The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-11-01


 casses teezns eOsssivs b dwslssus cu tAe hs0as. h msny plscs bizck ses- vants sSers sbOut tAe houee but haif dad, ard n1Ero chiI6rea of twelve and flkeen were saen waiting as tabIe . vithout even . 6g kzE" Slaves vese somesimsu marked or branded like cattle; and a theory vas very current that the African wss sort of sub-human species, possess- ing 10 soul The laws souehf to strip him of human attributes; the slave might not even with the masters consent, own boats, canoes, or cattle; he might not learn to write: he could not be freed without license, and one colonial law for bade master to dress . servant in fine clothes. In South Carolina manslaugh.er q slave was not punishable; in vir- ginia "death under correction" if not proven to be wiilful killing, did not en- tail punishment In South Carolina after I7i7, the cold-6looded murderer who, ot wantonness, or bloody minded ness, CT cruel intention slew . negro vas obliged to pay Gre ot fifty pounds
 Such was the law, but public policy gen. erally prevented any punishment of a master for the death of slave; even in Pennsylvania, where the slaves were hardly a fortieth of the entire popula- ton, a master who had murdered his negro vas allowed to escape from the province by the connivance of the magis- trates.
 The treatment which slaves received ranged all the way from the utmost in- duigence to the utmost cruelty, accord ing to the character of the master. 1t is in the nature of man that ir such rela- ton there should be cases of extreme b hardship. Overseers usually had share in the crops, and overseers as a class were coarse, passionate, ruthless, and covetous-" unfeeiing sons of barbarity,n a writer of that time styles them. Eighty of Spotswood's negroes perished from cruelty and neglect during his absence in England. 1t is probable that under the utmost pressure negro could rarely be brought to do as much work as an ener- getic white man. But the hours of slave labor covered the whole period of day light; corn-husking and riee-beating we!e ofteu before daylieht and after dark There were laws forbidding masters to exact mole than fourteen or fifteen hours in winter, and more than fifteen or six teen in summer. A peck of corn-meal a week, often ground by their own hands after the days task was done, was the usual allowance. Humane masters, and those with fewer slaves, added sometimes little meat, and sometimes skinned milk. Their beds were benches or boards. It would be wrong, however, to insist on their fare or their lodging as peculiar hardships; slave fare and lodg- ings were better and more regular than the food and dwellings of the poorer classes in Europe. White6eld ayers that for trifling offenses slaves were cut with knives or had forks thrust into thsm. and the restraining statutes ot the later colonial time tell the same story. Scala ing and cruelty mutilating were forbidden in South Carolina, and the laws recoe- nised the halEstarved condition of some slaves as an extenuatiou of the crime of breaking into granaries for food Georgia specially forbids the cutting out of the tongue, the putting out of an eye, and other mutilation of slaves. Bat these punishmen;s represented the extreme cruelty exercised only by the brutally de prayed. Compared with the condition of slave. in the sugar islands, the negroes in the continental colonies were in a state that might almost be called comfortable, and there were plantation owners, even in that time, who showed no little humanity.
 All the other doors of hope for better ment of condition having been closed, many negroes ran away. Sturdy fugi- tives, lying out in secret places, carried on bold system of plunder, subsisting sometimes fos years on the crops and hogs of the planters. One Billy" was the terror of three Virginia counties in I7oI, and is immortaliied by special statute of outlawry. In New England, as well as the south, the Indians were the most effective restraint upon the fugitive slaves. Finding himself pursued by In- dians, the runaway negro would turn about in despair and deliver himself to the tender mercies of the overseer, know ing how exquisite were the tortures which the Indians like to inflict on a black ~being allowed so to do by the chris tians," says . traveller. It was deemed impolitic to drive of the Carolina In- dians, lest the woods should be filled with fugitive negroes, who, from their relations with the slaves, would prove a tar more dangerous foe. In spite of white men and Indians, there were ad- venturous negroes who got away into the bae.~ sois" of Maryland, into the great Dismal Swamp of Virginia, and the Great Alligator Dismal Swamp" of North Carolina In the somber recesse< of these swamps, usuaiiy ...oSS:ea im- penetrable by white people, they lived on corn, hogs, and fowls, which they raised on spots not covered by water. During the revolution two travellers through