The decision
was in favor of the last alternative"[61] An anonymous writer in 1857
repeated this last item without indication of its date or authority but
with a shortening of the period of exhaustion to "some four or five
years."[62]
[Footnote 59: Frances A. Kemble, _Journal_ (New York, 1863), p. 28.]
[Footnote 60: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion Through the Slave States_
(London, 1844), I, 120. Though Featherstonhaugh afterward visited New
Orleans his book does not recur to this topic.]
[Footnote 61: William Goodell, _The American Slave Code in Theory and
Practise_ (New York, 1853), pp. 79-81, citing Theodore Weld, _Slavery as it
is_, p 39, and Mattheson, _Visit to the American Churches_, II, 173.]
[Footnote 62: _The Suppressed Book about Slavery! Prepared for publication
in 1857, never published until the present time_ (New York, 1864), p. 211.]
These assertions, which have been accepted by some historians as valid,
prompt a series of reflections. In the first place, anyone who has had
experience with negro labor may reasonably be skeptical when told that
healthy, well fed negroes, whether slave or free, can by any routine
insistence of the employer be driven beyond the point at which fatigue
begins to be injurious.
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