The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4 · Chapter 30Personal Narratives-Part III. (7)
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W.C. GILDERSLEEVE, Esq., a native of Georgia, now elder of the Presbyterian church, Wilkes-barre, Penn. after describing the flogging of a slave, in which his hands were tied together, and the slave hoisted by a rope, so that his feet could not touch the ground; in which condition one hundred lashes were inflicted, says:
"I stood by and witnessed the whole without feeling the least compassion; so hardening is the influence of slavery that it very much destroys feeling for the slave."
Mrs. CHILD, in her admirable "Appeal," has the following remarks:
"The ladies who remove from the free States into the slaveholding ones almost invariably write that the sight of slavery was at first exceedingly painful; but that they soon become habituated to it; and after a while, they are very apt to vindicate the system, upon the ground that it is extremely convenient to have such submissive servants. This reason was actually given by a lady of my acquaintance, who is considered an unusually fervent Christian. Yet Christianity expressly teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves. This shows how dangerous it is, for even the best of us, to become accustomed to what is wrong.
"A judicious and benevolent friend lately told me the story of one of her relatives, who married a slave owner, and removed to his plantation. The lady in question was considered very amiable, and had a serene, affectionate expression of countenance. After several years residence among her slaves, she visited New England. 'Her history was written in her face,' said my friend; 'its expression had changed into that of a fiend. She brought but few slaves with her; and those few were of course compelled to perform additional labor. One faithful negro woman nursed the twins of her mistress, and did all the washing, ironing, and scouring. If, after a sleepless night with the restless babes, (driven from the bosom of their mother,) she performed her toilsome avocations with diminished activity, her mistress, with her own lady-like hands, applied the cowskin, and the neighborhood resounded with the cries of her victim. The instrument of punishment was actually kept hanging in the entry, to the no small disgust of her New England visitors. 'For my part,' continued my friend, 'I did not try to be polite to her; for I was not hypocrite enough to conceal my indignation.'"
The fact that the greatest cruelties may be exercised quite unconsciously when cruelty has become a habit, and that at the same time, the mind may feel great sympathy and commiseration towards other persons and even towards irrational animals, is illustrated in the case of Tameriane the Great. In his Life, written by himself, he speaks with the greatest sincerity and tenderness of his grief at having accidentally crushed an ant; and yet he ordered melted lead to be poured down the throats of certain persons who drank wine contrary to his commands. He was manifestly sincere in thinking himself humane, and when speaking of the most atrocious cruelties perpetrated by himself, it does not seem to ruffle in the least the self-complacency with which he regards his own humanity and piety. In one place he says, "I never undertook anything but I commenced it placing my faith on God"—and he adds soon after, "the people of Shiraz took part with Shah Mansur, and put my governor to death; I therefore ordered a general massacre of all the inhabitants."
It is one of the most common caprices of human nature, for the heart to become by habit, not only totally insensible to certain forms of cruelty, which at first gave it inexpressible pain, but even to find its chief amusement in such cruelties, till utterly intoxicated by their stimulation; while at the same time the mind seems to be pained as keenly as ever, at forms of cruelty to which it has not become accustomed, thus retaining apparently the same general susceptibilities. Illustrations of this are to be found every where; one happens to lie before us. Bourgoing, in his history of modern Spain, speaking of the bull fights, the barbarous national amusement of the Spaniards, says:
"Young ladies, old men, people of all ages and of all characters are present, and yet the habit of attending these bloody festivals does not correct their weakness or their timidity, nor injure the sweetness of their manners. I have moreover known foreigners, distinguished by the gentleness of their manners, who experienced at first seeing a bull-fight such very violent emotions as made them turn pale, and they became ill; but, notwithstanding, this entertainment became afterwards an irresistible attraction, without operating any revolution in their characters." Modern State of Spain, by J.F. Bourgoing, Minister Plenipotentiary from France to the Court of Madrid, Vol ii., page 342.
It is the novelty of cruelty, rather than the degree, which repels most minds. Cruelty in a new form, however slight, will often pain a mind that is totally unmoved by the most horrible cruelties in a form to which it is accustomed. When Pompey was at the zenith of his popularity in Rome, he ordered some elephants to be tortured in the amphitheatre for the amusement of the populace; this was the first time they had witnessed the torture of those animals, and though for years accustomed to witness in the same place, the torture of lions, tigers, leopards, and almost all sorts of wild beasts, as well as that of men of all nations, and to shout acclamations over their agonies, yet, this novel form of cruelty so shocked the beholders, that the most popular man in Rome was execrated as a cruel monster, and came near falling a victim to the fury of those who just before were ready to adore him.
