The negro said no more, but retained his position until the tree was nearly cut in two. When it began to totter, he slid down the trunk, the dogs springing upon him as soon as he was within their reach. He fought them hard, and got hold of one by the ear; that made them fiercer, and they tore him till the hunter was afraid they’d kill him, and stopped them.
“Are dogs allowed to tear the negroes when they catch them?”
“When the hunters come up they always call them off, unless the nigger fights. If the nigger fights ’em that makes ’em mad, and they let ’em tear him good,” said the clergyman.
There were two or three young women present, and the young men were sparking with them in the house, sitting on the beds for want of sofas, the chairs being all in use outside; the rest of the company sat on the gallery most of the time, but there was little conversation. It was twice remarked to me, “Sunday’s a dull day—nothing to do.”
As the Methodist and I were reading after dinner, I noticed that two or three were persuading the others to go with them somewhere, and I asked where they purposed to go. They said they wanted to go over the mountain to hunt a bull.
“To shoot him?”
“Oh, no, it’s a working bull; they got his mate yesterday. There ain’t but one pair of cattle in this neighbourhood, and they do all the hauling for nine families.” They belonged, together with their waggon, to one man, and the rest borrowed of him. They wanted them this week to cart in their oats. The stray bull was driven in toward night, yoked with another to a waggon, and one of the women, with her family, got into the waggon and was carried home. The bulls were fractious and had to be led by one man, while another urged them forward with a cudgel.
Last night by the way a neighbour came into the house of Uncle Abram’s master, and in the course of conversation about crops, said that on Sunday he went over to John Brown’s to get him to come out and help him at his harvesting. He found four others there for the same purpose, but John said he didn’t feel well, and he reckoned he couldn’t work. He offered him a dollar and a half a day to cradle for him; but when he tried to persuade him, John spoke out plainly and said, “he’d be d—d if he was going to work anyhow;” so he said to the others, “Come, boys, we may as well go; you can’t make a lazy man work when he’s determined he won’t.” He supposed that remark made him mad, for on Thursday John came running across his cotton patch, where he was ploughing. He didn’t speak a word to him, but cut along over to his neighbour’s house, and told him that he had shot two deer, and wanted his hounds to catch ’em, promising to give him half the venison if he succeeded. He did catch one of them, and kept his promise.
This man Brown, they told me, had a large family, and lived in a little cabin on the mountain. He pretended to plant a corn patch, but he never worked it, and didn’t make any corn. They reckoned he lived pretty much on what corn and hogs he could steal, and on game. The children were described as pitiably, “scrawny,” half-starved little wretches. Last summer his wife had come to one of them, saying they had no corn, and she wanted to pick cotton to earn some. He had let her go in with the niggers and pick. She kept at it for two days, and took her pay in corn. Afterward he saw her little boy “toting” it to the mill to be ground—much too heavy a load for him.
I asked if there were many such vagabonds.
“Yes, a great many on the mountain, and they make a heap of trouble. There is a law by which they might be taken up [if it could be proved that they have no ‘visible means of support’] and made to work to support their families; but the law is never used.”
Speaking of another man, one said: “He’ll be here to breakfast, at your house to dinner, and at Dr. ——’s to supper, leaving his family to live as best they can.” They “reckoned” he got most of his living in that way, while his family had to get theirs by stealing. He never did any work except hunting, and they “reckoned” he killed about as many shoats and yearlings as deer and turkeys.
They said that this sort of people were not often intemperate; they had no money to buy liquor with; now and then, when they’d sold some game or done a little work to raise money, they’d have a spree; but they were more apt to gamble it off or spend it for fine clothes and things to trick out their wives.
