swung a large iron kettle on the middle of the pole; then made up a fire under
the kettle, and boiled the hominy; when ready, the hands were called around this
kettle with their wooden plates and spoons. They dipped out and ate, standing
around the kettle, or sitting upon the ground, as best suited their convenience.
When they had potatoes, they took them out with their hands, and ate them.
--
Thomas Clay, Esq., a slaveholder of Georgia, and a most
benevolent man, and who interested himself very successfully in
endeavouring to promote the improvement of the negroes, in
his address before the Georgia Presbytery, 1833, says of their
food, “The quantity allowed by custom is a peck of corn a
week.”
The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, May 30,
1788, says, “A single peck of corn, or the same measure of
rice, is the ordinary provision for a hard-working slave, to
which a small quantity of meat is occasionally though rarely
added.”
Captain William Ladd, of Minot, Maine, formerly a slave-
holder in Florida, says, “The usual allowance of food was a
quart of corn a day to a full-task hand, with a modicum of salt.
Kind masters allowed a peck of corn a week.”
The law of North Carolina provides that the master shall
give his slave a quart of corn a day, which is less than a peck
a week by one quart.--Haywood's Manual, 525; Slavery as
It is, p. 29. The master, therefore, who gave a peck a week
would feel that he was going beyond the law, and giving a
quart for generosity.
This condition of things will appear far more probable in the
section of country where the scene of the story is laid. It is
in the South-western States, where no provision is raised on
the plantations, but the supply for the slaves is all purchased
from the more Northern States.
Let the reader now imagine the various temptations which
might occur to retrench the allowance of the slaves, under these
circumstances; scarcity of money, financial embarrassment, high
price of provisions, and various causes of the kind, bring a
great influence upon the master or overseer.
At the time when it was discussed whether the State of
Missouri should be admitted as a slave State, the measure,
like all measures for the advancement of this horrible system,
was advocated on the good old plea of humanity to the negroes.
Thus Mr. Alexander Smyth, in his speech on the slavery ques-
tion, January 21, 1820, says--
By confining the slaves to the Southern States, where crops are raised for
exportation, and bread and meat are purchased, you doom them to scarcity and
hunger. It is proposed to hem in the blacks where they are ILL FED.
-- This is a simple recognition of the state of things we have
adverted to. To the same purport, Mr. Asa A. Stone, a
theological student, who resided near Natchez, Mississippi, in
1834-5, says--
On almost every plantation, the hands suffer more or less from hunger at some
seasons of almost every year. There is always a good deal of suffering from
hunger. On many plantations, and particularly in Louisiana, the slaves are in a
condition of almost utter famishment during a great portion of the year.
--
Mr. Tobias Baudinot, St. Albans, Ohio, a member of the
Methodist Church, who for some years was a navigator on the
Mississippi, says:--
The slaves down the Mississippi are half-starved. The boats, when they stop at
night, are constantly boarded by slaves, begging for something to eat.
-- On the whole, while it is freely and cheerfully admitted that
many individuals have made most commendable advances in
regard to the provision for the physical comfort of the slave, still
it is to be feared that the picture of the accommodations on
Legree's plantation has yet too many counterparts. Lest, how-
ever, the author should be suspected of keeping back anything
which might serve to throw light on the subject, she will insert
in full the following incidents on the other side, from the pen of
the accomplished Professor Ingraham. How far these may be
regarded as exceptional cases, or as pictures of the general mode
of providing for slaves, may safely be left to the good sense of
the reader. The professor's anecdotes are as follows:--
“What can you do with so much tobacco?” said a gentleman--who related the
circumstance to me--on hearing a planter, whom he was visiting, give an order to
his teamster to bring two hogsheads of tobacco out to the estate from the
“Landing.”
“I purchase it for my negroes; it is a harmless indulgence, which it gives me
pleasure to afford them.”
“Why are you at the trouble and expense of having high-post bedsteads for
your negroes?” said a gentleman from the North, while walking through the
handsome “quarters,” or village, for the slaves, then in progress on a plantation
near Natchez--addressing the proprietor.
“To suspend their `bars' from, that they may not be troubled with mosquitos.”
“Master, me would like, if you please, a little bit gallery front my house.”
“For what, Peter?”
“'Cause, master, the sun too hot (an odd reason for a negro to give) that side,
and when he rain, we no able to keep de door open.”
“Well, well, when a carpenter gets a little leisure, you shall have one.”