We will now briefly notice another objection, somewhat akin to the preceding, and based mainly upon the same and similar fallacies.
OBJECTION III.—'SLAVEHOLDERS ARE PROVERBIAL FOR THEIR KINDNESS, HOSPITALITY, BENEVOLENCE, AND GENEROSITY.'
Multitudes scout as fictions the cruelties inflicted upon slaves, because slaveholders are famed for their courtesy and hospitality. They tell us that their generous and kind attentions to their guests, and their well-known sympathy for the suffering, sufficiently prove the charges of cruelty brought against them to be calumnies, of which their uniform character is a triumphant refutation.
Now that slaveholders are proverbially hospitable to their guests, and spare neither pains nor expense in ministering to their accommodation and pleasure, is freely admitted and easily accounted for. That those who make their inferiors work for them, without pay, should be courteous and hospitable to those of their equals and superiors whose good opinions they desire, is human nature in its every-day dress. The objection consists of a fact and an inference: the fact, that slaveholders have a special care to the accommodation of their guests; the inference, that therefore they must seek the comfort of their slaves—that as they are bland and obliging to their equals, they must be mild and condescending to their inferiors—that as the wrongs of their own grade excite their indignation, and their woes move their sympathies, they must be touched by those of their chattels—that as they are full of pains-taking toward those whose good opinions and good offices they seek, they will, of course, show special attention to those to whose good opinions they are indifferent, and whose good offices they can compel—that as they honor the literary and scientific, they must treat with high consideration those to whom they deny the alphabet—that as they are courteous to certain persons, they must be so to "property"—eager to anticipate the wishes of visitors, they cannot but gratify those of their vassals—jealous for the rights of the Texans, quick to feel at the disfranchisement of Canadians and of Irishmen, alive to the oppressions of the Greeks and the Poles, they must feel keenly for their negroes! Such conclusions from such premises do not call for serious refutation. Even a half-grown boy, who should argue, that because men have certain feelings toward certain persons in certain circumstances, they must have the same feelings toward all persons in all circumstances, or toward persons in opposite circumstances, of totally different grades, habits, and personal peculiarities, might fairly be set down as a hopeless simpleton: and yet, men of sense and reflection on other subjects, seem bent upon stultifying themselves by just such shallow inferences from the fact, that slaveholders are hospitable and generous to certain persons in certain grades of society belonging to their own caste. On the ground of this reasoning, all the crimes ever committed may be disproved, by showing, that their perpetrators were hospitable and generous to those who sympathized and co-operated with them. To prove that a man does not hate one of his neighbors, it is only necessary to show that he loves another; to make it appear that he does not treat contemptuously the ignorant, he has only to show that he bows respectfully to the learned; to demonstrate that he does not disdain his inferiors, lord it over his dependents, and grind the faces of the poor, he need only show that he is polite to the rich, pays deference to titles and office, and fawns for favor upon those above him! The fact that a man always smiles on his customers, proves that he never scowls at those who dun him! and since he has always a melodious "good morning!" for "gentlemen of property and standing," it is certain that he never snarls at beggars. He who is quick to make room for a doctor of divinity, will, of course, see to it that he never runs against a porter; and he who clears the way for a lady, will be sure never to rub against a market woman, or jostle an apple-seller's board. If accused of beating down his laundress to the lowest fraction, of making his boot-black call a dozen times for his pay, of higgling and screwing a fish boy till he takes off two cents, or of threatening to discharge his seamstress unless she will work for a shilling a day, how easy to brand it all as slander, by showing that he pays his minister in advance, is generous in Christmas presents, gives a splendid new-year's party, expends hundreds on elections, and puts his name with a round sum on the subscription paper of the missionary society.
Who can forget the hospitality of King Herod, that model of generosity "beyond all ancient fame," who offered half his kingdom to a guest, as a compensation for an hour's amusement.—Could such a noble spirit have murdered John the Baptist? Incredible! Joab too! how his soft heart was pierced at the exile of Absalom! and how his bowels yearned to restore him to his home! Of course, it is all fiction about his assassinating his nephew, Amasa, and Abner the captain of the host! Since David twice spared the life of Saul when he came to murder him, wept on the neck of Jonathan, threw himself upon the ground in anguish when his child sickened, and bewailed, with a broken heart, the loss of Absalom—it proves that he did not coolly plot and deliberately consummate the murder of Uriah! As the Government of the United States generously gave a township of land to General La Fayette, it proves that they have never defrauded the Indians of theirs! So the fact, that the slaveholders of the present Congress are, to a man, favorable to recognizing the independence of Texas, with her fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants, before she has achieved it, and before it is recognized by any other government, proves that these same slaveholders do not oppose the recognition of Hayti, with her million of inhabitants, whose independence was achieved nearly half a century ago, and which is recognized by the most powerful governments on earth!
