Notes
Journey in the Back Country. By Frederick Law Olmsted.
The Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sentinel, of June 3, contained a confirmation of these statements in regard to Northern Alabama. A gentleman returned from 'a prolonged tour through the cotton States' communicated a narrative, which demonstrated that the people of Huntsville and vicinity were very hostile to secession in January, that 'at Athens the stars and stripes floated over the court house long after the State had enacted the farce of secession,' and that, even in May, open opposition to secession existed 'in the mountain portion of Alabama, a large tract of country, embracing about one-third of the State, lying adjacent to and south of the Tennessee valley.' The writer added, 'IN THEIR MOUNTAIN FASTNESSES THEY DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY, OR THE POWER OF ITS RULERS.'
It is proved, by the great increase of the cotton crop during this period, that the surplus increase of slaves was mainly composed of field hands purchased in the border States.
'The Edwards Family;' page 11.
'If some learned philosopher who had been abroad, in giving an account of the curious observations he had made in his travels, should say he had been in Terra del Fuego, and there had seen an animal, which he calls by a certain name, that begat and brought forth itself, and yet had a sire and dam distinct from itself; that it had an appetite and was hungry before it had a being; that his master, who led him and governed by him, and driven by him where he pleased; that when he moved he always took a step before the first step; that he went with his head first, and yet always went tail foremost, and this though he had neither head nor tail,' etc. etc.—Freedom of the Will, part 4.
Sismondi's History of the French.
Benôit, Hist. Rev. Edict of Nantes, book 7.
Dr. Baird, vol. I. p. 174.
Oxford town records.
Vandenkemp's Alb. Rec. viii.
Instances are frequent where Southern gentlemen form these left-handed connections, and rear two sets of differently colored children; but it is not often that the two families occupy the same domicil. The only other case within my personal knowledge was that of the well-known President of the Bank of St. M——, at Columbia, Ga. That gentleman, whose note ranked in Wall Street, when the writer was acquainted with that locality, as 'A No. 1,' lived for fifteen years with two 'wives' under one roof. One—an accomplished white woman, and the mother of several children—did the honors of his table, and moved with him in 'the best society;' the other—a beautiful quadroon, also the mother of several children—filled the humbler office of nurse to her own and the other's offspring.
In conversation with a well-known Southern gentleman, not long since, I mentioned these two cases, and commented on them as a man educated with New England ideas might be supposed to do. The gentleman admitted that he knew of twenty such instances, and gravely defended the practice as being infinitely more moral and respectable than the more relation existing between masters and slaves.
Among the things of which slavery has deprived the black is a name. A slave has no family designation. It may be for that reason that a high-sounding appellation is usually selected for the single one he is allowed to appropriate.
It is not now improper to broach this button ruse, because it was recently discovered at the South and is guarded against.