CHAPTER II. PRIVATIONS OF SLAVES, IN REFERENCE TO LABOR, FOOD, THE slaves, in perfect keeping with the system of slavery, may be deprived of the comforts and conveniences of life suitable to rational creatures. We will instance in their labor, food, clothing, dwellings, and health. This head may be termed privations of the slaves. 1. The master may determine the kind, and degree, and time of labor to which the slave shall be subject. In most of the slaveholding states the law is silent on this point. The codes of Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi, speak on the subject. Any owner of a The law of Georgia, of 1817, says: slave or slaves who shall cruelly beat such slave or slaves, by unnecessary or excessive whipping, by withholding proper food and sustenance, by requiring greater labor from such slave or slaves, than he, she, or they are able to perform, by not affording proper clothing, whereby the health of such slave or slaves may be injured and impaired, every such owner or owners shall, upon sufficient information being laid before the grand jury, be by said jury presented, whereupon it shall be the duty of the attorney or solicitor-general to prosecute said owner or owners, who, on conviction, shall be sentenced to pay a fine or be imprisoned, or both, at the discretion of the court." (Stroud, p. 26.) The ostensible design of the law is to afford protection to the slave; but as the testimony of colored persons can not be received against a white person, the law is a dead letter in most cases. The "requiring greater labor than the slave is able to perform," forms a charge of a criminal nature. Every thing must therefore be strictly proved, and the law must be strictly defined; and this would require that all the illegal circumstances enumerated in the law should exist, and be proved against the master, to constitute the single crime of cruelty to the slave. Besides, the cruelty of the owner only is made penal; while the exaction of too much labor by the overseer is not provided against. Hence, any cruelties by the overseer must pass unpunished. In the preamble of the law of South Carolina, of 1740, it is said, "Many owners of slaves and others who have the care, management, and overseeing of slaves, do confine them so closely to hard labor, that they have not sufficient time for natural rest." The act then fixes the hours of labor not to exceed fifteen hours, from March to September, nor fourteen hours, from September to March. The penalty is from five to twenty pounds, current money. In Mississippi, the law allows half an hour for breakfast during the year, and two hours for dinner in summer, and an hour and a half in winter; but if the meals of the slaves are prepared for them, half an hour may be taken from the dinner hour. The laws of South Carolina and Louisiana, as well as those of Georgia, are incapable of being executed, and therefore inoperative, and must give way to the cupidity of the master, whenever circumstances excite the passion of gain. The time of labor in South Carolina is enormous; it may reach fourteen or fifteen hours a day. In Jamaica ten hours was the extent to which slaves could be employed in work. In the penitentiaries of Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, the time of labor does not exceed eight hours, in November, December, and January, nine in February and October, and ten hours the rest of the year. Thus, ten hours make up the largest space out of twenty-four hours which can be exacted from convicted felons whose punishment consists of hard labor. Yet the slave of South Carolina, under a law professing to extend humanity to him, may be required to toil for fifteen hours within the same period. In the extreme south, where cotton, sugar, and rice are raised, and where the plantations are large, and many hands are employed in field work, the slaves are generally worked hard, or overwrought. At least during portions of the year they are worked from dawn of day till night; and in making sugar very often they are employed a considerable portion of the night. It is calculated that slaves will wear out, under these circumstances, in from five to seven years. The accurate calculators about how much profit may be made in the wear and tear of human flesh, estimate, that it is most economical to require twice the amount of labor during the boiling season in making sugar, in order to accomplish the labor with one set of hands. By pursuing this course they could afford to sacrifice a set of hands once in seven years; and this horrible system is practiced to a considerable extent. (See "American Slavery As It Is," pp. 35-40.) Some testimonies here will present this subject in its true light. Many owners of slaves, and others who have the management of slaves, do confine them so closely at hard labor that they have not sufficient time for natural rest.” (Legislature of S. Carolina; see 2 Brenard's Digest, 243.) "So laborious is the task of raising, beating, and cleaning rice, that had it been possible to obtain European servants in sufficient numbers, thousands and tens of thousands must have perished." (History of South Carolina, vol. i, p. 120.) "Is it not obvious that the way to render their situation more comfortable, is to allow them to be taken where there is not the same motive to force the slave to incessant toil that there is in the country where cotton, sugar, and tobacco are raised for exportation? It is proposed to hem in the blacks where they are hard worked, that they may be rendered unproductive and the race be prevented from increasing. The proposed measure would be extreme cruelty to the blacks. You would doom them to hard labor." (Hon. Alexander Smyth, Speech on Missouri Question, January 28, 1820.) "At the rolling of sugars, an interval of from two to three months, they work both night and day, abridged of their sleep. They scarce retire to rest during the whole period." (Travels in Louisiana, p. 81.) "The slaves are driven to the field in the morning about four o'clock. The general calculation is to get them at work by daylight. The time for breakfast is between nine and ten o'clock. This meal is sometimes eaten bite and work;' others allow fifteen minutes; and this is the only rest the slave has while in the field. I have never known a case of stopping an hour in Louisiana; in Mississippi the rule is milder, though entirely subject to the will of the master. On cotton plantations, in cotton-picking time-that is, from October to Christmas-each hand has a certain quantity to pick, and is flogged if his task is not accomplished; their task is such as to keep them all the while busy." (George W. Westgate, who lived a number of years in the southwestern states.) As to the argument from self-interest, that it is the interest of the slaveholders not to overwork the slaves, we may remark that this has two applications. When breeding slaves becomes, by choice or circumstances, the policy of slaveholders, then their self-interest leads them ordinarily to supply them with sufficient food and clothing, and to exact only moderate labor. But when the object is merely to calculate on the profit and loss of outlay and income in the calculations of slavery, then excessive labor and waste of life form the more economical plan. On the sugar plantations it is necessary to employ about twice the amount of labor during the boiling season; hence, the labor at that season is often doubled. By pursuing this plan the planters could afford to sacrifice a set of hands every five or seven years. And this plan is frequently pursued. When the boiling season commences, it must be pushed without cessation, and by doubling the work, half the hands will do; and thus there is a great saving in having to purchase only half the number of hands, and also to maintain this number. Thus self-interest leads to overworking, and even killing off, by this process, multitudes of human beings. By this process of overworking in the West Indies, the slaves were hurried prematurely to their graves in great numbers. The same, though perhaps not to the same extent, occurs in the sugar plantations of the United States. The sacrifice of human life, in the sugar, cotton, and rice regions in the United States, has been very great, and the waste has been supplied from the slave-growing states of Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. These have supplied the victims to replenish the grave-yards of the rice, cotton, and sugar regions of the far south. The self-interest of slave-breeders leads them to use the means of increasing the number, health, and white color of the marketable negroes, from their home stock. And the self-interest of the raisers of cotton, sugar, and rice, is to have half the number of hands, wear them out in from five to seven years, and from this economical process save more than will buy fresh hands, after even paying the expenses of burying the worn-out slaves. It is but proper to state, that in the grain-growing states the slaves, in general, are not overworked. Perhaps in these states their labor does not exceed that of laborers in other countries. The same will apply to most of the house hands even in the far south. But there seems to be a terrible retribution of Heaven resting on the system of slavery in reference to labor. The slaves were introduced into America in order to relieve their masters from work, as well as to make them rich by the toils of the slave. All this was forced labor-labor without |