Besides, it is deemed a foolish whim for a slave-mother to manifest concern to see her children, and, in one point of view, the case is made out--she can do nothing for them.
She has no control over them; the master is even more than the mother, in all matters touching the fate of her child.

Why, then, should she give herself any concern?
She has no responsibility.

Such is the reasoning, and such the practice.

The iron rule of the plantation, always passionately and violently enforced in that neighborhood, makes flogging the penalty of{42} failing to be in the field before sunrise in the morning, unless special permission be given to the absenting slave.
"I went to see my child," is no excuse to the ear or heart of the overseer.
One of the visits of my mother to me, while at Col.

Lloyd's, I remember very vividly, as affording a bright gleam of a mother's love, and the earnestness of a mother's care.
"I had on that day offended "Aunt Katy," (called "Aunt" by way of respect,) the cook of old master's establishment.