“…on Christmas day, 1833. The days
between Christmas and New Year’s day are allowed as holidays; and, accordingly, we were
not required to perform any labor, more than to feed and take care of the
stock. This time we regarded as our own, by the grace of our masters; and we
therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased.
Those of us who had families at a distance, were
generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society. This time,
however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober, thinking and industrious
ones of our number would employ themselves in making corn-brooms, mats,
horse-collars, and baskets; and another class of us would spend the time in
hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But by far the larger part engaged in such
sports and merriments as playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling,
dancing, and drinking whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was by
far the most agreeable to the feelings of our masters. A slave who would work during the holidays was considered by our
masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the
favor of his master. It was deemed a
disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the
necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through
Christmas.
From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon
the slave, I believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of
the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the
slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt
it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or
safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But
for these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the day he
ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those conductors! I warn him
that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be
dreaded than the most appalling earthquake.
The holidays
are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a
custom established by the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to
say, it is the result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed
upon the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because they
would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know
it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will be seen by the fact, that
the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a
manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their
object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into
the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like
to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make
him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the
most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting
whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous
freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled
with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result
was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and
slavery. We felt, and very
properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when
the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a
long breath, and marched to the field,–feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to
go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the
arms of slavery.
I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system of fraud and
inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to disgust the slave
with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse of it, is carried out in
other things. ”
~Frederick Douglas
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