Rev. John Rankin, a native of Tennessee, and for many years a preacher in slave states, says of the food of slaves, “It often happens that what will barely keep them alive, is all that a cruel avarice will allow them.  Hence, in some instances, their allowance has been reduced to a single pint of corn each, during the day and night.  And some have no better allowance than a small portion of cotton seed; while perhaps they are not permitted to taste meat so much as once in the course of seven years. Thousands of them are pressed with the gnawings of cruel hunger during their whole lives.” Rankin’s Letters on Slavery, pp. 57, 58.

Hon. Robert J. Turnbull, of Charleston, S.C., a slaveholder, says, “The subsistence of the slaves consists, from March until August, of corn ground into grits, or meal, made into what is called hominy, or baked into corn bread.  The other six months, they are fed upon the sweet potatoe.  Meat, when given, is only by way of indulgence or favor.” See “Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States,” by a South Carolinian.  Charleston, 1822.

Asa A. Stone, a theological student, residing at Natchez, Mississippi, wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Evangelist in 1835, in which he says, “On almost every plantation, the hands suffer more or less from hunger at some seasons of almost every year.  There is always a good deal of suffering from hunger.  On many plantations, and particularly in Louisiana, the slaves are in a condition of almost utter famishment during a great portion of the year.”

At the commencement of his letter, Mr. S. says, “Intending, as I do, that my statements shall be relied on, and knowing that, should you think fit to publish this communication, they will come to this country, where their correctness may be tested by comparison with real life, I make them with the utmost care and precaution.”

President Edwards, the younger, in a sermon preached half a century ago, at New Haven, Conn., says, speaking of the allowance of food given to slaves—­“They are supplied with barely enough to keep them from starving.”

In the debate on the Missouri question in the U.S.  Congress, 1819-20, the admission of Missouri to the Union, as a slave state, was urged, among other grounds as a measure of humanity to the slaves of the south.  Mr. Smyth, a member of Congress, from Virginia, and a large slaveholder, said, “The plan of our opponents seems to be to confine the slave population to the southern states, to the countries where sugar, cotton, and tobacco are cultivated.  But, sir, by confining the slaves to a part of the country where crops are raised for exportation, and the bread and meat are purchased, you doom them to scarcity and hunger.  Is it not obvious that the way to render their situation more comfortable is to allow them to be taken where there is not the same motive