But, seriously, no man is so slightly versed in human nature as not to know that men habitually exercise the most opposite feelings, and indulge in the most opposite practices toward different persons or different classes of persons around them. No man has ever lived who was more celebrated for his scrupulous observance of the most exact justice, and for the illustration furnished in his life of the noblest natural virtues, than the Roman Cato. His strict adherence to the nicest rules of equity—his integrity, honor, and incorruptible faith—his jealous watchfulness over the rights of his fellow citizens, and his generous devotion to their interest, procured for him the sublime appellation of "The Just." Towards freemen his life was a model of every thing just and noble: but to his slaves he was a monster. At his meals, when the dishes were not done to his liking, or when his slaves were careless or inattentive in serving, he would seize a thong and violently beat them, in presence of his guests.—When they grew old or diseased, and were no longer serviceable, however long and faithfully they might have served him, he either turned them adrift and left them to perish, or starved them to death in his own family. No facts in his history are better authenticated than these.
No people were ever more hospitable and munificent than the Romans, and none more touched with the sufferings of others. Their public theatres often rung with loud weeping, thousands sobbing convulsively at once over fictitious woes and imaginary sufferers: and yet these same multitudes would shout amidst the groans of a thousand dying gladiators, forced by their conquerors to kill each other in the amphitheatre for the amusement of the public.[22]
[Footnote 22: Dr. Leland, in his "Necessity of a Divine Revelation," thus describes the prevalence of these shows among the Romans:—"They were exhibited at the funerals of great and rich men, and on many other occasions, by the Roman consuls, praetors, aediles, senators, knights, priests, and almost all that bore great offices in the state, as well as by the emperors; and in general, by all that had a mind to make an interest with the people, who were extravagantly fond of those kinds of shows. Not only the men, but the women, ran eagerly after them; who were, by the prevalence of custom, so far divested of that compassion and softness which is natural to the sex, that they took a pleasure in seeing them kill one another, and only desired that they should fall genteelly, and in an agreeable attitude. Such was the frequency of those shows, and so great the number of men that were killed on those occasions, that Lipsius says, no war caused such slaughter of mankind, as did these sports of pleasure, throughout the several provinces of the vast Roman empire."—Leland's Neces. of Div. Rev. vol. ii. p. 51.]
Alexander, the tyrant of Phaeres, sobbed like a child over the misfortunes of the Trojan queens, when the tragedy of Andromache and Hecuba was played before him; yet he used to murder his subjects every day for no crime, and without even setting up the pretence of any, but merely to make himself sport.
The fact that slaveholders may be full of benevolence and kindness toward their equals and toward whites generally, even so much so as to attract the esteem and admiration of all, while they treat with the most inhuman neglect their own slaves, is well illustrated by a circumstance mentioned by the Rev. Dr. CHANNING, of Boston, (who once lived in Virginia,) is his work on slavery, p. 162, 1st edition:—
"I cannot," says the doctor, "forget my feelings on visiting a hospital belonging to the plantation of a gentleman highly esteemed for his virtues, and whose manners and conversation expressed much benevolence and conscientiousness. When I entered with him the hospital, the first object on which my eye fell was a young woman very ill, probably approaching death. She was stretched on the floor. Her head rested on something like a pillow, but her body and limbs were extended on the hard boards. The owner, I doubt not, had, at least, as much kindness as myself; but he was so used to see the slaves living without common comforts, that the idea of unkindness in the present instance did not enter his mind."
Mr. GEORGE A. AVERY, an elder of a Presbyterian church in Rochester, N.Y. who resided some years in Virginia, says:—
"On one occasion I was crossing the plantation and approaching the house of a friend, when I met him, rifle in hand, in pursuit of one of his negroes, declaring he would shoot him in a moment if he got his eye upon him. It appeared that the slave had refused to be flogged, and ran off to avoid the consequences; and yet the generous hospitality of this man to myself, and white friends generally, scarcely knew any bounds.