June —. To-day, I am passing through a valley of thin, sandy soil, thickly populated by poor farmers. Negroes are rare, but occasionally neat, new houses, with other improvements, show the increasing prosperity of the district. The majority of dwellings are small log cabins of one room, with another separate cabin for a kitchen; each house has a well, and a garden inclosed with palings. Cows, goats, mules and swine, fowls and doves are abundant. The people are more social than those of the lower country, falling readily into friendly conversation with a traveller. They are very ignorant; the agriculture is wretched and the work hard. I have seen three white women hoeing field crops to-day. A spinning-wheel is heard in every house, and frequently a loom is clanging in the gallery, always worked by women; every one wears homespun. The negroes have much more individual freedom than in the rich cotton country, and are not unfrequently heard singing or whistling at their work.
Tennessee, June 29th.—At nightfall I entered a broader and more populous valley than I had seen before during the day, but for some time there were only small single room log cabins, at which I was loath to apply for lodging. At length I reached a large and substantial log house with negro cabins. The master sat in the stoop. I asked if he could accommodate me.
“What do you want?”
“Something to eat for myself and horse, and room to sleep under your roof.”
“The wust on’t is,” he said, getting up and coming toward me, “we haven’t got much for your horse.”
“You’ve got corn, I suppose.”
“No, hain’t got no corn but a little that we want for ourselves, only just enough to bread us till corn comes again.”
“Well, you have oats?”
“Hain’t got an oat.”
“Haven’t you hay?”
“No.”
“Then I must go further, for my horse can’t travel on fodder.”
“Hain’t got nary fodder nuther.”
Fortunately I did not have to go much farther before I came to the best house I had seen during the day, a large, neat, white house, with negro shanties, and an open log cabin in the front yard. A stout, elderly, fine-looking woman, in a cool white muslin dress sat upon the gallery, fanning herself. Two little negroes had just brought a pail of fresh water, and she was drinking of it with a gourd, as I came to the gate. I asked if it would be convenient for her to accommodate me for the night, doubtingly, for I had learned to distrust the accommodations of the wealthy slaveholders.
“Oh yes, get down; fasten your horse there, and the niggers will take care of him when they come from their work. Come up here and take a seat.”
I brought in my saddle-bags.
“Bring them in here, into the parlour,” she said, “where they’ll be safe.”
The interior of the house was furnished with unusual comfort. “The parlour,” however, had a bed in it. As we came out, she locked the door.
We had not sat long, talking about the weather (she was suffering much from the heat), when her husband came. He was very hot also, though dressed coolly enough in merely a pair of short-legged, unbleached cotton trousers, and a shirt with the bosom spread open—no shoes nor stockings. He took his seat before speaking to me, and after telling his wife it was the hottest day he ever saw, squared his chair toward me, threw it back so as to recline against a post, and said gruffly, “Good evening, sir; you going to stay here to-night?”
I replied, and he looked at me a few moments without speaking. He was, in fact, so hot that he spoke with difficulty. At length he got breath and asked abruptly: “You a mechanic, sir, or a dentist, eh—or what?”
Supper was cooked by two young women, daughters of the master of the house, assisted by the two little negro boys. The cabin in front of the house was the kitchen, and when the bacon was dished up, one of the boys struck an iron triangle at the door. “Come to supper,” said the host, and led the way to the kitchen, which was also the supper-room. One of the young ladies took the foot of the table, the other seated herself apart by the fire, and actually waited on the table, though the two negro boys stood at the head and foot, nominally waiters, but always anticipated by the Cinderella, when anything was wanted.
A big lout of a youth who came from the field with the negroes, looked in, but seeing me, retired. His father called, but his mother said, “’t wouldn’t do no good—he was so bashful.”
Speaking of the climate of the country, I was informed that a majority of the folks went barefoot all winter, though they had snow much of the time four or five inches deep, and the man said he didn’t think most of the men about here had more than one coat, and they never wore any in winter except on holidays. “That was the healthiest way,” he reckoned, “just to toughen yourself and not wear no coat; no matter how cold it was, he didn’t wear no coat.”
The master held a candle for me while I undressed, in a large room above stairs; and gave me my choice of the four beds in it. I found one straw bed (with, as usual, but one sheet), on which I slept comfortably. At midnight I was awakened by some one coming in. I rustled my straw, and a voice said, “Who is there in this room?”
