towards her—I mean my aunt—in most of our family, on account of her treatment of my uncle's first children.
Ann Fontaine, sister to my cousin James, your son-in-law, lives with my sister Winston, who brought her up. She is a virtuous, good girl, and reaps the benefit of it even temporally, as my brother Winston has given her a little beginning, in case she should marry and leave him, and provides for her handsomely, as I dare say he will continue to do while she stays with him. I have not in a great while heard any thing of the rest of the family my uncle James left behind him. They live in the Northern Neck, 170 or 180 miles from me.
My father has by his last wife, my mother-in-law, five children, three boys and two girls, the oldest about twelve years old. He has made use of my opportunities as a surveyor to procure lands for them in Halifax County, where he has procured five tracts of land, amounting to about six thousand acres, which he designs, with near or about twenty slaves, to divide amongst them at his death.
And here I cannot help expressing my concern at the nature of our Virginia estates, so far as they consist in slaves. I suppose we have, young and old, one hundred and fifty thousand of them in the country, a number, at least, equal to the whites. It is a hard task to do our duty towards them as we ought, for we run the hazard of temporal ruin if they are not compelled to work hard on the one hand—and on the other, that of not being able to render a good account of our stewardship in the other and better world, if we oppress and tyrannize over them. Besides, according to our present method, which every body appears afraid to go out of, it seems quite necessary to lay most stress on that stinking, and, in itself, useless weed, tobacco, as our staple commodity, which is the
