Slaves--Classes--Anecdotes--Negro instruction--Police--Natchez
fencibles--Habitual awe of the negro for the white man--
Illustrations--Religious slaves--Negro preaching--General view
of slavery and emancipation--Conclusion.
There are properly three distinct classes of slaves in the south. The
first, and most intelligent class, is composed of the domestic slaves,
or "servants," as they are properly termed, of the planters. Some of
these both read and write, and possess a great degree of intelligence:
and as the negro, of all the varieties of the human species, is the most
imitative, they soon learn the language, and readily adopt the manners,
of the family to which they are attached. It is true, they frequently
burlesque the latter, and select the high-sounding words of the former
for practice--for the negro has an ear for euphony--which they usually
misapply, or mis-pronounce.
"Ben, how did you like the sermon to-day?" I once inquired of one, who,
for pompous language and high-sounding epithets, was the Johnson of
negroes.--"Mighty obligated wid it, master, de 'clusive 'flections werry
distructive to de ignorum."
In the more fashionable families, negroes feel it their duty--to show
their aristocratic breeding--to ape manners, and to use language, to
which the common herd cannot aspire. An aristocratic negro, full of his
master's wealth and importance, which he feels to be reflected upon
himself, is the most aristocratic personage in existence. He supports
his own dignity, and that of his own master, or "_family_," as he
phrases it, which he deems inseparable, by a course of conduct befitting
coloured gentlemen. Always about the persons of their masters or
mistresses, the domestic slaves obtain a better knowledge of the modes
of civilized life than they could do in the field, where negroes can
rise but little above their original African state. So identified are
they with the families in which they have been "raised," and so
accurate, but rough, are the copies which they individually present, of
their masters, that were all the domestic slaves of several planters'
families transferred to Liberia, or Hayti, they would there constitute a
by no means inferior state of African society, whose model would be
found in Mississippi. Each family would be a faithful copy of that with
which it was once connected: and should their former owners visit them
in their new home, they would smile at its resemblance to the original.
It is from this class that the friends of wisely-regulated emancipation
are to seek material for carrying their plans into effect.
The second class is composed of town slaves; which not only includes
domestic slaves, in the families of the citizens, but also all negro
mechanics, draymen, hostlers, labourers, hucksters, and washwomen, and
the heterogeneous multitude of every other occupation, who fill the
streets of a busy city--for slaves are trained to every kind of manual
labour. The blacksmith, cabinet-maker, carpenter, builder,
wheelwright,--all have one or more slaves labouring at their trades. The
negro is a third arm to every working man, who can possibly save money
enough to purchase one. He is emphatically the "right-hand man" of every
man. Even free negroes cannot do without them: some of them own several,
to whom they are the severest masters.
"To whom do you belong?" I once inquired of a negro whom I had employed.
"There's my master," he replied; pointing to a steady old negro, who had
purchased himself, then his wife, and subsequently his three children,
by his own manual exertions and persevering industry. He was now the
owner of a comfortable house, a piece of land, and two or three slaves,
to whom he could add one every three years. It is worthy of remark, and
serves to illustrate one of the many singularities characteristic of
the race, that the free negro, who "buys his wife's freedom," as they
term it, from her master, by paying him her full value, ever afterward
considers her in the light of property.
"Thomas, you are a free man," I remarked to one who had purchased
himself and wife from his master, by the profits of a poultry yard and
vegetable garden, industriously attended to for many years, in his
leisure hours and on Sundays. "You are a free man; I suppose you will
soon have negroes of your own."
"Hi! Hab one now, master." "Who, Tom?"--"Ol' Sarah, master." "Old Sarah!
she is your wife." "She my nigger too; I pay master five hun'red dollar
for her."
