50.[73] These are mere chance items in the multitude which
constantly recur in probate records. Business prudence required expenditure
with almost a lavish hand when endangered property was to be saved. The
same consideration applied when famines occurred, as in Alabama in 1828[74]
and 1855.[75] Poverty-stricken freemen might perish, but slaveowners could
use the slaves themselves as security for credits to buy food at famine
prices to feed them.[76] As Olmsted said, comparing famine effects in the
South and in Ireland, "the slaves suffered no physical want--the peasant
starved."[77] The higher the price of slaves, the more stringent the
pressure upon the masters to safeguard them from disease, injury and risk
of every sort.
[Footnote 72: MS. receipt in private possession.]
[Footnote 73: MS. probate records at LaGrange, Ga.]
[Footnote 74: Charleston, _City Gazette_, May 28, 1828.]
[Footnote 75: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 707, 708, quoting
contemporary newspapers.]
[Footnote 76: Cf. D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 429.]
[Footnote 77: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 244.]
Although this phase of the advancing valuation gave no occasion for regret,
other phases brought a spread of dismay and apprehension.
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