A very different state of things, this, from what I saw on the great cotton planter's estate, where a profit of ^100,000 was made in a single year, but where five hundred negroes were constantly kept under the whip, where religion was only a pow-wow or cloak for immorality, and whei'e the negro was considered to be of an inferior race, especially designed by Providence to be kept in the positioft he there occupied ! A very diflferent thing ; and strongly suggesting what a very difterent thing this negro servitude might be made in general, were the ruling disposition of the South more just, democratic, and sensible. About half past eleven, a stage coach, which had come earlier in the morning from the East, and had gone on as far as the brook, returned, having had our baggage transferred to it from the one we had left on the other side. In the transfer a portion of my baggage was omitted and never recovered. Up to this time our host had not paid the smallest attention to any work his men were doing, or even looked to see if they had fed the cattle, but had lounged about, sitting upon a fence, chewing tobacco, and talking with us, evidently very glad to have somebody to converse with. He went in once again, after a drink; showed us the bacon A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI. 157 he had in his Bmoke-houso, and told a good many stories of bis experience in life, about a white man's " dying hard" in the neighborhood, and of a tree falling on a team with which one of his negroes was plowing cotton, " which was lucky" — that is, that it did not kill the negro — and a good deal about "hunting" when he was younger and lighter. Still embarrassed by an old idea which I had brought to the South with me, I waited, after the coach came in sight, for Yazoo to put the question, wdiich he presently did, boldly enough. " Well ; reckon we 're goin' now. What 's the damage ?" " Well ; reckon seventy-five cents '11 be right." CHAPTER IV. THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. I HAVE considered the condition and prospects of the white race in the South a much more important subject, and one, at this time, much more in want of exposition than that of the Afri- can. But the great difference in the mode of life of the slaves when living on large plantations, and when living on farms or in town establishments, or on such small plantations that they are intimately associated with white families, has seemed to me to have been so much overlooked by writers, that I have departed widely from the narrative with which this volume commenced, and drawn from my traveling notes of a previous year, to more fully display it. Continuing the horseback journey commenced in the rich cot- ton-bearing soils Avhich border the Mississippi river, I turned east- ward, not far above Natchez, and pursued an indirect route to- wards Tuscaloosa in Alabama. The country grew less fertile, and the plantations smaller. The number of whites (not of negroes), living upon plantations of the class chiefly described thus far in this volume (and in two instances, at length, in my first volume), is, of course, small. The more common sort of plantations and the common middle-class planter, can hardly be seen by a tourist in any other way than that I now pursued, traveling in the in- terior, away from the rivers and the ordinary lines of communi- cation, and independently of public conveyances ; there is conse- THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 159 quently less general kuowledgG of tliem, I apprehend, than of any other portion of the populatiou of the South, yet of the class properly termed "the planters" they constitute probably nine tenths. The price of " improved" plantation land varies from five to ten dollars per acre, according to its fertility and the vicinity to a market ; near large towns only does it command more.* As the richest soils are in the lowest situations — frequently on the bor- ders of marshes and streams — the most productive plantations are seldom healthy, and their proprietors very generally live for a part of the summer, I am informed, in the neighboring towns, where they constitute congenial society for each other. Com- paratively few of the towns, however, are thus favored ; all that I saw in central Mississippi, with the exception of JaclvSon,f the capital, were forlorn, poverty-stricken collections of shops, grog- geries, and lawyers' offices, mingled with unsightly and usually dilapidated dwelling-houses. Moreover, I found that many a high-sounding name (figuring on the same maps in which towns * " The value of the best cotton plantations on the uplands of Natchez, is about £4 an acre, which is little more than half that which soils of similar quality are worth in Canada West." — Korih America : its Agriculture, etc., page 271. f The capital is a rather fine town externally. At the principal hotel, in some departments of which there is the usual " first-class" regal magnifi- cence, napkins, silver-plated forks and candelabra, there was, at the time of my visit, and, as I learn from a recent traveler, there is still no cabinet dfaisance. On inquiring for it, I was advised by the landlord himself to go to a cypress swamp, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, and there was evi- dence enough that this was daily resorted to for the purpose, not only by the other guests of the hotel, but by a large portion of the inhabitants of the town. The reader ner;d be under no fear of drawing a false inference from this fact, with regard to the degree in which the South generally is pos- sessed of all modern civilized convenience. 160 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. of five thousand inhabitants in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, are omitted), indicated the locality of merely a grocery or two, a blacksmith shop, and two or three log cabins. I passed through two of these map towns without knowing that I had reached them, and afterwards ascertained that one of them consisted of a deserted blacksmith shop, and a cabin in which the post-master lived, and the other, of a single grocery. The majority of the interior plantations which came under my observation belong to resident planters, and are from four hundred to one thousand acres in extent, the average being perhaps six hundred acres.^ The number of negroes on each varies from ten to forty, more frequently being between twenty and thirty. Where there are fewer than ten negroes, the owners are fre- quently seen holding a plow among them ; where there are over twenty, a white overseer is usually employed, the owner perhaps directing, but seldom personally superintending, the field labor. The characteristics of this latter class of cotton-planters vary much. I shall, I think, be generally rightly understood if I say that the majority of them possess more dignity of bearing and manner, that they give a stranger an impression of greater " respectability" than the middle class of farmers at the North and in England, while they have less general information and less active and inquiring minds. The class of farmers in New England and New York, with whom I compare them, have rare- ly received any education beyond that of the public schools, which, in the last generation, afi'orded a very meager modicum * "When the largest share of the labor is not intended to be applied to the cotton crop, but is divided among various crops, as is usually the case where less than four hundred acres are held in possession by the proprietor, I term the enterprise a farm in distinction from a plantation. THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 161 of instruction. The planters of whom I speak, 1 judge to have usually spent a short time at boarding-schools or institutions of a somewhat superior order to the common, or " primary" schools of the country — but their acquisition of knowledge subsequently to their school-days by newspapers and books, and by conver- sation, has been very small. It is frequently the case, however, that the planter has started as a poor, and entirely self-dependent young man, the basis of whose present fortune consisted of his savings from the wages earned by him as overseer — these are commonly as illiterate as the very poorest of our northern agricultural laborers. Yet again there are those who, beginning in the same way, have ac- quired, while so employed, not only a capital with which to pur- chase land and slaves, but a valuable stock of experience and practical information, and somewhat of gentlemanly bearing from intercourse with their employers. In respect to the enjoyment of material comforts, and the exercise of taste in the arrange- ment of their houses and grounds, the condition of these plant- ers, while it is superior to that of the Tcxans, is far below that of northern farmers of one quarter their wealth. But an ac- quaintance with their style of living can only be obtained from details, and these I shall again give by extracts from ray journal, showing how I chanced to be entertained night after night, pre- mising that I took no little pains to select the most comfortable quarters in the neighborhood which I reached at the close of the day. To avoid repetition, I will merely say with regard to diet, tliat bacon, corn-bread and coffee invariably appeared at every meal ; but, besides this, either at breakfast or supper, a fried fowl, " biscuit" of wheat flour, with butter were added — the biscuit invariably made heavy, doughy and indigestible with shortening 162 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. (fat), and brought to table in relays, to be eaten as Lot as possible with melting butter. Molasses usually, honey frequently, and, as a rare exception, potatoes and green peas were added to the board. Whiskey was seldom offered me, and only once any other beverage except the abominable preparation which passes for coffee. Until I reached the softly rounded hills, with occasional small prairies, through which flows the Tombigbee, in the eastern part of the State, the scenery was monotonous and somber. The pre- dominating foliage is that of the black-oak, black-jack, and pine, except in the intervale lands, where the profuse and bright-colored vegetation common to the latitude is generally met with in great variety. Last of May. 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 traveled 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. The climate here is very mild ; lung com- plaints, though not infrequent, not nearly as common as in Mary- land. Of a number of northern people whom he had known to come here with consumption, only one or two had recovered. There are several in the country now, he said, young women teach- ing school. This immediate locality, he considered very healthy ; he had a family (including about fifteen negroes) of twenty, and had never been visited by any sickness more serious than chills THE INTERIOK COTl^ON DISTRICTS. 163 and fever ; but on lower and richer ground, they suffered much from typhus fever, pneumonia, and malignant typhus. His first dwelling, a rude log cabin, was still standing, and was occupied by some of his slaves. The new house, a cottage, con- sisting of four rooms and a hall, stood in a small grove of oaks ; the family were quiet, hind, and sensible. When I arrived, the oldest boy was at work, holding a plow in the cotton-field, but he left it and came at once, with confident and aff"able courtesy, to entertain me. My host had been in Texas, and after exploring it quite tho- roughly, 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 did n't " fancy" a prairie country. Here, in favorable 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 said that he was a Methodist ; he was also an extreme pro- slavery man. He had seen in his religious newspaper an account of Mr. Fillmore's being shown a large Alabama plantation on a Sunday ; Mr. Fillmore had expressed himself highly delighted and surprised with the manner in which the slaves were taken care of, being obliged to attend church, etc. He hoped it would do Mr. Fillmore good. He had been opposed to him in politics, and he doubted now if he could be trusted. They would try to make him President again, he supposed, for they were working hard to make the South think him her friend. There was no knowing about any thing of that kind now. There was New York, my State, who could tell any thing about her now-a-days ? It seemed 164 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. to him slie was controlled by fanatics, demagogues, and foreigners, who were purchased by the highest bidder; she was no more to bo depended upon than a weathercock. One year she pointed one way, the next, directly opposite. The South could no more depend on the Democrats than on the Whigs in New York, that was his opinion. I went five times to the stable without being able to find the 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 leno-th I had to go to bed, trusting to this assurance. I went out just before breakfast 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. AVhcn 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 V " Ten or fifteen — or sixteen, sir ; he eats very hearty." I went into the stable and saw that he had had no more, i. e., after the feed of the evening ; 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 very likely the negro stole 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 mid-day. At nightfall I was much fatigued, but had as yet failed to get lodging.- It began to THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 165 rain and grow dark, and I kept the road with difficulty. Finally, 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 fast- ened 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 wdiar dey '11 be safe. Dese niggers is so treacherous can't leave notliin' roun' but dey '11 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 mas- ter'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 Belshazzar 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 166 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. jewelry which they displayed at breakfast. I've no doubt they had enjoyed the advantages of some ''Institute," where they had been put clean through from " the elementaiy studies" to " Wax- work and Watts on the Mind.'''' One of them surprised me, therefore, not a little at the table. I had been offered, in succes- sion, fried ham and eggs, sweet potatoes, apple-pie, corn-bread, boiled eggs, 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 — . 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 w^as first received, followed me to the stable. He had ordered a negro child to lead my horse, but as I saw the little fellow^ could n'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 un- tasted, 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 parlor or common THE INTERTOR COTTOX DISTRICTS. 167 room stood a handsome center- table, on Avliich were a few books and papers, mostly Baptist publications. I sat here alone in the evening, straining my eyes to read a wretchedly-printed news- paper, till I was offered a bed. I was very tired and sleepy, hav- ing been ill two nights before. A physician, whom I had been obliged to consult, informed me that severe illness was frequently occasioned here by an exposure of the abdomen to the cool night air, an accident to which the irritation of insects must often snb- ject sleepers. The bed was apparently clean, and I embraced it with pleasure. 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 fjistened in the same manner. No sooner was the light withdrawn than I was at- tacked 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 out of 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 parlor. At first I thought that I would ar- range 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 168 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. feed but little except in darkness, and with my saddle-bags for a pillow, again essayed to sleep. Fleas ! instantly. I rolled and scratched for hours. 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 lengh 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 dryness of the eyes which indicates a determination of the system 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 put on my boots and hat, pushed back the bolt of the outside door-lock with my thumb, and went to the stable. The negroes were al- ready at work in the field. Belshazzar had had nearly as bad a place to sleep in as I ; the floor of the stall, being of earth, had been trodden into two hollows at each end, leaving a small rough hillock in the center. Bad as it was, however, it was the best in the stable ; only one in four of the stalls having a man- ger that was not broken down. A little black girl and boy were cleaning their master's horses — mine they were afraid of. They had put some fresh corn in his manger, however, and as he re- fused to eat I took a curry-comb and brush, and for 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 traveler to ex- amine 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 THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 169 liorse, then and subsequently, I suspect some trick of this kind was here practiced 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 apotheca- ries in mixing drugs. The title of doctor is often popularly giv- en 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 . — I saddled and rode on immediately after breakfast ; but as soon as the dew had dried oft' the grass, and I could find an abandoned plantation, I turned aside from the road and wan- dered through the old fields till I came upon a thicket of broad- leafed black-jacks, with glades of grass only a little broken by bushes. I then unsaddled, and fastening Belshazzar with a lar- iat, where he could either graze or lie in the shade of a pine tree, I laid my blanket on the ground among the black-jacks, and in two minutes was rapidly overtaking my lost night's rest. Awakening suddenly, I find that Belshazzar, his rope stretched to its utmost tension, has got close to me, and stands strongly braced, with nostrils dilated, eyes and ears bent on the swamp below us, where a pack of hounds are rushing past in full frantic cry. Gradually the music dies away in the distance ; we see nothing of deer, or fox, or nigger, hounds or huntsmen. Bel- shazzar returns to feed, and Jude coils down to sleep again upon her form. But I have slept enough ; so I wash myself from canteen and get dinner, write up my journal, and am off 170 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. A PIOUS SLAVE. Soon I met a very 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 '11 all take in travelers ?" " Yes, sir, if you '11 take rough fare, such as travelers has to, sometimes. They 're all dam'd rascals along dis road, for ten or twelve miles, and you '11 git 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 do n'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 ?" "DeLord! massa, de bresscd Lord! He cum to me in cie night time, in de year '45, and he says to me, says he, ' I '11 spare you yet five year longer, old boy !' So wdien '50 cum round I thought my time had cum, sure ; but as I did n't die, I reckon de Lord has 'ceptcd of me, and I 'specs I shall be saved, dough I do n'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 mer- cy circumwent me. Got some tobaccy, master ?" A little after sunset I came t0 an unusually promising planta- tion, the dwelling being within a large inclosure, 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 THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 171 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 char- acter of entertainer. Nothing in his tone or manner would have indicated that he w^as not the father of the family, and proprietor of the establishment. No prince royal could have had more as- sured 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, I expect ?" " Yes, very big." " Big as New Orleans, is it ?" " Yes, much bio-o-er." " 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, sir ?" " No, never so bad as New Orleans sometimes is." " Right healthy place, I expect ?" " 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 yon have here." "Measles and hooping cough, sometimes, I reckon?" " Yes, 'most all the time, I dare say." 8* 172 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " All the time ! People must die tliere right smart. Some is dyin' 'most every day, I expect ?" " More than a hundred every day, I suppose." " Gosh ! a hundred every day ! Almighty sickly place 't must be?" " I do n't think it is any more sickly than it is here. It is such a large place, you see — seven hundred thousand people." " Seven hundred thousand — expect that 's a heap of people, aint it ?" His father, a portly, well-dressed man, soon came in, and learn- ing 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, do n'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, that is; just the same as stealing, sir. Why do n't our government make them deliver them up ? What good is the government to us if it do n'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 ? THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 173 Niggers are property, 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 sub- ject 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 g-overnment 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, 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 proposed twice to take him to the stable, but was told not to — 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 '11 eat," said I. " Yes, sir — feed him well ; do you hear, there ?" The house was meagerly 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. 1V4 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " 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, at the furthest point from her mistress. Presently she was discovered. " You, Bet, are you there ? Come here ! come here to me ! close to me ! {Slap, slap, slap.) Now, why do n't you stay in here? [Shqj, 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." [Skq)/) The other girl did n't come in 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 ; miud you run every step of the way, and if yon 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 pick- ing than at hoeiug. " They do n't pick so much in a day as nig- gers, but do it better." The women said they were good for nothing, and her husband had no business to plant so much cot- ton that he could n'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 THE INTEKIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 175 table before I had finished, and hghting 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 he was in the habit of going to bed early, and he would now show me to my room. He did so, and left me alone 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 w^hen 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 master fol- Towing 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 '11 have him fed. I s'pose the overseer forgot him." But, instead of going to the crib and feeding him at once him- self, he returned to the house and blew a horn for a negro ; when 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 gentle- man's horse, and asked me to now come to breakfast. The over- seer soon joined us as at 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 ears of corn only. I came back to ask for more, but could find neither master nor overseer. While I was packing my sad- 176 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. die-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 musketo tent attached to the saddle and examined it. I told him why I carried it. " You won't want it any more,"said he ; " no musketoes of any account where you are going ; you 'd better give it to me, sir, I should like to use it when I go a-fishing ; musketoes 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, not- withstanding the value of the tent was several times that amount. Hospitality to travelers 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 ; none looked up at me. Within ten minutes I passed five who were plowing, with no overseer or driver in sight, and every one stopped their plows to gaze at me. I reached a village before noon, and as I was confident the negro had neglected to feed my horse the evening previous, I stopped and bought some oats for him, which he ate with great avidity. Oats is a fodder crop here only; no grain is ever threshed out except for seed. A negro in the stable asked if I was " gwine on Tuscaloosy way ?" " Yes." " Oh, I wish I could go wid you." " Why, have you friends there ?" " I has dat, both black and white. Does you live in Tusca- loosy, massa ?" THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 177 " No, I live at tlie North, in New York." " At tlie North ! Oh, dat's de country for to live in. Wish I conld go dar wid you, right now. Dat's de country ; a man can live dar, and a nigger too, and no devilishness dar 'cept what a man does to hisself." He was born in Virginia, owned in Tuscaloosa, and was hired out to a man here. He did not like this place at all, but would rather live here than go any "further down." He seemed to have great dread of going "further down" (South). " Why ?" " Niggers does n't have no Sunday dar, massa. Niggers has to work and white folks has muster; dey drums and jQfes de whole bressed day ; dat yer '11 sound strange on a Sunday to a northern man, eh ?" I told him I did n't think it was so. He did n't know, but so the niggers here had told him. A report of steamboat negroes from New Orleans and the sugar districts, probably. A MISSISSIPPI SLAVEHOLDING ABOLITIONIST. YestO'rday I met a well-dressed man upon the road, and in- quired 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. Ho is a real good fellow, and his wife is a nice, tidy woman ; he 's got a good house, and you '11 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 178 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY, 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 any thing to eat ; we do n't have any thiiig to eat but once a week." " You look as if it agreed with you ; I reckon I '11 try it for one night." " Alight, sir, alight. AVhy, you came from Texas, did n'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 '11 be right glad to hear some- thing 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 Gaudaloupe, more Ger- mans 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 ; T would like right well to go and settle tliere if it was free from slavery. You see Kansas and all the free States are too far north for me ; I was raised in Ala- bama, and I do n't want to move into a colder climate ; but I THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 179 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 '11 put an end to it. It 's bound to come to an end, and when the end does come, there '11 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 v/orse. 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 do n'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 did n't know I would go and see, and would whip him if I found he had n'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 steahng are not the worst of it. I 've got a family of children, and I do n't like to have such de- graded 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 dis- trict, 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 180 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. 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 do n'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 wdio 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 do n't believe there are many who do n't think so, sometimes — it 's im- possible, I know, that they do n't." Were there any others in this neighborhood, 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 constant- ly made to feel themselves engaged with slave-labor was degrad- ing 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 be- fore he helped a slave to become a mechanic.''^ There was a * At Wilmington, North Carolina, on the night of the 27th of Julj (1857,) the frame-work of a new building was destroyed by a number of persons and a placard attached to the disjointed lumber, stating that a similar course would be pursued in all cases, against edifices that should be erected by ne- gro contractors or carpenters, by one of which class of men the house had been constructed. There was a public meeting called a few days afterwards, to take this outrage into consideration, which was numerously attended. Resolutions were adopted, denouncing the act, and the authorities were in- THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 181 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 labor 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 labor 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 extraor- dinary 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 neo-roes, some fifty of them ; he did not suppose there were any fifty structed to offer a suitable reward for the detection and conviction of the rioters. " The impression was conveyed at the meeting," says the Wilming- ton Herald, " that the act had been committed by members of an organized association, said to exist here, and to number some two hundred and fifty persons, and possibly more, who, as was alleged, to right what they con sid- ercd a grievance in the matter of negro competition with white labor, had adopted the illegal course of which the act in question was an illustration." Proecedings of a similar significance have occurred at various points, espec- ially in Virguiia. 182 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. more contented people in the world ; they were not driven hard, and work was stopped three times a day tor meals ; they had plenty to eat, and good clothes ; and throngh 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 w^ere 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 pur- chased 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 ser- vice. 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, THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 183 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 labor required of them on some planta- tions, he did not think slaves were often treated with unneces- sary 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 seven- teen slaves, and he did not suppose that there had been a hun- dred 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 Ameiicans there, w^ere all slaveholders themselves; that their influence all went to encourage the use of slave-labor, and render labor by whites disreputable. " But are there not a good many northern men there?" he asked. The 184 A JOURNEY IN THE HACK COUNTRY. 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-labor community, including an abundance and variety of skilled labor, a home market for a variety of crops, denser settle- ments, and more numerous social, educational and commercial conveniences. There would soon be a large body of small pro- prietors, 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 laborers who were not landholders would be inti- mately 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 fulfillment 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 pre- vent 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 THE INTEKIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 185 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 do n'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.) W^hen 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 un- necessary to state his views at length. They were precisely those Avhich used to be common among all respectable men at the South. I have recently received a letter from him, in which, after alluding to the excitement Avhich the Kansas question has produced, he says he thinks a considerable change of sentiment has occurred, in consequence of reading and talking about Kan- sas difiiculties, among his neighbors. He is fully determined to go to western Texas, and reckons as many as ten families and 186 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. thirty single men would go with him, if there Avere a prospect that free servants and laborers could be hired there and negroes be kept away. As we rode, an old negro met and greeted us warmly. My companion hereupon observed that he had never uttered his sen- timents 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 the impression I had formed of the purely dramatic and deceptive character of what passed for religion with most of the slaves. One of his slaves was a preacher, and a favor- ite among them. He sometimes went to plantations twenty miles away — even further — on a Sunday, to preach a funeral ser- mon, 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 ran 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 run-away parson saw that he could not escape, he jumped up into a tree and called out to him, THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 187" with an aggravatingly 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 sin- fulness, and would weep and bellow about it like a bull of Bashan, till he got a whole camp meeting into convulsions. This phrase reminds me of a scene which I witnessed in New Orleans, and as I have not yet described any of the religious services of the negroes, except that observed at a funeral, I will here give an account of it, which was written the same day. A SLAVE RELIGIOUS SERVICE IN NEW ORLEANS. Walking this morning through a rather mean neighborhood I was attracted, by a loud chorus singing, to the open door of a chapel or small church. I found a large congregation of negroes assembled within, and the singing being just then concluded, and a negro preacher commencing a sermon, I entered an empty pew near the entrance. I had no sooner taken a seat than a negro usher came to me and, in the most polite manner, whis- pered, " Won't you please to let me give you a seat higher up, mas- ter, 'long o' tudder white folks ?" I followed him to the uppermost seat, facing the pulpit, where there were three other white persons. One of them was a woman — old, very plain, and not as well dressed as many of the negroes ; another looked like a ship's officer, and was probably a 188 A JOURNEY IX THE BACK COUNTKY. member of the police force in undress — what we call a spy when we detect it in Europe; both of these remained diligently and gravely attentive during the service; the third was a foreign- looking person, very flashily dressed, and sporting a yellow- headed walking-stick, and much cheap jewelry. The remainder of the congregation consisted entirely ot colored persons, many of them, however, with light hair and hardly any perceptible indications of having African blood. On the step of the chancel were a number of children, and among these one of the loveliest young girls that I ever saw. She was a light mulatto, and had an expression of unusual intelligence and vivacity. During the service she frequently smiled, I thought derisively, at the emotions and excitement betrayed by the older people about her. She was elegantly dressed, and was accom- panied by a younger sister, who was also dressed expensively and in good taste, but who was a shade darker, though much removed from the blackness of the true negro, and of very good features and pleasant expression. The preacher was nearly black, with close wooly hair. His figure was slight, he seemed to be about thirty years of age, and the expression of his face indicated a refined and delicately sen- sitive nature. His eye was very fine, bright, deep and clear ; his voice and manner gener.dly quiet and impressive. The text was, "I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory ;" and the sermon was an appropriate and generally correct ex- planation of the customs of the Olympic games, and a proper and often eloquent application of the figure to the Chris- tian course of life. Much of the language was highly meta- phorical ; the figures long, strange and complicated, yet some- THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 189 times, however, beautiful. Words were frequentl}^ misplaced, and their meaning evidently misapprehended, while the grammar and pronunciation were sometimes such as to make the idea intended to be conveyed by the speaker incomprehensible to me. Vulgarisms and slang phrases occasionally occurred, but evidently ■without any consciousness of impropriety on the part of the speaker or his congregation. As soon as I had taken my seat, my attention was attracted by an old negro near me, whom I supposed for some time to be sufiering under some nervous complaint ; he trembled, his teeth chattered, and his face, at intervals, was convulsed. He soon began to respond aloud to the sentiments of the preacher, in such words as these: "Oh, yes!" "That's it, that's it!" " Yes, yes — glory — yes !" and similar expressions could be heai'd from all parts of the house whenever the speaker's voice was unusually solemn, or his language and manner eloquent or excited. Sometimes the outcries and i-esponses were not confined to ejaculations of this kind, but shouts, and groans, terrific shrieks, and indescribable expressions of ecstacy — of pleasure or agony — and even stamping, jumping, and clapping of hands, were added. The tumult often resembled that of an excited political meeting ; and I was once surprised to find my own muscles all stretched, as if ready for a struggle — my face glowing, and my feet stamping — having been infected unconsciously, as men often are, with in- stinctive bodily sympathy with the excitement of the crowd. So wholly unintellectual was the basis of this excitement, how- ever, that I could not, when my mind retroverted to itself, find any connection or meaning in the phrases of the speaker that remained in my memory; and I have no doubt it was his 190 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUXTEY. " action" rather than his sentiments, that had given rise to the excitement of the congregation. I took notes as well as I could of a single passage of the ser- mon. The preacher having said that among the games of the arena, were "raaslin" (wrestling) and boxing, and described how a combatant determined to win the prize, would come boldly up to his adversary and stand square before him, looking him straight in the eyes, and while he guarded himself with one hand, would give him "a lick" with the other, continued in these words : "Then would he stop, and turn away his face, and let the adversary hit back? No, my brethren, no, no I he'd follow up liis advantage, and give him another lick ; and if he fell back, he 'd keep close after him, and not stop ! — and not faint !— not be content with merely driving him back ! — but he 'd j^erscvere ! (yes, glory !) and hit him again ! (that 's it, hit him again ! hit him again ! oh, glory ! hi ! hi ! glory !) drive him into the corner! and never, never stop till he had him down! (glory^ glory, glory !) and he had got his foot on his neck, and the crown of wild olive leaves was placed upon his head by the lord of the games. (Ha ! ha ! glory to the Lord ! etc.) It was the custom of the Olympian games, my brethren, for the victor to be crowned with a crown of wild olive leaves ; but sometimes, after all, it would n't be awarded right, because the lord of the games was a, poor, frail, erroneous man, and maybe he couldn't see right, or maybe he wasn't an honest roan, and would have his favorites among the combatants, and if his favorite was beaten, he would not allow it, but would declare that he was the victor, and the crown would descend on hh head {glory !) But there ain't no danger of that in our fight with the world, for our Lord is throned in justice. (Glory! — oh, yes! yes! — sweet Lord! THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRTCTS. 191 sweet Lord!) He scetli in secret, and he knowcth all things, and there 's no chance for a mistake, and if we only will just persevere and conquer, and conquer and persevere (yes, sir I oh. Lord, yes !), and persevere — not for a year, or for two year, or ten year; nor for seventy year, perhaps ; but if we persevere — (yes ! yes !) — if we persevere — (oh ! Lord ! help ns !) — if we persevere unto the end — (oh! oh ! glory! glory ! glory!) — until he calls us home ! (Frantic shouting.) Henceforth there is laid up for us a crown of immortal glory — (Ha ! ha ! HA !) — not a crown of wild olive leaves that begin to droop as soon as they touch our brow, (oh ! oh ! oh !) but a crown of immortal glory ! That fadeth not away ! Never begins to droop ! But is immor- tal in the heavens !" Tremendous uproar, many of the congrega- tion on their feet, and uttering cries and shrieks impossible to be expressed in letters. The shabby gentleman by my side, who had been asleep, suddenly awakened, dropped his stick, and shouted with all his might, " Glory to the Lord !" The body of the house was filled by the audience ; there were galleries, but few persons were in them ; on one side, two or three boys, and on the other, on the seat nearest the pulpit, about a dozen women. The preacher was drawing his sermon to a close, and offering some sensible and pertinent advice, soberly and calmly, and the congregation was attentive and comparatively quiet, when a small old woman, perfectly black, among those in the gallery, suddenly rose, and began dancing and clapping her hands ; at first, with a slow and measured movement, and then with in- creasing rapidity, at the same time beginning to shout " ha ! ha /" The women about her arose also, and tried to hold her, as there appeared great danger that she would fall out of the gallery, 192 A JOURNEr IN THE BACK COUNTRY. and those below, left their pews that she might not fall upon them. The preacher continued his remarks — much the best part of his sermon — but it was plain that they were wasted ; every one was looking at the dancing woman in the gallery, and many were shouting and laughing aloud (in joyful sympathy, I suppose). His eye flashed as he glanced anxiously from the woman to the people, and then stopping in the middle of a sentence, a sad smile came over his face ; he closed the book, and bowed his head upon his hands to the desk, A voice in the congregation struck into a tune, and the whole congregation rose and joined in a roaring song. The woman was still shouting and dancing, her head thrown back and rolling from one side to the other. Gradually her shout became indistinct, she threw her arms wildly about instead of clapping her hands, fell back into the arms of her companions, then threw herself forward and embraced those before her, then tossed herself from side to side, gasping, and finally sunk to the floor, where she remained at the end of the song, kicking, as if acting a death struggle. Another man now rose in the pulpit, and gave out a hymn, naming number and page, and holding a book before him, though I thought he did not read from it, and I did not see another book in the house. Having recited seven verses, and repeated the number and page of the hymn, he closed the book and com- menced to address tbe congregation. He w^as a tall, fnll- blooded negro, very black, and with a disgusting expression of sensuality, cunning and vanity in his countenance, and a pomp- ous, patronizing manner — a striking contrast, in all respects, to the prepossessing quiet and modest young preacher who had pre- ceded him. He was dressed in the loosest form of the fashion- THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 193 able sack overcoat, which he threw oft" presently, showing a white vest, gaudy cravat, and a tight cut-away coat, linked to- gether at the breast with jet buttons. lie commenced by pro- posing to further elucidate the meaning of the apostle's words; they had an important bearing, he said, which his brother had not had time to bring out adequately before the congregation. At first he leaned carelessly on the pulpit cushion, laughing cun- ningly, and spoke in a low, deep, hoarse, indistinct and confi- dential tone, but soon he struck a higher key, drawling his sen- tences like a street salesman, occasionally breaking out into a yell Avith all the strength of extraordinarily powerful lungs, at the same time taking a striking attitude and gesturing in an ex- traordinary manner. This would create a frightful excitement in the people, and be responded to with the loudest and most terrific shouts. I can compare them to nothing else human 1 ever heard. Sometimes he would turn from the audience and assume a personal opponent to be standing by his side in the pulpit. Then, after battling for a few minutes in an awful and majestic manner with this man of Belial, whom he addressed constantly as " sir !" he would turn again to the admiring con- gregation, and in a familiar, gratulatory and conversational tone explain the difficulty into which he had got him, and then again suddenly turn back upon him, and in a boxing attitude give an- other knock-down reply to his heretical propositions. llis language was in a great part unintelligible to me, but the congregation seemed to enjoy it highly, and encouraged and as- sisted him in his combat with "Sir" Knight of his imagination most tumultuously, and I soon found that this poor gentleman, over whom he rode his high horse so fiercely, was one of those 194 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUXTRY. "who take unto themselves the name of Baptist," and that the name of his own charo-er was ^'' Perseverance-of-thc-Saintsr The only intelligible argument that I could discover, was pre- sented under the following circumstances. Having made his sup- posed adversary assert that " if a man w^ould only just believe and let him bury him under de water, he would be saved," — he caught up the big pulpit Bible, and using it as a catapult, pre- tended to hurl from it the reply — *' Except ye persevere and fight de good fight unto de end, ye shall be damned !" " That 's it, that 's it !" shouted the delighted audience. " Yes ! you shall be damned ! Ah ! you 've got it now, have ye ! Pooh I — Wha 's de use o' his tellin' us dat ar?" he continued, turning to the congre- gation with a laugh ; " wha 's de use on 't, when we know dat a month arter he's buried 'em under de water — whar do we find 'em ? Ha ? ah ha ! AVhah ? In de grog-shop ! (ha ! ha ! ha ! ha !) Yes we do, do n't we ? (Yes ! yes !) In de rum-hole ! (Ha ! ha ! ha ! Yes ! yes ! oh Lord !) and we know de spirit of rum and de Spirit of God has n't got no 'finities. (Yah ! ha ! ha ! yes ! yes ! dat 's it ! dat 's it ! oh, my Jesus ! Oh ! oh ! glory ! glory !) Sut'nly, sah ! You may launch out upon de ocean a drop of oil way up to Virginny, and we'll launch annudder one heah to Lusiana, and when dey meets — no matter how far dey been gone — -dey '11 unite I Why, sah ? Because dey 's got de 'finities, sah ! But de spirit of rum haint got nary sort o' 'finity with de Spirit — " etc. Three of the congregation threw themselves into hysterics during this harangue, though none were so violent as that of the woman in the gallery. The man I had noticed first from his strange convulsive motions, was shaking as if in a violent ague, and frequently snatched the sleeve of his coat in his teeth as if THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 195 he would rend it. The speaker at length returned to the hymn, repeated the number and page and the first two lines. These were sung, and he repeated the next, and so on, as in the Scotch Presbyterian service. The congregation sang ; I think every one joined, even the children, and the collective sound was won- derful. The voices of one or two women rose above the rest, and one of these soon began to introduce variations, which con- sisted mainly of shouts of oh ! oh ! at a piercing height. Many of the singers kept time with their feet, balancing themselves on each alternately, and swinging their bodies accordingly. The reading of the lines would be accompanied also by shouts, as during the previous discourse. When the preacher had concluded reading the last two lines, as the singing again proceeded, he raised his own voice above all, turned around, clapped his hands, and commenced to dance, and laughed aloud, first with his back, and then with his face to the audience. The singing ceased, but he continued his movements, leaping, with increasing agility, from one side of the pulpit to the other. The people below laughed and shouted, and the two other preach- ers who were shut into the pulpit with the dancer, tried hard to keep out of his way, and threw forward their arms or shoulders, to fend off his powerful buffets as he surged about between them. Swinging out his arms at random, with a blow of his fist he knocked the great Bible spinning off the desk, to the great dan- ger of the children below ; then threw himself back, jamming the old man, who was trying to restrain him, against the wall. At the next heave, he pitched headforemost into the young preacher, driving him through the door and falling with him half down the stairs, and after bouncing about a few moments, jerk- 196 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. ing his arms and legs violently, like a supple-jack, in every direc- tion, and all the time driving his breath with all the noise possi- ble between his set teeth, and trying to foam at the mouth and act an epileptic fit, there he lay as if dead, the young preacher, with the same sad smile, and something of shame on his face, sitting on the stair holding his head on his shoulder, and grasp- ing one of his hands, while his feet were extended up into the pulpit. The third man in the pulpit, a short, aged negro, with a smiling face, and a pleasing manner, took the Bible, which was handed up to him by one of the congregation, laid it upon the desk, and, leaning over it, told the people, in a gentle, conversa- tional tone, that the " love feast" would be held at four o'clock ; gave some instructions about the tickets of admission, and severely reproved those who were in the habit of coming late, and insisting upon being let in after the doors were locked. He then announced that the doxology would be sung, which accord- ingly followed, another woman going into hysterics at the close. The prostrate man rose, and released the young preacher, who pronounced the Apostles' blessing, and the congregation slowly passed out, chatting and saluting one another politely as they went, and bearing not the slightest mark of the previous excite- ment. The night after leaving Mr. AVatson'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 pre- tentious residences at which I passed a night on this journey. THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. lOV Foi 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 him- self. There was a good assortment of books and newspapers at this house, and the people Avere quite intelligent and very amiable. A NIGHT WITH A " POOR WHITE." 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-culti- vated 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 till 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 knowl- edge of them. The fact that a horse and wagon 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, ihey may be considered to represent very favorably, 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 198 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. reversed ; and -svitliin 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 travelers, and his wife was about sick, but if I was a mind to put up with common fare, he did n'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 suminer. 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 fur- niture either nseful or ornamental in purpose. A little girl imme- diately, 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 " coftee" 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 THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 199 cuttin' brush in the cotton this arternoon. Knew 't would bring on m}' 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, wdiich she spread upon the floor, and presently crawled among them out of sight for the night. The Avoman 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 fii'e. This she pUxced upon a large block, which was evidently used habitually for the purpose, in the center of the cabin. A furious smoke arose from it, and we soon began to cough. "Most too much smoke," observed the man. " Hope 't will 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 Avoman 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 oft' his shoes only, rolled himself into a blanket by the side of his wife. I ventured to take oft' my cra- vat and stockings, as well as my boots, but almost immediately put my stockings on again, drawing their tops over my panta- loons. The advantage of this arrangement Avas that, although 200 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. my face, eyes, ears, neck, and hands, were immediately attacked, the vermin did not reach my legs for two or three houi's. 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. For- tunately 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 risinpf in the mornino;, 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, wdiich was of exactly the same ma- terials as my supper, was ready, rain again 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 Avork done ?" " There are many Irish and German people constantly coming there who are glad to get work to do." THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 201 " 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 sicli like. They was paid twenty -five or thirty dollars a mon;^i 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 all together." " 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 Snnday last summer, and I see 'era weighin' outen the meat Tell you, it took a powerful lieap 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 'em into the scales, and if a piece weighed a pound or two over he would n't mind it ; he never took none back. Ain't nig- gers all-fired sassy at the North ?" " No, not particularly." " Aint they all free, there ? I hearn so." 202 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " 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 plan- tations do, I should think." " ! 