[17] When the Georgia supreme
court awarded the owner a full year's hire of a slave who had died in the
midst of his term the decision was complained of as an innovation "signally
oppressive to the poorer classes of our citizens--the large majority--who
are compelled to hire servants."[18]
[Footnote 16: Nina M. Tiffany ed., _Letters of James Murray, Loyalist_
(Boston, 1901), pp. 67-69.]
[Footnote 17: J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_ (New York, 1837), pp.
152-155.]
[Footnote 18: Editorial in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec.
12, 1854.]
The main supply of slaves for hire was probably comprised of the husbands
and sons, and sometimes the daughters, of the cooks and housemaids of the
merchants, lawyers and the like whose need of servants was limited but who
in many cases made a point of owning their slaves in families. On the other
hand, many townsmen whose capital was scant or whose need was temporary
used hired slaves even for their kitchen work; and sometimes the filling of
the demand involved the transfer of a slave from one town to another. Thus
an innkeeper of Clarkesville, a summer resort in the Georgia mountains,
published in the distant newspapers of Athens and Augusta in 1838 his
offer of liberal wages for a first rate cook.
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