The master held a candle for me while I undressed, in a large room above stairs; and gave me my choice of the four beds in it. I found one straw bed (with, as usual, but one sheet), on which I slept comfortably. At midnight I was awakened by some one coming in. I rustled my straw, and a voice said, “Who is there in this room?”
“A stranger passing the night; who are you?”
“All right; I belong here. I’ve been away and have just come home.”
He did not take his clothes off to sleep. He turned out to be an older son who had been fifty miles away, looking after a stray horse. When I went down stairs in the morning, having been wakened early by flies, and the dawn of day through an open window, I saw the master lying on his bed in the “parlour,” still asleep in the clothes he wore at supper. His wife was washing her face on the gallery, being already dressed for the day; after using the family towel, she went into the kitchen, but soon returned, smoking a pipe, to her chair in the doorway.
Yet everything betokened an opulent and prosperous man—rich land, extensive field crops, a number of negroes, and considerable herds of cattle and horses. He also had capital invested in mines and railroads, he told me. His elder son spoke of him as “the squire.”
A negro woman assisted in preparing breakfast (she had probably been employed in the field labour the night before), and both the young ladies were at the table. The squire observed to me that he supposed we could buy hands very cheap in New York. I said we could hire them there at moderate wages. He asked if we couldn’t buy as many as we wanted, by sending to Ireland for them and paying their passage. He had supposed we could buy them and hold them as slaves for a term of years, by paying the freight on them. When I had corrected him, he said, a little hesitatingly, “You don’t have no black slaves in New York?” “No, sir.” “There’s niggers there, ain’t there, only they’re all free?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, how do they get along so?” “So far as I know, the most of them live pretty comfortably.” (I have changed my standard of comfort lately, and am inclined to believe that the majority of the negroes at the North live more comfortably than the majority of whites at the South.) “I wouldn’t like that,” said the old lady. “I wouldn’t like to live where niggers was free, they are bad enough when they are slaves: it’s hard enough to get along with them here, they’re so bad. I reckon that niggers are the meanest critters on earth; they are so mean and nasty” (she expressed disgust and indignation very strongly in her face). “If they was to think themselves equal to we, I don’t think white folks could abide it—they’re such vile saucy things.” A negro woman and two boys were in the room, as she said this.
North Carolina, July 13th.—I rode late last night, there being no cabins for several miles in which I was willing to spend the night, until I came to one of larger size than usual, with a gallery on the side toward the road and a good stable opposite it. A man on the gallery was about to answer (as I judged from his countenance), “I reckon you can,” to my inquiry if I could stay, when the cracked voice of a worryful woman screeched out from within, “We don’t foller takin’ in people.”
“No, sir,” said the man, “we don’t foller it.”
“How far shall I have to go?”