Chapter 4

_A General Survey of the Slave Plantation_

ISOLATION OF LLOYD S PLANTATION--PUBLIC OPINION THERE NO
PROTECTION TO THE SLAVE--ABSOLUTE POWER OF THE OVERSEER--NATURAL
AND ARTIFICIAL CHARMS OF THE PLACE--ITS BUSINESS-LIKE
APPEARANCE--SUPERSTITION ABOUT THE BURIAL GROUND--GREAT IDEAS OF
COL. LLOYD--ETIQUETTE AMONG SLAVES--THE COMIC SLAVE DOCTOR--
PRAYING AND FLOGGING--OLD MASTER LOSING ITS TERRORS--HIS
BUSINESS--CHARACTER OF AUNT KATY--SUFFERINGS FROM HUNGER--OLD
MASTER'S HOME--JARGON OF THE PLANTATION--GUINEA SLAVES--MASTER
DANIEL--FAMILY OF COL. LLOYD--FAMILY OF CAPT. ANTHONY--HIS SOCIAL
POSITION--NOTIONS OF RANK AND STATION.

It is generally supposed that slavery, in the state of Maryland,
exists in its mildest form, and that it is totally divested of
those harsh and terrible peculiarities, which mark and
characterize the slave system, in the southern and south-western
states of the American union. The argument in favor of this
opinion, is the contiguity of the free states, and the exposed
condition of slavery in Maryland to the moral, religious and
humane sentiment of the free states.

I am not about to refute this argument, so far as it relates to
slavery in that state, generally; on the contrary, I am willing
to admit that, to this general point, the arguments is well
grounded. Public opinion is, indeed, an unfailing restraint upon
the cruelty and barbarity of masters, overseers, and slave-
drivers, whenever and wherever it can reach them; but there are
certain secluded and out-of-the-way places, even in the state of
Maryland, seldom visited by a single ray of healthy public
sentiment--where slavery, wrapt in its own congenial,
midnight darkness, _can_, and _does_, develop all its malign and
shocking characteristics; where it can be indecent without shame,
cruel without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or
fear of exposure.

Just such a secluded, dark, and out-of-the-way place, is the
"home plantation" of Col. Edward Lloyd, on the Eastern Shore,
Maryland. It is far away from all the great thoroughfares, and
is proximate to no town or village. There is neither school-
house, nor town-house in its neighborhood. The school-house is
unnecessary, for there are no children to go to school. The
children and grand-children of Col. Lloyd were taught in the
house, by a private tutor--a Mr. Page a tall, gaunt sapling of a
man, who did not speak a dozen words to a slave in a whole year.
The overseers' children go off somewhere to school; and they,
therefore, bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad,
to embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the
place. Not even the mechanics--through whom there is an
occasional out-burst of honest and