W. Westgate, member of the Congregational Church, of Quincy, Illinois. Mr. W. has been engaged in the low country trade for twelve years, more than half of each year, principally on the Mississippi, and its tributary streams in the south-western slave states.
"Feeding is not sufficient,--let facts speak. On the coast, i. e. Natchez and the Gulf of Mexico, the allowance was one barrel of ears of corn, and a pint of salt per month. They may cook this in what manner they please, but it must be done after dark; they have no day light to prepare it by. Some few planters, but only a few, let them prepare their corn on Saturday afternoon. Planters, overseers, and negroes, have told me, that in pinching times, i. e. when corn is high, they did not get near that quantity. In Miss., I know some planters who allowed their hands three and a half pounds of meat per week, when it was cheap. Many prepare their corn on the Sabbath, when they are not worked on that day, which however is frequently the case on sugar plantations. There are very many masters on "the coast" who will not suffer their slaves to come to the boats, because they steal molasses to barter for meat; indeed they generally trade more or less with stolen property. But it is impossible to find out what and when, as their articles of barter are of such trifling importance. They would often come on board our boats to beg a bone, and would tell how badly they were fed, that they were almost starved; many a time I have set up all night, to prevent them from stealing something to eat."
3. QUALITY OF FOOD.
Having ascertained the kind and quantity of food allowed to the slaves, it is important to know something of its quality, that we may judge of the amount of sustenance which it contains. For, if their provisions are of an inferior quality, or in a damaged state, their power to sustain labor must be greatly diminished.
| WITNESSES. | TESTIMONY. |
| Thomas Clay, Esq. of Georgia, in an address to the Georgia Presbytery, 1834, speaking of the quality of the corn given to the slaves, says, | "There is often a defect here." |
| Rev. Horace Moulton, a Methodist clergyman at Marlboro', Mass. and five years a resident of Georgia. | "The food, or 'feed' of slaves is generally of the poorest kind." |
| The "Western Medical Reformer," in an article on the diseases peculiar to negroes, by a Kentucky physician, says of the diet of the slaves; | "They live on a coarse, crude, unwholesome diet." |
| Professor A. G. Smith, of the New York Medical College; formerly a physician in Louisville, Kentucky. | I have myself known numerous instances of large families of badly fednegroes swept off by a prevailing epidemic; and it is well known to many intelligent planters in the south, that the best method of preventing that horrible malady, Chachexia Africana, is to feed the negroes with nutritious food. |
4. NUMBER AND TIME OF MEALS EACH DAY.
In determining whether or not the slaves suffer for want of food, the number of hours intervening, and the labor performed between their meals, and the number of meals each day, should be taken into consideration.
| WITNESSES. | TESTIMONY. |
| Philemon Bliss, Esq., a lawyer in Elyria, Ohio, and member of the Presbyterian church, who lived in Florida, in 1834, and 1835. | "The slaves go to the field in the morning; they carry with them corn meal wet with water, and at noon build a fire on the ground and bake it in the ashes. After the labors of the day are over, they take their second meal of ash-cake." |
| President Edwards, the younger. | "The slaves eat twice during the day." |
| Mr. Eleazar Powell, Chippewa, Beaver county, Penn., who resided in Mississippi in 1836 and 1837. | "The slaves received two meals during the day. Those who have their food cooked for them get their breakfast about eleven o'clock, and their other meal after night." |
| Mr. Nehemiah Caulkins, Waterford, Conn., who spent eleven winters in North Carolina. | "The breakfast of the slaves was generally about ten or eleveno'clock." |
| Rev. Phineas Smith, Centreville, N. Y., who has lived at the south some years. | "The slaves have usually two meals a day, viz: at eleven o'clock and at night." |
| Rev. C. S. Renshaw, Quincy, Illinois,--the testimony of a Virginia. | "The slaves have two meals a day. They breakfast at from ten to eleven, A. M., and eat their supper at from six to nine or ten at night, as the season and crops may be." |
The preceding testimony establishes the following points.
1st. That the slaves are allowed, in general, no meat. This appears from the fact, that in the only slave states which regulate the slaves' rations by law, (North Carolina and Louisiana,) the legal ration contains no meat. Besides, the late Hon. R. J. Turnbull, one of the largest planters in South Carolina, says expressly, "meat, when given, is only by the way of indulgence or favor." It is shown also by the direct testimony recorded above, of slaveholders and others, in all parts of the slaveholding south and west, that the general allowance on plantations is corn or meal and salt merely. To this there are doubtless many exceptions, but they are only exceptions; the number of slaveholders who furnish meat for their field-hands, is small, in comparison with the number of those who do not. The house slaves, that is, the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, &c., generally get some meat every day; the remainder bits and bones of their masters' tables. But that the great body of the slaves, those that compose the field gangs, whose labor and exposure, and consequent exhaustion, are vastly greater than those of house slaves, toiling as they do from day light till dark, in the fogs of the early morning, under the scorchings of mid-day, and amid the damps of evening, are in general provided with no meat, is abundantly established by the preceding testimony.
Now we do not say that meat is necessary to sustain men under hard and long continued labor, nor that it is not. This is not a treatise on dietetics; but it is a notorious fact, that the medical faculty in this country, with very few exceptions, do most strenuously insist that it is necessary; and that working men in all parts of the country do believe that meat is indispensable to sustain them, even those who work within doors, and only ten hours a day, every one knows. Further, it is notorious, that the slaveholders themselves believe the daily use of meat to be absolutely necessary to the comfort, not merely of those who labor, but of those who are idle, as is proved by the fact of meat being a part of the daily ration of food provided for convicts in the prisons, in every one of the slave states, except in those rare cases where meat is expressly prohibited, and the convict is, by way of extra punishment confined to bread and water; he is occasionally, and for a little time only, confined to bread and water; that is, to the ordinary diet of slaves, with this difference in favor of the convict, his bread is made for him, whereas the slave is forced to pound or grind his own corn and make his own bread, when exhausted with toil.
The preceding testimony shows also, that vegetables form generally no part of the slaves' allowance. The sole food of the majority is corn: at every meal--from day to day--from week to week--from month to month, corn. In South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the sweet potato is, to a considerable extent, substituted for corn