A few weeks after, I was at the plantation, and riding past the quarters one
Sabbath morning, beheld Peter, his wife and children, with his old father, all sun-
ning themselves in the new gallery.
“Missus, you promise me a Chrismus gif'.”
“Well, Jane, there is a new calico frock for you.”
“It werry pretty, missus,” said Jane, eyeing it at a distance without touching
it, “but me prefer muslin, if you please: muslin de fashion dis Chrismus.”
“Very well, Jane, call to-morrow, and you shall have a muslin.”
The writer would not think of controverting the truth of these
anecdotes. Any probable amount of high-post bedsteads and
mosquito “bars,” of tobacco distributed as gratuity, and
verandahs constructed by leisurely carpenters for the sunning
of fastidious negroes, may be conceded, and they do in no whit
impair the truth of the other facts. When the reader remembers
that the “gang” of some opulent owners amounts to from 500
to 700 working hands, besides children, he can judge how exten-
sively these accommodations are likely to be provided. Let
them be safely thrown into the account for what they are worth.
At all events, it is pleasing to end off so disagreeable a chapter
with some more agreeable images. (See Appendix.)
CHAPTER XI.
SELECT INCIDENTS OF LAWFUL TRADE.
In this chapter of Uncle Tom's Cabin were recorded some of
the most highly-wrought and touching incidents of the slave-
trade. It will be well to authenticate a few of them.
One of the first sketches presented to view is an account
of the separation of a very old decrepit negro woman from
that not the slightest credit for invention is due to her in this
incident. She found it, almost exactly as it stands, in the
published journal of a young Southerner, related as a scene to
which he was eye-witness. The only circumstance which she
has omitted in the narrative was one of additional inhumanity
and painfulness which he had delineated. He represents the
boy as being bought by a planter, who fettered his hands, and
tied a rope round his neck which he attached to the neck of his
horse, thus compelling the child to trot by his side. This
incident alone was suppressed by the author.
Another scene of fraud and cruelty, in the same chapter, is
described as perpetrated by a Kentucky slave-master, who sells
a woman to a trader, and induces her to go with him by the
deceitful assertion that she is to be taken down the river a short
distance, to work at the same hotel with her husband. This
was an instance which occurred under the writer's own observa-
tion, some years since, when she was going down the Ohio
river. The woman was very respectable, both in appearance
and dress. The writer recals her image now with distinctness,
attired with great neatness in a white wrapper, her clothing and
hair all arranged with evident care, and having with her a
prettily-dressed boy about seven years of age. She had also a
hair-trunk of clothing, which showed that she had been carefully
and respectably brought up. It will be seen, in perusing the
account, that the incident is somewhat altered to suit the
purpose of the story, the woman being there represented as
carrying with her a young infant.
The custom of unceremoniously separating the infant from its
mother, when the latter is about to be taken from a Northern to
a Southern market, is a matter of every-day notoriety in the
trade. It is not done occasionally and sometimes, but always,
whenever there is occasion for it; and the mother's agonies
are no more regarded than those of a cow when her calf is
separated from her.
The reason of this is, that the care and raising of children is
no part of the intention or provision of a Southern plantation.
They are a trouble; they detract from the value of the mother
as a field-hand, and it is more expensive to raise them than
to buy them ready raised; they are therefore left behind in
making up of a coffle. Not longer ago than last summer, the
writer was conversing with Thomas Strother, a slave minister of
the gospel in St. Louis, for whose emancipation she was making
some effort. He incidentally mentioned to her a scene which
he had witnessed but a short time before, in which a young
woman of his acquaintance came to him almost in a state of
distraction, telling him that she had been sold to go South with
a trader, and leave behind her a nursing infant.
In Lewis Clark's narrative he mentions that a master in his
neighbourhood sold a woman and child to a trader, with the
charge that he should not sell the child from its mother. The
man, however, traded off the child in the very next town, in
payment of his tavern-bill.
The following testimony is from a gentleman who writes from
New Orleans to the National Era.
