The pay attracted
those whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor was
their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the lives
of their slaves.
[Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, _The Agricultural Productions of
Louisiana_ (New Orleans, 1845).]
[Footnote 28: _Harper's Magazine_, VII, 755.]
[Footnote 29: _DeBoufs Review_, XI, 401.]
[Footnote 30: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 90, 91.]
[Footnote 31: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp
272, 273, 278.]
[Footnote 32: Robert Russell, _North America, Its Agriculture and Chwate_
(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 272.]
[Footnote 33: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the
South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 84, 318.]
[Footnote 34: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 550, 551.]
Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease, disability
and death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better than
a slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on the
plantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely
took vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened
punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape from
bondage altogether.
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