short, as far as I could ascertain
from this gentleman, the negro was the embodiment of all earthly
wickedness. Theft, falsehood, idleness, deceit, and many other sins
which afflict mortals, were the especial heritance of the negro.

In looking about me, I found that many of these charges against
the negro were true. The black man was deceptive, and he was often
dishonest. There can be no effect without a cause, and the reasons
for this deception and dishonesty were apparent, without difficult
research. The system of slavery necessitated a constant struggle
between the slave and his overseer. It was the duty of the latter to
obtain the greatest amount of labor from the sinews of the slave. It
was the business of the slave to perform as little labor as possible.
It made no difference to him whether the plantation produced a hundred
or a thousand bales. He received nothing beyond his subsistence and
clothing. His labor had no compensation, and his balance-sheet at the
end of the month or year was the same, whether he had been idle or
industrious. It was plainly to his personal interest to do nothing he
could in any way avoid. The negro displayed his sagacity by deceiving
the overseer whenever he could do so. The best white man in the world
would have shunned all labor under such circumstances. The negro
evinced a pardonable weakness in pretending to be ill whenever he
could hope to make the pretense successful.

Receiving no compensation for his services, beyond his necessary
support, the negro occasionally sought to compensate himself. He was
fond of roasted pork, but that article did not appear on the list
of plantation rations. Consequently some of the negroes would make
clandestine seizure of the fattest pigs when the chance of detection
was not too great. It was hard to convince them that the use of one
piece of property for the benefit of another piece, belonging to the
same person, was a serious offense.

"You see, Mr. K----," said a negro to me, admitting that he had
sometimes stolen his master's hogs, "you see, master owns his
saddle-horse, and he owns lots of corn. Master would be very mad if I
didn't give the horse all the corn he wanted. Now, he owns me, and he
owns a great many hogs. I like hog, just as much as the horse likes
corn, but when master catches me killing the hogs he is very mad, and
he makes the overseer whip me."

Corn, chickens, flour, meal, in fact, every thing edible, became
legitimate p