22 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



island he came,) was an able man, but now having no mas- 

 ter, he was bold and sometimes impudent to my mother. 

 His wife, Sue, was kind and faithful. 



A sense of integrity alone induces me to record these 

 painful facts regarding the participation of our family 

 in the sin and shame of slavery. I trust that we have 

 been for many years cleared of these injuries to our fel- 

 low-men, and our nation is now settling an awful account 

 with heaven for the accumulated guilt of more than two 

 centuries, for which we are paying the heavy penalty of our 

 blood 



Domestic slavery was extensively diffused through these 

 colonies, in a mild form indeed, the men working on the 

 farms, and the women generally in the house, more rarely 

 on the land, especially during harvest-time and haying. 

 The dairy was managed chiefly by the women, with occa- 

 sional help from the men in milking. In general, the 

 treatment was not severe ; the lash was rarely used on 

 human beings, and never on women. In general, the 

 slaves, especially on the farms, fared as to food as their 

 masters did. The in-door servants were often favorites 

 with the family, and especially with the children. In the 

 North, slaves rarely became fugitives, and were never 

 hunted by the gun and the blood-hound, and were never 

 loaded with the ball and chain, or with the iron collar ; 

 nor, in general, were they overtasked with labor. Eng- 

 land, from the planting of Virginia, forced slavery and the 

 slave-trade upon the colonies. On this subject, even the 

 Puritans, to a certain extent, followed the bad example 

 of the cavaliers of the South. The Quakers, however, 

 stood out as a noble exception, and are in general con- 

 sistent opposers of slavery to this day. As regards my 

 paternal family, I am sure it was a wasteful institution, not 

 to mention its injustice. My father would have been 

 much better off with his legal business alone, than with 

 the horde of negro servants who consumed the products 



