Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

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Slave Life in Georgia 102 number is usually set to watch the overseer, and when he sees them coming, they give a signal, and all hands fall to again as fast as Page 197 they can. Some days he is not in a flogging humour, and then he will ease off the hands a little. On others it is just the reverse. Then, again, there is all the difference in the work. Some fields are easy; some hard; some have more grass; others more roots; and it very often happens that the hands are hardest pressed where the land is most difficult to clean, and that they are eased off when the work is comparatively light. In picking cotton, an ordinary fair day's pick is a hundred pounds. In Georgia, a day's task picking is a hundred and fifty pounds: in Mississippi about two hundred. In hoeing corn, thirty-five rows of ten acres across is a task. The hoers are generally led by the fastest hand, and the rest are compelled to strain their utmost to keep up with him. I have no hesitation in saying that the task system is very bad indeed for the negroes; and any one who considers the facts I have given, must, I think, come to the same conclusion. Having alluded to the food and lodging of slaves, I may, perhaps, put in a word here about their raiment. We get two suits a year, consisting of a cotton shirt of coarse cloth, and pantaloons of the same; the whole cost of which does Page 198 not exceed half a crown. We get a blanket once a year, and sometimes only once in two years; value not more than from one shilling and six-pence to two shillings. I should say that the cost of a negro's clothing does not exceed eight shillings a year, and that his rations do not cost more than a shilling a week; so that Three Pounds sterling will cover his keep and clothing. There is then his first cost to be considered. But the calculation of the master is, that in two years one slave earns enough to buy another; that is, that he pays for himself, and henceforward all he earns, over and above the expense of keeping him, is clear profit. Before I close this chapter, I wish to add a remark or two about the slave-trade. It is supposed that there are no slaves imported into the South from Africa. I am quite sure that the reverse is the case. There was a planter lived on an estate adjoining my old master, Stevens. His name was Zachariah Le Mar, and he was called Squire. That man had, to my knowledge, five hundred of them, all fresh from Africa, and I know that new ones were constantly brought in. We call 24.03.2006
Slave Life in Georgia 103 them "Salt-backs." I remember, too, that one day, being still at Stevens', I was down in our apple-orchard shooting red-headed wood-peckers with a Page 199 bow and arrow. John Glasgow was with me, and there came across to see him, one Tony Wilson, a negro belonging to John Wilson, whose farm adjoined our's; and one Boatswain Smith, another negro, who belonged to a Doctor Smith, living three miles from us. They were native Africans, and could speak English only very imperfectly. They met in the orchard, and had not long been in conversation, before Tony Wilson discovered that Boatswain Smith was the very man who had sold him from his country, within the last two years. He got into a great rage, and fell upon Smith directly, and they both began to fight, butting at one another furiously. We had a great deal of trouble to part them, but we succeeded at last, and learnt that they had both been brought direct to Savannah in Georgia, with a great many more. Boatswain Smith had been kidnapped not very long after he had been the means of sending his countryman into Slavery. This little incident may serve as a proof of the fact I am quite sure would be borne out by close inquiry, that the slave-trade is still carried on between the Coast of Africa and the Slave States of the American Union. Page 200 24.03.2006 CHAPTER XX. MY REFLECTIONS. WHEN I think of all I have gone through, and of the millions of men, women, and children I have left behind me in slavery, every one of whom may be undergoing similar or even greater sufferings, I ask myself when this is all to end? and how it is to be ended? I look upon it that slavery is kept up entirely by those who make it profitable as a system of labour. Bad as slave-holders are, if they did not find their account in working slaves, they would soon leave off doing it. Their badness arises out of the system. They must get work out of their "niggers" any how, or else they will not get profit. To make them work they must have complete control over them, and the laws are framed with an eye to this object. Now, "niggers" will work well enough for themselves, but they do not care to work for the benefit of another, unless they are forced to do it. And who can blame them? In order to compel them to labour for the sole advantage
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Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

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