Philemon Bliss, Esq., a lawyer in Elyria, Ohio, and member of the Presbyterian church, who lived in Florida, in 1834, and 1835.

“The slaves go to the field in the morning; they carry with them corn meal wet with water, and at noon build a fire on the ground and bake it in the ashes.  After the labors of the day are over, they take their second meal of ash-cake.”

President Edwards, the younger.

“The slaves eat twice during the day.”

Mr. Eleazar Powell, Chippewa, Beaver county, Penn., who resided in Mississippi in 1836 and 1837.

“The slaves received two meals during the day.  Those who have their food cooked for them get their breakfast about eleven o’clock, and their other meal after night.”

Mr. Nehemiah Caulkins, Waterford, Conn., who spent eleven winters in North Carolina.

“The breakfast of the slaves was generally about ten or eleven o’clock.”

Rev. Phineas Smith, Centreville, N.Y., who has lived at the south some years.

“The slaves have usually two meals a day, viz:  at eleven o’clock and at night.”

Rev. C.S.  Renshaw, Quincy, Illinois—­the testimony of a Virginian.

“The slaves have two meals a day.  They breakfast at from ten to eleven, A.M., and eat their supper at from six to nine or ten at night, as the season and crops may be.”

The preceding testimony establishes the following points.

1st.  That the slaves are allowed, in general, no meat.  This appears from the fact, that in the only slave states which regulate the slaves’ rations by law, (North Carolina and Louisiana,) the legal ration contains no meat.  Besides, the late Hon. R.J.  Turnbull, one of the largest planters in South Carolina, says expressly, “meat, when given, is only by the way of indulgence or favor.”  It is shown also by the direct testimony recorded above, of slaveholders and others, in all parts of the slaveholding south and west, that the general allowance on plantations is corn or meal and salt merely.  To this there are doubtless many exceptions, but they are only exceptions; the number of slaveholders who furnish meat for their field-hands, is small, in comparison with the number of those who do not.  The house slaves, that is, the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, &c., generally get some meat every day; the remainder bits and bones of their masters’ tables.  But that the great body of the slaves, those that compose the field gangs, whose labor and exposure, and consequent exhaustion, are vastly greater than those of house slaves, toiling as they do from day light till dark, in the fogs of the early morning, under the scorchings of mid-day, and amid the damps of evening, are in general provided with no meat, is abundantly established by the preceding testimony.