Year: 1863

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toned to work and contrive for themselves


as they used to be, when they were not
fed and clothed nearly as well as now.


Except by the excessive and ineessant
labor required of them on some planta-
| tions, he did not think slaves were often
treated with unnecessary cruelty. 1t was
necessary to use the lash occasionally
Slaves never really felt under any moral
obligation to obey their masters. Faith
full service was preached to them as q
Christian duty, and they pretended to ac-
knowledge it, but the fact was they were
obedient just so far as they saw they must
be to avoid punishment; and punishment
was necessary, now and then, to maintain
their faith in their masters power. He
had seventeen slaves, and he did not sup
pose there had been a hundred strokes of
the whip on the place for a year past.


He asked if there were many Ameri-
cans in Texas who were opposed to slave
ry, and if they were free to express them
selves | said that the wealthy Ameri-
cans there were all shareholders themselves
that their influence all went to make
slave servants fashionable, and labor by
whites disreputable. They were all parti-
sans of slavery, and there were great
many miserable, ignorant and desperate
fellows whom they could employ or en-
courage to bully down anything that was
given the name of Abolitionsm. But
are there not good many Northern men
there ?" he asked. The Northern men,
replied, were chiefly merchants or specu-
lators, who had but one idea, which was
to make money as fast as they could and
as nearly all the little money there was in
that country was in the hands of the large
shareholders, they never lost'an opportuni-
ty to establish their reputation as zealously
loyal to the institution.


If that was the way of things there, he
said, there was not much chance of its be-
cominga free State. thought the chances
were against it, but if the Germans con-
tinued to flock into the country, it would
rapidly acquire all the characteristic social
features of free-labor community, having
an abundance and variety of skilled labor,
a home market for variety of crops, den
ser settlements, and consequently moro
abundant social, educational and CONNER
cial conveniencics. There would soon be
a numerous body of small proprietors, not
so wealthy that the stimulus to personal
and active industry would have been lost,
but yet able to indulge in good many
luxuries, and to give employment to nu-
merous tradesmen, mechanics and school
teachers, and the laborers who were not
land-holders would be intimately involved
in all their interests with them; the two
classes not living dissociated from each
other, as was the case generally in the
South, but engaged in constant fulfill
ment of reciprocal obligations. If snch a
character of society could once be firmly
and extensively established before the
country got to be much taken up with
these little Independent negro kingdoms,
which had prevailed from the beginning
in every other part of the South, l did
not think any laws would be necessary to
prevent slavery. 1t might be a slave State
but it would be free people.


We had an excellent supper, the bread
being wheat of his own raising, the first
plantation grown wheat that | have met
with. He said this was an excellent
wheat-growing country if people took any
pains with it He always grew little
more than he used in his family. His
crop had never been less than twenty
bushels per acre, and he had once raised
over thirty without manuring or especial
pains-taking.


He had grown wheat weighing sixty
six pounds to the bushel. There was
good market for wheat as it was rarely
raised in that vicinity. Cotton, however,
was ordinarily more profitable crop, es-
pecially since railroad had lessened the
expense of wagoning it to market. Judg-
ing that events in Europe were likely to
lessen the demand for cotton, he had planted
but little this summer, giving his labor
chiefly to corn.


On coming from my room iii the morn
ing my host met me with hearty grasp
of the hand. i" l have slept very little
with thinking Of what you told me about
Western Texas. | think shall have to
go there. If we could get free State in
this climate, l believe it would soon be
the most prosperous in the Union. What
disadvantage it must be to have your
ground all frozen up and to be obliged to
fodder your cattle six months in the year,
as you do at the North. l don't see how