far happier than that of the slaves in the lower South.[134]

The conditions in the planting colonies from Virginia southward were
different. Here was an unlimited supply of fertile lands which lent
themselves readily to the unskillful and exhausting methods of slave
labor. Here too was a warm climate congenial to the Negro, though
enervating and often unhealthful for the white. The staples, such as
the sugar cane, rice and later the cotton plant, were such as the
unscientific slave labor might easily cultivate. All the conditions of
profitable slave labor were present, namely, possibilities for
concentration of labor, its absolute control and direction and
exploitation.

The status of the Negro in the planting colonies was the outcome of
these economic conditions. He was deprived of the stimulating effect
of personal intercourse with the white, enjoyed by the slave at the
north. His status was fixed by a certain position in an industrial
system, the tendency of which was to attach him more and more to the
soil and, especially on the larger plantation, to make of him a
"living tool." He became, as time went on, the economic unit. Even
free labor, in so far as it survived slave labor, was forced to take
its measure of values from the slave. There were of course gradations
in status even among the slaves in the lower South so that the same
system could include the conditions described in Fanny Kemble's
_Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation_ as well as those
portrayed in Smedes' _Memorials of a Southern Planter_. If we take the
whole sweep of country from New England to the far South, the
differences in the status of the slave varied still more, including
the exceedingly mild form of slavery in Pennsylvania where the slave
was not essentially different from the indentured servant, the
patriarchal slavery of Virginia, as well as the capitalistic
exploitation of slave labor in the great rice plantations of South
Carolina and Georgia and the cotton and cane plantations of
Mississippi and Louisiana. Here, in some cases at least, the West
Indian conditions were approximated. In the lower South particularly
were found those conditions which as we shall see later tended to fix
the slave status as an integral part of southern life so that in time
it came to be spoken of as the South's "peculiar institution."

Strange as it may seem, religion also played a large part in the
determination of the status of the slave i