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 planta- tions." " 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 big plantations they start 'cm to work 'fore light, and they do n'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 withoutcn 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 em- ploy. Yes, I think it 's better than it is here, for all concerned, a great deal. Folks that can't aftbrd to buy niggers get along a great deal better in the free States, I think ; and I guess that THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS. 203 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 't would n't do to free 'era ; that would n't do no how I" GET RID OF THE NIGGERS. " 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 Avould n't never do to free 'em and leave 'em here. I do n't know anybody, hardly, in favor of that. Make 'em free and leave 'em here and they 'd steal every thing we made. Nobody could n'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. NIGGER PANICS. " 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 204 A JOURNEY IN THK BACK COUNTRY. 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 yeai's. I could not make out why he had not accumulated wealth, so small a family and such an in- expensive 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 plant- ing should have produced him five hundred dollars' worth of cotton, besides supplying him with bread and bacon — his chief ex- pense, apparently. I suggested that this was a very large phant- ing 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 did n'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 could n'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, was n't worth much of any thing ; he was sorry he could not have accommodated me better. I off'ered 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. CHAPTER V. THE PIEDMONT COTTON DISTRICT. NORTHERN ALABAMA. Omitting a portion of my journey, in which the general char- acteristics of the country through which I passed, diftered not materially from those of the district described in the last chap- ter, I resume my narrative at the point where, in my progress northward, it was first evident that cotton was no longer the all- important object of agricultural interest, other crops receiving, at least, equal attention. June — . I have to-day reached a more distinctly hilly coun- try — somewhat rocky and rugged, but with inviting dells. The soil is sandy and less irequently 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. Tlie 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 mo- notony of these huts is agreeably varied by neat, white, frame houses. At one such, I dined to-day, and was comfortably enter- tained. The owner held a number of slaves, but made no cot- 206 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. ton. He owned a saw mill, was the postmaster of the neighbor- hood, and had been in the Legislature. I asked him why the capital had been changed from Tusca- loosa to Montgomery. He did not know. " Because Mont- gomery is more central and easy of access, probably," I suggested. " No, I do n't think that had any thing to do with it." " Is Tus- caloosa an unhealthy place ?" " No, sir ; healthier than Mont- gomery, 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 do n't think that was it, exactly. The fact is, sir, the people here are not like you northern people ; they do n't reason out every thing 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, w^as it not rather wasteful to give up all the public buildings at Tusca- loosa ?" " Oh, the Montgomery people wanted it so bad they promised to pay for building a new State House ; so it did not cost any thing." Quite on a par with the economics of southern commercial conventions. COTTON-GROWING FARMERS. I passed the night at the second framed house that I saw dur- ing the day, stopping early in order to avail myself of its promise of comfort. It Avas attractively situated on a hill-top, with a peach orchard near it. The proprietor owned a dozen slaves, and "made cotton," he said, "with other crops." He THE PIEDMONT COTTON DISTRICT. 207 had some of his neighbors at tea and at breakfast; sociable, kindly people, satisfied with themselves and their circumstances, which I judged from their conversation had been recently im- proving. One coming in, remarked that he had discharged a white laborer 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 did n'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 an- other, "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 would n't rap him — the lazy whelp." One of the negroes complimented my horse. "Dar's a heap of genus in dat yar boss'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 Avent 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,'^ 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 * See De Bow's Review, for August, 1857, p. 117. 208 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. supplies, and can furnisli food cheaper than those in which atten- tion is more exclusively given to cotton. June — . The country continues hilly, and is well popu- lated 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 plowing while the negroes hoe. WARM WORK FOR WOMAN-KIND. 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 shoveler 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 bare-headed, and otherwise half-naked, as perhaps needed to bo, for her work would have been thought hard by our stoutest laborers, 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 shoveled out the ore and piled it on kilns of timber, where they roasted it to make it crumble. It was then caFted to a forge, and they were paid for it by the load. They were all clothed very meanly and scantily. The woman worked, THE PIEDMONT COTTON DISTRICT. 209 SO far as I could see, as liard 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 shoveling the finer into a screen to separate the earth from it. Immediately after leaving them I found a good spot for noon- ing. 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 on my blanket, whicli he declined. Pres- ently he took up a newspaper that I had been reading, looked at it a moment, then told me he could n't read. " Folks do n't care much for edication round here; it would be better for 'em, I expect, if they did." He then began to question me closely about my circumstances — where I came from, whither I was go- ing, 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 aAvay, and they were much frightened, thinking I must be crazy at least. When he started to come toward me they told him he would n'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 210 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. off and would n'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 ex- pect." 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 did n't let them work in the vein — he kept that for him- self^ — but they w^orked 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 wildcat ; 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 any thing, 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 THE PIEDMONT COTTON DISTRICT. 211 he seems to live. If you want to fare well in tliis country you stop to poor folks' liousen ; they try to enjoy what they've got, while they ken, but these yer big planters they do n't care for nothin' but to save. Now, I never calculate to save any thing ; 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. lie 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 did n't have to load, and he had a nigger to take care of the horses when his day's teaming was done. ARTICLES OF FEMININE LUXURY. 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, " to- bacco 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, beside their keep and tobacco." Irish- men, 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-Hkc, you can't get along with 'cm." He remained about half an hour, and not till he returned 10 212 A JOURNEY IN THE HACK COUNTRY. did I liear again the noise of picking and shoveling, and cutting timber. At the forges, I was told, slave labor is mainly employed — the slaves being owned by the proprietors of the forges. "please to remember," etc. I spent that niglit 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, "AA^ell?" " I didn't say nuthin', sar." with a great grin. " What are you v^-aiting there for ?" " Please, massa, I b'leve you's 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 lire, that they might be dry if I should wish to leave early in the morning. When I went to my bed- room 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 mornings 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 '11 skuse me, sar." a sporting farmer and nigger-hunting. 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. THE PIEDMONT COTTON DISTRICT. 213 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 bosses, and to treat them well ; " then^" he said, bowing and with emphasis, " they looks out and do nH 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 re- turn, I opened them. Uncle x\bram was bending over me, hold- ing 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 tx) drink, in dem saddle-bags has you, sar ?" My host wanted much to buy or borrow Jude of me ; offering to return her to me in New York, with the best pup, and with- out expense to me^ if I would let him get a litter from her. 214 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. I Lave been asked for my dog at every house in which I have stopped on the road, and, on an average, twice a day beside, since I left Natchez. Gentlemen inquire respectfully : " Would not you like to give away that dog, sir ?" Negroes : " Do n't you want to gib me dat dog, sar ?" Boys : " Please, sir, gin me that dog, sir ?" and children, black and white, demand it peremptorily : " Gim me dat dog." 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 could n't leap it, to break it down. Dogs were trained, wdien pups, to follow a nigger — not allowed to catch one, how- ever, unless they were quite young, so that they could n'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 fall- en 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 THE PIEDMONT COTTON DISTRICT. 215 hunters), and tLey '11 let 'cm tear him a spell. The owners do n't mind having them kind o' niggers tore a good deal ; run- aways ain't much account no how, 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 ow^ner should think it exorbitant, he supposed, he said in reply to an in- quiry, they 'd turn the nigger loose, order him to make off, and tell his master to catch his own nio-o-ers. HILL-FOLKS OX SUNDAY. June — , 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, gath- ered at the house. All of them, I concluded, were non-slave- holders, 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 an over- seer, and niggers w^on't work, you know, unless there 's some- body 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 traveler and myself to dinner, and three bountiful tables were spread, one after another. The traveler was said to be a Methodist preacher, but gave no 216 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. indication of it, except that lie said grace before meat, and used the Hebrew word for Sunday. He was, however, a man of supe- rior intelligence to the others, who were ignorant and stupid, though friendly and communicative. One asked me "what a good nigger man could be bought for in New York ;" he did n't seem surprised, or make any farther 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 differ- ently ; he had thought that perhaps more wheat would grow if more seed were sown, but he never tried it. The general prac- tice, they told me, was to sow wheat on ground from which they had taken maize, without removing the maize stumps, or plowing it at all ; they sowed three pecks of wheat to the acre, and then plowed 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. HUNTING TALES. The general admiration of Jude brought up the topic of negro dogs again, and the clergyman told a story of a man who hunted THE riEDMO:^iT COTTOX DISTRICT. 217 niggers near where lie lived. lie was out once witli another man, when, after a long search, they found the dogs barking up a big Cottonwood tree. They examined the tree closely witliout finding any negro, and concluded that the dogs must have been foiled, and tliey were about to go away, when Mr. • , from some distance oft", 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 ax, and called out again, saying he would cut the tree to the ground if he did n'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 w^as still far from the ground, and asked the hunter to take away his dogs, and promise they should n'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. I asked if dogs were often allowed to tear the negroes when they caught 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. 218 A JOURNEY IN THE EACK COUNTRY. There were two or three young womcTi present, and the young ' men were sparking witli 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 proposed 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 neighborhood, and they do all the hauling for nine families." They belonged, together with their wagon, 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 wagon, and one of the women, with her family, got into the wagon 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 a neighbor 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 did n't feel well, and he reckoned he could n't work. He offered him a dollar and a lialf 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 anvhow ;" so he said to the others, " Come, boys, we may THE PIEDMONT COTTON DISTRICT. 219 as well go; you can't make a lazy man work when he's de- termined he won't." He supposed that remark made him mad, for on Thursday John came running across his cotton patch, where he was plowing. He did n't speak a word to him, but cut alono; over to his neio'hbor'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 did n'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 '11 be here to break- fast, at your house to dinner, and at Dr. 's to supper, leaving Lis family to live as they best can." They " reckoned" lie 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 ]0* 220 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. "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 the dwellings are small log cabins of one room, with another separ- ate 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 traveler. 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 planting country, and are not unfrequentiy heard singing or whistling ^t their work. CHAPTER VI. THE HIGHLANDERS. The northernmost cotton-fields, wliich I observed, were near the Tennessee line. This marks a climactic division of the country, which, however, is determined b}^ change of elevation rather than of latitude. For a week or moi-e afterwards, my course was easterly, through parts of Tennessee and Georgia into JsTortli Carolina, then northward, and by various courses back into Tennessee, when, having finally crossed the Apalachians for the fourth time, I came again to the tobacco plantations of the Atlantic slope in Virginia. AGRICULTURAL NOTES IN THE HIGHLANDS. The climate of this mountain region appears not to differ very greatly from that of Long Island, southern New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It is perhaps more variable, but the extremes both of heat and cold are less than are reached in those more northern and less elevated regions. The usual crops are the same, those of most consequence being corn, rye, oats, and grass. Fruit is a more precarious crop, from a greater liability to severe frosts after the swelling of buds in the spring. The apple-crop has been thus totally destroyed in the year of my journey, so that in considerable orchards I did not see a single a])ple. Snow had fallen several inches in depth in April, and a severe freezing 222 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. night following, even young shoots, which had begun to grow, forest trees, und leaves which had expanded, were withered. The summer pasture continues about six months. The hills generally afford an excellent range, and the mast is usually good, much being provided by the chestnut, as well as the oat, and smaller nut-bearing trees. The soil of the hills is a rich dark vegetable deposit, and they are cultivated upon very steep slopes. It is said to wash and gully but little, being very absorptive. The valleys, and gaps across the mountain ranges, are closely settled, and all the feasible level ground that I saw in three weeks was fenced, and either under tillage or producing grass for hay. The agricultural management is nearly as bad as possible. Corn, plant- ed without any manure, even by farmers who have large stocks of cattle, is cultivated for a long series of years on the same ground ; the usual crop being from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre. Where it fails very materially, it is thought to be a good plan to shift to rye. Rye is sown in July, broadcast, among the growing corn, and incidentally covered with a plow and hoes at the "lay by" cultivation of the corn. It is reaped early in July the follow- ing year with cradles, an acre yielding from five to fifteen bush- els. The following crop of corn is said to be much the better for the interpolation. Oats, and in the eastern parts, buckwheat, are sowed in fallow land, and the crops appeared to be excellent, but I could learn of never a measurement. Herds-grass {agrostis vulgaris)^ is sown on the valley lands, (rarely on the steep slopes of the mountains,) with oats, and the crop, without any further labor, pays for mowing and making into hay for from four to eight years afterward. Where it becomes mossy, weedy, and thin, it is often improved by harrowing or scarifying with a small " bull-tongue," or coulter-plow, and meadows thus made THE HIGHLA.NDERS. 223 and occasionally assisted, are considered "permanent." The hay from them soon becomes in large part, however, coarse, weedy and bnshy. Natural meadows are formed on level land in the valleys, which is too wet for cultivation, by felling the timber and cutting up the bushes as close to the ground as practicable, in August. The grass is cut the following year in June, and again in August or September, at which time the new growth of bushes yield to the scythe. The sprouts cease to spring after the second or third year. Clover is a rare crop, but appears well, and is in some lo- calities a spontaneous production. Hay is stored but little in barns, the larger part being stacked in fields. The hay fields are pastured closely, and with evident bad cft'ect, in the spring and autumn. Horses, mules, cattle, and swine,, are raised extensively, and sheep and goats in small numbers, throughout the mountains, and aftord almost the only articles of agricultural export. Although the mountains are covered during three months of the winter with snow several inches in depth, and sometimes (though but rarely) to the depth of a foot or more, and the nights, at least, are nearly always freezing, I never saw any sort of shelter prepared for neat stock. In the severest weather they are only fed oc- casionally, hay or corn being served out upon the ground, but this is not done daily, or as a regular thing, even by the better class of farmers. One of these, who informed me that his neigh- bor had four hundred head that were never fed at all, and never came ofl:* the mountain, in consequence of which " heaps of them" were starved and frozen to death every year, said that he himself gave his stock a feed " every few days," sometimes not oftener than " once in a week or two." The cattle arc of course 224 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. smal], coarse, and "raw-boned." They are usually sold to drovers from Tennessee when three years old, and are driven by them to better lowland pastures, and more provident farmers, by whom they are fattened for the New York market. During the past five or six years, in consequence of the increasing competition, the drovers h'ave purchased also the two year olds. No dairy products are sold. I saw no cheese ; but butter of better quality than I found elsewhere at the South, is made by all farmers for their own tables. Mules are raised largcl}^ The mares with foals are usually provided with a pen and shed, and fed with corn, cut oats, (the grain and straw chopped together), and hay, daily during winter. This is done by no means univer- sally, however. In no single case did I find stabling and really comfortable shelter prepared for a stock of mules ; as a conse- quence, the mules are inferior in size and constitution to those of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, and command less prices when driven to the plantations of South Carolina and Georgia — the market for which they are raised. The business of raising hogs for the same market, which has formerly been a chief source of revenue to the mountain region, has greatly decreased under the competition it has latterly met with from Tennessee and Kentucky. It is now a matter of infe- rior concern except in certain places where the chestnut mast is remarkably fine. The swine at large in the mountains, look much better than I saw them anywhere else at the South. It is said that they will fatten on the mast alone, and the pork thus made is of superior taste to that made Avith corn, but lacks firm- ness. It is the custom to pen the swine and feed them with corn for from three to six weeks before it is intended to kill them. In some parts of the mountains the young swine are killed a great THE HIGHLANDERS. 225 deal by bears. Twenty neighbors, residing within a distance of three miles, being met at a corn-shucking, last winter, at a house in which I spent the night in North Carolina, account had been taken of the number of swine each supposed himself to have lost by this enemy, during the previous two months, and it amounted to three hundred. Bears, wolves, panthers, and wild-cats are numerous, and all kill young stock of every description. Domestic dogs should also be mentioned among the beasts of prey, as it is the general opinion of the farmers that more sheep are killed by dogs than by all other animals. Sheep raising and wool growing should be, I think, the chief business of the mountains. If provided with food in deep snows, a hardy race of sheep could be wintered on the mountains with comfort. At present no sheep are kept with profit. I have no doubt they miight be, were shepherds and dogs kept with them constantly, and were they always folded at night. Eagles are numerous, and prey upon very young lambs and pigs. Many of the farmers keep small stocks of goats, for the man- ageable quantity of excellent fresh meat the kids afford them, when killed in summer. Their milk is seldom made use of. They require some feeding in winter, and the new-born kids, no adequate shelter ever being provided for them, are often frozen to death. Goats, in all parts of the South, are more generally kept by farmers than at the North. The agricultural implements employed are rude and inconve- nient. A low sled is used in drawing home the crops of small grain. As it is evident that large loads may be moved with a sled across dechvities Avhere it would be impracticable to use a cart or wagon, hill-side farmers, elsewhere, might frequently find it advantageous to adopt the plan. 226 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. Slaves, I was often told, were " unprofitable property" in the mountains, except as they increase and improve in salable value. Two men, on different occasions, in mentioning the sources of revenue of the farmers in their respective districts, spoke of the sale of negroes in the same sentence with that of cattle and swine. " A nigger," said one of them, " that would n't bring over |300, seven years ago, will fetch $1000, cash, quick, this year ; but now, hogs, they ain't worth so much as they used to be ; there 's so many of 'em driven through here from Tennessee, they've brought the price down." Of the people who get their living entirely by agriculture, few own negroes ; the slaveholders being chiefly professional men, shop-keepers, and men in office, who are also land owners, and give nr divided attention to farming. The disadvantages attendant upon slave-labor are more obvious where slaves are employed in small numbers together, because the proportion of the labor of the agricultural establishment which requires discretion and trustiness on the part of the laborer or vigilant superintendence, and " driving," at many different points at the same moment, on that of the overseer, is much smaller on a farm than on a plantation. A man can compel the uninterrupted labor of a gang of fifty cotton-hoers almost as absolutely as he can that of a gang of five, and it takes scarcely more superintendence to make sure of the proper feeding of thirty mules, when they are collected in their stable, than of three. For this reason, the bad economy of slavery is more obvious to the unthinking people, where it exists in the mild and segregated form in which it is found, when found at all, in these highland districts, than in the large properties of the cotton and sugar districts. The direct moral evils of slavery, THE HIGHLANDERS. 227 however, are less — even less proportionately to the number of slaves, because the slaves being of necessity less closely superin- tended, and their labor being directed to a greater variety of employments, their habits more resemble those of ordinary free laborers, they exercise more responsibility, and both in soul and intellect they are more elevated ; and this may be said generally of the slaves of the northern or farming, as compared with those of the southern or planting slave States. The condition of a slave, however, must always carry with it the strongest temptations to falsehood and eye-service, and slav- ery, in its mildest character, must be prejudicial to the morals and to the prosperity of the country in which it exists. How this appears in the highland region I can easily show. In a valley of unusual breadth and fertility, where the farmers were wealthier and the slaves more numerous than usual, I came, one afternoon, upon a herd of uncommonly fine cattle, as they were being turned out of a field by a negro woman. She had given herself the trouble to let down but two of the seven bars of the fence, and they were obliged to leap over a barrier at least four feet high. Last of all came, very unwillingly, a hand- some heifer, heavy with calf; the woman urged her with a cud- gel and she jumped, but lodging on her belly, as I came up she lay bent, and, as it seemed, helplessly hung upon the top bar. I was about to dismount to help her, when the woman struck her severely, and with a painful effort she boggled over. I spent the night at the best farm, and with the best educated man I met in all the mountain region — this, indeed, was rather below the mountain district proper, in a valley of the eastern Piedmont region. He spoke with some pride of the improvement in the quality of the stock and agriculture of the neighborhood, and 228 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. asked if I had not seen some fine cattle during the afternoon. I replied that I had, and at the same time mentioned the incident I have just related. "Ha! yes," said he, "that's just a piece of nigger- work. She ought to have had fifty given her right off. But a nigger always will be lazy and careless." " But," said his son, a young man of eighteen, " niggers can be made to do right." " No, they can not," returned the father, " they can never be trusted to do rio-ht. I never had a nio-o-er that would even plow to suit me unless while I was standing right over him. And who wants to spend all his life in scolding ?" Then to me, " If I could get such hired men as you can in New York, I 'd never have another nigger on my place ; but the white men here who will labor, are not a bit better than negroes. You have got to stand right over them all the time, just the same ; and then, if I should ask, now, one of my white men to go and take care of your horse, he 'd be very apt to tell me to do it myself, or, if he obeyed, he would take pains to do so in some way that would make me sorry I asked him ; then if I should scold him, he would ask me if I thouo-lit he was a nio-o-er, and refuse to work for me any more." AVherever there are slaves, I have found that farmers univer- sally testify that white laborers adopt their careless habits, and that they are even more indiflerent than negroes to the interests of their employers. Southerners, sometimes, deny that "slavery degrades labor," or prevents industry among the free, and I have been shown individual instances of hard-working white men to prove this. Perhaps it would be more strictly correct to say that slavery breeds unfaithful, meretricious, inexact and non-persistent habits of working. This influence of slavery extends to the mountains, although the people are much more industrious than THE HIGHLANDERS. 229 those of the low lands. It continued to be my custom to bivouac in the woods during the hottest part of the day. One fine morning, in July, I stopped about ten o'clock, at a fork in the road, to inquire my way of a couple of young men who were binding grain in an adjoining field. They both left their work and came to the fence before answering me, but as soon as I could with civility interrupt the conversation they desired, I rode on. Just beyond the fork, a brook, having a grassy bank, and a hill crowned by a forest upon one side, crossed the road. The view down the valley was fine, and thinking I was unlikely to find a pleasanter spot later, I rode into the woods until I reached a shaded opening, took oft' my saddle, and soon brought my horse back to the brook crossing to graze. I then returned down the brook till I found a deep, clear pool, where I bathed ; then coming back toward my horse I saw that the men had fol- lowed me all this time. . I went on to my saddle, and presently saw them approach and lie down near the horse. I walked to- wards them, but before I came within speaking distance, they rose and returned to their work. Half an hour later, I was awakened by Jude, and found they had again left the field, and were coming toward me. I restrained the dog and they ap- proached ; one whittling a stick, but aimlessly, and to no pur- pose or shape, unlike a Yankee. Whittling away, he addressed me : " 'Low yer minin'." (Searching for ore-beds.) " No, sir." "'Low yer travelin'." "Yes." " 'Lowed yer was." " 'Low that boss was raised in the mountings," said the other. 230 A JOURXET IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " 'No ; lie was raised in Texas." " What sort of a dog you call that ?" " A bull terrier." "'Lowed 't was a sort of a bully dog," and so on. They were very ignorant. Reckoned if I was going to New York, I would not come back here — peoj^le that went that way hardly ever did. I asked if many went from here to New York. " There was a heap gone to the Texies," they said ; " but they allowed New York was beyond the Texies." (Texas.) They remained standing fully an hour near me. At length I went to the horse to give him a little corn ; they followed me down, and I left them watching him eat it. Before they again returned to their work, they had lost not less than three hours of the finest harvesting morning of the season ; and this is a fair illustration of the way in which the poor white farmers of the slave States are generally found to attend to their business. Extreme poverty is rare in the mountains, but a smaller pro- portion of the people live in a style corresponding to that cus- tomary among what are called in New England "fore-handed folks," than in any other part of the civilized world which I have visited. The number who can be classed as moderately well-informed, using the New England rural standard, is ex- tremely small. I did not meet in a whole month more than two or three natives who seemed to have enjoyed equal advantages of education with the lowest class of New England (native) working people. Each of those above the average in this respect I shall speak of distinctly. The great majority live in small and comfortless log huts, two detached cabins usually forming the habitation of a family. These are rarely provided with glass windows, many are even THE HIGHLANDERS. 231 ^vithout a port; yet the winter is more severe than that ot England. The interior of one frame house, in whicli I spent a night, forty by thirty feet in dimensions, and two stories in height, occupied by a family of much more than the usual wealth, received light in the lower story only by the door and the occa sional interstices of the boarding, and in the upper, by two loop- holes, unfurnished with shutters. The table is usually abundantly provided, its only marked dif- ference from that of the lower country being the occasional pres- ence of unleavened rye bread, made with saleratus and fat, unlike any rye bread I have eaten elsewhere, but more palatable to me than the usual corn bread. Butter is always offered in the moun- tains, and is usually good. The women, as well as the men, generally smoke, and tobacco is grown for home use. They are more industrious than the men, often being seen at work in the fields, and at spuming wheels and hand-looms in almost every house. I was less troubled by vermin than in the low country, yet so much so that I adopted the habit of passing the night on the floor of the cabins, rather than in their beds. The fnrniture of the cabms is rather less meager than that of a similar class of habitations m the lower region. In the northern parts, it is common to see a square frame in which are piled a dozen bed quilts. Notwith- standing the ignorance of the people, books are more common than even in the houses of the slave owners of the planting dis- tricts. They seemed fond of reading aloud, those who were able-in a rather doleful and jolting manner. Their books are generally the cheapest and tawdriest of religious holiday books, as Mr. Sears' publications. Fox's "Martyrs," the "Biography of Distinguished Divines," with such others as " The Alarm to the 232 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. Uuconvertecr' and "The Cause and Cure of Infidelity;" not such as Pilgriin's Progress, or Rohinson Crusoe, neither of which did I ever meet with. The generally open-hearted, frank^ and kiudly character of the people, the always agreeable scenery, usually picturesque, and in some parts grandly beautiful, and the salubrious atmosphere, cool at night, and though very hot, rarely at all enervating at mid-day, made this part of my journey extraordinarily pleasant. I would have been willing to continue it for months. My horse and dog, now almost every day bountifully fed on suitable food, were in good condition and spirits, and resting on Sundays, I could calcu- late to make twenty-six miles a day. The dog, notwithstanding the roads were much more stony and hotter than in the low country, was now^ never foot-sore, which I attribute to the fre- quency of mountain streams in which she could cool herself. Nor did my horse, though climbing and descending, mountains, get seriously saddle-galled. The only precaution I took against this danger, was to wash his back twice a day with cold water, and to be sure that the saddle-blanket was laid on smoothly, and was quite clean even from dust. My expenses were not over one dol- lar a day, the usual charge for a night being from fifty to seventy- five cents, or little more than half that charged me by Missis- sippi planters for much poorer entertainment. I resume the narrative of my journey, chiefly in the form of extracts from my diary, as before. June 29. At nightfall I entered a broader and more popu- lous valley than I had seen before during the day, but for THE HIGHLANDERS. 233 sometime there were only small single-room log cabins, at wliicli I Avas loth 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 have n't got much for your horse." " You 've got corn, I suppose." " No, haint got no corn but a little that we want for our- selves, only just enough to bread us till corn comes again." " Well, you have oats ?" " Haint got an oat." "Haven't you hay?" " No." " Then I must go further, for my horse can't travel on foa- der." " Haint got nary fodder nuther." A TENNESSEE SQUIRE. Fortunately I did not have to go much further before I came to the best house I had seen during the day, a largo, 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, fenning 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, 234 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. 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 parlor," she said, "where they '11 be safe." The interior of the house was furnished with unusual comfort. " The parlor," 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 suf- fering 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 trowscrs, 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 hot- test r\aj he ever saw, squared his chair toward me, threw it back so a<- 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 speak- ing. 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 ?" I presently asked what railroad it was that I had crossed about six miles east of Chatanooga. I had not expected to find any railroad in this direction. He answered pompously that it was " the Atlantic and Pacific railroad. It began at Charleston and ended at Chatanooga, but was to be carried across to a place called Francisco in California." THE HIGHLANDERS. 235 Valuable information, but hardly as interesting as tbat wliicla the old lady gave me soon afterward. AVe had been talking of Texas and the emigration. She said " there was a new comitry they had got annexed to the United States now, and she reck- oned people would all be for going to that, now it was annexed. They called it Nebrasky ; she did n't know much about it, but she reckoned it must be a powerful fine country, they 'd taken so much trouble to get possession of it." 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 al- ways anticipated by the Cinderella, when any thing was wanted. A big lout of a youth who came from the field with the ne- groes, looked in, but seeing me, retired. His father called, but his mother said, " 't would n'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 did n'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 did n't wear no coat." The master held a candle for me while I undressed, in a large 11 236 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. 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 tlie 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 " parlor," still asleep in the clothes he wore at supper. His wife was wash- ing herself on the gallery, being already dressed for the day ; after drying her face on the family towel, she went into the kitchen, but soon returned, smoking a pipe, to her chair in the doorway. Yet every thing betokened an opulent and prosperous farmer — rich land, extensive field crops, a number of negroes, and consider- able 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 prob- ably been employed in the field labor 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 could n't buy as many as we wanted, by sending to Ireland ^or them and paying their passage. He had supposed we could THE IllGHLANDEllS. 237 buy them and hold them as slaves for a term of years, by pay- ing 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." " AVell, how do they get along so ?" " So far as I know, the most of them live pretty comfort- ably." (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 would n't like that," said the old lady. " I would n'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 do n't think white folks could abide it — they 're such vile saucy things." A negro woman and two boys w-ere in the room as she said this. At night I was again troubled to find a house at which my horse could be suitably fed, and was finally directed to a place at some distance off my direct road. To reach it, I followed a cart path up a pretty brook in a mountain glen, till I came to an irregular-shaped cattle yard, in the midst of which was a rather picturesque cabin, the roof being secured by logs laid across it and held in place by long upright pins. The interior consisted of one large " living-room," and a " lean-to," used as a kitchen, with a sleeping loft over half the living-room. For furniture, there were tw^o bedsteads, which occupied one-third of the room ; a large and a small table, on the latter of which lay a big Bible, and other books ; several hide-bottomed chairs, two chests, 238 A JOUKNKY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. shelves, with crockery, and a framed lithographic portrait of Washington on the white horse. Women's dresses hung as a curtain along the foot of one bed ; hides, hams, and bunches of candles from the rafters. An old man and his wife, with one hired man, were the occupants ; they had come to this place from North Carolina two years before. They were very good, simple people ; social and talkative, but at frequent intervals the old man, often in the midst of conversation, interrupting a reply to a question put by himself, would groan aloud and sigh out, " Glory to God 1" " Oh, my blessed Lord !" " Lord, have mercy on us !" or something of the sort, and the old woman would respond with a groan, and then there would be silence for reflec- tion for a few moments, as if a dead man were in the house, and it had been forgotten for a time. They talked with great geniality and kindness, however, and learning that I was from New York, said that I had reminded them, " by the way I talked," of some New York people who had moved near to where they had lived in North Carolina, and whom they seemed to have much liked. " They w^as well larned people," the old man said ; " though they warn't rich, they was as well larned as any, but they was the most friendly people I ever see. Most of our country folks, when they is well larned, is too proud, they won't hardly speak civil to the common ; but these Yorkers was n't so, the least bit ; they was the civilest people I ever seed. When I seed the gals coming over to our houscn, I nat'rally rejoiced; they always made it so pleasant. I never see no peo- ple who could talk so well." He and his wife frequently referred to them afterwards, and complimented me by saying that " they should have known me for a Yorker by my speeching so like them." THJE HIGHLANDERS. 239 I said, in answer to tlieir inquiry, that I had found the peo- ple of this part of the country remarkably friendly and sociable. The old man said he had " ahvays heard this was so, and it was nat'ral it should be. There warn't no niggers here ; where there was niggers, people could n't help getting a cross habit of speak- ing." He asked if New York were not a free State, and how I liked that. I answered, and he said he 'd always wished there had n't been any niggers here (the old woman called out from the other room, that she wished so, too), but he would n't like to have them free. As they had got them here, he did n't think there was any better way of getting along with them than that they had. There were very few in this district, but where they came from there were more niggers than whites. They had had three themselves ; when they decided to move up here into the mountains, the niggers did n't want to come with them, and they sold thera to a speculator. I asked if it was possible they would prefer to be sold to a trader, who might take them off and sell them to a cotton planter. " 0, yes, they had a great fear of the mountains ; they would rather, they said, be sent to a cotton farm, or a rice or sugar farm — any thing else ; so we sold them to the first nigger-specu- lator that come along." The old woman called out again, that she wished they had n't, for after all they was a great help to her, and it was very hard sometimes to do all the work she had to do, alone. "Those Yorkers did n't like slaves neither," she continued, coming into the room, "they said they couldn't bear to have 'em do any thing for 'em, they was so shacklin and lazy, but one of the gals married a man who owned a heap of niggers, for all that." 240 A JOrRNET IN THE BACK COUNTRY. Their notions of geography were amusing. They thought Virginia Lay to the southward, and was a cotton-growing State, and they supposed that one reason their niggers were willing to be sold, was that their mother came from Virginia, and they had heard her talk of it, and that they thought they might be sold to go back there upon a cotton farm. New York, they thought, lay west of Georgia, and between them and Texas. They asked about Indiana, and said that I must have passed through it com- ing from Texas, confusing it, probably, with Louisiana ; and they asked if New York were not the country the Yankees came from — " the people that used to come peddling." They supposed also that New York had a much warmer climate than Georgia. The younger man informed me that " the United States had lately annexed a new coimtry that was called Nebrisky. It w-as large enough to make thirteen States, and they had had a great com- motion as to whether it should be free or slave States. The peo- ple here all wanted it to be slave States, because they might want to move out there, and a fellow might get a nigger and have to sell him. If a man moved into a free State, he 'd have to sell his niggers ; if he did n't, they 'd be free as soon as he took 'em in. He did n't think that was right ; a man ought to be able to take his property wherever he pleased." I replied that it would be a great deal better place for non- slaveholders to move to, if slaves were excluded, to which he made no reply. We had for supper, cold corn bread, cold bacon and hot coffee. The old woman remarked she had got so w^arm she could n't eat any thing, but she drank much coffee. I was a good deal fatigued ; about eight o'clock I intimated that I would like to go to bed. The old man lighted a candle, for until then, we had THE IIIGnLANDERS. 241 been sitting by the fireliglit in tlie chimney, and after groaning aloud for the space of ten minutes, began to read in a very slow, monotonous manner, spelling out the hard words, from the Bible. After continuing this exercise for half an hour, he took a hymn Loot, read two lines and commenced to sing, and thus went on reading and singing, the other two joining him at the second verse, when we all rose. Thirteen verses v/ere sung, and then, after blowing out the candle, he kneeled for prayer. lie prayed with great fervor, much assisted by the ejaculatory responses of his wife, for more than half an hour. When we rose, the old woman took a single clean sheet from a chest, spread it on one of the beds, and told me that I could take that one. I began to undress, and she stepped out of doors till I was under the counter- pane. The young man climbed into tlie loft, and the two old people took the other bed. There was no window at all in the house ; they closed both doors and left a considerable fire burn- ing on the hearth. There did not, however, appear to be any want of ventilation, the logs and roof being sufficiently open. It was the first time, with only one exception, in more than a month, that I had been furnished with a clean sheet. (The luxury of two sheets I have never had in a private house since crossing the Mississippi ;) and I slept better than I have done before, for weeks. When I came to breakfast, the old woman was much disap- pointed that I declined coffee. She had thought I would like it sweet, and had taken pains to boil in some sweetenin' (mo- lasses) on my account ; she said she did not think I could have strength to travel such hot weather without it. I replied that I thought that I had found that in hot weather, after a little while, its effect was rather debilitating. " Perhaps it was so," she said, 242 A JOTJENET IN THE BACK COUNTET. " and tliat was the reason she felt so weak and sleepy in the after- noon. They did n't have no coffee for dinner, and she had thought she onght to have it, because in the afternoon she was always so tired and sleepy she could hardly drag about till sup- per time, and at supper she always drank a lot of coffee just to keep from going to sleep till after prayers. She did n't feel as though she could live without coffee." She had taken much pains otherwise to get a good break- fast — thick griddle cakes of Indian meal, which I could really praise with a good conscience. This greatly elevated her, and J,. she told me in a confidential whisper, " there were none of her neighbors ever had any thing nice, not even for company, because they did n't any of 'em know how to cook beyond the common." Molasses they always used as if in the plural number (like oats), urging me to take " them molasses — but perhaps I "would n't like them with my bacon." My horse was well cared for, voluntarily, by the hired man ; cleaned and fed generously with corn, fodder, hay and sheaf oats. Charge for all, including two of the notable Indian slap-jacks, which I carried away in my haversack, sixty-two and a half cents. When I wanted to wash, I was directed to " the spring," the old woman having the w^ash basin in use. In fact, she was mixing the cakes in it. TENNESSEE COPPEE MINING. I have been visiting the mining region, which I approached through the pretty valley of the , where, for the first time in this journey, I met with hemlocks and laurels growing in great perfection. THE HIGHLANDERS. 243 The first discovery of ore was made ten years ago, sooi after which, specimens were taken to New York, but no mining was done, and nothing was known of it here, until a New York com- pany bought a tract of kind three years ago, and immediately commenced operations. New veins were soon f^nd and new companies formed, and the excitement continues, new discoveries being made up to this time. At the public house were ten or twelve gentlemen of wealth, v/ho had come to sell or buy copper land, or to learn " the signs" that they might look for them on their own land elsewhere. The mines in operation at present are owned almost entirely in New York and London. The miners employed are mostly white North Carolinians, who are paid twenty to twenty-five dollars a month, when digging perpendicular shafts, and twenty-five to thirty dollars, when working horizontally. There are here, how- ever, several hundred Cornish men (" London miners," a native told me), and more are constantly coming. They are engaged in Cornwall, and have their expenses out paid, and forty dollars a month wages. They are said, at these wages, to be much more profitably employed than the natives. Two, whom I found at work together, one hundred and fifty feet from the surface, told me that they had been here about six weeks, and were well pleased. They each got forty dollars a month ; in England, they had earned respectively but three and four pounds. Board costs here at the boarding houses seven dollars a month, but they thought that a man living " in a cottage" by himself, could live cheaper than in England. Corn-bread (though Cornish men), they had not yet eaten, and they did not believe that they should ever come to it. They must have wheaten bread. The only thing they much missed was ale ; the people here did not know what 11* 2^^ A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. it was, but drank whiskey. They would rather have one draught of Cornish swipes than a gallon of this whiskey. Some of the miners, including some of the Cornish men, had been getting ready a pole, which they were to erect, and hoist a flag upon, on the fourth of July. I heard a report the day be- fore I reached the mines, that the Englishmen at the mines were going to hoist the English flag and hurrah for the Queen on the fourth of July. The country people were much excited by this report, and on the third I met a great many of them, armed with rifles, coming in "to see about it." I could not persuade them that the Englishmen were intending in good faith to cele- brate the day, so strong was their belief in the continued hos- tility of the English people to American independence. There were few settlers here when the mines were discovered. At present, the population is reported to be many thousand. If so, it must be remarkably scattered, for there is nothing like a village; the only houses, with two or three exceptions, being small log cabins. I stopped at what is considered the best public house. When I asked for a bed, I was pointed to a room in which there were seven beds, and told that I could take my pick. Two gentlemen immediately called out to inform me which of the beds they had used the night before, hoping that I would respect their claim to hold them. All the beds had been slept in by others, without change of sheet. Being the first to withdraw from the bar room, I had my choice, and found one straw bed among them, which, of course, I appropriated. Fortunately, I had no bed-fellow ; the other beds were mostly doubly occu- pied. At a public house, a few nights before, I heard the landlord, while conducting two men to their sleeping room, observe, that THE HIGHLANDERS. 