affection. Slavery may have been wrong there also, or it may have been justifiable. But it was not on account of the happy slaves that John Brown sallied forth at Harper’s Ferry, but because of the many unhappy ones. As the whole intensity[11] of the Negro trouble is centered in the evils of the institution of slavery, it is necessarily on these that one must insist, though the exceptions be not lost sight of.

[11]

It is often said that the slaves were seldom hurt because, since they were property, it behooved a master to take care of them and preserve them. But that is fallacious. Men got pleasure out of beating their slaves as they get pleasure out of chewing tobacco, drinking spirits, and using bad language. It grew on them; they liked it more and more. In many cases no proficiency or industry could save the slaves from a flogging. And, besides that, there was current in Georgia and all the more commercial parts a theory that it was most profitable to use up your slaves every seven years and then re-stock.

Slaves of course were bred, and it is conceivable that it might have been generally more profitable to have a breeding farm of Negroes and sell the children than work them off in seven years. But there was little method in the minds of the planters. They tried to combine the seven-years system and breeding at the same time. Every girl of sixteen had children, every woman of thirty had grandchildren. But the women were worked up to the last moment of pregnancy on the cotton fields and sent back three weeks after delivery, and even flogged then. The poor women lay on straw on earthen[12] floors in their torments, moaning in their agonies. When sent back to the fields too soon they suffered horrible physical torment. They often appealed to their masters: “Me make plenty nigger for massa, me useful nigger.” But more than half of their offspring were allowed to die. The mother would have been worth her keep as a mother, but, no, she must fill her place in the hoeing line instead of looking after her children.

[12]

There were few genuine Negro families. All were herded or separated and sold off in batches and re-herded with little or no regard to family relationships, though these poor, dark-minded slaves did form the most intimate and precious attachments. The slaves’ fervent hope was that massa would marry and have children, so that when he died they would not be sold up, but remain in the family.

Illegitimacy in sexual relationships raged. Almost every planter had 

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