Slave quarters

“ Besides those I saw, about thirty negroes, destined for the New Orleans market, were shut up in the Paris jail, for safe keeping.
But Washington is the great emporium of the internal slave trade! The United States jail is a perfect storehouse for slave merchants; and some of the taverns may be seen so crowded with negro captives that they have scarcely room to stretch themselves on the floor to sleep. ”

“ The overseers' children go off somewhere to school; and they, therefore, bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad, to embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the place. Not even the mechanics—through whom there is an occasional out-burst of honest and telling indignation, at cruelty and wrong on other plantations—are white men, on this plantation. Its whole public is made up of, and divided into, three classes—slaveholders, slaves and overseers. Its blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and coopers, are slaves. ”

“ This is all the abolitionists have ever done; it is all they have ever desired to do. Nobody disputes that Congress has constitutional power to abolish slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. That District belongs in common to all the States, and each of them has an interest in the slaves there. The public prisons of that District, built with the money of the whole people of the United States, are used for the benefit of slave-traders, and the groaning victims of this detestable traffic are kept confined within their walls. ”

“ In the provinces of New York and New Jersey, negro slaves were employed to a certain extent, not only as domestic servants, but as agricultural laborers. In the city of New York they constituted a sixth part of the population. The slave code of that province was hardly less harsh than that of Virginia.
In Pennsylvania, the number of slaves was small, partly owing to the ample supply of indented white servants, but partly, also, to scruples of conscience on the part of the Quakers. ”

“ By that cruel act of Congress, everybody, all over the country, was required to send back fugitive slaves to their masters. Whoever concealed them or helped them in any way became liable to a year's imprisonment and a fine of a thousand dollars, besides paying the price of the slave. In all the Northern cities there were many honest, industrious colored people who had escaped from Slavery years before, and were now getting a comfortable living. ”

“ There being few towns in the cotton country, the shops, or stores, are frequently kept at some cross road, or other public place, in or adjacent to a rich district of plantations. To these shops the slaves resort, sometimes with, and at other times without, the consent [Pg 130] of the overseer, for the purpose of laying out the little money they get. Notwithstanding all the vigilance that is exercised by the planters, the slaves, who are no less vigilant than their masters, often leave the plantation after the overseer has retired to his bed, and go to the store. ”

“ They do not understand what a vast gulf flows between them and the equality of position with the white race which most of those who have aspirations imagine to be meant by emancipation. He said the town slave-owners were very severe and harsh in demanding larger sums than the slaves could earn. The slaves are sent out to do jobs, to stand for hire, to work on the quays and docks. Their earnings go to the master, who punishes them if they do not bring home enough. ”

“ The great properties were usually divided, even where the lands lay in single tracts, into several plantations for more convenient operation, each under a separate overseer or in some cases under a slave foreman. If the working squads of even the major proprietors were of but moderate scale, those in the multitude of minor holdings were of course lesser still. On the whole, indeed, slave industry was organized in smaller units by far than most writers, whether of romance or history, would have us believe. ”

“ Now a Virginia planter stands in much the same relation to his plantation as an absentee Irish landlord to his estate; the care of the land is in each case handed over to a middleman, who is anxious to screw out of it as large a return of produce or rent as possible; and pecuniary embarrassment is in both cases the result. But as long as every pound of cotton grown on the Mississippi and the Red River finds eager customers in Liverpool, the price of slaves in those districts cannot fail to keep up. ”

“ In general, the chief men of commerce are hostile to it. They want first money, next money, and money last of all; fairly if they can get it—if not, unfairly. Hence, the commercial cities are the headquarters of slavery; all the mercantile capitals execute the Fugitive Slave Bill—Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati; only small towns repudiate man-stealing. The Northern capitalists lend money and take slaves as collateral ”

“ They infest the suburbs of the towns and cities, where they become the depositories of stolen goods, and, schooled by necessity, elude the vigilance of our defective police." [245] Thus a Virginia slaveholder saw in Negro colonization a means to relieve the State of a dangerous population, to increase the value of slave property and to make possible manumission by that class of slaveholders in which he put himself. ”

“ In unmanly and degrading barbarity, wanton cruelty, and horrible indifference to every human emotion, facts could be produced worthy of association with whatever is recorded of the slave trade in any other form. One of these internal slave traders has built, in a neighbouring city, a range of private prisons, fronting the main road to Washington, in which he collects his cattle previous to sending off a caravan to the south. ”

“ Russell recorded his surprise at finding that the Louisiana planters made no reckoning whatever of the cost of their slaves' labor, that Irish gangs nevertheless did the ditching, and that the slave children of from nine to eleven years were at play, "exempted from that cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and manufacturing districts of England"; and then upon glimpsing the homesteads of some Creole small proprietors, he wrote: "It is among these men that, at times, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that slaves are exposed to the severest labor." ”

“ If we take the whole sweep of country from New England to the far South, the differences in the status of the slave varied still more, including the exceedingly mild form of slavery in Pennsylvania where the slave was not essentially different from the indentured servant, the patriarchal slavery of Virginia, as well as the capitalistic exploitation of slave labor in the great rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia and the cotton and cane plantations of Mississippi and Louisiana. ”