245 Le supposed that they would like to sleep both in the same bed, as they came together, and I afterwards saw them together in a feather bed, notwithstanding there were several vacant beds in the same room. It was almost the hottest night I ever expe- rienced out of the East Indies, and I sweltered upon the floor. A SMART YANKEE. Everybody at the mines took me for either a shrewd specula- tor, or a mineralogist who had come to make examinations for a speculator. I was several times stopped and asked if I did not wish to look at a good piece of mineral land, and often requested to give my opinion of specimens, nor could I make myself be- lieved when I said I knew nothing about the matter. After I returned from visiting some of the mines, there was a room full of people at the public house. One asked me if I would tell them what I thought about those I had seen. I assured him that I was not in the least able to judge of their value, probably not half so much so as he was himself. He laughed, and another, laughing, asked, "What do you carry in that thing at your side ?" and every body smiled. " In this pouch, do you mean ?" " Yes, if it 's no offense— no offense meant, no offense taken, you know." " Certainly not ; I '11 tell you exactly what I 've got in it." I opened it and looking in, as it were, read the contents, " a pair of gloves, a knife, a corkscrew, a fleam, a tooth brush, a box of tapers, and a ball of twine." All laughed aloud, being quite sure in their minds that the pouch contained a blowpipe, tests, and specimens of ore, and that I was a very knowing fellow, who could keep his own counsel. . 246 A JOXJENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. m July hih. — Last evening I rode several miles, constantly saying to myself, as I passed tlie miserable huts, " tbat, I can't put up with," and still going on to try further for something better, until, just as it was getting dark, I came to some larger cabins, one of which had creepers trained over a porch, for which sign of taste I selected it. It was occupied by a family, possessing a number of negro servants, and living in more comfort than I have seen for some time. My horse being brought out in the morning covered with mire, I asked the negro if he would not clean him. He picked up a piece of corn cob and began scrap- ing him. " Had n't he got a curry comb or card ?" I asked, but he did not know what I meant, and laughed when I explained it to him, as you would laugh at some little article of pure foppery. I passed through Murphy to-day, a pretty, shady town, sur- rounded by lovely scenery. I was a little surprised at the sight of a pillory and stocks, and to learn that a white man had been recently stripped, whipped, and branded with a red hot iron for some petty crime, by the officers of the law, in the presence ot my infoimant, and of all of the inhabitants who could be called together to witness this solemn testimony of the legislative bar- barism of their State. While I stopped under a tree near a house as a heavy rain cloud was passing, a white man came out, and after greeting me with a single word, began calling : " Duke, Clary, Tom, Joe," etc., finally collecting seven little negroes and three white children ; " Just look a here ! here 's a reg'lar nigger dog ; have it to ketch niggers when they run away, or do n't behave." (He got a piece of bread and threw it to Jude.) " There ! did you see that ! See what teeth she 's got, she 'd just snap a nigger's leg off. If you do n't mind I '11 get one — you Jule, if I hear you crying any THE HIGHLANDERS. 247 more, I'll get this gentlemau to send me one. See Low strono- its jaws be ; lie says all lie 's got to do when a nigger do n't be- have, is just to say the word, and it'll snap a nigger's head right off, just as easy as you 'd take a chicken's head off with an ax." (The niggers look with dismay at Jude, who is watching them very closely expecting some more bread. The white children laugh foolishly.) July 6. — I have to-day crossed the Tomahila mountain, hav ing spent the night at an unusually comfortable house, known throughout all the country as " Walker's," situated at its western base. Apparently it is a house which the wealthy planters from the low country make a halting station on their journey to cer- tain sulphur springs further north and east. There were plenty of negroes, under unusually good government, and the table sup- ply was abundant and various. Yet every thing was greasy ; even what we call simple dishes, such as boiled rice, and toast, were served soaking in a sauce of melted fat. I gave the stable boy a quarter of a dollar for thoroughly cleaning my horse, but rode away with less than usual scrutiny of the harness, and when I came to climb a steep pitch of the mountain, discovered that the rascal had unbuckled and kept the preventer-girth. The road, which is excellent, and which was built by aid of a State appropriation, follows for some distance the slopes of a water course, and then, tack and tack, up a steep mountain-side, until, at about twelve miles from Walker's, a small plateau and clearing is reached, on which stands a cabin occupied by a man, who, as he told me, gets his living by turning bed-posts of maple, which grows here abundantly and is scarce below. After leaving this place, the road descends into a shallow val- ley in which flows the Tomahila river, a stream some twenty 2^^ A JOUEN^EY m THE BACK COUNTRY. yards across, then follows for several miles along the crest of a deep dark gorge, at the bottom of which the i-iver roars in fre- quent cascades, and then mounts another high ridge. From the summit there is a grand prospect, to the eastward. Directly below is a deep valley, surrounded on all sides by a succession of mount- ain peaks. With the exception of one bald prominence tower- ing up on the left, these are all, notwithstanding their great height, densely wooded. Those directly opposite are some forty miles distant, and are among the highest elevations on the con- tinent. While I was resting my horse and looking at these distant summits, some thunder clouds drifted around and collected be- fore them, and then floated forward, hovering over the minor peaks and pouring copious showers upon them. The thunder grew constantly more threatening, and I began to descend hast- ily. A zigzag road has been made with great labor, so that by traveling two miles upon a descending slope, never more rapidly than at the rate of perhaps six feet in one hundred, you ac- complish with entire ease what would be, in a direct course down the steep side of the mountain, not more than a thousand feet. The entire distance to the valley is six miles. A little boy on a mule, carrying a mail-bag, here overtook me. He said that he carried the mail from Ashville to Murphy, one Imndred and fourteen miles, traveling each way once a week. He starts from Ashville Monday morning and returns there Sat- urday night, rests on Sunday, but during the week travels an av- erage of nearly forty miles a day on a mule's back. Last win- ter, he said, the snow was often up to the mule's shoulders on the mountain, but he did not fail to accomplish his stated journey every day. When I asked him how old he was, he said " he be- THE HIGHLANDERS. 249 lieved that lie sliould be about fifteen in three or four months." He had two mules, but only changed from one to the other on alternate weeks. He was paid $5 a month, and board. Speaking of mountains, he asked if I " had ever been on Old Balsam ?" He had ; he was up on the top of it one morning at sunrise. I asked how he could sleep there — was there a cabin ? No, but he had been coon hunting with some fellows all night, and toward daylight they got to running a wild-cat, for they had a dog that would kill any wild-cat if it could catch it. They did not succeed, however, and just at sunrise they gave it up and found themselves close to the top of Old Balsam. Then he had to go down the mountain and get up his mule, and ride forty miles with the mail before be could go to sleep. It was as much as he could do to keep awake that day. Hearing that I belonged in New York, he asked if I knew a man there by the name of Poillon. Yes, I did ; he lived a little out of New York city, though — in the country. "The man I mean lives in New York center — rio-ht in the villao^e itself," he replied. I knew that there was a man there of that name, I said. "Well he went from Ashville." "Yes, perhaps so." "Oh he did, he went from there two year ago. Do you know a man there by the name of Ogee ?" " No." "There was a man at Ashville, came from somewhere in that country — Charleston, I believe 't was — by that name." " Charleston is not very near New York." "Ain't it? well, 't w^as Charleston he said, I believe; Charles- ton or New York, or some place out there." Another man near Waynesville in this region, asked me if I 250 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. knew Mr. White, of New York. I did not. " Why, he belongs in New York." " Very likely, but New York is a large place. There are prob- ably a hundred people of the name of White there, but I do n't happen to know one of them." " Reckon you 'd know this man if he came from there, for he 's a man of talent ; must be one of the first men ; I never see a man who knew so much about all sorts of things, and who could explain every thing out to you, as well as he. Expect he must have come from some other place. I thought he said he was raised in New York, too." " Very possibly he was, but I know but very few indeed of all the men of talent in New York. You do n't consider how many people there are there." "It's a right smart business place, I know ; it must be. You know Mr. , do n't you ?" "Who is he?" " Why the little man that keeps store in Waynesville ; reckon you know him, he goes to New York every spring to buy goods ; seen him there, hain't you ?" " I do n't think that I have ; you see, there are seven hundred thousand people in New York, and there are thousands and tens of thousands whom I never saw. It would be impossible for me to see one in a thousand of the people who come there every year. In fact, though I have lived in New York some years, I have but very few acquaintances there, not nearly as many as you have in this county probably." " Such a big place ; I suppose there 's some people been living there all their lives that do n't know each other, and never spoke to one another once yet in their lives, ain't there ?" THE HIGHLANDERS. 251 "Certainly — thousands of them." "'T ain't so here ; people 's more friendly, this country." Ashville, July 1 1 th. — This is a beautiful place among the hills, with a number of pretty country-seats about it, which, I suppose are summer residences of South Carolina planters. A great many of these " Southerners," as they are called here, are now traveling farther north, to spend the heat of summer at the numerous sulphur springs and other pleasure haunts, where good boarding houses have been established for them along the cool region of the Blue Ridge. I passed one of these, a sulphur spring, yesterday. It was a white, wooden building, with a long piazza for smokers, loungers, and flirters, and a bowling alley and shuffle board ; with coaches and trotting wagons at the stable ; poor women picking blackberries, poor men bringing fowls, school girls studiously climbing romantic rocks and other- wise making themselves as pretty as possible, children fighting their black nurses, and old gold spectacles stopping me to inquire if I was the mail, and if I had not got a newspaper. It is very odd, by the way, what old news one keeps getting in these places far from telegraphs. I inquired here for a late paper, and the clerk of the hotel went to a store to get one. It was the Ashville News, with the same articles copied from New York papers, which I had read a month before. All this country is to be netted by railroads soon, however, that is, as soon as they can be built after an appropriation to assist them passes Congress. I have crossed engineers' stakes every day, I believe, since I left Jackson, Mississippi, and generally, when I stop at night, the farmer tells me that a railroad, which will be the link which is wanting, either in a direct communication between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, or between New York and New Orleans, is 252 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. to pass between liis lionse and his corn-crib, and tliat in conse- quence land about liim has lately become of great value, that is, from four to ten dollars an acre. He is in great perplexity, too, to conclude how much he can make the railroad company pay for damao-es. o Bay before yesterday I ascended "Balsam Mountain," said to have been recently ascertained to be the highest peak of the Apalachian chain. A barometrical measurement of Professor W. D. Jones, of Tennessee, makes it ten thousand and three hun- dred feet above the sea, or one hundred and five feet higher than Black Mountain, which has always had the reputation of being the highest. I was told that the ascent was easy, and could be made on horseback to within less than a quarter of a mile of the top. I was offered a guide, but preferred to go alone, leaving Belshazzar to rest and recruit below. The mountain is one of a very lofty range, and the gap be- tween it and the next peak is crossed by a (State) turnpike road. The distance to the top from this road is a])out four miles, and its elevation above the road, four thousand feet. A very rank growth of weeds and grass covers the ground on nearly all parts of the mountain to the top, which is all nsed as a range for cat- tle, horses and hogs, and would be very profitably employed in this way but for the havoc committed on young cattle, and espe- cially on swine and sheep, by bears, wolves and panthers. The horses and cattle make so many paths that I was soon led astray from the one which leads directly to the top (if there is any such), and had to shape my course by the sun, and the ap- parent feasibility of the ground in diff-erent directions before me. The mountain, to within less than a mile from the top, is entirely shaded bj- a forest of large trees, the chestnut pi-edominating. THE HIGHLANDERS. 253 The only cliange found as yon ascend, is in their heiglit ; the trunks continually becoming shorter and sturdier. At perhaps half a mile from the summit, the trees appear gradually more scattered ; at length there is a nearly bald zone, covered, however, with grass and weeds waist high. Above this, at a quarter of a mile from the top, begins a forest of balsam firs (popularly called "balsams"). In the interval, between the two forests, the ascent was steep and fatiguing. AVhcther owing to the exertion of climbing altogether, or somewhat to the rarity of the atmos- phere, I w^as obliged to stop frequently to rest, to relieve myself from a rush of blood to the head. The moment I entered the balsam forest, I was freed from this. These balsams are thirty or forty feet high, and under their shelter flourish a variety of smaller trees and shrubs. A great many of these trees have fall- en down, and the nearer I came to the top the steeper became the ascent, the more frequent the prostrate trees, and the thicker and more impenetrable the undergrowth, a large part of it being blackberry briars. I crept under and climbed over, and pulled myself along slowly, and at length came to a knob or pinnacle, across and upon which, trees and shrubs, and stumps, with the roots uppermost, seemed to have been hurled by a whirlwind. Supposing this to be the summit itself, I climbed among the roots and briars, the best way I could, until I got my head above the wreck. It was very dark from the shade of the standing trees, and I perceived that the rocks rose still higher beyond. I worked my way down again and continued climbing, until I reached a comparatively level surface of several yards in extent, from which a number of trees had been cut away so as to open a view in two or three directions. A dense cloud hung in a cir- cle all around the peak, and though it was quite clear in the cen- 254 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. ter where I stood, I could not see beyond it at all. Overhead, at a still vast apparent distance, were striae, through which, at length, the sun came out for a few minutes, but the only effect was to give the cumulus below me a more mist-like and steamy appearance. At length came a slight breeze, and set it in rapid motion, and rent and lifted, and lowered it, so that I got a few glimpses across the neighboring mountains, and saw their tops rising above rolling thunder heads, one of which was dark, and probably discharging rain. I heard thunder, and conjectured that at a distance, the cloud within which I stood would appear to be a thunder cloud, w^ooly and snowy, and gilded when the sun shone, and dark and rainy below. The peculiarity of this mountain-top, distinguishing it from all others I know, of nearly equal height, is its moderate tempera- ture and consequent abundant vegetation. It was so warm (it was half past one), that, heated as I became by my exertions, I felt no necessity for putting on my coat. The air was soft and agreeable. The ground, a dark, rich soil, with rocks protruding and shaly stones, bore luxuriant coarse herbage. Beside the thick growth of firs, I noticed black birch, chestnut, mountain ash, wild currant, whortleberry, blackberry, honeysuckle, and a variety of cherry, all growing on the highest point. The air was of coarse moist, and every thing damp, and this was evidently its usual condition. All the dead and broken down trees, and the rocks were covered thickly with mosses and hchens, which were charged with water like a soaked sponge. I remained half an hour, hoping the cloud would clear away, but it only grew denser and darker. Beginning to descend, I found a path and endeavored to follow it, but as it soon ran into forks, branching out in every direction, I determined to pursue a THE HIGHLANDERS. 255 direct course down tlie mountain to the edge of tbe balsam for- est, and then follow its lower line until I came to tlie path, or to the ridge along which I knew the path or way usually followed, led. I got lost, however, in the cloud, and descended at a point where the lower forest extended up so as to meet the firs. I could not see out, but turnino; to the left, continued descendino- diagonally. The slope was very steep, and the ground covered w^th shelving stones, so that it was difficult to keep my feet. At length, on an inclination of about thirty-five degrees, I slipped, caught myself with a quick motion of my foot, but at the next step, tripped on a protruding root or tangle of wee(^s, balanced for a moment and was then thrown down headlong. I was severely bruised, and for some minutes could not rise. Fortu- nately, at no great distance, I found a deep gully with a stream of cold water ; after bathing in which, I entirely recovered my strength, though it was not till after several days that the contu- sions I received ceased to be inconvenient. I soon reached a more moderate slope, with a rich soil, bearing large trees, and very luxuriant tangled herbage. Meanwhile the cloud on the pinnacle was muttering thunder, and growing darker and more threatening. As I hastened on, I saw at no great distance, waddling off" through the weeds, tw^o black bears, but was so fortunate as to meet no snakes, and nothing else at all memorable. At about half past six I reached the foot of the mountain, and shortly afterward the cloud on its summit swept downward and onward with heavy thunder and copious rain. I was about five hours descending and reaching the house whence I started. The farmer said that he went nearly to the top to salt his cattle once a week, and he could go up and back 256 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTHy. again by his path in two hours. In going up I v/ent leisurely, stopping to sketch, and made a very good course until I got to the firs ; but in coming down I missed ray ^vay, and probably traveled over four times as much ground as was necessary. It was from carelessness or indifference at the start — I was willinlo\v. His usual crop of corn was forty to fifty bushels to the acre, sometimes much more. He asked if I did not think as he did, that their climate here was more favorable to profitable agriculture than that of New York. I thought that it was so for all purposes of agriculture, except for the small grains. " But," rejoined he, " you have one great advantage over us. If I could get good laborers as easily as you can in New York, I would never have another negro on my place ; it 's a part of the evil we suffer from slavery that it spoils our white men. Our white hands are not, in general, a bit better than the negroes." He employed several white handsi and paid them ten dollars a month ; and they wanted the sanio whether they were hired by the year or only for the summer. They did n't care to work for any great length of time without a change. They were very stupid at work, almost as much so as the negroes, and could not be set to do any thing that required the least exercise of judgment, unless he stood over them con- stantly. Yet he beheved that the white men, whom he had this year at 8120 a year wages, were worth more to him than the negroes who were hired for $140. One of the latter was almost useless, and this entirely from laziness and stupid indifi'erence, for he was strong enough ; he hardly paid for his bread. Still there was much that was inconvenient and unpleasant in employing white men, especially where thoy were employed with negroes. His white hands all were seated with us at the breakfast table ; coarse, dirty, silent, embarrassed, and embarrassing men. He afterwards observed that if thev could o-^t rid of slaves. 276 4 JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. and obtain a sufficient number of white laborers to do tlieir field work, they woukl still have to employ negro girls for tlic kitchen and household labor. The white girls Avho would go out to work were worse than the men, much worse than the negroes, lie did not know a white girl wdio would hire out, whose habits were such that he could endure to have her in his house. In fact, no girl hereabouts, whose character was good, would ever hire out to do menial service. There were some Maine gentle- men whom he knew, who were professors in Emery and Henry College. They thought slavery wrong, and they would n't buy slaves, and had tried to o-et alonof v/ith white o'irls, but they were obliged to give it up, and pay owners for the use of their slaves, as cooks and maids. Abolition of slavery he thought impracticable. The slaves could not take care of themselves. If they were freed and allowed to remain here, they w^ould ruin the country. Every one knew, he said, that the State w^ould be far more prosperous if the slaves were out of it. No doubt the State would be richer if they were all taken out of it without being paid for. He wished they might be. Jnhj IQth. — Last night I spent with the family of a farmer who owned three or four negroes, and lived in a superior sort of log cabin quite comfortably. Indeed, a higher degree of com- fort is generally evident since I entered Virginia. Although they had slaves, and there was a daughter, eighteen or t\venty years old, I observed that they had a slovenly and very ugly white girl (possibly a very light mulatto), who seemed to be a servant, and who did not come to the table with the family, but gave the negroes their breakfast in the kitchen while we ate in an adjoining room w^ith the door between the rooms open. THE HIGHLANDERS. 277 On a small table in the parlor -svere some books, the " Revival Miscellanies," and the " Alarm to the Unconveited," two Meth- odist Hymn Books, a large Bible, and a North Carolina Almanac, of the year before. The mother of the family, a very kindly fat old lady, officiated at family prayers. " What yer done v.'ith yer gnn ?" inquired the mother ; " see you 'vc got your shot pouch." " No, madam, it is not shot I carry in this pouch." " No. 'Lowed 't wan't shot." Silence and universal gravity, the eyes of the whole family bent on my kiather pocket for the next five minutes. At length, a young man asks if I got much gold in Texas. He had heard say there was powerful good mines there. I told him there were no gold mines in operation in Texas ; perhaps it was California he meant. He did n't know but it was ; it was either Texas or California; he was sure he'd heard people say there was heaps of gold got out there. These people told me that they had heard that some Yankees (" that 's what they called people who came from that part of the country," they parenthesized — New Jersey Yankees,) had come down into Virginia somewhere to raise stuff for New York. " They come here because it is so much hotter, and they can raise things earlier than they can about New York, and then they take 'em on to New York. The New Yorkers is so fond of novels that they '11 pay high for 'em to come a little earlier." July 20th. — After two farmers had declined to receive me, because, as they said, they had not got any corn and were not prepared for travelers, and did not like to take them in unless they could treat them well, I stopped, near nine o'clock, at a house to which they had recommended me, as the best within 278 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK OOITNTRY. some miles. It was a boarded log house, of four rooms and a gallery. The owner was a farmer, with two hired white hands besides his sons; the v.'hole family coarse, ignorant people. As I took a seat for my supper, the mother placed herself opposite to me, resting her two red scabby arms on the table, smoking a pipe, and in the most good-natnred way, inquired into ail the particulars of my life as far as possible ; whether I were married or not, what "persuasion" (religious sect) my father and mother belonged to, etc., etc. She had had some notion of moving to Texas. A woman who went out from here and settled there, wrote home that she had n't got any cows of her own yet, but she could have the milking of twent}-, if she wanted, that belonged to the planters around ; and she made butter and sold it at 37^ cents a pound to the very men who owned the cows. They were too lazy to make butter for themselves, but they liked it so well they would pay 37i cents a pound for it. The old woman thought if she could get 37^ cents a pound for making butter, it would n't take long for her to get rich, and "I'd like to be rich," said she, " not so rich as Wade Hampton, but so rich I need n't do any more work." There had been several othei's from here- about, however, who went out to Texas and did n't like it. There were two young men came back last spring. They said 't v/as a right level flat country, and 'twas all of such deep, sticky mud, that it took five pair of mules to haul a load of corn, and it was dreadful sickly there, and there was n't any water at all ; all that people had to drink was rain water that they caught and kept. These men had, it appeared, landed at Galveston or Indianola, gone back only a few miles from the coast, lived tiiere through a summer, and then returned disgusted with Texas, as well they mio;ht be if that were all of it. THE HIGHLANDERS. 279 Although there were four rooms in the house, six of us, inchid- ing a girl of fifteen, were bedded in one tight room. There were no sheets at all on my bed, and what, with the irritation of the feathers and the blanket, the impurity of the air, and a cry- ing child, I did not fall asleep till near daylight. Kotwithstanding it was the middle of the harvest season, and they had mentioned to me that their oats had been struck with rust, and would lose value very rapidly every additional hour they remained uncut, there seemed to be no hurry about getting to work in the morning. I hastened them all I could, in order to ride while the day was tolerably cool, but the sun was thi'ee hours high beibre breakfast was ready, and even when I rode away after it was finished, all the men and boys were lounging on the gallery, waiting to see me start, before they went afield ; nothing at all out of doors having been done before breakfast, not even the grinding of scythes. The following day I descended the eastern slope of the Blue Kidge and came to tliat part of Virginia which was considered in the first volume of this work. Richmond, where I arrived a week later, somewhat surprised me by its substance, show and gardens, and I was inclined to think that in coming to it directly from New York and Philadel- phia, I had been led to rather underrate its quality at my first visit.""' There are only six towns, having a town-like character, in the slave States — New Orleans, Mobile, Louisville, St. Louis, Charleston, and Richmond. Savannah, and all the other "places" having, like it, in winter, a population for a town, are simply overgrown villages in appearance, and in convenience ; half the streets tolerably good pastures, the other half intolerable cart- * Seaboard Slave States, p. 19. 280 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. roads; the best mansions, clap-boarcl, Americo-moresqne cot- tages ; the best gardens in a setting of picket fence ; the public squares mere camp grounds, with weedy walks and sedge-grass lawns ; the majority of the shops selling raisins, nailrods and nig- ger clotlj, from the same counter with silks, and school books and " bitters." Richmond, by contrast, is a metropolis, having some substantial qualities, having a history, and something prepared for a future as well. Compared with northern towns of the same population, there is much that is quaint, provincial and excessively slovenly, especially in whatever connects directly with the coun- try, such as the marketing. It is only the mills and warehouses, a few shops and a few private residences and hotels, that show real enterprise or real and permanent wealth. The Crawford Washington Monument is much the highest attainment of American plastic art, and would be a glory to any town or country, but it points to the past. What a failure has there been in the promises of the past ! That, at last, is what impresses one most in Richmond. It is a metropolis, and, of course, the tide of modern life elsewhere reaches it, stii-s it, and here and there possesses it, but yet it is plainly the metropolis of Virginia, of a people who have been dragged along in the grand march of the rest of the world, but who have had, for a long time and yet have, a disposition within themselves only to step backward. Revolting from the generous and noble theories of Jefferson the essential difficulty with Virginians of to-day is want of faith in the capacity of men individually, white and black. Wealth, knowledge, and morality, are practically regarded as the acci- dents of men, not as their earnings. Slavery, and the laziness and faithlessness of the poor whites, are deplored, especially through THE IIIGIILANDEES. 281 out the west, but every oue says, and every one feels, it is liopelcss to contend with these evils. " Slavery makes our' poor whites worthless laborers ; even slaves are better. The country lan- guishes for want of laborers. No one then must be allowed to think of our dispensing with slaves." They thus acknowledge the cause of the evil ; but show that they have not a. spark of faith in the capacity of their poor whites to improve, even on the removal of this cause. This is what they mean, when they say, " It is impossible to abolish slavery ;" — it is impossible to live with- out somebody can be made to work. In every neighborhood, I found hope to center in something to come from without A railroad or canal, which the Governor had recommended the State to aid; a copper or coal mine, or salt works, which some New Yorkers were talking about establishing ; a new college, which some religious body proposed to found. But, lately, in the extreme West, where slaves are no direct impediment, a new hope seems to have got a lodgment, and where, even on the frontier, a newspaper can not be prevented from giving utterance to it, in such a manner as is done in the following paragraph from the Wheeling Intelligencer, it is impossible that it shall not bring with it at least a negative faith. A faith that will not resist, if it may not encourage, an infusion of such elements of improvement, as will make the obstruction which slavery presents to wealth, more and more obvious to all, at the same time that the possi- bility of dispensing with it is demonstrated. " The present great and pressing want of our State, like that of the United States, is cultivation and improvement, not enlarge^ ment or annexation, and the obvious and the only mode of a rapid growth of oar State or city, is such a change of public policy as shall invite to our aid and cooperation our Caucasian 282 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. cousins, the intelligent, moral and industrious artizans, mechanics, miners, manufacturers, farmers, and commercial men of Europe and the northern States, to share our taxation, develop our resources, and mate ours a white man's country, with all the energy, education, love of order, of freedom, and of progress characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race. The history of the world, and especially of the States of this Union, shows most conclu- sively that public prosperity bears an almost mathematical pro- portion to the degree of freedom enjoyed by all the inhabitants of the State. Men will always work better for the cash than for the lash. The free laborer will produce and save as much, and consume and waste as little as he can. The slave, on the con- trary, will produce and save as little, and consume and waste as much as possible. Hence States and counties filled with the former class must necessarily flourish and increase in population, arts, manufactures, wealth, and education, because they are ani- mated and incited by all the vigor of the will ; while States filled with the latter class m^ust exhibit comparative stagnation, be- cause it is the universal law of nature that force and fear end in ruin and dccav." CHAPTER VII. PATRIARCHAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA, AND IN GENERAL. JAMES KIVER CHAT. From Richmond I went with my horse and dog direct to New York by the steamer. There were but few first-class pas- sengers ; the majority of those who did not leave at the river landings, or at Norfolk, being Northern men, or men of North- ern birth doing business at the South, and going North with their families for the remainder of the summer. Of the project of a line of "mammoth steamships," to be established between Richmond and Antwerp, with the assistance of mail patronage from the United States, and loans from the Belgian and Virginian governments, which, when I was last on James River, was the exciting topic of conversation, I now no longer heard a word spoken. The party of progress, however, represented by six gentlemen in black, with gold-headed walking- sticks, sitting in caucus around a spittoon by the side of the wheel-house, as we were carefully floated in ballast over the shoals, were equally animated in the confidence of some new scheme, which it was deemed equally safe and respectable to discuss publicly, and which it was held with equal confidence would be the sure salvation of old Yir2:inia. My room-mate proved to be a Mississippian, lazy and amiable, a sort of smouldering fire-eater. He sneered at the Virginians 13 284 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. and their speculations, and held men to be little better than fools who would keep niggers to make corn and tobacco, when by- moving them to his own region, and setting them to make cotton, they might easily double their incomes. But they did not keep them to make corn, he said, they kept them to breed and raise young ones. It was folly to pretend that they did not. A man might not raise a nigger with a well-considered plan to sell him eighteen years after he was born ; he might never sell a nigger, but for all that, it was the readiness with which he could com- mand a thousand dollars for every likely boy he had, if he should ever need it, that made him stay here and be bothered with taking care of a gang of niggers who barely earned enough to enable his family to live decently. He did not sell them, be- cause he thought they were a good investment to hold, and men were proud of being able to hold a big lot of niggers. There were not many men here, either, who did not sell their niggers oiF, some of them, every year or two ; whenever they w^anted money. Some pretended that they only sold the rascals, but the rascals they sold were generally likely boys, just the thing for cotton pickers, and would bring more money than the slow men and the women whom they kept. If they did not sell them off, why were not the stocks larger? There were a few men here who owned a hundred or two niggers, but not nearly as many as in Mississippi, and yet every body knew a nigger stock would naturally increase twice as fast here as it would in Mississippi. What became of them if they were not sold ? He had never sold a nigger in his life, but he had bought a good many, and two-thirds of them were fresh from Virginia. He had one boy who said that the man who raised him had sold him to get the money to pay for a piano which he had bought for his PATBIARCHAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 285 daughter. A gentleman would never tliink of doing such a thing as that in Mississippi. He would always calculate to pay from his crop. I have more than once observed that the rich men of the South- west feel themselves rather a superior class to the Virginians, somewhat as the rich Virginia country-gentlemen look upon Northern farmers — as if agriculture in a free-labor country were necessarily a small and rather mean business. The following passage from an article in the Brandon Republican, a Mississippi newspaper, manifests the general incredulity with regard to the assertion that slaves are not bred for commercial purposes in Virginia and the adjoining States, which it is impossible to resist in regions where half the population of a county often consists of negroes who have been sold from that State : " Now let us consider the prpbable consequences of drawing upon the savage and barbcarous hordes of Africa for slaves to compete with our own, and most likely eventually drive out of Southern markets the slave breeders of the South. Are there not, including South Car- olina — although for the last eight or ten years she has thrown upon us more slaves than any one of the old slave States — six States that must hereafter derive pi-ofit from breeding slaves for the Southern States or derive no profit from the institution ? We mean Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Missouri. Nearly one third of the population of these States are slaves. If slave labor can not be made to pay there — and we hear it continually asserted that tiiis labor can not be advantageously employed in grain growing countries — then what are they to do with their slaves if this policy is inaugurated and they are excluded from Southern markets, they being forced to retain in their hands property which can make no a'lequate return for the expenses of feeding, clothing, etc ? Do you think, reader, that any surer means could be employed to call into existence an abolition sen- timent there than that of forcing these States to retain in their territory a large and expensive body of slaves that they can not find remuner- ative employment for ? No practical man will believe that they will keep them when the time comes that they can not be turned to profit. Should they be shut out from the Southern markets, with their heavy slave population to 'harass them and eat out their substance,' and al- most unproductive and rapidly producing, how can they keep them? Let it come to this, and we predict that their owmers will get rid of 286 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. them, even if they are compelled to incur the expenses of their sliip- ment to Africa. Allow them still to find a profit in slave breeding, and their affection for the institution will remain as fixed as ' Ixion on his wheel." To the same effect is the following admission of the Charles- ton Standard in an article on agricultural improvement at the South : '' The Virginia journalists have repeatedly borne witness to the fact, that in many districts, where large estates have been divided and sold to small farmers, the land is turning^ off from three to six times as much produce as it did a few years ago."* This is much the same as saying, that from certain limited districts of Virginia, where slavery has been practically aban- doned (the slaves having been sold off by the sheriff in most cases) the contribution of the earth to the comfort of the human race has almost immediately been increased four fold. Once again, during the afternoon, I had the pleasure of wit- nessing a scene similar to those described in the first volume, in the same locality, the joyful welcome of white people, returning to their plantation, by their house-servants ; and again I noticed tlie comparative indifference of the field-hands or common slaves, who barely touched their tatterred hats and grinned, before lift- ing on to each other's heads the trunks which were to be thus carried to the house after the carriage which bore the whites and upper servants altogether. This humbler kind did not say one word to their master or mistress, and only grinned in sym- pathy with the excitement of the young people, nor were they spoken to at all, so far as I observed. I am here reminded that I may seem to have hitherto too much overlooked a certain view of Southern life, much delighted * Charleston Standard, August 17, 1854. PATRIARCHAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 287 in by novelists and poets, and not usually neglected by travelers, I mean that which, in debates, is commonly alluded to when the terms, patriarchal, paternal, filial, tutellary and pupilage, are used, the two latter terms being less frequently heard of late years than in the early days of the republic. The truth is, that I have made, as all travelers are inclined to mate, the most I honestly could of every instance or indication of such a relation as these terms express, that I have seen. Any- thing of the kind is always interesting, and gratifying to read of and to write of, as it is to witness. Would I then have it inferred that Slavery has been too much honored in this respect ? I must say that such is my conviction. Will the reader consider how many poets and novelists, and what is of more consequence, how many apparently matter-of-fact travelers speak of our Yankee tars otherwise than as gallant, jolly and generous fellows, or of the red Indian otherw^ise than as the calm, sad, dignified child of nature — " the noble savage." And yet the reader probably knows, if he has taken the trouble to look the facts in the face, regardless of traditions and predispositions, that American seamen, (sea-going,) as a class, are more wretched, and are governed more by threats of force than any other civilized laborers of the world. There arc exceptions. There are ports from which when ships are manned the rule is otherwise. But at our great ports. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, the sailor of sea-going ships, nine times out of ten, when sober and not led to do otherwise by vanity or a desire to satisfy your romantic interest, will tell you that he hates the sight of blue water, that he habitually hates his ship, hates his officers, hates his mess- mates and despises himself. And as for the red man of nature, when found in a state of nature, what, in fact, is he ? Nine 288 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. times out of ten experience will say that the description which in the second volume of this work* I quoted, as best expressing my own obversation among the most natural and the most war- like, that is, the most murderous and every way detestable tribes on the continent, is no libel; — "a conceited, tiresome, bloodthirsty monotonous humbug." Civilization is, in fact, the best condition of mankind, and the steps by which mankind have arrived at civilization do not need to be retraced to find morality, respectability or happiness. The supposition of a master's occupying the position of a father toward his slaves and of the slaves accepting this relation, affectionately, faithfully and confidingly, is an improbable one. Imagine a household consisting of first a man and wife, second an ordinary family of sons and daughters, for whom the parents must have a special affection, and who must be favored and petted, as compared with — third, twenty to fifty additional sons and daughters, of ail ages, the majority being adults, however, but all subject in all their movements, not to the influence and advice merely, but absolutely and abjectly, to the will, of their parents, not being able to eat or drink, or to dress, or to engage in any business, or to pursue any inclination of taste, or to marry, except with the approval of their father, not even after marriage to be any more independent than before. There is not one man among millions whose household under such circumstances would not be a pandemoniam. The slaves are not their master's children; he is not affected in his government of them by the instinctive regard for their happiness which a parent might have. The patriarchal condition of society is, in fact, an exceedingly * Journey in Texas, p. 289. PATKIAKOIIAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 289 mde, uncomfortablo and low state of society, only endurable by indolent, wandering n,en, who are obliged for purposes of defense to remain attaebed, on any terms which may be required, to the most convenient nucleus of combined strength which ,s offered them. If a solitary wanderer on the great plains without arms or food should be overtaken by a family of wanderers, and the father should offer to supply him with food, and to furnish him with means of defense, on condition that he wculd obey his orders and attach his fortunes to those of the family, he would probably accept the proposal, and would remain in irksome dependence so long as the family were subject to the dangers of the wilderness, but as soon as the opportunity of fixed settlements and a peace- able organization of many independent families made it possible, he would form other and various associations and direct his movements according to his own judgment, for his own good, and it would doubtless be for the best good of all concerned that he should do so. The patriarchal condition is a transitional one. If long maintained it must be by an abuse of intelligence and at the expense of comfort and morality. It then ceases to be paternal and becomes oppressive; becomes degrading, both in patriarch and patriarchate. The true teaching of history is clearly ex- pressed in the following passage from Mill's Political Economy :* " The theory of dependence and protection is an idealization, Rrounded on the charlcter and conduct of here and there an uulividual. All de^pisin-^ and not in lovingly caring for th^^e who were in their est mation dp-radpd by being under the necessity of working for their benefit: f do no't affirm that what has always been always must be, * Principles of Political Economy, II., 325. 290 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. or that human improvement has no tendency to correct the intensely selfish feehngs engendered by power ; but though tlie evil may be les- sened, it cannot be eradicated until the power itself is withdrawn. This, at least, seems to me undeniable, that long before the superior classes could be suflSciently improved to govern in the tutelary manner supposed, the inferior classes would be too much improved to be governed." This, written with no reference to Slavery, is, in my experi- ence, the lesson taught at all points by Slavery, to-day, in our nation. CHAPTER yill. SLAYERY EXTENSION; SOUTHERN COMMERCE AND COTTON SUPPLY; PRESENT CONDITION AND CHARACTER OF THE CITIZENS OF THE SOUTH; THE CAUSES AND THE REM- EDY. To observe the condition and character of the citizens, was my principal object while traveling in the slave States; to con- tribute toward a study of the practical workings of the system of which their condition and character must be the truest expo- nent is the principal object of these volumes. That system, while it rests on slavery, is not simply slavery, but is slavery of the peculiar kind which exists alone in our republic, including es- pecially the various laws, habits and political and social customs which are designed to secure its inviolability and perpetuity, and by which any modification, improvement or different arrange- ment, is resisted. American slavery is not merely a system for the subjection and government, under individual masters, of a cer- tain number of slaves. It is, for instance, a system of coloniza- tion as well. Most of the citizens of the slave States appear to believe that the continuance of slavery depends upon the continual and rapid territorial dispersion of the slave-holding community. Whether they are right or not, such a movement is at present a distin- guishing and essential fact of American slavery. If an Ameri- can slave-holding community could be other than a very loosely 13* 292 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. organized community, American slavery would be, in that com- munity, a difterent thing from what it is now everywhere found to be. In Virginia itself, an essentially frontier condition of society prevails to this day. Beasts and birds of prey, forests and marshes are increasing ; bridges, schools, churches and shops diminishing in number, where slavery has existed longest. The habits of the people correspond. There are various other circumstances at present peculiar and essential to the system of American slavery, which might be changed, and yet slavery remain, but such slavery would not be the system which is now discussed, nor would its effects be the same. When speaking of the slavery of our slave States, then, I mean not slavery simply, but all those habits, customs and laws, which at present invariably accompany, and are peculiarly con- nected with the slave system as it at present exists in our own country. The slave States are vast territorially. There are, independ- ently of slavery, important circumstances acting in their differ- ent parts, hence a study of the condition of the people must be an extended and tedious one, nor can facts or phenomena in suf- ficient number to enable the reader to form an estimate for him- self, of the effects which it is right to ascribe simply to slavery and the customs, habits and laws, which at present belong to the slave system, be given otherwise than in a long and circum- stantial narrative. In previous volumes, the grand divisions of old settlement and of receilt settlement, have been separately considered. In the pre- sent volume, my experience and observations with regard to two distinct divisions have been narrated. The first, a region which, independently of slavery, is unquestionably able to yield a larger THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 293 money value for agricultural labor than any other in the world, it being the favored soil, in the favored climate, with the cheap- est natural fiieilities of transportation to a market, of that pro- duction, for which there is the most urgent commercial demand ; the second, widely different, being distant from markets, with no peculiar agricultural productions, and offering but small rewards for agricultural labor. In the latter, the mountainous region, the people are poor, and there are but few slaves. It is true that nearly all have either themselves been educated in the slave-holding districts, or are the direct descendants, and but one or two generations removed from persons so educated ; but slavery at present exercises scarcely any direct efiect upon them. Whether in consequence of this exemption or not, they differ noticeably in character, customs and habits from the people of the slave- holding districts. Their own impression that the absence or scarcity of slaves is the cause of this difference, and that this is a matter of congratulation, was expressed to me every day while I was among them, nor was any doubt of it even once intimated to me. Compared with the slaveholders, these people are more cheerful, more amiable, more sociable, and more liberal. Com- pared with tlic non-slaveholders of the slave-holding districts, they are also more hopeful, more ambitious, more intelligent, more provident, and more comfortable. Their general poverty can not be thouo-ht to result from the absence of slaves. Rather it is the small reward for labor which agriculture in the moun- tains offers, and their consequent inability to accumulate capital, wliich prevents them from possessing slaves. Such difference as is most obvious and general between them and the people of the mountain regions in the free States may be confidently attrib- 294 A JOUENEY IJT THE BACK COUNTRY uted to their distance from markets (including markets of in- telligence) and the consequent want of variety in their occu- pation. The distinguishing clement of the condition of the other region considered in this volume, is the extraordinary value which attaches to labor within it, in consequence of the peculiar favorableness of the soil and climate for the production of cotton. It is quite plain, notwithstanding all the drawbacks attending the employment of forced labor, and notwithstanding the high price of slaves, that slave labor is employed profitably by the large planters in Mississippi, and in certain other parts of the South, in the culture of cotton. That the profit, in this case, is not only large compared with the profit of slave labor employed elsewhere, and in other occupations, but that it is moderately good, at least, compared with the profit of other investments of capital and enterprise at the North and in Europe, must also be admitted. There are few enterprises to which capital lends itself more freely than to speculation in slaves, when the seeker for it is already a large cotton planter. Is slave labor, then, profitable ? To certain individuals, unquestionably. Nor do I think myself warranted in denying that the produc- tion of cotton per acre on many Mississippi plantations may not be as large as it can be economically made with land as low and slaves as high in price as is at present the case. Is not then this slave agriculture economically conducted? To the ends had in view by the planter it certainly is. I answer thus distinctly, because assertions to the same effect have been addressed to me, evidently with the supposition that THE CAUSES AND THE EEMEDY. 