"When they lay themselves down to rest, their comforts are equally miserable and limited, for they sleep on a bench, or on the ground, with an old scanty blanket, which serves them at once for bed and covering, their cloathing is not less wretched, consisting of a shirt and trowsers of coarse, thin, hard, hempen stuff, in the Summer, with an addition of a very coarse woolen jacket, breeches and shoes in Winter. But since the war, their masters, for they cannot get the cloathing as usual, suffer them to go in rags, and many in a state of nudity.
"The female slaves share labor and repose just in the same manner, except a few who are term'd house negroes, and are employed in household drugery.
"These poor creatures are all submission to injuries and insults, and are obliged to be passive, nor dare they resist or defend themselves if attacked, without the smallest provocation, by a white person, as the law directs the negroe's arm to be cut off who raises it against a white person, should it be only in defence against wanton barbarity and outrage.
"Notwithstanding this humiliating state and rigid treatment to which this wretched race are subject, they are devoid of care, and appear jovial, contented and happy. It is a fortunate circumstance that they possess, and are blessed with such an easy satisfied disposition, otherwise they must inevitably sink under such a complication of misery and wretchedness; what is singularly remarkable, they always carry out a piece of fire, and kindle one near their work, let the weather be so hot and sultry.
"As I have several times mentioned homminy and hoe-cake, it may not be amiss to explain them: the former is made of Indian corn, which is coarsely broke, and boiled with a few French beans, till it is almost a pulp. Hoe-cake is Indian corn ground into meal, kneaded into a dough, and baked before a fire, but as the negroes bake theirs on the hoes that they work with, they have the appellation of hoe-cakes. These are in common use among the inhabitants, I cannot say they are palateable, for as to flavor, one made of sawdust would be equally good, and not unlike it in appearance, but they are certainly a very strong and hearty food."
--Anburey, "Travels through America during the War," Vol. 2, pp. 330-5.
Vindication of the Negroes: A Controversy
First let me repeat your longest section relative to that people.
'Below this class of inhabitants, (the whites of no property, in Virginia,) we must rank the Negroes, who would be still more to be pitied, if their natural insensibility did not in some measure alleviate the wretchedness inseparable from slavery. Seeing them ill lodged, ill clothed, and often overcome with labour, I concluded that their treatment had been as rigorous as it is elsewhere. Notwithstanding I have been assured that it is very mild, compared to what they suffer in the Sugar Colonies. And indeed one does not hear habitually, as at Jamaica and St. Domingo, the sound of whips, and the outcries of the wretched beings, whose bodies are torn piece meal by their strokes. It is because the people of Virginia are commonly milder than those of the Sugar Colonies, which consist chiefly of rapacious men, eager to amass fortunes, as soon as possible, and return to Europe. The produce of their labours being also less valuable, their tasks are not so rigorously exacted, and in justice to both, it must be allowed that the Negroes themselves are less treacherous and thievish, than they are in the Islands: for the propagation of the black species being very considerable here, most of them are born in the country, and it is remarked that these are in general less depraved than those imported from Africa. Besides, we must do the Virginians the justice to remark, that many of them treat their Negroes with a great deal of humanity, and what is still more to their honor, they appear sorry there are any among them, and are forever talking of abolishing slavery, and falling upon some other mode of improving their land, &c.
'However this may be, it is fortunate that different motives concur to deter mankind from exercising such tyranny, at least upon their own species, if we cannot say, strictly speaking, their equals; for the more we observe the Negroes, the more we are convinced that the difference between us does not lie in the colour alone, &c.