With respect to the policy of holding slaves in any country, on account of the depravity of morals which it necessarily occasions, besides the many other evil consequences attendant upon it, so much has already been said by others, that it is needless here to make any comments on the subject.
The number of the slaves increases most rapidly, so that there is scarcely any estate but what is overstocked. This is a circumstance complained of by every planter, as the maintenance of more than are requisite for the culture of the estate is attended with great expence. Motives of humanity deter them from selling the poor creatures, or turning them adrift from the spot where they have been born and brought up, in the midst of friends and relations.
CULTIVATION.
What I have here said, respecting the condition and treatment of slaves, appertains, it must be remembered, to those only who are upon the large plantations in Virginia; the lot of such as are unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the lower class of white people, and of hard task-masters in the towns, is very different. In the Carolinas and Georgia again, slavery presents itself in very different colours from what it does even in its worst form in Virginia. I am told, that it is no uncommon thing there, to see gangs of negroes staked at a horse race, and to see these unfortunate beings bandied about from one set of drunken gamblers to another for days together. How much to be deprecated are the laws which suffer such abuses to exist! yet these are the laws enacted by people who boast of their love of liberty and independence, and who presume to say, that it is in the breasts of Americans alone that the blessings of freedom are held in just estimation.
The Northern Neck, with the exception of some few spots only, is flat and sandy, and abounds with pine and cedar trees. Some parts of it are well cultivated, and afford good crops; but these are so intermixed with extensive tracts of waste land, worn out by the culture of tobacco, and which are almost destitute of verdure, that on the whole the country has the appearance of barrenness.
This is the case wherever tobacco has been made the principal object of cultivation. It is not, however, so much owing to the great share of nutriment which the tobacco plant requires, that the land is impoverished, as to the particular mode of cultivating it, which renders it necessary for people to be continually walking between the plants from the moment they are set out, so that the ground about each plant is left exposed to the burning rays of the sun all the summer, and becomes at the end of the season a hard beaten pathway. A ruinous system has prevailed also of working the same piece of land year after year, till it was totally exhausted; after this it was left neglected, and a fresh piece of land was cleared, that always produced good crops for one or two seasons; but this in its turn was worn out and afterwards left waste. Many of the planters are at length beginning to see the absurdity of wearing out their lands in this manner, and now raise only one crop of tobacco upon a piece of new land, then they sow wheat for two years, and afterwards clover. They put on from twelve to fifteen hundred bushels of manure per acre at first, which is found to be sufficient both for the tobacco and wheat; the latter is produced at the rate of about twenty bushels per acre.
In some parts of Virginia, the lands left waste in this manner throw up, in a very short time, a spontaneous growth of pines and cedars; in which case, being shaded from the powerful influence of the sun, they recover their former fertility at the end of fifteen or twenty years; but in other parts many years elapse before any verdure appears upon them. The trees springing up in this spontaneous manner usually grow very close to each other; they attain the height of fifteen or twenty feet, perhaps, in the same number of years; there is, however, but very little sap in them, and in a short time after they are cut down they decay.
TOBACCO PLANTATIONS.
Tobacco is raised and manufactured in the following manner: When the spring is so far advanced that every apprehension of the return of frost is banished, a convenient spot of ground is chosen, from twenty to one hundred feet square, whereon they burn prodigious piles of wood, in order to destroy the weeds and insects. The warm ashes are then dug in with the earth, and the seed, which is black, and remarkably small, sown. The whole is next covered over with bushes, to prevent birds and flies, if possible, from getting to it; but this, in general, proves very ineffectual; for the plant scarcely appears above ground, when it is attacked by a large black fly of the beetle kind, which destroys the leaves. Persons are repeatedly sent to pick off these flies; but sometimes, notwithstanding all their attention, so much mischief is done that very few plants are left alive. As I passed through Virginia, I heard universal complaints of the depredations they had committed; the beds were almost wholly destroyed.
As soon as the young plants are sufficiently grown, which is generally in the beginning of May, they are transplanted into fields, and set out in hillocks, at the distance of three or four feet from each other. Here again they have other enemies to contend with; the roots are attacked by worms, and between the leaves and stem different flies deposit their eggs, to the infallible ruin of the plant if not quickly removed; it is absolutely necessary, therefore, as I have said, for persons to be continually walking between the plants in order to watch, and also to trim them at the proper periods. The tops are broken off at a certain height, and the suckers, which spring out between the leaves, are removed as soon as discovered. According also to the particular kind of tobacco which the planter wishes to have, the lower, the middle, or the upper leaves are suffered to remain. The lower leaves grow the largest; they are also milder, and more inclined to a yellow colour than those growing towards the top of the plant.