A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Documents on Slavery. Гарриет Бичер-Стоу

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СКАЧАТЬ certain business relations which caused him frequently to visit different plantations, and to have under his control many of the slaves. His opportunities for observation, therefore, were quite intimate. There is a homely matter-of-fact distinctness in the style that forbids the idea of its being a fancy sketch:

      It was a general custom, wherever I have been, for the master to give each of his slaves, male and female, one peck of corn per week for their food. This, at fifty cents per bushel, which was all that it was worth when I was there, would amount to twelve and a half cents per week for board per head.

      It cost me, upon an average, when at the South, one dollar per day for board;—the price of fourteen bushels of corn per week. This would make my board equal in amount to the board of forty-six slaves! This is all that good or bad masters allow their slaves, round about Savannah, on the plantations. One peck of gourd-seed corn is to be measured out to each slave once every week. One man with whom I labored, however, being desirous to get all the work out of his hands he could, before I left (about fifty in number), bought for them every week, or twice a week, a beef’s head from market. With this they made a soup in a large iron kettle, around which the hands came at meal-time, and dipping out the soup, would mix it with their hominy, and eat it as though it were a feast. This man permitted his slaves to eat twice a day while I was doing a job for him. He promised me a beaver hat, and as good a suit of clothes as could be bought in the city, if I would accomplish so much for him before I returned to the North; giving me the entire control over his slaves. Thus you may see the temptations overseers sometimes have, to get all the work they can out of the poor slaves. The above is an exception to the general rule of feeding. For, in all other places where I worked and visited, the slaves had nothing from their masters but the corn, or its equivalent in potatoes or rice; and to this they were not permitted to come but once a day. The custom was to blow the horn early in the morning, as a signal for the hands to rise and go to work. When commenced, they continue work until about eleven o’clock A. M., when, at the signal, all hands left off, and went into their huts, made their fires, made their corn-meal into hominy or cake, ate it, and went to work again at the signal of the horn, and worked until night, or until their tasks were done. Some cooked their breakfast in the field while at work. Each slave must grind his own corn in a hand-mill after he has done his work at night. There is generally one hand-mill on every plantation for the use of the slaves.

      Some of the planters have no corn; others often get out. The substitute for it is the equivalent of one peck of corn, either in rice or sweet potatoes, neither of which is as good for the slaves as corn. They complain more of being faint when fed on rice or potatoes than when fed on corn. I was with one man a few weeks who gave me his hands to do a job of work, and, to save time, one cooked for all the rest. The following course was taken:—Two crotched sticks were driven down at one end of the yard, and, a small pole being laid on the crotches, they 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.

      Slavery as It Is, p. 18.

      Thomas Clay, Esq., a slave-holder of Georgia, and a most benevolent man, and who interested himself very successfully in endeavoring 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 question, Jan. 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.

      Slavery as It Is, p. 28.

      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, Miss., 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.—Ibid.

      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.

      Ibid.

      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 as yet too many counterparts. Lest, however, 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.”

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