Engraving accompanies T. Addison Richard's narrative, "The Rice Lands of the South," which, among other topics, describes slave life on southern rice plantations. It shows a slave funeral, set in a heavily wooded grove, in which numerous mourners take part. A preacher with raised, out-streched arms leads the service; mourners kneel, pray, and weep. Engraving corresponds with the following passage: "The state of excitement and exaltation to which their [i.e, the plantation slaves'] impressionable natures are so easily wrought, especially in religious matters, is manifest in their singing even more strangely than in their preaching and praying. These performances though, are, with all their grotesqueness and absurdity, often very effective and beautiful. Not seldom has it been our pleasure to listen to impromptu music, wondrously sweet and wild and weird, which, well counterfeited on the lyric stage, would bring fame and fortune. Perhaps the most remarkable of these exhibtions are those which are wont to occur on occasions of funeral solemnities, celebrated, as they generally are, in the deep night-darkness of some dense old wood, made doubly dismal by the ghostly light of the pine torches and the phantom-like figures of the scarcely visible mourners." (p. 735), Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 19, no. 114 (November 1859), p. 731., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Date
[November 1859]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 19 n 114 November 1859 p 731, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2876
