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116 SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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and security from the captain . No freed negro can stay in the state unless born hereand no free colored people can enter ; so that the
, free colored population can only increase by births . I enclose a letter from Virginia , which shows you the tendency of thingsand
, the fears of the owners . It is a most unnatural state of affairs ! I never was in a country where law interfered so wickedly with
right ; and I never was in a country where law was so little administered as here . I have given you a few instances ; many more
come before us , which I do not write , because there" is often some hitch in the . stories . Mrs . V told me not to tell the chief of
police that I visited her , or that I went to black churches ! Madame B is a fair specimen of an elegant American—very
pretty , very musical , very kind and cordial . Her dress is exquisite —her manner French . I saw her in England years ago , and
thought her maienre ; but here she does not seem so , the whole tone is so different . Madame B prides herself on wearing false
hair , ( almost every lady does , ) and takes inunense pains to have it becomingly arranged . The woman who has dressed Madame
B— ' s hair for years is the slave of one of her friends , and this is her history : —Her mother was a full-blooded African slave of
M 's . She was married to another of his slaves , and had a large family . M ' s wife died , he took this black woman to be his
wife and to suckle his infant son , at the same time freeing all her children , and promising her her freedom . She had a second family
hy M . He always promising her and her second family their freedomshe was content . Butunfortunatelyhe died suddenly
without , leaving them free . The slave , was a faithful , womanand had , , devoted herself to the son—was indeed the only mother he knew
—but , when he was twenty-one , he sold her and all his brothers and sistersthough he knew his father ' s intentions ! Pie tried also
, to claim the first family . This was told as nothing outrageous , and received with no exclamations excepting mine . I hear many
such stories here from those who uphold the system . Madame B has slaves , and thinks it a good institution . Madame B
has had three husbands—first dead , second was divorced and went to the Mormons , third was blown up in a steamboat . This is a
characteristic of America . Every third woman I meet seems to have been divorced . In the courts of Philadelhiain ten years
about 2 , 700 divorces liave been granted : suits of p this , nature are , increasing in frequency . Next door to Madame B lives a
widow whose means of subsistence consist of two small houses and a negress , whom she sends out to dress hair . This negress has a
family of children by a white man , but the widow owns them , and of course will sell them , * and the father does not think about
buy-Ing them , nor did it eirfcer the heads of either Madame B or Mrs . S to suggest it as humanein our conversation—nothey
are the property of the widow . The , negress , Madame B , says ,
Is a good-for-nothing woman . Madaine B ' s Amy ( a slave )
116 Slavery In The South.
116 _SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1861, page 116, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101861/page/44/
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