"[70] Johann Schoepf on the other hand while travelling
many years before on the Atlantic seaboard had written: "They who have the
largest droves [of slaves] keep them the worst, let them run naked mostly
or in rags, and accustom them as much as possible to hunger, but exact of
them steady work."[71] That no concrete observations were adduced in any
of these premises is evidence enough, under the circumstances, that the
charges were empty.
[Footnote 69: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_
(London, 1854), p. 154.]
[Footnote 70: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp.
274, 278.]
[Footnote 71: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation_, A.J.
Morrisson, tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), II, 147. But _see ibid_., pp. 94, 116,
for observations of a general air of indolence among whites and blacks
alike.]
The capital value of the slaves was an increasingly powerful insurance of
their lives and their health. In four days of June, 1836, Thomas Glover of
Lowndes County, Alabama, incurred a debt of $35 which he duly paid, for
three visits with mileage and prescriptions by Dr. Salley to his "wench
Rina";[72] and in the winter of 1858 Nathan Truitt of Troup County,
Georgia, had medical attendance rendered to a slave child of his to the
amount of $130.
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