"There were amongst my slaveholding friends and acquaintances, persons who were as humane and conscientious as men can be, and persist in the impious claim of property in a fellow being. Still I can recollect but one instance of corporal punishment, whether the subject were male or female, in which the infliction was not on the bare back with the raw hide, or a similar instrument, the subject being tied during the operation to a post or tree. The exception was under the following circumstances. I had taken a walk with a friend on his plantation, and approaching his gang of slaves, I sat down whilst he proceeded to the spot where they were at work; and addressing himself somewhat earnestly to a female who was wielding the hoe, in a moment caught up what I supposed a tobacco stick, (a stick some three feet in length on which the tobacco, when out, is suspended to dry.) about the size of a man's wrist, and laid on a number of blows furiously over her head. The woman crouched, and seemed stunned with the blows, but presently recommenced the motion of her hoe."
Dr. DAVID NELSON, a native of Tennessee, and late president of Marion College, Missouri, in a lecture at Northampton, Mass. in January, 1839, made the following statement:—
"I remember a young lady who played well on the piano, and was very ready to weep over any fictitious tale of suffering. I was present when one of her slaves lay on the floor in a high fever, and we feared she might not recover. I saw that young lady stamp upon her with her feet; and the only remark her mother made was, 'I am afraid Evelina is too much prejudiced against poor Mary.'"
General WILLIAM EATON, for some years U.S. Consul at Tunis, and commander of the expedition against Tripoli, in 1895, thus gives vent to his feelings at the sight of many hundreds of Sardinians who had been enslaved by the Tunisians:
"Many have died of grief, and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death. Alas! remorse seizes my whole soul when I reflect, that this is indeed but a copy of the very barbarity which my eyes have seen in my own native country. How frequently, in the southern states of my own country, have I seen weeping mothers leading the guiltless infant to the sales with as deep anguish as if they led them to the slaughter; and yet felt my bosom tranquil in the view of these aggressions on defenceless humanity. But when I see the same enormities practised upon beings whose complexions and blood claim kindred with my own, I curse the perpetrators, and weep over the wretched victims of their rapacity. Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession, that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among professing Christians of civilized America; and yet here [in Tunis] sensibility bleeds at every pore for the wretches whom fate has doomed to slavery."
Rev. H. LYMAN, late pastor of the free Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, N.Y. who spent the winter of 1832-3 at the south, says:—
"In the interior of Mississippi I was invited to the house of a planter, where I was received with great cordiality, and entertained with marked hospitality.
"There I saw a master in the midst of his household slaves. The evening passed most pleasantly, as indeed it must, where assiduous hospitalities are exercised towards the guest.
"Late in the morning, when I had gained the tardy consent of my host to go on my way, as a final act of kindness, he called a slave to show me across the fields by a nearer route to the main road. 'David,' said he, 'go and show this gentleman as far as the post-office. Do you know the big bay tree?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Do you know where the cotton mill is?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Where Squire Malcolm's old field is?' 'Y—e—s, sir,' said David, (beginning to be bewildered). 'Do you know where Squire Malcolm's cotton field is?' 'No, sir.' 'No, sir,' said the enraged master, levelling his gun at him. 'What do you stand here, saying, Yes, yes, yes, for, when you don't know?' All this was accompanied with threats and imprecations, and a manner that contrasted strangely with the religious conversation and gentle manners of the previous evening."
The Rev. JAMES H. DICKEY, formerly a slaveholder in South Carolina, now pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Hennepin, Ill. in his "Review of Nevins' Biblical Antiquities," after asserting that slaveholding tends to beget "a spirit of cruelty and tyranny, and to destroy every generous and noble feeling," (page 33,) he adds the following as a note:—
"It may be that this will be considered censorious, and the proverbial generosity and hospitality of the south will be appealed to as a full confutation of it. The writer thinks he can appreciate southern kindness and hospitality. Having been born in Virginia, raised and educated in South Carolina and Kentucky, he is altogether southern in his feelings, and habits, and modes of familiar conversation. He can say of the south as Cowper said of England, 'With all thy faults I love thee still, my country.' And nothing but the abominations of slavery could have induced him willingly to forsake a land endeared to him by all the associations of childhood and youth.
"Yet it is candid to admit that it is not all gold that glitters. There is a fictitious kindness and hospitality. The famous Robin Hood was kind and generous—no man more hospitable—he robbed the rich to supply the necessities of the poor. Others rob the poor to bestow gifts and lavish kindness and hospitality on their rich friends and neighbors. It is an easy matter for a man to appear kind and generous, when he bestows that which others have earned.
