The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

The custos thought the apprentices were behaving very ill. On being asked if he had any trouble with his, he said, O, no! his apprentices did quite well, and so did the apprentices generally, in the Plantain Garden River Valley. But in far off parishes, he heard that they were very refractory and troublesome.

The custos testified that the negroes were very easily managed. He said he had often thought that he would rather have the charge of six hundred negroes, than of two hundred English sailors. He spoke also of the temperate habits of the negroes. He had been in the island twenty-two years, and he had never seen a negro woman drunk, on the estate. It was very seldom that the men got drunk. There were not more than ten men on Golden Grove, out of a population of five hundred, who were in the habit of occasionally getting intoxicated. He also remarked that the negroes were a remarkable people for their attention to the old and infirm among them; they seldom suffered them to want, if it was in their power to supply them. Among other remarks of the custos, was this sweeping declaration--"No man in his senses can pretend to defend slavery."

After spending a day at Golden Grove, we proceeded to the adjacent estate of Amity Hall. On entering the residence of the manager, Mr. Kirkland, we were most gratefully surprised to find him engaged in family prayers. It was the first time and the last that we heard the voice of prayer in a Jamaican planter's house. We were no less gratefully surprised to see a white lady, to whom we were introduced as Mrs. Kirkland, and several modest and lovely little children. It was the first and the last family circle that we were permitted to see among the planters of that licentious colony. The motley group of colored children--of every age from tender infancy--which we found on other estates, revealed the state of domestic manners among the planters.

Mr. K. regarded the abolition of slavery as a great blessing to the colony; it was true that the apprenticeship was a wretchedly bad system, but notwithstanding, things moved smoothly on his estate. He informed us that the negroes on Amity Hall had formerly borne the character of being the worst gang in the parish; and when he first came to the estate, he found that half the truth had not been told of them; but they had become remarkably peaceable and subordinate. It was his policy to give them every comfort that he possibly could. Mr. K. made the same declaration, which has been so often repeated in the course of this narrative, i.e., that if any of the estates were abandoned, it would be owing to the harsh treatment of the people. He knew many overseers and book-keepers who were cruel driving men, and he should not be surprised if they lost a part, or all, of their laborers. He made one remark which we had not heard before. There were some estates, he said, which would probably be abandoned, for the same reason that they ought never to have been cultivated, because they require almost double labor;--such are the mountainous estates and barren, worn-out properties, which nothing but a system of forced labor could possibly retain in cultivation. But the idea that the negroes generally would leave their comfortable homes, and various privileges on the estates, and retire to the wild woods, he ridiculed as preposterous in the extreme. Mr. K. declared repeatedly that he could not look forward to 1840, but with the most sanguine hopes; he confidently believed that the introduction of complete freedom would be the regeneration of the island. He alluded to the memorable declaration of Lord Belmore, (made memorable by the excitement which it caused among the colonists,) in his valedictory address to the assembly, on the eve of his departure for England.[[A]] "Gentlemen," said he, "the resources of this noble island will never be fully developed until slavery is abolished!" For this manly avowal the assembly ignobly refused him the usual marks of respect and honor at his departure. Mr. K. expected to see Jamaica become a new world under the enterprise and energies of freedom. There were a few disaffected planters, who would probably remain so, and leave the islands after emancipation. It would be a blessing to the country if such men left it, for as long as they were disaffected, they were the enemies of its prosperity.

[Footnote [A]: Lord Belmore left the government of Jamaica, a short time before the abolition act passed in parliament.]

Mr. K. conducted us through the negro quarters, which are situated on the hill side, nearly a mile from his residence. We went into several of the houses; which were of a better style somewhat than the huts in Antigua and Barbadoes--larger, better finished and furnished. Some few of them had verandahs or porches on one or more sides, after the West India fashion, closed in with jalousies. In each of the houses to which we were admitted, there was one apartment fitted up in a very neat manner, with waxed floor, a good bedstead, and snow white coverings, a few good chairs, a mahogany sideboard, ornamented with dishes, decanters, etc.

From Amity Hall, we drove to Manchioneal, a small village ten miles north of the Plantain Garden River Valley. We had a letter to the special magistrate for that district, R. Chamberlain, Esq., a colored gentleman, and the first magistrate we found in the parish of St. Thomas in the East, who was faithful to the interests of the apprentices. He was a boarder at the public house, where we were directed for lodgings, and as we spent a few days in the village, we had opportunities of obtaining much information from him, as well as of attending some of his courts. Mr. C. had been only five months in the district of Manchioneal, having been removed thither from a distant district. Being a friend of the apprentices, he is hated and persecuted by the planters. He gave us a gloomy picture of the oppressions and cruelties of the planters. Their complaints brought before him are often of the most trivial kind; yet because he does not condemn the apprentices to receive a punishment which the most serious offences alone could justify him in inflicting, they revile and denounce him as unfit for his station. He represents the planters as not having the most distant idea that it is the province of the special magistrate to secure justice to the apprentice; but they regard it as his sole duty to help them in getting from the laborers as much work as whips, and chains, and tread-wheels can extort. His predecessor, in the Manchioneal district, answered perfectly to the planters' beau ideal. He ordered a cat to be kept on every estate in his district, to be ready for use as he went around on his weekly visits. Every week he inspected the cats, and when they became too much worn to do good execution, he condemned them, and ordered new ones to be made.

Mr. C. said the most frequent complaints made by the planters are for insolence. He gave a few specimens of what were regarded by the planters as serious offences. An overseer will say to his apprentice, "Work along there faster, you lazy villain, or I'll strike you;" the apprentice will reply, "You can't strike me now," and for this he is taken before the magistrate on the complaint of insolence. An overseer, in passing the gang on the field, will hear them singing; he will order them, in a peremptory tone to stop instantly, and if they continue singing, they are complained of for insubordination. An apprentice has been confined to the hospital with disease,--when he gets able to walk, tired of the filthy sick house, he hobbles to his hut, where he may have the attentions of his wife until he gets well. That is called absconding from labor! Where the magistrate does not happen to be an independent man, the complaint is sustained, and the poor invalid is sentenced to the treadmill for absenting himself from work. It is easy to conjecture the dreadful consequence. The apprentice, debilitated by sickness, dragged off twenty-five miles on foot to Morant Bay, mounted on the wheel, is unable to keep the step with the stronger ones, slips off and hangs by the wrists, and his flesh is mangled and torn by the wheel.

The apprentices frequently called at our lodgings to complain to Mr. C. of the hard treatment of their masters. Among the numerous distressing cases which we witnessed, we shall never forget that of a poor little negro boy, of about twelve, who presented himself one afternoon before Mr. C., with a complaint against his master for violently beating him. A gash was cut in his head, and the blood had flowed freely. He fled from his master, and came to Mr. C. for refuge. He belonged to A. Ross, Esq., of Mulatto Run estate. We remembered that we had a letter of introduction to that planter, and we had designed visiting him, but after witnessing this scene, we resolved not to go near a monster who could inflict such a wound, with his own hand, upon a child. We were highly gratified with the kind and sympathizing manner in which Mr. C. spoke with the unfortunate beings who, in the extremity of their wrongs, ventured to his door.

At the request of the magistrate we accompanied him, on one occasion, to the station-house, where he held a weekly court. We had there a good opportunity to observe the hostile feelings of the planters towards this faithful officer--"faithful among the faithless," (though we are glad that we cannot quite add, "only he.")