The cool barbarity of such a regulation is hardly surpassed by the worst edicts of the Roman Caligula—especially when we consider that the plantations of this man were in the neighborhood of the Combahee river, one of the most unhealthy districts in the low country of South Carolina; further, that large numbers of his slaves worked in the rice marshes, or 'swamps' as they are called in that state—and that during six months of the year, so fatal to health is the malaria of the swamps in that region that the planters and their families invariably abandon their plantations, regarding it as downright presumption to spend a single day upon them 'between the frosts' of the early spring and the last of November.
The reader may infer the high standing of Mr. Heyward in South Carolina, from the fact that he was selected with four other freeholders to constitute a Court for the trial of the conspirators in the insurrection plot at Charleston, in 1822. Another of the individuals chosen to constitute that court was Colonel Henry Deas, now president of the Board of Trustees of Charleston College, and a few years since a member of the Senate of South Carolina. From a late correspondence in the "Greenvile (S.C.) Mountaineer," between Rev. William M. Wightman, a professor in Randolph, Macon, College, and a number of the citizens of Lodi, South Carolina, it appears that the cruelty of this Colonel Deas to his slaves, is proverbial in South Carolina, so much that Professor Wightman, in the sermon which occasioned the correspondence, spoke of the Colonel's inhumanity to his slaves as a matter of perfect notoriety.
Another South Carolina slaveholder, Hon. Whitmarsh B. Seabrook, recently, we believe, Lieut. Governor of the state, gives the following testimony to his own inhumanity, and his certificate of the 'public opinion' among South Carolina slaveholders 'of high degree.'
In an essay on the management of slaves, read before the Agricultural Society of St. Johns, S.C. and published by the Society, Charleston, 1834, Mr. S. remarks:
"I consider imprisonment in the stocks at night, with or without hard labor in the day, as a powerful auxiliary in the cause of good government. To the correctness of this opinion many can bear testimony. EXPERIENCE has convinced ME that there is no punishment to which the slave looks with more horror."
The advertisements of the Professors in the Medical Colleges of South Carolina, published with comments—on [pp. 169, 170], are additional illustrations of the 'public opinion' of the literati.
That the 'public opinion' of the highest class of society in South Carolina, regards slaves a mere cattle, is shown by the following advertisement, which we copy from the "Charleston (S.C.) Mercury" of May 16:
"NEGROES FOR SALE.—A girl about twenty years of age, (raised in Virginia,) and her two female children, one four and the other two year old—is remarkably strong and healthy—never having had a day's sickness, with the exception of the small pox, in her life. The children are fine and healthy. She is VERY PROLIFIC IN HER GENERATING QUALITIES, and affords a rare opportunity to any person who wishes to raise a family of strong and healthy servants for their own use.
"Any person wishing to purchase will please leave their address at the Mercury office."
The Charleston Mercury, in which this advertisement appears, is the leading political paper in South Carolina, and is well known to be the political organ of Messrs. Calhoun, Rhett, Pickens, and others of the most prominent politicians in the state. Its editor, John Stewart, Esq., is a lawyer of Charleston, and of a highly respectable family. He is a brother-in-law of Hon. Robert Barnwell Rhett, the late Attorney-General, now a Member of Congress, and Hon. James Rhett, a leading member of the Senate of South Carolina; his wife is a niece of the late Governor Smith, of North Carolina, and of the late Hon. Peter Smith, Intendant (Mayor) of the city of Charleston; and a cousin of the late Hon. Thomas S. Grimké.