at with
cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at
the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the
wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division
of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise
confirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggers
are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard,
or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chance
observations it may be added that many newspaper items and canal and
railroad company reports from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that the
construction gangs were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attracted
those whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor was
their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the lives
of their slaves.

[Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, _The Agricultural Productions of
Louisiana_ (New Orleans, 1845).]

[Footnote 28: _Harper's Magazine_, VII, 755.]

[Footnote 29: _DeBoufs Review_, XI, 401.]

[Footnote 30: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 90, 91.]

[Footnote 31: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp
272, 273, 278.]

[Footnote 32: Robert Russell, _North America, Its Agriculture and Chwate_
(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 272.]

[Footnote 33: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the
South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 84, 318.]

[Footnote 34: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 550, 551.]

Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease, disability
and death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better than
a slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on the
plantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely
took vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened
punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape from
bondage altogether.

Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a protest against
severities. An episode of this sort was recounted in a letter of a Georgia
overseer to his absent employer: "Sir: I write you a few lines in order to
let you know that six of your hands has left the plantation--every man but
Jack. They displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a few
lashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were missing. I think
they a