several.[11] More commonly the mitigation lay not in the laws themselves but in the general disposition to leave to the discipline of the masters such slave misdeeds as were not regarded as particularly heinous nor menacing to the public security.
[Footnote 9: A.C. Goodell, Jr., _The Trial and Execution for Petit Treason of Mark and Phillis_ (Cambridge, 1883), reprinted from the Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XX, 132-157.]
[Footnote 10: A.L. Cross, “Benefit of Clergy,” in the _American Historical Review_, XXII, 544-565.]
[Footnote 11: _Abridgement of the Laws in Force in Her Majesty’s Plantations_ (London, 1704), pp. 104-108.]
Burnings at the stake, breakings on the wheel and other ferocious methods of execution which were occasionally inflicted by the colonial courts were almost universally discontinued soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century. The general trend of moderation discernible at that time, however, was hampered then and thereafter by the series of untoward events beginning with the San Domingo upheaval and ending with John Brown’s raid. In particular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuing Nat Turner’s revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislation the whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes, stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing the already limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration, however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to have grown milder as the decades passed.
The police ordinances of the several cities and other local jurisdictions were in keeping with the state laws which they supplemented and in some degree duplicated. At New Orleans an ordinance adopted in 1817 and little changed thereafter forbade slaves to live off their masters’ premises without written permission, to make any clamorous noise, to show disrespect to any white persons, to walk with canes on the streets unless on account of infirmity, or to congregate except at church, at funerals, and at such dances and other amusements as were permitted for them on Sundays alone and in public places. Each offender was to be tried by the mayor or a justice of the peace after due notice to his master, and upon conviction was to be punished within a limit of twenty-five lashes unless his master paid a fine for him instead.[12]
[Footnote 12: D. Augustin, _A General Digest of the Ordinances and Resolutions of the Corporation of New Orleans_ ([New Orleans], 1831), pp. 133-137.]
At Richmond an ordinance effective in 1859 had provisions much like those of New Orleans regarding residence, clamor, canes, assemblage and demeanor, and also debarred slaves from the capitol square and other specified public enclosures unless in attendance on white persons or on proper errands, forbade them to ride in public hacks without the written consent of their masters, or to administer medicine to any persons except at their masters’ residences and with the masters’ consent. It further forbade all negroes, whether bond or free, to possess offensive weapons or ammunition, to form secret societies, or to loiter on the streets near their churches more than half an hour after the conclusion of services; and it required them when meeting, overtaking or being overtaken by white persons on the sidewalks to pass on the outside, stepping off the walk if necessary to allow the whites to pass. It also forbade all free persons to hire slaves to themselves, to rent houses, rooms or grounds to them, to sell them liquors by retail, or drugs without written permits from their masters, or to furnish offensive weapons to negroes whether bond or free. Finally, it forbade anyone to beat a slave unlawfully, under fine of not more than twenty dollars if a white person, or of lashes or fine at the magistrate’s discretion in case the offender were a free person of color.[13]
[Footnote 13: _The Charters and Ordinances of the City of Richmond_ (Richmond, 1859), pp. 193-200.]
Of rural ordinances, one adopted by the parish of West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1828 was concerned only with the organization and functions of the citizens’ patrol. As many chiefs of patrol were to be appointed as the parish authorities might think proper, each to be in charge of a specified district, with duties of listing all citizens liable to patrol service, dividing them into proper details and appointing a commander for each squad. Every commander in his turn, upon receiving notice from his chief, was to cover the local beat on the night appointed, searching slave quarters, though with as little disturbance as possible to the inmates, arresting any free negroes or strange whites found where they had no proper authority or business to be, whipping slaves encountered at large without passes or unless on the way to or from the distant homes of their wives, and seizing any arms and any runaway slaves discovered.[14] The police code of the neighboring parish of East Feliciana in 1859 went on further to prescribe trials and penalties for slaves insulting or abusing white persons, to restrict their carrying of guns, and their assemblage, to forbid all slaves but wagoners to keep dogs, to restrict citizens in their trading with slaves, to require the seizure of self-styled free negroes not possessing certificates, and to prescribe that all negroes or mulattoes found on the railroad without written permits be deemed runaway slaves and dealt with as the law regarding such directed.[15]
[Footnote 14: _Police Regulations of the Parish of West Baton Rouge (La.), passed at a regular meeting held at the Court House of said Parish on the second and third days of June, A.D. 1828_ (Baton Rouge, 1828), pp. 8-11. For a copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Professor W.L. Fleming of Louisiana State University.]
[Footnote 15: D.B. Sanford, _Police Jury Code of the Parish of East Feliciana, Louisiana_ (Clinton, La., 1859), pp. 98-101.]
In general, the letter of the law in slaveholding states at the middle of the nineteenth century presumed all persons with a palpable strain of negro blood to be slaves unless they could prove the contrary, and regarded the possession of them by masters as presumptive evidence of legal ownership. Property in slaves, though by some of the statutes assimilated to real estate for certain technical purposes, was usually considered as of chattel character. Its use and control, however, were hedged about with various restraints and obligations. In some states masters were forbidden to hire slaves to themselves or to leave them in any unusual way to their self-direction; and everywhere they were required to maintain their slaves in full sustenance whether young or old, able-bodied or incapacitated. The manumission of the disabled was on grounds of public thrift nowhere permitted unless accompanied with provision for their maintenance, and that of slaves of all sorts was restricted in a great variety of ways. Generally no consent by the slave was required in manumission, though in some commonwealths he might lawfully reject freedom in the form bestowed.[16] Masters might vest powers of agency in their slaves, but when so doing the masters themselves became liable for any injuries or derelictions ensuing. In criminal prosecutions, on the other hand, slaves were considered as responsible persons on their own score and punishable under the laws applicable to them. Where a crime was committed at the master’s express command, the master was liable and in some cases the slave also. Slave offenders were commonly tried summarily by special inferior courts, though for serious crimes in some states by the superior courts by regular process. Since the slaves commonly had no funds with which to pay fines, and no liberty of which to be deprived, the penalties imposed upon them for crimes and misdemeanors were usually death, deportation or lashes. Frequently in Louisiana, however, and more seldom elsewhere, convicted slaves were given prison sentences. By the intent of the law their punishments were generally more severe than those applied to white persons for the same offenses. In civil transactions slaves had no standing as persons in court except for the one purpose of making claim of freedom; and even this must usually be done through some friendly citizen as a self-appointed guardian bringing suit for trespass in the nature of ravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted; any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to their masters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although the wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person even in self-defense unless his life or limb were endangered, nor might he in his own person apply to the courts for the redress of injuries, nor generally give evidence except where negroes alone were involved. All white persons on the other hand were permitted, and in some regards required, to exercise police power over the slaves; and their masters in particular were vested with full disciplinary power over them in all routine concerns. If they should flee from their masters’ dominion, the force of the state and of other states into which they might escape, and of the United States if necessary, might be employed for their capture and resubjection; and any suspected of being fugitives, though professing to be free, might be held for long periods in custody and in the end, in default of proofs of freedom and of masters’ claims, be sold by the authorities at public auction. Finally, affecting slaves and colored freemen somewhat alike, and regardless as usual of any distinction of mulattoes or quadroons from the full-blood negroes, there were manifold restraints of a social character buttressing the predominance and the distinctive privileges of the Caucasian caste.