“A stranger passing the night; who are you?”
“All right; I belong here. I’ve been away and have just come home.”
He did not take his clothes off to sleep. He turned out to be an older son who had been fifty miles away, looking after a stray horse. When I went down stairs in the morning, having been wakened early by flies, and the dawn of day through an open window, I saw the master lying on his bed in the “parlour,” still asleep in the clothes he wore at supper. His wife was washing her face on the gallery, being already dressed for the day; after using the family towel, she went into the kitchen, but soon returned, smoking a pipe, to her chair in the doorway.
Yet everything betokened an opulent and prosperous man—rich land, extensive field crops, a number of negroes, and considerable herds of cattle and horses. He also had capital invested in mines and railroads, he told me. His elder son spoke of him as “the squire.”
A negro woman assisted in preparing breakfast (she had probably been employed in the field labour the night before), and both the young ladies were at the table. The squire observed to me that he supposed we could buy hands very cheap in New York. I said we could hire them there at moderate wages. He asked if we couldn’t buy as many as we wanted, by sending to Ireland for them and paying their passage. He had supposed we could buy them and hold them as slaves for a term of years, by paying the freight on them. When I had corrected him, he said, a little hesitatingly, “You don’t have no black slaves in New York?” “No, sir.” “There’s niggers there, ain’t there, only they’re all free?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, how do they get along so?” “So far as I know, the most of them live pretty comfortably.” (I have changed my standard of comfort lately, and am inclined to believe that the majority of the negroes at the North live more comfortably than the majority of whites at the South.) “I wouldn’t like that,” said the old lady. “I wouldn’t like to live where niggers was free, they are bad enough when they are slaves: it’s hard enough to get along with them here, they’re so bad. I reckon that niggers are the meanest critters on earth; they are so mean and nasty” (she expressed disgust and indignation very strongly in her face). “If they was to think themselves equal to we, I don’t think white folks could abide it—they’re such vile saucy things.” A negro woman and two boys were in the room, as she said this.
North Carolina, July 13th.—I rode late last night, there being no cabins for several miles in which I was willing to spend the night, until I came to one of larger size than usual, with a gallery on the side toward the road and a good stable opposite it. A man on the gallery was about to answer (as I judged from his countenance), “I reckon you can,” to my inquiry if I could stay, when the cracked voice of a worryful woman screeched out from within, “We don’t foller takin’ in people.”
“No, sir,” said the man, “we don’t foller it.”
“How far shall I have to go?”
“There’s another house a little better than three quarters of a mile further on.”
To this house I proceeded—a cabin of one room and a loft, with a kitchen in a separate cabin. The owner said he never turned anybody away, and I was welcome. He did not say that he had no corn, until after supper, when I asked for it to feed my horse. The family were good-natured, intelligent people, but very ignorant. The man and his wife and the daughters slept below, the boy and I in the cock-loft. Supper and breakfast were eaten in the detached kitchen. Yet they were by no means poor people. The man told me that he had over a thousand acres of rich tillable land, besides a large extent of mountain range, the most of which latter he had bought from time to time as he was able, to prevent the settlement of squatters near his valley-land. “There were people who would be bad neighbours, I knew,” he said, “that would settle on most any kind of place, and everybody wants to keep such as far away from them as they can.” (When I took my bridle off, I hung it up by the stable-door; he took it down and said he’d hang it in a safer place. “He’d never had anything stolen from here, and he didn’t mean to have—it was just as well not to put temptation before people,” and he took it into the house and put it under his bed.)
Besides this large tract of land here, he owned another tract of two hundred acres with a house upon it, rented for one-third the produce, and another smaller farm, similarly rented; he also owned a grist mill, which he rented to a miller for half the tolls. He told me that he had thought a good deal formerly of moving to new countries, but he had been doing pretty well and had stayed here now so long, he didn’t much think he should ever budge. He reckoned he’d got enough to make him a living for the rest of his life, and he didn’t know any use a man had for more’n that.