295 they invalidated the arg'ument on the economy of Virginia, and of other parts of my first volume. That argument was intended to lead to the conclusions that the cost of such labor as is usually performed by slaves in Virginia, is more than double, in that State, what it is in New York. That in consequence of this excessive cost of labor, the profits of agriculture are much less than they would be if free trade in the commodity of labor could be established. That it is a consequence also of this high cost of labor that enterprise and capital avoid Virginia, especially avoid agriculture in Virginia, and that, as might therefore be supposed, agriculture in Virginia is a wretchedly conducted busi- ness, and among the agricultural class, niggardness, surliness and bigoted ignorance much more prevail than among the farmers of the free States. In short, that slavery, by unnecessarily adding to the cost of making natural wealth, or the resources of the country, available, and by causing a wasteful use of natural wealth, has the effect of impoverishing and degrading Virginia. The diff"erence between A^irginia and Mississippi is mainly found in the fact that in the latter State cotton grows luxuriantly and matures perfectly. The demand for cotton is such, and the soil on which it can be grown is so limited, that wherever it can be produced with facility a given investment in land, tools and labor will be much better rewarded than a similar investment can be rewarded in any agricultural enterprise in Virginia. AVhat is true with reo-ard to Virginia, I believe to be true with regard to Mississippi, with only this difference, that in Mississippi there is one description of natural w^ealth available with so little labor (having regard to its value in the world) that even with the disadvantages of slavery, capital appears for a time to be well in- vested in developing it, hence agriculture; that is to say, cotton 296 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. culture, in Mississippi attract capital, enterprise and skill, as com culture would in Virginia if the value of corn bore the same re- lation to the cost of the labor employed in its production. The cost of labor merely, is as much increased by slavery in Mississippi as it is in Virginia; the cost of production, the barrier to wealth, is as much more than it needs to be in Mississippi as it is in Virginia. The necessary loss appears to me to be larger in Mississippi, indeed. Substitute a free trade of labor in Mississippi for the present system, and I suppose that you will have, as you would in Virginia, a fourfold value of land, a fourfold economy. I repeat : Slave labor is to-day undoubtedly profitable to certain owners of slaves in Mississippi. It was undoubtedly profitable to roll tobacco in casks one hundred miles to market, at one time, in Virginia. It would probably be profitable in Illinois to reap wheat with sickles, and thrash it v/ith flails, and market it by wagons, if there were no horse reaping machines and horse thrashing machines, and steam locomotive machines, engaged in supplying the de- mand for wheat, but there is many hundredfold the wealth in Illinois to-day that there would have been had sickles, flails and wagon trains been held to there with the same bigotry as is slavery in Mississippi ; and if it could be made certain that ten years hence the present labor system of Mississippi would be superseded by the free labor system, I have little doubt that twenty years hence the wealth of Mississippi would be at least tenfold what, under the present system, it is likely to be, and the whole country and the whole world be some degrees happier than it is now likely to be. But this is conjectural. What is the actual condition of the people of Mississippi to-day ? THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 2 9*7 In Mississippi (and in the rich lowland cotton regions gener- ally of the slave States) the social phenomena are found most satisfactory in districts wherein a fixed community has for many years been established, and the fertility of the soil not yet largely exhausted. Evidences of wealth, of education, religion and re- finement Avill never be wanting among the citizens of such a district, nor evidences of a bantling civilization and of a certain degree of rude comfort among the other part of the people. Among the citizens there may, indeed, be but few indigent or un- instructed ; possibly on several square miles not one such family will be resident. At no great distance, however, there may, I believe, invariably be found some tract of sterile or less fertile land, a large majority of the inhabitants of which are extremely poor and ignorant whites, stupidly contented, helpless and hope- less in their ignorance and poverty. I have on my desk, as I write, and I wTite only after seeing how fully the judgment to which I am compelled from my own scrutiny of the ground is confirmed by it, evidence published by many partisans of the extension of slavery enough to half fill this volimie, of which, to corroborate the sweeping assertion just made, I need give here but a single example : " I am not aware that the relative number of these two classes has ever been ascertained in any of the States, but I am satisfied that the non-slaveholdei"S far outnumber the slaveholders, perhaps by three to one.* In the more southern portion of this region [^ the south-west,' of which Mississippi is the center], the non-slaveholders possess generally but very small means, and the land which they possess is almost univer- sally poor, and so sterile that a scanty subsistence is all that can be de- rived from its cultivation, and the more fertile soil, being in the hands of the slaveholder, must ever remain out of the power of those who * It was not long since estimated in the Legislature of Kentucky as seven to one in that State. 298 A JOURNEY IX THE BACK COUNTEY. have none. * * * ^q(J j lament to say that I have observed of late years that an evident deterioration is taking place in this part of the population, the younger portion of it being less educated, less in- dustrious, and, in every point of view, less respectable than tlieir an- cestors."* And, for the present, I ask that what is said by this writer of the material condition of two thirds of the whole population of his own quarter, which, in its natural resources, is the very richest region at this moment in the known world, may be assumed to be true of the majority of the people of the South, as, I believe, no in- genuous southern gentleman will deny that it is. Is their condition the result of poverty caused merely by a poor return for labor which is yielded by such a soil ? I say that it is not, because I know that the occupants of similar soils at the North are far superior to them in nearly every quality, habit and attainment which civilized men respect and value. Is their condition the result of climate ? The conviction in my mind that it is not, has been formed from innumerable personal obser- vations and some personal experience. The recent German set- tlers in Texas and in South Carolina, the whites on steamboats and railroads and in trade, the white workmen in New Orleans, as well as thousands of exceptional, hardworking and successful laboring Southerners testify that the climate is no preventive of persevering toil by the white race in any part of the slave States. I have, in fact, seen more white native American women at work in the hottest sunshine in a single month, and that near mid- summer, in Mississippi and Alabama than in all my life in the free States, not on account of an emergency, as in harvesting, either, but in the regular cultivation of cotton and of corn, chiefly of cotton. * De Bow's Eesources of the South and West, vol. ii., p. 106. THE, CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 299 Further evdclence leading to the same conclusion, I find in the fact, that men born, nurtured and trained in the South show no lack of strength or endurance when engaged in athletic exercise which is immediately gratifying to their ambition, passions, or their tastes. The climate prohibits no sort of labor, except such as w^ould be generally productive of wealth, to the white man of the South."* How is this to be explained ? In part, at least, thus, is it not ? (I ask, and I hope the reader will not neglect to answer according as he is well persuaded.) All mankind have an intuitive respect for strength or power. Slavery is the most palpable evidence of weakness or the invol- tary subjection of strength in the slave. That is the meaning of slavery. The condition of a slave, therefore, as compared with that of a man independent of another's will, so far as that condition of him is alone concerned, is universally regarded with the absence of respect, with something of contempt or pity. Whatever is associated with the slave as having been peculiarly attached to his condition is regarded with a certain degree of similar feeling. Manual agricultural labor is the chief employment of slaves in the South. For manual agricultural labor, therefore, the free man looking on, has a contempt, and for its necessity in himself, if such necessity exists, a pity quite beyond that of the man under w^hose observation it has been free from such an association of ideas. Slaves are not wholly confined to agricultural labor, it is true, but it is equally true that in proportion as they are engaged in other * See the evidence of Mr. Darby and others, p. 586 and onward, Seaboard Slave States. See also pp. 182, 187, 279, 281. 358, 359 and 360, Texas Jour- ney. Additional testimony on this point from southern experts may be found further on. 300 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. employments are the whites who are also engaged in these em- ployments found to be generally indolent, careless, untrustworthy and unsuccessful. That such persons are conscious of the degra- dation which attaches to the employment of slaves is manifested in the fierce hostility of white mechanics to the instruction of slaves in their crafts, for this opposition is not at all relative or proportionate to the effect of such use of slaves in reducing their wages. It is not the mere competition of slaves in the market which throws white men out of it. If it were, labor contracts could be made at a lower rate in the slave than in the adjoining free States, whereas the contrary is the case * " The poor white man," Mr. De Bow tells us, " will endure the evils of pinching * Of course I do not refer to contracts for the time of laborers or work- men, which, owing to their indolence and unskillfulness, are frequently lower for whites at the South than at the North. So few southerners hesitate to admit this effect of slavery, and it has been so forcibly set forth by Jefferson and most other statesmen of the South, that it may seem supererogatory to argue its existence or importance. I observe, however, that of late not a few Democratic journalists of the North have shown a disposition to discredit it, and nearly all to make light of it. A friend of Senator Douglas, for instance, said recently in the "Mattoon G-azette:" " We are one of those that utterly discredit the idea that the presence of slaves works an injury to the whites. * * * We candidly and firmly believe to-day that if Illinois were a slave State the best men of Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and even States further South, would be here as soon as tliey could remove their families, and the prairies of Illinois would be made to smile as a lovely garden. "We have seen the best class of men come to our State, admire it with enthusiasm, but return to their homes because they could not bring their whole famihes with them." Judge Nichols, of Kentucky, whose opportunity of observation was proba- bly better than tliis gentleman's, and whose character and position entitle his views to particular respect, said, in a speech in 1837 : "The deliberate con- victions of my most matured consideration are, that the institution of slavery is a most serious injury to the habits, manners and morals of our white popu- lation; that it leads to sloth, indolence, dissipation and vice." THE CAUSES AND THE KEMEDY. 301 poverty rather than engage in servile labor;"* and the white woman would, " however humble in the scale of society, consider such services a decree of deo-radation to which she could not con- descend, and she has, therefore, no resource but to suffer the pangs of want and wretchedness." And J. H. Taylor, Esq., of Charles- ton, in defending an effort to employ whites in manufactories in South Carolina against the charge that it might tend to injure the value of slaves, says : " The poor man has a vote as well as the rich man, and in our State the number of the former will largely overbalance the laiter. So long as these poor but industrious people could see no mode of living ex- cept by a degrading operation of work with the negro upon the plan- tation, they were content to endure life in its most discouraging forms, satisfied they were above the slave, thouofh farino: often worse than he."t ... Many writers attempt, in my opinion, to attach an entirely undeserved "honor to labor." Mere plodding manual labor is not in itself honorable. Dexterity, ingenuity in the application of labor, industry and perseverance are honorable traits in all men, but labor in itself is not honorable. On the other hand, in no enlightened free community is labor in itself practically degrad- ing, because hireling labor is everywhere the stepping-stone from povert}^ and mediocrity to comfort and a position of usefulness. But in the South the step has become, if w^e are to believe Mr. De Bow, (as quoted above,) a degradation which the poorest white considers more grievous than the " pangs of want and wretchedness." It is sometimes said that this feeling of degradation only ex- ists when the free laborer works in the same gang or the same * Resources of the South, vol. i., p. 241. f De Bow's Review, January, 1850. 302 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. field witli slaves, or that at furthest it extends only to hired la- borers working under the direction of their employers, that it does not lesson the industry of men working on their own ac- count. The observation above quoted from Mr. De Bow may be intended to be so restricted. In view of notorious facts, of which many have been already cited in this work from other and equally respectable advocates of the slave social system the reader may judge how far this theory is philosophically probable. I will only say here that I have seen nothing in the South to lead me to entertain it. Not that I have seen no industrious white men at the South, I have seen many, and seen them side by side with slaves. There are incentives to industry acting counter to this influ- ence of slavery, which in certain situations can not fail to be in some degree effective, for there is probably no country in the world where nature offers a better reward for intelligent labor than in some parts of the slave States. When, indeed, this is considered, the mere popular degradation of labor arising from its association with the idea of subjection and submission to the will of a master, does not seem adequate to account for the ac- tual excessive indolence, folly and poverty of the majority of the people of the South. Nor does it, for that would be a result of slavery simply, of any slavery. x\merican slavery, as at present advocated, American slavery, as it is desired to be perpetuated, nourished, protected and extended, has an influence far more cruel, more strenuously repressive upon the mass of free citizens than slavery elsewhere ever did ; than slavery in itself at all needs to have ; than, with all possible safety, with all reasonable profitableness to the owners of slaves, it is my judgment that it needs to have. THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. OtWi I hope that those who have read what I, as an eye-witness have described, in this and the preceeding vohimes, will have acquired, if they did not otherwise possess, some understanding of the manner in which slavery, as it is now maintained in our slave States, operates very generally to put a limit, and a very short limit upon the natural motives which should impel a free man to live industriously. No theoretic explanation can be sufficient, if the facts, the abundant facts, which no intelligent traveler who has really penetrated the South has failed to ac- quire, which no sincere patriot of the South attempts to disguise, are not strongly impressed upon the nnnd of the investigator. The accidental discovery of a palliative sometimes indicates unerringly the true nature of a disease and makes its remedy simple. I think that I always felt the poverty of the whites of the South, in the midst of so much inert wealth, to be somewhat m3'sterious ; I had no such prejudice against American slavery that I felt satisfied with it as the sole cause, until I caught sight of a fragment of the annual report of the president of a South Carolina manufacturing company. This presiding manufacturer is not a Massachusetts spinner, nor a New York merchant, but a well-known and a much and worthily respected citizen of Charleston, William II. Gregg, Esq. In his report, Mr. Gregg, in a manner characteristic of his class and his educa- tion, withdraws the attention of his directors as soon as prac- ticable from the mere commercial view of their enterprise, and shows its higher interest as a social experiment. I quote : " The population of Graniteville is made up mainly from the poor of Edgefield, Barnwell and Lexington districts." Before going further, it is well that it should be known that 304 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. the " poor" of tliese districts are by no means more destitute of ed- ucational and religious privileges tlian tlie poor men, on an average, within the planting regions. By reference to the census returns I find that they are provided with public schools at the rate of one to less than thirty square miles, while within the State of South Carolina, inclusive of its several towns, there is but one public school, on an average, to every forty square miles. There are churches within these districts, one to about seventeen square miles ; throughout the State, including Charleston and its other cities, one to every twenty-five square miles. In Georgia the av- erage is one to thirty-two square miles. AVith the condition of the newer cotton States, in these respects, that of Edgefield, Barnwell and Lexington would be found to compare still more favorably for the poor. In Lexington there is even a theological seminary. Nevertheless, even in these districts, there must have^ been not a little destitution and ignorance, for Mr. Gregg goes on congratulating the stockholders on what their enterprise has accomplished : ''From extreme poverty and want, they have become a thrifty, happy, and contented people. When they were first brought to- gether, the seventy-nine out of a hundred grown girls who could nei- ther read nor write were a by- word around the country ; that re- proach has long since been removed. We have night, Sunday and week-day schools. Singing-masters, music-teachers, writing-masters, and itinerant lecturers all find patronage in Graniteville where the people can easily earn all the necessaries of life, and are in the enjoy- ment of the usual luxuries of country life." * * * " To get a steady supply of workmen, a population must be collected which will rega?'d themselves as a community, and two essential elements are necessary to the building up, moral growth and stability of such a collection of people, namely, a church and a school-house." * * * The truth of these views Mr. Gregg establishes by the failure of manufacturing enterprises at the South in which they have THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 305 been disregarded. From these failures the opinion has obtained that the poor whites were not available as laborers, and that in all industrial enterprises the capitalists would be obliged to em- ploy slave labor. Mr. Gregg combats this view energetically, and says : / can safely say that it is only necessary to make comfortable liomes in order to procure families that itnll afford laborers of the best kind. A large manufacturing establishinent located anywhere in the State, away from, a town and in a healthy situation, luiU soon collect around it a popidaiion who, however poor, with proper moral restraijits thrown around them, tvill soon develop all the elements of good society. Self- respect and attachment to the place will soon find their way into the minds of such, while intelligence, morality, and well directed industry, will not fail to acquire position." To relieve the extreme poverty and want of the South it is necessary, according to the teaching of this report, to lead those who suifer "to regard themselves as a community," for this pur- pose the nuclei of "a church and a schoolhouse" are essential, to which will be added, as the work develops, such other stimu- lants as "singing and writing schools, itinerant lecturers," etc., etc. In short, the power of obtaining, as the result of their labor, "the necessaries of life," "the usual luxuries of country life," or, in two words, which cover and include church, school, music and lecture, as well as bread, cleanliness, luxuries and necessities, " comfortable homes." Mr. Gregg has here indicated, in my opinion, not only the truest test of a prosperous people, but the essential condition of prosperity with any people. The mass of men must have in their minds the idea and the hope of a comfortable home as a starting point of respectable industry ; must have secured some degree of home comfort as a condition of continued success in their industry. 306 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. The present system of American slavery prevents the people at large from having " comfortable homes," in the sense intended by Mr. Gregg. For nine tenths of the citizens, comfortable homes, as the words would be understood by the mass of citizens of the North and of England, as well as by Mr. Gregg, are impossible, and are rendered impossible by the system of slavery. How ? I believe that all political economists agree in the opinion that either a varied industry within the limits of any given country or district must exist, or that it must enjoy a large export trade, to support a prosperous and happy people. The slave States would appear to be in the latter condition. Their export of cotton is of great value. It should make comfortable homes for their people. It does not, because their slavery system interposes to prevent the demand of commerce from having its legitimate effect upon the mass of the people. Examine almost any rural district of the South, study its his- tory, and it will be seen how it does so. Take, in the first instance, one of entirely rich soil. Suppose it to be of twenty square miles, with a population of six hundred* all told, and with an ordinarily convenient access by river navi- gation to market. The whole of the available cotton land in this case will probably be owned by three or four men, and on these men the demand of commerce will have had, let us suppose, its full effect. Their tillage land will be comparatively well culti- vated. Their houses will be comfortable, their furniture and their food luxurious. They will, moreover, not only have secured the best land on which to apply their labor, but the best brute force, the best tools, and the best machinery for ginning and pressing, all superintended by the best class of overseers. The THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 307 cotton of each will be shipped at the best season, perliaps all at once, on a boat or by trains expressly engaged at the lowest rates of freight. It will everywhere receive special attention and care, because it forms together a parcel of great value. The merchants will watch the markets closely to get the best prices for it, and wdien sold the cash returns to each proprietor will be enormously large. As the expense of raising and marketing cotton are in inverse ratio to the number of hands employed, planters nearly always immediately reinvest their surplus funds in slaves ; and as there is a sufficient number of large capitalists engaged in cotton- growing to make a strong competition for the limited number of slaves which the breeding States can supph^, it is evident that the price of a slave will always be as high as the product of his labor, under the best management, on the most valuable land, and with every economical advantage which money can procure, will warrant. But suppose that there are in the district besides these three or four large planters, their families and their slaves, a certain num- ber, say twenty white families, who do not own slaves. The fact of their being non-slaveholders is evidence that they are as yet without capital. In this case one of two tendencies must soon be developed. Either being stimulated by the high price of cotton they will grow* industrious, will accumulate capital and purchase slaves, and owning slaves will require a larger amount of land upon which to work them than they require for their own labor alone, thus being led to buy out one of the other plan- ters, or to move elsewhere themselves before they have acquired an established improvement of character from their prosperity; or, secondly, they will not purchase slaves, but either expend cur- rently for their own comfort, or hoard the results of their labor. 14 308 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. If they lionrd they will acquire no increase of comfort or ini- provement of character on account of the demand. If they fepend all their earnings, these will not be sufficient, however profitable their cotton culture may be supposed, to purchase luxuries much superior to those furnished to the slaves of the planters, because the local demand, being limited to some fifty white families, old and young, in the whole district of twenty square miles, is not enough to draw luxuries to the neighbor- hood, unless they are brought by special order, and at great ex- pense from the nearest shipping port. Nor is it possible for so small a number of whites to maintain a church or a newspaper, nor yet a school, unless it is one established by a planter, or two or three planters, and really of a private and very expensive character. Of course, this is a somewhat extreme case. As a general rule, accidents of settlement, divisions by inheritance, the resistance of moral or social to economical forces, or other irregular cir- cumstances, will modify in a m-eater or less decree what is never- theless the ruling tendency. Suppose, again, another district in which either the land is generally less productive or the market less easy of access than in the last, or that both is the case. The stimulus of the cot- ton demand is, of course, proportionately lessened. In this case, equally with the last, the richest soils, and those most conven- ient to the river or the railroad, if there happens to be much choice in this respect, will assuredly be possessed by the largest capitalists, that is, the largest slaveholders, who may nevertheless be men of but moderate wealth and limited information. If so, their standard of comfort will yet be low, and their demand will consequently take effect very slowly in increasing the means of THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 309 comfort, and rendering facilities for obtaining instruction more accessible to tlieir neighbors. But suppose, notwithstanding the disadvantages of the district in its distance from market, that their sales of cotton, the sole export of the district, are very profitable, and that the demand for cotton is constantly increas- ing, A similar condition with regard to the chief export of a free labor community would inevitably tend to foster the intelli- gence and industry of a large number of people. It has this effect with only a very limited number of the inhabitants of a plantation district consisting in large part as they must of slaves. These laborers may be driven to work harder, and may be fur- nished with better tools for the purpose of increasing the value of cotton Avhich is to be exchanged for the luxuries which the planter is learning to demand for himself, but it is for himself and for his family alone that these luxuries will be demanded. The wages — or means of demanding home comfort — of the work- men arc not at all influenced by the cotton demand, the effect, therefore, in enlarging and cheapening the local supply of the means of home comfort w^ill be almost inappreciable, while the impulse generated in the planter's mind is almost wholly directed toward increasing the cotton crop through the labor of his slaves alone. His demand upon the Avhites of the district is not mate- rially enlarged in any way. The slave population of the district will be increased in number, and its labor more energetically directed, and soon the planters will find the soil they possess growing less productive from their increasing drafts upon it. There is plenty of rich unoccupied land to be had for a dollar an acre a few hundred miles to the West, still it is no trifling matter to move all the stock, human, equine and bovine, and all the imple- ments and machinery of a large plantation. Hence, at the same time, 810 A JOUENEY IN THE BACIv COUNTRY. perliaps, with an importation from Virginia of purchased slaves, there will be an active demand among the slaveholders for all the remaining land in the district on which cotton can be profitably grown. Then sooner or later, and with a rapidity proportionate to the effect of the cotton demand, the white population of the district divides, one part, consisting of a few slaveholders, obtains possession of all the valuable cotton laud, and monopolizes for a few white families all the advantages of the cotton demand. A second part removes with its slaves, if it possess any, from the district, while a third continues to occupy the sand hills, or sometimes perhaps takes possession of the exhausted land which has been vacated by the large planters, because they, with all their superior skill and advantages of capital, could not cultivate it longer with profit. This class, still ignorant of all luxury, having no higher aim than to procure the bare means of subsistence, is doomed to remain in a condition thus described in De Bow's Review by a writer " whose name," says the editor, " has long been illustrious for the services he has rendered the South :" "All of you must be aware of the condition of the class of people I allude to. What progress have they made in the last hundred years, and what is to be their future condition, unless some mode of employ- ment be devised to improve it ? A noble race of people ! reduced to a condition but little above the wild Indian of the forest, or the Euro- pean gipsy, without education, and, in many instances, unable to pro- cure the food necessary to develop the natural man. They seem to be the only class of people in our State who are not disposed to emigrate to other countries, while our wealthy and intelligent citizens are leav- ing us by scores, taking with them the treasures which have been ac- cumulated by mercantile thrift, as well as by the growth of cotton and the consequent exhaustion of the soil."* * Yol. xviii., p. "790. THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 311 The population of the district, then, will consist of the largo land owners and slave owners, who are now so few in number as to be unnoticeable either as producers or consumers; of their slaves, who are producers but not consumers (to any important extent), and of this forlorn hope of poor whites, who are, in the eyes of the commercial w^orld, neither producers nor con- sumers.* To set forth their condition more clearly than I have done in the quotations from southern writers already given in this chapter, is possible only by obtaining the actual statistics of population and trade of a district the soil of which is in great part naturally un- productive, or which has become so through the process I have described. This is difficult, owiiig not only to the neglect of all the slave States to obtain statistics of the character now gener- ally required by the legislatures of the free States as a basis of legislative judgment, but owing to the difficulty of finding a region in which the elements of fertility correspond at all closely with the political divisions under which all extant statistics nre classified. It would perhaps be desired that I chose for this purpose the counties referred to by Mr. Gregg, but the meagre returns of the Xational Census appear to be peculiarly untrust- worthy with regard to South Carolina, and I prefer to take cor- * Mr. J*Iills' remarks on the condition of India apply, vvitli very sliglit changes, to portions of the slave States: "The implements and processes of agriculture are, however, so wretched that the produce of tlie soil, in s\)lte of its great natural fertility, and a climate highly favorable to vegetation, is miserably small ; and the land might be made to yield food in abundance for many more than the present number of inhabitants, without departing from the system of small holdings. But to this the stimulus is wanting, which a large town population would afford. That town population again does not grow up because the feto ivants and unaspiring spirit of the cultivators pre- vent them from attempting to become consumers of town produced 312 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. responding counties in Georgia, chiefly because there is a volume of statistics compiled in this State, a special section of which is devoted to the condition of trade in each of its counties, while a comparison is also attempted to be given, from the personal ob- servation of the compiler, of the comparative social, moral and religious properties of their people. Thus, so far as the plan has been thoroughly executed, an estimate is presented, not only of the ordinary commercial demand of the citizens, but, so to speak, of the state of their intellectual and moral market. I refer to " White's Statistics of Georgia," a largo octavo volume of Too pages. The compiler's standard of manners and morals is a local one, and the northern reader must not understand his language in all cases as he would if it were used by a northern writer, but taken relatively to one another, the terms by which the pe*^' le in the different counties are characterized afford signilieant indications of their condition. The counties referred to by Mr. Gregg are in the second tier from the sea in South Carolina. I shall give statistics from Mr. White, and other authorities named in the note*, with regai'd to all the second tier counties of Georgia. What of good soil to be brought into cultivation, without a heavy expenditure at start- ing, there w^as originally in these counties begun to be first oc- * The population, following Mr. White, is given in round numbers, from the State census of 1845 ; average personal estate, per family of citizens, reck- oned from an ofBcial return, published in the "Soil of the South" (Columbus, Georgia, 1852, p. 210), the amount given for each county being divided by one fifth the number of its population (for families). Observations on edu- cation and the character of the people, from White's Statistics of Georgia (generally in quotations). School, library and church statistics, in figures, from official United States Census, 1850. THE CAUSES AND THE KEJrEDY. 313 cnpied by whites about 1740. It was not till nearly twenty years after this that slavery obtained the slightest footing in them, and it was not till ab.nit thirty years ago that they had begun to seriously deteriorate in production. There is yet some rich land upon the alluvial bottoms of the numerous rivers, wliich, rising above, pass through these counties toward the ocean ; and here many wealthy planters still remain, owning a large number of slaves, and there has been recently a considerable increase of production of some parts owing to the employment of capital in draining marshes, the riches of wdiicli have previously been con- sidered impregnable.^' In general, however, this wdiolc range of country is now quite barren, and most of the land at present cul- tivated will not probably yield one third as large a crop for the same expenditure of labor as would fair Mississippi cotton land. The slaves formerly owned here have therefore been very largely transferred westward, and the land they have worn out is left for the non-slaveholding whites to make the best of. As an instructive contrast, I place in an adjoining column with the statistics of these counties those of the counties which bound each of them on the east. In these there is a much larger pro- portion of rich alluvial soil, and they contain the famous "sea island" cotton plantations, as well as the Georgian rice planta- tions. The valuable soil is still entirely possessed, as will be evi- * The presence of these few planters, with their valuable human property, makes the average nominal wealth of each white famil^y, at first sight, appear large. If, however, the slaves had been appraised at only $500 each, wliicli would be low, they would alone amount in value in some counties to the sum assigned for the whole personal property of the citizenr. This item is not, therefore, trustworthy, but, in comparing the coast and second tier counties, it serves to show the great difference in the average wealth of the citizens of each. A similar division of personal estate, as officially returned for the city of New York, would give $4,660 to eacli family. 314 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. dent, by large planters and slave owners, the usual monopolizing effect of slavery being in this instance increased by the peculiar local insalubrity of the coast. SECOND TIER COUNTIES. Bulloch County. (The Central Railroad, the best conducted road in all the South, passes either through this county or close be- side its northern boundary, for a distance of fifty miles. It is watered by the Ogeechee and Conuauchee and a number of smaller rivers. On the larger rivers there is yet a considerable amount of productive land.) Population. Whites, 2,000 ; slaves, 1,000. Average amount of property to each white family, $1,570. State tax for each white family, $2 95. Mr. White omits his usual sta- tistics of trade. Both in this and the adjoining coast county of Bryan, the poor people, as well as the planters, are in the habit of dealing directly with Savannah, as described in Seaboard Slave States, p. 414, and there are prob- ably no estabhshed tradesmen in either. The soil is described by Mr. White as generally poor, with some productive "hummock" and river tracts. Education. " No newspapers are taken, and few books read. The school fund was once suffi- cient to educate many poor chil- dren, but owing to bad manage- ment it has become exhausted." COAST COUNTIES. Bryan County, adjoining Bul- lock county, on the coast. Population. Whites, 1,000 ; slaves, 2,400. Average amount of property to each white family, $5,302, (fourfold what it is in Bul- lock county.) State tax to each white family, $7. No statistics of trade, again. Soil. " The soil, under the present system of culture, can not, without rest and manure, be made to produce more than one half as much as when new." This appears to refer particularly to the rice plantations. Education. There is no acad- emy, and there are no schools, ex- cept those supported by the " Poor School Fund," (a State provision for the children of indigent par- ents.) " The children of the THE CAUSES AND THE REISIEDY. 315 SECOND TIER COUNTIES. COAST COUNTIES. Thus says Mr. White. The census returns show, however, a pubhc school expenditure of $150 per annum, and a private expenditure of $3,000, divided among fifteen schools, which is one for eighty square miles. This is so much better than usual, that, with Mr. "White's remarks, I am inclined to think it an error. Character of the people. " By industry and economy, they man- age to supply their wants, which, however, are few. Many rely a great deal on game. * * * As far as temperance is concerned, they are behind the times. Whis- key has its votaries. Those who have attempted to show the citi- zens the folly and ill consequences of intemperance have been in- sulted and threatened. Even min- isters of our holy religion have publicly denounced the motives and efforts of those who have at- tempted to form temperancce so- cieties." Religion. '' The most numerous [sects] are the Anti-Missionary [hard shell?] Baptists." Ten church edifices; average value, $145. No Sunday school or other pubUc libra- ries. 14* wealthy are either educated by private teachers or sent to school in the more favored portions of the country ; [the vicinity of Savannah, where there is a cele- brated and well endowed acad- emy, and of Liberty, where there are others, accounts for this ;] the population is too sparse to furnish pupils enough to sustain a regular school," (large tracts of land being held by the planters, though wholly unproductive, to prevent the settlement of poor whites near their negroes, as one in this county informed me.) According to the census returns, there were eight schools (one to twenty-five square miles) of ah kinds, with an average of twelve pupils each. Total expenditure for each school, $38 per annum. Character of the people. No remarks. Religion. The county contains eleven church edifices ; avei'age value, $500. No Sunday school or other public libraries. 316 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. SECOND TIER COUNTIES. COAST COUNTIES. TatnaJl County. Population. Whites, 2^000 ; slaves, 600. Average amount of property to each white family, $901. Capital invested in trade, $4,200. Soil. " Light and sandy, except on the streams, which is stiff." Education. " Education is neg- lected." Eight public schools, (1 to 148 square miles,) with six- teen pupils each. Annual cost of maintenance of each school, $150. No other schools ; no iSunday school or other libraries. Qharacler of the people. " So- ber, industrious and hospitable," (phrases applied to every county not specially noted as conspicuous for some vice or virtue of its in- habitants.) Religion. Sixteen church edi- fices, valued at $938 each. Ac- cording to Mr. White, however, Liberty Comity. Population. Whites, 2,000 ; slaves, 6,000. Average amount of property to each white family, $6,330. State tax to each white family, $10. Capital invested in trade, $3,850. Soil. " The practice has been to wear out the virgin soils, and clear new lands. ^ * * Much waste land." Education. '^ Excellent schools are found. * * * And it is beheved that a greater number of young men from Liberty county graduate from our colleges than from any other section of G-eorgia." There are five " academies," with an average of nineteen pupils each. Five public schools, (1 to 160 square miles,) maintained at an average expenditure of $15.40 per annum each. Ko libraries found in the census canvass of 1849. Mr. White states that the Med way and Newport Library Society had, in 1845, "about seven hundred volumes, in a very bad state of preservation." This library was established by some New England immigrants before the prohibition of slavery was annulled in the province. The early settlers of the county were chiefly from Massachusetts. Character of the people. " Gen- erally upright and virtuous, and they are unsin-passed for the great attention paid to the duties of re- ligion." Religion. Ten church edifices j average value, $1,200. THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 317 SECOND TIER COUNTIES. COAST COUNTIES. there are '" about thirty churches" in the county. Wayne County. PopidaUoii. Whites, 930 ; slaves, 350. Average amount of property for each white family, $898. State tax, $1 23. Capital invested in trade, $4,200. Soil. ^' G-enerally poor, barren pine land ; when manured, will produce about twenty bushels of corn per acre." Education. ^ ^' Few schools ;" two academies, (one Baptist, and the other Methodist, probably,) with thirteen pupils between them. Four public schools, (1 to 148 square miles,) averaging ten pupils each ; expense of main- tenance not returned. Character of the people. " High for morality and hospitality ;" '^ poor, but honest" xit the seat of justice " are many beautiful pine hills, affording delightful summer residences to the wealthy planters of Glynn." (hence the academical advantages.) Religion. Eight church edi- fices; average value, $240, Ware County. (About one fifth of this county is occupied by the Okefenokee Swamp.) Population. Whites, 2,000 ; slaves, 300. Average amount of personal property for each white family, $480. Mcintosh County, broadest on the sea. Population. Whites, 1,300 ; slaves, 4,400. Average aniount of property for each white family, $7,287, or eight times as much as in Wayne. State tax, $2 77. Capital invested in trnde, $1,200. Soil. Poor turpentine pine land in the rear ; on the Alta- maha, "of inexhaustible fer- tility." Education. One academy, with thirty-eight scholars ; four public schools, twelve and a half miles apart, averaging twenty pupils each. Expense of maintaining each school, $78 per annum. " The wealthier classes are highly edu- cated ; but, generally, little inter- est is felt in the subject of educa- tion." Character of the people. " Like all parts of lower Georgia, the citizens of Mcintosh are generally intelligent and hospitable." Religion. Twelve church edi- fices; average value, $1,041. Camden County. Much the largest part of this county, which is L shaped, with but one arm on the sea, is inland, and unfertile. Population. Whites, 3,000 ; slaves, 4,000. Average amount of personal pr(){)erty for each white family, $4,428. 318 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. SECOND TIER COUNTIES. State tax, $4 05. Stock in trade, $2,200. Soil; "light and tolerably pro- ductive." Education. '■'• Very little inter- est is taken in the subject of edu- tion." No academies ; six public schools, (1 to 485 square miles,) sixteen pupils each. Wages of teachers, etc., yearly, $41 each school. No Sunday school or other libraries. Character of tlie people. " The citizens are said to be hardy, in- dustrious and honest." " Much good might be done by .the organization of temperances so- cieties." Religion. Fifteen church edi- fices, fourteen miles apart, each accommodating one hundred sit- ters, and valued at $56 each. COAST COUNTIES, State tax, $13. "Amount of business done at St. Mary's is about $30,000 per annum," nearly all in lumber, and done by New Englanders. No other trade statistics. Soil ; "of celebrated fertility." Education. No remarks on ed- ucation or character by Mr. White. Four public schools^ (1 to 280 square miles,) with seventeen pu- pils each, maintained at an average expenditure of $290 per annum. Two academies, with forty-five pupils. Five Sunday school libra- ries, with one hundred and ten volumes each. Oharacter of ilw people. No remarks. Religion. Ten churches, (five of which are in the town of St. Mary's, a beautiful and healthy village, resorted to by consump- tives ;) average value, $850. I have purposely omitted Effingham county in the above arrange- ment, because the adjoining coast county of Chatham contains the city of Savannah, an aggregate agency of northern and foreign merchants, through which is effected the commercial exchanges of a great extent of back country, the population of which can therefore afford no indi- cation as to the point under consideration. Effingham, the county above Cliathara, and one of the second tier, is worthy of notice, from some other important exceptional features of its constitution. Owing to the amount of rich soil in the county, along the Savannah river, there is a larger proportion of slaves to the whole population than is usual in the second tier, their number being sixteen hundred against only eighteen hundred whites ; the non-slaveholders, however, appear to possess unusual privileges. There is an academy, with fifty pupils, which Mr. White describes as " a fine school." The public schools, eight in number, are less than eight miles apart, with an average at- tendance of sixteen pupils. Each school costs one hundred and twelve THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 319 dollars a yeai\ There are twenty-one churches, less than five miles apart, and valued at over twelve hundred dollars apiece. Mr. White says that honesty and industry are leading characteristics of the peo- ple, who. notwithstanding the poverty of the soil, are generally in com- fortable circumstances. The reason of this is partially the close vicinity of Savannah, afford- ing a cash market for a variety of productions and household manu- tures, among which, as distinguishing the county from any other in the State, are mentioned fruits, silk, fishing lines and cow-bells, " the latter," Mr. White is told, "superior to any manufactured in the North or in Europe." But an equally important reason for the better char- acter and condition of the people is to be found in the fact that a ma- jority of them* are descendants and heirs of the land of those very early settlers who most strenuously and to the last resisted the intro- duction of slaves into the colony, being convinced that, if permitted, it Avould, as they said in their memorials, "prove a scourge" to the poor people who were persuaded to petition for it.t It is most gratifying to perceive that all traces of the habits of industry, honesty and manly self-reliance, in wliich they thus educated their children, are not wholly lost in the lapse of a century. To recapitulate the more exact of these statistics : A large majority of the whole white population resides within the barren counties, of which the slave population is less than one fourteeuth that of the aggregate slave population of the whole. The personal estate of the vjhites of these upper counties is, on an a\erage, less than one sixth that of the others. As the wealthy are independent of public schools, the means of education are scarcely more available for those who are not rich' in one than the other, the school houses being, on an average, ten and a half miles apart in the less populous, thirteen and three quarters miles apart in the more populous. It is widely otherwise as to churches. In the planting counties, there is a house of worship for every twenty-nine white families ; in the poor white counties, one for everv one hundred and sixty- * White's Statistics, p. 224. f Hewitt, — ; Seaboard Slave States, p. 528. 320 A JOURNEY IN TPIE BACK COUNTEY. two white families. Notwitlistanding the fact, that to accommo- date all, the latter should be six times as large, their avcrao-e value is less than one tenth that of the others; the one being eight hundred and ninety-eight dollars, the other eighty-nine dollars. So wholly do the planters, in whose hands is the wealth, depend on their factors for direct supplies from without, the capital invested in trade, in the coast counties, is but thirty- seven and a half cents to each inhabitant, and in the upper coun- ties it is but one dollar and fifty cents. From the remarks on temperance, it would seem that the most of this capital must be held in the form of whiskey. One " store" in Libej'ty county, which I myself entered, contained, so far as I could see, nothing but casks, demijohns, decanters, a bag of coffee, a ( ase of tobacco, and some powder and lead, and I believe that nine tenths of the stock in trade rcfei-red to in these statistics is of this character. It was mentioned to me by a gentleman who had examined this district with a commercial purpose, that, off' the plantations, there was no money in the country — almost literally, no money. The dealings even of the merchants or tradesmen seemed to be en- tirely by barter. He believed there were many full grown men who had never seen so much as a dollar in money in their lives. What inducement has capital in railroads or shops or books or tools to move into districts like this, or wdiich are to become dike this ? Why, rather, I shall be asked, does it not withdraw more completely? Why do not all, who are able, remove from a region so desolate ? Why was not its impoverishment more complete, more simultaneous ? How is it that any slaveholders yet remain ? Mr. Ptuffin, president of the Virginia State Agricultural Society, Address before the South Carohna Institute. THE CAUSES AND THE KEMEDY. 