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Updated: May 27, 2025
In regard to slavery and to Southern society before the war the author has made much use of "Our Slave States," by Frederick Law Olmsted; Dix and Edwards, New York, 1856, and other works of the same author. Mr. Olmsted was a Northerner, but his very full observations can be checked by the numerous quotations on the same subject collected by Mr. Rhodes in his history.
Abdy, Smedes, Andrews, Bremer, and Olmsted found during their stay in the South many slaves who had experienced unusual spiritual and mental development. Nehemiah Adams, giving the southern view of slavery in 1854, said that large numbers of the slaves could read and were furnished with the Scriptures.
Olmsted, then connected with the Sanitary Commission, alone seemed to grasp it, and to see the necessity of immediate action. It is doubtful if any member of the Cabinet, except Mr. Chase, took then any interest in the enterprise, though it has since been fostered by the Secretary of War. At the suggestion of the Secretary, the President appointed an interview with the agent. Mr.
Olmsted in his turn found the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the whites, and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia. The town ordinances, while commonly strict in regard to the police of slaves for the rest of the year, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festive assemblies at Christmas tide.
Another estate in the same district, which Olmsted observed more cursorily, comprised four adjoining plantations, each with its own stables and quarter, each employing more than a hundred slaves under a separate overseer, and all directed by a steward whom the traveler described as cultured, poetic and delightful.
In other words, it was entirely independent of the earth and its rotation. It was a point in inter-planetary space. The effective perception of this fact amounted to a discovery, as Olmsted and Twining, who had "simultaneous ideas" on the subject, were the first to realize. Denison Olmsted was then Professor of Mathematics in Yale College.
Olmsted ascribed to the meteors a revolution about the sun once in every six months, bringing them to the intersection of their orbit with that of the earth every November 13th; but later investigators found that the real period was about thirty-three and one-quarter years, so that the great displays were due three times in a century, and their return was confidently predicted for the year 1866.
Financial embarrassment and disagreements among the stockholders marked the first year of its existence, at the end of which Godkin, McKim, and Frederick Law Olmsted took over the property, and continued the publication under the proprietorship of E. L. Godkin & Co. "The Nation owed its continued existence to Charles Eliot Norton," wrote Godkin in 1899.
An observation that women were at some of the plows prompted Olmsted to remark that throughout the Southwest the slaves were worked harder as a rule than in the easterly and northerly slaveholding states. On the other hand he noted: "In the main the negroes appeared to be well cared for and abundantly supplied with the necessaries of vigorous physical existence.
He thinks himself providentially guided in the choice of his Superintendent, and does not vainly pique himself upon his sagacity in selecting Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted for the post. This gentleman, in his place, offsets at least a thousand square plugs in round holes. He is precisely the man for the place, and that is precisely the place for the man.
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