The first of these was to Theodore Weld as
authority, that "Professor Wright" had been told at New York by Dr. Deming
of Ashland, Ohio, a story that Mr. Dickinson of Pittsburg had been told by
Southern planters and slave dealers on an Ohio River steamboat. The tale
thus vouched for contained the assertion that sugar planters found that by
the excessive driving of slaves day and night in the grinding season they
could so increase their output that "they could afford to sacrifice one set
of hands in seven years," and "that this horrible system was now practised
to a considerable extent." The second citation was likewise to Weld for a
statement by Mr. Samuel Blackwell of Jersey City, whose testimonial lay in
the fact of his membership in the Presbyterian church, that while on a tour
in Louisiana "the planters generally declared to him that they were obliged
so to overwork their slaves during the sugar-making season (from eight to
ten weeks) as to use them up in seven or eight years." The third was to the
Rev. Mr. Reed of London who after a tour in Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky
in 1834 published the following: "I was told, confidentially, from
excellent authority, that recently at a meeting of planters in South
Carolina the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more
profitable to the owner if well fed, well clothed and worked lightly, or if
made the most of at once and exhausted in some eight years.
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