University of Virginia Library

38. XXXVIII.

For the tourist to give sketches of the south
without adverting to the slave population, would be
as difficult, as for the historian to write of the early
settlement of America without alluding to the
aborigines. I shall, therefore, in this and two or
three subsequent letters, discursively, as the subject
is suggested to me, introduce such notices of the
relative and actual condition of the slaves in this
state, as may have a tendency to correct any prejudices,
which as a New-Englander you may have
imbibed, and set you right upon a subject, which
has been singularly misrepresented. With slavery
in the abstract, my remarks have nothing to do.
Southerners and northerners think alike here—but I
wish to present the subject before you precisely, as
during a long residence in Mississippi it has constantly

been presented to me—not to give you ex parte
facts, and those from the darkest side of the picture—
recording the moan here, and omitting the smile there
—remembering the sound of the lash, and forgetting
that of the violin—painting the ragged slave, and
passing by his gayly-dressed fellow—but to state
facts impartially and fearlessly, leaving you to draw
your own conclusions.

Aware of the nature of the ground, upon which I
am about to venture, I trust that I shall approach a
subject upon which the sons of the chivalresque
south are naturally so sensitive—involving as it
does, a right so sacred as that of property—without
those prejudices with which a northerner might be
supposed fore-armed. Among the numerous important
subjects with which the public mind within
a few years past has been agitated, no one has been
so obscured by error, and altogether so little understood
as this.

In my letters from New-Orleans, there was but
little allusion to this subject, as I then possessed
very slight and imperfect knowledge of it. But the
broad peculiarities of slavery, and the general traits
of African character differ not materially, whether
exhibited on the extensive sugar fields of Louisiana,
or on the cotton plantations of Mississippi. The
relative situations, also, of the slaves are so much
alike, that a dissertation upon slavery as it exists in
one state, can with almost equal precision be applied
to it as existing in the other. All my remarks
upon this subject, however, are the result only of
my observations in the state of Mississippi.

“Will you ride with me into the country?” said
a young planter as we rose from the table d'hote of
the Mansion house. “I am about purchasing a few
negroes, and a peep into a slave-mart may not be
uninteresting to you.” I readily embraced the opportunity
thus presented of visiting a southern slave
market; and in a few minutes our horses were at
the door—long-tailed pacers with flowing manes
and slender limbs. One of them was caparisoned
with the deep concave Spanish saddle I have so
often mentioned, with a high pummel terminating in
a round flat head—and covered with blue broad-cloth,
which hung nearly to the stirrup, and, extending
in one piece far behind, formed ample housings.
The other horse bore an ordinary saddle, over which
was thrown a light blue merino blanket several
times folded, and secured to the saddle by a gayly-woven
surcingle. Southerners usually ride with a
thick blanket, oftener white than coloured, thus
bound over their saddles, forming a comfortable
cushion, and another placed between the saddle and
the back of the horse. These blankets are considered
indispensable in this climate. They are not always
of the purest white, and the negroes, whose taste in
this as well as in many other things might be improved,
usually put them on awry, with a ragged
corner hanging down in fine contrast with the handsome
saddle, and in pleasant companionship with
the cloth skirts of the rider. These little matters,
however, the southerner seldom notices. If well
mounted, which he is always sure to be, the “keeping”
of the ensemble is but a secondary affair.

The saddle blankets are often unstrapped by the
rider, in case of rain, and folded about him after the
manner of the Choctaws. This custom of wearing
blankets over the saddle originated with the old
pioneers, who carried them to sleep on, as they
camped in the woods.

Crossing Cotton Square—the chief market place
for cotton in the city—we in a few minutes entered
upon the great northern road leading to Jackson, the
capital of this state, and thence to Washington, the
seat of the general government. Near the intersection
of this road with the city streets, a sudden clanking
of chains, startled our horses, and the next instant
a gang of negroes, in straggling procession, followed
by an ordinary looking white man armed with a
whip, emerged from one of the streets. Each negro
carried slung over his shoulder a polished iron ball,
apparently a twenty-four pounder, suspended by a
heavy ox chain five or six feet in length and secured
to the right ancle by a massive ring. They moved
along under their burthen as though it were any
thing but comfortable—some with idealess faces,
looking the mere animal, others with sullen and dogged
looks, and others again talking and laughing as
though “Hymen's chains had bound them.” This
galley-looking procession, whose tattered wardrobe
seemed to have been stolen from a chimney-sweep,
was what is very appropriately termed the “Chain
gang,” a fraternity well known in New-Orleans and
Natchez, and valued for its services in cleaning and
repairing the streets. In the former city however
there is one for whites as well as blacks, who may