321 '' The causes are not all in action at once, and in equal progress. The labors of exhausting culture, also, are necessarily suspended as each of the cultivators' fields is successively worn out. And when tillage so ceases, and any space is thus left at rest, nature immediately goes to work to recruit and replace as much as possible of the wasted fertility, until another destroyer, after many years, shall return, again to waste, and in much shorter time than before, the smaller stock of fertility so renewed. Thus the whole territory, so scourged, is not de- stroyed at one operation. But though these changes and partial re- coveries are continually, to some extent, counteracting the labors for destruction, still the latter work is in general progress. It may re(|uire, (as it did in my native region,) more than two hundred 3'ears, from the first settlement, to reach the lowest degradation. But that final result is not the less certainly to be produced by the continued action of the causes." As to the extent to which the process is carried, Mr. Gregg says :* " I think it would be within bounds to assume that the planting capi- tal withdrawn Avithin that period [the last twenty-five years] would, judiciously applied, have drained every acre of swamp land in South Carolina, besides resuscitating the old, worn out land, and doubling the crops — thus more than quadrupling the productive power of the agriculture of the State." It would be consoling to hope that this planters' capital in the new region to which it is driven were used to better results. Does the average condition of the people of Mississippi and Texas justify such a hope ? When we consider the form in which this capital exists, and the change in the mode of its investment which is accomplished when it is transferred from South Carolinn, we perceive why it does not. If wc are told that the value of one hundred thousand dollars has been recently transferred from Massachusetts to a certain young township of Illinois, we reasonably infer that the people of this township will be considerably benefited thereby. We * Fifth Annual Report to Directors of Graniteville Company. 322 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. think wliat ail excellent saw mill and grist mill, what an assort- ment of wares, what a good inn, what a good school, what fine breeding stock, what excellent seeds and fruit trees, what superior machinery and implements, they will be able to obtain there now, and we know that some of these or other sources of profit, con- venience and comfort to a neighborhood, are almost certain to exist in all capital so transferred. In the capital transferred from South Carolina, there is no such virtue-none of consequence. In a hundred thousand dollars of it there will not be found a single mill, nor a wagon load of " store goods;" it will hardly in- troduce to the neighborhood whither it goes a single improve- ment, convenience or comfort. At least ninety thousand dollars of it will consist in slaves, and if their owners go with them it is hard to see in what respect their real home comfort is greater. We must admit, it is true, that they are generally better satis- fied, else this transfer would not be so unremitting as it is. The motive is the same at the North as at the South, the prospect of a better interest from the capital, and if this did not exist it would not be transferred. Let us suppose that, at starting, the ends of ' the capitalist are obtained equally in both cases, that a sale of produce is made, bringing in cash twenty thousand dollars; sup- pose that five thousand dollars of this is used in each case for the home comfort of the owners, and that as much immediate com- fort is attainable with it in the one case as in the other. What, then, is done with the fifteen thousand dollars? At the South' it goes to pay for a further transfer of slaves purchased in the East, a trifle also for new tools. At the North, nearly all of it will go to improvement of machinery of some kind, machinery of transfer or trade, if not of manufacture, to the improvement THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 323 of the productive value of whatever the original capital had been invested in, much of it to the remuneration of talent; which is thus enabled to be employed for the benefit of many people other than these capitalists — for the home comfort of many peo- ple. If five thousand dollars purchased no more comfort in the one case than the other, at starting, in a few years it will purchase double as much. For the fifteen thousand dollars which has gone East in the one case to pay for more labor, will, in the other, have procured good roads and cheap transportation of comforts, or shops and machinery, and thus the cheap manufacture of com- forts on the spot "where they are demanded. But they who sell the reinforcement of slaves, and to whom comes the fifteen thou- sand dollars, do they have no increase of home comfort ? Taking into consideration the gradual destruction of all the elements of home comfort which the rearing and holding of those slaves has occasioned in the district from which they are sold, it may be doubtful if, in the end, they do. AVhither, then, does this capital go ? The money comes to the country from those who buy cot- ton, and somebody 'must have a benefit of it. Who? Every one at the South says, when you ;isk this, it is the northern merchant, who, in the end, gets it into his own hands, and it is only him and his whom it benefits. Mr. Gregg apparently believes this. He says, after the sentence last quoted from him, describing the transfer of capital to the West from South Carolina : " But this is not all. Let us look for a moment at the course of tilings among our mercantile classes. We shall not have to go much further back than twenty-five years to count up twenty-five millions of capital accumulated in Cliarleston, and which has left us with its entciprising owners, who have principally located in northern cities. This sum would build factories enough to spin and weave every pound of cotton made in the State, besides making railroads to intersect every portion of the up-country, giving business facilities to the re- motest points." 324 A JOUKXEY IX THE BACK COUNTRY. How comes this capita], the return made by the world for the cotton of the South, to be so largely in the hands of northern men? The true answer is, that what these get is simply their fair commercial remuneration for the trouble of transporting cotlon, transporting money, transporting the total amount of home com- fort, little as it is, which the South gets for its cotton, from one part of the country to the other, (chieliy cotton to the coast, and goods returned instead of money from the coast to the planta- tions.) Is this service over paid ? If so, why do not the plan- ters transfer capital and energy to it from the plantations ? It is not so. Dispersed and costly labor makes the cost of trade or transfer enormous, (as it does the cost of cotton producing.) It is only when this wealth is transferrred to the free States or to Europe that it gives great results to human comfort. The South, as a whole, has at present no advantage from cotton, even planters but little. The chief result of the demand for it, as far as they are concerned, is to give a fictitious value to slaves. Throughout the Southwest I found men, who either told me themselves or of whom it was said by others, that they settled where I found them, ten or fifteen years ago, with scarcely any property beyond half a dozen negroes, who were then indeed heavily in debt, but who were now quite rich men, having from twenty to fifty negroes. Nor is this at all surprising, when it is considered that cotton costs nothing but labor, the value of the land, however rich, being too inconsiderable to be taken into ac- count, and that the price of cotton lias doubled in ten years. But in what else beside negroes were these rich men belter off" than when they called themselves poor? Their real comfort, unless in the sense of security against extreme want, or immunity from THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 325 the necessity of personal labor to sustain life, could scarcely liave been increased in the least. There was, at any rate, the same bacon and corn, the same slough of a wagon channel througli the forest, the same bare walls in their dwellings, the same ab- sence of taste and art and literature, the same distance from schools and churches and educated advisers, and — on account of the distance of tolerable mechanics, and the difficulty of moving without destruction, through such a rough country, anything elaborate or finely finished — the same make-shift furniture. There were, to be sure, plows and hoes, and gins and presses, and there were scores of very "likely negroes." Whoever sold such of these neoToes as had been bouo-ht must have been the richer, it will be said. But let us see : A large proportion of the negroes were probably bought by traders at forced sales in the older States, sales forced by mer- chants who had supplied the previous owners of the negroes, and who had given them credit, not on account of the productive value of their property as then situated, but in view of its cash value for sale, that is, of the value which it would realize when applied to cotton on the new soils of the Southwest, The planters of the Southwest are then, in fact, supplying the deficit of eastern production, taking their pay almost entirely in negroes. The free West fills the deficit of the free eastern cereal production, but takes its pay in the manufactured goods, the fish, the oil, the butter and the importations of the free East. Virginia planters owning twejity to forty slaves, and nominally worth as many thousand dollai'S, often seem to live generously, but, according to northern standards, I do not think that they possess at all equal comforts and advantages for a rationally 326 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. liappy life, Avith the average of northern farmers of half that wealth. If they do, they are either supplying slaves for the new cotton fields or living on credit — credit based on an anticipation of supplying that market. Of course, it can not be maintained that no one, while living at the South, is actually richer from the eflfects of the cotton de- mand. There are a great many very wealthy men at the South, and of planters, as well as land dealers, negro dealers and gen- eral merchants, but, except in or near those towns which are, practically, colonies of free labor, having constant direct com- munication and intimate relationship with free countries, the wealth of these more fortunate people secures to them but a small proportion of the advantages which belong to the same nominal wealth anywhere in the free States, while their number is so small that they must be held of no account at all in esti- mating the condition of the people, when it is compared wnth the number of those who are exceedingly destitute, and at whose ex- pense, quite as much as at the expense of their slaves, the wealth of the richer class has been accumulated. This can not be rightly deemed extravagant or unjust lan- guage. I should not use it if I did not feel satisfied that it was warranted, not only by my own personal observations, but by the testimony of persons whose regard for the pride of the South, whose sympathy with wealthy planters, and whose disposition not to underrate the good results of slavery, if not more sincere than mine, is more certain not to be doubted. I quote, for in- stance, a single passage from the. observations of Mr. Russell, an English gentleman, who, traveling with a special view of study- ing the agricultural condition and prospects of the country, was, nevertheless, so much limited in time that he was obliged to THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDY. 327 trust, in a great degree, to the observations of planters for his facts. " In traveling through a fertile district in any of the southern States, the appearance of things forms a great contrast to that in similar dis- tricts in the free States. During two days' sail on the Alabama river from Mobile to Montgomery, I did not see so many houses standing together in any one spot as could be dignified with the appellation of village :* but I may possibly have passed* some at night. There were manj^ j^iaces where cotton was shipped and provisions were landed, still there were no signs of enterprise to indicate that we were in tlie heart of a rich cotton region. * * * 'fhe planters supply them- selves directly through agents in the large towns, and comparatively little of the money drawn for the cotton crop is spent in the southern States. Many of the planters spend their incomes by traveling with their families in the northern States or in Europe during the summer, and a large sum is required to pay the hog-raiser in Ohio, the mule- breeder in Kentucky, and, above all, the northern capitalists who have vast sums of money on mortgage over the estates. Dr. Cloud, the edi- tor of the Cotton Plant, [Alabama,] assured me that after all these items are paid out of the money received for the whole cotton crop and sugar crops of the South, there did not remain one fourth part of it to be spent in the southern States. Hence, the slave States soon attain a comparatively stationary condition, and, further, the progress they make is in proportion to the increase of freemen, whose labor is rendered comparatively unproductive, seeing that the most fertile land is occupied by slaveholders."! I questioned the agent of a large land speculation in Mississippi with regard to the success of small farmers. In reply he made the following statement, allowing me to take notes of it. I quote from these in order to show that what is true of the Atlantic shore and of the banks of the Alabama is also true of more western and interior districts. * Mr. Kussell uses the language of England. There are several collections of houses on this river bank, the inhabitants of which would consider it an insult if they should hear such an humble term as "village" applied to their pseudo towns and cities. f North America; Its Agriculture and Climate, p. 290. 328 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. " The majority of our purchasers have been men without capital To such we usually sell one hundred and sixty acres of land, at from two to three dollars an acre, the agreement being to pay in one, two and three years, with six per cent, interest. It is very rare that the payments are made when due, and much the largest proportion of this class fail even to pay their interest punctually. Many fail altogether, and quit their farms in about ten years. When crops are generally good, and planters, in the same neighborhood make seven bales to a hand, poor people will not make over two bales, with their whole famil}'. There is , in — county, for instance. We sold him one hundred and sixty acres of land in 1843. He has a family ©f good sized boys — young men now. For ten years he was never able to pay his interest. He sold from two to four bales a year, but he did not get much for it, and after taking out the cost of bagging and rope, and ginning and pressing, he scarcely ever had two hundred dollars a year coming to him, of which he had to pay his store bills, chiefly for coffee and molasses, sometimes a httle clothing — some years none at all. They made then- own cloth mostly in the house, but bought sheeting some- times. He has made one payment on the principal, from a sale of hogs. Almost the only poor people who have kept up to their agreement have been some near , since the cotton factory was started there. It is wonderful what a difference that has made, though it's but a pica- yune affair. People who have no negroes in this country generally raise corn enough to bread them througli the year, and have hogs enough ranging in the swamps to supply them with bacon. They do not often buy anything except coffee and molasses and tobacco. They are not generally drunkards, but the men will spend all the money they may have, and get gloriously drunk once or twice a year, at elections or at court time, when they go to the county town. I think that two bales of cotton a year is as much as is generally made by people who do not own negroes. They are doing well if they net over fifty dollars a year from their labor, besides supplying themselves with corn. A real smart man, who tends his crop well, and who knows how it ought to be managed, can make five bales, almost always. Five bales are worth two hundred and fifty dollars, but it's very rare that a white man makes that. They have not got the right kind of tools, and they don't know how. Their crops are never half tended. If folks geneially tended their crops as some do, there would be more than twice as much cotton raised as there is." With regard to the enlargement of estates by successful plan- ters, liaving stated what were my impressions, the same sjentle- man replied that I was entirely I'ight, and gave an instance, as fol- lows, from his personal knowledge : THE CAUSES AXD THE REMEDY. 329 " J. B. moved into county within my recollection. He has boug-ht out, one after another, and mainly since 1850, more than twenty small land owners, some of them small slaveholders, and they have moved away from the vicinity. I do not know how many ne- groes he has now, but several hundred, certainly. His surplus must have averag-ed twenty thousand dollars a year for several years, and, as fiir as I know, the whole is expended in purchasing negroes or land. He spends no money for anything else in the county, I am sure. It is a common thing to hear a man say, 'J. B. has bought up next to me, and I shall have to quit soon.' He never gets the land alongside of a man that ^vithin two years he does not buy him out. In the last ten years I know of but one exception, and that is a man who has shot two of B.'s niggers who were stealing his corn. This man swears he wont sell at any price, and that he will shoot any of J. B.'s niggers whom he catches coming on his place. B.'s niggers are afraid of him, aiid let him alone. J. B. will pay more for land than its worth to anybody else, and his negroes are such thieves that nobody can live in comfort on any place adjoining one of his. There are two other men in the county who are constantly buying up the land around there. The white population of the county is diminishing, and the trade of the place [the county town] is not as good as it was ten years ago." I am not nt liberty to give the name of the above quoted ob- server. I will state, however, that he was a southerner born, and if his narration needs authentication with any reader, I refer to the Hon. C. C. Clay, whose observations, (given at p. 57G, Seaboard Slave States,) will be found to confirm it in all essential particulars, especially in those describing the absorption of small landed properties in large slave estates. The following description of the social construction of the western cotton districts I find among tlie selected matter of a country newspaper. The antlior is unknown to me, but it is ap- parent from the context that he writes from personal observation. I quote it, not so much for the additional testimony it offers as for the clearer statement it affords of the tendency I have asserted to exist throughout the rich cotton districts. " The cotton-growing portion of the valley of the Mississippi, the very garden of the Union, is year by year being wrested from the hands of 330 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY the small farmer and delivered over to the great capitalists. The white yeoman, the class which has contributed more of the blood and devo- tion, and good sense and enterprise which have made this country what it is than any other, are either forced into the sandy pine-hills or are driven West to clear and prepare the soil for the army of negroes and negro-drivers which forever presses on their heels, to make their in- dustry unprofitable, and their life intolerable. " All the great cotton lands Avere first opened up by industrious set- tlers, with small means and much energy. No sooner is their clearing made, and their homestead growing into comfort, than the great plan- ter co|nes up from the East, with his black horde, settles down on the district, and absorbs and overruns everything. This is precisely the process which is going on, day by day, over the greater portion of Louisiana and Mississippi. The small farmers, that is to say, the mass of the white population, are fast disappearing. The rich bottom lands of that glorious valley are being concentrated in the hands of large planters, with from one hundred to one thousand negroes. The average number of negroes and average quantity of land belonging to single proprietors is yearly increasing. The wealthier the proprietor himself, the less does he reside on his property, and the more disposed is he to commit it to the care of overseers. In some counties in Mississippi the negroes are twenty times more numerous than the citizens. Whole districts are solely peopled by black ' merchandise,' and some half dozen white drovers. The real ' people' are thus not only deprived of the patrimony which our abolition of the laws of entail and primogeniture was specially intended to secure them ; are not only driven off the fair- est portions of the soil, like the Scotch Highlanders and the Irish peas- antry, but literature and rehgion are fast disappearing in that portion of this continent on which Providence seems to have intended them to flourish most." THE DIFFICULTY OF POPULAR EDUCATION. The last sentence, it will be observed, only confirms the opin- ion quoted from the Superintendent of the Census, at p. 298, an opinion which I have not ventured to express as my own. In the Seaboard Slave States, I declared the impracticability of Mr. Wise's redeeming certain promises he was, when that book was written, freely making to the people of Virginia with re- gard to the education of the poor whites, unless he was prepared to adopt the emancipation system of Mr. Jefferson with regard to the blacks. I quoted, in evidence of this impracticability, from THE DIFFICULTY OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 331 the county reports printed in the General Report of the year to the Governor with regard to the working of the then existino- educational system of the State. Mr. Wise was elected on those promises. He has occupied the gubernatorial chair four years, and I now take from the report made to Governor Wise himself, November, 1859, extracts of the same kind then given, for several of the considerable slaveholding counties. They are from the re- marks of the local commissioners or the superintendents having charge of the expenditure for the education of the indigent. Comparatively few make any report at all, especially in the slave- holding counties — not nearly as many as in 1852. I copy all reports with regard to the large slave counties in full, and some instructive notes from counties containing but few slaves. These are chiefly in the mountain region, and show the influence of the advantages possessed everywhere by the mountain people, as de- scribed in the beginning of this chapter, over those living imme- diately adjoining plantations, yet the eflfect upon them of State laws adapted to the necessities of slaveholders is obvious. BEDFORD. Whites, 13,536; slaves, 10,061. " The superintendent states that the benefits of the fund have been extended to a larger number of children than in previous years, but that much remains yet to be done to give to the system the efficiency of wiiich it is capable; that his observation leads him to believe that a large number of the teachers employed are miserably incompetent, and perhaps better qualified for some other vocation than that of directing the education of the young, and that some other plan ought to be adopted for the examination of teachers as to their competency before they are employed." BRUNSWICK. Whites, 4,885; slaves, 8,456. "The superintendent regrets that he can not present in his annual account a full view of the school operations for the year. He has re- 15 fi32 A .lOLTRNEY IN TIIK BACK COUNTRY. peatedly urged upon the commissioners the importance of requiring the teachers in their respective districts to render their accounts on or before the 30th of September, but the attainment of that desirable object has not as yet been effected. He can bear cheerful testimony to the capacity, competency and faithfulness of most of the teachers who are employed to instruct the indigent, and believes that the progress of the pupils is as satisfactory as could be expected under the existing circum- stances. " The present primary school system, whatever may be Its defects, has accomplished much good in this county. The benefits conferred thereby on many of the poorer classes of people are not only great but incalculable. The system may be amended ; but as long as south- ern society remains as at present constituted, and the white population of the State continues to be sparse, any system that may be devised for the education of the poor will in a great measure prove inefficient." CULPEPPER. "Whites, 5,112 ; slaves, 6,683. " The superintendent states that he has received no synopsis of re- ports of the commissioners, and he believes that they do not visit the schools very often. Consequently, he has no authority to notice their visits or their observations of the working of the system. The com- missioners, however, have promptly attended the meetings of the board, and examined accounts before payment. The superintendent (individ- ually) thinks the system far from being perfect, yet, for the amount ex- pended, it does perhaps as well as any other. To improve the system, would require an immense additional expenditure to agents, for which the State treasury is but little prepared at the present time." CUMBERLAND. Whites, 3,082; slaves, 6,339. " The commissioners report that they have found much difBculty in securing the attendance of the children at school; that many of the teachers are disinchned to take the indigent children, in consequence of the inadequacy of the compensation, and they recommend an in- crease of the maximum rate of compensation to ten cents a day." FAIRFAX. Whites, 6,835; slaves, 8,250. " The superintendent states, that in some of the districts the teachers refused to dismiss the children when notified of the exhaustion of the district apportionment. In other districts, the commissioners failed to notify the teachers of the insufficiency of funds to continue the chil- dren — which must operate a loss to the teachers, though a benefit to the children." THE DIFFICULTY OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 333 FAYETTE. Whites, 3,780; slaves, 156. " The board report, that the appropriation from the treasury is in- sufficient to aid in the education of all that really stand in need of as- sistance from the fund. Those who are the most needy, and at the same time most punctual in their attendance, are the ones for whose benefit we endeavor to apply the funds." '' The superintendent, in his report to the board of school commis- sioners, says : " While I would recommend to the board the propriety of having all teachers who apply for schools examined as to their qualifications, I am aware that they are compelled to send to such teachers as are employed by the paying patrons of the school ; but really some plan ought to be adopted to prevent unqualified persons from teaching; for it is evident, if I be permitted to judge from the accounts presented for payment, that we have many teachers who would not be injured by taking a few lessons in penmanship and orthography themselves; but I am happy to say to the board that we have some teachers who are eminently qualified to teach. So far as I have been able to observe, there is certainly an increased interest mani- fested by parents and children on the sul:ject of education, and a visible amount of good has been accomplished under the present system. The shortness of the session is one of the greatest objections to the schools. I would, so far as my experience both as teacher and commissioner ex- tends, recommend a general system of free schools ; for while the county is large, and uporv first thought one tuould think sparsely settled, yet the people are generally settled in neighborhoods or settlements sufficiently large and compact to justify the system;" [a mountain county — observe the small proportion of slaves;] "and upon the adoption of such a system, I think it would be best for the first few years to teach about six months in the year, including the winter months ; and under proper re- strictions, I have no doubt but that it would be crowned with success." SPOTSyL\-ANIA. Whites, G,894; slaves, 7,481. " The board report that the appropriation from the treasury would not be sufficient, if all the indigent children were sent to school and attended regularly. Some of those entered attend regularly — others not at all. The fault lies in the parents and guardians." FRANKLIN. Whites, 11,638; slaves, 5,736. " The superintendent regrets to say that it is a difficult thing to get suitable persons to undertake to act as school commissioners, and 334 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. the duties, when undertaken, are not attended to as they should be ; that if a small compensation were allowed, perhaps they would be ful- filled in a better manner." GLOUCESTER. Whites, 4,290; slaves, 5,887. '' The board report that the schools have been visited by some of the commissioners, and that many of the children have impi-oved very much. The teachers are generally qualified and attentive to their schools. The amount allowed and received for the school fund is en- tirely insufficient to send all the children entitled to the said fund to school. That they are pleased to say that they have no difficulty now as heretofore in getting the parents to send their children; hence the large number that attended school the past year." HANOVER. Whites, 6,539; slaves, 8,393. " The board report that they have unshaken confidence in the value of our school system, and would earnestly call upon the Legislature to do -all they can constitutionally to increase the fund for this purpose." " The superintendent reports : The important duty of visiting the districts, inspecting the schools, and making the proper returns to the superintendent, are almost entirely neglected ; and we believe, that partly in consequence of this neglect, the proper discrimination be- tween those children who are really proper objects of the State's bounty and those who are not, is lost sight of I have no hesita- tion in saying that the small amount of money laid out in our county schools does more good than the same amount expended in any other way, or in any other form of education. There are returns from thirty-four schools, and the teachers are generally believed to be com- petent." HENRY. Whites, 5,524; slaves, 3,340. " The superintendent states : It will be seen from the foregoing report of the board that there are several blanks which remain un- filled. These blanks can not be filled with any accuracy, as the com- missioners say, which is very true, that they got nothing for their services, and they do not intend to trouble themselves in getting such information as will enable us to fill the blanks in the report. We are, therefore, under the necessit}'" of forwarding a report which can not be considered complete." " I would fuither remark, that while the commissioners are some- what remiss in furnishing reports, I do not suppose the children of the county suffer any from that cause, as the teachers' accounts show that THE DIFFICULTY OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 335 the commissioners all send to school fully to the amount allotted their respective districts ; so that the children of the county are getting the full benefit of the fund. The only difficulty is, that the fund is by no means sufficient to educate the indigent children of this county.' HENRICO, Whites, 23,826; slaA^es, 16,109. " The superintendent states that he takes pleasure in reporting the fact that the false pride which has in former years prevented many poor parents from sending their children to school, to be paid for by the State, has been broken down, and that at the present price allowed by the law, most of the teachers in the county are not only willing but anxious to teach the children — so that now the main obstacle in the way of more extended usefulness is the want of sufficient funds. He is of the opin- ion that nearly double the amount now appropriated might and could be judiciously expended by the board. He thinks the present system is working well, and knows it has and is doing good, and that he has no alteration to suggest except an increase of funds," ISLE OF WIGHT. Whites, 4,nO; slaves, 3,395. " The superintendent states that the average attendance of the chil- dren at school for the year appears to be only thirty-two and a quarter days, yet were the outstanding claims all paid, it would show quite a different state of things. Those accounts would exhibit an increase of the number of days, while the number of children would only be the same. He has on two or three occasions visited two of the three schools in his district, and was much pleased with the operations of those schools — the teachers being fully competent to the discharge of the important duties devolving on them. Had the funds been suffi- cient, nearly every child in the district could have attended school tlirough the year." LANCASTER. Whites, 1,802; slaves, 2,640. " The board report that, as a general thing, the schools of the county are of a higher grade than formerly, and few teachers will take pupils for the price (five cents per day) allowed by the school commissioners. The difference between their charge for tuition and the amount paid by the commissioners is therefore charged to the parents, guardians or other friends of the indigent children, A few very ordinary teachers may be found who will take pupils at the price allowed by law out of the funds of the State and county," 336 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. Whites, 9,062; slaves, 1,081. " The committee appointed to report the transactions of the school commissioners, state that the commissioners have done as much to promote the interest of the indigent children as was in their power, laboring as they do under many disadvantages." MONTGOMERY. "Whites, 6,822; slaves, 1,491. " The superintendent has for years complained of the incompetency of teachers, and he has to regret that the evil is growing rather than diminishing. The visiting of schools by the commissioners has become obsolete." NANSEMOND. Whites, 5,424; slaves, 4,715. " The commissioners have visited their schools during the year, and are satisfied with the qualifications of their teachers. The children make very fair improvement. Children from eight to eighteen years of age have been admitted to school, without regard to sex. The commissioners have not established any new schools, but have sent to those established in different neighborhoods by the people. They have authorized the superintendent to furnish books, paper, etc. The school quota for this county is not sufncient for the education of the indigent children by three or four thousand dollars, if they could be induced to attend school." NOTTOWAY. Whites, 2,234; slaves, 6,050. " The superintendent is under the necessity of reporting the great want of attention paid to the requirements of the law on the part of school commissioners. Having to make out his account and report almost entirely from teachers' accounts, he is unable consequently to say how many poor children there are in the county who do not attend school, but, from the best information he can get, thinks there are at least sixty or seventy." TUCKER. Whites, ; slaves, '^The board report that the insufficiency of the appropriation from the treasury precludes the education of all the poor children of the county, and it is only the most needy that can be sent to school." THE (QUESTION OF COTTON SUrPLY. 337 WYTHE. Whites, 9,618; slaves, 2,185. " The board report that the funds are iusufficient to send all the poor children for the whole time; that their object has been to send all a greater or less time, proportioned to their means." WOOD. Whites, 9,008; slaves, 375. " The superintendent congratulates the board upon the advanced con- dition of the schools of the county generally." '' In reference to the general system of education, as pursued under the present arrangement of Yirgiuia, although it is liable to some- de- fects and objections, yet if properly and efficiently attended to and carried out by the commissioners, in selecting good and competent teache^rs, and in a just and equitable distribution of the funds for the education of the indigent children in all the neighborhoods of the county, it is the best that can be devised." THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. Mr. Russell, altliougli lie clearly sees tlie calamity of the South, fully accepts the cotton planter's opinion, that, after all, the sys- tem of slavery is a necessary evil attending upon the great good of cheap cotton. He says : " If the climate had admitted of the growing of cotton on the banks of the Ohio, we should have seen that slavery possessed as great advantages over free labor in the raising of this crop as it does in that of tobacco." If this is so, it is important that it should be well understood why it is so as precisely as possible. In his Notes on Maryland, Mr. Russell (p. 141) says : " Though a slave may, under very favorable circumstances, cultivate twenty acres of wheat and twenty acres of Indian corn, he can not man- age more than two acres of tobacco. The cultivation of tobacco, therefore, admits of the concentration of labor, and thus the su- 838 A JOUKNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. perintendence and management of a tobacco plantation will be more perfect and less expensive than a corn one." And tliis is the only explanation lie offers of the supposed advantage of slave labor in the cultivation of tobacco, (and of consequence in the cultivation of cotton.) The chief expense of raising corn is chargeable to planting and tillage, that of tobacco to the seed- bed, the transplanting and nursing of the young plants, (which is precisely similar to the same operation with cabbages,) the hand- weeding, the hoeing after the plant has " become too large to work without injuring the leaves by the swingle-trees of a horse plow ;"'^' "the topping," "the suckering," the selection and re- moval of valueless leaves, and " the worming," all of them, except hoeing, being operations which can be performed by children and child-bearing women, as they usually are in Virginia.f The chief expense of raising cotton, as of corn, is that of planting and tillage. The principal difference between the method of tillage of cotton and that of corn is occasioned by the greater luxuriance of weeds in the southern climate and the slow growth of the cotton plant in its early stages, which obliges the tillage process to be more carefully and more frequently performed. For this reason, the area of cotton cultivated by each laborer is less than of corn. The area of corn land to ahand is, however, very much over-estimated, in my opinion, by Mr. Russell. On the other hand, the only mention he makes of the area of cotton land to a hand (being the statement of a negro) would lead to the conclusion that it is often not over three acres, and that five acres is extra- ordinary. Mr. L)e Bow says,;J[ in an argument to prove that the average production per acre is over-estimated, "In the real cotton region, perhaps the average number of acres per hand is ten." * De Bow, vol. iii., p. 342. f Soe De Bow's "Ecsources," art. Tobacco. + v-1 ; -. 17."). " Resources" THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. 839 Mr. Russell observes of worming and leafing tobacco : "These operations can be done as well, and consequently as cheaply, by women and children as by full grown men." (Page 142.) After reading Mr. Russell's views, I placed myself, through the kindness of Governor Chase, io communication v/ith the Ohio Board of Agriculture, from which I have obtained elaborate statistics, to- gether with reports on the subject from twelve presidents or sec- retaries of county agricultural societies, as well as from othei's. These gentlemen generally say that a certain amount of labor given to corn will be much better repaid than if given to tobacco. "Men are worth too much for growing corn to be employed in strolling through tobacco fields, looking for worms, and even women can, as our faimers think, find something better to do about the house." Children, too, are thought to be, and doubtless are, better employed at school in preparing themselves for more profitable duties, and this is probably the chief reason why coarse tobacco* can not be cultivated with as much profit as corn in Ohio, while the want of intelligent, self-interested labor, is the reason why the corn field, among the broad blades of which a man will work during much of its growth in comparative ob- scurity, can not be cultivated with as much profit on soils of the same quality in Virginia as in Ohio. In short, a class of laborevs, * In my Notes on Eastern Virginia, it was mentioned that a tobacco planter informed me that he could not raise the liner sorts of tobacco with profit, because ke could not make his slaves take pains enough with it ; and in certain localities in Ohio, having a favorable soil for the production of fine or high priced tobacco, it appears that free labor is engaged more profitably in the cultivation of tobacco than in the cultivation of corn. It is the same in parts of Connecticut and of Massachusetts. Except in these limited dis- tricts, however, it is found that the labor of Ohio, as of Connecticut and Massachusetts, is more profitably directed to the cultivation of corL '^•nai/e) and other crops than of tobacco. 15* 340 A JOUKXEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. wliich are good for notliing else, and wliicli but for this would be an intolerable burden upon those who are obliged to support them, can be put to some use in raising tobacco, and, therefore, coarse tobacco continues to be cultivated in some of the principal slave- holding counties of Virginia. But this class of laborers. is of no more value in cotton culture than in corn culture. Mr. De Bow says: "The Southwest, the great cotton region, is newly settled, and the number of children, out of all proportion, less than in negroes [regions ?] peopled by a natural growth of population.'* Weak women and weak children arc?, in fact, not at all in demand for cotton culture, the cotton planter's inquiry being only for 'prime boys,' or 'A. 1. field hands.' " Thus, in every way, cotton culture, in my judgment, more re- sembles corn culture than it does tobacco culture. The produc- tion of corn is larger in the aggregate, is considerably larger per man engaged in its cultivation, and is hi- larger per acre in Ohio than in Yirginia.f I should, therefore, be inclined to reverse Mr. * "Eesources," p. 175. f Virginia, with 10,360,135 acres of improved land, produced, according to the last census returns, 35,254,319 bushels of corn, 56,803,227 pounds of tobacco. Ohio, with 9,851,493 acres of improved land, produced 59,078,695 bushels of corn, 10,454,449 pounds of tobacco. The aggregate value of these two products alone, at present New York prices, would be Ohio $5,127,223,565 Virginia $3,564,639,385 Actual crops per acre, on the average, as returned by the marshals for 1849-50 (Census Compilation, p. 178): Corn. Tobacco. Ohio 36 bushels 730 pounds. Virginia 18 " 630 " THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. 341 PtUsseH's statement, and to say that if the climate had admitted of the growing of cotton on both banks of the Ohio, we should have seen that free labor possessed as great advantages over shivery in the cultivation of cotton as of corn. Mr. Russell echoes also the opinion, which every cotton planter is in the habit of urging, that the production of cotton would have been comparatively insignificant in the United States if it had not been for slave labor. He likewise restricts the true cot- ton region within much narrower limits than are usually given to it, and holds that the slave population must soon in a great meas- ure be concentrated within it. As these conclusions of a scien- tific traveler unintentionally support a view which has been lately systematically pressed upon manufacturers and merchants both in Great Britain and the free States, namely, that the perpetuation of slavery in its present form is necessary to the perpetuation of a liberal cotton supply, and also that the limit of production in the United States must be rapidly approaching, and consequently that the tendency of prices must be rapidly upw^ard, the grounds on which they rest should be carefully scrutinized, Mr. Rusgell says, in a paragraph succeeding the words just now quoted with regard to the supposed advantages of slave labor in raising tobacco : '• The rich upland soils of the cotton region afford a profitable invest- ment for capital, even when cultivated by slaves left to the care of over- seers. The natural increase of the slaves, ftoiu two to six per cent., iroes far to pay the interest of the money invested in them. The rich- est soils of the uplands are invariably occupied by the largest planta- tions, and the alluvial lands on the banks of the rivers are so unhealthy for white laborcu's that the slave owners occupy them without compe- tition. Thus the banks of the western rivers are now becoming the great cotton-producinjj^ districts. Taking these focts into consideration, it appears that the quantity of cotton which would have been raised without slave labor in the United States w^ould have been compai-atively insignificant to the present supply."* * North America, its Climate, etc., n. 286. 342 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. The advantages of slave labor for cotton culture seem from this to have been predicated mainly upon the unwholesomeness to free or white laborers of the best cotton lands, especially of the alluvial lands on the banks of rivers. Reference is made par- ticularly to " the county of Washington, Mississippi State, [which] lies between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. * * * The soil is chiefly alluvial, though a considerable portion is swampy and liable to be flooded." Mr. Russell evidently considers that it is to this swampy con- dition, and to stagnant water left by floods, that the supposed in- salubrity of this region is to be chiefly attributed. How would he explain, then, the undoubted salubrity of the bottom lands in Louisiana, which are lower than those of the Mississippi, exposed to a more southern sun, more swampy, and which were origi- nally much more frequently flooded, but having been dyked and "leveed," are now inhabited by a white population of several hundred thousand. I will refer to the evidence of an expert : "Heat, moisture, animal aud vegetable matter, are said to be the ele- ments which produce the diseases of the South, and yet the testimony iu proof of the health of the banks of the lower portion of the Missis- sippi river is too strong to be doubted. Here is a perfectly flat alluvial country, covering several hundred miles, interspersed with interminable lakes, laguues and jungles, and still we are informed by Dr. Cartwright, one of the most acute observers of the day, that this country is exempt from miasmatic disorders, and is extremely healthy. His assertion has been confirmed to me by hundreds of witnesses, and we know, from our own observation, that the population presents a robust and healthy appearance." (Statistics are given to prove a greater average length of life for the white race in the South than in the North.) — Essay on the Value of Life in the South, by Dr. J. C. Nott, of Alabama. - The unacclimated whites on the sea coast and on the river and bayou banks of the low country, between which and the sea coast there is much inter-communication, suft^er greatly from cer- * Do Bow's "Resources." See "Seaboard Slave States," pp. 463 and 586, for further gouthem e^ddenoe. THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. 843 tain epidemic, contagious and infectious pestilences. Tliis, how- ever, only renders the fact that dense settlements of whites have been firmly established upon them, and that they are remarkably exempt from miasmatic disease, one of more value in evidence of the practicability of white occupation of the upper bottom lands. There are strong grounds for doubting the common opinion that the negroes at the South sufier less from local causes of disease than whites. (See "Seaboard Slave States," p. 647.) They may be less subject to epidemic and infectious diseases, and yet be more liable to other fatal disorders than whites. The worst climate for unacclimated whites of any town in the United States is that of Charleston. (This, together with the whole of the rice coast, is clearly exceptional in respect to salubrity for whites.) It happens fortunately that the most trustworthy and complete vital statistics of the South are those of Charleston. Dr. Nott, commenting upon these, says that the average mortality, during six years, has been, of blacks alone, one in forty-four ; of whites, alone, one in fifty-eight. " This mortality," he adds, " is perhaps not an unfair test, as the population during the last six years has been undisturbed by emigration, and acclimated in greater pro- portion than at any previous period." If the comparison had been made between native negroes and native or acclimated whites alone, it would doubtless show the climate to be still more unfavorable to negroes.* * Dr. Barton, of New Orleans, in a paper read before the Academy of Science of tliat city, says: "The class of diseases most fatal in the South are mainly of a '■ irreverdible nature,' and embraces fevers and intestinal diseases, and depends mostly on conditions under the control of man, as drainage, the removal of forest growth — of personal exposure and private hygiene. The climate further north is too rigid the greater part of the year for personal exposure to the open air, so essential to the enjoyment of health, and when the extremes are great and rapid, another class of maladies predominate — 344 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. Upon the very district to which Mr. Russell refers, as offer- ing an extreme case, I quote the testimony of a Mississippi statistician : " The cotton planters, deserting the rolling land, are fast pouring in upon the ' swamp,' Indeed, the impression of the sickliness of the Soath generally has been rapidly losing ground, [i. e. among the whites of the South] lor some years back, and that blessing [health] is now sought with as much confidence on the swamp lands of the Yazoo and the Mississippi as among the hills and plains of Carolina and Virginia." — (Do Bow's "Resources," vol. ii., p. 43.) Dr. Barton says : " In another place I have shown that the direct temperature of the sun is not near so great in the South, (during the summer,) as it is at the North. I shall recur to this hereafter. In fact, the climate is much more endurable, all the year round, with our refreshing breezes, and particularly in some of the more elevated parts of it, or within one hundred miles of the coast, both in and out of doors, at the South than at the North, which show^s most conspicuously the folly of the annual summer migrations, to pursue an imaginary mildness of tem- perature, which is left at home." Mr. Russell assumes that slave hibor tends, as a matter of course, to the formation of large plantations, and that free labor can only be applied to agricultural operations of a limited scope. Of slaves, he says: "Their numbers admit of that organization and division of labor which renders slavery so serviceable in the cul- ture of cotton." I find no reason given for this assumption, except that he did not himself see any large agricultural enterprises con- ducted with free labor, while he did see many plantations of fifty to one hundred slave hands. The explanation, in my judgment, is that the cultivation of the crops generally gi-own in the free States has hitherto been most profitable when conducted on the the pulmonary, as well as others arising from crowding, defective ventilation and filth — exacting preventive measures from the public authorities with as much urgency as the worst fevers of the South." THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. 345 "small holding" system;* the cultivation of cotton is, as a gen- eral rule, more profitable upon the " large holding" system.f Undoubtedly there is a point below which it becomes disadvan- tageous to reduce the farm in the free States, and this varies with local circumstances. There is equally a limit beyond which it is acknowledged to be unprofitable to enlarge the body of slaves engaged in cotton cultivation under one head. If cotton were to be cultivated by free labor, it is probable that this number would be somewhat reduced. I have no doubt that the number of men on each plantation, in any case, would, on an average, much nearer approach that which would be most economical, in a free labor cotton growing country than in a country on which the whole dependence of each proprietor was on slaves. Is not this conclusion irresistible when we consider that the planter, if he needs an additional slave hand to those he possesses, even if temporarily, for harvesting his croj), must, in most cases, employ at least a thousand dollars of capital to obtain it ? Mr. Russell has himself observed that — " The quantity of cotton which can be produced on a [slave- worked] plantation is limited by the number of hands it can turn into the field during the picking or harvesting of the crop. Like some other agri- cultural operations, this is a simple one, though it does not admit of being done by machinery, as a certain amount of intelligence must direct the hand." The same is true of a wheat farm, except that much more can be done by machinery, and consequently the extraordinary de- mand for labor at the wheat harvest is much less than it is on a -^- Corn has been considered an exception, and there are prol^ably larger corn fields in Indiana tlian CMDtton fields in Mississippi. f I believe that plantations or agricultural operations devoted to a single crop are, as a general rule, profitable in proportion to their size in the free States, unless indeed the market is a small one and easily overstocked, which is never the case with the cotton market. 