"While traveling across the Peninsula in a stage, in company with a northern gentleman, and southern lady, of great worth and piety, a dispute arose respecting the general treatment of slaves, the gentleman contending that their treatment was generally good--'O, no!' interrupted the lady, 'you can know nothing of the treatment they receive on the plantations. People here do whip the poor negroes most cruelly, and many half starve them. You have neither of you had opportunity to know scarcely anything of the cruelties that are practiced in this country,' and more to the same effect. I met with several others, besides this lady, who appeared to feel for the sins of the land, but they are few and scattered, and not usually of sufficiently stern mould to withstand the popular wave.
"Masters are not forward to publish their "domestic regulations," and as neighbors are usually several miles apart, one's observation must be limited. Hence the few instances of cruelty which break out can be but a fraction of what is practised. A planter, a professor of religion, in conversation upon the universality of whipping, remarked that a planter in G--, who had whipped a great deal, at length got tired of it, and invented the following _excellent_ method of punishment, which I saw practised while I was paying him a visit. The negro was placed in a sitting position, with his hands made fast above his head, and feet in the stocks, so that he could not move any part of the body.
"The master retired, intending to leave him till morning, but we were awakened in the night by the groans of the negro, which were so doleful that we feared he was dying. We went to him, and found him covered with a cold sweat, and almost gone. He could not have lived an hour longer. Mr. ---- found the 'stocks' such an effective punishment, that it almost superseded the whip."
"How much do you give your niggers for a task while hoeing cotton," inquired Mr. C---- of his neighbor Mr. H----."
H. "I give my men an acre and a quarter, and my women an acre."[15]
[Footnote 15: Cotton is planted in drills about three feet apart, and is hilled like corn.]
C. "Well, that is a fair task. Niggers do a heap better if they are drove pretty tight."