From Chambers' Journal. A FEW STATISTICS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. WHILE American novelists have been drawing paper pictures of Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Aunt Phillis' Cabin," and innumerable other competitive cabins of this character, the planters of the south have been visited with a sort of philanthropic mania for erecting "improved dwellings" for their negroes, and introducing "scientific culture" into their cotton-fields. They have been holding conventions to promote industrial progress, collecting statistics, supporting commercial journals, and contributing personal experience, in the shape of essays and letters, a vast mass of which had been recently published in an encyclopedic work on the Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States. We have read these papers with much interest, for though they are animated with an intense southern spirit, they are full of valuable information, much of which cannot elsewhere be met with. They have the advantage, too, of not having been written for any other purpose than the mutual benefit and instruction of the planters themselves, and are, therefore, more unreserved and more worthy of confidence than if they had been originally intended for permanent publication in a form which would bring them before European readers. The contributors are planters, lawyers and physicians, each illustrating his own department of the subject. The medical reports are occupied with the diseases and physical peculiarities of the negroes; but of these only a few points may engage our attention. One of the most formidable ailments among negroes, more fatal than any other, is congestion of the lungs. Except when the body is warmed by exercise, the negro's lungs are very sensitive to the impressions of cold air. When not working, they are eager to crowd around a fire, even in comparatively warm weather, and seem to take a positive pleasure in breathing heated air and warm smoke. If they sleep beside a fire, they turn their heads to it. Consumption is a common disease, and presents peculiar features. Its seat is not in the lungs, stomach, liver, or any organ of the body, but in the mind; and its cause is stated to be cruelty on the part of the master, and superstition or dissatisfaction on the part of the negro. On almost every large plantation, one or more negroes are to be found who are ambitious to be considered in the character of conjurers, in order to gain influence, *The Industrial Resources, &c., of the Southern and Western States. By J. D. B. De Bow, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Louisiana. 3 vols. 1852. and to make the others fear and obey them. It is said that their influence over their fellow-servants would not be credited by persons unacquainted with the superstitious mind of the negro. Intelligent negroes believe in conjuration, though they are ashamed to acknowledge it. The effect of such a superstition-a firm belief that he is poisoned or conjured upon the patient's mind, already in a morbid state, and his health affected from hard usage, overtasking, or exposure, want of wholesome food, good clothing, comfortable lodging, with the distressing idea that he is an object of dislike both to his master and his fellow-slaves, and has no one to befriend him, tends directly to generate that erythism of mind which is the essential cause of negro consumption. This complaint often causes a depraved appetite for earth, chalk, lime, and such indigestible substances - natural instinct leading the patient to absorbents to correct the state of the stomach. Contrary to the received opinion, a northern climate, though not so favorable to the physical health, is the most favorable to the intellectual development of the negroes; those of Missouri, Kentucky, and the colder parts of Virginia and Maryland, having much more mental energy, being more bold and ungovernable than in the southern lowlands; a dense atmosphere causing a better ventilation of their blood. A northern climate remedies, to a considerable degree, their naturally indolent disposition; but they are more healthy and long-lived in a tropical climate, provided they can be induced to labor. So sensitive are they to cold, and so little are they affected by that fell destroyer of the white race, malaria, which kills more than war and famine, that they suffer, in the southern states, more from diseases of winter than those of summer. "They are," says Dr. Nott, of Mobile, 66 exempt from the violent congestive fevers of our interior districts, and other violent forms of marsh fever; and so exempt are they from yellow fever, that I am now attending my first case of this disease in a full-blooded negro. In fact, it would seem that negro blood is an antidote against yellow fever, for the smallest admixture of it with the white will protect against this disease, even though the subject come from a healthy northern latitude in the midst of an epidemic." Physiologically, negroes resemble children, in whom the nervous system predominates, and whose temperament is lymphatic. Goodnature is decidedly a prevalent characteristic of the negro race, but it is associated with irritability; and, considering their treatment, this last peculiarity can excite no surprise. One of the greatest mysteries to those unacquainted with the negro character, is the facility with which 200 or 300 able-bodied negrocs are held in subjection by one white man, who sleeps