most rapidly, so that there is scarcely
any state but what is overstocked. This is a circumstance complained of by
every planter as the maintenance of more than are requisite for the culture
of the estate is attended with great expense. Motives ... of humanity deter
them from selling the poor creatures, or turning them adrift from the spot
where they have been born and brought up, in the midst of friends and
relations.

"What I have here said, respecting the condition and treatment of slaves,
appertains, it must be remembered, to those only who are upon the larger
plantations in Virginia; the lot of such as are unfortunate enough to fall
into the hands of the lower class of white people, and of hard task-masters
in towns, is very different. In the Carolinas and Georgia again, slavery
presents itself in very different colors from what it does even in its
worst form in Virginia. I am told that it is no uncommon thing there, to
see gangs of negroes staked at a horse race, and to see these unfortunate
beings bandied about from one set of drunken gamblers to another for days
together. How much to be deprecated are the laws which suffer such abuses
to exist! Yet these are the laws enacted by the people who boast of their
love of liberty and independence, and who presume to say, that it is in the
breasts of Americans alone that the blessings of freedom are held in just
estimation."--_Isaac Weld, Jr., "Travels through the States of North
America and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada," 1795, 1796, and
1797._ (London, 1799.)

JOHN DAVIS'S THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY

"The negroes on the plantation, including house-servants and children,
amounted to a hundred; of whom the average price being respectively seventy
pounds, made them aggregately worth seven thousand to their possessor.

"Two families lived in one hut, and such was their unconquerable propensity
to steal, that they pilfered from each other. I have heard masters lament
this defect in their negroes. But what else can be expected from man in so
degraded a condition, that among the ancients the same word implied both a
slave and a thief.

"Since the introduction of the culture of cotton in the State of South
Carolina, the race of negroes has increased. Both men and women work in the
field, and the labour of the rice plantation formerly prevented the
pregnant negroes from bringing forth a long-lived offspring. It may be
established as a maxim that on a plantation wh