The slaves are obliged to work from daylight till dark, as long as they can see.  When they have tasks assigned, which is often the case, a few of the strongest and most expert, sometimes finish them before sunset; others will be obliged to work till eight or nine o’clock in the evening.  All must finish their tasks or take a flogging.  The whip and gun, or pistol, are companions of the overseer; the former he uses very frequently upon the negroes, during their hours of labor, without regard to age or sex.  Scarcely a day passed while I was on the plantation, in which some of the slaves were not whipped; I do not mean that they were struck a few blows merely, but had a set flogging.  The same labor is commonly assigned to men and women,—­such as digging ditches in the rice marshes, clearing up land, chopping cord-wood, threshing, &c.  I have known the women go into the barn as soon as they could see in the morning, and work as late as they could see at night, threshing rice with the flail, (they now have a threshing machine,) and when they could see to thresh no longer, they had to gather up the rice, carry it up stairs, and deposit it in the granary.

The allowance of clothing on this plantation to each slave, was given out at Christmas for the year, and consisted of one pair of coarse shoes, and enough coarse cloth to make a jacket and trowsers.  If the man has a wife she makes it up; if not, it is made up in the house.  The slaves on this plantation, being near Wilmington, procured themselves extra clothing by working Sundays and moonlight nights, cutting cordwood in the swamps, which they had to back about a quarter of a mile to the ricer; they would then get a permit from their master, and taking the wood in their canoes, carry it to Wilmington, and sell it to the vessels, or dispose of it as they best could, and with the money buy an old jacket of the sailors, some coarse cloth for a shirt, &c.  They sometimes gather the moss from the trees, which they cleanse and take to market.  The women receive their allowance of the same kind of cloth which the men have.  This they make into a frock; if they have any under garments they must procure them for themselves.  When the slaves get a permit to leave the plantation, they sometimes make all ring again by singing the following significant ditty, which shows that after all there is a flow of spirits in the human breast which for a while, at least, enables them to forget their wretchedness.[1]

Hurra, for good ole Massa,
    He giv me de pass to go to de city
Hurra, for good ole Missis,
    She bile de pot, and giv me de licker. 
                        Hurra, I’m goin to de city.

[Footnote 1:  Slaves sometimes sing, and so do convicts in jails under sentence, and both for the same reason.  Their singing proves that they want to be happy not that they are so.  It is the means that they use to make themselves happy, not the evidence that they are so already.  Sometimes, doubtless, the excitement of song whelms their misery in momentary oblivion.  He who argues from this that they have no conscious misery to forget, knows as little of human nature as of slavery.—­EDITOR.]