out into the grave, in incessant labour, in all sorts of weather, at all seasons of the year, without any other change or relaxation than is furnished by sickness, without the smallest hope of any improvement either in their condition, in their food, or in their clothing, which are of the plainest and coarsest kind, and indebted solely to the forbearance or good temper of the overseer for exemption from terrible physical suffering. They are rung to bed at nine o'clock, almost immediately after bolting the food which they often have to cook after coming home from their day's labour, and are rung out of bed at four or five in the morning. The interval is one long round of toil. Life has no sunny spots for them. Their only refuge or consolation in this world is in their own stupidity and grossness. The nearer they are to the beast, the happier they are likely to be. Any mental or moral rise is nearly sure to bring unhappiness with it."
The same gentleman writes from Columbus:—
"One gets better glimpses of the real condition of the negroes from conversations
one happens to overhear than from what is told to one's-self—above
all, when one is known to be a stranger, and particularly an Englishman.
The cool way in which you hear the hanging of niggers, the shooting
of niggers, and the necessity for severe discipline among niggers talked of
in bar-rooms, speaks volumes as to the exact state of the case. A negro
was shot when running away, near Greensboro', a small town on my road,
the day before I passed through, by a man who had received instructions
from the owner to take him alive, and shoot him if he resisted. I heard
the subject discussed by some 'loafers' in the bar, while getting my horse
fed, and I found, to my no small—I do not know whether to say horror or
amusement—that the point in dispute was not the degree of moral guilt
incurred by the murderer, but the degree of loss and damage for which he
had rendered himself liable to the owner of the slave in departing from the
letter of his commission. One of the group summed up the arguments on
both sides, by exclaiming, 'Well, this shootin' of niggers should be put a
stop to, that's a fact.' The obvious inference to be deduced from this
observation was, that 'nigger shootin was a slight contravention of police
regulations—a little of which might be winked at, but which, in this
locality, had been carried to such an extent as to call for the interference
of the law."
I do not think that I have ever seen the sudden death of a
negro noticed in a Southern newspaper, or heard it referred
to in conversation, that the loss of property, rather than the
extinction of life, was not the evident occasion of interest.
Turning over several Southern papers at this moment, I fall
at once upon these examples:—
