“A Merciful Provision of the Creator”

Peter McCandless

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511977428.013

7 - “A Merciful Provision of the Creator”

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011

Peter McCandless

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Peter McCandless: Affiliation:
College of Charleston, South Carolina

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The flux which prevailed amongst [the slaves], could not be stopped by the most able of our physicians. From this disorder 13 are now dead and some still not out of danger and the best that remain in a poor and meager condition.

Henry Laurens, 1756

Here the negro enjoys better health in the vicinity of the rice fields, and arrives at greater longevity than he does in the mountains. He requires not to be acclimated, but is constitutionally at home along the shores of our sluggish rivers, and in situations adapted to the culture of indigo, cotton, and rice, where a similar exposure would prove fatal to the white man. Short-sighted men may ascribe all this to accidental causes and the results of blind chance; we confess, however, we view it in a different light – we see in it evidences of design – we regard it as a merciful provision of the Creator in imparting to the human constitution the tendency to produce varieties adapted to every climate and every country.

John Bachman, The Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race, 1850

Stoke Martha is sick. Rock Sena has some fever. Harcules is sick. Driver Simon is sick. Stoke Hetty is sick. Stoke Mudlong is sick. Marcia is sick. Saby is sick. Duckey's Tom is sick.

Thomas Sinkler, overseer, Stoke Plantation, August 1833

RICE, SLAVERY, AND DEATH

The combination of rice and slavery did more than anything else to make the lowcountry the richest and deadliest region in British North America.

Type: Chapter
Information: Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry , pp. 125 - 148

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511977428.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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7 - “A Merciful Provision of the Creator”

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