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Beecher Stowe has, as a picture of slave-life in the Southern States, is as gross a libel as if any one were to make a collection of all the wife-beatings and assaults of drunken English ruffians, and to publish them as a picture of the average life of English people. "Such libels as these have done more to embitter the two sections of America against each other than anything else.
At the close of the meeting the colored people gathered around us, and gave us such a hand-shaking and "God bless you" as we seldom find outside of this oppressed people. In the evening more than a dozen came to our lodgings and spent two hours recounting the trials of their slave-life, which were of thrilling interest. O, what a bitter draught was theirs, even to the very dregs!
I spoke half an hour, and told the history of Uncle Philip, and how, amidst the persecutions and sorrows to which his slave-life subjected him, he had kept his hand in the hand of his Savior all these ninety-seven years. While speaking of his being whipped until he fainted, a few wept aloud, and after meeting a number came to tell me of their being whipped for praying.
"Not so weak as you think, mother, though the sufferings of slave-life and subsequent anxiety have brought him very near to the grave. But I will break it to him judiciously. We will get my dear little Hester to do it." "Your Hester!" exclaimed Mrs Foster, in surprise. "I trust, George, that you, a mere midshipman, have not dared to speak to that child of "
But more interesting and instructive were the features of slave-life which here opened to us.
Horton saw that here was a romance in slave-life that the man and woman were in love with each other. "Well, if you can't pick cotton," he said to Alston, "what can you do?" "Mos' anything else, moster. I kin do ev'rything 'bout cawn; I kin split rails; I kin plough; I kin drive carriage." "Could you run a cotton-gin?" "Reckon so, moster: the black folks says it's tolerbul easy."
There were some old and crippled people here in the same condition as those whom I had relieved in other places in this part of the State. As usual, I took with me my Bible, for these colored people had none, because they had never been permitted to learn to read. Many of them gave thrilling sketches of their experiences in slave-life.
The odd expressions and gestures, the novel behaviour of both father and daughter, the peculiarity of this slave-life, interested me. I had a keen appetite, notwithstanding my weakness. I had eaten nothing on the boat; in the excitement of the race, supper had been forgotten by most of the passengers, myself among the number.
He had seldom suffered hardships such as fell to the lot of many slaves whom he knew. To quote his own words: "I was now about to sound profounder depths in slave-life. Starvation made me glad to leave Thomas Auld's, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to Covey's." Escape, however, was impossible. The picture of the "slave-driver," painted in the lurid colors that Mr.
Hall, who traveled far in the Southern states and then merely touched at Havana on his way home, wrote: "In the United States the life of the slave has been cherished and his offspring promoted. In Cuba the lives of the slaves have been 'used up' by excessive labour, and increase in number disregarded. It is said, indeed, that the slave-life did not extend beyond eight or ten years."
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