[Footnote 24: William Allen, _Life of John McDonogh_ (Baltimore, 1886), p.
54.]
[Footnote 25: _Niles' Register_, XLV, 84]
[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Sept. 14 and 17 and
Oct. 22, 1834.]
Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin. A series
of them drove M.W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation journal: "Oh! my
losses almost make me crazy. God alone can help." In short, planters must
guard their slaves' health and life as among the most vital of their own
interests; for while crops were merely income, slaves were capital. The
tendency appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrant
labor when available for such work as would involve strain and exposure.
The documents bearing on this theme are scattering but convincing. Thus
E.J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields,
said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantation
ditches;[27] T.B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippi
in 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planter
when describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were
hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usual
routine.
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