Many of the negroes who swarm in the cities are what are called "hired
servants." They belong to planters, or others, who, finding them
qualified for some occupation in which they cannot afford to employ
them, hire them to citizens, as mechanics, cooks, waiters, nurses, &c.,
and receive the monthly wages for their services. Some steady slaves are
permitted to "hire their own time;" that is, to go into town and earn
what they can, as porters, labourers, gardeners, or in other ways, and
pay a stipulated sum weekly to their owners, which will be regulated
according to the supposed value of the slave's labour. Masters, however,
who are sufficiently indulgent to allow them to "hire their time," are
seldom rigorous in rating their labour very high. But whether the slave
earn less or more than the specified sum, he must always pay that, and
neither more nor less than that to his master at the close of each
week, as the condition of this privilege. Few fail in making up the sum;
and generally they earn more, if industrious, which is expended in
little luxuries, or laid by in an old rag among the rafters of their
houses, till a sufficient sum is thus accumulated to purchase their
freedom. This they are seldom refused, and if a small amount is wanting
to reach their value, the master makes it up out of his own purse, or
rather, takes no notice of the deficiency. I have never known a planter
refuse to aid, by peculiar indulgences, any of his steady and
well-disposed slaves, who desired to purchase their freedom. On the
contrary, they often endeavour to excite emulation in them to the
attainment of this end. This custom of allowing slaves to "hire their
time," ensuring the master a certain sum weekly, and the slave a small
surplus, is mutually advantageous to both.
The majority of town servants are those who are hired to families by
planters, or by those living in town who own more than they have
employment for, or who can make more by hiring them out than by keeping
them at home. Some families, who possess not an acre of land, but own
many slaves, hire them out to different individuals; the wages
constituting their only income, which is often very large. There are
indeed few families, however wealthy, whose incomes are not increased by
the wages of hired slaves, and there are many poor people, who own one
or two slaves, whose hire enables them to live comfortably. From three
to five dollars a week is the hire of a female, and seventy-five cents
or a dollar a day for a male. Thus, contrary to the opinion at the
north, families may have good servants, and yet not own one, if they are
unable to buy, or are conscientious upon that ground, though there is
not a shade of difference between hiring a slave, where prejudices are
concerned, and owning one. Those who think otherwise, and thus compound
with conscience, are only making a distinction without a difference.
Northern people, when they come to this country, who dislike either to
hire or purchase, often bring free coloured, or white servants (helps)
with them. The first soon marry with the free blacks, or become too
lofty in their conceptions of things, in contrasting the situation of
their fellows around them, with their own, to be retained. The latter,
if they are young and pretty, or even old and ugly, assume the fine lady
at once, disdaining to be servants among slaves, and Hymen, in the
person of some spruce overseer, soon fulfils their expectations. I have
seen but one white servant, or domestic, of either sex, in this country,
and this was the body servant of an Englishman who remained a few days
in Natchez, during which time, John sturdily refused to perform a single
duty of his station.
The expense of a domestic establishment at the south, would appear very
great in the estimation of a New-Englander. A gardener, coachman, nurse,
cook, seamstress, and a house-maid, are indispensable. Some of the more
fashionable families add footmen, chamber-maids, hostler, an additional
nurse, if there be many children, and another seamstress. To each of
these officials is generally attached a young neophyte, while one
constantly stumbles over useless little negroes scattered all about the
house and court-yard. Necessary as custom has made so great a number of
servants, there seems to be much less domestic labour performed in a
family of five, such perfect "eye-servants" are they, than in a northern
family, with only one "maid of all work." There are some Yankee "kitchen
girls"--I beg their ladyships' pardon for so styling them--who can do
more house-work, and do it better, than three or four negro servants,
unless the eye of their mistress is upon them. As nearly all manual
labour is performed by slaves, there must be one to each department, and
hence originates a state of domestic manners and individual character,
which affords an interesting field of contemplation to the severer
northerner. The city slaves are distinguished as a class, by superior
intelligence, acuteness, and deeper moral degradation. A great
proportion of them are hired, and, free from restraint in a great
degree, compared with their situations under their own masters, or in
the country, they soon become corrupted by the vices of the city, and in
associating indiscriminately with each other, and the refuse of the
white population. Soon the vices of the city, divested of their
refinement, become their own unmasked. Although they may once have
ranked under the first class, and possessed the characteristics which
designate the decent, well-behaved domestic of the planter, they soon
lose their identity. There are of course exceptions to these
characteristics, as also in the other classes. Some of these exceptions
have come within my knowledge, of a highly meritorious character.
