Treatment of Slaves: Food

                 Abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld and his wife and coauthor Angelina Grimké included in their book American Slavery As It Is this second-hand testimony from a former Virginian who wished to remain anonymous and passed on this recollection to a minister in Quincy, Illinois, the Reverend C. S. Renshaw.

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                 The slaves are generally allowanced: a pint of corn meal and a salt herring is the allowance, or in lieu of the herring a "dab" of fat meat of about the same value. I have known the sour milk, and clauber to be served out to the hands, when there was an abundance of milk on the plantation. This is a luxury not often afforded.

From Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York: American Antislavery Society, 1839), 30.