A Mississippi slave’s quality of life.

[**The following takes place in the south during the American Civil War.**] >A Mississippi slave’s quality of life depended entirely on whether he happened to be purchased by a humane owner or sold to a sadist. In either case, the element of random fortune only heightened the sense of bondage. “When you is a slave, you ain’t got no mo’ chance than a bullfrog,” said Virginia Harris of Coahoma County. >Sadists existed right in the vicinity of Jones County. In one notorious local incident, an area slaveholder named Bryant Craft caught a man named Jessie giving whiskey to the other Negroes and flogged him until the cloth of his shirt was embedded in his back. Afterward the tortured man crawled away to die, and he was lying by the side of an old dirt road when a horseman named Duckworth happened by. Duckworth took the slave home and tended to his wounds, greasing them with warm tallow, and then took him back to the Craft place, hoping to “reconcile” the master. Instead, Craft was enraged by Duckworth’s interference and struck Jesse [**sic**] down with a lethal blow. “Let that be an example to you,” he said to Duckworth. ____________________________ **Source:** Jenkins, Sally, and John Stauffer. “Home.” *The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy*. Anchor Books, 2010. 64. Print.