University of Virginia Library

43. XXXIX.

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 à 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 controul 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

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.”