The scenes, brought about in this way, were often
scandalous and loathsome in the extreme. Whole multitudes might
be found stretched out in brutal drunkenness, at once helpless
and disgusting. Thus, when the slave asks for a few hours of
virtuous freedom, his cunning master takes advantage of his
ignorance, and cheers him with a dose of vicious and revolting
dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of LIBERTY. We were
induced to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were
over, we all staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a
long breath, and went away to our various fields of work;
feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go from that which our
masters artfully deceived us into the belief was freedom, back
again to the arms of slavery. It was not what we had taken it to
be, nor what it might have been, had it not been abused by us.
It was about as well to be a slave to _master_, as to be a slave
to _rum_ and _whisky._
I am the more induced to take this view of the holiday system,
<198>adopted by slaveholders, from what I know of their treatment
of slaves, in regard to other things.
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