[Footnote 16: _E. g_., Jones, _North Carolina Supreme Court Reports_, VI. 272.]
It may fairly be said that these laws for the securing of slave property and the police of the colored population were as thorough and stringent as their framers could make them, and that they left an almost irreducible minimum of rights and privileges to those whose function and place were declared to be service and subordination. But in fairness it must also be said that in adopting this legislation the Southern community largely belied itself, for whereas the laws were systematically drastic the citizens in whose interest they were made and in whose hands their enforcement lay were in practice quite otherwise. It would have required a European bureaucracy to keep such laws fully effective; the individualistic South was incapable of the task. If the regulations were seldom relaxed in the letter they were as rarely enforced in the spirit. The citizens were too fond of their own liberties to serve willingly as martinets in the routine administration of their own laws;[17] and in consequence the marchings of the patrol squads were almost as futile and farcical as the musters of the militia. The magistrates and constables tended toward a similar slackness;[18] while on the other hand the masters, easy-going as they might be in other concerns, were jealous of any infringements of their own dominion or any abuse of their slaves whether by private persons or public functionaries. When in 1787, for example, a slave boy in Maryland reported to his master that two strangers by the name of Maddox had whipped him for killing a dog while Mr. Samuel Bishop had stood by and let them do it, the master, who presumably had no means of reaching the two strangers, wrote Bishop demanding an explanation of his conduct and intimating that if this were not satisfactorily forthcoming by the next session of court, proceedings would be begun against him[19]. While this complainant might not have been able to procure a judgment against a merely acquiescent bystander, the courts were quite ready to punish actual transgressors. In sustaining the indictment of a private citizen for such offense the chief-justice of North Carolina said in 1823: “For all purposes necessary to enforce the obedience of the slave and render him useful as property the law secures to the master a complete authority over him, and it will not lightly interfere with the relation thus established. It is a more effectual guarantee of his right of property when the slave is protected from wanton abuse by those who have no power over him, for it cannot be disputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master’s service when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violence of every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by the humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an anomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated in the verdict [the striking of a slave] were not indictable.”[20] Likewise the South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1850 endorsed the fining of a public patrol which had whipped the slaves at a quilting party despite their possession of written permission from their several masters. The Court said of the quilting party: “The occasion was a perfectly innocent one, even meritorious…. It would simply seem ridiculous to suppose that the safety of the state or any of its inhabitants was implicated in such an assemblage as this.” And of the patrol’s limitations: “A judicious freedom in the administration of our police laws for the lower order must always have respect for the confidence which the law reposes in the discretion of the master.”[21]
[Footnote 17: _E. g_., Letter of “a citizen” in the Charleston _City Gazette_, Aug. 17, 1825.]
[Footnote 18: _E. g., L’Abeille_ (New Orleans), Aug. 15, 1841, editorial.]
[Footnote 19: Letter signed “R.T.,” Port Tobacco, Md., Aug. 19, 1787. MS. in the Library of Congress.]
[Footnote 20: The State _v_. Hale, in Hawks, _North Carolina Reports_, V, 582. See similarly Munford, _Virginia Reports_, I, 288.]
[Footnote 21: The State _v_. Boozer _et al_., in Strobhart, _South Carolina Law Reports_, V, 21. This is quoted at some length in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 146-148.]
The masters were on their private score, however, prone to disregard the law where it restrained their own prerogatives. They hired slaves to the slaves themselves whether legally permitted or not; they sent them on responsible errands to markets dozens of miles away, often without providing them with passes; they sanctioned and encouraged assemblies under conditions prohibited by law; they taught their slaves at will to read and write, and used them freely in forbidden employments. Such practices as these were often noted and occasionally complained of in the press, but they were seldom obstructed. When outside parties took legal steps to interfere in the master’s routine administration, indeed, they were prompted probably as often by personal animosity as by devotion to the law. An episode of the sort, where the complainants were envious poorer neighbors, was related with sarcasm and some philosophical moralizing by W.B. Hodgson, of whose plantation something has been previously said, in a letter to Senator Hammond: “I am somewhat ‘riled’ with Burke. The benevolent neighbors have lately had me in court under indictment for cruel treatment of my fat, lazy, rollicking sambos. For fifty years they have eaten their own meat and massa’s too; but inasmuch as rich massa did not _buy_ meat, the _poor Benevolens_ indicted him. So was my friend Thomas Foreman, executor of Governor Troup. My suit was withdrawn; he was acquitted. I have some crude notions about that thing slavery in the end. Its tendency, as with landed accumulations in England, or Aaron’s rod, is to swallow up other small rods, and inevitably to attract the benevolence of the smaller ones. You may have two thousand acres of land in a body. That is unfeeling–land is. But a body of a thousand negroes appeals to the finer sentiments of the heart. The agrarian battle is hard to fight. But ‘_les amis des noirs_’ in our midst have the vantage ground, particularly when rejected overseers come in as spies. _C’est un peu degoutant, mon cher ami_; but I can stand the racket.”[22]
[Footnote 22: Letter of W.B. Hodgson, Savannah, Ga., June 19, 1859, to J.H. Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress. “Burke” is the county in which Hodgson’s plantation lay.]