in perfect security among them, says: "The increase of deaths comes from with doors and windows open. Another blacks. This increase of mortality is found mystery is the undoubted fact of the love they in the fact, that those colored inmates from bear to a kind master. It is not arbitrary the county of Philadelphia are so constituauthority over them that they dread, but cru- tionally diseased, as under any and all cirelty, and the petty tyranny and imposition cumstances to be short-lived, from their charof one another. All this is accounted for by acter and habits. They die of constitutional their physiological constitution. The slave- and chronic disorders, which are general holder, of course, makes this an argument for among their order, owing to the privations slavery. But if, in these respects, his negroes they undergo, and the want of proper attenare like his children, what should he do with tion in infancy, and their peculiar mode of the latter? The facts are undoubted, but living." Mr. Bevan concludes: "Indulging they might suggest a very different course of in the use of ardent spirits, subjected to a treatment for the negroes. prejudice, which bids defiance to any successful attempt to improve their physical or moral condition, from youth to manhood, sowing the seeds of disease in their constitutions, and at last becoming inmates of pris The vital statistics of slavery are not sufficiently copious and accurate to furnish data for very sweeping conclusions. But increased attention has been directed to the subject, in consequence of the introduction of life insur-ons.' ance in connection with the slaves. This would be a powerful prop to the system, and a source of increased cruelty to its victims. And herein is the great obstacle to its success. When a company insures the life of a free man, it has the best of all guarantees against foul play- namely, the innate love of life of the insured party. But the master's selfinterest is the sole law in the treatment of negroes; and as soon as a slave became unsound, and worth less than the amount insured, what would be the result? The tender mercies of his master would be very small; and it is a singular fact that the negroes who will nurse their master with untiring devotion and kindness, night and day, are utterly regardless of each other's wants in sickness. The southern planters, of course, point to these facts with exultation, and contrast their own treatment of the blacks with great advantage. It would indeed appear from several papers in these volumes (De Bow), and it is not an unlikely thing to occur as an epochal phenomenon, that a scientific spirit is gaining ground among the slave-owners, which extends not merely to improved cotton culture, but also to improved negro management. Some of the contributions of this character are both interesting and amusing. The suggestions about " improved dwellings,' sanitary regulations," and "water supply," not to mention provisions of a more spiritual character, would do credit to Lord Shaftesbury, or Prince Albert himself. Evidently, these planters consider themselves no mean philanthropists. 99 66 One" The future statistics of negro life-insurance will be very important. Insurance companies will know what they are about; and if they very sensible and practical writer" refuse to insure negroes, it will be in vain gives a description of his plantation, which for the planters to say, that the charge of would tempt any man to become a slave for cruelty brought against them is false; while, the pleasure of living on it. His " quarter" on the other hand, if the insurance system has been selected on scientific principles, become general, the south must be credited" well protected by the shade of forest-trees, with more humanity than is commonly attrib- sufficiently thinned out to admit a free ciruted to it. Statistics sometimes tell curious culation of air, so situated as to be free from tales. the impurities of stagnant water;" and on this he has erected "comfortable houses, made of hewn post oak, covered with cypress, 16 by 18, with close plank floors and good chimneys, and elevated two feet from the ground. The ground under and around the houses is swept every month, and the houses, both inside and out, whitewashed twice a year." Then there are "good cisterns, providing an ample supply of pure water," and "ample clothing" for their beds, with a henhouse for each, so that he may have "his chickens and eggs for his evening and morning meals to suit himself," besides gardens for every family, in which "they raise such vegetables and fruits as they take a fancy to." The beauty of this description would be lost, were it regarded as drawn for European readers. It The report of the Prison Dicipline Association for 1845 throws some light on the morals, as well as the longevity, of negroes in the north. After giving the bills of mortality for the black and white population in the city and penitentiary of Philadelphia, the report says: "Out of 1000 of each color residing in the city, 196 blacks die for every 100 whites; and for every 1000 of each color in the penitentiary, the astonishing number of 316 blacks to every 100 whites. Returns from the Philadelphia County Prison, for the last ten years, show that out of 101 deaths in that establishment, 54 died of consumption. Of these, 40 were colored, and 14 white." In 1845, Mathew L. Bevan, president of the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, with