H. Stovall, Stovall,
Miss.]
[Footnote 13: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 293, 294.]
[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., 192, 193.]
[Footnote 15: MS. copy in Manigault's letter book.]
[Footnote 16: MS. in the possession of Mrs. J.F. Minis, Savannah, Ga.]
As for housing, the vestiges of the old slave quarters, some of which
have stood abandoned for half a century, denote in many cases a sounder
construction and greater comfort than most of the negroes in freedom have
since been able to command.
With physical comforts provided, the birth-rate would take care of itself.
The pickaninnies were winsome, and their parents, free of expense and
anxiety for their sustenance, could hardly have more of them than they
wanted. A Virginian told Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fast
as they did on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and in
Georgia, Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits."[18] In Mississippi
M.W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when at the age of
thirty she was married by her master to a new husband, and had eight more
thereafter, including a set of triplets.[19] But the culminating instance
is the following as reported by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERY
REMARKABLE.
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