The courts exercising jurisdiction over slaves were of two sorts, those of inferior grade and amateurish character which dealt with them as persons, and those of superior rank and genuine magisterial quality which handled them as property and sometimes, on appeal, as persons as well. These lower courts for the trial of slave crimes had vices in plenty. They were informal and largely ignorant of the law, and they were so quickly convened after the discovery of a crime that the shock of the deed had no time to wane. Such virtues as they sometimes had lay merely in their personnel. The slaveholders of the vicinage who commonly comprised the court were intimately and more or less tolerantly acquainted with negro nature in general, and usually doubtless with the prisoner on trial. Their judgment was therefore likely to be that of informed and interested neighbors, not of jurors carefully selected for ignorance and indifference, a judgment guided more by homely common sense than by the particularities of the law. Their task was difficult, as anyone acquainted with the rambling, mumbling, confused and baffling character of plantation negro testimony will easily believe; and the convictions and acquittals were of course oftentimes erroneous. The remodeling of the system was one of the reforms called for by Southerners of the time but never accomplished. Mistaken acquittals by these courts were beyond correction, for in the South slaves like freemen could not be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Their convictions, on the other hand, were sometimes set aside by higher courts on appeal, or their sentences estopped from execution by the governor’s pardon.[23] The thoroughness with which some of the charges against negroes were considered is illustrated in two cases tried before the county court at Newbern, North Carolina, in 1826. In one of these a negro boy was acquitted of highway robbery after the jury’s deliberation of several hours; in the other the jury on the case of a free negro woman charged with infanticide had been out for forty-six hours without reaching a verdict when the newspaper dispatch was written.[24]
[Footnote 23: The working of these courts and the current criticisms of them are illustrated in H.M. Henry _The Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 58-65.]
[Footnote 24: News item from Newbern, N.C., in the Charleston _City Gazette_, May 9, 1826.]
The circuit and supreme courts of the several states, though the slave cases which they tried were for the most part concerned only with such dry questions as detinue, trover, bailment, leases, inheritance and reversions, in which the personal quality of the negroes was largely ignored, occasionally rendered decisions of vivid human interest even where matters of mere property were nominally involved. An example occurred in the case of Rhame _vs_. Ferguson and Dangerfield, decided by the South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1839 in connection with a statute enacted by the legislature of that state in 1800 restricting manumissions and prescribing that any slaves illegally set free might be seized by any person as derelicts. George Broad of St. John’s Parish, Berkeley County, had died without blood relatives in 1836, bequeathing fourteen slaves and their progeny to his neighbor Dangerfield “in trust nevertheless and for this purpose only that the said John R. Dangerfield, his executors and assigns do permit and suffer the said slaves … to apply and appropriate their time and labor to their own proper use and behoof, without the intermeddling or interference of any person or persons whomsoever further than may be necessary for their protection under the laws of this state”; and bequeathing also to Dangerfield all his other property in trust for the use of these negroes and their descendants forever. These provisions were being duly followed when on a December morning in 1837 Rebecca Rhame, the remarried widow of Broad’s late brother-in-law, descended upon the Broad plantation in a buggy with John J. Singletary whom she had employed for the occasion under power of attorney. Finding no white person at the residence, Singletary ordered the negroes into the yard and told them they were seized in Mrs. Rhame’s behalf and must go with him to Charleston. At this juncture Dangerfield, the trustee, came up and demanded Singletary’s authority, whereupon the latter showed him his power of attorney and read him the laws under which he was proceeding. Dangerfield, seeking delay, said it would be a pity to drag the negroes through the mud, and sent a boy to bring his own wagon for them. While this vehicle was being awaited Colonel James Ferguson, a dignitary of the neighborhood who had evidently been secretly sent for by Dangerfield, galloped up, glanced over the power of attorney, branded the whole affair as a cheat, and told Dangerfield to order Singletary off the premises, driving him away with a whip if necessary, and to shoot if the conspirators should bring reinforcements. “After giving this advice, which he did apparently under great excitement, Ferguson rode off.” Singletary then said that for his part he had not come to take or lose life; and he and his employer departed. Mrs. Rhame then sued Ferguson and Dangerfield to procure possession of the negroes, claiming that she had legally seized them on the occasion described. At the trial in the circuit court, Singletary rehearsed the seizure and testified further that Dangerfield had left the negroes customarily to themselves in virtually complete freedom. In rebuttal, Dr. Theodore Gaillard testified that the negroes, whom he described as orderly by habit, were kept under control by the trustee and made to work. The verdict of the jury, deciding the questions of fact in pursuance of the judge’s charge as to the law, was in favor of the defendants; and Mrs. Rhame entered a motion for a new trial. This was in due course denied by the Court of Appeals on the ground that Broad’s will had clearly vested title to the slaves in Dangerfield, who after Broad’s death was empowered to do with them as he pleased. If he, who was by the will merely trustee but by law the full owner, had given up the practical dominion over the slaves and left them to their own self-government they were liable to seizure under the law of 1800. This question of fact, the court concluded, had properly been put to the jury along with the issue as to the effectiveness of the plaintiff’s seizure of the slaves; and the verdict for the defendants was declared conclusive.[25]
[Footnote 25: Rebecca Rhame _vs_. James Ferguson and John R. Dangerfield, in Rice, _Law Reports of South Carolina_, I, 196-203.]
This is the melodrama which the sober court record recites. The female villain of the piece and her craven henchman were foiled by the sturdy but wily trustee and the doughty Carolina colonel who, in headlong, aristocratic championship of those threatened with oppression against the moral sense of the community, charged upon the scene and counseled slaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. And in the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come to judgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assured the so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, the decision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to prove that negroes freed by will in South Carolina might be legally enslaved by any person seizing them, and that the bequest of slaves in trust to an executor as a merely nominal master was contrary to law;[26] and in later times a historian has instanced the traveller’s account in support of his own statement that “Persons who had been set free for years and had no reason to suppose that they were anything else might be seized upon for defects in the legal process of manumission.”[27]
[Footnote 26: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States in America_, II, 32, 33.]
[Footnote 27: A.B. Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_ (New York, 1906), p. 88.]
