OBSERVATIONS OF ROBERT SUTCLIFF

“I had the curiosity to look into some of their little habitations; but all that I examined were wretched in the extreme and far inferior to many Indian cottages I have seen.

“I slept at C. A.’s and this morning set out for Fredericksburg, being accompanied by his young man, our road lying through the woods the greater part of the way.  At the place where we dined, we were waited on by two mulatto girls, whose only clothing appeared to be loose garments of cotton and woollen cloth, girt round the waist with a small cord.  I had observed that this was the common dress of the working female negroes in the fields; but when engaged in business in the house it seemed hardly sufficient to cover them.  In the yard, I observed a number of slaves engaged in the management of a still, employed in making spirits from cider.  Here again I had the curiosity to look into some of the negro huts, which like those I had seen, presented little else but dirt and rags.

“We came to Fredericksburg and lodged at Fisher’s Tavern.  The next morning I was waked early by the cries of a poor negro, who was undergoing a severe correction, previously to his going to work.  On taking a walk on the banks of the Rappahannock, the river on which the town is seated, I stepped into one of the large tobacco warehouses which are built here, for the reception and inspection of that plant before it is permitted to be exported.  On entering into conversation with an inspector, as he was employed in looking over a parcel of tobacco, he lamented the licentiousness which he remarked so generally prevailed in this town.  He said that in his remembrance, the principal part of the inhabitants were emigrants from Scotland, and that it was considered so reproachful to the white inhabitants, if they were found to have illicit connection with their female slaves, that their neighbors would shun the company of such, as of persons whom it was a reproach to be acquainted.  The case was now so much altered that, he believed, there were but few slave holders in the place who were free from guilt in this respect:  and that it was now thought but little of.  Such was the brutality and hardness of heart which this evil produced, that many amongst them paid no more regard to selling their own children, by their females slaves, or even their brothers and sisters, in the same line, than they would do to the disposal of a cow or a horse, or any other property in the brute creation.  To so low a degree of degradation does the system of negro slavery sink the white inhabitants, who are unhappily engaged in it.”—­Robert Sutcliff, Travels in some parts of North America in Years 1804, 1805, 1806, pp. 37-52.

SOME LETTERS OF RICHARD ALLEN AND ABSALOM JONES TO DOROTHY RIPLEY