[Footnote 43:  Letter of Caroline Raoul, Belleville, S.C., Dec. 26, 1829, to James H. Hammond.  MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.]

Likewise where the family affairs of slaves were concerned the silence and passiveness of the law gave masters occasion for eloquence and activity.  Thus a Georgian wrote to a neighbor:  “I have a girl Amanda that has your servant Phil for a husband.  I should be very glad indeed if you would purchase her.  She is a very good seamstress, an excellent cook—­makes cake and preserves beautifully—­and washes and irons very nicely, and cannot be excelled in cleaning up a house.  Her disposition is very amiable.  I have had her for years and I assure you that I have not exaggerated as regards her worth....  I will send her down to see you at any time."[44] That offers of purchase were no less likely than those of sale to be prompted by such considerations is suggested by another Georgia letter:  “I have made every attempt to get the boy Frank, the son of James Nixon; and in order to gratify James have offered as far as five hundred dollars for him—­more than I would pay for any negro child in Georgia were it not James’ son."[45] It was therefore not wholly in idyllic strain that a South Carolinian after long magisterial service remarked:  “Experience and observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of kindness from the master to the slave.  With that ... slavery becomes a family relation, next in its attachments to that of parent and child."[46]

[Footnote 44:  Letter of E.N.  Thompson, Vineville, Ga. (a suburb of Macon), to J.B.  Lamar at Macon, Ga., Aug. 7, 1854.  MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S.  Erwin, Athens, Ga.]

[Footnote 45:  Letter of Henry Jackson, Jan. 11, 1837, to Howell Cobb.  MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S.  Erwin, Athens, Ga.]

[Footnote 46:  J.B.  O’Neall in J.B.D.  DeBow ed., Industrial Resources of the South and West, II (New Orleans, 1852), 278.]

On the whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the Old South have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to their abundance and accessibility.  The statutes, copious and easily available, describe a hypothetical regime, not an actual one.  The court records are on the one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions of human adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisions were themselves largely controlled by the statutes, perverse for ordinary practical purposes as these often were.  It is therefore to the letters, journals and miscellaneous records of private persons dwelling in the regime and by their practices molding it more powerfully than legislatures and courts combined, that the main recourse for intimate knowledge must be had.  Regrettably fugitive and fragmentary as these are, enough it may be hoped have been found and used herein to show the true nature of the living order.