A young man from Missouri lately related, at a public meeting in Ohio, the following circumstance which took place in his own state. A young slave, who had been much abused, ran away, after an unusually severe whipping. She returned in a few days, and was sent into the field to work. In consequence of excessive punishment she was very ill; and when she reached the house at night, she lay down on the floor exhausted. When her mistress spoke to her, she made no reply. She again asked what was the matter, but received no answer. “I’ll see if I can’t make you speak,” exclaimed she, in a rage; and she applied red-hot tongs to her limbs and throat. The poor girl faintly whispered, “Oh, misse, don’t; I’m most gone”—and expired.
Such cruelties probably are not of common occurrence; but the habits of indolence, acquired by having slaves to obey every look, are universal. Ladies thus educated consider it a hardship to untie a string, or pick up a handkerchief that has fallen. A slave must be always near them to perform such offices. Even after the family have retired to rest, some of their locomotive machinery must be within call. A lady, having heard surprise expressed at this custom, replied with much earnestness, “Mercy! what should I, or my husband do, if we happened to want a glass of water in the night, and there was nobody near to bring it!” A little girl, whose parents removed from Massachusetts to South Carolina, complained that she had an utter aversion to going to school, it was so fatiguing to carry her books. All the other little girls had slaves to carry them.
Among the women of slave countries there is a tendency to mental as well as physical indolence. They are often more elegant and graceful than ladies educated under a more healthy system; but they are far less capable, industrious, and well-informed.
The slaves themselves are brutally ignorant. In several of the United States, there are very strict laws to prevent their learning the alphabet.
Early habits of allowed profligacy in men form a bad school for the domestic affections; and a wife who sees herself neglected for others, with a great deal of unemployed time on her own hands, is placed in circumstances where she has need of great strength of principle. According to Stedman’s account, these influences have produced a lamentable effect on the character of women in Surinam; though there are there, as elsewhere, honorable exceptions to the general tone of manners and morals.
Human beings are generally merry and thoughtless in proportion as their wants are merely animal; and slaves are light-hearted, both by habit and natural temperament. The memory of suffering soon passes away; and during every interval of labor they will sing, dance, and laugh, as if the world had no cares for them. Pinckard, speaking of the British West Indies, says: “Sunday is a day of festivity among the slaves. They are passionately fond of dancing; and the Sabbath, offering them an interval from toil, is generally devoted to their favorite amusement. Instead of remaining in tranquil rest, they undergo more fatigue, or at least more personal exertion, during their gala hours of Saturday night and Sunday, than is demanded of them in labor during any four days of the week. They assemble in crowds upon the open green, or in any square or corner of the town, and forming a ring in the centre of the throng, dance to the sound of their beloved African music, consisting of a species of drum, a kind of rattle, and their ever delightful banjar. The dance consists of stamping of the feet, twisting of the body, and a number of strange, indecent attitudes. It is a severe bodily exertion, more bodily indeed than you can well imagine, for the limbs have little to do with it.”
The clothing of slaves is generally the slightest possible, and of the coarsest materials. Pinckard speaks of seeing old women at Barbadoes washing clothes in the river, with no other covering than a piece of blue cloth fastened round the loins, after the manner of savages. He says “their bodies bore the crowded and callous scars of repeated punishment.”
In the West Indies, the negro women carry their babes across the hip, as in Africa.
Small rude huts are appropriated to the field slaves, where they live much after the fashion of pigs in a sty. Those who are kept for house-servants generally lie down upon the floor, wherever they happen to be when the labors of the day are over. A person rising earlier than usual, is liable to stumble over them in the entries. Female slaves toil in the fields, under the lash of the driver, as laboriously as the men; and, generally speaking, no difference is made in the mode or severity of punishment. A little patch of ground is usually assigned to each slave family, where they may raise vegetables for themselves, in addition to the tasks performed for their masters. Many of them spend their leisure moments in making baskets and brooms to carry to market, and thus procure a little money.
The negroes believe they shall return to Africa when they die; and this idea has often led to suicide. They follow a friend to the grave with every demonstration of joy; and when the ceremony is finished, sing: “God bless you, Jenny—Good-bye—remember me to all friends t’other side of the sea—tell ’em me come soon—Good-bye, Jenny.”