Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/65

Rh to forethought, and self-government, at least so far as regarded their own affairs. In the meantime Macdonald's plantation had been unusually well cultivated, and the slaves had repaid their original purchase-money.

I do not know whether it was Macdonald's intention to have his plantation afterwards cultivated by white labourers or by free blacks; but one thing appears to me certain, and that is, that Macdonald's mode of effecting the emancipation of slaves is deserving of consideration and imitation, as one of the wisest which can be devised for the gradual and general release of both the blacks and the whites of North America from the fetters of slavery.

I know many estimable and thinking men of New Orleans who consider that such a mode of emancipation, as would, by degrees, convert the negro slaves into free labourers, might be put into operation without much difficulty, and that all those dangerous results which people imagine are, in great measure, only fears and fancies.

I have been told that the severest slave-owners in this neighbourhood are French, and I can credit it from the French popular temperament; the Scotch and the Dutch take the second place. Slaves of small and poor proprietors often suffer very much from hunger, as do also cattle. I heard to-day of one place where a considerable number of cattle had literally perished for want of food.

I have made inquiries after the Christmas dances and festivities of the negro slaves, of which I heard so much, but the sugar-harvest was late last year, and the sugar-grinding was not over till after New-year's day; the cotton is still being plucked on the plantations, and the dances are deferred. I have now travelled in search of these negro festivities, from one end of the slave States to the other, without having been lucky enough to meet with, to see, nay nor even to hear, of one such occasion. I believe, nevertheless, that they do occur here and there on the plantations.