Читать книгу American Slavery as It is: Testimonies - Theodore Dwight Weld - Страница 26
THE SLAVES ARE OVERWORKED.
ОглавлениеThis is abundantly proved by the number of hours that the slaves are obliged to be in the field. But before furnishing testimony as to their hours of labor and rest, we will present the express declarations of slaveholders and others, that the slaves are severely driven in the field.
| WITNESSES. | TESTIMONY. |
| The Senate and House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina. | "MANY OWNERS of slaves, and others who have the management of slaves, do confine them so closely at hard labor that they have not sufficient time for natural rest.--See 2 Brevard's Digest of the Laws of South Carolina, 243." |
| History of Carolina.--Vol. i, page 120. | "So laborious is the task of raising, beating, and cleaning rice, that had it been possible to obtain European servants in sufficient numbers, thousands and tens of thousands MUST HAVE PERISHED." |
| Hon. Alexander Smyth, a slaveholder, and member of Congress from Virginia, in his speech on the "Missouri question," Jan. 28, 1820. | "Is it not obvious that the way to render their situation more comfortable, is to allow them to be taken where there is not the same motive to force the slave to INCESSANT TOIL that there is in the country where cotton, sugar, and tobacco are raised for exportation. It is proposed to hem in the blacks where they are HARD WORKED, that they may be rendered unproductive and the race be prevented from increasing. * * * The proposed measure would be EXTREME CRUELTY to the blacks. * * * You would * * * doom them to HARD LABOR." |
| "Travels in Louisiana," translated from the French by John Davies, Esq.--Page 81. | "At the rolling of sugars, an interval of from two to three months, they work both night and day. Abridged of their sleep, they scarce retire to rest during the whole period." |
| The Western Review, No. 2,--article "Agriculture of Louisiana." | "The work is admitted to be severe for the hands, (slaves,) requiring when the process is commenced to be pushed night and day." |
| W. C. Gildersleeve, Esq., a native of Georgia, elder of the Presbyterian church, Wilkesbarre, Penn. | "Overworked I know they (the slaves) are." |
| Mr. Asa A. Stone, a theological student, near Natchez, Miss., in 1834 and 1835. | "Every body here knows overdriving to be one of the most common occurrences, the planters do not deny it, except, perhaps, to northerners." |
| Philemon Bliss, Esq., a lawyer of Elyria, Ohio, who lived in Florida in 1834 and 1835. | "During the cotton-picking season they usually labor in the field during the whole of the daylight, and then spend a good part of the night in ginning and baling. The labor required is very frequently excessive, and speedily impairs the constitution." |
| Hon. R. J. Turnbull of South Carolina, a slaveholder, speaking of the harvesting of cotton, says: | 'All the pregnant women even, on the plantation, and weak and sickly negroes incapable of other labor, are then in requisition." |