I did not see a single book in the house, nor do I think that any of the family could read. He said that many people here were talking about Iowa and Indiana; “was Iowa (Hiaway) beyond the Texies?” I opened my map to show him where it was, but he said he “wasn’t scollar’d enough” to understand it, and I could not induce him to look at it. I asked him if the people here preferred Iowa and Indiana to Missouri at all because they were Free States. “I reckon,” he replied, “they don’t have no allusion to that. Slavery is a great cuss, though, I think, the greatest there is in these United States. There ain’t no account of slaves up here in the west, but down in the east part of this State about Fayetteville there’s as many as there is in South Carolina. That’s the reason the West and the East don’t agree in this State; people out here hates the Eastern people.”
“Why is that?”
“Why you see they vote on the slave basis, and there’s some of them nigger counties where there ain’t more’n four or five hundred white folks, that has just as much power in the Legislature as any of our mountain counties where there’ll be some thousand voters.”
He made further remarks against slavery and against slaveholders. When I told him that I entirely agreed with him, and said further, that poor white people were usually far better off in the Free than in the Slave States, he seemed a little surprised and said, “New York ain’t a Free State, is it?”
Labourers’ wages here, he stated, were from fifty cents to one dollar a day, or eight dollars a month. “How much by the year?” “They’s never lured by the year.”
“Would it be $75 a year?”
“’Twouldn’t be over that, anyhow, but ’tain’t general for people to hire here only for harvest time; fact is, a man couldn’t earn his board, let alone his wages, for six months in the year.”
“But what do these men who hire out during harvest time do during the rest of the year; do they have to earn enough in those two or three months to live on for the other eight or nine?”
“Well, they gets jobs sometimes, and they goes from one place to another.”
“But in winter time, when you say there’s not work enough to pay their board?”
“Well, they keeps a goin’ round from one place to another, and gets their living somehow.”
“The fact on’t is,” he said at length, as I pressed the inquiry, “there ain’t anybody that ever means to work any in this country, except just along in harvest—folks don’t keep working here as they do in your country, I expect.”
“But they must put in their crops?”
“Yes, folks that have farms of their own, they do put in their craps and tend ’em, but these fellows that don’t have farms, they won’t work except in harvest, when they can get high wages [$8 a month]. I hired a fellow last spring for six months; I wanted him to help me plant and tend my corn. You see I had a short crap last year, and this spring I had to pay fifty cents a bushel for corn for bread, and I didn’t want to get caught so again, not this year, so I gin this fellow $6 a month for six months—$36 I gin him in hard silver.”
“Paid it to him in advance?”
“Yes, he wouldn’t come ’less I’d pay him right then. Well, he worked one month, and maybe eight days—no, I don’t think it was more than six days over a month, and then he went away, and I hain’t seen a sight on him since. I expect I shall lose my money—reckon he don’t ever intend to come back; he knows I’m right in harvest, and want him now, if ever I do.”
“What did he go away for?”
“Why, he said he was sick, but if he was, he got well mighty easy after he stopped working.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Oh, yes, he’s going round here.”
“What is he doing?”
“Well, he’s just goin’ round.”
“Is he at work for any one else?”
“Reckon not—no, he’s just goin’ round from one place to another.”
At supper and breakfast surprise was expressed that I declined coffee, and more still that I drank water instead of milk. The woman observed, “’twas cheap boarding me.” The man said he must get home a couple more cows; they ought to drink milk more, coffee was so high now, and he believed milk would be just as healthy. The woman asked the price of coffee in New York; I could not tell her, but said I believed it was uncommonly high; the crops had been short. She asked how coffee grew. I told her as well as I was able, but concluded by saying I had never seen it growing. “Don’t you raise coffee in New York?” she asked; “I thought that was where it came from.”
