"Hi! Bill—dat you in ball and chain?" said, as we passed by, a young slave well dressed and mounted on his master's fine saddle-horse; "I no tink you eber runaway—you is a disgrace to we black gentlemen—I neber 'sociate wid you 'gain."
Bill, who was a tall, good-looking mulatto, the coachman of a gentleman near town, and of course, high in the scale of African society—seemed to feel the reproof, and be sensible of his degradation; for he hung his head moodily and in silence. The other prisoners, however, began to vituperate the young horseman, who was glad to escape from their Billingsgate missiles, by quickening his speed.
When a runaway is apprehended he is committed to jail, and an advertisement describing his person and wearing apparel, is inserted in the newspaper for six months, if he is not claimed in the interim; at the expiration of which period he may be sold at auction, and the proceeds, after deducting all expenses, go to the use of the county. Should the owner subsequently claim and prove his property, the amount paid into the treasury, on account of the sale, is refunded to him. An owner, making his claim before the six months have expired, and proving his property before a justice of the peace, is allowed to take him away on producing a certificate to that effect from the justice, and paying the expenses incurred in the apprehension and securing of his slave. All runaways, or suspected runaways, may lawfully be apprehended, and carried before a justice of the peace, who at his discretion may either commit them to jail, or send them to the owner, and the person by whom the arrest was made, is entitled to six dollars for each, on delivering him to his master.
The road, for the first mile after leaving town, passed through a charming country, seen at intervals, and between long lines of unpainted, wretched looking dwellings, occupied as "groggeries," by free negroes, or poor emigrants. The contrast between the miserable buildings and their squalid occupants, and the rich woodlands beyond them on either side, among whose noble trees rose the white columns and lofty roofs of elegant villas, was certainly very great, but far from agreeable. On a hill a short distance from the road the "Orphan Asylum" was pointed out to me, by my companion, as a monument of the benevolence and public spirit of the ladies of Natchez. Shortly after the prevalence of a great epidemic in this city, seventeen years ago, which left many children orphans, and destitute, a few distinguished ladies formed themselves into a society for their aid, obtained bountiful subscriptions, for on such occasions hearts and purses are freely opened, gathered the parentless children scattered throughout the city, and placed them in this asylum, where all destitute orphans have since found a home. The institution is now in a flourishing state, and is under the patronage of several ladies of great respectability. Some distance beyond the asylum, to the left, a fine view of groves and green hills, presenting a prospect strikingly resembling English park scenery, terminated in the roofs and columns of a "southern palace" rising above rich woods and evergreen foliage—the residence of the family of a late distinguished officer under the Spanish regime. These massive structures, with double colonnades and spacious galleries, peculiar to the opulent southern planter, are numerous in the neighbourhood of Natchez, but they date back to the great cotton era, when fortunes were made almost in a single season. Magnificence was then the prevailing taste, and the walls of costly dwellings rose, as the most available means of displaying to the public eye the rapidly acquired wealth of successful speculators. But times are now somewhat changed. The rage for these noble and expensive structures has passed away, and those which are now seen, rear themselves among magnificent groves—monuments only of the past, when the good old customs of Virginia characterized the inhabitants. These were for the most part gentlemen of education, or officers of the army—for those were military times. This was the day of dinner parties and courtly balls—an era to which the gentlemen, who participated in them, now look back with a sigh. Perhaps no state—not even Virginia herself, which Mississippi claims as her mother country—could present a more hospitable, chivalrous, and high-minded class of men, or more cultivated females than this, during the first few years, subsequent to its accession to the Union.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] The capital crimes of this state are, murder, arson, robbery, rape, burglary, stealing a slave, stealing or selling a free person for a slave, forgery, manslaughter, second offence—horse stealing, second offence—accessories, before the fact, to rape, arson, robbery and burglary.
XXXIX.
Slave mart—Scene within—File of negroes—"Trader"—Negro feelings—George and his purchaser—George's old and new wife—Female slaves—The intellect of the negro—A theory—An elderly lady and her slaves—Views of slaves upon their condition—Separation of kindred among slaves.
Having terminated my last letter with one of my usual digressions, before entering upon the subject with which I had intended to fill its pages, I will now pursue my original design, and introduce you into one of the great slave-marts of the south-west.