a suitable number of properly located water-closets," which, in addition to other ends, may serve the much more important purpose of cultivating feelings of delicacy." The pro-slavery romancers, who have been paying back Mrs. Stowe in her own coin, will here find ample corroboration of their pleasant and pathetic pictures of negro-life. In was written for a local magazine as a bona fide essay on the scientific management of negroes. This gentleman's treatment of his negroes is as precise as if he were conducting an hospital or superintending a nursery. "Their dinners are cooked for them, and carried to the field, always with vegetables, according to the season. There are two hours, set apart at mid-day for resting, eat- There is another point to which we must ing, and sleeping, if they desire it [always con- advert before closing this paper. It appears. sulting their wishes], and they retire to one that the slave population of America has been of the weather-sheds or the grove to pass this doubled within the last thirty years. time, not being permitted to remain in the 1860, the slaves will number four millions; hot sun while at rest." A species of Har- at the end of the next thirty years, they will mony Hall has been erected for the children, number six millions and a half; and at the "where all are taken at daylight, and placed commencement of the next century, they will under the charge of a careful and experienced not fall far short of thirteen millions. The woman." Moreover, continues our philan- question presents itself— what is to be done thropic planter, "I have a large and comfort- with this rapidly increasing population? able hospital provided for my negroes when The south says to the north, "Let us enlarge they are sick; to this is attached a nurse's our slave territory." The north refuses; room; and when a negro complains of being whereupon the south retaliates by a threat to too unwell to work, he is at once sent to the employ slave-labor in the manufacture of hospital." such articles as are now made almost excluNor are either lighter or weightier matters sively in the northern states. At present, it overlooked. Besides passing a liquor-law" is said that free-labor is cheaper than slavefor his plantation, which secures sobriety, labor for manufacturing purposes; but it "I must not omit to mention," he says, will be different as the latter is multiplied. "that I have a good fiddler, and keep him The subject is seriously discussed by the well supplied with catgut; and I make it his planters. Already there are factories in duty to play for the negroes every Saturday South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, night until twelve o'clock. They are exceed- where negro-labor has been successfully emingly punctual in their attendance at the ployed. In 1850, there were ninety-three ball, while Charley's fiddle is always accom-factories in these states. It has been ascerpanied with Herod on the triangle, and Sam 'pat!'"' to' tained that the negroes are quite equal to the work, and that it suits their habits. Some Better still: "I also employ a good writers also contend that they are ready now preacher, who regularly preaches to them on to compete with the north, and with all the the Sabbath-day, and it is made the duty of world, as regards the quality and price of every one to come up clean and decent to the what they can manufacture; and that time place of worship. As Father Garritt regu-alone is wanted to render the south the greatlarly calls on Brother Abram to close the ex-est seat of manufactures in the world. ercises, he gives out and sings his hymn with much unction, and always cocks his eye at Charley the fiddler, as much as to say Old fellow, you had your time last night; now it is mine.'' Neither the preaching nor the prayers have much effect on their morality, for the writer admits that they are very licentious. He attempted to improve them " for many years by preaching virtue and decency, encouraging marriages, and by punishing, with some severity, departures from marital obligations; but it was all in vain. We give these statistics, because we believe they exhibit the subject in new aspects, and indicate that new elements are about to be introduced into the slave problem. Southern labor will press upon the north; and to perplex the problem still further, northern labor threatens to press upon the south, as will appear from the following extract from Cist's Cincinnati in 1851 :-The time consumed in seeding, tending, and havesting the cereal crops, embraces about one half the year: if not in idleness, then, during the remainder of it, the laborer has to seek other Another contributor to the science of "ne-employments than on the land. The grain gro management," says: "In no case should crop is sown and gathered during the months two families be allowed to occupy the same of April, May, June, July, August, Septemhouse. The crowding a number into one house is unhealthy. It breeds contention; is destructive of delicacy of feeling; and it promotes immorality between the sexes. In addition to their dwellings, where there are a number of negroes, they should be provided 20 (1852). ber, and part of October; this includes corn. The cotton crop is seeded in the spring, and gathered during the late fall and winter * Quoted in Freddley's Treatise on Business, p. Some time had months. Now, let the great reduction take ladies. They were now become grandmothplace which I predict