e production of the farm and
home industry: grain enough was to be grown to serve the wants of the
family for bread, and to feed the stock; for this was to furnish the
meat, milk, and butter. Cotton enough to serve the wants of families,
together with the wool from the flock, and some flax, were of prime
consideration. All of this was prepared and manufactured into fabrics
for clothing and bedding at home. The seed from the cotton was picked
by hand; for, as yet, Whitney had not given them the cotton-gin. This
work was imposed most generally upon the children of families, white
and black, as a task at night, and which had to be completed before
going to bed; an ounce was the usual task, which was weighed and spread
before the fire; for it was most easily separated from the seed when
warm and dry. Usually some petty rewards stimulated the work. In every
family it was observed and commented upon, that these rewards excited
the diligence of the white children, but were without a corresponding
effect upon the black; and any one who has ever controlled the negro
knows that his labor is only in proportion to the coercion used to
enforce it. His capacity, physically, is equal to the white; but this
cannot be bought, or he persuaded to exert it of himself, and is given
only through punishment, or the fear of it. The removal of restraint is
to him a license to laziness; and the hope of reward, or the cravings
of nature, will only induce him to labor sufficiently to supply these
for immediate and limited relief.

Stock of every kind except horses was left to find a support in the
forest, and at that time, when their range was unlimited, they found it
in abundance. Increasing wants stimulated the cultivation of a market
crop to supply them, and indigo and tobacco were first resorted to.
Tobacco was the principal staple, and the method of its transportation
was extraordinary. As at the present day in Kentucky, it was pressed
into very large hogsheads. Upon these were pinned large wooden felloes,
forming the circle of a wheel around the hogshead at either end, and in
the centre of each head a large pin was inserted. Upon these pins were
attached shafts or thills, as to a cart, and to these teams, and thus
the hogshead was rolled along rough roads and through streams for
sometimes ninety miles to Augusta, for a market. When sold, the shafts
were reserved, and upon these was then erected a sort of box, into
which the few articles purc