The third and lowest class consists of those slaves, who are termed
"field hands."[19] Many of them rank but little higher than the brutes
that perish, in the scale of intellect, and they are in general, as a
class, the last and lowest link in the chain of the human species.
Secluded in the solitude of an extensive plantation, which is their
world, beyond whose horizon they know nothing--their walks limited by
the "quarters" and the field--their knowledge and information derived
from the rude gossip of their fellows, straggling runaways, or house
servants, and without seeing a white person except their master or
overseer, as they ride over the estate, with whom they seldom hold any
conversation--they present the singular feature of African savages,
disciplined to subordination, and placed in the heart of a civilized
community. Mere change of place will not change the savage. Moral and
intellectual culture alone, will elevate him to an equality with his
civilized brethren. The African transplanted from the arid soil of Ebo,
Sene-Gambia, or Guinea, to the green fields of America, without mental
culture, will remain still the wild African, though he may wield his
ox-whip, whistle after his plough, and lift his hat, when addressed,
like his more civilized fellows. His children, born on the plantation to
which he is attached, and suffered to grow up as ignorant as himself,
will not be one degree higher in the scale of civilization, than they
would have been had they been born in Africa. The next generation will
be no higher advanced; and though they may have thrown away the idols of
their country, and been taught some vague notions of God and the
Christian religion, they are in almost every sense of the word Africans,
as rude, and barbarous, but not so artless, as their untamed brethren
beyond the Atlantic. This has been, till within a few years, the general
condition of "field hands" in this country, though there have been
exceptions on some plantations highly honourable to their proprietors.
Within a few years, gentlemen of intelligence, humanity, and wealth,
themselves the owners of great numbers of slaves, have exerted
themselves and used their influence in mitigating the condition of this
class. They commenced a reformation of the old system, whose chief
foundation was unyielding rigour, first upon their own plantations. The
influence of their example was manifest by the general change which
gradually took place on other estates. This reformation is still in
progress, and the condition of the plantation slave is now meliorated,
so far as policy will admit, while they remain in their present
relation. But still they are, and by necessity, always will be, an
inferior class to the two former. It is now popular to treat slaves with
kindness; and those planters who are known to be inhumanly rigorous to
their slaves, are scarcely countenanced by the more intelligent and
humane portion of the community. Such instances, however, are very rare;
but there are unprincipled men everywhere, who will give vent to their
ill feelings, and bad passions, not with less good-will upon the back of
an indented apprentice, than upon that of a purchased slave. Private
chapels are now introduced upon most of the plantations of the more
wealthy, which are far from any church; Sabbath-schools are instituted
for the black children, and Bible-classes for the parents, which are
superintended by the planter, a chaplain, or some of the female members
of the family. But with all these aids they are still, as I have
remarked, the most degraded class of slaves; and they are not only
regarded as such by the whites, but by the two other classes, who look
upon them as infinitely beneath themselves. It is a difficult matter to
impress upon their minds moral or religious truths. They generally get
hold of some undefined ideas, but they can go no farther. Their minds
seem to want the capacity to receive intellectual impressions, nor are
they capable of reasoning from the simplest principles, or of
associating ideas. A native planter, who has had the management of
between two and three hundred slaves, since he commenced planting,
recently informed me, that if he conveyed an order to any of his "field
hands," which contained two ideas, he was sure it would not be followed
correctly.
"Dick," said he to one of them, "go to the carriage-house, and you will
find a side-saddle and a man's saddle there. Put one of them on the roan
horse; but don't put on the ladies' saddle, mind you." "Yes, master,"
said Dick, lifting his cap very respectfully, and then posted off to the
carriage-house; whence he returned in a few minutes with the roan
caparisoned for a lady.
