of drunkenness and
dissipation, this effect is almost certain to follow. I have known
slaveholders resort to cunning tricks, with a view of getting their
slaves deplorably drunk. A usual plan is, to make bets on a slave, that
he can drink more whisky than any other; and so to induce a rivalry
among them, for the mastery in this degradation. The scenes, brought
about in this way, were often scandalous and loathsome in the extreme.
Whole multitudes might be found stretched out in brutal drunkenness, at
once helpless and disgusting. Thus, when the slave asks for a few
hours of virtuous freedom, his cunning master takes advantage of
his ignorance, and cheers him with a dose of vicious and revolting
dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of LIBERTY. We were induced
to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were over, we all
staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a long breath, and went
away to our various fields of work; feeling, upon the whole, rather glad
to go from that which our masters artfully deceived us into the belief
was freedom, back again to the arms of slavery. It was not what we had
taken it to be, nor what it might have been, had it not been abused by
us. It was about as well to be a slave to _master_, as to be a slave to
_rum_ and _whisky._

I am the more induced to take this view of the holiday system,{198}
adopted by slaveholders, from what I know of their treatment of slaves,
in regard to other things. It is the commonest thing for them to try
to disgust their slaves with what they do not want them to have, or to
enjoy. A slave, for instance, likes molasses; he steals some; to cure
him of the taste for it, his master, in many cases, will go away to
town, and buy a large quantity of the _poorest_ quality, and set it
before his slave, and, with whip in hand, compel him to eat it, until
the poor fellow is made to sicken at the very thought of molasses. The
same course is often adopted to cure slaves of the disagreeable and
inconvenient practice of asking for more food, when their allowance
has failed them. The same disgusting process works well, too, in other
things, but I need not cite them. When a slave is drunk, the slaveholder
has no fear that he will plan an insurrection; no fear that he will
escape to the north. It is the sober, thinking slave who is dangerous,
and needs the vigilance of his master, to keep him a slave. But, to
proceed with my narrative.

On the first of January