Now according to the letter of certain statutes at certain times, these assertions were severally more or less true; but if this particular case and its outcome have any palpable meaning, it is that the courts connived at thwarting such provisions by sanctioning, as a proprietorship valid against the claim of a captor, what was in obvious fact a merely nominal dominion.
Another striking case in which the severity of the law was overridden by the court in sanction of lenient custom was that of Jones _vs_. Allen, decided on appeal by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1858. In the fall of the preceding year Jones had called in his neighbors and their slaves to a corn husking and had sent Allen a message asking him to send help. Some twenty-five white men and seventy-five slaves gathered on the appointed night, among them Allen’s slave Isaac. After supper, about midnight, Jones told the negroes to go home; but Isaac stayed a while with some others wrestling in the back yard, during which, while Jones was not present, a white man named Hager stabbed Isaac to death. Allen thereupon sued Jones for damages on the ground that the latter had knowingly and unlawfully suffered Isaac, without the legally required authorization, to come with other slaves upon his premises, where he had been slain to his owner’s loss. The testimony showed that Allen had not received Jones’ message and had given Isaac no permission to go, but that Jones had not questioned Isaac in this regard; that Jones had given spirituous liquors to the slaves while at work, Isaac included, but that no one there was intoxicated except Hager who had come drunk and without invitation. In the trial court, in Rutherford County where the tragedy had occurred, the judge excluded evidence that such corn huskings were the custom of the country without the requirement of written permission for the slaves attending, and he charged the jury that Jones’ employment of Isaac and Isaac’s death on his premises made him liable to Allen for the value of the slave. But on Jones’ appeal the Supreme Court overruled this, asserting that “under our modified form of slavery slaves are not mere chattels but are regarded in the two-fold character of persons and property; that as persons they are considered by our law as accountable moral agents; … that certain rights have been conferred upon them by positive law and judicial determination, and other privileges and indulgences have been conceded to them by the universal consent of their owners. By uniform and universal usage they are constituted the agents of their owners and sent on business without written authority. And in like manner they are sent to perform those neighborly good offices common in every community…. The simple truth is, such indulgences have been so long and so uniformly tolerated, the public sentiment upon the subject has acquired almost the force of positive law.” The judgment of the lower court was accordingly reversed and Jones was relieved of liability for his laxness.[28]
[Footnote 28: Head’s _Tennessee Reports_, I, 627-639.]
There were sharp limits, nevertheless, to the lenity of the courts. Thus when one Brazeale of Mississippi carried with him to Ohio and there set free a slave woman of his and a son whom he had begotten of her, and then after taking them home again died bequeathing all his property to the mulatto boy, the supreme court of the state, in 1838, declared the manumission void under the laws and awarded the mother and son along with all the rest of Brazeale’s estate to his legitimate heirs who had brought the suit.[29] In so deciding the court may have been moved by its repugnance toward concubinage as well as by its respect for the statutes.
[Footnote 29: Howard’s _Mississippi Reports_, II, 837-844.]
The killing or injury of a slave except under circumstances justified by law rendered the offender liable both to the master’s claim for damages and to criminal prosecution; and the master’s suit might be sustained even where the evidence was weak, for as was said in a Louisiana decision, the deed was “one rarely committed in presence of witnesses, and the most that can be expected in cases of this kind are the presumptions that result from circumstances.”[30] The requirement of positive proof from white witnesses in criminal cases caused many indictments to fail.[31] A realization of this hindrance in the law deprived convicted offenders of some of the tolerance which their crimes might otherwise have met. When in 1775, for example, William Pitman was found guilty and sentenced by the Virginia General Court to be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the _Virginia Gazette_ said: “This man has justly incurred the penalties of the law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning to others to treat their slaves with more moderation.”[32] In the nineteenth century the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to be felonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases where the victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premises the courts felt themselves free to remedy the defect.[33]
[Footnote 30: Martin, _Louisiana Reports_, XV, 142.]
[Footnote 31: H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 69-79.]
[Footnote 32: _Virginia Gazette_, Apr. 21, 1775, reprinted in the _William and Mary College Quarterly_, VIII, 36.]
[Footnote 33: The State _vs_. Jones, in Walker, _Mississippi Reports_, p. 83, reprinted in J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_, pp. 252-254.]
Despite the ferocity of the statutes and the courts, the fewness and the laxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies were called into play. For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped in Belle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious and lasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgia militia. On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employed was obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcements merely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while the negroes themselves were safely in hiding. Not long afterward, however, the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and Catawba Indians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads.[34] The Seminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as to prompt invasions of their country by the United States army both before and after the Florida purchase.[35] On lesser occasions raids were made by citizen volunteers. The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, were searched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, the capture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as the result.[36]
[Footnote 34: _Georgia Colonial Records_, XII, 325, 326; _Georgia Gazette_ (Savannah), Oct. 19, 1786; _Massachusetts Sentinel_ (Boston), June 13, 1787; _Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), June 16, 1787.]
[Footnote 35: Joshua R. Giddings, _The Exiles of Florida_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1858).]
[Footnote 36: Diary of Dr. Henry Ravenel, Jr., of St. John’s Parish, Berkeley County, S.C. MS. in private possession.]
More frequent occasions for the creation of vigilance committees were the rumors of plots among the blacks and the reports of mischievous doings by whites. In the same Santee district of the Carolina lowlands, for instance, a public meeting at Black Oak Church on January 3, 1860, appointed three committees of five members each to look out for and dispose of any suspicious characters who might be “prowling about the parish.” Of the sequel nothing is recorded by the local diarist of the time except the following, under date of October 25: “Went out with a party of men to take a fellow by the name of Andrews, who lived at Cantey’s Hill and traded with the negroes. He had been warned of our approach and run off. We went on and broke up the trading establishment.”[37]
[Footnote 37: Diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, which is virtually a continuation of the Diary just cited. MS. in private possession.]
