they are hereby authorized to abridge, by half an hour a day, the time fixed for their rest."
All these laws, apparently for the protection of the slave, are rendered perfectly null and void, by the fact, that the testimony of a negro or mulatto is never taken against a white man. If a slave be found toiling in the field on the Sabbath, who can prove that his master commanded him to do it?
The law of Louisiana stipulates that a slave shall have one linen shirt,[K] and a pair of pantaloons for the summer, and one linen shirt and a woollen great-coat and pantaloons for the winter; and for food, one pint of salt, and a barrel of Indian corn, rice, or beans, every month. In North Carolina, the law decides that a quart of corn per day is sufficient. But, if the slave does not receive this poor allowance, who can prove the fact. The withholding of proper sustenance is absolutely incapable of proof, unless the evidence of the sufferer himself be allowed; and the law, as if determined to obstruct the administration of justice, permits the master to exculpate himself by an oath that the charges against him are false. Clothing may, indeed, be ascertained by inspection; but who is likely to involve himself in quarrels with a white master because a poor negro receives a few rags less than the law provides? I apprehend that a person notorious for such gratuitous acts of kindness, would have little peace or safety, in any slaveholding country.
[K] This shirt is usually made of a coarse kind of bagging.
If a negro be compelled to toil night and day, (as it is said they sometimes are,[L] at the season of sugar-making) who is to prove that he works more than his fourteen or fifteen hours? No slave can be a witness for himself, or for his fellow-slaves; and should a white man happen to know the fact, there are ninety-nine chances out of a hundred, that he will deem it prudent to be silent. And here I would remark that even in the island of Jamaica, where the laws have given a most shocking license to cruelty,—even in Jamaica, the slave is compelled to work but ten hours a day, beside having many holidays allowed him. In Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New-Jersey, the convicts condemned to hard labor in the penitentiaries, are required by law to toil only from eight to ten hours a day, according to the
season of the year; yet the law providing that the innocent slave should labor but fourteen or fifteen hours a day, professes to have been made as a merciful amelioration of his lot!—In Rome, the slaves had a yearly festival called the Saturnalia, during which they were released from toil, changed places with their masters, and indulged in unbounded merriment; at first it lasted but one day; but its duration afterwards extended to two, three, four, and five days in succession. We have no Saturnalia here—unless we choose thus to designate a coffle of slaves, on the fourth of July, rattling their chains to the sound of a violin, and carrying the banner of freedom in hands loaded with irons.
[L] See Western Review, No. 2, on the Agriculture of Louisiana.
In Georgia, "The inferior courts of the several counties on receiving information on oath of any infirm slave or slaves, being in a suffering condition, from the neglect of the owner or owners, can make particular inquiries into the situation of such slaves, and render such relief as they think proper. And the said courts may sue for and recover from the owner of such slaves the amount appropriated for their relief." The information must, in the first place, be given by a white man upon oath; and of whom must the "particular inquiries" be made? Not of the slave, nor of his companions,—for their evidence goes for nothing; and would a master, capable of starving an aged slave, be likely to confess the whole truth about it? The judges of the inferior courts, if from defect of evidence, or any other cause, they are unable to prove that relief was absolutely needed, must pay all the expenses from their own private purses. Are there many, think you, so desperately enamored of justice, as to take all this trouble, and incur all this risk, for a starving slave?
Prop. 3.—Slaves considered personal chattels, liable to be sold, pledged, &c.
The advertisements in the Southern papers furnish a continued proof of this; it is, therefore, unnecessary to go into the details of evidence.[M] The power to separate mothers and children, husbands and wives, is exercised only in the British West Indies, and the republic of the United States!