"[46] Olmsted in his turn found
the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the whites,[47]
and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia. The town ordinances,
while commonly strict in regard to the police of slaves for the rest of the
year, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festive
assemblies at Christmas tide.
[Footnote 45: Adam Hodgson, _Letters from North America_, I, 97.]
[Footnote 46: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States_, II, 427.]
[Footnote 47: _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 101, 103. Cf. also _DeBow's
Review_, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199.]
Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasional
complaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, among
matters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grog
shops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night,
in spite of the prohibitions of the law.[48] A citizen of Charleston
protested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form of
dissipation. "There are," said he, "sometimes every evening in the week,
funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes ...
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