Penn., who resided in
Mississippi in 1836 and 1837.

"The slaves received _two_ meals during the day. Those who have their
food cooked for them get their breakfast about eleven o'clock, and
their other meal _after night_."

Mr. Nehemiah Caulkins, Waterford, Conn., who spent eleven winters in
North Carolina.

"The _breakfast_ of the slaves was generally about _ten or eleven_
o'clock."

Rev. Phineas Smith, Centreville, N.Y., who has lived at the south some
years.

"The slaves have usually _two_ meals a day, viz: at eleven o'clock
and at night."

Rev. C.S. Renshaw, Quincy, Illinois--the testimony of a Virginian.

"The slaves have _two_ meals a day. They breakfast at from ten to
eleven, A.M., and eat their supper at from six to nine or ten at
night, as the season and crops may be."

The preceding testimony establishes the following points.

1st. That the slaves are allowed, in general, _no meat_. This appears
from the fact, that in the _only_ slave states which regulate the
slaves' rations _by law_, (North Carolina and Louisiana,) the _legal
ration_ contains _no meat_. Besides, the late Hon. R.J. Turnbull, one
of the largest planters in South Carolina, says expressly, "meat, when
given, is only by the way of indulgence or favor." It is shown also by
the direct testimony recorded above, of slaveholders and others, in
all parts of the slaveholding south and west, that the general
allowance on plantations is corn or meal and salt merely. To this
there are doubtless many exceptions, but they are _only_ exceptions;
the number of slaveholders who furnish meat for their _field-hands_,
is small, in comparison with the number of those who do not. The
house slaves, that is, the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, &c.,
generally get some meat every day; the remainder bits and bones of
their masters' tables. But that the great body of the slaves, those
that compose the field gangs, whose labor and exposure, and consequent
exhaustion, are vastly greater than those of house slaves, toiling as
they do from day light till dark, in the fogs of the early morning,
under the scorchings of mid-day, and amid the damps of evening, are
_in general_ provided with _no meat_, is abundantly established by the
preceding testimony.

Now we do not say that meat _is necessary_ to sustain men under hard
and long continued labor, nor that it is _not_. This is not a treatise
on dietetics; but it is a notorious fact, that the medical faculty i