346 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. cotton plantation. I have several times been on the Mississippi plantations during picking time, and have seen how every thing black, with hands, was then pressed into severe service ; but, after all, I have often seen negroes breaking down, in preparation for re-plowing the ground for the next crop, acres of cotton plants, upon which what appeared to me to be a tolerable crop of wool still hung, because it had been impossible to pick it. I have seen what was confesssed to be many hundred dollars' worth of cotton thus wasted on a single Red River plantation. I much doubt if the harvest demand of the principal cotton districts of Missis- sippi adds five per cent, to their field hand force. In Ohio, there is a far larger population ordinarily engaged in other pursuits which responds to the harvest demand. A temporary increase of the number of agricultural laborers thus occurs of not less than forty per cent, during the most critical period. An analogous case is that of the vintage in the wine districts of France. In some of these the " small holding" or parcellement system is carried to an unfortunate extreme under the influence of what are perhaps injudicious laws. The parcels of land are much smaller, on an average, than the smallest class of farms ordinarily cultivated by free labor in the United States. But can any one suppose that if the slave labor system, as it exists in the United States, prevailed in those districts, that is to say, if the proprietors depended solely on themselves, their families and their regular servants, as those of Mississippi must, at the picking time, there would not be a disastrous falling oft' in the commerce of those districts? Substitute the French system, unfortunate as in some respects it is, for the Mississippi system in cotton growing, and who will doubt that the commerce of the United States would be greatly increased ? THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. 847 Hop picking and cotton picking are very similar operations. The former is the more laborious, and requires the greater skill. What would the planters of Kent do if they had no one but their regular laborers to call upon at their harvest season ? As it is, the population in many parishes in Kent I suppose to be quadrupled in picking time. I observed this advantage of the free labor system exemplified in Western Texas, the cotton fields in the vicinity of the German village of New Braunfels having been picked, when I saw them, far closer than any I had before seen, in fact, perfectly clean, having been undoubtedly gleaned by the poor emigrants. I was told that some mechanics made more in a day, by going into the field of a slave owner and picking side by side with his slaves, being paid by measure, than they could earn at their regular work in a week. The degree of intelligence and of practice re- quired to pick to advantage was found to be very slight, less very much than in any single operation of wheat harvesters. One woman was pointed out to me who had, in the first year she had ever seen a cotton field, picked more cotton in a day than any slave in the county. I am reminded, as this page is about to be stereotyped, by ob- serving the letter of a cotton planter in the New Orleans Price Current, of auother disadvantage for cotton production, of slave labor, or rather of the system which slavery induces. In the Texas journey, I stated that I was informed by a merchant that the cotton picked by the free labor of the Germans was worth from one to two cents a pound more than that picked by slaves in the same township, by reason of its greater cleanliness. From the letter referred to, I make the following extracts : 348 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. "Dear Sir: * * * There are probabl}^ no set of men engaged in any business of life who take as little pains and care to inform them- selves with regard to the character and quahty of their marketable produce as the cotton planter. Not one in a thousand knows, nor cares to know, whether the cotton he sends to market is ordinary, good ordinary, or middling. Not one in a hundreil spends one hour of each day at his gin in ginning season ; never sees the cotton after it is gath- ered, unless he happens to ride near the scaffold and looks from a dis- tance of a hundred yards, and declares the specimen very white and clean, when, perhaps, it, on the contrary, may be very leafy and dirty. * * * "I have often seen the hands on plantations picking cotton with sacks that would hardly hold stalks, they were so torn and full of holes; these sacks dragging on the ground and gathering up pounds of dirt at eveiy few steps. The baskets, too, were with scarcely any bottoms re- maining, having been literally worn out, the cotton lying on the ground. Indeed, some overseers do not forbid the hands emptying their cotton on the ground when their sacks are full, and they som(3 distance from tiieir baskets. When this cotton is taken up, some dirt must necessarily come with it. When gathering in wet weather, the hands get into their baskets with muddy feet, and thus toss in some pounds of dirt, in this way making their task easier. These things are never, or rarely, seen by the proprietor ; and, consequently, when his merchant writes him that his cotton is a little dusty, he says how can it be ? you are surely mistaken. " Now, sir, for all this there is one simple, plain remedy ; let the planter spend his time in ginning season at his gin; let liiiM see every load of cotton as it comes from the field and before it goes through the gin. But, says the man of leisure, the gin is a dirty, dusty place. Yes, sir, and always will be so, until you remedy the evil by staying there yourself. You say your overseer is hired to do this dirty work. Your overseer is after quantity^ sir, and the more extra tveight he gets in your cotton, the more bales he iviU have to brag of having made at the end of the year. Don't trust him at the gin. * * * "Probably he has a conditional contract wdth his employ oi': gets so many dollars for all he makes over a certain number of hales ; thus having every inducement to put up as much leaf and dirt, or, if he is one of the dishonest kind, he may add stones^ if they should abound in the neigh- borhood. " Why will not the cotton planter take pride in his own production? The merchant prides himself on his wares; the mechanic on the work of his hands. All seem to pride themselves on the result of their labor except the cotton planter." * * * It can not be admitted that the absence in the free States of that organization and division of labor in agriculture which is found on a large slave-worked plantation is a necessity attending THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. 349 tlie use of free labor. Why should it be any more impossible to employ an army of free laborei's in moving the ground with an agricultural design than with the intention of constructing a canal or a road, if it were profitable to so employ the necessary capital ? A railroad contractor in one of the best cotton districts of the United States told me, that liaving begun his work with negroes, he was substituting Irish and German laborers for them as rapidly as possible, with great advantage, (and this near midsummer.) But if I were convinced with Mr. Russell upon this point, I should still be inclined to think that the advantages which are possessed in a free labor state of society equally by the great hop planters at picking time and the petits proprietairea at vintage, which are also found in our own new States by the wheat farmer, and which are not found under the present system anywhere at the South, for cotton picking, would of themselves be sufficient to turn the scale in favor of the free labor cotton grower. The errors of the assumptions upon which the opinion is based by Mr. Russell, that slave labor is essential or important to sustain cotton production in the United States, is, I trust, apparent. The more common and popular opinion is, that the necessary labor of cotton tillage is too severe for white men in the cotton-growing climate. As I have said before, I do not find the slightest weight of fact to sustain this opinion. The necessary labor and causes of fatigue and vital exhaustion attending any part or all of the process of cotton culture does not compare with that of our July harvesting ; it is not greater than attends the cultivation of Indian corn in the usual New England method. I have seen a weakly white woman the worse for her labor in the cotton field, but never a white man, and I have seen hundreds of them at work in cotton fields under the most unfavorable circumstances, miserable, dis- 350 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. pirited wretches, and of weak muscle, subsisting mainly, as they do, on corn bread. Mr. De Bow estimates one hundred thousand white men now engaged in the cultivation of cotton, being one ninth of the whole cotton force (numerically) of the country."^' I have just seen a commercial letter from San Antonio, which es- timates that the handful of Germans in Western Texas will send ten thousand bales of cotton, the production of their own labor, to market this season. If it should prove to be half this, it must be considered a liberal contribution to the needed supply of the year, by those who, following Mr. Russell, have considered West- ern Texas out of the true cotton region, and taking the truth of the common planters' assertion for granted, have thought Afri- cans, working under physical compulsion, the only means of meeting the demand which could be looked to in the future of the United States. It would not surprise me to learn that the cultivation of cotton by the German settlers in Texas had not, after all, been as profit- able as its cultivation by the planters employing slaves in the vicinity. I should attribute the superior profits of the planter, if any there be, however, not to the fitness of the climate for negro labor, and its unfitness for white labor, but to the fact that his expenses for fencing, on account of his larger fields and larger estate, are several hundred per cent, less than those of the farmer ; to the fact that his expenses for tillage, having mules and plows and other instruments to use at the opportune moment, are less than those of the farmer, who, in many cases, can not afford to own a single team ; to the fact that he has, fi-oni experience, a better knowledge of the most successful method of cultivation ; to the fact that he has a gin and a press of his own in the midst of his * Vol. l, p. 115, "Resources." THE QUESTION OF COTTON SUPPLY. 351 cotton fields, to which he can carry his wool at one transfer from the picking* ; by which he can put it in order for market expedi- tiously, and at an expense much below that falling upon the farmer, who must first store his wool, then send it to the planter's gin and press and have it prepared at the planter's convenience, pay- ing, perhaps, exorbitantly therefor ; and, finally, to the fact that the planter deals directly with the exporter, while the farmer, the whole profit of whose crop would not pay his expenses in a jour- ney to the coast, must transfer his bale or two to the exporter through two or three middle-men, carrying it oue bale at a time, to the local purchaser. Merchants will never give as good prices for small lots as for large. There are reasons for this which I need not now explain. I consider, in short, that the disadvantages of the farmer in growing cotton are of the same nature as I have before explained (p. 122) with those which long ago made fire-wood of hand-looms, and paupers of those who could be nothing else but hand-loom weavers, in Massachusetts. Exactly how much is gained by the appHcation of labor with the advantage of capital and combination of numbers over its isolated application as directed by individuals without capital in a slaveholding region, I can not estimate, but no one will doubt that it is considerable. Never- theless, in all the cotton climate of the United States, if a white farmer has made money without slaves, it will be found that it has been, in most cases, obtained exclusively from the sale of cotton. If cotton is a plant the cultivation of which by free or white labor is especially difficult, how is it that, with the additional em- barrassments arising from a lack of capital, his gains are almost exclusively derived from his cotton crop ? But I may be asked, if combination is what is needed to make cotton a source of more general prosperity at the South, why is 352 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. there no sucli thing as a joint-stock cotton plantation in Missis- sippi, as there are joint-stock cotton mills in Massachusetts, the stock in which is in large part owned by those employed in them? I ask, in reply, how is it that the common way of ob- taining bi'eadstnffs in northern Alabama is to sow three pecks of seed wheat on hard stubble ground, plow it under with unbroken bullocks, led with a rope, and a bull-tongue plow, and finally to garner rarely so much as six bushels from an acre. How is it that while in Ohio the spinning-wheel and handdoom are curi- osities, and homespun would be a conspicuous and noticeable material of clothing, half the white population of Mississippi still dress in homespun, and at every second house the wheel and loom are found in operation? The same influences which con- demn the majority of free laborers in Alabama to hand-looms, homespun, and three hundred pounds of wheat to the acre as the limit of production, also condemn them to isolated labor, poor soil, poor tools, bad management, " bad luck," small crops and small profits in cotton culture. The following passages from a letter published in the " New York Times" present convincing evidence that it is no peculiarity of the Western Texas climate, but only the exceptional social con- dition with which its people are favored, that enables free white labor to be employed in increasing the cotton production of the country. I have ascertained that the author of the letter is known to the editor of the Times, and is esteemed a gentleman of veracity and trustworthy judgment. " I am well acqninted with eastern Mississippi, south of -Monroe county, and there are few settlements where my name or face is un- known in the following counties, over the o-reater part of Avhich I have ridden on horseback, to wit: Loundes, Oktibleha. Choctaw, Carroll, Attalla, Winston, Noxubee, Kemper, Nashoba, Leake, Soott, Newton, TIIK QUESTION OF OOTTOX SUPPLY. DTy] Lauderdale, Clai-ke, Smith and Jasper. After four years' travel throug-Ii these counties, transacting business with great numbers of their inhabi- tants, stopping at their houses, conversing much w^ith them, and view- ing their mode of hving, I unhesitatingly answer that white men can and do labor in the cotton field, from Christmas to Christmas follow- ing; and that there, as elsewhere, prudence, industry and energy find their universal reward, success and wealth. '• In the counties of Choctaw, Winston, Nashoba, Newton and Smith, there are very few large plantations ; most of those having slaves holding but two or three, while those who own none are in the majority ; yet these are all cotton-growing counties, and the staple of their cotton, poor as their lands are, is equal to the average sold in the Mol)ile mar- ket. Where the young farmer is enterprising and go-ahead, his cotton is usually superior. * * * " The rich lands where white labor, even in small numbers, might be profitable, are either in the hands of large planters, or too heavily timbered for a single man. The only thing now preventing any poor white man in the South from gaining a fair competence, and even attaining wealth, is his own laziness, shiftlessness and ignorance ; for the small planters in the counties I have mentioned are deplorably ignorant. * * * " There is one case I remember, which is to the point ; the man lives in Choctaw county, and was born in GTeorgia. He does not own a negro, but has two boys, one sixteen, the other twelve. With the as- sistance of these boys, and the most imperfect agricultural implements, he made twenty-two bales of cotton, year before last, plenty of corn, and sufficient small grain for himself and family, although the season was mure than ordinarily bad in his neighboihood, while many of his neighbors, with five or six slaves, did not exceed him, and some made even less. He went on to his place without ten dollars in his pocket, gave his notes for eight hundred dollars, payable in one, two and three years' time, with interest at six per cent, per annum, and the ensuing year he purchased another one hundred and sixty acres for seven hundred and fifty dollars, also on time. This man is, however, far more intelligent and progressive in farming than those about him; he does not plant as did his grandfather, because his father did so, but endeavors to improve, and is willing to try an experiment occasionally. " In my own county, in Alabama, there is a woman whose husband died shortly after the crop was planted, leaving her without a singly .servant, and no assistance except i'rom a little son of twelve years of age ; yet she went into the field, plowed and picked her cotton, prep;a-ed her ground for the coming crop, and raised a second crop thereon.' My conclnsion, from the various evidences to which I have re- ferred, would be a widely difterent one from Mr. Russell's, from that which is generally thought to prevail with our leading capi- talists, mei'chants and manufacturers, and from that which seems 354 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. to have been accepted by tbc Cotton Supply Associations of Liver- pool and Manchester. It is this: that there is no physical obstacle in the way of our country's supplying ten bales of cotton where it now does one. All that is necessary for this purpose is to direct to the cotton-producing region an adequate number of laborers, either black or white, or both. No amalgamation, no association on equality, no violent disruption of present relations is necessary. It is not even requisite that botli black and white should work in the cotton fields. It is necessary that there should be more ob- jects of industry, more varied enterprises, more general intelli- gence among the people, and especially that they should become or should desire to become richer, more comfortable, than they are. The simple truth is, that even if we view in the brightest light of Fourth of July patriotism, the character of the wdiites of the cotton-producing region, and the condition of the slaves, we can not help seeing that, commercially speaking, they are but in a very small part a civilized people. Undoubtedly a large number of merchants have a profitable business in supplying civilized luxuries and conveniences to the South. The same is true of Mexico, of Turkey, of Egypt, and of Russia. Silk, cloth and calico, shoes, gloves and gold watches, were sold in some quantity in California before its golden cofi"ers were forcibly opened ten years ago. The southern supply to commerce and the southern demand of commerce is no more what it should be, comparing the resources of the South with those of other lands occupied by an active civilized community, than is that of any half civilized community, than was that of California. Give the South a people moderately close settled, moderately well-informed, moder- ately ambitious and moderately industrious, somewhat approach- REMEDIAL MEASURES. 355 ing that of Ohio, for instance, and what a business it would have ! Twenty double-track railroads from the Gulf to the lakes, and twenty lines of ocean steamers, would not sufficiently meet its requirements. Who doubts, let him study the present busi- ness of Ohio, and ask upon what in the natural resources of Ohio, or its position, could, forty years ago, a prediction of its present wealth and business have been made, of its present sup- ply and its present demand have been made, which would compare in value with the commercial resources and advantages of posi- tion possessed to-day by any one of the western cotton States?* REMEDIAL MEASURES. Mr. Gregg's scheme, which I have before described, is a sim- ple, common sense method of palliating the wretchedness of the poor of his own district, by endeavoring to make practicable to them the acquisition of "home comforts." That it can afford only a palliation will be obvious if we consider how much capital would be needed to make it a remedy, having a general applica- tion. So large a part of the whole population consists of slaves, whose demand for manufactured goods would be supplied by a small number of operatives, the factories would be required to send their goods to a distance for Purchasers. Mr. Gregg acknowl- edges that the manufacture of the coarse goods, such as are * Some one can render a service to civilization by publishing precisely what feudal rights, so called, were abolished in large parts of Germany and Hungary in 1848, and what results to the commerce of the districts affected the greater freedom and impulse to industry arising therefrom has had. If I am rightly informed, trade, in many cases, both export and import, has al- ready much more than quadrupled in value, thousands of peasants now de- manding numerous articles and being able to pay for them, which before only a few score or hundred proprietors were expected to buy. 16 356 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. chiefly required by slaves, and which near the factory displace the common home-spun and woven cloth formerly worn by the majority of the free people, has been already over-done. He es- timates the white population of South Carolina alone, " who ought to work and wlio do not, or who are so employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State," at one hundred and twenty- five thousand. If they were all collected, as he proposes, they would operate (upon his own data) five million spindles. In Massachusetts, with all its railroads, foundries, quarries, and machine shops, it is usual to reckon the plant cost of a factory of the character proposed by Mr. Grecrg at twenty-five dollars a spindle. Thus, to put at work, on Mr. Gregg's plan, merely that portion of the population of South Carolina who at present are pure vagrants, and attempting nothing directly for those who barely earn their own means of subsistence, a capital would be required, at the lowest estimate, of one hundred and twenty -five million dollars, or more than six times the estimated value of all the landed property in the State. But suppose that this capital could be profitably used in cot- ton manufacturing, would this be the best way of applying it? Mr. Gregg says that three fourths of the eight hundred adults whom he has collected at Graniteville are not able to read or to write their names. " With the aid of ministers of the gospel on the spot to preach to them and lecture them on the subject, we have obtained but about sixty children for our school, of about a hundred which are in the place. We are satisfied that nothing but time and patience will enable us to bring them all out. * * * Notwithstanding our rule that no one can be permitted to occupy our houses wdio does not send all his chil- dren to school that are between the ages of six and twelve, it REMEDIAL MEASURES. 357 was with some difficulty, at first, that we could make up even a small school.'"'^ Mr. Taylor, a co-laborer of Mr. Grcgg, says : " The question has often been asked, Will southern operatives equal northern in their ability to accomplish factory work ? As a general answer, I would reply in the affirmative ; but at the same time it may with justice be said they can not at present, even in our best fac- tories, accomplish as much as is usual in northern mills. The habitude of our people has been to anything but close applica- tion to manual labor, and it requires time to bring the whole habits of a person into a new train. "f As aftbrding an argument against establishing factories in towns, Mr. Gregg refers to the history of manufacturing in Augusta. I myself had a singular confirmation of the correct- ness of his views in this respect in the information given me by the landlord of a hotel in Augusta, who said, in answer to my inquiries, that the hands employed in the factories were country people who had been induced by a promise of fixed cash wages to move into town, but who were so lazy that only an immediate necessity to keep them from starvation would induce them to work. The president or foreman of the mills had been to him and implored him never to give them food when they came beg- ging for it, as he had sometimes done, because it increased the difficulty of making them work. " If you ride past the factory," he added, " you will see them loafing about, and I reckon you never saw a meaner looking set of people anywhere. If they were niggers, they would not sell for five hundred dollars a head." * Address to South Carolina Institute. f De Bow's Review, January, 1850. 858 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. Of one of the manufacturing villages of Georgia, Tobler's Creek, the Rev. Mr. White, (Statistics, p. 575,) says : "The char- acter of the operatives is marked by the usual traits which dis- tinguish the poor uneducated class of this country. Of the whole population of the village, which amounts to two hundred and forty, there are not twenty who can either read or write. '^' * * Nearly all the families residing here are those who have been driven by necessity to engage their children to work in the mills, whose toil on some worn out or barren piece of land was not sufficient to supply their wants." Yet the same authority says elsewhere (p. 576) : "No one can visit this section of the coun- try without forming a favorable opinion of the character of its population, the greater part are snug farmers, out of debt." I have ]n'eviously shown that the population from which Mr. Gregg's operatives are drawn is a rather supei'ior one to that of other parts of the State. Is it not obvious that the capital required to have the slightest remedial effect would be much better employed in transferring the raw cotton to a free country and there manufacturing it, or that it would be far more economical to transport, en masse, a body of decent, intelligent, disciplined and industrious work-people to South Carolina, than to enlist, drill and educate to the necessary degree of intelligence for effective operatives, the wretched starvelings and wild men of the pine woods, who have grown up under the edu- cational influence of slavery ? It may be replied that the labor of these latter may be procured at half the price per day of the more intelligent and industrious class. But how long would they be content with these low wages after they had become suffi- ciently intelligent to earn them ? Knowing that, on free soil, as it would be impossible long to prevent their knowing, the same REMEDIAL MEASURES. 359 deo-ree of intellio-ence and the same amount of labor would earn twice the amount of comfort, how long would it be before Mr. Gregg's "communities" would take themselves to free soil, or — make free soil of South Carolina? It Avill help us to an answer to look for an instant at Missouri. In 1849, in Missouri, only fourteen counties out of one hun- dred were returned as sending above twenty per cent, of their whole population to school. Seven years afterwards came the presidential election, and the next year a State election, hotly canvassed, in which the representative of the administration party declared the question between himself and his opponent to be between the fortification of slavery and emancipation. His opponent courageously accepted it, and was denounced by that name so odious to ignorant southern citizens, abolitionist. What did the a Iministration party gain by it in those counties where education had been least obstructed ? In six of these counties but three hundred and twenty-eight votes, while in eight of these counties the vote against it was increased over that of the presidential election fourteen hundred and forty-six votes. It is, however, as impracticable, as it would be unsafe to the present system, to introduce white operatives in large numbers from tree soil. Impracticable, because, except at greatly en- hanced wages, they will not endure the necessary discomfort of the life of working people in a slave State ; unsafe, because, with their intelligence, the antagonism of slavery to their interests could not be concealed from them. They are naturally, in the words of a South Carolina editor before quoted, " enemies to the peculiar institution," or, as De Bow says, "European [or intelligent, in contradistinction to African or ignorant] labor * * * has 360 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. not taken footliold in our limits, evidencing thus an incapacity to adapt itself to our condition." It is from the admission of Ger- man laborers into Missouri that the agitation for emancipation in that State has arisen. The southern gentlemen could not occupy the land with their forces, not even with a single slave family to a square mile in many parts. They could not afford to "take up" or hold all they left unoccupied and have not the slightest pro- duction from it. Much as the Germans disliked the proximity of slaves, they could not resist the temptation to buy this rich un- occupied land at a fourth part of the value of similar soil in the adjoining free States; government could not refuse to sell it them, and so came the catastrophe of popular education and of discussion of the value of slavery right in the midst of a slave- holding state. How can such a process be prevented from going on, or from recurring ? The Charleston Mercury says: "Traveling in any direction, broad uncultivated lands and beds of mineral wealth, still un- opened, lie before you. Settlement and cultivation mark only the most fertile spots. In South Carolina, one of the oldest States, thousands upon thousands of acres of surpassing richness stretch along her rivers, crowned with the unshorn forest. * * * These remarks have a much stronger application to the newer States of the South. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas, exhibit this want of labor in far more startling de- grees." Mr. Spratt, writing from Charleston to the editor of the New Orleans Delta, (September, 1859,) upon the settlement of Kansas, which the South then expected to make a slave State before 1860 : REMEDIAL MEASURES. 361 " WitliOLit slaves, there Avill be little udvantag-e in having it nomi- nally a slave State. * * * r^\^Q gtate of Delaware is nominally a slave State, but it were madness to rely on Delaware for aid; and Mis- souri even, which has ninety thousand slaves, has an abolition parly to contest for power. " So circumstanced, it is to be doubted whether Kansas can ever ac- quire the slaves to make her in fact a slave State; but should she do so, she must take them from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, or Missouri — no one of which has slaves enough now to sustain the perfect integrity of a slave system. Maryland reels upon the line be- tween slavery and the isms, and cast her vote for Fillmore in the late election. Virginia is threatened with a colony of New Englanders to cultivate a space she can not cover with slave labor. " In Kentucky it has been proposed to manumit the slaves. Ten • nessee is aghast at the mention of the slave trade, and Missouri, as I have said, has an abolition party to contest for power. It can never strengthen slavery to take slaves from those States to Kansas, and per- haps there is no place in the Union where one hundred thousand slaves could be so profitably planted as upon the soil of the brave old State of Virginia." Thus, while we are every year presented with new projects from southern politicians for an increase of territory, are called upon to further stimulate the expanding and dispersing tendency, some answer must be given at home to the question : What are we going to do with it ? " While wc have millions of acres open to slave occupation, yet a perfect wilderness, while some of the longest settled parts of our present territory are every year re- gaining more and more of their original wilderness condition, from the dispersion of our labor over new wildernesses, when it is certain that civilized laborers will not come upon our territory, or that if they do they will wrest it from us, what can we do with more territory? AVhat can wc do with that we have?" Mr. Dc Bow says : " To one who has observed the signs of the times, the evidence is irresistible, that the question of labor supply is at this monient attracting in every part of the South and of the Southwest a ('egrec of attention which has never been accorded to it before, stiimdated as the question is by the almost 3G2 A JOl JINEY IX THE BACK COUNTRY. boundless and now but partially occupied domain in our pos- session 0?' within our reach, adapted to rich and productive culti- vation ; by the increasing demand and enhanced prices obtained for every description of product peculiar to that domain, and by the unprecedented rise in the value of the only species of labor which it is capable of employing."'^ It will profit us to observe how the South, becoming, in these last few years, graduall}^ aware of the dilemma into which its policy of extension has carried it, goes to work to relieve itself. Up to this time it is only at a few points, in the vicinity of com- mercial centers, where the contact of men with each other is most frequent, that the dread of enterino; upon any discussion is not the strongest feeling manifested. The more impetuous only as yet have propounded a remedy, and this they advocate not earn- estly but frantically ; thus : FROM THE CHARLESTON MERCURY. " The alternative to the South is, whether she will continue to depend solely upon the natural increase of her slaves, for development and colonization, wholly inadequate as it is for either, or, despising for once and tor ever the whinings of fanaticism, she will brash from her path its flimsy obstacles, and demand that the original and true source of her labor shall be no longer closed — that Africa and America shall be free to reciprocate blessings ? If, when slavery was deemed an evil, southern men consented to the abolition of the slave trade, as the precur- sor of emancipation, will they adhere to the same policy when slavery is proved to be a blessing — nay, the very heart blood of the South ? Are they still advocates of emancipation? Do they not perceive that by such a coiu'se they are preparing the way of abolition ? Is it worthy of a free people to consent to absolute restrictions upon their legitimate progress, when progress is to them, more than to all others, the veiy necessity of their existence? Shall the North be permitted to supply her demand for labor, wdierewith to usur[) the common territories, and abolitionize the government by an emigration, attended with all the horrors of the slave trade, wliile the South is tied hand and foot? Will * Letter to AY. L. Yancey, published generally in Southern newspapers, July, 1859. REMEDIAL JrEASURES. 'A()3 she perpetuate a policy which stigmatizes her civilization, betrays her cause into the silliest inconsistencieSj and tends to her complete annihilation ? Will she permit her vast and splendid resources to be wasted, because fanaticism and political rivalry demand the sacrifice ?" FROM THE SAME. " If it benefits the African, and benefits the southern planter, and benefits the trader who brings over the slaves, who is there to be in- jured by it? We are to be content with the answer that there is a pack of fools and Pharisees in England and the Northern States, whose feelings are hurt by the horrors of the slave trade, and that the general assembly of French philosophers have decided that man can righti'uUy have no property in man." FROM THE CHARLESTON STANDARD. " It is first necessary to see that we are right, to look at this great question of the slave trade, and see if, in fact, we require its establish- ment, and, if so, we will demand its reestablishment within the Union, or we will reestablish it to ourselves." FROM THE STATES RI&HT LOUISIANIAN. " Unless the slave trade be reestablished, slavery, instead of increas- ing, must necessarily diminish its borders, and, after a certain length of time, be extinguished. Slaveholders, for the present, have no other interest than to strengthen and defend it in all places where it already exists, and where it is an essential and integrant part of the domestic institutions," FROM THE MOBILE REGISTER. We can not people a country with blacks or whites, without a people to do it with, and the simple truth is, the South has not the black labor to spare for any such an enterprise. " We can not hold our own in such a race until we increase the slave population, and that can only be done with effective rapidity by trans- ferring them from the great hive of barbarian slavery in Afiica to the scene of humanized and Christianized slavery in America. If the South desires to maintain the conflict, so far against her in its results, for an equality of rights in the territories, and for the preservation of an equilibrium of political power in th(; Union, we know of no other way to do it but to go to work at once in an effort to repeal the laws of the Union which prohibit the African slave trade. This is a power- ful, active, and vital issue; and pushed to the wall by Ikm- fanatical enemies, we see no course open to the South but to strip it of all mere- tricious surroundings of prejudice and cant, and to discuss and meet it boldly on its merits." IG* SG4 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. For heaven's sake, do not propose anything so startling, is the first reply ; for the discussion which it must provoke will be ruinous to us. And to this time, therefore, the advocates of the slave trade are chiefly engaged in arguing, not the feasibility of their scheme, but the safety of arguing its feasibility. Mr. De Bow, for one, believes "it is an idle assumption that the discussion will divide and distract the South. The division, at most," he con- tends, " will prove to be of no more importance than such as already exists in regard to cardinal matters of State and federal policy ; (in saying which he can only refer to the naturaliza- tion question, which has been the base of the only party divi- sions of the South in the last six years;) "and which," continues Mr. De Bow, "is at any moment ready to be sacrificed when the common interest is menaced. We must trust our fellow-citizens thus far, and they in return will suspect us [who ?] neither of dis- trust or of treason."* It is clear that the majority are, at the opening, against the African party, that is to say, are against discussion, but it is equally clear that the African party can not be silenced, and that a pi-actical agreement will be arrived at, is in many parts already arrived at, as follows : The question shall be argued, and the South given over to discussion, upon these conditions : That it shall always be taken for granted on both sides — First, that free society is full of mor- bid and dangerous elements, not respectable, irreligious, and altogether offensive to a true Southerner. Second, that slavery, under our present laws, is a Bible institution, and the most effec- tive agent of freedom, Christianity, Democracy, civilization, and * Letter to Hon. Wm. L. Yancey. REMEDIAL MEASURES. 365 wealth. Third, that any man who proposes measures which in- volve an amelioration of the condition of the slaves, or which look in the slightest toward the possibility of any portion of them or of their descendants being allowed to take care of them- selves, shall be called an abolitionist, and as such shall be pul)- licly entertained. Fourth, that the man who shows the greatest regard for slavery is the truest Democrat and truest Chris- tian, and shall be held to deserve best of his country. Wherever the main question is yet at all discussed, these conditions are rigidly adhered to. South of Washington, not a single newspaper article, not a single pamphlet, not a single sermon or address has been published, since the scheme was sug- gested, in which these conditions have been in the slightest degree infringed. The opponents of importation may manage to postpone a general engagement upon the final issue, but it is impossible that it shall be more than postponed, and when they can no longer avoid it, they will have to fight on ground upon which the African party will be irresistible. For who can object to this scheme, and on what grounds can he object to it, that will not, as soon as the battle is at all hot, stamp him an enemy to the South, a traitor, an infidel ? Immorality? It would not be well for a man to suggest that line of argument. "Either slavery is right or it is wrong, and it is a greater and more unmitigated wrong in liiui who keeps the negro to that sad condition than in him who originally fastened the yoke upon him." Thus replies in ndvance the Charleston Standard, and who dare rejoin with the Charleston mob, to maintain the fundamental conditions of the discussion, before him? 366 A JOURXEY IX THE BACK COUNTRY. The only resistance to be feared at the South is from those ignorant citizens whose ruling passion is hatred not of slavery, hut of negroes, and who with some difficulty are now restrained from demanding measures which w^ill deport them all from their own vicinity. Nevertheless, they can be managed. As- sure th.em that an importation of the original savage stock is a measure directed ajxainst those who would like to Hve the negroes who have come of families two hundred years under American training a chance to better themselves wdien they can, without fighting or breaking laws, and they will yield their prejudices. Is evidence needed of how the plan carries, by its mere state- ment, conviction to those who give it a hearing, it is found in confessions like the following,* the writer of which opens his letter with expressions of doubt. The measure is a little too startling — impracticable — he fears ; but he presently adds : "I can go thus far with you, however. I have some two thousand acres of land thatwnll now sell for about six dollars an acre, and which, when twenty or even ten thousand slaves are brought into the country ffom Africa, or any other quarter, wnll sell for thirty dollars an acre. I think I could find it in my breast to pocket the difference of forty- eight thousand dollars, and trust to casuists to determine wdiether I came honestly by it. I am not sure but I could go a little further. I have an interest in a gold mine, whose Avork requires no very great intelligence, and which yields from two to four dollars a day to the hand. I am now purchasins: negroes at from eight hundred to eleven hun- dred dollars each. If I could have an opportunity of purchasing some one or two thousand at about two hundred dollars each, I am not cer- tain that I should insist upon their having been torn from their families either in this or the adjoining States, but could even find it in my heart to take them Avith a knowledge of the flxct that they had come from Africa. We want labor, and only labor, to a most rapid and astonish- ing development of w^ealth, but our sources of supply are hmited. What we get is hmited. What we get is taken from some other em- ployments in our own vicinity. The gain at one point is to be dimin- * Published in the CharlestOQ Standard. EEMEDIAL MEASURES. 367 ished by the loss at another, and there is no other way of it but tliat we must set to work and laboriously breed the labor by which the golden harvest of our country is to be ultimately gathered." Another, writing to the same editor from the State Capitol of South Carolina, says : " There are many gentlemen of character and standing in the State who daily tell me that they are not ashamed of slavery, [the man would be a hero, indeed, who dare speak otherwise in that locality, but what follows ?] or the means by tuhich it was established. They con- fess the want of labor to every interest in the country, and express the assurance that the only kind of labor we are capable of receiving, without a disturbance of existing relations, is in the form of slavery." The domestic slave trade, slave auctions, the forcible separa- tion of husbands and wives, of parents and children ; the com- pulsion to adultery of members of Christian churches, without legal remedy ; and a commerce (the internal slave trade) once characterized by John Randolph, of Roanoke, on the floor of Congress, as '• the infernal traffic," has been maintained by con- vincing men who objected to it, on the score of morality and Immanity, of its necessity for the "safety" of the South, that is (as assumed by those interested) of the political equality in power of the slaveholding minority with the non-slaveholding majority of the republic* It can not be doubted that the African slave * It is an infamous libel which we by our partisanship have fastened upon ourselves, that the Nortli has an aggressive spirit towards the South. It has always been directly otherwise. Mr. Webster, in liis plea for the com- promise on the Vtli of M;irch, 1850, said these true words: "Tlic ]ion(,irable member from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun,) observed there has been a majority all along in favor of the North. If that be true, sir, the Nortli has acted either very liljerally and kindly, or very weakly ; for they never exercised that majority efficiently five times in the history of this government, when a division or trial of strength arose. Never. ■VVhctlier they were out-generalled, or whether it was owing to other causes, I shall not stop to consider ; but no man acquainted with the history of the 368 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. trade is, at this time, a much more obvious and immediately pressing necessity for that purpose than the domestic slave trade has ever been. And the moral objections to it are to be more easily overcome. As, therefore, a South Carolinian quoted else- where says,* " If men are to make a fuss about it, they will have to begin with the internal slave trade.''"' After all, then, the difficulty is at the North ; the North can never be convinced or brought to consent to the reopening of the foreign slave trade. Why not ? Evidently there would be no difficulty, if the same conditions of discussion could be imposed at the North — even in parts of the North. There are spots where this might be hoped for. If a party at the North could be got to accept those conditions of discussion — could be got to take ground that slavery must be Union can deny that the general lead in the politics of the country, for three fourths of the period that has elapsed since the adoption of the Constitution has been a southern lead." The Charleston Courier, commenting on a discourse delivered in South Carolina, against the immediate secession of that great Power from our Union, to which the Courier itself is yet kindly opposed, says it "truthfully as well as strongly, details and depicts the various occasions on \vhich Hoath- ern interests have obtained the mastery in Congress, or, at least, impor- tant advantages, which are well worthy of the consideration of all who erroneously suppose that the action of the general government has been, on the whole, adverse to slavery. The truth is that our government, although hostile in its incipiency [that is, until after the administration of Jefferson] to domestic slavery, and starting into political being with a strong bent to- ward abolition, yet afterwards so changed its policy that its action for the most part, and with only a few exceptions, has fostered the slaveholding interest, and swelled it from six to fifteen states, and from a feeble and sparse population to one of ten millions. * Sea-Board Slave States, p. 522. REMEDIAL MEASURES. 369 considered a good thing- for low people, or for niggers alone, and could be kept in ascendency in a few States, or a few pai'ts of States, that would be sufficient; the South being united to control Congress and the navy, and remove the present difficulties.* Not to directly and avowedly legalize the traffic ; that would be too much to hope of this generation. The friends of the institution at the North could hardly be ashed to advocate that. It would be too much for the South to demand that, except to make a less advanced position appear more tenable — except to prepare the way for a new " compromise." But the friends of slavery at the North can be brought to adopt measures in the interest of the South, which, if carried, will soon involve the African slave trade as a necessity — a necessity of that kind which knows no law, which cares for no law, which will evade or overcome all law and all legal force that seeks to prevent the profits which would soon attend the supply of labor to the insati- able demand of capitalists for the South. " The course wo propose to be pursued is this : Let each southern State say, through her legislature, that the importation — immigration if you prefer — of the African race to the South, is the means appointed of heaven for theii* civilization, and that as their coming will be nm- * ""We took occasion to notice, a few days since, the resolution reported by Mr. Slidell, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, proposing to give to England and France notice of the abrogation of the treaty stipulations by which we are bound to keep a naval force upon the African coast for the suppression of the slave trade. We stated then our approbation of this measure, from the conviction that it is onerous to our country, destructive to our seamen engaged in this service, and utterly inefficient for the purpose intended. We also approve of it for another reason, which wo will state with perfect frankness to the people of this country. We have no sympathy in the purposes of this convention, and no wish for its success." — Charleston Standard. 370 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. tually beneficial both to us and to them, hereafter it shall be lawful for all ships having such pafisengers on board, freely to land them at any port or harbor in the State ; that the sheriff of the district in which the port may be situated shall lodge such passengers at the expense of the State, until they can find employment, and shall moreover pay to the captain of the ship bringing them liberal passage money, to be charged against the State in the first instance, and provided for in any subsequent contract respecting their service and employ- ment." — Pee Dee Times. Governor Moore, of Alabama, being a candidate for reelection, and addressed on the subject of the slave trade, says that " he is in favor of modifying the laws which make it piracy, and dis- criminating among the different grades of the offense, but thinks that neither this nor any other question should be allowed to divide the South in the crisis of the approaching presidential campaign." Tins indicates the policy of the mischief-makers. Insist that it is a mistake to suppose that slavery is an evil, and wait for a chance to demand, with some show of force, as a matter of courtesy and of safety to the Union, the modifica- tion of the laws against the African slave trade. Then the Cuba game. The Florida jury, which lately had a slaver captain in their hands, published a card in which they pledged themselves to labor unremittingly for a " repeal of all laws which directly or indirectly condemn" the institution of slavery, or "those who have inherited or maintained it." They denominated the preju- dice which has existed against the business of importing Africans "a sickly sentiment of pretended philanthropy." Undoubtedly the African slave trade is yet protested against by many. It would be unjust and unkind to say that the lead- ing politicians of the South had adopted it, and were only EEMEDIAL MEASURES. 