Such transactions were those of the most responsible and substantial citizens, laboring to maintain social order in the face of the law’s desuetude. A mere step further in that direction, however, lay outright lynch law. Lynchings, indeed, while far from habitual, were frequent enough to link the South with the frontier West of the time. The victims were not only rapists[38] but negro malefactors of sundry sorts, and occasionally white offenders as well. In some cases fairly full accounts of such episodes are available, but more commonly the record extant is laconic. Thus the Virginia archives have under date of 1791 an affidavit reciting that “Ralph Singo and James Richards had in January last, in Accomac County, been hung by a band of disguised men, numbering from six to fifteen”;[39] and a Georgia newspaper in 1860 the following: “It is reported that Mr. William Smith was killed by a negro on Saturday evening at Bowling Green, in Oglethorpe County. He was stabbed sixteen times. The negro made his escape but was arrested on Sunday, and on Monday morning a number of citizens who had investigated the case burnt him at the stake.”[40] In at least one well-known instance the mob’s violence was directed against an abuser of slaves. This was at New Orleans in 1834 when a rumor spread that Madame Lalaurie, a wealthy resident, was torturing her negroes. A great crowd collected after nightfall, stormed her door, found seven slaves chained and bearing marks of inhuman treatment, and gutted the house. The woman herself had fled at the first alarm, and made her way eventually to Paris.[41] Had she been brought before a modern court it may be doubted whether she would have been committed to a penitentiary or to a lunatic asylum. At the hands of the mob, however, her shrift would presumably have been short and sure.
[Footnote 38: For examples of these see above, pp. 460-463.]
[Footnote 39: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 328.]
[Footnote 40: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 14, 1860. Other instances, gleaned mostly from _Niles’ Register_ and the _Liberator_, are given in J.E. Cutler, _Lynch Law_ (New York, 1905), pp. 90-136.]
[Footnote 41: Harriett Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_ (London, 1838), I, 262-267; V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, 1841), p. 155; Alcee Fortier, _History of Louisiana_, III, 223.]
The violence of city mobs is a thing peculiar to no time or place. Rural Southern lynch law in that period, however, was in large part a special product of the sparseness of population and the resulting weakness of legal machinery, for as Olmsted justly remarked in the middle ‘fifties, the whole South was virtually still in a frontier condition.[42] In _post bellum_ decades, on the other hand, an increase of racial antipathy has offset the effect of the densification of settlement and has abnormally prolonged the liability to the lynching impulse.
[Footnote 42: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey in the Back Country_, p. 413.]
While the records have no parallel for Madame Lalaurie in her systematic and wholesale torture of slaves, there were thousands of masters and mistresses as tolerant and kindly as she was fiendish; and these were virtually without restraint of public authority in their benevolent rule. Lawmakers and magistrates by personal status in their own plantation provinces, they ruled with a large degree of consent and cooperation by the governed, for indeed no other course was feasible in the long run by men and women of normal type. Concessions and friendly services beyond the countenance and contemplation of the statutes were habitual with those whose name was legion. The law, for example, conceded no property rights to the slaves, and some statutes forbade specifically their possession of horses, but the following characteristic letter of a South Carolina mistress to an influential citizen tells an opposite story: “I hope you will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you on the subject of John, the slave of Professor Henry, Susy his wife, and the orphan children of my faithful servant Pompey, the first husband of Susy. In the first instance, Pompey owned a horse which he exchanged for a mare, which mare I permitted Susy to use after her marriage with John, but told them both I would sell it and the young colt and give Susy a third of the money, reserving the other two thirds for her children. Before I could do so, however, the mare and the colt were exchanged and sent out of my way by this dishonest couple. I then hoped at least to secure forty-five dollars for which another colt was sold to Mr. Haskell, and sent my message to him to say that Susy had no claim on the colt and that the money was to be paid to me for the children of Pompey. A few days since I sent to Mr. Haskell again who informed me that he had paid for the colt, and referred me to you. I do assure you that whatever Susy may affirm, she has no right to the money. It is not my intention to meddle with the law on the occasion, and I infinitely prefer relying on you to do justice to the parties. My manager, who will deliver this to you, is perfectly acquainted with all the circumstances; and [if] after having a conversation with him you should decide in favor of the children I shall be much gratified.”[43]
[Footnote 43: Letter of Caroline Raoul, Belleville, S.C., Dec. 26, 1829, to James H. Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.]
Likewise where the family affairs of slaves were concerned the silence and passiveness of the law gave masters occasion for eloquence and activity. Thus a Georgian wrote to a neighbor: “I have a girl Amanda that has your servant Phil for a husband. I should be very glad indeed if you would purchase her. She is a very good seamstress, an excellent cook–makes cake and preserves beautifully–and washes and irons very nicely, and cannot be excelled in cleaning up a house. Her disposition is very amiable. I have had her for years and I assure you that I have not exaggerated as regards her worth…. I will send her down to see you at any time.”[44] That offers of purchase were no less likely than those of sale to be prompted by such considerations is suggested by another Georgia letter: “I have made every attempt to get the boy Frank, the son of James Nixon; and in order to gratify James have offered as far as five hundred dollars for him–more than I would pay for any negro child in Georgia were it not James’ son.”[45] It was therefore not wholly in idyllic strain that a South Carolinian after long magisterial service remarked: “Experience and observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of kindness from the master to the slave. With that … slavery becomes a family relation, next in its attachments to that of parent and child.”[46]
[Footnote 44: Letter of E.N. Thompson, Vineville, Ga. (a suburb of Macon), to J.B. Lamar at Macon, Ga., Aug. 7, 1854. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.]
[Footnote 45: Letter of Henry Jackson, Jan. 11, 1837, to Howell Cobb. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.]
[Footnote 46: J.B. O’Neall in J.B.D. DeBow ed., _Industrial Resources of the South and West_, II (New Orleans, 1852), 278.]
On the whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the Old South have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to their abundance and accessibility. The statutes, copious and easily available, describe a hypothetical regime, not an actual one. The court records are on the one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions of human adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisions were themselves largely controlled by the statutes, perverse for ordinary practical purposes as these often were. It is therefore to the letters, journals and miscellaneous records of private persons dwelling in the regime and by their practices molding it more powerfully than legislatures and courts combined, that the main recourse for intimate knowledge must be had. Regrettably fugitive and fragmentary as these are, enough it may be hoped have been found and used herein to show the true nature of the living order.
