Stowe's Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin [pp. 214-254]

Stowe's Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.
acre on which 2,000 is produced. Thick grass is easier cut
than thin, and so with cotton picking. These hands under
James Stewart, overseer for Major Parr, the Winnsboro'
planter, struck work at sun down, ate a famous supper of
cornbread and bacon, and slept, each of them, like a Trojan
hero, after swallowing a hecatomb. They worked from sun
rise to sun set, allowing for breakfast and nooning, and if
not hurt by the work, it would have been not amiss, we think,
if they had picked an hundred thousand pounds! The ques tion is not how much they did, during the day, but whether
they suffered in health from doing it? The matter is one
that need not trouble any southern conscience. It is brought
forward by our author to prove that our cupidity works out
the negro prematurely, and shortens his days; and this is
asserted of a people who are much longer lived, on the average, than their owners. There is scarcely an old plantation
in the South, that cannot afford you samples of octogenarians, with eyes as bright and appetites as keen, as
a young panther on his first scent of calves in a pasture. The
number that live to a round hundred, is probably greater
among the slaves of the South than among any other people
of the globe. Now, we do not say that there may not be
found an instance of a selfish and stupid proprietor, whose
greedy appetite requires too much from the slave; but of
these we do not know a solitary instance, and we have
some personal knowledge of the subject in most of the Southern States. Of the sugar plantations we claim to know
nothing; but, arguing from Mrs. Stowe's mistakes and misrepresentations of what is done by the cotton planter, we can
hardly doubt that he who deals in sugar is subjected to a reproach and odium which he does not deserve. Our good
lady talks solemnly of the absence of laws which protect the
slave from abuse by his owner; but the common sense argument finds a better security for the good treatment of the
slave in the selfish interest of the master. Negroes cost
money, are held to be valuable property, and, neither by
neglect or cruelty, is the owner likely to suffer the idle,
wasteful, wanton destruction of valuable property. Ordinarily, the argument is good-the security is sufficient. The
1853]
237