The last idea seems to thrust out the first. I have frequently tried
experiments to ascertain how far this was true of them in general, and
have convinced myself, that it is very hard for the uneducated, rude
field negro to retain more than a single impression at a time. A
gentleman, who has been a leading planter for the last twenty years, and
who has nearly one hundred slaves, of all ages, told me, that, finding
the established catechism too hard for his slaves, he drew one up in
manuscript himself, as simply as he thought it could be done. But a few
lessons convinced him that he must make another effort, on a plan still
more simple: and he accordingly drew up a series of questions, each
containing one idea, and no more; for every question involving two had
always puzzled them. Every question he also made a _leading_ one: this
he found to be absolutely necessary. "Yet," he observed, "after all my
efforts, for many years past, to imbue the minds--not of the children
only, but of the parents, who were all included in my list of
catechumens--with the plainest rudiments of Christianity, I do not
think that I have one on my estate, who comprehends the simplest
principle connected with the atonement."
One of these negroes, after a long course of drilling, was asked, "In
whose image were you made?" "In de image ob de debil, master," was his
prompt reply.
The restrictions upon slaves are very rigorous in law, but not in fact.
They are forbidden to leave their estates without a written "pass," or
some letter or token, whereby it may appear that they are proceeding by
authority. This is a wise regulation, to which I have before alluded;
and if its spirit was properly entered into by the community, it would
be the best means for public security that could be adopted.
Patrols are organized in the several counties and towns, whose duty it
is to preserve order, and apprehend all negroes without passes. This
body of men consists of four or five citizens, unarmed, unless with
riding whips, headed by one of their number as captain. They are
appointed monthly by a justice of the peace, and authorized to visit
negro cabins, "quarters," and all places suspected to contain negroes,
or unlawful assemblies of slaves; and all whom they may find strolling
about, without a "pass," they are empowered to punish upon the spot,
with "any number of lashes not exceeding fifteen," or take them to
prison. They go out on duty once a week in the towns and villages; but
it is considered a bore, and performed reluctantly. But there is no
deficiency of energy and activity in case of any actual alarm. Soon
after the South-Hampton tragedy, during the Christmas holydays, the
public mind was excited by a vague rumour that this drama was to be
reacted here, as it was known that some of the negroes, supposed to be
engaged in it, had been brought out and sold in this state. During this
excitement the patrols were very vigilant. On the high roads they were
increased to one hundred armed and mounted men. But this alarm was
groundless, and very soon subsided.
The fencibles--a volunteer military corps in Natchez, composed of the
first young gentlemen of the city, and now commanded by the late
chancellor of the state--the best disciplined and finest looking body of
men west of the Alleghanies, constitute the military police of that
city. They are also the "firemen;" and a more efficient phalanx to
battle with a conflagration, cannot be found, even in New-York or
Boston. Patrols go out merely to preserve the peace of the neighbourhood
from any disturbance from drunken negroes, rather than to guard against
insurrectionary movements.
Though the south has little to apprehend from her coloured population,
yet many bold plans, indicating great genius in their originators, have
been formed by slaves for effecting their freedom. But farther than mere
plans, or violent acts, of short continuance, they will hardly be able
to advance. The negro is wholly destitute of courage. He possesses an
animal instinct, which impels him, when roused, to the performance of
the most savage acts. He is a being of impulse, and cowardice is a
principle of his soul, as instinctive as courage in the white man. This
may be caused by their condition, and without doubt it is. But whatever
may be the cause, the effect exists, and will ever preclude any
apprehension of serious evil from any insurrectionary combination of
their number. The spirit of insubordination will die as soon as the
momentary excitement which produced it has subsided; and negroes never
can accomplish any thing of a tragic nature, unless under the influence
of extraordinary temporary excitement. The negro has a habitual fear of
the white man, which has become a second nature; and this, combined with
the fearless contempt of the white man for him, in his belligerent
attitude, will operate to prevent any very serious evil resulting from
their plans.