The butter was excellent. I said so, and asked if they never made any for sale. The woman said she could make “as good butter as any ever was made in the yarth, but she couldn’t get anything for it; there warn’t many of the merchants would buy it, and those that did, would only take it at eight cents a pound for goods.” The man said the only thing he could ever sell for ready money was cattle. Drovers bought them for the New York market, and lately they were very high—four cents a pound. He had driven cattle all the way to Charleston himself, to sell them, and only got four cents a pound there. He had sold corn here for twelve and a half cents a bushel.
Although the man could not read, he had honoured letters by calling one of his children “Washington Irving;” another was known as Matterson (Madison?). He had never tried manuring land for crops, but said, “I do believe it is a good plan, and if I live I mean to try it sometime.”
July 16th.—I stopped last night at the pleasantest house I have yet seen in the highlands; a framed house, painted white, with a log kitchen attached. The owner was a man of superior standing. I judged from the public documents and law books on his table, that he had either been in the Legislature of the State, or that he was a justice of the peace. There were also a good many other books and newspapers, chiefly of a religious character. He used, however, some singularly uncouth phrases common here. He had a store, and carried on farming and stock raising. After a conversation about his agriculture, I remarked that there were but few slaves in this part of the country. He wished that there were fewer. They were not profitable property here, I presumed. They were not, he said, except to raise for sale; but there were a good many people here who would not have them if they were profitable, and yet who were abundantly able to buy them. They were horrid things, he thought; he would not take one to keep it if it should be given to him. ’Twould be a great deal better for the country, he believed, if there was not a slave in it. He supposed it would not be right to take them away from those who had acquired property in them, without any remuneration, but he wished they could all be sent out of the country—sent to Liberia. That was what ought to be done with them. I said it was evident that where there were no slaves, other things being equal, there was greater prosperity than where slavery supplied the labour. He didn’t care so much for that, he said; there was a greater objection to slavery than that, in his mind. He was afraid that there was many a man who had gone to the bad world, who wouldn’t have gone there if he hadn’t had any slaves. He had been down in the nigger counties a good deal, and he had seen how it worked on the white people. It made the rich people, who owned the niggers, passionate and proud, and ugly, and it made the poor people mean. “People that own niggers are always mad with them about something; half their time is spent in swearing and yelling at them.”
“I see you have ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ here,” said I; “have you read it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And what do you think of it?”
“Think of it? I think well of it.”
“Do most of the people here in the mountains think as you do about slavery?”
“Well, there’s some thinks one way and some another, but there’s hardly any one here that don’t think slavery’s a curse to our country, or who wouldn’t be glad to get rid of it.”
I asked what the people about here thought of the Nebraska Bill. He couldn’t say what the majority thought. Would people moving from here to Nebraska now, be likely to vote for the admission of slavery there? He thought not; “most people would much rather live in a Free State.” He told me that he knew personally several persons who had gone to California, and taken slaves with them, who had not been able to bring them back. There were one or two cases where the negroes had been induced to return, and these instances had been made much of in the papers, as evidence that the slaves were contented.
“That’s a great lie,” he said; “they are not content, and nine-tenths of ’em would do ’most anything to be free. It’s only now and then that slaves, who are treated unusual kind, and made a great deal of, will choose to remain in slavery if freedom is put in their way.” He knew one man (giving his name) who tried to bring two slaves back from California, and had got started with them, when some white people suspecting it, went on board the ship and told him it was against the law to hold negroes as slaves in California, and his negroes shouldn’t go back with him unless they were willing to. Then they went to the slaves and told them they need not return if they preferred to stay, and the slaves said they had wanted very much to go back to North Carolina, yet they would rather remain in California, if they could be free, and so they took them ashore. He had heard the slave owner himself relating this, and cursing the men who interfered. He had told him that they did no more than Christians were obliged to do.
