NEHEMIAH ADAMS (1806-1878) was a graduate of Harvard University and pastor of Union Congregational Church in Boston, Massachusetts for more than 40 years. He was also a staunch abolitionist.

In 1834, he visited the South for the first time with the idea of confirming his notions of the institution of slavery as practiced in that part of the world.

In the book he subsequently wrote,  A South-Side View of Slavery, he recalled his trip and his first impressions of “Negro slaves:”

The steam tug reached the landing, and the slaves were all about us. One thing immediately surprised me; they were all in good humor, and some of them in a broad laugh. The delivery of every trunk from the tug to the wharf was the occasion of some hit, or repartee, and every burden was borne with a jolly word, grimace, or motion. The lifting of one leg in laughing seemed as natural as a Frenchman’s shrug. I asked one of them to place a trunk with a lot of baggage; it was done; up went the hand to the hat: “Anything more, please sir?” What a contrast, I involuntarily said to myself, to that troop at the Albany landing on our Western Railroad and on those piles of boards, and on the roofs of the sheds, and at the piers, in New York! I began to like these slaves. I began to laugh with them. It was irresistible. Who could have convinced me, an hour before, that slaves could have any other effect upon me than to make me feel sad? One fellow, in all the hurry and bustle of landing us, could not help relating how, in jumping on board, his boot was caught between two planks, and ‘pulled clean off;” and how “‘dis ole feller went clean over into de watter” with a shout, as though it was a merry adventure.

One thing seemed clear; they were not so much cowed down as I expected. Perhaps, however, they were a fortunate set. I rode away, expecting soon to have some of my disagreeable anticipations verified.

… I shall now relate the impressions which were involuntarily made upon me while residing in some of the slave States. As before mentioned, I was making no deliberate investigations, and had no theory to maintain; but the things which daily passed before me led to reflections and conclusions, which will appear, some of them, as we proceed, but more especially in the review.

…The city of Savannah abounds in parks, as they are called — squares, fenced in with trees. Young children and infants were there, with very respectable colored nurses — young women, with bandanna and plaid cambric turbans, and superior in genteel appearance to any similar class, as a whole, in any of our cities. They could not be slaves. “Are they slaves?” “Certainly,” says the friend at your side; ““They each belong to some master or mistress.”

In behalf of a score of mothers of my acquaintance, and of some fathers, I looked with covetous feelings upon the relation which I saw existed between these nurses and children. These women seemed not to have the air and manner of hirelings in the care and treatment of the children; their conversation with them, the degree of seemingly maternal feeling which was infused into their whole deportment, could not fail to strike a casual observer.

Then these are slaves. Their care of the children, even if it be slave labor, is certainly equal to that which is free.

“But that was a freeman who just passed us?”

“No, he is Mr. W’s servant, near us.”

“He a slave?” Such a rhetorical lifting of the arm, such a line of grace as the hand described in descending easily from the hat to the side, such a glow of good feeling on recognizing neighbor B., with a supplementary act of respect to the stranger with him, were wholly foreign from my notions of a slave. “Where are your real slaves, such as we read of?”

“These are about a fair sample.”

Our fancies with regard to the condition of the slaves proceed from our Northern repugnance to slavery, stimulated by many things that we read. The everyday life, the whole picture of society at the South, is not presented to us so frequently — indeed it cannot be, nor can it strike the mind as strongly — as slave auctions and separations of families, fugitives hiding in dismal swamps, and other things which appeal to our sensibilities. Whatever else may be true of slavery, these things, we say, are indisputable; and they furnish materials for the fancy to build into a world of woe.

Without supposing that I had yet seen slavery, it was nevertheless true that a load was lifted from my mind by the first superficial look at the slaves in the city.

It was as though I had been let down by necessity into a cavern which I had peopled with disagreeable sights, and, on reaching bottom, found daylight streaming in, and the place cheerful.

A better-looking, happier, more courteous set of people I had never seen, than those colored men, women and children whom I met the first few days of my stay in Savannah.

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