be known by their parti-coloured clothing. These
gangs are merely moving penitentiaries, appropriating
that amount of labor, which at the north is expended
within four walls, to the broader limits of
the city. In Natchez, negro criminals only are
thus honoured—a “coat of tar and feathers” being
applied to those white men who may require some
kind of discipline not provided by the courts of justice.
This last summary process of popular justice,
or more properly excitement, termed “Lynch's
law,” I believe from its originator, is too much in
vogue in this state. In the resentment of public as
well as private wrongs, individuals have long been in
the habit of forestalling and improving upon the decisions
of the courts, by taking the execution of the
laws into their own hands. The consequence is,
that the dignity of the bench is degraded, and justice
is set aside for the exhibition of wild outbreaks of
popular feeling. But this summary mode of procedure
is now, to the honour of the south, rapidly falling
into disuse, and men feel willing to yield to the
dignity of the law and acquiesce in its decisions,
even to the sacrifice of individual prejudices. That
“border” state of society from which the custom
originated no longer exists here—and the causes
having ceased which at first, in the absence of proper
tribunals, may have rendered it perhaps necessary
thus to administer justice, the effect will naturally
cease also—and men will surrender the sword of
justice to the public tribunals, erected by themselves.

The want of a penitentiary has had a tendency to

keep this custom alive in this state longer than it
would otherwise have existed. When an individual
is guilty of any offence, which renders him amenable
to the laws, he must either be acquitted altogether
or suffer death. There is no intermediate
mode of punishment, except the stocks, whipping,
branding and cropping—the last two are seldom resorted
to now as legal punishments, and the others
are regarded as too light an expiation for an offence
which merited a seven years' imprisonment. Therefore
when a criminal is acquitted, because his guilt is
not quite sufficient to demand the sacrifice of his
life, but enough to confine him to many years' hard
labour in a state's prison—popular vengeance, if
the nature of his guilt has enlisted the feelings of
the multitude—immediately seizes upon him, and the
poor wretch expiates his crime, by one of the most
cruel systems of justice that human ingenuity has
ever invented. When a criminal is here condemned
to death, whose sentence in other states
would have been confinement for a limited period,
there is in public feeling sometimes a reaction, as
singularly in the other extreme. Petitions for his
pardon are circulated, and, with columns of names
appended, presented to the governor, for here there
can be no commutation of a sentence of death.—
There must be a free, unconditional pardon or the
scaffold. Sometimes a criminal under sentence of
death is pardoned by the governor, thinking his
crime not sufficiently aggravated to be atoned for
by his life, which may often be the case in a state
where eleven crimes are punishable with death.[15]
In such instances the criminal, unless escorted beyond
the reach of popular resentment, receives from
the multitude a commutation of his sentence, which,
through the tender mercies of his judges, is more
dreadful than death itself. Death indeed has in two
or three instances terminated the sufferings of these
victims of public feeling; sometimes they have been
placed upright in a skiff with their arms pinioned
behind them, and a jug of whiskey placed at their
feet, and thus thrown upon the mercy of the Mississippi,
down which under a burning sun, naked and
bareheaded they are borne, till rescued by some
steamer, cast upon the inhospitable shores, or buried
beneath the waves. This act, inhuman as it may
appear, does not indicate a more barbarous or inhuman
state of society than elsewhere. It is the consequence
of a deficiency in the mode and means of
punishment. Was there but one sentence passed
upon all criminals in sober New-England, and that
sentence, death, humanity would lead to numerous
acquittals and pardons, while popular feeling, when
it felt itself injured, refusing to acquiesce in the total
escape of the guilty, would take upon itself to inflict
that punishment which the code had neglected
to provide. A penitentiary in this state would at
once do away this custom, which however necessary
it may appear in the opinion of those who adhere
to it, can never be defended.