This writer says:--
While at Robinson, or Eyree Springs, twenty miles from Nashville, on the
borders of Kentucky and Tennessee, my hostess said to me, one day, “Yonder
comes a gang of slaves chained.” I went to the road-side and viewed them. For
the better answering my purpose of observation, I stopped the white man in front,
who was at his ease in a one-horse waggon, and asked him if those slaves were
for sale. I counted them and observed their position. They were divided by
three one-horse waggons, each containing a man-merchant, so arranged as to
command the whole gang. Some were unchained; sixty were chained in two
companies, thirty in each, the right hand of the one to the left hand of the other
opposite one, making fifteen each side of a large ox-chain, to which every hand
was fastened, and necessarily compelled to hold up--men and women promis-
cuously, and about in equal proportions--all young people. No children here,
except a few in a waggon behind, which were the only children in the four gangs.
I said to a respectable mulatto woman in the house, “Is it true that the negro-
traders take mothers from their babies?” “Massa, it is true; for here, last week,
such a girl (naming her), who lives about a mile off, was taken after dinner--
knew nothing of it in the morning--sold, put into the gang, and her baby given
away to a neighbour. She was a stout young woman, and brought a good price.”
Nor is the pitiful lie to be regarded which says that these un-
happy mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, do not feel when
the most sacred ties are thus severed. Every day and hour bears
living witness of the falsehood of this slander, the more false
because spoken of a race peculiarly affectionate, and strong,
vivacious and vehement, in the expression of their feelings.
The case which the writer supposed of the woman's throwing
herself overboard is not by any means a singular one. Witness
the following recent fact, which appeared under the head of
[title]ANOTHER INCIDENT FOR “UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.”
The editorial correspondent of the Oneida (N. Y.) Telegraph, writing from a
steamer on the Mississippi river, gives the following sad story:--
“At Louisville, a gentleman took passage, having with him a family of blacks
--husband, wife, and children. The master was bound for Memphis, Tennessee,
at which place he intended to take all except the man ashore. The latter was
handcuffed, and although his master said nothing of his intention, the negro made
up his mind, from appearances, as well as from the remarks of those around him,
that he was destined for the Southern market. We reached Memphis during the
night, and whilst within sight of the town, just before landing, the negro caused
his wife to divide their things, as though resigned to the intended separation, and
then, taking a moment when his master's back was turned, ran forward and
jumped into the river. Of course he sank, and his master was several hundred
dollars poorer than a moment before. That was all; at least, scarcely any one
mentioned it the next morning. I was obliged to get my information from the
deck hands, and did not hear a remark concerning it in the cabin. In justice to
the master, I should say that, after the occurrence, he disclaimed any intention to
separate them. Appearances, however, are quite against him, if I have been
rightly informed. This sad affair needs no comment. It is an argument, how-
ever, that I might have used to-day, with some effect, whilst talking with a
highly-intelligent Southerner of the evils of slavery. He had been reading Uncle
Tom's Cabin, and spoke of it as a novel, which, like other romances, was well
calculated to excite the sympathies, by the recital of heart-touching incidents
whic
h never had an existence, except in the imagination of the writer.”
Instances have occurred where mothers, whose children were
about to be sold from them, have, in their desperation, mur-
dered their own offspring, to save them from this worst kind of
orphanage. A case of this kind has been recently tried in the
United States, and was alluded to, a week or two ago, by Mr.
Giddings, in his speech on the floor of Congress.
An American gentleman from Italy, complaining of the effect
of Uncle Tom's Cabin on the Italian mind, states that images
of fathers dragged from their families to be sold into slavery,
and of babes torn from the breasts of weeping mothers, are
constantly presented before the minds of the people as scenes of
every-day life in America. The author can only say, sorrow-
fully, that it is only the truth which is thus presented.
These things are, every day, part and parcel of one of the
most thriving trades that is carried on in America. The only
difference between us and foreign nations is, that we have got
used to it, and they have not. The thing has been done, and
done again, day after day, and year after year, reported and
lamented over in every variety of way; but it is going on this
day with more briskness than ever before, and such scenes as
we have described are enacted oftener, as the author will prove
when she comes to the chapter on the internal slave-trade.
The incident in this same chapter which describes the scene
where the wife of the unfortunate article, catalogued as “John,
aged 30,” rushed on board the boat and threw her arms around
him, with moans and lamentations, was a real incident. The
gentleman who related it was so stirred in his spirit at the
sight, that he addressed the trader in the exact words which
the writer represents the young minister as having used in her
narrative.
My friend, how can you, how dare you, carry on a trade like this? Look at
those poor creatures! Here I am, rejoicing in my heart that I am going home to
my wife and child; and the same bell which is the signal to carry me onward
towards them will part this poor man and his wife for ever. Depend upon it,
The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin Page 15