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While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The Feeding and Clothier of the Slaves in the
Part of Maryland where I Lived
The slaves are generally fed upon salt pork, herrings and
Indian corn.
The manner of dealing it out to them is as follows:—Each
working man, on Monday morning, goes to the cellar of the
master where the provisions are kept, and where the overseer
takes his stand with some one to assist him, when he, with a
pair of steel yards, weighs out to every man the amount of
three and a half pounds, to last him till the ensuing
Monday, allowing him just half-a-pound per day. Once in a
few weeks there is a change made, by which, instead of the
three and a half pounds of pork, each man receives twelve
herrings, allowing two a-day. The only bread kind the slaves
have is that made of Indian meal. In some of the lower
counties, the masters usually give their slaves the corn in
the ear; and they have to grind it for themselves by night
at hand mills. But my master had a quantity sent to the
grist mill at a time, to be ground into coarse meal, and
kept it in a large chest in his cellar, where the woman who
cooked for the boys could get it daily. This was baked in
large loaves, called "steel pound bread." Sometimes as a
change it was made into "Johnny Cake," and then at others
into mush.
The slaves had no butter, coffee, tea, or sugar;
occasionally they were allowed milk, but not stately; the
only exception to this statement was the "harvest
provisions." In harvest, when cutting the grain, which
lasted from two to three weeks in the heat of summer, they
were allowed some fresh meat, rice, sugar, and coffee; and
also their allowance of whiskey.
At the beginning of winter, each slave had one pair of
coarse shoes and stockings, one pair of pantaloons, and a
jacket.
At the beginning of summer, he had two pair of coarse linen
pantaloons and two shirts.
Once in a number of years, each slave, or each man and his
wife, had one coarse blanket and enough coarse linen for a
"bed-tick." He never had any bedstead or other furniture
kind. The men had no hats, waistcoats or handkerchiefs given
them, or the women any bonnets. These they had to contrive
for themselves. Each laboring man had a small "patch" of
ground allowed him; from this he was expected to furnish
himself and his boys hats, &c. These patches they had to
work by night; from these, also, they had to raise their own
provisions, as no potatoes, cabbage, &c., were allowed them
from the plantation. Years ago the slaves were in the habit
of raising broom corn, and making brooms to supply the
market in the towns; but now of later years great quantities
of these and other articles, such as scrubbing-brushes,
wooden trays, mats, baskets, and straw hats which the slaves
made, are furnished by the shakers and other small
manufacturers, from the free states of the north.
Neither my master or any other master, within my
acquaintance, made any provisions for the religious
instruction of his slaves. They were not worked on the
Sabbath. One of the "boys" was required to stay at home and
"feed," that is, take care of the stock, every Sabbath; the
rest went to see their friends. Those men whose families
were on other plantations usually spent the Sabbath with
them; some would lie about at home and rest themselves.
When it was pleasant weather my master would ride "into
town" to church, but I never knew him to say a word to one
of us about going to church, or about our obligations to
God, or a future state. But there were a number of pious
slaves in our neighborhood, and several of these my master
owned; one of these was an exhorter. He was not connected
with a religious body, but used to speak every Sabbath in
some part of the neighborhood. When slaves died, their
remains were usually consigned to the grave without any
ceremony; but this old gentleman, wherever he heard of a
slave having been buried in that way, would send notice from
plantation to plantation, calling the slaves together at the
grave on the Sabbath, where he'd sing, pray, and exhort. I
have known him to go ten or fifteen miles voluntarily to
attend these services. He could not read, and I never heard
him refer to any Scripture, and state and discourse upon any
fundamental doctrine of the gospel; but he knew a number of
"spiritual songs by heart," of these he would give two lines
at a time very exact, set and lead the tune himself; he
would pray with great fervor, and his exhortations were
amongst the most impressive I have heard.
The Methodists at one time attempted to evangelize the
slaves in our neighborhood, but the effort was sternly
resisted by the masters. They held a Camp Meeting in the
neighborhood, where many of the slaves attended. But one of
their preachers for addressing words of comfort to the
slaves, was arrested and tried for his life.
My master was very active in this disgraceful affair, but
the excellent man, Rev. Mr. G., was acquitted and escaped
out of their hands. Still, it was deemed by his brethren to
be imprudent for him to preach any more in the place, as
some of the more reckless masters swore violence against
him. This good man's name is remembered dearly, till this
day, by slaves in that county. I met with a fugitive about a
year ago, who remembered distinctly the words spoken by Mr.
G., and by which his own mind was awakened to a sense of the
value of his soul. He said, in the course of his preaching,
addressing himself to the slaves, "You have precious
immortal souls, that are worth far more to you than your
bodies are to your masters;" or words to that effect. But
while these words interested many slaves, they also made
many masters exceedingly angry, and they tortured his words
into an attempt to excite the slaves to rebellion.
Some of my master's slaves who had families, were regularly
married, and others were not; the law makes no provision for
such marriages, and the only provision made by the master
was, that they should obtain his leave. In some cases, after
obtaining leave to take his wife, the slave would ask
further leave to go to a minister and be married. I never
knew him to deny such a request, and yet, in those cases
where the slave did not ask it, he never required him to be
married by a minister. Of course, no Bibles, Tracts, or
religious books of any kind, were ever given to the slaves;
and no ministers or religious instructors were ever known to
visit our plantation at any time, either in sickness or in
health. When a slave was sick, my master being himself a
physician, sometimes attended, and sometimes he called other
physicians. Slaves frequently sickened and died, but I never
knew any provision made to administer to them the comforts,
or to offer to them the hopes of the gospel, or to their
friends after their death.
