The New-Orleans mob met the carriage returning from the lake. What became of the coachman I do not know. The carriage was broken to pieces and thrown into the swamp, and the horses stabbed and left dead upon the road. The house was gutted, the two poor girls having just time to escape from a window. They are now living, in great poverty, in one of the faubourgs. The piano, tables, and chairs were burned before the house. The feather-beds were ripped up, and the feathers emptied into the street, where they afforded a delicate footing for some days. The house stands, and is meant to stand, in its ruined state. It was the strange sight of its gaping windows and empty walls, in the midst of a busy street, which excited my wonder, and was the cause of my being told the story the first time. I gathered other particulars afterward from eyewitnesses.
The crowd at first intended to proceed to the examination of other premises, whose proprietors were under suspicion of cruelty to their slaves; but the shouts of triumph which went up from the whole negro population of the city showed that this would not be safe. Fearing a general rising, the gentlemen organized themselves into a patrol, to watch the city night and day till the commotion should have subsided. They sent circulars to all proprietors suspected of cruelty, warning them that the eyes of the city were upon them. This is the only benefit the negroes have derived from the exposure. In reply to inquiries, I was told that it was very possible that cruelties like those of Madame Lalaurie might be incessantly in course of perpetration. It may be doubted whether any more such people exist; but if they do, there is nothing to prevent their following her example with impunity as long as they can manage to preserve that secrecy which was put an end to by accident in her case.
I could never get out of the way of the horrors of slavery in this region. Under one form or another, they met me in every house, in every street; everywhere but in the intelligence pages of newspapers, where I might read on in perfect security of exemption from the subject. In the advertising columns there were offers of reward for runaways, restored dead or alive; and notices of the capture of a fugitive with so many brands on his limbs and shoulders, and so many scars on his back. But from the other half of the newspaper, the existence of slavery could be discovered only by inference. What I saw elsewhere was, however, dreadful enough. In one house, the girl who waited on me with singular officiousness was so white, with blue eyes and light hair, that it never occurred to me that she could be a slave. Her mistress told me afterward that this girl of fourteen was such a depraved hussy that she must be sold. I exclaimed involuntarily, but was referred to the long heel in proof of the child's being of negro extraction. She had the long heel, sure enough. Her mistress told me that it is very wrong to plead in behalf of slavery that families are rarely separated; and gave me, as no unfair example of the dealings of masters, this girl's domestic history.
The family had consisted of father, mother, and four children, this girl being the eldest, and the youngest an infant at the breast. The father was first sold separately, and then the rest of the family were purchased in the market by the husband of my friend, the mother being represented to be a good cook and house servant. She proved to be both; but of so violent a temper that it was necessary to keep her own children out of her way when she had a knife in her hand, lest she should murder them. The anxiety of watching such a temper was not to be borne, and the woman was sold with her infant. Here was the second division of this family. The behaviour of the eldest girl was so outrageously profligate, that she was about to be disposed of also. And yet she was only a fair illustration of the results of the education by circumstance that slaves receive. When detected in some infamous practices, this young creature put on air of prudery, and declared that it gave her great pain to be thought immodest; that, so far from her being what she was thought, she had no wish to have any other lover than her master. Her master was so enraged at this—being a domestic Northern man, and not a planter—that he tied her to the whipping-post and flogged her severely with his own hands. The story of this dispersed and wretched family has nothing singular in it. With slight variations, it may be found repeated in every Southern settlement the traveller visits.
Just about the time that this was happening, a family in the neighbourhood was poisoned by a slave. I think one died, and the others had a narrow escape. The poisoner was sold in the market, as the proprietor could not afford to lose his human property by the law taking its course.
About the same time the cashier of a bank in New-Orleans sent one of his slaves out of the way, in order to be undisturbed in the violence which he meditated against the negro's attached wife. The negro understood the case, but dared not refuse to go where he was bid. He returned unexpectedly soon, however; found his home occupied, and stabbed the defiler of it. The cashier was the stronger man, and, in spite of his wound, he so maltreated the negro that he expired on the barrow on which he was being conveyed to jail. Nothing ensued on account of this affair; though, when the cashier was some time after found to be a defaulter, he absconded.
I would fain know what has become of a mulatto child in whom I became much interested at New-Orleans. Ailsie was eight years old, perfectly beautiful, and one of the most promising children I ever saw. She was quick, obedient, and affectionate to a touching degree. She had a kind master and mistress. Her mistress's health was delicate, and the child would watch her countenance wistfully, in the constant hope of saving her trouble. She would look very grave if the lady went up stairs with a languid step, take hold of her gown, and timidly ask, "What, an't ye well?" I used to observe her helping to dress her mistress's hair, her little hands trembling with eagerness, her eye following every glance of the eye which ever looked tenderly upon her. Her master declared he did not know what to make of the child, she looked so scared, and trembled so if she was spoken to; and she was, indeed, the most sensitive of children. As she stood at the corner of the dinner-table to fan away the flies, she was a picture from which it was difficult to turn away. Her little yellow headdress suited well with her clear brown complexion and large soft black eyes; nothing that she could at all understand of the conversation escaped her, while she never intermitted her waving of the huge brush of peacock's feathers. Her face was then composed in its intelligence, for she stood by her mistress's elbow; a station where she seemed to think no harm could befall her. Alas! she has lost her kind mistress. Amid the many sad thoughts which thronged into my mind when I heard of the death of this lady, one of the wisest and best of American women, I own that some of my earliest regrets were for little Ailsie; and when I think of her sensibility, her beauty, and the dreadful circumstances of her parentage, as told me by her mistress, I am almost in despair about her future lot; for what can her master, with all his goodness, do for the forlorn little creature's protection? None but a virtuous mistress can fully protect a female slave, and that too seldom.
Ailsie was born on an estate in Tennessee. Her father is a white gentleman not belonging to the family, her mother the family cook. The cook's black husband cherished such a deadly hatred against this poor child as to be for ever threatening her life, and she was thought to be in such danger from his axe that she was sent down the river to be taken into the family where I saw her. What a cruel world, what a hard human life must Ailsie find that she is born into!
Such facts, occurring at every step, put the stranger on the watch for every revelation of the feelings of the masters about the relation of the two races. Some minute circumstances surprised me in this connexion. At the American Theatre in New-Orleans, one of the characters in the play which my party attended was a slave, one of whose speeches was, "I have no business to think and feel."
At a dinner-party where three negroes were waiting, and where Ailsie stood fanning, a gentleman of very high official rank told a facetious story, at which everybody laughed heartily (being, indeed, quite unable to help it, the manner of the narrator was so droll) except a gentleman next me who had once been a slavetrader. The senator told us of a couple from the Green Island, Pat and Nancy, who had settled on the Mississippi, and, in course of time (to use the language of the region), "acquired six children and nine negroes." Pat had a mind to better his fortunes, and to go unencumbered higher up the river; and he therefore explained his plans to Nancy, finishing with, "and so, my darlin', I'll lave you; but I'll do my best by you; I'll lave you the six dear, nate, pretty little childer, and I'll take the nine nasty dirty negroes." While every other American at the table laughed without control, I saw my neighbour, the former slavetrader, glance up at the negroes who were in attendance, and use a strong effort not to laugh.