he can give of utter indifference to their comfort. The father who stints his children or domestics, or the master his apprentices, or the employer his laborers, or the officer his soldiers, or the captain his crew, when able to furnish them with sufficient food, is every where looked upon as unfeeling and cruel. All mankind agree to call such a character inhuman. If any thing can move a hard heart, it is the appeal of hunger. The Arab robber whose whole life is a prowl for plunder, will freely divide his camel's milk with the hungry stranger who halts at his tent door, though he may have just waylaid him and stripped him of his money. Even savages take pity on hunger. Who ever went famishing from an Indian's wigwam? As much as hunger craves, is the Indian's free gift even to an enemy. The necessity for food is such a universal want, so constant, manifest and imperative, that the heart is more touched with pity by the plea of hunger, and more ready to supply that want than any other. He who can habitually inflict on others the pain of hunger by giving them insufficient food, can habitually inflict on them any other pain. He can kick and cuff and flog and brand them, put them in irons or the stocks, can overwork them, deprive them of sleep, lacerate their backs, make them work without clothing, and sleep without covering.
Other cruelties may be perpetrated in hot blood and the acts regretted as soon as done--the feeling that prompts them is not a permanent state of mind, but a violent impulse stung up by sudden provocation. But he who habitually withholds from his dependents sufficient sustenance, can plead no such palliation. The fact itself shows, that his permanent state of mind toward them is a brutal indifference to their wants and sufferings--A state of mind which will naturally, necessarily, show itself in innumerable privations and inflictions upon them, when it can be done with impunity.
If, therefore, we find upon examination, that the slaveholders do not furnish their slaves with sufficient food, and do thus habitually inflict upon them the pain of hunger, we have a clue furnished to their treatment in other respects, and may fairly infer habitual and severe privations and inflictions; not merely from the fact that men are quick to feel for those who suffer from hunger, and perhaps more ready to relieve that want than any other; but also, because it is more for the interest of the slaveholder to supply that want than any other; consequently, if the slave suffer in this respect, he must as the general rule, suffer more in other respects.
We now proceed to show that the slaves have insufficient food. This will be shown first from the express declarations of slaveholders, and other competent witnesses who are, or have been residents of slave states, that the slaves generally are under-fed. And then, by the laws of slave states, and by the testimony of slaveholders and others, the kind, quantity, and quality, of their allowance will be given, and the reader left to judge for himself whether the slave must not be a sufferer.
THE SLAVES SUFFER FROM HUNGER--DECLARATIONS OF SLAVE-HOLDERS AND OTHERS
| WITNESSES. | TESTIMONY. |
| Hon. Alexander Smyth, a slave holder, and for ten years, Member of Congress from Virginia, in his speech on the Missouri question. Jan 28th, 1820. | "By confining the slaves to the Southern states, where crops are raised for exportation, and bread and meat are purchased, you doom them to scarcity and hunger. It is proposed to hem in the blacks where they are ILL FED." |
| Rev. George Whitefield, in his letter, to the slave holders of Md. Va. N C. S. C. and Ga. published in Georgia, just one hundred years ago, 1739. | "My blood has frequently run cold within me, to think how many of your slaves have not sufficient food to eat; they are scarcely permitted to pick up the crumbs, that fall from their master's table." |
| Rev. John Rankin, of Ripley, Ohio, a native of Tennessee, and for some year's a preacher in slave states. | "Thousands of the slaves are pressed with the gnawings of cruel hunger during their whole lives." |
| Report of the Gradual Emancipation Society, of North Carolina, 1826. Signed Moses Swain, President, and William Swain, Secretary. | Speaking of the condition of slaves, in the eastern part of that state, the report says,--"The master puts the unfortunate wretches upon short allowances, scarcely sufficient for their sustenance, so that a great part of them go half starved much of the time." |
| Mr. Asa A. Stone, a Theological Student, who resided near Natchez, Miss., in 1834-5. | "On almost every plantation, the hands suffer more or less from hunger at some seasons of almost every year. There is always a good deal of suffering from hunger. On many plantations, and particularly in Louisiana, the slaves are in a condition of almost utter famishment, during a great portion of the year." |
| Thomas Clay, Esq., of Georgia, a Slaveholder. | "From various causes this [the slave's allowance of food] is often not adequate to the support of a laboring man." |
| Mr. Tobias Boudinot, St. Albans, Ohio, a member of the Methodist Church. Mr. B. for some years navigated the Mississippi. | "The slaves down the Mississippi, are half-starved, the boats, when they stop at night, are constantly boarded by slaves, begging for something to eat." |
| President Edwards, the younger, in a sermon before the Conn. Abolition Society, 1791. | "The slaves are supplied with barely enough to keep them from starving." |
| Rev. Horace Moulton, a Methodist Clergyman of Marlboro' Mass., who lived five years in Georgia. | "As a general thing on the plantations, the slaves suffer extremely for the want of food." |
| Rev. George Bourne, late editor of the Protestant Vindicator, N. Y., who was seven years pastor of a church in Virginia. | "The slaves are deprived of needful sustenance." |
1. KINDS OF FOOD.
| Hon. Robert Turnbull, a slaveholder of Charleston, South Carolina. | "The subsistence of the slaves consists, from March until August, of corn ground into grits, or meal, made into what is called hominy, or baked into corn bread. The other six months, they are fed upon the sweet potatoe. Meat, when given, is only by way of indulgence or favor." |
| Mr. Eleazar Powell, Chippewa, Beaver Co., Penn., who resided in Mississippi, in 1836-7. | "The food of the slaves was generally corn bread, and sometimesmeat or molasses." |
| Reuben G. Macy, a member of the Society of Friends, Hudson, N. Y., who resided in South Carolina. | "The slaves had no food allowed them besides corn, excepting at Christmas, when they had beef." |
| Mr. William Leftwich, a native of Virginia, and recently of Madison Co., Alabama, now member, of the Presbyterian Church, Delhi, Ohio. | "On my uncle's plantation, the food of the slaves, was corn pone and a small allowance of meat." |
WILLIAM LADD, Esq., of Minot, Me., president of the American Peace Society, and formerly a slaveholder of Florida, gives the following testimony as to the allowance of food to slaves.
"The usual food of the slaves was corn, with a modicum of salt. In some cases the master allowed no salt, but the slaves boiled the sea water for salt in their little pots. For about eight days near Christmas, i. e., from the Saturday evening before, to the Sunday evening after Christmas day, they were allowed some meat. They always with one single exception ground their corn in a hand-mill, and cooked their
