I once passed a colored woman at work on a plantation, who was singing apparently with animation, and whose general manners would have led me to set her down as the happiest of the gang. I said to her, "Your work seems pleasant to you." She replied, "No, Massa." Supposing that she referred to something particularly disagreeable in her immediate occupation, I said to her, "Tell me, then, what part of your work is most pleasant." She answered, with much emphasis, "No part pleasant. We forced to do it." These few words let me into the heart of the slave. I saw under its apparent lightness a human heart.
On this plantation, the most favored woman, whose life was the easiest, earnestly besought a friend of mine to buy her and put her in the way to earn her freedom. A daughter of this woman, very young, had fallen a victim to the manager of the estate. How far this cause influenced the exasperated mother, I did not learn.
I heard of an estate managed by an individual who was considered as singularly successful, and who was able to govern the slaves without the use of the whip. I was anxious to see him, and trusted that some discovery had been made favorable to humanity. I asked him how he was able to dispense with corporal punishment. He replied to me, with a very determined look, "The slaves know that the work must be done, and that it is better to do it without punishment than with it." In other words, the certainty and dread of chastisement were so impressed on them that they never incurred it.
I then found that the slaves on this well managed estate decreased in number. I asked the cause. He replied, with perfect frankness and ease, "The gang is not large enough for the estate." In other words, they were not equal to the work of the plantation and yet were made to do it, though with the certainty of abridging life.
On this plantation the huts were uncommonly convenient. There was an unusual air of neatness. A superficial observer would have called the slaves happy. Yet they were living under a severe, subduing discipline, and were overworked to a degree that shortened life.
I cannot forget my feelings on visiting a hospital belonging to the plantation of a gentleman highly esteemed for his virtues, and whose manners and conversation expressed much benevolence and conscientiousness. When I entered with him the hospital, the first object on which my eye fell was a young woman, very ill, probably approaching death. She was stretched on the floor. Her head rested on something like a pillow; but her body and limbs were extended on the hard boards. The owner, I doubt not, had, at least, as much kindness as myself; but he was so used to see the slaves living without common comforts, that the idea of unkindness in the present instance did not enter his mind.
The severest blow I ever saw given to a slave was inflicted by a colored driver on a young girl, who, on removing a load of wood from a horse, had let a stick fall against the animal's leg. I remonstrated with the man, as soon as an opportunity offered, against his inhumanity. He said, "Massa, I have the care of the horse, and the manager lick me if it get hurt." This answer explained to me the common remark, that the black drivers are more cruel than the whites. I saw where the cruelty began.
I once heard some slaves, who had been taken by law from their master, singing a song of their own composition, and at the end of every stanza they joined with a complaining tone in a chorus, of which the burden was, "We got no Massa." Here seemed a striking proof of attachment to the master; but on inquiry into the rest of the song, I found it was an angry repetition of the severities which they were suffering from the new superintendent. They wanted their master as an escape from cruelty.
Facts of this kind, which make no noise, which escape or mislead a casual observer, help to show the character of slavery more than occasional excesses of cruelty though these must be frequent. They show how deceptive are the appearances of good connected with it; and how much may be suffered under the manifestation of much kindness. It is, in fact, next to impossible to estimate precisely the evils of slavery. The slave writes no books, and the slaveholder is too inured to the system, and too much interested in it, to be able to comprehend it. Perhaps the Laws of the slave States are the most unexceptionable witnesses which we can obtain from that quarter; and the barbarity of these is decisive testimony against an institution which requires such means for its support.