I overtook upon the road, to-day, three young men of the poorest class. Speaking of the price of land and the profit of farming, one of them said, believing me to be a southerner—
“We are all poor folks here; don’t hardly make enough to keep us in liquor. Anybody can raise as much corn and hogs on the mountains as he’ll want to live on, but there ain’t no rich people here. Nobody’s got any black ones—only three or four; no one’s got fifty or a hundred, like as they have down in the East.” “It would be better,” interrupted another, somewhat fiercely, “there warn’t any at all; that’s my mind about it; they’re no business here; they ought to be in their own country and take care of themselves, that’s what I believe, and I don’t care who hears it.” But let the reader not be deceived by these expressions; they indicate simply the weakness and cowardice of the class represented by these men. It is not slavery they detest; it is simply the negro competition, and the monopoly of the opportunities to make money by negro owners, which they feel and but dimly comprehend.
If you meet a man without stopping, the salutation here always is, “How d’ye do, sir?” never “Good morning;” and on parting it is, “I wish you well, sir,” more frequently than “Good-bye.” You are always commanded to appear at the table, as elsewhere throughout the South, in a rough, peremptory tone, as if your host feared you would try to excuse yourself.
“Come in to supper.” “Take a seat.” “Some of the fry?” “Help yourself to anything you see that you can eat.”
They ask your name, but do not often call you by it, but hail you “Stranger,” or “Friend.”
Texas is always spoken of in the plural—“the Texies.” “Bean’t the Texies powerful sickly?”
“Ill” is used for “vicious.” “Is your horse ill?” “Not that I am aware of. Does he appear so?” “No; but some horses will bite a stranger if he goes to handling on ’em.”
“Is your horse ill?” “No, I believe not.” “I see he kind o’ drapt his ears when I came up, ’zif he was playful.”
Everybody I’ve met in the last three counties—after ascertaining what parts I came from, and which parts I’m going to, where I got my horse, what he cost, and of what breed he is, what breed the dog is, and whether she’s followed me all the way from the Texies, if her feet ain’t worn out, and if I don’t think I’ll have to tote her if I go much further, and if I don’t want to give her away, how I like the Texies, etc.—has asked me whether I didn’t see a man by the name of Baker in the Texies, who was sheriff of —— county, and didn’t behave exactly the gentleman, or another fellow by the name of ——, who ran away from the same county, and cut to the Texies. I’ve been asked if they had done fighting yet in the Texies, referring to the war with Mexico, which was ended ten years ago. Indeed the ignorance with regard to everything transpiring in the world outside, and the absurd ideas and reports I hear, are quite incredible. It cannot be supposed that having been at home in New York, there should be any one there whom I do not personally know, or that, having passed through Texas, I should be unable to speak from personal knowledge of the welfare of every one in that State.
North-eastern Tennessee,——.—Night before last I spent at the residence of a man who had six slaves; last night, at the home of a farmer without slaves. Both houses were of the best class common in this region; two-story framed buildings, large, and with many beds, to accommodate drovers and waggoners, who, at some seasons, fill the houses which are known to be prepared with stabling, corn, and beds for them. The slaveholder was much the wealthier of the two, and his house originally was the finer, but he lived in much less comfort than the other. His house was in great need of repair, and was much disordered; it was dirty, and the bed given me to sleep in was disgusting. He and his wife made the signs of pious people, but were very morose or sadly silent, when not scolding and re-ordering their servants. Their son, a boy of twelve, was alternately crying and bullying his mother all the evening till bed-time, because his father had refused to give him something that he wanted. He slept in the same room with me, but did not come to bed until after I had once been asleep, and then he brought another boy to sleep with him. He left the candle burning on the floor, and when, in five minutes after he had got into bed, a girl came after it, he cursed her with a shocking volubility of filthy blackguardism, demanding why she had not come sooner. She replied gently and entreatingly, “I didn’t think you’d have more ’n got into bed yet, master John.” The boys were talking and whispering obscenity till I fell asleep again. The white women of the house were very negligent and sluttish in their attire; the food at the table badly cooked, and badly served by negroes.
