A Journey in the Back CountryMason brothers, 1860 - 492 pages |
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abolitionists acres African slave trade agricultural Alabama asked average Bakersville bales believe Belshazzar better breakfast cabins census character church civilized comfort condition corn cotton cotton districts cotton plantations crop cultivation demand districts dollars employed evidence fact farmers field free labor gentleman Georgia girl habits hands heerd horse hundred intelligent land large plantations laws less Liberty county live look manner master ment miles Mississippi molasses moral mountain Natchez necessary negroes never niggers night North northern observed Orleans overseer owner plant planters poor whites population present profitable railroad reckon religious rich river road rode slave trade slaveholders slavery soil soon South Carolina southern square miles stopped suppose Tennessee Texas thing thought thousand tion tobacco told town traveler trees twenty usually Virginia wealth whip woman Yazoo York young
Popular passages
Page 174 - I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory...
Page 282 - So it is with these people; the acquisition of a respectable position in the scale of wealth appears so difficult that they decline the hopeless pursuit, and many of them settle down into habits of idleness, and become the almost passive subjects of all its consequences. And I lament to say that I have observed of late years that an evident deterioration is taking place in this part of the population, the younger portion of it being less educated, less industrious, and in every point of view less...
Page 454 - It is to be hoped, that, by expressing a national disapprobation of this trade, we may destroy it, and save ourselves from reproaches, and our posterity the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with slaves.
Page 189 - Where I used to live [Alabama], I remember when I was a boy —must ha' been about twenty years ago —folks was dreadful frightened about the niggers. I remember they built pens in the woods where they could hide, and Christmas time they went and got into the pens, 'fraid the niggers was risin'.
Page 325 - is perhaps not an unfair test, as the population during the last six years has been undisturbed by emigration, and acclimated in greater proportion than at any previous period.
Page xv - ... ever saw together; they were all in a simple uniform dress of a bluish check stuff, the skirts reaching little below the knee; their legs and feet were bare; they carried themselves loftily, each having a hoe over the shoulder, and walking with a free, powerful swing, like chasseurs on the march.
Page 74 - This was especially the case with the hoe-gangs. One of them numbered nearly two hundred hands (for the force of two plantations was working together), moving across the field in parallel lines, with a considerable degree of precision. I repeatedly rode through the lines at a canter, with other horsemen, often coming upon them suddenly, without producing the smallest change or interruption in the dogged action of the labourers, or causing one of them, so far as I could see, to lift an eye from the...
Page 79 - Oh yes, sir," (laughing again.) If I hadn't, she would have done the same thing again to-morrow, and half the people on the plantation would have followed her example. Oh, youve no idea how lazy these niggers are; you Northern people don't know anything about it. They'd never do any work at all if they were not afraid of being whipped.
Page 336 - From the best estimates that I have been able to make, I put down the white people who ought to work, and who do not, or who are so employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand.
Page 13 - I passed during the day four or five large plantations, the hill-sides worn, cleft, and channelled like icebergs; stables and negro quarters all abandoned, and everything given up to nature and decay.