[Footnote C: See law of North Carolina, Haywood's Manual 524-5. To show
that slaveholders are not better than their laws. We give a few
testimonies. Rev. Thomas Clay, of Georgia, (a slaveholder,) in an
address before the Georgia presbytery, in 1834, speaking of the slave's
allowance of food, says:--"The quantity allowed by custom is a _peck of
corn a week._" The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser of May 30,
1788, says, "a _single peck of corn a week, or the like measure of
rice_, is the ordinary quantity of provision for a _hard-working_ slave;
to which a small quantity of meat is occasionally, though _rarely_,
added."

The Gradual Emancipation Society of North Carolina, in their Report for
1836, signed Moses Swaim, President, and William Swaim, Secretary, says,
in describing the condition of slaves in the Eastern part of that State,
"The master puts the unfortunate wretches upon short allowances,
scarcely sufficient for their sustenance, so that a _great part_ of them
go _half naked_ and _half starved_ much of the time." See Minutes of the
American Convention, convened in Baltimore, Oct. 25, 1826.

Rev. John Rankin, a native of Tennessee, and for many years a preacher
in slave states, says of the food of slaves, "It _often_ happens that
what will _barely keep them alive_, is all that a cruel avarice will
allow them. Hence, in some instances, their allowance has been reduced
to a _single pint of corn each_, during the day and night. And some have
no better allowance than a small portion of cotton seed; while perhaps
they are not permitted to taste meat so much as once in the course of
seven years. _Thousands of them are pressed with the gnawings of cruel
hunger during their whole lives._" Rankin's Letters on Slavery, pp. 57,
58.

Hon. Robert J. Turnbull, of Charleston, S.C., a slaveholder, says, "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_."
_See "Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and
Western States," by a South Carolinian. Charleston_, 1822.

Asa A. Stone, a theological student, residing at Natchez, Mississippi,
wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Evangelist in 1835, in
which he says, "On almost every plantation, the hands suffer more or
less