A northerner looks upon a band of negroes, as upon so many _men_. But
the planter, or southerner, views them in a very different light; and
armed only with a hunting whip or walking-cane, he will fearlessly throw
himself among a score of them, armed as they may be, and they will
instantly flee with terror. There is a peculiar tone of authority, in
which an angry master speaks to his slaves, which, while they are
subordinate, cowers them, and when they are insubordinate, so strong is
the force of habit, it does not lose its effects. The very same cause
which enables him to keep in subjection fifty or a hundred negroes on
his estate, through the instrumentality of his voice, or mere presence,
operates so soon as the momentary intoxication of insurrectionary
excitement is over--if it does not check its first exhibition--to bring
them into subjection. Nor do I speak unadvisedly or lightly, when I say
that a band of insurgent slaves will be more easily intimidated and
defeated by half the number of planters, with whips or canes, and their
peculiarly authoritative voices, than by an equal number of northern
soldiers armed _cap a pie_. Fear, awe, and obedience in relation to his
master, are interwoven into the very nature of the slave. They are the
main-spring of all his actions; a part and portion of himself, and no
extraneous circumstances can enable him to rise superior to their
influence.
I could relate many facts illustrative of what I have stated above,
respecting the influence of habitual or natural obedience upon the
negro. The runaway will sometimes suffer himself to be taken by a white
boy not a third of his size. Recently, about midnight, a lady saw, by
the light of the moon, a tall negro enter her gallery. She immediately
arose, observed him through the window more distinctly as he was peering
about with a light step, and satisfied that he was a negro, she threw up
the window, and cried "stop, sir! stop!" in the tone of authority
peculiar to all who have had any thing to do with negroes. He at first
started, and made a motion to run, but on a repetition of the command he
submissively obeyed, and suffered himself to be taken by the lady's
coachman, whom she called up--the runaway, as he proved to be, standing
till he came and bound him, without moving a limb. This conduct betrayed
no uncommon nerve or resolution in the lady, for southern ladies would
laugh at the idea of being afraid of a negro. The readiness of the black
coachman to arrest his fellow slave, goes far also toward illustrating
the views which the slaves themselves entertain of their condition. But
this is illustrated still more forcibly by the following incident. I was
sitting, not long since, on the portico of a house in the country,
engaged in conversation, when an old negro entered the front gate,
leading by the arm a negro boy about sixteen years of age. "Ah," said
the gentleman with whom I was talking, "there is my runaway!" The old
man approached the steps, which led to the portico, and removing his
hat, as usual with slaves on addressing a white person, said, "master, I
done bring John home. I cotch him skulkin 'bout in Natchy: I wish master
sell him where ol' nigger nebber see him more, if he runaway 'gain: he
disgrace he family; his ol' mammy cry 'nough 'bout it when she hearn
it."
This couple were father and son. A "good negro," in the usual
acceptation of the term, feels that there is a kind of disgrace attached
to himself and family, if any one of them becomes a runaway.
A negro lad, who had absconded for a few days' play, was apprehended and
led by his overseer through the streets on his way home, not long ago,
when an old negro wash-woman standing by, exclaimed on seeing him, "La,
me! who 'tink he 'gin so young to act bad!" I will relate an instance of
their readiness to arrest each other.
"Missus, dere's a runaway back de garden," said hastily a young negress,
as a party were sitting down to the tea table of a lady at whose house I
was visiting. "Let me go catch him," "let me go missus," said the
waiters, and they could hardly be kept in the hall. Permission was given
for one to go, who in a few minutes returned, leading up to the
hall-door a stout half-naked negro whom he had caught prowling about the
premises. "Here de nigger, missus," said he exultingly, as though he
himself belonged to another race and colour.
Negroes are very sensitive. They are easily excited, and upon no subject
so much so perhaps, as religion. They are, particularly the females, of
a very religious temperament, strongly inclining to superstition. Unable
to command their feelings, they give vent to the least emotion in the
loudest clamours. They are thereby persuaded that they are converted,
and apply for admission into the church in great numbers. Many of them
are perhaps truly pious. But the religion of most of them is made up of
shouting, which is an incontrovertible argument or proof, with them, of
conversion. This shouting is not produced generally by the sermon, for
few are able to understand a very plain discourse, of which every
sentence will contain words wholly incomprehensible to them. But they
always listen with great attention, and so they would do were the sermon
delivered in any other tongue. A few of the more intelligent and pious
negroes, who can understand most of the sermon, perhaps become affected,
and unable, like their better disciplined masters, to control their
feelings, give vent to them in groans and shouts. Those about them catch
the infection, and spread it, till the whole negro portion of the
audience in the gallery, becomes affected ostensibly by religious
feeling, but really by a kind of animal magnetism, inexplicable and
uncontrollable.
