American Agriculture [pp. 249-264]

AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.
the rebellion, tilled by a race of blacks degraded and brutalized
so far as is implied in a system of chattel slavery. Upon the
fruits of their labor the master lived, either in luxury or in
squalor, according to the number of those whose unpaid services
he could command. The great majority of the slave-holding
class lived far more meanly than ordinary mechanics at the North,
or even than the common day-laborers among us.
Of the 384,000 slave-holders of I86o, 20 per cent owned but
one slave each; 2I per cent more owned but two or three; those
who owned five slaves or fewer comprised 55 per cent of the entire number; while 72 per cent had less than ten slaves, including men, women, and children. To the vast majority of this
class slavery meant, simply and solely, shirking work; and to
enjoy this blessed privilege they were content to live in miserable
huts, eat the coarsest food, and wear their butternut-colored
homespun. The slave worked just as little as he could, and just
.as poorly as he dared; ate everything on which he could lay his
hands without having the lash laid on his back; and wasted and
spoiled on every side, not from a malicious intention, but because he was ignorant, clumsy, and stupid, or at least stupefied.
The master lived upon whatever he could wrest from laborers of
this class. Of the planters with seven cabins or families of
slaves, averaging five each, including house servants, aged invalids, and children, Mr. Fred. Law Olmstead, in his work on "The
Cotton Kingdom," estimated the income "to be hardly more
than that of a private of the New York metropolitan police
force." Yet there were only about 20,000 slave-holders in I86o
who held slaves in excess of this number, - Of these two or three
thousand lived in something like state and splendor.
What the industrial outcome of the abolition of slavery will
be it is yet too early to decide; but we already know that we
are past the danger of "a second Jamaica," of which we had
once a reasonable fear. The blacks are already under the impulse of their own wants, working better than they did beneath
the lash, and those wants are likely to increase in number and
intensity.
As to the poor whites of the South, I am disposed to believe
that they are preparing for us a great surprise. We have been
accustomed to think of them as brutalized by slavery till they
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