"I said, there is a fictitious kindness and hospitality. I once knew a man who left his wife and children three days, without fire-wood, without bread-stuff and without shoes, while the ground was covered with snow—that he might indulge in his cups. And when I attempted to expostulate with him, he took the subject out of my hands, and expatiating on the evils of intemperance more eloquently than I could, concluded by warning me, with tears, to avoid the snares of the latter. He had tender feelings, yet a hard heart. I once knew a young lady of polished manners and accomplished education, who would weep with sympathy over the fictitious woes exhibited in a novel. And waking from her reverie of grief, while her eye was yet wet with tears, would call her little waiter, and if she did not appear at the first call, would rap her head with her thimble till my head ached.
"I knew a man who was famed for kindly sympathies. He once took off his shirt and gave it to a poor white man. The same man hired a black man, and gave him for his daily task, through the winter, to feed the beasts, keep fires, and make one hundred rails: and in case of failure the lash was applied so freely, that, in the spring, his back was one continued sore, from his shoulders to his waist. Yet this man was a professor of religion, and famous for his tender sympathies to white men!"
OBJECTION IV.—'NORTHERN VISITORS AT THE SOUTH TESTIFY THAT THE SLAVES ARE NOT CRUELLY TREATED.'
ANSWER:—Their knowledge on this point must have been derived, either from the slaveholders and overseers themselves, or from the slaves, or from their own observation. If from the slaveholders, their testimony has already been weighed and found wanting; if they derived it from the slaves, they can hardly be so simple as to suppose that the guest, associate and friend of the master, would be likely to draw from his slaves any other testimony respecting his treatment of them, than such as would please him. The great shrewdness and tact exhibited by slaves in keeping themselves out of difficulty, when close questioned by strangers as to their treatment, cannot fail to strike every accurate observer. The following remarks of CHIEF JUSTICE HENDERSON, a North Carolina slaveholder, in his decision (in 1830,) in the case of the State versus Charity, 2 Devereaux's North Carolina Reports, 513, illustrate the folly of arguing the good treatment of slaves from their own declarations, while in the power of their masters. In the case above cited, the Chief Justice, in refusing to permit a master to give in evidence, declarations made to him by his slave, says of masters and slaves generally—
"The master has an almost absolute control over the body and mind of his slave. The master's will is the slave's will. All his acts, all his sayings, are made with a view to propitiate his master. His confessions are made, not from a love of truth, not from a sense of duty, not to speak a falsehood, but to please his master—and it is in vain that his master tells him to speak the truth and conceals from him how he wishes the question answered. The slave will ascertain, or, which is the same thing, think that he has ascertained the wishes of his master, and MOULD HIS ANSWER ACCORDINGLY. We therefore more often get the wishes of the master, or the slave's belief of his wishes, than the truth."
The following extract of a letter from the Hon. SETH M. GATES, member elect of the next Congress, furnishes a clue by which to interpret the looks, actions, and protestations of slaves, when in the presence of their masters' guests, and the pains sometimes taken by slaveholders, in teaching their slaves the art of pretending that they are treated well, love their masters, are happy, &c. The letter is dated Leroy, Jan. 4, 1839.
"I have sent your letter to Rev. Joseph M. Sadd, Castile, Genesee county, who resided five years in a slave state, and left, disgusted with slavery. I trust he will give you some facts. I remember one fact, which his wife witnessed. A relative, where she boarded, returning to his plantation after a temporary absence, was not met by his servants with such demonstrations of joy as was their wont. He ordered his horse put out, took down his whip, ordered his servants to the barn, and gave them a most cruel beating, because they did not run out to meet him, and pretend great attachment to him. Mrs. Sadd had overheard the servants agreeing not to go out, before his return, as they said they did not love him—and this led her to watch his conduct to them. This man was a professor of religion!"
If these northern visitors derived their information that the slaves are not cruelly treated from their own observation, it amounts to this, they did not see cruelties inflicted on the slaves. To which we reply, that the preceding pages contain testimony from hundreds of witnesses, who testify that they did see the cruelties whereof they affirm. Besides this, they contain the solemn declarations of scores of slaveholders themselves, in all parts of the slave states, that the slaves are cruelly treated. These declarations are moreover fully corroborated, by the laws of slave states, by a multitude of advertisements in their newspapers, describing runaway slaves, by their scars, brands, gashes, maimings, cropped ears, iron collars, chains, &c. &c.