371 restrained from openly advocating it from a fear that by so doing they would open ground upon which a conservative party could rally. It is not unjust to say; it is certainly true that there is a necessity upon the South — a pressing necessity — a necessity of constantly increasing pressure, which, if not in some other way met, must inevitably lead to the renewed importation of Africans. Says a Virginian, addressing Elihu Burritt : "Europe needs it; every steamer brings us intelligence that efforts are to be made to produce more cotton. Tropical and semi-tropical products — some of them articles of prime necessity — are constantly increasing in price. Already sugar is so high that its consumption in Europe is becoming a luxury. Cotton is rising daily ; and no sugar or cotton lands are brought into cultivation. Nor can they, Tiiere is a want of labor to cultivate these lands. Give us more of the only kind of labor that will enable us to keep up the supply of the raw ma- terial, and the free labor of Europe and the North can find employ- ment, and consequently bread in its manufacture. Diminish the sup- ply of cotton, or let it not increase to keep pace with the demand, and you throw thousands out of employment, and bring starvation upon all manufacturing communities." "America needs it. The North needs it, as Western Europe does, for clothing, to furnish the raw material for manufacture. The South needs it to bring more laud into cultivation." This is the plain truth, and there is no avoiding it. The Afri- can slave trade may easily be made a more pressing necessity than it is at present by an enlargement of the field of slave occupation ; but it is already, to-day, a necessity more urgent than the Dred Scott decision was yesterday, than the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was the day before yesterday, than the Fugitive Slave Law was the day before that ; a necessity more imperative and obvious than the internal slave trade ever has been ; a neces- Bity less sincerely resisted, and by far less logically, less convinc- 372 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY ingly, by the politicians of the South to-day, than the inter-State slave trade was by those of the last generation.* For the politicians of the South it is a necessity which can no more be avoided than agitation can be avoided by those of the North. As, says Mr. Spratt, in concluding the article on the settlement of Kansas, from which I recently quoted : " The for- eign slave trade is the certain road to power [with the three fifths rule] for the South, and the only road to power within the Union."! Is dissolution or the slave trade, to be the next alternative pre- sented us by the politicians of the South ? I see not how any man in his senses, comprehensively viewing the whole ground, can escape from the conclusion, that, if not the next, it is but a few steps beyond it. Is there no ground on which a Union party can permanently stand at the South ? * "Both South Carolina and G-eorgia have at different times passed acts to prevent the internal slave trade. Governor Williams, of South Carolina, in his annual message to the Legislature of that State (1817) spoke of it as a * remorseless and merciless traffic, a ceaseless dragging along the highways of a crowd of suffering beings to minister to insatiable avarice, condemned alike by enlightened humanity, wise pohcy, and the prayers of the just.' " — Hildrefh, vol. vi., p. 614. f " It may be said that the slave trade can never be re-established within this Union. This may be true, perhaps, and we would regret the alternative thus presented to us. We have, with the northern States, a common inde- pendence, a common government and a common history, and we would re- gret tlie necessity for a separation ; but if we have a separate existence to defend, we must have the means by which we are to defend it ; if we have war within this Union for the preservation of our institutions, we must have within this Union the right to use our own natural implements of warfixre, or we must leave it. It is first necessary to see that we are right, to look at this great question of the slave trade, and see if, in fact, wo require its rees- tablishment, and if so, wo will demand its reestablishment within this Union, or we will reestablish it to ourselves," — Charleston Standard. REMEDIAL MEASURES. 373 There is. " Slavery shall, by general consent, be hereafter confined within Its present limits." There is no other. Is this ruin to the South ? Ruin to the present ruling politicians of the South, it per- haps is. WHAT MIGHT BE ANTICIPATED FROM A TERRITORIAL RESTRICTION OF SLAVERY. The necessity of the South really demands only cheaper labor and cheaper means of exchanging the results of labor. To re- strict the region within which slave labor may be employed, would, after the varying demands for labor of diflerent parts within the region had been equalized, check the further emigra- tion of slaves from any particular district. As the natural in- crease of neo^roes would then in a o-reat measure remain where it was born, any. given district would soon be better supplied than at present with laborers. (This tendency might be increased by legal restrictions on the transfer, or State exportation of slaves.) With a better provision of laborers, land would increase in pro- duction. With an increased production of each district, new facilities of transportation to the consumer would be required from that district. With a diminished cost of labor, these facili- ties could be more cheaply obtained ; with a larger amount to carry, more effective means of carriage could be provided with profit. With the cost of exportation, the cost of impoitation would be lessened. Articles of use, comfort and luxury, iutlud- ing tools and machinery, and the results of study in improved methods of agriculture, and in all industry, would be made more 374 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. accessible, cheaper and more common. This would act further, and constantly further and further, to lessen the cost of the labor necessary to obtain a given value of cotton or of any other pro- duction of the soil. The present facility of acquiring land in the cotton States, the capital needed for its purchase not exceeding, for fresh soil, on an average, three dollars an acre, and the large outlay of capital needed to obtain labor, necessarily induces that mode of agricul- ture which has desolated so large a portion of the seaboard slave States. Twenty slave laborers cost over t\Yenty thousand dol- lars.*^' They will cultivate four hundred acres of land, which costs less than a tenth of that sum. Knowing that he can buy as much more as he wants, at an equally low rate, why, when the production of his land decreases, should the slave owner drain it, or manure it, or "rest" it, or vary liis crops, to prevent further exhaustion ? It will cost twenty dollars' worth of labor to ma- nure an acre. Why make this expenditure when he can obtain other land at five dollars an acre, (fenced and ready for the plow,) which, without manure, will return just as much cotton for the same amount of labor (in cultivation merely) as this with it? Why, when on fresh soil he can get three hundred dollars' worth of cotton a year for each slave employed in cultivating it, should he apply that labor to some other crop on his old land which would return him not more than a hundred dollars for each slave * The following paragraph, from a North Carolma newspaper, gives the latest quotations: " We learn, through a friend, that on Monday last the following property was sold in Salisbury at the prices annexed : Leve, $1,600 ; George, $1,895 ; Charlotte and two children, $1,600 ; Henry, $1,476; Alick, $1,600; and Hiram, $2,130. The above prices show that negro property is not depreci- ating in value." REMEDIAL MEASURES. 375 employed? Why, in these circumstances, should he arrange to remain half his life on the same spot? and if he is not expecting to remain, why should he expend his costly labor on houses and roads and bridges and fruit trees, or on schools and churches, or on railroads and Avharves ? Fifteen years hencii his land will no longer be worth cultivating for cotton, and it will then afford no business to a railroad or a steamboat, and in the mean time the difference between wagoning and railing or boating his cotton to the merchant would do but little toward defraying the cost of a railroad or establishing a steamboat route. "In 1825, Madison County, [Alabama,] cast 3,000 votes; now, [1855,] it can not cast exceeding 2,500. * * The fresh- ness of its agricultural glory is gone; the vigor of its youth is extinct, and the spirit of desolation seems brooding over it." These are what the Hon. C, C. Clay, member of Congress from Alabama, describes as " memorials of the artless and exhausting culture of cotton" in the State he represents. But why thus artless and exhausting ? He himself gives the answer : " Our small planters, after taking the cream off their lands, * * * are going further West and South, in search of other virgin lands, which they will despoil and impoverish in a similar manner." And when they have done this, they fnlly anticipate going still further and further, and again and again repeating the process. Can the men who do this and who have these anticipations be expected to build railroads, or bridges, or schools, or churches? Can they, wanting nothing but corn, coffee, hogs, niggers, and camp furniture, support mechanics or merchants? Can they form by themselves a prosperous or respectable comnnmity ? Will the annexation of Sonora, of the whole of Mexico, Nicar- augua, Cuba, and the Amazon region enable them to do so ? 376 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. Except the African slave trade is reestablished, it will have^ and every southern gentleman knows it and will acknowledge it — directly the contrary influence. The first thing necessary to the prosperity of the South is, to make possible to its citizens the comforts of civilized life. To this is first essential the civil- ized idea of home ; and this will not be gained while the nomadic and vagabond propensities of its petty patriarchs continue to be stimulated by our government as they have been hitherto. OBJECTIONS. Practically, I have heard but one urged : that the danger of insurrection would increase. This supposes that a portion of the non-slaveholding population would remove to free territory, or at least that the slave population would increase more rapidly than the free. I believe that the counteracting element would soon be obvious, in the incoming of a " town population" of whites, which would follow from the greater abundance of raw material — the production of unskilled labor — and the better markets which an increasing density even of a plantation population would occasion. This could be insured, if thought necessary, by laws, for a time, prohibiting slave labor to be employed for any other purpose than the production of raw materials and in domestic duties, thus obliging planters to give employment to free, instead of using, as at present, slave mechanics. No one apprehends that a plan of general insurrection will be devised and successfully executed by negroes over a large extent of country. The danger is that the slaves will rise and make a temporarily successful stand in some of those districts in which the proportion of white inhabitants is the smallest, (it being now REMEDIAL MEASURES. S11 one man to a liundrcd slaves of both sexes, in some parts,) and that from such a success an insurrectionary contagion will be communicated to adjoining districts, in which the strength of the whites is otherwise sufficient to leave no room for appre- hension. There is now a law in several of the slave States, perhaps in all, which requires that there shall be at least one white man resident on ever}^ plantation. This law, while it recognizes the principle that each owner of slaves should be required to main- tain any arrangement that is deemed necessary by the legisla- ture for the safe control of his property, is very inadequate to its purpose, for precisely under the circumstances where danger is most to be apprehended, it posts the weakest guard. I have seen four adjoining plantations, the aggregate slave population of which was close upon one thousand, with but one overseer living on each, and these, together with one other, the only Avhite men within several hours' ride; all the land in the vicinity being, in fact, engrossed in these great plantations. In a region of small plantations there are not only more whites on the plantations themselves, proportionately to the number of blacks, but almost always resident, some families of non-slaveholding whites. Suppose that, instead of this inefficient law, it should be enacted that each owner of a plantation on which lived twenty- five slaves, should either himself reside, or should cause a white overseer to reside on each such plantation, and that for every twenty-five slaves, additional to the first twenty-five, he should cause another white man, as overseer or assistant overseer, to reside. Further : that each such owner or overseer, (one only for each plantation, however large,) should be held responsible to 378 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. the magistrates of the county for the prudent guardianship of said slaves ; that he should be required to report at stated inter- vals the number he had in charge, and any other particulars necessary to give confidence that a sufficient guard was main- tained. It would not be necessary that the assistants should be employed as overseers. They might be mechanics; tliey might be any poor whites already resident in the vicinity, who could be depended upon to be always within reach if wanted by the responsible overseer. Such a law would not only be far more effective than the pre- sent one, for the present circumstances, it would be equally so for a slave population of ten times the present average density ; because even though the white population should not increase proportionately, those classes of it which are now mainly relied upon to prevent insurrection, would be stronger, and more effec- tively stationed for the purpose.* It is, however, the opinion of students on the subject whose judgment is most respected at the South, that the slave population, if densely settled, would be less dangerous and more efficiently managed than as at present, even without any such precaution as I have suggested, and this opinion seems reason- able. The following is from a Memoir on Negro Slavery, written by Chancellor Harper, of Sonth Carolina, edited by Mr. * If to such a law there should be added a provision requiring that no one should be deemed an overseer, within the meaning of the act, who had not been certified by specified authorities to be a man of good character and of adequate intelligence and information for the legal duties to be imposed upon him, it would not only be a humane act toward the slaves, but would practically embody a well-distributed and trustworthy police force, vastly better for its purpose, and costing the community less than the present rural patrols. REMEDIAL MEASURES. 379 De Bow, of Louisiana, in which state it was published not ten years ago, while it is yet exposed for sale by booksellers in Mobile and Charleston, without causing their expulsion. Hence it may be inferred that the mob as yet really hold the same opinions : " President Dew," (whose writings have also escaped being placed on the Index Expurgatorium,) " President Dew," says Chancellor Harper, endorsed as to safety by Commissioner De Bow, '' has very fully shown how utterly vain are the fears of those who, though there may be no danger for the present, yet apprehend great danger for the future, when the number of slaves shall be greatly increased. He has shown that the larger and more condensed society becomes, the easier it will be to maintain subordination, supposing the relative numbers of the different classes to remain the same, or even if there should be a very disproportionate increase of the enslaved class." " When the demand for agricultural labor shall be fully supplied, then of course the labor of slaves will be directed to other employ- ments and enterprises. Already it begins to be found that, in some instances, it may be used as profitably in works of public improve- ment. As it becomes cheaper, it will be appUed to more various pur- poses, and combined in larger masses. It may be commanded and combined with more facility than any other sort of labor, and the laborer, kept in strict subordination, will be less dangerous to the security of society than in any other country which is crowded and overstocked wnth a class of what are called free laborers. Let it be remembered that all the great and enduring monuments of human art and industry — the w^onders of Egypt, the everlasting works of Rome, were created by the labor of slaves."* But the Egyptians and the Romans enjoyed the advantage of an unimpeded importation of slaves, when engaged in these works. It was a dense slave population only which made them possible ; and if the South is to rival them it must reopen the African slave trade, or put a check upon the dispersion of its laborers, which is thus shown to be as much a measure of safety as of glory. * Resources, Vol. ii., p. 233. 17 380 A JOURNEY. IN THE BACK COUNTRY. The alleged danger, on whicli is based tlie plea of the neces- sity of the South to extend slavery, I propose to yet further con- sider in the last chapter. I will now simply add that the advan- tages and the safety of a restriction of the territorial field of slave labor, and of other measures which, as I have suggested, migbt be employed for the same purposes, will be found much more fully and clearly set forth in any of the many able papers which have been published in South Carolina since the last presidential election in advocacy of the African slave trade. CHAPTER IX. CHARACTER AND MANNERS. FORMULA FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY. Since the growth of the cotton demand has doubled the value of slave labor, and with it the pecuniary inducement to prevent negroes from taking care of themselves, hypotheses and easy methods for justifying their continued slavery have been multiplied. I have not often conversed with a planter about the condition of the slaves, that he did not soon make it evident, that a number of these were on service in his own mind, naively falling back from one to another, if a few inquiries about matters of fact were addressed him without obvious argumentative pur- pose. The beneficence of slavery is commonly urged by an exposition not only of the diet, and the dwellings, and the jollity, and the devotional eloquence of the negroes, but also by demon- strations of the high mental attainments to which individuals are already found to be arriving. Thus there is always at hand some negro mathematician, who is not merely held to be far in advance of the native Africans, but who beats most white men in his quickness and accuracy in calculation, and who is at the same time considered to be so thoroughly trustworthy, that he is con- stantly employed by his master as an accountant and collecting agent; or some negro whose reputation for ingenuity and skill in the management and repair of engines, sugar-mills, cotton presses, 382 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. or other macliinery, is so well established that his services are more highly valued, throughout a considerable district, than any white man's ; or some negro who really manages his owner's plantation, his agricultural judgment being deferred to, as superior to that of any overseer or planter in the county. Scarcely a plantation did I visit on which some such representative black man was not acknowledged and made a matter of boasting by the owner, who, calling attention perhaps to the expression of intelligence and mien of self-confidence which distinguished his premium specimen, would cheerfully give me a history of the known special circumstances, practically constituting a special mental feeding, by which the phenomenon was to be explained. Yet it might happen that the same planter would presently ask, pointing to the brute-like countenance of a moping field hand, what good would freedom be to such a creature ? And this would be one who had been provided from childhood with food, and shelter, and clothing with as little consideration of his own therefor as for the air he breathed ; who had not been allowed to determine for himself with whom he should associate ; with what tools and to what purpose he should labor; who had had no care on account of his children ; who had no need to provide for old age; who had never had need to count five-and-twenty ; the highest demand upon whose faculties had been to discrimi- nate between cotton and crop-grass, and to strike one with a hoe without hitting the other; to whose intelligence, though hving in a civilized land, the pen and the press, the mail and the the telegraph, had contributed nothing ; who had no schooling as a boy ; no higher duty as a man than to pick a given quan- tity of cotton between dawm and dark ; and of whom, under this training and these confinements, it mio-ht well be wondered that FORMULA FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY. 383 ho was found aUe to understand and to speak the language of human intelligence any more than a horse. Again, one would assure me that he had witnessed in his own time an obvious advan.ce in the quality of the slaves generally ; they were more active, less stupid, employed a larger and more exact vocabulary, and w^ere less superstitious, obstinate, and per- verse in their habits of mind than when he was himself a boy ; but I had only to presume that, with this rapid improvement, the negroes would soon be safely allowed to take some step toward freedom, to be assured with much more apparent confi- dence than before, that in the special quality which originally made the negro a slave, there had been no gain ; that indeed it was constantly becoming more evident that he was naturally too deficient in forecasting capacity to be able to learn how to take civilized care of himself. As a rule, when the beneficence of slavery is argued by south- erners, an advancing intellectual as well as moral condition of the mass of negroes is assumed, and the high attainments of individuals are pointed to as evidence of what is to be expected of the mass, if the system is not disturbed. Suggest that any modification of the system would enlarge its beneficence, however, and an exception to the general rule, as regards the single quality of providence, is at once alleged, and in such a manner, that one can not but get the impression that, in this quality, the negro is believed to be retrograding as surely as he is advancing in everything else; and this is one method by which the unconditional perpetuation of the system, as it is, is justified. Such a justification must of course involve the supposition that in the tenth generation of an unremitted training, discipline, education, and custom in abject dependence upon a voluntary 384 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. provision by others, for every wish of which the gratification is permitted, white men would be able, as a rule, to gain in the quality of providence and capacity for independent self- support. As to the real state of the case, I find, in my own observation, no reason for doubting, what must be expected of those inter- ested, that the general improvement of the slave is usually some- what overrated, and his forecasting ability underrated. Measures intended to prevent a man from following his natural inclinations often have the eff'ect of stimulating those inclinations ; and I believe that the system which is designed not merely to relieve the negro from having any care for himself, but, as far as prac- ticable, to forcibly prevent him from taking care of himself, in many particulars to which he has more or less instinctive inclina- tion, instead of gradually suppressing this inclination, to some extent stimulates it, so that the southern negro of to-day, how- ever depraved in his desires, and however badly instructed, is really a man of more cunning, shrewdness, reticence, and per- sistence in what he does undertake for himself than his father was. The healthful use of these qualities (which would consti- tute providence) is, however, in general, successfully opposed by slavery, and, as far as the slave is concerned, nothing worse than this can be said of the system. Admitting that, in this view, slavery is not beneficent, or is no longer beneficent, or can be but for a time beneficent to the slave, the present attitude of the South still finds a mode of justification with many minds, in the broad assertion that the negro is not of the nature of mankind, therefore can not be a subject of inhumanity. This, of course, sweeps the field, if it does anything : thus, (from the Day-Book,) FORMULA FOK JUSTIFYING SLAYEKY. 385 " The wide-spread delusion that southern institutions are an evil, and their extension dangerous — the notion so prevalent at the North that there is a real antagonism, or that the system of the South is hos- tile to northern interests ; the weakened union sentiment, and the utter debauchment, the absolute traitorism of a portion of the northern peo- ple, not onl}^ to the Union, but to Democratic institutions, and to the cause of civilization on this continent ; all these, with the minor and most innumerable mischiefs that this mighty world-wide imposture has engendered or drags in its midst, rest upon the dogma, the single assumption, the sole elementary foundation falsehood, that a negro is a black man." This bold ground is not as often taken at the Soutli as by des- perate bidders for southern confidence among ourselves. I have heard Christian men, however, when pushed for a justification of the sealing up of the printed Bible, of the legal disregard of mar- riage, of giving power to rascally traders to forcibly separate fami- lies, and so on, refer to it as a hypothesis not at all to be scouted under such circumstances. Yet, as they did so, there stood behind their chairs, slaves, in whose veins ran more Anglo-Saxon blood than of any African race's blood, and among their other slaves, it is probable there were many descendants of Nubians, Moors, Egyptians, and Indians, all interbred with white and true negro tribes, so that it would be doubtful if there remained one single absolutely pure negro, to which animal alone their argument would strictly apply. If the right or expediency of denying the means of preparing themselves for freedom to these beings could even be held to be coexistent with the evident preponderance in them of certain qualities of form, color, etc., the number of those who are held unjustly or inexpediently in the bonds of a perpetual slavery is already quite large in the South, and is gradually but surely increasing — is increasing much more rapidly than are their means of cultivating habits which are necessary to be cul- 386 A JOUKXEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. tivated, before the manliest child of white men is capable of enj oy i ng freedom . There are but two methods of vindicating the habit of depend- ing on the labor of slaves for the development of wealth in the land, w^hich appear to me, on the face of them, entitled to be treated gravely. One of these, assuming the beings held in slavery to be as yet, generally incompetent to take care of them- selves in a civilized manner, and dangerous to the life as well as to the wealth of the civilized people who hold them in slavery, argues that it is necessary for their humane maintenance, and to prevent them from acquiring an increase of the disposition and strength of mind and will which has always been felt a source of danger to the well-being of their masters, that all the present laws for their mental repression should be rigidl}^ main- tained. It is not to be denied, I think, that there is some ground for this assumption. Inasmuch as it is also argued that the same necessity requires that these beings, and with them all these laws, should be carried on to territory now free from them, we are called upon to give a sober consideration to the argu- ment which is based upon it. This I shall do in the last chapter. The other method to which I refer assumes that by having a well-defined class set apart for drudging and servile labor, the remainder of a community may be preserved free from the de- meaning habits and traits of character which, it is alleged, servile and menial obligations and the necessity of a constant devotion to labor are sure to fix upon those who are subject to them. Hence a peculiar advantage in morals and in manners is believed to belong to the superior class of a community so divided. I am inclined to think that there is no method of justifying slavery, which is more warmly cherished by those in- FORMULA FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY. 387 terested to maintain it, than this. I am sure that there is none which planters are more ready to suggest to their guests.* No sensible man among us shuts his eyes to the ignorance, meanness, vice, and misery which accompanies our general pros- perity ; no class of statesmen, no politicians or demagogues, no writers deny or ignore it. It is canvassed, published, studied, struggled with, by all honest men, and this not in our closets alone, but in our churches, our legislatures, our colleges, our newspapers, our families. We are constantly urging, constantly using means for discovering it and setting it forth plainly. AVe commission able men to make a business of bringing it to the light, and we publish the statistics which their labors supply as legislative documents to be circulated at the genferal expense, in order that our misfortune may be as well known and as exactly comprehended as possible. * From an ^^ Address on Climatology^'" before the Academy of Science, by Dr. Barton, of New Orleans: — •'The institution of slavery operates by contrast and comparison; it ele- vates the tone of the superior, adds to its refinement, allows more time to cultivate tlie mind, exalts the standard in morals, manners, and intellectual endowments, operates as a safety-valve for the evil disposed, leaving the upper race purer, while it really preserves from degradation, in the scale of civilization, the inferior, which we see is their uniform destiny when left to themselves. The slaves constitute essentially the lowest class, and society is immeasurably benefited by having this class, which constitutes the offen- sive fungus — the great cancer of civilized life — a vast burthen and expense to every community, under surveillance and control ; and not only so, but under direction as an efficient agent to promote the general welfare and in- crease the wealth of the community. The history of the world furnishes no Institution under similar management, where so much good actually results to the governors and the governed as this in the southern States of North America." " It is by the existence of slavery, exempting so largo a portion of our citizens from labor, that we have leisure for intellectual pursuits.'' — Governor Hammond, in South. Literary Mess. 17^ 388 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTET. From mucli of all this, which so painfully and anxiously con- cerns ITS, we are told that the South is free. We are told that what we bewail is seen at the South to be the result of a mis- taken social system ; that the South escapes that result by slavery. We do not deny, we daily acknowledge that there are mistakes in our system ; we endeavor to remedy them ; and we not unfrequently have to acknowledge that in doing so, we have made some of our bad things worse. Does slavery relieve all ? And without compensation ? We often find, upon a thorough review, that our expedients, while they have for a time seemed to produce very valuable results, have in fact corrected one evil by creating or enhancing another. AVe have borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. In this way we find investigation and dis- cussion to be constantly- essential to prevent errors and mistakes from being exaggerated and persevered in unnecessarily. Thus we — our honestly humane part at least — are ever calling for facts, ever publishing, proclaiming, discussing the facts of our evil. It is only those whose selfish interest is thought by them- selves to be served by negligence, who resist investigation and publication, who avoid discussion. Thus we come to habitually associate much activity of discussion, much consideration, much publication with improvement — often no doubt erroneously — still it is natural and rational that when we find no discussion of facts, no publication, no consideration, where we find general consideration and general discussion practically prevented by a forcible resistance to publication, we can not but suspect there is something sadly needing to be made better. And this last we do find to be the case at the South, and with regard to slavery. Why, if their system has such tangible evidence of its advan- tages within the personal knowledge of any citizen, do they FORMULA FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY. .389 object to its alleged disadvantages being set forth for considera- tion, and, if it should happen, discussion ? True, we may be wrong, we may be mistaken in supposing that this, our constant publication and challenge to discussion is a good thing. Perhaps if we were better, we should talk less, know less of what evil remained to be gradually grown out of. It might be found that the constant consideration of our evil had had a bad effect upon us. But I have not found that the people of the South are inclined to shut their eyes, and close their ears, and bar their imaginations to the same evil. With the misery which prevails among us, southerners generally appear to be, indeed, more familiar than the most industrious of our home philan- thropists. Great as it is, it is really overestimated at the South — overestimated in the aggregate at least — for it is perhaps impos- sible to overestimate the sufferings of individuals. South of Vir- ginia, an intelligent man or woman is rarely met who does not maintain, with the utmost apparent confidence, that the people who do the work of the North are, on the whole, harder driven, worse fed, and more destitute of comfort than are the slaves at the South, taking an average of both classes ; and this I heard assumed by gentlemen, the yearly cost of maintaining whose own slaves, according to their statement to. me, would not equal the average monthly expenses of an equal number of the poorest class of laborers I have ever known at the North. I have heard it assumed by planters, who not only did not themselves enjoy, but who never imagined or aspired to a tithe of the comfort to which most journeymen mechanics whom I have known are habituated. I have heard it assumed by gentlemen, nine- tenths of whose neio-hbors for a hundred miles around them lived in a manner which, if witnessed at the North, would 390 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. have made them objects of compassion to the majority of our day-laborers. A gentleman coming up the Mississippi, just after a recent " Southern Commercial Convention" at Memphis, says : " For three days I have been sitting at a table three times a day op- posite four of the fire-eaters. * * * It was evident that they Avere sincere; for they declared to one another the behef that Providence was directing the South to recommence the importation of Africans, that she mig-ht lead the world to civilization and Christianity through its dependence upon her soil for cotton. All their conversation was consistent with this. They beheved the South the center of Chris- tianity and the hope of the world, while they had not the slightest doubt that the large majority of the people of the ISTorth were much more to be pitied than their own negroes. Exclusive of merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and politicians, they evidently imagined the whole population of the North to be quite similar to the poor white population of the South. Yet they had traveled in the North, it ap- peared. I could only conclude that their observation of northern working men had been confined to the Irish operatives of some half- finished western railroad, living in temporary shanties along the route." I have even found that conservative men, who frankly acknowl- edged the many bad eifects of slavery, and confessed the conviction that the northern slave States were mined by it ; men who ex- pressed admiration of Cassius Clay's course, and acknowledged no little sympathy with his views, and who spoke with more con- tempt of their own fanatics than of the Abolitionists themselves ; that such men were inclined to apologize fur slavery, and for their own course in acting politically for its extension and per- petuation, by assuming certain social advantages to exist where it prevailed. "There is a higher tone in southern society than at the North," they would say, " which is, no doubt, due to the greater leisure which slavery secures to us. There is less anx- iety for wealth, consequently more honesty. This also leads to FOEMTJLA FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY. 391 the habit of more generous living and of hospitality, which is so characteristic of the South." I think that there is a type of character resulting in a sec- ondary way from slavery, of which Mr. Clay is himself a noble example, which attracts admiration and aftection in a rare man- ner. I shall explain this secondary action of slavery by and by. I have come to the conclusion that whatever may be the good results of slavery in the way I shall then describe, this so con- stantly asserted, so generally conceded, of inducing a " higher tone" of breeding, and especially of nourishing the virtue of hospitality, is chimerical. Some reader may at once be inclined to say that the south- erners whom he has met are unquestionably better bred people than are common at the North, and that they state as their ex- perience that they do not find that hospitality, that honesty, that guilelessness of dealing one with another among the people of the North, to which they are accustomed at home. It would remain a question, whether the southerners whom the reader has met are of a common or an exceptional class ; whether it is to slavery, or to some other circumstance, they owe their breeding ; whether this other circumstance is dependent on slavery, or whether it may exist (and, if so, whether, when it does exist, it produces the same fruit), quite independently of slavery. It can not be said that there are no gentlemen and gentlewomen of first water in free countries. A comparison, then, nuist be a compai'ison of numbers. I shall, by and by, offer the reader some assistance in making a comparison of this kind. And if, as we hear, free-labor society is still an experiment, and one of the results of that experiment is to be found in the low condition of portions of our community, and it is by comparing this result 392 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. with the condition of the whites of the South that we must judge of the success of the experiment ; it may again be a ques- tion of numbers. As to experience of hospitality, that is not a question of quantity or of quality merely. I should wish to ask the reader's southern authorities, " where and with whom has your experience been, North and South ?" And if with a similar class and in similar circumstances, I should wish to ask further, " what do you mean by hospitality ?" In the previous chapter, I have shown that slavery does not prevent a condition of destitution of what at the North are deemed the ordinary comforts of civilized life, with a large part of the race supposed to be benefited especially by slavery ; whether it secures to it the supposed advantage in morals and manners remains to be considered. I tbink that the error which prevails in the South, with regard to the general condition of our working people, is much strengthened by the fact that a different standard of comfort is used by most persons at the South from that known at the North, and that used by northern writers. People at the South are content and happy with a condition which few accept at the North unless with great complaint, or with expressions of resignation such as are the peculiar property of slaves at the South. If, reader, you had been traveling all day through a country of the highest agricultural capability, settled more than twenty years ago, and toward nightfall should be advised by a considerate stranger to ride five miles further, in order to reach the residence of Mr. Brown, because Mr. Brown, being a well-to- do man, and a right good fellow, had built an uncommonly good house, and got it well furnished, had a score of servants, and being at a distance from neighbors, was always glad to enter- FORMULA FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY. 393 tain a respectable stranger — after hearing this, as you continued your ride somewhat impatiently in the evening chill, what con- solations would your imagination jfind in the prospect before you? My New England and New York experience would not forbid the hope of a private room, where I could, in the first place, wash off the dust of the road, and make some change of clothing before being admitted to a family apartment. This family room would be curtained and carpeted, and glowing softly with the light of sperm candles or a shaded lamp. When I entered it, I could expect that a couch or an arm-chair, and a fragrant cup of tea, with refined sugar, and wholesome bread of wheaten flour, leavened, would be off'ered me. I should think it likely that I should then have the snatch of Tannhauser or Trovatore, which had been running faintly in my head all day, fingered clearly out to my entire satisfaction upon a piano-forte. I should then look with perfect confidence to being able to refer to Shakespeare, or Longfellow, or Dickens, if anything I had seen or thought during the day had haply led me to wish to do so. I should expect, as a matter of course, a clean, sweet bed, where I could sleep alone and undisturbed, until possibly in the morning a jug of hot water should be placed at my door, to aid the removal of a traveler's rigid beard. I should expect to draw a curtain from before a window, to lift the sash without effort, to look into a gar- den, and fill my lungs with fragrant air ; and I should be certain when I came down of a royal breakfast. A man of these cir- cumstances in this rich country, he will be asking my opinion of his fruits. A man of his disposition can not exist in the country without ladies, and ladies can not exist in the country without flowers; and might I not hope for the refinement which decks even the table with them ? and that the breakfast would be a 394 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTEY. meal as well as a feed — an institution of mental and moral sus- tenance as well as of palatable nourishment to the body ? My horse I need harldly look after if he be a sound brute ; — good stables, litter, oats, hay, and water, grooming, and discretion in their use, will never be wanting in such a man's house in the country. In what civilized region, after such advice, would such thoughts be preposterous, unless in the slave States ? Not but that such men and such houses, such families and home comforts may be found In the South. I have found them — a dozen of them, delight- ful homes. But then in a hundred cases where I received such advice, and heard houses and men so described, I did not find one of the things imagined above, nor anything ranging with them. Between the Mississippi and the upper James River, I saw not only none of those things, received none of those attentions, but I saw and met nothing of the kind. Nine times out of ten at least, after such a promise, I slept in a room with others, in a bed which * stank, supplied with but one sheet, if with any ; I washed with utensils common to the whole household ; I found no garden, no flowers, no fruit, no tea, no cream, no sugar, no bread ; (for corn pone, let me assert, in parenthesis, though possibly, as tastes differ, a very good thing of its kind for ostriches, is not bread : neither does even flour, salt, fat, and water, stirred together and warmed, constitute bread ;) no curtains, no lifting windows (three times out of four absolutely no \viudows), no couch — if one reclined in the fomily room it was on the bare floor — for there were no carpets or mats. For all that the house swarmed with vermin. There was no hay, no straw, no oats (but mouldy corn and leaves of maize), no discretion, no care, no honesty at the there was no stable, but a log-pen ; and besides this, FORMULA FOE JUSTIFYING SLAYEEY. 395 110 other oiit-liouse but a smoke-house, a corn-house, and a range of nio-o-er-houses. I do not exaggerate ; I can not but err, if at all, from a wish to avoid all possibility of exaggeration. I say nothing more, I am sure, than is unquestionably and undeniably true, and exactly true, on this subject. I have avoided generalizations, which would cover more ground than I can speak of with confi- dence from personal experience. As to causes, we may differ ; as to facts, we can not ; for if the reader should be incredulous, I will presently give him the means of satisfying himself, that after the experience and observation of others, who can not be supposed prejudiced unfavorably to the condition and character of the people of the slave country, there is nothing improbable in what I say, namely : that in nine tenths of the houses south of Virgiuia, in which I was obliged, making all reasonable endeavor to find the best, to spend the night, there were none of these things. And most of these houses had been recommended to me by disinterested persons on the road as being better than ordi- nary — houses where they " sot up for travelers and had things." From the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of James, I did not (that I remember) see, except perhaps in one oi" two towns, a thermometer, nor a book of Shakespeare, nor a piano-forte or sheet of music ; nor the light of a carcel or other good center- table or reading-lamp, nor an engraving, or a copy of any kind, of a work of art of the slightest merit. Most of these houses were, I should also say, the mansions of "planters," "slave owners," "cotton lords" of the "southern aristocracy." But I need not ring the changes. If tlie word "planter" comes with the same associations to the reader which it would have formerly brought to my mind, T need say no more 396 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. of the different ideas which may be attached to the same words in the same great country. For when has the word " planter," in popular usage, been allowed to stand without the company of certain other words which hardly prepare most of us at the North for simple bacon and greens, pone and " coffee ;" which naked log-walls, swarming with bugs ; which naked " puncheon" floors; which feather beds, with but one sheet, in July, and windows without glass, in January, hardly satisfy with men and women who have got above rag-picking or charcoal-burning for their means of living at the North. It is my experience that the majority of "planters," however broad, generous, lavish, bounti- ful and luxurious may be their open-handed hospitality of char- acter, know of nothing better to which they can lift open their creaking doors in welcome to the stranger guest. Yet it is the popular opinion of the South, that the people who do the work of the North have less experience of comfort, not to say luxury, than these planters' " niggers." Now, if the reader finds my statements of the planters' real pov- erty incredible, or if he imagines ray experience a strangely unfor- tunate and exceptional one, I must beg him to review in connection the quotations given in full from southern authorities, and chiefly from the most determined defenders of slavery and advocates of its extension, southern born and southern bred, at pp. 166, 167, 172, 173, 274, 280, 289, 295, 506, 510, 511, 514, 518, 520, 533, 538, 544, 576, 707, 708, 709, 710, "Seaboard Slave States." Compared with these he will find that my statements have been made cautiously and with intentional moderation, that my hap- penings were fortunate, my experience favorable. Let him also consult Sir Charles Lyell, or the journal of any traveler who has ventured beyond hotels without letters to "first family" planters. FORMULA FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY. 397 I will here call upon just one more witness, whose evidence I cite at this point not merely because, in very few words, having refer- ence to the very heart of the planter's prosperity, it practically endorses all I have said, but for another reason which will pres- ently appear. "If one unacquainted with the condition of the Southwest were told that the cotton-growing district alone had sold the crop for fifty millions dollars for the last twenty years, he would naturally conclude that this must be the richest community in the world, * * * But what would be his surprise when told that so far from living in pal- aces, maay of these planters dwell in habitations of the most primitive construction, and these so inartificially built as to be incapable of de- fending the inmates from the winds and rains of heaven. That instead of any artistical improvement, tliis rude dwelling was surrounded by cotton fields, or probably by fields exhausted, washed into gullies, and abandoned ; that instead of canals, the navigable streams remain un- improved, to the great detriment of transportation ; that the common roads of the country were scarcely passable ; that the edifices erected for the purposes of learning and religion were frequently built of logs and covered [roofedj with boards." — J". 