in the cost of locomo- ers, and many visits were exchanged in contion; let the passage between this city and sequence of the important events that had Charleston come down, as I predict it will, occurred in their families. to five dollars, and to intermediate points in passed over, the young mothers were again in the same proportion; and let the time con- perfect health, when a serious dispute arose sumed in the trip be within my estimate between them. The daughter's child was a say, thirty-six hours to Charleston who girl, that of the daughter-in-law a boy. The will gather the cotton crop? What becomes former maintained that the boy was hers, and of slavery and slave-labor when these north- had been taken from her, and given to her ern hordes shall descend upon the fair fields of sister-in-law. The woman accused of havthe sunny south? No conflicts, no interfer- ing stolen the boy denied the charge, and she ence with southern institutions need be ap- was supported in her declaration by her husprehended; the unemployed northern laborer band's mother. The strife became serious, will simply underwork the slave during the and the contending parties brought the affair winter months, and, when the crop is gath- before the judge. This magistrate, who was ered, return to his home. It is known that no Solomon, not being able to elicit the truth, the labor required to gather the cotton crop, dismissed the complainants. The latter as compared with that to plant and tend it, were not satisfied, and appealed to the high is as about four to one that is, one man court, in which General Avitabelli presided. can plant and tend as much as four can gather." The case was brought before him as he sat in It would appear, then, that the "peculiar the divan. Public curiosity was strained to institutions" of the south will not remain the highest pitch, and each eagerly asked his unaffected by the general progress of the neighbor: How will the judge decide?" world. And from another quarter a blow is The statements on both sides having been threatened, which will set Jonathan to calcu- gone through, General Avitabelli ordered two late again whether his slaves will be any goats to be brought, one having a male, the profit to him. We allude to cotton cultiva- other a female kid. This being done, he sent tion in Australia, not to speak of India. In for two sheep that had each a lamb, one a the course of last summer, Dr. Lang, of Syd- male, the other a female. In like manner, ney, addressed a series of letters to the Daily he commanded two cows to be brought, of News, in which he presented a very plausible which one had a male, the other a female "demonstration," as he calls it, of his con- calf. These different quadrupeds being inviction, "that cotton of the finest quality for troduced, he ordered that the goats, the the home-market can be grown by means of sheep, and the cows should be milked, and British free-labor to any conceivable extent the milk of each animal placed in a separate on the coast of Australia; that the growth vessel, which should be marked. "Now," of that article, of indispensable necessity for said the General, "let this milk be examined, the manufactures of this country, will prove and it will be found that that which belongs a highly remunerative employment for tens of to the animals which have male young is thousands of the industrious and virtuous stronger than the milk which has been taken working-classes of this country, provided they from the others. Upon inspection, this was can only be carried out and settled in suffi- found to be correct. Now," said the judge, cient numbers along our coast, of which the" bring me some milk from the mothers of climate cannot be surpassed by that of any the children." The milk was brought, and other country on earth; that there is no diffi- General Avitabelli declared that the milk of culty whatever in the way of our competing, and competing successfully and triumphantly, in this department of transmarine industry, with the slaveholders of the United States; and that there is a moral certainty of our being enabled, in a very few years hence, and in the fair and honorable way of free-trade and open competition, to give its death-blow to slavery in America." A SECOND SOLOMON.-A certain Mahomedan woman, of respectable family, resided at Peshawur at the time that General Avitabelli was governor of the place. This woman had a son and daughter. Both married, and the daughter and daughter-in-law gave birth, at the same time, to two children, one a boy, the other a girl. This circumstance gave a great deal of occupation to the mothers of the sick 66 the daughter was stronger than that of the daughter-in-law, and that, consequently, she must be the mother of the boy.