The house of the farmer without slaves, though not in good repair, was much neater, and everything within was well-ordered and unusually comfortable. The women and girls were clean and neatly dressed; every one was cheerful and kind. There was no servant. The table was abundantly supplied with the most wholesome food—I might almost say the first wholesome food—I have had set before me since I was at the hotel at Natchez; loaf bread for the first time; chickens, stewed instead of fried; potatoes without fat; two sorts of simple preserved fruit, and whortleberry and blackberry tarts. (The first time I have had any of these articles at a private house since I was in Western Texas.) All the work, both within and without the house, was carried on regularly and easily, and it was well done, because done by parties interested in the result, not by servants interested only to escape reproof or punishment.
Doubtless two extreme cases were thus brought together, but similar, if less striking, contrasts are found the general rule, according to my experience. It is a common saying with the drovers and waggoners of this country, that if you wish to be well taken care of, you must not stop at houses where they have slaves.
The man of the last described house was intelligent and an ardent Methodist. The room in which I slept was papered with the “Christian Advocate and Journal,” the Methodist paper of New York.[11] At the slaveholder’s house, my bed-room was partially papered with “Lottery Schemes.”
The free labouring farmer remarked, that, although there were few slaves in this part of the country, he had often said to his wife that he would rather be living where there were none. He thought slavery wrong in itself, and deplorable in its effects upon the white people. Of all the Methodists whom he knew in North-eastern Tennessee and South-western Virginia, he believed that fully three fourths would be glad to join the Methodist Church North, if it were “convenient.” They generally thought slavery wrong, and believed it the duty of the church to favour measures to bring it to an end. He was not an Abolitionist, he said; he didn’t think slaves could be set free at once, but they ought to be sent back to their own country, and while they were here they ought to be educated. He had perceived that great injustice was done by the people both of the North and South, towards each other. At the South, people were very apt to believe that the Northerners were wanting not only to deprive them of their property, but also to incite the slaves to barbarity and murder. At the North, people thought that the negroes were all very inhumanely treated. That was not the case, at least hereabouts, it wasn’t. If I would go with him to a camp meeting here, or to one of the common Sunday meetings, I would see that the negroes were generally better dressed than the whites. He believed that they were always well fed, and they were not punished severely. They did not work hard, not nearly as hard as many of the white folks; they were fat and cheerful. I said that I had perceived this, and it was so generally, to a great degree, throughout the country; yet I was sure that on the large plantations it was necessary to treat the slaves with great severity. He “expected” it was so, for he had heard people say, who had been on the great rice and cotton plantations in South Carolina, that the negroes were treated very hard, and he knew there was a man down here on the railroad, a contractor, who had some sixty hands which he had hired in Old Virginny (“that’s what we call Eastern Virginia here”), and everybody who saw them at work, said he drove them till they could hardly stand, and did not give them half what they ought to have to eat. He was opposed to the Nebraska Bill, he said, and to any further extension of slavery, on any pretext; the North would not do its Christian duty if it allowed slavery to be extended; he wished that it could be abolished in Tennessee. He thought that many of the people who went hence to Kansas would vote to exclude slavery, but he wasn’t sure that they would do it generally, because they would consider themselves Southerners, and would not like to go against other Southerners. A large part of the emigration from this part of the country went to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa; those States being preferred to Missouri, because they were Free States. There were fewer slaves hereabouts now, than there were when he was a boy. The people all thought slavery wrong, except, he supposed, some slaveholders who, because they had property in slaves, would try to make out to themselves that it was right. He knew one rich man who had owned a great many slaves. He thought slavery was wrong, and he had a family of boys growing up, and he knew they wouldn’t be good for anything as long as he brought them up with slaves; so he had told his slaves that if they wanted to be free, he would free them, send them to Liberia, and give them a hundred dollars to start with, and they had all accepted the offer. He himself never owned a slave, and never would own one for his own benefit, if it were given to him, “first, because it was wrong; and secondly, because he didn’t think they ever did a man much good.”
I noticed that the neighbours of this man on each side owned slaves; and that their houses and establishments were much poorer than his.