Truly, after the foregoing array of facts and testimony, and after the objectors' forces have one after another filed off before them, now to march up a phalanx of northern visitors, is to beat a retreat. 'Visitors!' What insight do casual visitors get into the tempers and daily practices of those whom they visit, or of the treatment that their slaves receive at their hands, especially if these visitors are strangers, and from a region where there are no slaves, and which claims to be opposed to slavery? What opportunity has a stranger, and a temporary guest, to learn the every-day habits and caprices of his host? Oh, these northern visitors tell us they have visited scores of families at the south and never saw a master or mistress whip their slaves. Indeed! They have, doubtless, visited hundreds of families at the north—did they ever see, on such occasions, the father or mother whip their children? If so, they must associate with very ill-bred persons. Because well-bred parents do not whip their children in the presence, or within the hearing of their guests are we to infer that they never do it out of their sight and hearing? But perhaps the fact that these visitors do not remember seeing slaveholders strike their slaves, merely proves, that they had so little feeling for them, that though they might be struck every day in their presence, yet as they were only slaves and 'niggers,' it produced no effect upon them; consequently they have no impressions to recall. These visitors have also doubtless rode with scores of slaveholders. Are they quite certain they ever saw them whip their horses? and can they recall the persons, times, places, and circumstances? But even if these visitors regarded the slaves with some kind feelings, when they first went to the south, yet being constantly with their oppressors, seeing them used as articles of property, accustomed to hear them charged with all kinds of misdemeanors, their ears filled with complaints of their laziness, carelessness, insolence, obstinacy, stupidity, thefts, elopements, &c. and at the same time, receiving themselves the most gratifying attentions and caresses from the same persons, who, while they make to them these representations of their slaves, are giving them airings in their coaches, making parties for them, taking them on excursions of pleasure, lavishing upon them their choicest hospitalities, and urging them to protract indefinitely their stay—what more natural than for the flattered guest to admire such hospitable people, catch their spirit, and fully sympathize with their feelings toward their slaves, regarding with increased disgust and aversion those who can habitually tease and worry such loveliness and generosity[23]. After the visitor had been in contact with the slave-holding spirit long enough to have imbibed it, (no very tedious process,) a cuff, or even a kick administered to a slave, would not be likely to give him such a shock that his memory would long retain the traces of it. But lest we do these visitors injustice, we will suppose that they carried with them to the south humane feelings for the slave, and that those feelings remained unblunted; still, what opportunity could they have to witness the actual condition of the slaves? They come in contact with the house-servants only, and as a general thing, with none but the select ones of these, the parlor-servants; who generally differ as widely in their appearance and treatment from the cooks and scullions in the kitchen, as parlor furniture does from the kitchen utensils. Certain servants are assigned to the parlor, just as certain articles of furniture are selected for it, to be seen—and it is no less ridiculous to infer that the kitchen scullions are clothed and treated like those servants who wait at the table, and are in the presence of guests, than to infer that the kitchen is set out with sofas, ottomans, piano-fortes, and full-length mirrors, because the parlor is. But the house-slaves are only a fraction of the whole number. The field-hands constitute the great mass of the slaves, and these the visitors rarely get a glimpse at. They are away at their work by day-break, and do not return to their huts till dark. Their huts are commonly at some distance from the master's mansion, and the fields in which they labor, generally much farther, and out of sight. If the visitor traverses the plantation, care is taken that he does not go alone; if he expresses a wish to see it, the horses are saddled, and the master or his son gallops the rounds with him; if he expresses a desire to see the slaves at work, his conductor will know where to take him, and when, and which of them to show; the overseer, too, knows quite too well the part he has to act on such occasions, to shock the uninitiated ears of the visitors with the shrieks of his victims. It is manifest that visitors can see only the least repulsive parts of slavery, inasmuch as it is wholly at the option of the master, what parts to show them; as a matter of necessity, he can see only the outside—and that, like the outside of doorknobs and andirons is furbished up to be looked at. So long as it is human nature to wear the best side out, so long the northern guests of southern slaveholders will see next to nothing of the reality of slavery. Those visitors may still keep up their autumnal migrations to the slave states, and, after a hasty survey of the tinsel hung before the curtain of slavery, without a single glance behind it, and at the paint and varnish that cover up dead men's bones, and while those who have hoaxed them with their smooth stories and white-washed specimens of slavery, are tittering at their gullibility, they return in the spring on the same fool's-errand with their predecessors, retailing their lesson, and mouthing the praises of the masters, and the comforts of the slaves. They now become village umpires in all disputes about the condition of the slaves, and each thence forward ends all controversies with his oracular, "I've seen, and sure I ought to know."