r
it prevails. The vast estates and large fortunes that once maintained,
and were maintained by, the serfdom of hundreds of negroes, have
dwindled in size and sunk in value, till the slaves have become so heavy
a burthen on the resources of the exhausted soil and impoverished owners
of it, that they are made themselves objects of traffic in order to ward
off the ruin that their increase would otherwise entail. Thus, the
plantations of the Northern slave States now present to the traveller
very few of the darker and more oppressive peculiarities of the system;
and, provided he does not stray too near the precincts where the negroes
are sold, or come across gangs of them on their way to Georgia,
Louisiana, or Alabama, he may, if he is a very superficial observer,
conclude that the most prosperous slavery is not much worse than the
most miserable freedom.

But of what value will be such conclusions applied to those numerous
plantations where no white man ever sets foot without the express
permission of the owner? not estates lying close to Baltimore and
Charleston, or even Lesington or Savannah, but remote and savage
wildernesses like Legree's estate in 'Uncle Tom,' like all the plantations
in the interior of Tennessee and Alabama, like the cotton-fields and
rice-swamps of the great muddy rivers of Lousiana and Georgia, like the
dreary pine barrens and endless woody wastes of north Carolina. These,
especially the islands, are like so many fortresses, approachable for
'observers' only at the owners' will. On most of the rice plantations in
these pestilential regions, no white man can pass the night at certain
seasons of the year without running the risk of his life; and during the
day, the master and overseer are as much alone and irresponsible in their
dominion over their black cattle, as Robinson Crusoe was over his small
family of animals on his desert habitation. Who, on such estates as these,
shall witness to any act of tyranny or barbarity, however atrocious? No
black man's testimony is allowed against a white, and who on the dismal
swampy rice-grounds of the Savannah, or the sugar-brakes of the
Mississippi and its tributaries, or the up country cotton lands of the
Ocamulgee, shall go to perform the task of candid observation and
benevolent enquiry?

I passed some time on two such estates--plantations where the negroes
esteemed themselves well off, and, compared with the slaves on several of
the neighbouring propert