The majority of the religious slaves are of the Methodist denomination,
some of which sect may be found on every plantation in the country, but
few of them are practical Christians. They are apt to consider the name
as the thing. But I have met with individual exceptions, which reflect
honour upon their race, and which I now recall with pleasure. One of the
most touching and eloquent prayers I have ever heard, I recently
listened to from the lips of an old negro, (who sometimes preached to
his fellow slaves,) as he kneeled by the pallet of a dying African, and
commended in an appeal,--which for beautiful simplicity and pathos, is
seldom equalled--his departing spirit to his God.
I have observed that they are seldom influenced by the principles of
religion in their individual conduct. Many, who are regarded by their
brother Africans as "shining lights," drink ardent spirits freely and
without compunction. "Ben, why do you drink whiskey?" I inquired of an
old "member," who was very fond of indulging in this favourite southern
potation for all classes.--"It no sin master--don't de Bible say, what
enter into de mouth no defile de man?" This was unanswerable.
I asked another, "why he swore?" "Cause, master, nigger no keep de debil
down he throat, when oxen so bad."
Negro preaching has obtained here formerly, but the injudicious course
taken at the north by those who are friendly to the cause of
emancipation, but who do not evince their good feelings in the wisest
manner, has led planters to keep a tighter rein upon their slaves. And
negro preaching, among the removal of other privileges which they once
enjoyed, is now interdicted. It is certainly to be regretted that the
steps taken by those who desire to do away slavery, should have
militated against their views, through their own unadvised measures, and
placed the subject of their philanthropic efforts in a less desirable
state than formerly.
The more I see of slavery, the more firmly I am convinced that the
interference of our northern friends, in the present state of their
information upon the subject, will be more injurious than beneficial to
the cause. The physician, like Prince Hohenloe, might as reasonably be
expected to heal, with the Atlantic between himself and his patient's
pulse, or to use a juster figure, an individual, wholly ignorant of a
disease, might as well attempt its cure, as for northerners, however
sincere their exertions, or however pure their intentions may be, under
existing circumstances, to meliorate the condition of the coloured
population of the south. When the chains of the slave are broken in
pieces, it must be by a southern hand--and thousands of southern
gentlemen are already extending their arms, ready to strike the blow.
And when experience shall tell them the time is at hand, then,
"Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!" shall be shouted from the
south to the north; and
wind waves
Shall waft the tidings to the land of slaves,
Proclaim on Guinea's coast, by Gambia's side,
As far as Niger rolls his eastern tide,
"Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!"
I will conclude my remarks upon this interesting subject, with some
valuable reflections from another pen. "It avails but little to
deprecate now," says the able writer whom I quote, "and even to denounce
with holy zeal, the iniquity of those who first established the
relations of master and slave in the then colonies of Great Britain, but
now United States of America. These relations have been sanctioned by
law and long usage, and interwoven with the institutions of the two
countries: they cannot be cancelled at once by any law, founded on
justice and equity, which should place at once either or both of the
parties in a less advantageous position, than the one which they held
when connected by the tie of master and slave. However opposed to
slavery in the abstract, and alive to its numerous evils in practice;
and with whatever zeal we may advocate emancipation, we ought ever, in
this, as in all other kinds of reform, political as well as moral, to
act with that wise discretion, which should make the present work a
means of future and permanent good. It should be steadily borne in mind,
therefore, that immediate, unconditional emancipation, while it is
detrimental to the master, does no immediate good to the manumitted
slave. It is not the boon, so much as a beginning, a hope, and a promise
of future good to the African; it is simply one of the means, a most
important and paramount one, indeed, for acquiring the blessings of
rational liberty; but it is not the blessing itself. It becomes,
therefore, the bounden duty, on every principle of equity and religion,
of those who, either of their own free will, or by menaces to the
master, give emancipation to the slave, to carry out what they have
begun, to realize what they have promised, to fulfil the hopes which
they have raised. Failing to do this, and simply content with severing
the relations between master and slave, they become, themselves, the
most cruel tyrants, the most unjust men. They have hurried on, by their
blind zeal, a crisis, which they are either unable, or unwilling, or
know not how, to turn to the best account, for the cause of humanity,
civilization, and religion.
