The hurtful influences of the institution were not by any means confined to the Negro.

This was fully illustrated by the life upon our own plantation.

The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority.

Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape.

The slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people.