ng these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen,
painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the
cast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread,
and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This element
was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or less
irked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could not
cross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes on the
other hand, with an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, the
women frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors, carrying
their burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying as great store in
their kerchief turbans as their paler cousins did in their beflowered
bonnets. The men of this class wore their shreds and patches with an
easy swing, doffed their wool hats to white men as they passed, called
themselves niggers or darkies as a matter of course, took the joys and
sorrows of the day as they came, improvised words to the music of their
work, and customarily murdered the Queen's English, all with a true if
humble nonchalance and a freedom from carking care.

The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more than
rudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work days assumed
a grandiloquence of manner when they donned their holiday clothes. The
gayeties of the colored population were most impressive to visitors from
afar. Thus Adam Hodgson wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "I
was pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day in
their best attire, and was amused with their manners towards each other.
They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, and make the
most formal and particular inquiries after each other's families."[45] J.S.
Buckingham wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays, when the
slaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they move about in
every thoroughfare, and are generally more gaily dressed than the whites.
The females wear white muslin and light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets,
ribbons and feathers; some carry reticules on the arm and many are seen
with parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchief
before them in the most fashionable style. The young men among the
slaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed hats, and carry
walking-sticks; and from the bowings