idnight darkness, _can_, and _does_, develop all its malign and
shocking characteristics; where it can be indecent without shame,
cruel without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or fear of
exposure.

Just such a secluded, dark, and out-of-the-way place, is the "home
plantation" of Col. Edward Lloyd, on the Eastern Shore, Maryland. It is
far away from all the great thoroughfares, and is proximate to no
town or village. There is neither school-house, nor town-house in its
neighborhood. The school-house is unnecessary, for there are no children
to go to school. The children and grand-children of Col. Lloyd were
taught in the house, by a private tutor--a Mr. Page a tall, gaunt
sapling of a man, who did not speak a dozen words to a slave in a whole
year. The overseers' children go off somewhere to school; and they,
therefore, bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad, to
embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the place. Not
even the mechanics--through whom there is an occasional out-burst
of honest and telling indignation, at cruelty and wrong on other
plantations--are white men, on this plantation. Its whole public is
made up of, and divided into, three classes--SLAVEHOLDERS, SLAVES and
OVERSEERS. Its blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and
coopers, are slaves. Not even commerce, selfish and iron-hearted at
it is, and ready, as it ever is, to side with the strong against the
weak--the rich against the poor--is trusted or permitted within its
secluded precincts. Whether with a view of guarding against the escape
of its secrets, I know not, but it is a fact, the every leaf and grain
of the produce of this plantation, and those of the neighboring farms
belonging to Col. Lloyd, are transported to Baltimore in Col.
Lloyd's own vessels; every man and boy on board of which--except
the captain--are owned by him. In return, everything brought to the
plantation, comes through the same channel. Thus, even the glimmering
and unsteady light of trade, which sometimes exerts a civilizing
influence, is excluded from this "tabooed" spot.{49}

Nearly all the plantations or farms in the vicinity of the "home
plantation" of Col. Lloyd, belong to him; and those which do not, are
owned by personal friends of his, as deeply interested in maintaining
the slave system, in all its rigor, as Col. Lloyd himself. Some of his
neighbors are said to be even more stringent than he. The Skinners, the
Peak