Previous--and essential preliminaries, to any attempt at emancipation,
either by direct advocacy of the measure in particular quarters, or by
legislative enactments, where such are constitutional and legal--a full
inquiry ought to be instituted under the following heads:--
I. The actual condition of the slaves, which will include the kind and
amount of labour which they are bound to perform, the treatment which
they experience when at work, and the degree of attention paid to their
physical wants and moral nature, as to lodging, clothing, food,
amusements, and instruction.
II. The immediate effects of unconditional emancipation, on the coloured
freeman. Under this head should be investigated his capability, under
the circumstances, of providing for himself and family; and of his
acting the part of a good neighbour, and a useful, productive citizen.
III. The compatibility of the whites and blacks, the former masters and
slaves, and their descendants respectively, living together after
emancipation in the same community, with due regard to the feelings,
interests, dispositions, and wants of each class.
IV. The measures to be adopted for the interests of each, in case of
such incompatibility being evident and impossible to be overcome. The
first branch of inquiry results favourably to the cause of humanity, as
far as the West Indies are concerned. The state of the slave population
in the United States is even still more favourable in the main: and if
the comparisons instituted between the slaves in the islands and the
operatives in England, have resulted in favour of the superior comforts
of the former, I feel very sure that, when made between the latter and
the American slaves, they will exhibit these in a still more
advantageous position.
All this, however, while it diminishes the fears of the philanthropist,
ought not to relax his efforts for a future and gradual melioration. It
simply illustrates things as they are, and does not positively show how
they should be.
The facts hitherto collected under the second branch of inquiry, are not
encouraging. The third head presents a very unsatisfactory aspect to the
friends of emancipation, and of the negro race. The problem has not been
solved; or if partially so, it goes to show, that there is an
incompatibility between the two races, and that both are sufferers by
their sojourn in the same land, even though both should be free
nominally, and, in the eye of the law, equal. A glance at the condition
of the free states of the union, as they are called, in this respect,
exhibits the proofs of this condition of things. And so long as these
startling anomalies exist--freedom without its enjoyments, equality
without its social privileges--we really do not see how the people of
the free states can pretend, with any show of propriety or justice, even
had they the power by law and constitution, to meddle with the relations
between master and slave, in the slave-holding states. They have the
right, which all men ought to have, of discussing freely any and every
important question in ethics, jurisprudence, and political economy, but
not to give their conclusion a direct and offensive application to those
portions of their fellow-citizens or fellow-men, to whom they have not
yet furnished a clear and satisfactory example, and rule of conduct in
the case specially adverted to.
Still more do the difficulties of the subject increase, if the last
branch of inquiry has not been satisfactorily carried out--if the
necessity of separation of the two races, be denied; or, if admitted,
the means of accomplishing it be opposed and reviled, as either
impracticable or unjust. I am myself in favour of emancipation; but this
is a conclusion which it seems to us ought to be carried into effect,
only after a due consideration of the premises, and with a full
knowledge of the remoter consequences, and ability to make these
consequences correspond with the claims of justice and peace in the
beginning; and the best and permanent interests of the two races,
ultimately. Have those who advocate immediate and unconditional
emancipation weighed well these several branches of inquiry on this
momentous subject? It is to be feared, indeed, by their language and
conduct, that they have not. They should beware, while they are
denouncing the slave-holder, that they do not themselves incur a still
more fearful responsibility, and make themselves answerable for
jeoparding, if not actually dissolving, the Union, and encouraging
civil, perhaps servile war, with all its horrors and atrocities."