-Schonberg's Travels in India. SPRING is coming! Hear the drumming of the pheasant, all so pleasant, 'mid the budding of the trees, and the singing of the bees in the distant, quiet wildwood, where the wonted steps of childhood seek, in summer's sultry hours, cooling shades by the God of nature's hand; where the tiny and beneath the bowers formed in arches wild and grand the sturdy (if my muse be not too wordy) both unite in one acclaim, singing on in nature's name, and fulfilling each their mission, live, but only in tradition. Spring is coming-coming, coming. On every side, scattering wide, see the farmer cast the grain: for he knows, as he throws the seed upon the ground so well prepared around, that, with sunshine and with rain, the harvest will appear as in cach former year. From Tait's Magazine. HOW A FORTUNE WAS MADE. You wish me to tell you how, after my escape from the horrors and perils of the French Revolution of 1789, I managed to retrieve my fortunes, and place myself once more in an independent position. Well, I will tell you the story as circumstantially as, at the present distance of time, I am able to recollect it. Having escaped with little more than a whole skin from France at the death of Robespierre, and returned to England, I was compelled to seek employment in any occupation suited to my qualifications. A knowledge of the French and German tongues, accomplishments at that time of day not so common as they are now, simply perhaps because they were not so much wanted, procured me a respectable post in a mercantile house of some standing, for whom I did the double duty of cashier and corresponding clerk. I was hardly more than twenty at the commencement of my engagement in the spring of 1795, and I remained thus occupied for eleven years, occasionally travelling abroad for a month or two in the summer, in the execution of confidential commissions intrusted to me by my principals. I was still a young man when, in the year 1806, news arrived in England of the capture of Buenos Ayres by Sir Home Popham, who, without any authority from the British government (having settled the business of the Dutch bottoms under Jansens, and cabbaged the Cape of Good Hope to serve for a Tom Tiddler's ground for unfledged governors to play the fool with), had started across the Atlantic, picking up reinforcements by the way at St. Helena, and, dashing at the Spanish capital, had carried it by a coup de main. If I were to talk for a month of nothing else, I should hardly succeed in giving you an adequate notion of the effect which the arrival of this news had upon the commercial world in England. Whether it be that there is anything talismanic in the two syllables "South Seas," I don't pretend to guess; but the fact once established that Buenos Ayres was ours, produced an infatuation comparable to nothing else of the kind which I can recall to mind. It was like a revival of the Mississippi scheme of Law, and had its effects not been confined to a certain class of the community, in all probability it would have resulted as ruinously. Merchants went mad upon the subject of the South Seas. Manufacturers were forced to work by relays day and night; and enormous consignments of anything and everything which could be produced by labor were dispatched headlong without prudence or premeditation for the mouth of the Plate. It is a fact consistent with my own knowledge, that among other things for which no reasonable being could have expected a demand, cargoes of winter clothing which would have been a godsend to an Esquimaux, and consignments of Sheffield skates, were hurried off to a tropical climate with the view of realizing a tremendous profit by their disposal. Infatuation was the order of the day. Everybody who had the means determined on a venture, and every vessel that could be caught up, whatever her sailing qualifications or condition as to seaworthiness, was chartered and freighted with commodities of all descriptions for the South American market. I cannot boast of having been myself free from the prevailing mania, and I invested a small sum of money in the purchase of weapons, which I thought would be at least as likely as skates or snow-boots to yield a profitable return. The house which I served held aloof from these speculations for a season; but they were bitten at last, and then set about making up for lost time with a vigor very different from their usually cautious and methodical mode of doing business. One morning I was surprised, while dressing, by a citation from the principal of the firm, to wait upon him at his breakfast table. During the meal he abruptly put the question to me, "Are you disposed to go on board the Lance as supercargo and agent, and to sail at once?" Though not very much surprised at the question, I was rather staggered at the suddenness of the requisition. I did not, however, object, but begged for a day or two to prepare my outfit. A few hours was all that could be allowed. My employers knew my penchant for travelling, and had rightly calculated that I should be at their command at any moment. I was no sailor, and knew but little of the necessaries required on ship-board, but I made the best use of the little time allowed me— - had all my luggage packed snug in the course of the afternoon, and that same night started in the mail for Liverpool, where the vessel lay, waiting only the arrival of the supercargo to proceed on her voyage. The Lance was nearly a new vessel of 500 tons burden, belonging to our house; and this would be but her third voyage. She was freighted with Manchester and woollen goods, and, besides a crew of eighteen or twenty hands, had a dozen passengers on board, most of them carrying small ventures of their own. I had been furnished with a sealed packet of instructions, and duplicates of the invoices, and these I took occasion to con over during my journey to the coast. I found myself charged with the entire responsibility of the cargo, and invested with a discretionary power as to its disposal; and from a copy of the directions forwarded to the captain of the vessel, which was enclosed, I saw that he was bound to navigate the ship to any part of the |