“ By and by the great, rusty bell of the quarter rang out from its hoarse, iron tongue the morning summons for the slaves to assemble. Ragged, tattered, unshorn and unshaven, dirty, ill and angry-looking, the negroes—men, women, and children, in large numbers—collected in the quarter-yard, where the overseer, an ugly, harsh white man, with a pistol in his belt, knife at his side, and whip in hand, stood to call the roll. ”

“ Every difficulty is thrown in your way by the population.... There are armed mobs, rescues. This is the real state of things." [717]
The law of 1850 was intended to remove the occasion for such complaints on the part of slaveholders, and secure them in the recovery and possession of their property. The effect of its provisions upon the South was to arouse slave-owners to greater activity in the pursuit of their chattels, while in the North the effect was to increase greatly the determination in the minds of many to resist the enforcement of the law. ”

“ Mr. Justice Jackson, in his opening address on behalf of the United States of America before the International Military Tribunal, [67] vividly described the character and extent of the slave-labor program in the following words:
“Perhaps the deportation to slave labor was the most horrible and extensive slaving operation in history. ”

“ But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices did rise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that in virtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area had been accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog upon material progress. The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its making labor mobile, regular and secure. These qualities accorded remarkably, so far as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the one hand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other. ”

“ One of the considerations involved was that a gang already organized would save its purchaser time and trouble in establishing a new plantation as a going concern, and therefore would probably bring a higher gross price than if its members were sold singly. Another motive was that of keeping slave families together, which served doubly in comporting with scruples of conscience and inducing to the greater contentment of slaves in their new employ. The documents of the time demonstrate repeatedly the appreciation of equanimity as affecting value. ”

“ Any white man who meets a slave of the plantation without a pass, has a right to take him up, and flog him at his discretion. All these causes combined, operate powerfully to keep the slave at home. But, in addition to these principles of restraint, it is a rule on every plantation, that no overseer ever departs from, to flog every slave, male or female, that leaves the estate for a single hour, by night or by day—Sunday not excepted—without a written pass. ”

“ It might be sufficient to mention, that the allowance of provisions alleged to have been commonly given to the working Slaves, in most of the Leeward Islands, was not above half the quantity which, by an act of Assembly, lately passed in Jamaica, was required to be given to such runaway Slaves as, having been taken up, were lodged in prison till they could be returned to their masters. A prison allowance is not meant to be such as will pamper the body; yet double the food given in the former case to the working Negroes, was prescribed for a Slave in prison, who had nothing to do. ”

“ Since slave labor is economical only where the slaves can be worked together in gangs, there was never much slavery among the farmers and small business men of the North. On the other hand, in the South, the developing plantation system made it possible for the owner to use large gangs of slaves in the clearing of new land; in the raising of [Pg 46] tobacco, and in caring for rice and cotton. The plantation system of agriculture and the cotton gin made slavery the success that it was in the United States. ”

“ He therefore carefully framed a bill providing for the abolishment of slavery in the District upon the following principal conditions:
First. That the law should be adopted by a popular vote in the District.
Second. A temporary system of apprenticeship and gradual emancipation for children born of slave mothers after January 1, 1850.
Third. The government to pay full cash value for slaves voluntarily manumitted by their owners. ”

“ Wealth existing in slaves, the owner selects that order of life in which his property may be best protected and yield him the best return; consequently he eschews the city, and settles down on a plantation where both he and his negroes are alike protected against the contaminating influences of congregated luxury, poverty, and vice. For these reasons have penitentiaries been few, and poorhouses scarcely known in the Southern States, while both have been numerous and crowded from their cellars to their garrets in the North. ”

“ But a system of small properties is not only adverse, but fatal, to slave culture, which can be profitably carried on only by large gangs of slaves working upon great estates, like the Roman latifundia or the plantations of the South. ”

“ A: "Large establishments have grown up upon the national domain, provided with prisons for the safe keeping of negroes till a full cargo is procured; and should, at any time, the factory prisons be insufficient, the public ones, erected by Congress, are at the service of the dealers, and the United States Marshal becomes the agent of the slave trade."—Judge Jay's View of the action of the Federal Government in behalf of Slavery, page 93. ”

“ About five o'clock, the jailer came and stood at the front door of the jail, and proclaimed, in a very loud voice, that a sale of most valuable slaves would immediately take place; that he had sold many fine hands yesterday, but they were only the refuse and most worthless part of the whole lot; — that those who wished to get great bargains and prime property, had better attend now; as it was certain that such negroes had never been offered for sale in Columbia before. ”

“ And in case the slave murdered shall be the property of any other person than the offender, the pay usually allowed by the public to the soldiers of such garrison, or the profits of the labor of the offender, if committed to the work house in Charlestown shall be paid to the owner of the slave murdered. And if any person shall, on a sudden heat of passion, or by undue correction, kill his own slave, or the slave of any other person, he shall forfeit the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds, current money. ”

“ With respect to the artificers, such as house-carpenters, coopers, and masons, and the drivers and head-slaves, who form the remaining part of the plantation slaves, they are described as having in general a more certain allowance of provisions, and as being better off.
Situation of the In-and-out-door Slaves. Having now described the state of the plantation, it will be proper to say a few words on that of the In-and- Out-door slaves. The In-door slaves, or domestics, are allowed by all the evidences to be better clothed, and less worked than the others, and invariably to look better. ”