houses out of the forest hard by. The slaves also raised their own
bacon, but unfortunately the price of meat was so high as to make its
use only an occasional luxury. North Carolina passed a law commanding
the planters to give their slaves meat at certain intervals, but the
law remained a dead letter. Other states, by legal enactment, fixed the
amount of meal that should be given to slaves.

When Fanny Kemble, the English actress, retired from the stage, it was
to marry a Southern planter, and her autobiography and private letters
throw a flood of light upon the life of the slaves upon a typical
plantation in the cotton States. She says that the planter expected that
about once in seven years he must buy a new set of hands; that the
slaves did little in the winter, but they worked fifteen hours a day in
the spring, and often eighteen hours a day in the summer until the
cotton was picked. She adds that the negro children used to beg her for
a taste of meat, just as English children plead for a little candy. She
states that on her husband's estate slave breeding was most important
and remunerative, and that the increase and the young slaves sold made
it possible for the plantation to pay its interest. "Every negro child
born was worth two hundred dollars the moment it drew breath."

It was this separation of families that touched the heart of Fanny
Kemble Butler, and stirred the indignation of Harriet Martineau, who at
the end of her year at the South wrote that she would rather walk
through a penitentiary or a lunatic asylum than through the slave
quarters that stood in the rear of the great house where she was
entertained. It is this element that explains the statement of John
Randolph of Virginia. Conversing one evening about the notable orations
to which he had listened, the great lawyer said that the most eloquent
words he had ever heard were "spoken on the auction block by a slave
mother." It seemed that she pleaded with the auctioneer and the
spectators not to separate her from her children and her husband, and
she made these men, who were trafficking in human life, realize the
meaning of Christ's words, "Woe unto him that doth offend one of My
little ones; it were better for him that a millstone were placed about
his neck and that he were cast into the depths of the sea."

In this era of industrial education for the coloured race it is
interesting to note that five of the slave States imposed heavy
penalties up