A NEW ENGLAND MAN.
He would now connect the peculiar and local facts of the preceding statement, with the whole community of slave holders, in the same State, and show by competent and disinterested testimony, the real and common state of things. The following extracts were from a letter printed in the New York Observer, of July 25, 1835:
I have resided eight years in South Carolina, and have an extensive acquaintance with the planters of the middle and low country. I have seen much of slavery, and feel competent to speak in regard to many facts connected with it.
What your correspondent has stated of the condition of one plantation, is in its essential points a common case throughout the whole circle of my acquaintance.
The negroes generally, in this State, are well fed, well clothed, and have the means of religious instruction. According to my best judgment, the work which a slave here is required to do, amounts to about one third the ordinary labor commonly performed by a New England farmer. A similar comparison would hold true in regard to the labor of domestics. In the family where I reside, consisting of nine white persons, seven slaves are employed to do the work. This is a common case.
In the village where I live, there are about four hundred slaves, and they generally attend church. More than one hundred of them are members of the church. Perhaps two hundred are assembled every Sabbath in the Sunday Schools. In my own Sunday School are about sixty, and most of them professors of religion. They are perfectly accessible and teachable. In the town of my former residence, in New England, there were three hundred free blacks. No more than eight or ten of these were professors of religion, and not more than twice that number could generally be induced to attend church. They could not be induced to send their children to the district schools, which were always open to them, nor could they generally be hired to work. They are thievish, wretched and troublesome. I have no hesitation in saying, and I say it deliberately, it would be a great blessing to them to exchange conditions with the slaves of the village in which I now live. Their intellectual and moral characters, and real means of improvement, would be promoted by the exchange.
There are doubtless some masters who treat their slaves cruelly in this State, but they are exceptions to the general fact. Public opinion is in a wholesome state and the man who does not treat his slaves kindly, is disgraced.
Great and increasing efforts are made to instruct the slaves in religion, and elevate their characters. Missionaries are employed solely for their benefit. It is very common for ministers to preach in the forenoon to the whites, and in the afternoon of every Sabbath to the blacks. The slaves of my acquaintance are generally contented and happy. The master is reprobated who will divide families. Many thousands of slaves of this State give evidence of piety. In many churches they form the majority. Thousands of them give daily thanks to God that they or their fathers were brought to this land of slavery.
And now, perhaps, I ought to add, that I am not a slave-holder, and do not intend to continue in a slave country; but wherever I may be, I intend to speak the TRUTH.
The next document related particularly to Virginia,—the largest and most powerful of the Slave States; but had also a general reference to the whole south, and the whole question at issue. The sentiments it contained were entitled to extraordinary consideration, on account of the source of them. Mr. Van Renselear, was the son of one of the most wealthy and distinguished citizens of the great free state of New York. He had gone to Virginia, to preach to the slaves. He had every where succeeded; was every where beloved by the slaves, and honored by their masters. He had access to perhaps forty plantations,—on which he from time to time preached,—and which might have been doubled, had his strength been equal to the work. In the midst of his usefulness—the storm of abolition arose. Mr. Thompson, like some baleful star landed on our shores; organized a reckless agitation, made many at the north frantic with folly—and as many at the south furious with passion. Mr. Van Renselear, like many others, saw a storm raging which they had no power to control; and like them withdrew from his benevolent labors. The following brief statements made by him at a great meeting of the colonization society of New York, exhibit his own view of the conduct and duty of the parties.