Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

Slave Life in Georgia 8
24.03.2006
stopped to eat. We had baked sufficient Johnny-cake over night, for the mid-day
meal next day, so we were not long refreshing. To encourage us to make good
speed, we were promised a feast of boiled black-eyed peas and bacon-rinds as
soon as we got to Northampton, and some of us got a cut with the whip. Any
how, we reached James Davis' that afternoon, at about four o'clock. We had our
peas and bacon-rinds, and some hard cider was served out to us into the bargain.
I remember it very well, for it gave me a very violent cholic. After supper we
were driven to our quarters.
And here I may as well tell what kind of a man our new master was. He was of
small stature, and thin, but very strong. He had sandy
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hair, fierce gray eyes, a very red face, and chewed tobacco. His countenance had
a very cruel expression, and his disposition was a match for it. He was, indeed, a
very bad man, and used to flog us dreadfully. He would make his slaves work
on one meal a day, until quite night, and after supper, set them to burn brush or
to spin cotton. We worked from four in the morning till twelve before we broke
our fast, and from that time till eleven or twelve at night. I should say that on the
average, and taking all the year round, we laboured eighteen hours a day well
told. He was a captain of the patrol, which went out every Wednesday and
Saturday night, hunting "stray niggers," and to see that none of the neighbours'
people were from quarters.
Our allowance of food was one peck of corn a week to each full-grown slave.
We never had meat of any kind, and our usual drink was water. Sometimes,
however, we got a drink of sour milk or a little hard cider. We used to make our
corn into homminy, hoe and Johnny-cake, and sometimes parch it, and eat it
without any other preparation. The corn was always of inferior quality, and
weevil-eaten, so that though we got a peck, it did not yield in meal what it
would have done
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had it been sound. Its outside value might have been about three-pence English
money.
The morning after our arrival, my mother was set to plough, and I was put to
grub and hoe. She also had other very hard work to do, such as making fences,
grubbing bushes, fetching and burning brush, and such like. I had the same kind