The government of slaves was for the ninety and nine by men, and only for the hundredth by laws. There were injustice, oppression, brutality and heartburning in the regime,–but where in the struggling world are these absent? There were also gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutual loyalty to a degree hard for him to believe who regards the system with a theorist’s eye and a partisan squint. For him on the other hand who has known the considerate and cordial, courteous and charming men and women, white and black, which that picturesque life in its best phases produced, it is impossible to agree that its basis and its operation were wholly evil, the law and the prophets to the contrary notwithstanding.
INDEX
Acklen, Joseph A.S.,
plantation home of
rules of, for overseers
Africa, West, _see_ Guinea
Agriculture, _see_ cotton, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture
Aiken, William, rice plantation of
Aime, Valcour, sugar plantation of
Amissa, enslaved and restored to Africa Angolas,
tribal traits of
revolt of
Antipathy, racial,
Jefferson’s views on
in Massachusetts
in North and South compared
Northern spokesmen of
Arabs, in the Guinea trade
Asiento
Azurara, Gomez E.
Baltimore, negro churches in
Barbados,
emigration from,
to Carolina
to Jamaica
founding of
planters’ committee of
slave laws of,
sugar culture in
Belmead plantation
Benin
Black codes,
administration of
attitude of citizens toward
local ordinances
origin of,
in Barbados
in the Northern colonies
in Louisiana
in South Carolina
in Virginia
tenor of,
in the North
in the South
Bobolinks, in rice fields
Bonny
Bore, Etienne de, sugar planter
Bosman, William, in the Guinea trade Branding of slaves
Bristol, citizens of, in the slave trade Burial societies, negro
Burnside, John, merchant and sugar planter Butler, Pierce,
the younger,
slaves of, sold
Cain, Elisha, overseer
Cairnes, J.E., views of, on slavery Calabar, New
Calabar, Old
Cape Coast Castle
Capers, William, overseer
Capital, investment of, in slaves
Charleston, commerce of,
free negroes in
industrial census of
racial adjustments in, problem of
slave misdemeanors in
Denmark Vesey’s plot
Churches,
racial adjustments in,
rural
urban
Clarkson, Thomas, views of, on the effects of closing the slave trade Columbus, Christopher, policy of
Concubinage
Congoes, tribal traits of
Connecticut,
slavery in,
disestablishment of
Cooper, Thomas, views of, on the economics of slavery Corbin, Richard, plantation rules of
Coromantees, conspiracy of,
tribal traits of
Corporations, ownership of slaves by Cotton culture,
sea-island
introduction of,
methods and scale of
upland,
engrossment of thought and energy by improvements in
methods and scale of
stimulates westward migration
Cotton gin, invention of
Cotton mills
slave operatives in
Cotton plantations, _see_ plantations, cotton Cotton prices, sea-island,
upland,
chart facing
Cottonseed,
oil extracted from
used as fertilizer
Covington, Leonard, planter, migration of Creoles, Louisiana
Criminality among free negroes
among slaves
Cuba
Dabney, Thomas S., planter, migration of Dahomeys
Dale, Sir Thomas
Davis, Joseph and Jefferson, plantation policy of Delaware,
slaves and free negroes in
forbids export of slaves
Depression, financial,
in Mississippi
in Virginia
Dirt-eating, among Jamaica slaves
Discipline, of slaves
Diseases,
characteristic,
in Africa
among Jamaica slaves
venereal
Doctors, black,
in Jamaica
in South Carolina
in Virginia
“Doctoress,” slave, in Georgia
Drivers (plantation foremen)
Driving of slaves to death, question of Dutch, in the slave trade
Dutch West India Company
Early, Peter, debates the closing of the foreign slave trade East India Company, in the slave trade
Eboes, tribal traits of
El Mina
Elliott, William, planter
economic views of
Ellsworth, Oliver
Emancipation, _see_ manumission
Encomiendia system, in the Spanish West Indies England, policy of, toward the slave trade Epitaph of Peyton, a slave
Evans, Henry, negro preacher
Factorage, in planters’ dealings
Factorage, in the slave trade,
in American ports
in Guinea
Farmers,
free negro
white,
in the Piedmont
in the plantation colonies
segregation of
in the westward movement
Federal Convention
Festivities, of slaves
Fithian, Philip V., observations by Foremen, plantation
Foulahs
Fowler, J.W.,
cotton picking records of
plantation rules of
Franklin and Armfield, slave-dealers Free negroes,
antipathy toward
criminality among
discriminations against
emigration projects of
endorsements of
kidnapping of
legal seizure of, attempts at
mob violence against
occupations of, in Augusta
in Charleston
in New Orleans and New York
prominent characters among
processes of procuring freedom by
qualities and status of
reenslavement of
secret societies among
slaveholding by
French, in the slave trade
Fugitive slaves, _see_ slaves, runaway, rendition, in the Federal Constitution, act of 1793
Funerals, negro
Gaboons, tribal traits of
Gabriel, insurrection led by
Gadsden, Christopher
Gambia, slave trade on the
Gang system, in plantation work
Genoese, in the slave trade
Georgia, founding of,
free negress visits
slave imports forbidden in,
permitted in
restricted by
uplands, development of
Gerry, Elbridge
Gibson, Arthur H., views of, on the economics of slavery Godkin, Edwin L., on the migration of planters Gold Coast
Goodloe, Daniel R., views of, on slavery Gowrie, rice plantation
Grandy King George, African chief, wants of Guiana, British,
invites free negro immigration
cotton culture in
Dutch
Guinea,
coastal explorations of
life and institutions in
slave exports from, beginnings of, volume of
tribal traits in
_See also_ negroes and slave trade
Hairston, Samuel, planter
Hammond, James H., planter and writer Hampton, Wade, planter
Harrison, Jesse Burton, views of, on slavery Hawkins, Sir John, adventures of, in the slave trade Hayti (Hispaniola)
Hearn, Lafcadio, on sugar-cane harvesting Helper, Hinton R., views of, on slavery
Hemp
Henry, Patrick
Henry, Prince, the Navigator
Heyward, Nathaniel, planter
Hodgson, W.B., planter
Holidays, of slaves,
plantation
urban
Hundley D.R., on slave traders
Immigrants, in the South
_See also_ Irish
Importations of slaves
prohibition of
Indians, enslaved,
