Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art - Fifth Series, No. 52, Vol. I

Synopsis

Those who profess to know all about slavery will tell you that the negro was a thousand times happier as a slave than he is as a freeman. This may be true of some of the race; we do not enter into the question. The field-hand was in general an entirely irresponsible creature. He belonged to his master as thoroughly as the dogs and horses did, and he was of infinitely less importance.

He had his daily task and his daily rations; he had also, if owned by a kind master, his little amusements, chief of which were the dance and the camp-meeting. Such a life would naturally not inspire one with any very high ambition. Give the plantation negro his hoe-cake and his bit of fat pork, his banjo, and the privilege of telling his experience to an unlimited chorus of ‘Halleluiahs!’ and ‘Bress de Lords!’ and you gave him perfect bliss. If the white man was his oppressor, he seldom knew it. 

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