There is no one feature of slavery to which the mind recurs
with more gloomy impressions, than to its disastrous
influence upon the families of the masters, physically,
peculiarly, and mentally.
It seems to destroy families as by a powerful blight, large
and opulent slave-holding families, often vanish like a
group of shadows at the third or fourth generation. This
fact arrested my attention some years before I escaped from
slavery, and of course before I had any enlightened views of
the moral character of the system. As far back as I can
recollect, indeed, it was a remark among slaves, that every
generation of slaveholders are more and more inferior. There
were several large and powerful families in our county,
including that of my master, which affords to my mind a
melancholy illustration of this remark. One of the
wealthiest slaveholders in the county, was General R., a
brother-in-law to my master. This man owned a large and
highly valuable tract of land, called R's Manor. I do not
know how many slaves he owned, but the number was large. He
lived in a splendid mansion, and drove his coach and four.
He was for some years a member of Congress. He had a
numerous family of children.
The family showed no particular signs of decay until he had
married a second time, and had considerably increased his
number of children. It then became evident that his older
children were not educated for active business, and were
only destined to be a charge. Of sons, (seven or eight,) not
one of them reached the eminence once occupied by the
father. The only one that approached to it, was the eldest,
who became an officer in the navy, and obtained the doubtful
glory of being killed in the Mexican war.
General R. himself ran through his vast estate, died
intemperate, and left a widow and large number of daughters,
some minors, destitute, and none of his sons fitted for any
employment but in the army and navy.
Slaves have a superstitious dread of passing the dilapidated
dwelling of a man who has been guilty of great cruelties to
his slaves, and who is dead, or moved away. I never felt
this dread deeply but once, and that was one Sabbath about
sunset, as I crossed the yard of General R's residence,
which was about two miles from us, after he had been
compelled to leave it.
To see the once fine smooth gravel walks, overgrown with
grass—the redundancies of the shrubbery neglected, the once
finely painted pricket fences, rusted and fallen down—a fine
garden in splendid ruins, the lofty ceiling of the mansion
thickly curtained with cobwebs, the spacious apartments
abandoned, while the only music heard within as a substitute
for the voices of family glee that once filled it, was the
crying cricket and cockroaches! Ignorant slave as I was at
that time, I could but pause for a moment, and recur in
silent horror to the fact that, a strange reverse of
fortune, had lately driven from that proud mansion, a large
and once opulent family. What advantage was it now to the
members of that family, that the father and head had for
near half a century stood high in the counsels of the state,
and had the benefit of the unrequited toil of hundreds of
his fellowmen, when they were already grappling with the
annoyances of that poverty, which he had entailed upon
others.
My master's family, in wealth and influence, was not
inferior to General R.'s originally. His father was a member
of the convention that framed the present constitution of
the state; he was, also, for some years chief justice of the
state.
My master was never equal to his father, although he stood
high at one time. He once lacked but a few votes of being
elected Governor of the state: he once sat in the Assembly,
and was generally a leading man in his own county. His
influence was found to be greatest when exerted in favor of
any measure in regard to the control of slaves. He was the
first mover in several cruel and rigid municipal regulations
in the county, which prohibited slaves from going over a
certain number of miles from their master's places on the
Sabbath, and from being seen about the town. He once
instigated the authorities of the town where he attended
service, to break up a Sabbath school some humane members of
the Methodist and Lutheran denominations had set up to teach
the free negroes, lest the slaves should get some benefit of
it.
But there was a still wider contrast between my master and
his own children, eight in number, when I left him. His
eldest daughter, the flower of the family, married a
miserable and reckless gambler. His eldest son was
kind-hearted, and rather a favorite with the slaves on that
account; but he had no strength of mind or weight of
character. His education was limited, and he had no
disposition or tact for business of any kind. He died at
thirty-six, intestate; leaving his second-wife (a sister to
his father's second wife) with several orphan children, a
widow with a small estate deeply embarrassed. The second son
was once sent to West Point to fit for an officer. After
being there a short time, however, he became unsteady, and
commenced the study of medicine, but he soon gave that up
and preferred to live at home and flog the slaves; and by
them was cordially dreaded and disliked, and among
themselves he was vulgarly nicknamed on account of his cruel
and filthy habits.
These two families will afford a fair illustration of the
gloomy history of many others that I could name. This
decline of slaveholding families is a subject of observation
and daily remark among slaves; they are led to observe every
change in the pecuniary, moral, and social state of the
families they belong to, from the fact, that as the old
master declines, or as his children are married off, they
are expecting to fall into their hands, or in case of
insolvency on the part of the old master, they expect to be
sold; in either case, it involves a change of master a
subject to which they cannot be indifferent. And it is very
rarely the case that a slave's condition is benefited by
passing from the old master into the hands of one of his
children. Owing to the causes I have mentioned, the decline
is so rapid and marked, in almost every point of view, that
the children of slaveholders are universally inferior to
themselves, mentally, morally, physically, as well as
pecuniarily, especially so in the latter point of view; and
this is a matter of most vital concern to the slaves. The
young master not being able to own as many slaves as his
father, usually works what he has more severely, and being
more liable to embarrassment, the slaves' liability to be
sold at an early day is much greater. For the same reason,
slaves have a deep interest, generally, in the marriage of a
young mistress. Very generally the daughters of slaveholders
marry inferior men; men who seek to better their own
condition by a wealthy connection. The slaves who pass into
the hands of the young master has had some chance to become
acquainted with his character, bad as it may be; but the
young mistress brings her slaves a new, and sometimes an
unknown master. Sometimes these are the sons of already
broken down slaveholders. In other cases they are
adventurers from the north who remove to the south, and who
readily become the most cruel masters.
The Fugitive
Blacksmith; or Events in the History of
James W. C. Pennington, 1849