The “chain gang,” which led to this digression,
consists of insubordinate negroes and slaves, who,
having run away from their masters, have been
taken up and confined in jail, to await the reclamation
of their owners; during the interval elapsing
between their arrest and the time of their liberation
by their masters, they are daily led forth from the
prison to work on the streets, under the charge of
an overseer. This punishment is considered very
degrading, and merely the threat of the Calaboose,
or the “ball and chain,” will often intimidate and
render submissive the most incorrigible.

“Hi! Bill—dat you in ball and chain?” said, as
we passed by, a young slave well dressed and
mounted on his master's fine saddle-horse; “I no
tink you eber runaway—you is a disgrace to we
black gentlemen—I neber 'sociate wid you 'gain.”

Bill, who was a tall, good-looking mulatto, the
coachman of a gentleman near town, and of course,
high in the scale of African society—seemed to feel
the reproof, and be sensible of his degradation; for
he hung his head moodily and in silence. The
other prisoners, however, began to vituperate the
young horseman, who was glad to escape from their
Billingsgate missiles, by quickening his speed.

When a runaway is apprehended he is committed
to jail, and an advertisement describing his person
and wearing apparel, is inserted in the newspaper
for six months, if he is not claimed in the interim;

at the expiration of which period he may be sold at
auction, and the proceeds, after deducting all expenses,
go to the use of the county. Should the
owner subsequently claim and prove his property,
the amount paid into the treasury, on account of the
sale, is refunded to him. An owner, making his claim
before the six months have expired, and proving his
property before a justice of the peace, is allowed to
take him away on producing a certificate to that effect
from the justice, and paying the expenses incurred
in the apprehension and securing of his slave.
All runaways, or suspected runaways, may lawfully
be apprehended, and carried before a justice of the
peace, who at his discretion may either commit
them to jail, or send them to the owner, and the
person by whom the arrest was made, is entitled to
six dollars for each, on delivering him to his master.

The road, for the first mile after leaving town,
passed through a charming country, seen at intervals,
and between long lines of unpainted, wretched
looking dwellings, occupied as “groggeries,” by
free negroes, or poor emigrants. The contrast between
the miserable buildings and their squalid
occupants, and the rich woodlands beyond them on
either side, among whose noble trees rose the white
columns and lofty roofs of elegant villas, was certainly
very great, but far from agreeable. On a
hill a short distance from the road the “Orphan
Asylum” was pointed out to me, by my companion,
as a monument of the benevolence and public
spirit of the ladies of Natchez. Shortly after the
prevalence of a great epidemic in this city, seventeen

years ago, which left many children orphans,
and destitute, a few distinguished ladies formed
themselves into a society for their aid, obtained
bountiful subscriptions, for on such occasions hearts
and purses are freely opened, gathered the parentless
children scattered throughout the city, and
placed them in this asylum, where all destitute orphans
have since found a home. The institution is
now in a flourishing state, and is under the patronage
of several ladies of great respectability. Some
distance beyond the asylum, to the left, a fine view
of groves and green hills, presenting a prospect
strikingly resembling English park scenery, terminated
in the roofs and columns of a “southern
palace” rising above rich woods and ever-green foliage—the
residence of the family of a late distinguished
officer under the Spanish regime. These
massive structures, with double colonnades and
spacious galleries, peculiar to the opulent southern
planter, are numerous in the neighbourhood of
Natchez, but they date back to the great cotton era,
when fortunes were made almost in a single season.
Magnificence was then the prevailing taste, and the
walls of costly dwellings rose, as the most available
means of displaying to the public eye the rapidly
acquired wealth of successful speculators. But
times are now somewhat changed. The rage for
these noble and expensive structures has passed
away, and those which are now seen, rear themselves
among magnificent groves—monuments only
of the past, when the good old customs of Virginia
characterized the inhabitants. These were for the
most part gentlemen of education, or officers of the
army—for those were military times. This was
the day of dinner parties and courtly balls—an era to
which the gentlemen, who participated in them, now
look back with a sigh. Perhaps no state—not even
Virginia herself, which Mississippi claims as her
mother country—could present a more hospitable,
chivalrous, and high-minded class of men, or more
cultivated females than this, during the first few
years, subsequent to its accession to the Union.