in New England
in South Carolina
in West Indies, subjugated by Spaniards Indigo culture,
introduction of,
in Georgia
in South Carolina
methods of
Insurrection of slaves, _see_ slave plots Irish, labor of, on plantations
Jamaica,
capture and development of
maroons of
nabobs, absentee
plantations in
runaway slaves in, statistics of
Jefferson, Thomas,
on the foreign slave trade
on negroes and slavery
Jennison, Nathaniel, prosecution of Job Ben Solomon, enslaved and restored to Africa Joloffs
Kentucky, settlement of
Kidnapping of free negroes
King, Rufus
Kingsley, Z., plantation experience of
Lace, Ambrose, slave trader
Lalaurie, Madame
Lamar, John B., planter
Las Casas, Bartholomeo de la
Laurens, Henry, factor and planter
Liberia
Lincecum, Gideon, peregrinations of Lindo, Moses, indigo merchant
Liverpool,
in the slave trade,
types of ships employed
Loango
Lodges, negro
London, in the slave trade
London Company
Loria, Achille, views of, on slavery economics Louisiana, cotton culture in,
slave laws of
sugar culture in
L’Ouverture, Toussaint
Lucas, Eliza
Lynchings
M’Culloch, J.R., views of, on slavery McDonogh, John, manumission by, method of Macon, Nathaniel
Madagascar, slaves procured from
Malaria,
in Africa
in South Carolina
Mandingoes, tribal traits of
Manigault, Charles, planter
rules of
Manors in Maryland
Manumission, of slaves
Maroons, negro, in Jamaica
on the Savannah River
Martinique
Maryland,
founding of
free negroes in
manors in
plantations in
slave imports prohibited by
slaveholdings in, scale of
slavery in, projects for the disestablishment of Massachusetts,
in the slave trade
slavery in
abolition of
Matthews, Samuel, planter
Medical attention to slaves
Mercer, James, planter
Merolla, Jerom, missionary
Middle passage, _see_ slave trade, African Midwives, slave
Migration
Mill, John Stuart, views of, on slavery Miller, Phineas, partner of Eli Whitney
Misdemeanors of slaves, in Charleston Missouri,
decline of slavery in
settlement of
Mississippi,
depression in
product of long-fibre cotton in
sale of slaves from
Mobs, violence of, toward free negroes Mocoes, tribal traits of
Molasses
Moore, Francis, Royal African Company factor Moors
Mulattoes
Mules
Nagoes, tribal traits of
Negro traits,
American
Angola
Congo
Coromantee
Ebo
Gaboon
Mandingo
Nago
Paw Paw
Whydah
Negroes, _see_ antipathy, black codes, church adjustments, free negroes, funerals, plantation labor, plantation life, slave plots slave trade, slaveholdings, slavery, slaves New England,
in the slave trade,
type of ships employed
slavery in,
disestablishment of
New Jersey,
slavery in,
disestablishment of
New Netherlands, slavery in
New Orleans, as a slave market,
free negroes in
New York,
negro plots in
slavery in,
disestablishment of
Nicholson, J.S., views of, on slavery Nobility, English, as Jamaica plantation owners North Carolina,
early conditions in
sentiment on slavery
Northrup, a kidnapped free negro, career of Northwest Territory, prohibition of slavery in
Oglethorpe, James,
administers the Royal African Company founds Georgia
restores a slave to Africa
Olmsted, Frederick L., observations by Overseers, plantation, functions, salaries, and experiences of
Panics, financial, effects on slave prices Park, Mungo, in Guinea
“Particular plantations,” in Virginia Paths, in Guinea, character of
Paw Paws, tribal traits of
Pennsylvania, slavery in,
disestablishment of
Peyton, a slave, epitaph of
Philips, Martin W.,
planter and writer
slave epitaph by
Pickering, Timothy
_Plantation and Frontier_, citation of title in full Plantation labor
Plantation life
Plantation management
Plantation mistress
Plantation rules
Plantation system,
cherishment of slaves in
as a civilizing agency
gang and task methods in
severity in, question of
soil exhaustion in
towns and factories hampered in growth by westward spread of
Plantation tendencies
Plantations, cotton, sea island
Plantations,
cotton,
upland,
J.H. Hammond estate
Retreat
indigo
rice,
Butler’s Island
Gowrie and East Hermitage
Jehossee Island
sugar,
in Barbados,
Drax Hall
in Jamaica,
Worthy Park
in Louisiana,
Valcour Aime’s estate
tobacco,
Belmead
James Mercer’s estate
Planters,
absenteeism among
concern of, for slaves
dietary of
exemplified,
in J.A.S. Acklen
in William Aiken
in John Burnside
in Robert Carter
in Christopher Codrington
in Thomas S. Dabney
in Jefferson and Joseph Davis
in Samuel Hairston
in James H. Hammond
in Wade Hampton
in Nathaniel Heywood
in W.B. Hodgson
in Z. Kingsley
in John B. Lamar
in Henry Laurens
in Charles Manigault
in Samuel Matthews
in James Mercer
in A.H. Pemberton
in Martin W. Philips
in George Washington
in David R. Williams
gentility of
homesteads of
innovations by
management by
migration of
purchases of slaves by
rules of
sales of slaves by
sports of
temper of
Poor whites,
in the South,
Cairnes’ assertions concerning
Portugal, activities of, in Guinea, an appandage of Spain
negroes in
Preachers, negro
Procter, Billy, a slave, letter of
Providence, “Old,” a Puritan colony in the tropics, career of Puritans, attitude of, toward slavery
Quakers, relationship of, to slavery
Quincy, Josiah
Railroad companies, slave ownership by Randolph, Edmund, disrelishes slavery
Randolph, John, of Roanoke,
on the coasting trade in slaves
on depression in Virginia
manumits his slaves
Randolph, Richard, provides for the manumission of his slaves Rape, by negroes in the ante-bellum South Rats, a pest in Jamaica
Rattoons, of sugar cane
Religion, among slaves,
rural
urban
Retreat, cotton plantation
Revolution, American,
doctrines of
effects of, on slavery
Negroes in
radicalism of, waning of
Rhode Island,
in the slave trade
resolution advocating the stoppage of the slave trade slavery in,
disestablishment of
Rice birds (bobolinks), damage from Rice culture,
introduced into Georgia
into South Carolina
methods of
plantations in,
scale of
Rishworth, Samuel, early agitator against slavery Rolfe, John, introduces tobacco culture into Virginia Roustabouts, Irish,
qualities of
negro
Royal African Company
Ruffin, Edmund,
advocates agricultural reforms
views of, on slavery
Rum,
product of, in Jamaica
rations issued to slaves,
in Jamaica
in South Carolina
use of, in the Guinea trade
Runaway slaves,
