all by over-driving. A cotton planter
with a hundred vigorous slaves, would have made a profitable
speculation, if, during the years '34, 5, and 6, when the average
price of cotton was 17 cents a pound, he had so overworked his slaves
that half of them died upon his hands in '37, when cotton had fallen
to six and eight cents. No wonder that the poor slaves pray that cotton
and sugar may be cheap. The writer has frequently heard it declared by
planters in the lower country, that, it is more profitable to drive
the slaves to such over exertion as to _use them up_, in seven or
eight years, than to give them only ordinary tasks and protract their
lives to the ordinary period.[26]

[Footnote 26: The reader is referred to a variety of facts and
testimony on this point on the 39th page of this work.]

4. _Untimely seasons_. When the winter encroaches on the spring, and
makes late seed time, the first favorable weather is a temptation to
overwork the slaves, too strong to be resisted by those who hold men
as mere working animals. So when frosts set in early, and a great
amount of work is to be done in a little time, or great loss suffered.
So also after a long storm either in seed or crop time, when the
weather becomes favorable, the same temptation presses, and in all
these cases the master would _save money_ by overdriving his slaves.

5. _Periodical pressure of certain kinds of labor._ The manufacture of
sugar is an illustration. In a work entitled "Travels in Louisiana in
1802," translated from the French, by John Davis, is the following
testimony under this head:--

"At the rolling of sugars, an interval of from two to three months,
they (the slaves in Louisiana,) work _both night and day_. Abridged of
their sleep, they scarcely retire to rest during the whole period" See
page 81.

In an article on the agriculture of Louisiana, published in the second
number of the "Western Review," is the following:--"The work is
admitted to be severe for the hands, (slaves) requiring, when the
process of making sugar is commenced, TO BE PRESSED NIGHT AND DAY."

It would be for the interest of the sugar planter greatly to overwork
his slaves, during the annual process of sugar-making.

The severity of this periodical pressure, in preparing for market
other staples of the slave states besides sugar, may be inferred from
the following. Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, in his speech in
Congress, Feb. 1. 1836, (See National Intellig