The negroes here, who see me row and walk hard in the sun, lift heavy burthens, and make various exertions which are supposed to be their peculiar privilege in existence, frequently remonstrate with me, and desire me to call upon them for their services, with the remark, "What for you work, missus! You hab niggers enough to wait upon you!" You may suppose how agreeable such remonstrances are to me.
When I remember, too, that here I see none of the worst features of this system: that the slaves on this estate are not bought and sold, nor let out to hire to other masters; that they are not cruelly starved or barbarously beaten, and that members of one family are not parted from each other for life, and sent to distant plantations in other States,—all which liabilities (besides others, and far worse ones) belong of right, or rather of wrong, to their condition as slaves, and are commonly practiced throughout the southern half of this free country,—I remain appalled at a state of things in which human beings are considered fortunate who are only condemned to dirt, ignorance, unrequited labor, and, what seems to me worst of all, a dead level of general degradation, which God and Nature, by endowing some above others, have manifestly forbidden.
Do you remember your admiration of philanthropy because I blew the dirty nose of a little vagabond in the street with my embroidered handkerchief? I wish you could see me cleansing and washing and poulticing the sick women and babies in the infirmary here; I think you would admit that I have what Beatrice commends Benedict for, "an excellent stomach."
God bless you, dear! I am not well; this slavish sunshine dries up my vitality. I have hardly any time for writing, but shall find it to write to you.
Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Butler's Island, January 20th, 1839.
Dear Mrs. Jameson,
To you who have, besides "swimming in a gondola" (which many of the vulgar do nowadays), paddled in a canoe upon the wild waters of this wild western world, my present abode, savage as it seems to me, might appear comparatively civilized. Certain it is that we are within view of what calls itself a town, and, moreover, from that town I have received an invitation to what calls itself a cotillon party! and yet, right and left, stretch the swamps and forests of Georgia, where the red men have scarcely ceased to skulk, and where the rattlesnakes and alligators, who shared the wilderness with them, still lurk in undisturbed possession of the soil, if soil that may be called which is only either muddy water or watery mud, a hardly consolidated sponge of alluvial matter, receiving hourly additions from the turbid current of the Altamaha.
We are here on our plantation, and if you will take a map of North America, and a powerful magnifying-glass, you may perceive the small speck dignified by the title of "Butler's Island," the Barataria where I am now reigning.