A Jewish Letter Home: “Blood Squirts from Them”

Marx Kaufman, Jewish merchant, writing back to his family in Germany from his new home in Burke County, Georgia (December 15, 1850)

“The white people do not work here. Every white man is highly regarded if he has a good name. There are no poor people here and there are not any differences among the white population. They do not know anything about Jews [and] you are at home in every house.… According to law we are the same and are treated impartially…

“Negroes, or blacks, live separately from the whites and they are slaves here. They have to work in the fields and are beaten in such a way that the skin and blood squirts from them. There are fifteen times more blacks than there are whites and they live like cattle. Every black man has to do what he is told. If he does not, one is allowed to proceed at will.

“A skilled black man is worth twelve or fourteen hundred dollars, a skilled black woman eight hundred to one thousand dollars.”