Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am telling
you the plain truth. Yet when victims make their escape from this wild
beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds,
and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den, “full of dead men’s
bones, and all uncleanness.” Nay, more, they are not only willing,
but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders.
The poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and of the
flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy home. To what
disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the
husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to
his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her
own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of
his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it
is ravaged of its loveliness.
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of
many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. They
regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the
plantation; and it is seldom that they do not make them aware of this
by passing them into the slave-trader’s hands as soon as possible, and
thus getting them out of their sight. I am glad to say there are some
honorable exceptions.
I have myself known two southern wives who exhorted their husbands to
free those slaves towards whom they stood in a “parental relation;” and
their request was granted. These husbands blushed before the superior
nobleness of their wives’ natures. Though they had only counselled them
to do that which it was their duty to do, it commanded their respect,
and rendered their conduct more exemplary. Concealment was at an end,
and confidence took the place of distrust.
Though this bad institution deadens the moral sense, even in white
women, to a fearful extent, it is not altogether extinct. I have
heard southern ladies say of Mr. Such a one, “He not only thinks it
no disgrace to be the father of those little niggers, but he is not
ashamed to call himself their master. I declare, such things ought not
to be tolerated in any decent society!”