general problem
of George Washington
in Georgia
in Jamaica
in Mississippi
Russell, Irwin, “Christmas in the Quarters,” Sabine Fields, rice plantation
Sahara, slave trade across
Saluda factory, slave operatives in San Domingo,
emigration from, to Louisiana
revolution in
Say, J.B., views of, on slavery
Sea-island cotton,
introduced into the United States
methods and scale of culture
Seasoning of slaves, in Jamaica
Secret societies, negro
Senegal, slave trade in
Senegalese, tribal traits of
Senegambia
Serfdom
Servants,
white indentured,
in Barbados
in Connecticut
in Jamaica
in Maryland
in Massachusetts
in Pennsylvania
in South Carolina and Georgia
in Virginia
revolts by
Servitude, indentured, tendencies of Shackles, used on slaves
Shenendoah Valley
Ships, types of, in the slave trade Sierra’ Leone
Slave Coast
Slave felons
Slave plots and insurrections,
general survey of
disquiet caused by
Gabriel’s uprising
in “Old” Providence
in New York
proclivity of Coromantees toward
San Domingan revolution
Stono rebellion
Nat Turner’s (Southampton), revolt Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy
Slave trade, African,
the asiento
barter in
chieftains active in
closing of, by various states,
by Congress
effects of
drain of funds by
Liverpool’s prominence in
the middle passage
reopening, project of
Royal African Company
ships employed in,
types of
care and custody of slaves on
tricks of
Yankee traders in
Slave trade,
domestic,
beginnings of
effects of
methods in
to Louisiana
scale of
Slave traders,
domestic,
Franklin and Armfield
methods and qualities of
reputations of, blackened
maritime
Slaveholding, vicissitudes of
Slaveholdings,
by corporations
by free negroes,
scale of, in the cotton belt
in Jamaica
in Maryland
in New York
in towns
in Virginia
on the South Carolina coast
Slavery,
in Africa
in the American Revolution
in ancient Rome
in the British West Indies
in Europe
in Georgia
in Louisiana
in the North
disestablishment of
in South Carolina
in Spanish America
in Virginia
_See also_ black codes, negroes, and plantation labor, life and management
Slaves, negro,
artizans among
as factory operatives
birth rates of
branding of
“breaking in” of
breeding, forced, question of
capital invested in
children, care and control of
church adjustments of
conspiracies of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections crimes of
crops of, private
dealers in, _see_ slave traders
discipline of
diseases and death rates of
driving of, to death, question of earnings of private
felons among, disposal of
festivities of
food and clothing of
foemen among
hiring of
to themselves
holidays of
hospitals for
labor of, schedule of
laws concerning
life insurance of
manumission of
marriages of
annulment of
medical and surgical care of
plots and insurrections of
police of
preachers among
prices of
property of
protection of, from strain and exposure punishments of
purchases of
by themselves
drain of funds, caused by
quarters of
sanitation of
rape by
religion among
revolts of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections rewards of
rum allowances to
running away by
sales of
shackling of
social stratification among
speculation in
stealing of
strikes by
suicide of
suits by, for freedom,
concerning
temper of
torture of
town adjustments of
undesirable types of
wages of
in the westward movement
women among, care and control of
work, rates of
working of, to death, question of Smart, William, views of, on slavery
Smith, Adam, views of, on slavery
Smith, Captain John
Smith, Landgrave Thomas
Snelgrave, William, in the maritime slave trade Soil exhaustion
Southampton insurrection
South Carolina,
closing and reopening of the foreign slave trade in cotton culture in
emigration from
founding of
indigo culture in
rice culture in
slave imports,
prohibited by
reopened by
slave laws of
slaveholdings in, scale of
uplands, development of
Spain,
annexation of Portugal by
asiento instituted by
negroes in
police of American dominions by
policy of, toward Indians and negroes Spaulding, Thomas, planter
Spinners, on plantations
Spratt, L.W., views of, on conditions in South Carolina Staples, _see_ cotton, hemp, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture and plantations
Steamboat laborers,
Irish
negro
Sugar culture,
in Barbados
in Jamaica
in Louisiana
methods and apparatus of
plantations in,
scale of
types of
in the Spanish West Indies
Task system, in plantation industry
Taylor, John, of Caroline, agricultural writings of Telfair, Alexander,
plantations of
rules of
Tennessee, settlement of
Texas
Thomas, E.S., bookseller, experience of Thorpe, George, Virginia colonist
Tobacco culture,
in Maryland
method of
in North Carolina
plantations in,
scale of
types of
in the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia in Virginia
Towns, Southern,
growth of, hampered
slaves in
Tucker, St. George, project of, for extinguishing slavery in Virginia Turner, Nat, insurrection led by
Utrecht, treaty of, grants the asiento to England
Van Buren, A. de Puy, observations by Venetians, in the Levantine slave trade
Vermont, prohibition of slavery by
Vesey, Denmark, conspiracy of
Vigilance committees
Virginia,
founding and early experience of
free negroes in
plantations in,
“particular”
private
servants, indentured, in
slave crimes in
slave imports, prohibited by
slave laws of
slave revolts in
slaveholdings in, scale of
slavery,
introduced in
disestablishment in, projects of
tobacco culture in
Walker, Quork, suits concerning the freedom of Washington, George
apprehensions of, concerning slave property desires the gradual abolition of slavery imports cotton
as a planter
West Indies,
British,
prosperity and decline in, progression of servile plots and insurrections in
slave prices in, on the eve of abolition Spanish,
colonization of
negro slavery in, introduction of Weston, P.C., plantation rules of
Westward movement
Whitney, Eli, invents the cotton gin Whydahs, tribal traits of
Williams, David R., planter
Williams, Francis, a free negro, career of Women, slave,
care of, in pregnancy and childbirth difficulties in controlling
Working of slaves to death, question of Worthy Park, Jamaica plantation, records of
Yeomanry, white, in the South