0. B. De Bow, Resources of the South, vol. ii. p. 113. Do a majority of northern working men dwell in habitations having no more elements of comfort, even taking difference of climate into consideration, than Mr. De Bow ascribes to the resi- dences of the slaves' owners ? No northern man can for a moment hold such an opinion. What, then, becomes of the theory by which the planters justify slavery to themselves and recommend it to usf If the ennobling luxuries which the institution of sla- very secures to the " superior class," and by which it is supposed to be "'qualified for the higher duties of citizenship," are, at the most, sugar, instead of molasses, in its coffee ; butter, with its pone; cabbage, with its bacon, and two sheets to its bed — and the trav- eler who goes where I traveled, month after month, with the same experience, can not help learning to regard these as luxuries indeed, — if " freedom from sordid and petty cares," and " leisure for intol- 398 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. lectual pursuits," means a condition approaching in comfort that of the keeper of a light-ship on an outer-bar, what is the exact value of such words as "hospitality," "generosity," and "gallan- try." What is to be understood from phrases in such common use as "high toned," "well bred," "generous," "hospitable," and so on, when used in argument to prove the beneficence of slavery and to advocate its extension ? OF SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY. " Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, after signalizing himself by two very wordy volumes, abounding in bitterness and prejudice of every sort, and misrepresentations upon the ' Seaboard Slave States,' finding how profitable such literature is in a pecuniary point of view^, and what a run is being made upon it throughout the entire limits of abolitiondom, vouchsafes us now another volume, entitled a ' Journey through Texas, or a Saddle-trip on the Southwestern Frontier.' Here, again, the op- portunity is too tempting to be resisted to revile and abase the men and the society whose open hospitality he undoubtedly enjoyed, and whom we have no doubt, like every other of his tribe travehng at the South, he found it convenient at the time to flatter and approve. We have now grown accustomed to this, and it is not at all surprising that here and there it is producing its effect in some violent exhibition of feeling like that displayed by our worthy old friend Dr. Brewer, of Montgomery count}^, Maryland, who persistently refuses, on all occa- sions, to allows a Yankee even to cross his fields, or like that of John Eandolpb, who said in the House, ' Mr. Speaker, I would not allow one of my servants to buy as much as a toot-horn from one of these people.' * * * " Somewhat further on the parties rest for the night. ' For this the charge was $1.25 to each person, including breakfast and horse-feed.' At the end of every page or two our tourist repeats these growlings over the enormous exactions. It is the refrain from one cover of the book to the other. What a series of martyrdoms. Could such a jour- ney by any possibility be made ' to pay ?' Perhaps, fritmd traveler, you had heard of the lavish hospitality of the South, and imagined that people there moved out upon the high road for the sole purpose of sharing the society which gentlemen, like yourself, could furnish, be- lieving every arrival to be an act of special providence ! When you offered to pay the w^oman on Red River, and ' feared she was offended by your otfering her money for her hospitaht}^,' you paid the highest comphment to the South, for heaven knows you would have had no such apprehension on the banks of the Connecticut." OF SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY. 399 I can not but be gratified that so much importance should have been attached to the preceding volume of this work as to induce the Superintendent of the Census to devote to its consid- eration a leading article in the first economico-political review of the country, and I can feel nothing but regret that he should be obliged to attribute to an unworthy niotive even those of my labo'^'s the result of which he does me the honor to designate as valuable and trustworthy. I have often had occasion to refer to Mr. De Bow, and I beheve have always done so in a manner con- sistent with the respect which I feel for the class of men among whom he has had the honorable ambition to rank himself. That a man while occupying a position which properly belongs to the most able and just-minded statistician in the country, should think it proper to write under his own name in the manner of which the above extracts are a sample, about a work which assumes to relate calmly and methodically, the result of a personal study of the condition of the people of a certain State, is a note-worthy circumstance in illustration of the present political history of our country. I cite them now, however, chiefly to show what need there is for a discussion upon which I propose to enter myself, little further than is necessary to enable me to clearly set forth certain facts, in their more important significance, the right of publishing which can hardly be denied me, in view of the insin- uations made by Mr. De Bow, who in this follows what has got to be a general custom of southern reviewers and journalists toward travelers with whose expressed judgments upon any matter observed within the slave States they differ. There are numerous homes in the South the memory of which I cherish tenderly. There are numbers of men in the South for whom I have a warm admiration, to whom I feel grateful, whose respect 400 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. I wish not to lose. There are others for whom I have a quite different feeling. Of a single individual of neither class have I spoken in these three volumes, I believe, by his true name, or in such a manner that he could be recognized, or his home pointed out by any one who had not been previously familiar with it and with him, being, as a rule, careful to so far differ from the actual order of the events of my journey in narrating them, that facts of private life could not be readily localized. From this rule I do not intend now to depart further than is necessary to exhibit the whole truth of the facts to which I have referred, but since the charge of ingratitude and indelicacy is publicly made against me, as it has frequently been of late against better men, on simi- lar grounds, I propose to examine those grounds in the light of certain actual experiences of myself and others, and let it be judged whether there must always exist a peculiar moral obliga- tion upon travelers to be mealy-mouthed as to the habits of the people of the South, either on account of hospitality or in recip- rocation of the delicate reserve which, from the tenor of Mr. De Bow's remarks, it might be supposed was habitually exercised in the South with regard to the habits of their own people. These experiences shall be both special and general. What immedi- diately follows is of the former class, but, in the end, it will be found to have a general significance. IN OLD VIRGINIA. On a hot morning in July a northern traveler left the town of Lynchburg, the chief market-town of Virginia tobacco, and rode eastwardly toward Farmville. Suddenly taken severely ill, and no house being in sight, he turned from the road into the shade of the wood, dismounted, reclined against a sturdy trunk, took OF SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY. 401 an anodyne, which he fortunately had with him, and at length found relief in sleep. Late in the day he awoke, somewhat re- covered, but with a sharp headache and much debilitated. He managed, however, to mount, and rode slowly on to find a shelter for the night. In half an hour the welcome sight of an old plantation mansion greeted his eyes. There was a large court, with shade trees and shrubbery between the road and the house, and iu the corner of this court, facing the road, a small ware- house or barn, in and around which were a number of negroes moving casks of tobacco. A white man, evidently their owner, was superintending their labor, and to him the traveler applied for lodging for the night. " We don't take in strangers." The traveler informed the planter of his illness and inability to ride further. " You'll have to try to ride as far as the next house, sir ; we don't take in travelers here," was the reply. " Really I don't feel able. I should not like to put you to in- convenience, sir, but I am weak and faint. My horse, too, has eaten nothing since early in the morning." " Sorry for you, but we have no accommodations for travelers here," was the only reply, and the planter stepped to the other side of a tobacco cask. The traveler rode on. About half an hour afterward he came in sight of another house. It was at a distance from the road, and to reach it he was obliged to let down and put up again three different sets of fence-bars. The owner was not at home, and his wife said that they were not accustomed to take in stran- gers. " It was not far to the next house," she added, as the trav- eler hesitated. 402 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. He reached, at length, the next house, which proved to be the residence of another large tobacco planter, who sat smoking in its veranda, as the traveler rode near and made his petition. " We don't take in travelers," was again his answer. The sick man stated his special claims to kindness, and the planter good-naturedly inquired the particulars, asked how far he had ridden, where he got his horse and his dog, whither he was bound, and so on (did not ask where he was born or what were his politics). The traveler again stated that he was ill, unable to ride further, and begged permission to remain for the night under the planter's roof, and again the planter carelessly replied that they didn't take in travelers ; anon, asked how crops were look- ing further west, and talked o-f guano, the war news, and the prospect for peaches. It became dusk while the traveler lingered, and the negroes came in with their hoes over their shoulders from the fields across the road, but the planter continued chatting and smoking, not even offering the traveler a cigar, till at length the latter said, " If you really can not keep me to-night I must go on, sir ; I can not keep my horse much longer, I fear." " It is not far to the next house." " But I have already called at three houses to-night, sir." "Well, you see, since the railroad was done, people here don't reckon to take in travelers as they once did. So few come along they don't find their account in being ready for them." The traveler asked for a drink of water, which a negro brought in a calabash, bade good night to the planter, and rode on through the woods. Night presently set in ; the road crossed a swamp and w^as difficult to follow, and for more than an hour he rode on — seeing no house — without stopping. Then crossing water, he deliberated whether he should not bivouac for the nio-ht where OF SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY. 403 he was. He had with him a few biscuits and some dried figs. He had not eaten hitherto, hoping constantly to come to a habi- tation where it might happen he could get a cnp of tea, of which he felt more particularly in need. He stopped, took some nour- ishment, the first he had tasted in fifteen hours, and taking also a little brandy, gained strength and courage to continue his jour- ney. A bright light soon cheered him, and after a time he made his way to a large white house, in the rear of which was an old negro woman stirring the contents of a cauldron which stood over the fire, by which he had been guided. The old woman had the appearance of a house servant, and he requested her to ask her master if he would favor him with lodging for the night. "Her master did not take in travelers," she said, "besides, he was gone to bed ;" and she stirred on, hardl}^ looking at the trav- eler till he put his hand in his pocket, and, holding forth silver, said, "Now, aunty, mind what I tell you. Do you go in to your master and say to him, ' There is a gentleman outside who says he is sick, and that his horse is tired and has had nothing to eat to-day; that he is a stranger and has been benighted, don't know the roads, is not well enough to ride further, and wants to know if you won't be so kind as to let him stay here to-night.' " "Yes, massa,ril tell him; twon't do no good, though, and he'll be almighty cross." She went in, returned after a few minutes, seized her paddle, and began stirring before she uttered the words, " Says yer ken go on to de store, he reckon." It was after ten o'clock when the traveler reached the next house. It stood close upon the road, and the voice of a woman 18 404 A JOUENEY IN THE BACK COUNTKY. answered a knock upon tlie door, and in reply to the. demand, said it was not far to the store, and she reckoned they accommo- dated travelers there. Finally, at the store, the traveler succeeded in getting admit- tance, was comfortably lodged and well entertained by an amiable family. Their kindness was of such a character that he felt in the position of an invited guest, unable to demand and unwilling to suggest any unvolunteered service. There was no indica- tion that the house was an inn, yet the traveler's experience left him little room to hesitate to offer money, nor Avas there the slightest hesitation on the part of the storekeeper in naming the amount due for the entertainment he had, or in taking it. If the reader will accept the travelers judgment of himself, he will assume that there was nothing in his countenance, his dress, his language, or his bearing, by which he could readily be distinguished from a gentleman of southern birth mid education, and that he was not imagined to be anything else, certainly not on his first inquiry, at an}^ one of the plantations where he was thus refused shelter. So far as this inhospitality (for this is, I think, what even the southern reader will be inclined to call it) needed explana- tion, it was supposed to be sufficiently given in the fact that the region had, by the recent construction of a railrorsd through it, approximated the condition of a w^ell-settled and organized com- munity, in which the movements of travelers are so systematized, that the business of providing for their wants, as a matter of pecuniary profit, can no longer be made a mere supplement of another business, but becomes a distinct occupation. This, then, but a small part of the whole land being thus SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY. 405 affected by railroads, was an exception in the South. True; but what is the rule to which this is the exception ? Mr. De Bow says, that the traveler would have had no appre- hension that the offer of money for chance entertainment for the night furnished him at a house on the banks of the Connecticut, would give ofiense ; yet in the Connecticut valley, among peo- ple having no servants, and not a tithe of the nominal wealth of the Red Kiver planter, or of one of these Virginia planters, such has been a frequent experience of the same traveler. Nor has he ever, when calling benighted at a house, anywhere in the State of Connecticut, far from a public house, escaped beiug in- vited with cordial frankness to enjoy such accommodation as it afforded ; and this, he is fully convinced, without any thought in the majority of cases of pecuniary remuneration. In several instances a remuneration in money has been refused in a manner which conveyed a reproof of the ofier of it as indelicate ; and it thus happens that it was a common experience of that, of the possibility of which Mr. De Bow is unable to conceive, that led in no small degree to the hesitation upon which this very com- ment was made. This simple faith in the meanness of the people of the North, and especially of New England, is no eccentricity of Mr. De Bow's. It is in accordance with the general tone of literature and of conversation at the South, that penuriousness, disin- genuousness, knavish cunning, cant, and hypocrisy, are assumed to be the prevailing traits by which they are distinguished from the people of the South — not the poor people of New England from the planters of the South, but the people generally from the people generally. Not the tone of the political literature and of the lower class of the South, but of its wealthy class, very gen- 406 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. erally, really of it& " better class." Mr. De Bow is himself the associate of gentlemen as well informed and as free from narrow- prejudices as any in the South. No New England man, who has traveled at the South, would be surprised, indeed, if^ at a table at which he were a guest, such an assumption as that of Mr. De Bow should be apparent in all the conversation ; that the gist of it should be supposed to be so well understood and gen- erally conceded^ that he could not be annoyed by its plainest statement. I need hardly say that this reference to Mr. De Bow is con- tinued, not for the purpose of vindicating the North any more than myself from a mistaken criticism. I wish only to demon- strate how necessary it must soon be to find other means for saving the Union than these common-place flatteries of southern conceit and apologies for southern folly, to which we have not only become so accustomed ourselves, as to hardly believe our eyes when we are obliged to meet the facts (as was my own case), but by which we have so successfully imposed upon our friends, that a man like Mr. De Bow actually supposes that the common planters of the teeming and sunny South, are, as a rule^ a more open-handed, libcraly and hospitable class than the hard- working farmers of the bleak and sterile hills of New England ; so much so, that he feels warranted not merely in stating facts within his personal knowledge, illustrating the character of the latter and arguing the causes, but in incidentally referring to their penuriousncss as a matter of proverbial contempts Against tli-is mistake, which, I doubt not, is accomplishing constant mis- chief to our nation, I merely oppose the facts of actual experi- ence. I wish to do so with true respect for the good sense of the South. SOUTHEEN HOSPITALITY. 407 IN GENERAL. Presenting myself and known only in the cliaracter of a chance traveler, most likely to be in search of health, entertain- ment and information, usually taken for and treated as a south- erner, until I stated that I was not one, I journeyed nearly six months at one time (my second journey) through the South. During all this journey, I came not oftener than once a week, on an average, to public houses, and was thus generally forced to seek lodging and sustenance at private houses. Often it was refused me ; not unfrequently rudely refused. But once did I meet with what northern readers could suppose Mr. De Bow to mean by the term (used in the same article), "free road-side hospitality." Not once with the slightest appearance of what Noah Webster defines hospitality, the " practice of receiving or entertainiiio- strano-ers without reward." Only twice, in a journey of four thousand miles, made inde- pendently of public conveyances, did I receive a night's lodging or a repast from a native southerner, without having the exact price in money which I was expected to pay for it stated to me by those at whose hands I received it. If what I have just narrated had been reported to me before I traveled in the manner I did in my second journey at the South, I should have had serious doubts of either the honesty or the sanity of the reporter. I know, therefore, to what I subject my- self in now giving my own name to it. I could not but hesitate to do this, as one would be cautious in acknowledging that he believed himself to have seen the sea-serpent, or had discovered a new motive power. By drawing out the confidence of other travelers, who had chanced to move through the South in a 408 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. manner at all similar, however, I have had the satisfaction of finding that I am not altogether solitary in my experience. Even this day I met one fresh from the Sonthwest, to whom, after due approach, I gave the article which is the text of these observations, asking to be told how he had found it in New England and in Mississippi. He replied : " During four winters, I have traveled for a business purpose two months each winter in Mississippi. I have generally spent the night at houses with whose inmates I had some previous acquaintance. Where I had business transactions, especially where debts v/cre due me, which could not be paid, I sometimes neglected to offer payment for my night's lodging, but in no other case, and never in a single instance, so far as I can now recollect, where I had offered payment, has there been any hesitation in taking it. A planter might refrain from asking payment of a traveler, but it is universally expected. In New England, as flir as my limited experience goes, it is not so. I have known New England farmers' wives take a small gr-atuity after lodging travelers, but always with apparent hesitation. I have known New England farmers refuse to do so. I have had some experience in Iowa ; money is there usually (not always) taken for lodging travelers. The principal difference between the custom at private houses there and in Alabama and Mississippi being, that in Iowa the farmer seems to carefully reckon the exact value of the produce you have consumed, and to charo-e for it at what has often seemed to me an absurdly low rate ; while in Mississippi, I have usually paid from four to six times as much as in Iowa, for similar accommodations. I consider the usual charges of planters to travelers extortionate, and the custom the reverse of hospitable. I knew of a Kentucky gentleman traveling from Eutaw to G-reensboro [twenty miles] in his own conveyance. He was taken sick at the crossing of the Warrior River. It was nine o'clock at night. He averred to me that he called at every plantation on the road, and stated that he was a Kentuckian, and sick, but was refused lodg- inpf at each of them." This the richest county of Alabama, and the road is lined with valuable plantations. The following is an extract from a letter dated Columbus, Mis- sissippi, November 24, 1856, published in the London Daily Ncivs. It is written by an Englishman traveling for commercial SOUTHERN HOSriTALTTY. 409 purposes, and tells what he has learned by experience of the cus- tom of the country : "It is customary in traveling through this country, where towns ai-e few and taverns scarce and vile, to stop at the planters' houses along the road, and pay for your bed and board in the morning just as if you had staid at an inn. The custom is rather repugnant to our Old World notions of hospitality, but it appears to me an excellent one for Ijoth the host and his guest. The one feels less bored by demands upon his kindness, as soon as it ceases to be merely a kindness to couiply with them, and the other has no fear about intruding or being trouble- some when he knows he will have to pay for his entertainment. It is rarely, however, that the entree can be obtained into the houses of wealthy planters in this way. They will not be bothered by your visits, and if you apply to them, have no hesitation in politely pass- ing you on to such of their neighbors as have less money or more generosity." The same writer afterwards rehites the following experi- ence : " About nineteen miles from Canton, I sought lodging at nightfall at a snug house on the roadside, inhabited by an old gentleman and his two daughters, who possessed no slaves and grow no cotton, and whose two sons had been killed in the Mexican war, and who, with the loudest professions of hospitality, cautiously refrained from giving himself any personal trouble in support of them. He informed me that there was corn in the husk in an almost inaccessible loft, there was fodder in an un-get-at-able sort of a cage in the yard, water in a cer- tain pond about half a mile off, and a currycomb in a certain hole in the wall. Having furnished me wdth this intelligence, he left me to draw my own conclusions as to wliat my conduct ought to be under the circumstances." A naturalist, the author of a well known standard work, wlio has made sevcrd tours of observation in the slave States, lately confided to me that he believed that the popular report of south- ern hospitality must be a popular romance, for never, during all his travels in the South, liad he chanced to be entertained for a single night, except by gentlemen to whom he was formally pre- sented by letter, or who had previously been under obligations to 410 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. liim, without paying for it in moiie}", and to an amount quite equal to tire value received. By the wealthier, a night's enter- tainment had been frequently refused him, under circumstances which, as must have been evident to them, rendered his further progress seriously inconvenient. Once, while in company with a foreign naturalist — a titled man — he had been dining at the inu of a small county-town, when a certain locally distinguished judge had seen fit to be eloquent at the dinner-table upon the advan- tages of slavery in maintaining a class of "high-toned gentle- men," referring especially to the proverbial hospitality of south- ern plantations, which he described as quite a bewilderment to strangers, and nothing like which was to be found in any coun- try unblessed with slavery, or institutions equivalent to it. It so happened that the following night the travelers, on approaching a plantation mansion in quest of lodging, were surprised to find that they had fallen upon the residence of this same judge, who recognized them, and welcomed them and bade them be at home. Embarrassed by a recollection of his discourse of hospi- tality, it was with some difhculty that one of them, when they were taking leave next morning, brought himself to inquire what he might pay for the entertainment they had received. He was at once relieved by the judge's prompt response, "Dollar and a quarter apiece, I reckon." It is very true that the general custom of the South which leads a traveler to ask for a lodging at any private house he may chance to reach near nightfall, and to receive a favorable answe? not merely as a fovor but as a matter of business, is a convenient one, is one indeed almost necessary in a country so destitute of villages, and where, oft" certain thorough ftires of our merchants, there are so few travelers. It is a perfectly respectable and en- OF SOUTHERN BKEEDING. 411 tirely sensible custom, but it is not, as it is commonly ixspresented to be, a custom of hospitality, and it is not at all calculated to induce customs of hospitality with the mass of citizens. It is calculated to make inhospitality of habit and inhospitality of character the general rule ; hospitality of habit and of character the exception. Yet the common misapplication of the word to this custom is, so far as I can ascertain, the only foundation of the arrogant assumption of superiority of character in this respect of the southerners over ourselves — the only ground of the claim that slavery breeds a race of more generous and hospitable citi- zens than freedom. OF SOUTHERN BREEDING. The difficulty of giving any thing like an intelligent and exact estimate of the breeding of any people or of any class of people is almost insurmountable, owing to the vagueness of the terms which must be used, or rather to the quite different ideas which difterent readers will attach to these terms. The very word which I have employed to designate my present subject has itself such a varied signification that it needs to be defined at the outset. I mean to employ it in that sense wherein, according to Webster, it covers the ground of " nurture, instruction, and the formation of manners." It is something more than "manners and customs," then, and includes or may include qualities which, if not congenital, are equally an essential part of character with those qualities which are literally in-bred of a man. Such qualities are mainly the result of a chiss of circumstances, of the influence of which upon his character and manners a man, or a child grow- ing to a man, is usually unconscious, and of which he can not be independent if he would. 412 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. The general difficulty is increased in dealing with the people of the slave States, because amono; themselves all terms definino; social rank and social characteristics are applied in a manner which can be understood only after considerable experience ; and also because the general terms of classification, always in- complete in their significance, fail entirely with a large class of southerners, whose manners have some characteristics which would elsewhere be thouo-ht "hioch bred," if thev had not other which are elsewhere universally esteemed low and ruffianly. I do not feel myself competent, therefore, to thoroughly analyze southern breeding ; but I propose, while giving my im- pressions for what they may be considered worth, and claiming but little value for them, to demonstrate clearly the error of cer- tain views on this subject, which have been popularly held at the South, and are still advanced with great confidence by many writers and orators. There are undoubted advantages resultino- from the effects of slavery upon the manners of some persons. The same results to manners, the same sort of breeding, I have thought that I perceived to have arisen in the free States, where a family has been educated with every advantage which wealth would be likely to secure, when judiciously used, in a frontier community. There is boldness, directness, largeness, confidence, with the eftect of t'he habitual sense of superiority to most of the commu- nity ; not superiority of wealth, and power from wealth merely, but of a mind well-stocked and refined by such advantages of education as only very unusual wealth can procure in a scat- tered and frontier community. When to this is added the effect of visits to the society of the wealthy of denser communi- ties; when refined and polished manners are grafted on a OF SOUTHERN BREEDING. 413 uatural, easy abandon ; when there is high culture without eftem- inacy either of body or mind, as not unfrcquently happens, "vve find a peculiarly respectable and agreeable sort of men and women. They are the result of frontier training under the most favorable circumstances. In the class furthest removed from this on the frontier — people who have grown up without civilized social restraints or encouragements, and always under what in a well- conditioned community would be esteemed great privations — happens, on the other hand, the most disagreeable specimen of mankind that the world breeds ; men of a sort almost peculiar to America and Australia ; border ruffians, of whom the "rowdies" of our eastern towns are tame reflections. Cooper has well described the first class in many instances. I know of no picture of the latter which represents them as detestable as I have found them. The whole South is maintained in a frontier condition by the system which is apologized for on the ground that it favors good breeding. This system, at the same time, tends to concen- trate wealth in a few hands. If there is wisdom and great care in the education of a family thus favored, the result Avhich we see at the North, under the circumstances I have described, is frequently reproduced. This is the whole story of tlie advantages of slavery on manners. There are many more such fruits of frontier life at the South than the North, because there is more frontier life. There is also vastly more of the other sort, and there is everything between, which degrees of wealtli and degrees of good fortune in education would be expected to occasion. Tlie bad breed of the frontier, at the South, however, is probably far w^orse than that of the North, because any effort toward something better which it may be inclined to make, is so effectually snubbed 414 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. in most cases by tlie tendencies described in a former chapter and because the frontier condition of the South is everywhere per- manent. The child born to-day on the northern frontier, in most cases, before it is ten years old, will be living in a well organized and tolerably well provided commuuity; schools, churches, libraries, lecture and concert halls, daily mails and printing presses, shops and machines in variety, having arrived within at least a day's journey of it ; being always within an in- fluencing distance of it. There are improvements, and commu- nities loosely and gradually cohering in various parts of the South, but so slowly, so feebly, so irregularly, that men's niinds and habits are knit firm quite independently of this class of social influences. There is one other grand ruling characteristic of the south- erner, which I here state as a fact, without pretending to state it clearly, and without undertaking to account for it, merely observ- ing that it is far more decided than the diff"erence of climate merely would warrant. It is intensity of impulse — willfulness. Every wish of the southerner is, for the moment at least, more imperative than of the northerner, every belief more undoubted, every hate more vengeful, every love more fiery. Hence, for instance, the scandalous fiend-like street fights of the South. If a young man feels oftended with another, he does not incline to a ring and a fair stand-up set-to, like a young Englishman ; he will not attempt to overcome his opponent by logic ; he will not be content to vituperate, or to cast ridicule upon him ; he is impelled straightway to kill him with the readiest deadly weapon at hand, and with as little ceremony and pretense of fair combat as the loose organization of the people against vio- lence will allow. He seems crazy for blood. Intensity of per- OP SOUTHERN KEEEDING. 415 sonal pride — pride in anything a man has, or which connects itself with him, is more commonly evident; hence intense parti- sanship; hence rashness and overconfidence ; hence visionary ambition; hence assurance and violence in debate ; hence assur- ance in society : no matter how ignorant, how out of place, self- assurance seldom fails — partisan assurance, never. As self- appreciation is equally with deference a part of what we call good breeding, and as the expression of deference is much more easily reduced to a matter of manners and forms, in the common- place intercourse of society, than self-appreciation, this character- istic quality of the southerner needs to be borne in mind in con- sidering the port and manners he commonly has, and judging from them of the eftects of slavery. What a man shows that he thinks of himself is certainly of considerable consequence in esti- mating his value to others. But it is not every thing, or most essential. What he washes to be, labors to be, is, perhaps, of more consequence, and this is not to be as quickly and as cer- tainly understood from his own presentation of himself. This much I have written in explanation of what is usually assumed by southerners to be the common opinion of the supe- rior breeding of the South. I svill now consider wliat is the general fiict. In the North, at the Revolution, we scarcely had a distinct class corresponding to the lowest white class of Virginia, as de- scribed by Jefferson, our laborers being less ignorant and coarse in their habits, and associating mi"ich more familiarly with their betters. We have now a class more nearly corresponding to it, furnished by the European peasant immigration. It is, however, a transient class, somewhat seldom including trvo generations, and, on an average, I trust, not one. It is, therefore, practically 416 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. not an additional class, but, overlooking the aged and diseased, a supplement to our lowest normal class. Out of twenty Irisli proletaires, of whose history for five years after their arrival and removal to the country 1 have been intimately cognizant, only two, both of whom were over fifty years of age, have lived out that period without beginning to acquire wealth and becoming superior in their ambition and habits to the lowest order, which I believe to include a majority of the whites in the plantation districts of the South.* Our lowest class, therefore, has a higher standard than the lowest class of the slave States. This, I un- derstand, is made very evident w^here the two come together at the West, as in southern Illinois. The very poorest and lowest New England women who go there, are frequently off'ended by tlie inconsiderate rudeness and coarseness of the women immi- grating from the South, and shocked by their "shiftless," com- fortless, vagrant habits, so much so that families have often re- moved, after having been once established, to escape being bored and annoyed by their southern-born neighbors. Referring to the lowest class, North and South, as the fourth, I class as third, the lowest rank in society, North or South, in which regard is had by its members to the quality of their asso- ciates from other than moral motives, or the prejudices of locality, race, sectarianism, and politics. In other words, that in which there is a distinct social selectiveness and pride. I think that everywhere in the free States men of this class would almost universally feel their position damaged — be a little ashamed — if * I fear that it must be confesed that this general rule has now a multi- tude of exceptions in our large towns, where, in New York, especially, we seem taking some.pains to form a permanent lower class. With the present great and apparently permanent falling oir in the European emigration, it can hardly last, however. OF SOUTHERN BREEDING. 417 obliged to confess tliat they did not take a newspaper, or were unable to read it with a clear understanding of the intelligence it was intended to communicate. Allusions to the main facts of American history, to any clause of the Bible, to the provisions of the Constitution, and the more important laws, State and na- tional, would be understood in most cases by those whom I refer to as the third class in northern society. In few families of this class would you fail to find some volumes of the English poets, or some works of great novelists or renowned travelers. Nothing like this would you find in the third class at the South. The ratio of the number of the citizens who can not read at all to the whole, appears, by the census returns, to be only three times larger at the South than at the North. I believe it to be much greater at the South than these returns indicate.* The comparative cultivation of the third class "North" and of the third class " South," however, can not be at all judged from these statistics, supposing them correct. Those who can read and who do not read, or whose reading is confined within extremely nar- row limits, are a much larger number at the South than at the North, owing to the much poorer supply of books and news- papers which commerce can afford to put within the reach of the former. The census returns two million newspapers, for instance, printed annually in Virginia, one hundred and fifteen million in * The ratio of white illiterate to white population, per cent, as returned, . ( free States, 3.36 ^ ^, ^. , ^. , , , , . . IS, -j " R 97 ^ ^° native population, over twenty years old, it is. \ ^[^"^ ^^t^^^' ^tll (Census Compendium, pp. 152, 163.) The ability to ' ( slave " 17.23 merely read and write may itself be of little value, but 'the fact of a child's having had the pains-taking necessary to so far instruct him is in some de- gree a means of measuring his other inherited wealth, and thus his breeding. 418 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. New York. Tliere is a post office to every fourteen square miles in New York, one to forty-seven square miles in Virginia ; over five hundred publishers and booksellers in New York, but forty in Virgina. Thirty thousand volumes in public libraries in Vir- ginia, eight "hundred thousand in New York. The area occupied by the population of Virginia being much the largest, it may be inferred that with the disposition and the ability to read any thing in particular, the Virginian of the third class will have to travel more than thirty times as far as the New Yorker to procure it. The same proposition will hold good in regard to most other means of cultivation, and the third class of the South generally has seemed to me to be as much more narrow-minded, rude, coarse, "dangerous," and miserable, than the third class of the free States, as the most sanguine friend of popular education could anticipate from these facts. The great difference in character between the third class of the South and that of the North, as indicated by their respective manners, is found in the much less curiosity and ready intelligent interest in matters which have not an immediate personal bearing in that of the South. Apathetic carelessness rather than simple indifference, or reckless incivility as to your comfort, is what makes the low southerner a disagreeable companion. It is liis impertinent shrewdness which makes you wish to keep the Yankee at a distance. The first seems without object, spiritless ; the latter keen to better himself, if with nothing else, with in- formation which he can draw from you, and by gaining your good opinion. The next or second class would include, both North and South, those with whose habits and character I am most fi\miliar, and of whom I can speak with the best right to confidence, It would OF SOUTHERN BREEDING. 419 include in New England and New York the better educated far- mers — these owning, I should say, half the agricultural land — the permanently established manufacturers and merchants of moderate capital ; most of the shop-keepers and the better-educated master mechanics and artisan foremen ; most of the preachers, physi- cians, and lawyers (some ranking higher). It would correspond most nearly to what in England would be called the lower-middle class, but any higher grade being very ill-defined, existing dis- tinctly but in few localities, and rarely recognized as existing at all, it is in a great measure free from the peculiar vulgarity of its English parallel. The number of those at the South who correspond in educa- tion and refinement of manners and habits to the average of this class of the North, it will be evident, from a similar mode of reasoning to that before employed, must be very much smaller rela- tively, either to the territory or the whole white population of their respective regions. In the comparison commonly made by southern writers be- tween the condition of the people of a sparsely-settled country and another, it is usually assumed that the advantages of the latter are confined exclusively to towns, and to large and crowded towns. By contrasting the evils which concentrate in such towns with the favorable circumstances of life, where at least wood, water, and air arc abundant, and corn is usually compara- tively cheap, an argument of some force to ignorant people is easily presented. The advantages possessed by a people living in communities, or in moderately well occupied rural districts, who are even more free from the evils of great towns than their own people, are entirely overlooked by most southern writers. Such is the condition, however, of more white people in the free 420 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. States than tlie whole white population of the shive States. A majority of our farmers' daughters can walk from their dwellings to schools of a quality such as at the South can be maintained not twice in five hundred square miles. These schools are prac- tically a part of their homes. Probably, in more than half the families of the South, the children of which are instructed to the least degree which would be considered "respectable," among this second class of the North, private governesses are obliged to be emploj^ed, or the children must be for many years at boarding-schools. We all know that the young women who go to the South, to meet the demand thus occasioned for home education, are not generally, though they may be in cases, our own most esteemed and successful instructresses ; and we also know from their report that their skill and labor has necessarily to be long chiefly employed in laying those simple foundation habits of instriictahiUtij^ which our northern children acquire imperceptibly from association with those of the neighborhood slightly in advance of them. Churches and the various sub- organizations centering in them, in which class distinctions are much lost sight of, to the great advantage of the manners of the lower classes, and little chance of injury to the higher; libraries, literary societies, lecture arrangements, dramatic and musical, art and scientific entertainments, and also highly educated profes- sional men, with whom, for various purposes, many persons are brought often in contact, are correspondingly more frequent at the North, correspondingly more accessible ; in other words, the advantages to be derived from them are cheaper, and so more influential on the manners of the people at large. The common opinion has been that the southerners or plant- ers of the class now under consideration, are more social, more OF SOUTHERN BREEDING. 421 generous, more heartily kind and genial than northerners. Ac- cording to my experience, the reverse of all this is true, as a general rule. Families live so isolatedly at the South, that any social contact, out of the family, is of course much more eventful and stimulating than it is ordinarily at the North, and this accounts for the common opinion. I could not but thinh, how- ever, that most persons at the South looked to the voluntary good offices and conversation of others, both within and without their families, for their enjoyment of the world, much less than most at the North. It may be that when in towns they attach a greater value to, and are more careful to make use of the opportunities for social gathering afforded by towns, than are northerners. In towns they attach more consequence to forms, are more scru- pulous in matters of etiquette, more lavish in expenditure for dress, and for certain other things which are the signs of luxury rather than luxury itself, such as plate and fancy brands of wines. They make less show of fine art, and less pretense of artistic judgment. As to manner or deportment simply, with the same impulse and intention, that of the southerner will be best, more true, more quiet, more modestly self-assured, more dignified. I have said that the second class at the North is without the pervading vulgarity of the class to which it most nearly corresponds in England, the reason being that those which constitute it seldom wish or attempt to appear to belong to a superior class, not clearly recognizing a superior class. Individuals, however, very gen- erally have a strong desire to be thought better infoi-med, more ingenious, more witty, as well as more successful in their enter- prises than they are, and this stamps them with a peculiar quality of manners vulgarity called "smartness," the absence of 422 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. which makes southern men and women generally much more agreeable companions than northerners of the same degree of education and accomplishments in other respects. Not but that snobs abound ; of these it will be more convenient to speak under the next division, however. We have next to consider the somewhat famous First Families. The traditional " family," stately but condescendinir, haughty but jovial, which has long kept open house for all comers on the old plantations of Virginia or South Carolina, is not wholly a myth. There really was something which, with some sort of pro- priety, could be termed a gentry in Carolina and Yirgina in their colony days ; yet of the names which are now thought to have belonged to it, as descended of brave, loyal, and adventurous cavaliers, some I once saw in London upon an old freight-list of a ship outward bound for Virginia, with the addition of tinker and tailor, poacher and pickpocket, all to be sold for life, or a term of years, to the highest bidder when they should arrive. What was properly to be termed the gentry in Virginia and South Carolina previous to the Revolution, was much smaller in number than is, I believe, commonly supposed. A large proportion of the families who composed it and who remained after the Revolution in the country (for many were tories), have since passed in all their branches through a poverty-stricken period, very dissipating in its influence upon hereditary breeding, novelists and dramatic old servants to the contrary notwithstanding. Many of those who have retained wealth and family pride in succession to the present time, have undeniably, from various causes, degenerated wofully in breeding. Coarse tastes and brutal dispositions can OF SOUTHERN BREEDING. 423 not be disguised under a cavalier address, and the most assured readiness in the established forms of polite society. Of the real "old families" which remain at all "high bred" in their qualities, habits, and manners, I think it will be difficult for most readers who have not studied the matter at all to form a sufficiently small estimate. Some may be supposed, however. Associating with these are many new or recuperated families, in which there is also the best breeding, and in certain few parts or districts of the South, to be defined and numbered without difficulty, there is unquestionably a wealth]/- and remarkably generous, hospitable, refined and accomplished first class, clinging with some perti- nacity, although with too evident an effort, to the traditional manners and customs of an established gentry. I speak of them as a class with some question of the propriety of the term, for I do not much doubt that, as I was told at the South, old ladies may easily be found who will give you a complete census of the whole really " first class people," between the courses of a well- served dinner. There was a gentry in the North as well as in Virginia and Carolina in the colony period, though a less important and numerous one. As the North has been much more prosperous, as the value of its property has much more rapidly increased than that of the South, the advantages of wealth have, I believe, been more generally retained in families, and probably the number of those who could trace their breeding in an uninterrupted pa- rental influence from the colonial gentry, is now larger at the North than the South. Including new families, in whose habits and manners and con- versation the best bred people of Europe would find nothing more offensive and inhariuonioas with tliemselves than miujht be as- 424 A JOURNEY IN THE BACK COUNTRY. cribecl to local fashion or a desire to avoid the responsibility of social leadership, there is unquestionably at this time a very much larger number of thoroughly well bred and even high bred people in the free than in the slave States. It is equally certain that the proportion of such people to the whole population of whites is larger at the North than the South. The great majority of wealthy planters who at the present day assume for themselves a special social respectability and su- periority to the class I have defined as the second, are, as a gen- eral rule, not only distinguished for all those qualities which our satirists and dramatists are accustomed to assume to be the es- pecial property of the newly rich of the Fifth Avenue, but, as far as I have had opportunity to observe both classes, are far more generally and ridiculously so than the would-be fashionable people of New York, or of any other part of the United States. It is a part of the role they undertake to act, to be hospitable and generous, as it AVas lately that of our fops to be sleepy and critical. They are not hospitable and generous, however ; they know not the meaning of these terms. They are absurdly ostentatious in entertainment, and extravagant in the purchase of notoriety; possibly they have more tact in this than our Potiphars, but such has not been my personal observation. It is only at a few centers of commerce in the South that there is a permanent class of merchants and functionaries such as chiefly lead in nortliern society, and at these the characteristics of society are foreign. With the lawyers, merchants, and functionaries of the interior of the South, I have had little to do. I judge them to be superior very much to the planting class, on an average, yet in several instances where I have been introduced to them, I have found them to be of such habits and manners as would have pre- OF SOUTHERN BREEDING. 425 vented them from occnpyiiig satisfactorily, similar stations at the North. Speaking of mercliants, I am reminded of an amnsing experience in my journey, which I relate not so much with the intention of instructing the reader as to the mercantile customs of the South, as for his entertainment. It illustrates, however, the wonderful liberality and hospitality to strangers which is sup- posed to be only born of slavery. Changing my plans of travel in Mississippi, I pursued a route to Virginia for which I had not previously provided myself with letters. The day after I reached Tuscaloosa I asked advice of the landlord of my inn as to how I could best obtain money by drafts on New York. He seemed surprised at the inquiry ; there was but one man who was known to do any thing like an ex- change business in the town. On this man, who had some title, judge or governor, I think, I accordingly called. He told me that he was in the habit of selling drafts on New York ; they had a certain value when any one wished to pay a bill there. I stated my circumstances, and with much difficulty got him to examine various letters which I carried with me ; some of them were from distinguished men, both of the North and South, with whom he professed to have an acquaintance. He did not for a moment doubt that I was the man I assumed to be, or that I was " good" for a much larger amount than I desired him to favor me with. He politely informed me that he did not make a business of furnishing money to travelers; and when I asked if he could not recommend me to some one in the town who would so far accommodate me, he said that he did not think I would find any one to do so. I reminded him that this would leave me in a very unpleasant predicament. He was sorry for it, he re- plied, but he did not see that he could help it, and as he had 426 A JOURNEY IK THE BACK COUNTRY. other business he would wish me good morning. I called with no better success upon two merchants, and then making a close calculation, I concluded that with good luck I could pay my way, by traveling in the most carefully frugal manner on the course I intended pursuing, to Chatannooga in Tennessee, and that by the time I reached that point I might expect to be supplied with funds in answer to a letter. I succeeded in reaching Chatannooga, but with quite an empty purse. My letters informed me that I was accredited to the post- master. This gentleman received me cordially, and at once offered to introduce me to the bank. At the bank, after a little general conversation with a polite cashier, I asked him to cash a draft on New York for two hundred dollars. He withdrew, and presently desired to see the postmaster in a private apartment. Soon after this, I was called in and presented to the president, who, after some polite inquiries about my health, wished to know Avhat friend I had in town who could identify me. None, but here was the postmaster with a letter — Ah ! but what assurance had they — (that this letter had not been sent the postmaster by an accomplice, he meant); how, in fact, it was mildly asked, was it to be known that I was not a swindler? I presented a circular letter of credit of Duncan, Sherman & Co. on their Mexican correspondents, and a general letter of credence by the Gov- ernor of New York. But who knew their signatures to be gen- uine, who could identify me as the Frederick Law Olmsted spoken of in them ? I offered to show various letters of introduction, and twenty letters received by me at post offices on the route which I alleged that I had followed from Mexico ; I proposed to show the marks on my linen, my engraved cards, my Mexican passport. But how were they to be made secure that I came OP SOUTHERN BREEDING. 42Y honestly by these things ? It was ray intention to remain a day or two, would I be so good as to leave my letters and papers, and allow them time for consideration ? When I called again at the banking establishment, which was a very commodious and handsome one, the cashier received me with consideration. They had had a meeting of their directors, he said, at which my request had been the subject of debate, and it had been determined, inasmuch as it seemed that I would not otherwise be able to pursue my journey, to cash a draft on New York for me, but the directors thinking that two hundred dollars was a larger amount than I should find absolutely necessary, he was only authorized to furnish me with one hundred, which he accordingly did in new notes of the bank. I was subsequently kept in funds by southern bank-notes, bought in New York and sent by mail to a designated point on my route. Of course, there was nothing wrong in all this — or if there was, it was with myself and my friends — but if a southerner had had anything like such an experience in New England, would he have said nothing about wooden nutmegs, and so forth ? Com- parisons of this kind are anything but agreeable to draw. They will be necessary, however, and it will be necessary that the re- moval of much popular delusion be seriously and systematically undertaken, if the future discussion of the slavery question is to have the character which, of late, southern writers have at- tempted to give it. I find no more foundation for tlio assumption of a greater habitual liberality or a more thorough -going honesty than of a more general hospitality having been produced by slav- ery, even upon the planters, than exists among ourselves. To say nothing more of my personal