From: 'American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses'

by Theodore Dwight Weld
May 4, 1839

this account was written by the Rev. Horace Moulton, a brickmaker
who lived in Savannah, Georgia for several years:

"II THE FOOD OF THE SLAVES.

"It was a general custom, wherever I have been
for masters to give each of his slaves, male
and female, one peck of corn per week for their
food. This at fifty cents per bushel, which was
all that it was worth when i was there, would
amount to twelve and a half cents per week for
board per head."
"It cost me upon an average, when at the south,
one dollar per day for board. The price of four-
teen bushels of corn per week. This would make
my board equal in amount to the board of forty-six
slaves! This is all that good or bad masters al-
low their slaves round about Savannah on the
plantations. One peck of gourd-seed corn is to
be measured out to each slaves once very week.
One man with whom I labored, however, being
desirous to get all the work out of his hands
he could, before I left, (about fifty in number)
bought for them every week, or twice a week, a
beef's head from market. With this, they made a
soup in a large iron kettle, around which the
hands came at meal time and dipping out the
soup, would mix it with their Hommony, and eat it
as though it were a feast."