This class is the mulatto
women, distinguished for their fascinating beauty. The handsomest
of these usually pay the greatest amount for their time. Many of
these women are the favorites of men of property and standing, who
furnish them with the means of compensating their owners, and not a
few are dressed in the most extravagant manner.
When we take into consideration the fact that no safeguard is
thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave-women to
be pure and chaste, we will not be surprised when told that
immorality and vice pervade the cities and towns of the South to
an extent unknown in the Northern States. Indeed, many of the
slave-women have no higher aspiration than that of becoming the
finely-dressed mistress of some white man. At negro balls and
parties, this class of women usually make the most splendid
appearance, and are eagerly sought after in the dance, or to
entertain in the drawing-room or at the table.
A few years ago, among the many slave-women in Richmond, Virginia,
who hired their time of their masters, was Agnes, a mulatto owned
by John Graves, Esq., and who might be heard boasting that she was
the daughter of an American Senator. Although nearly forty years
of age at the time of which we write, Agnes was still exceedingly
handsome. More than half white, with long black hair and deep blue
eyes, no one felt like disputing with her when she urged her claim
to her relationship with the Anglo-Saxon.
In her younger days, Agnes had been a housekeeper for a young
slaveholder, and in sustaining this relation had become the mother
of two daughters.
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