The proposed slave empire : its antecedents, constitution, and policy

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PROPOSED SLAVE EMPIRE:

ANTECEDENTS, CONSTITUTION,

AND. POLICY.

‘One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be
extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.
; This i is the only substantial dispute,”’—President Lincoln’s Inaugural Message.

ran great party [the Republican} was organized for the purpose of obtaining
the administration ofthe Government, with the avowed object of using its
_. power for the total exclusion of the Slave States from all participation of the
benefits of the public domain, acquired by all the States in common, whether
by. conquest or purchase ; ; of surrounding them entirely by States in which
slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so
insecure as to be entirely worthless.”—President Davis’ Inaugural Message.

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PREFACKE,

THE accompanying papers appeared in successive numbers of
the Nonconformist newspaper. They are published in a separate
form in response to the wishes of others, and in the hope that
they may. help, in however slight a degree, to deepen the growing
apprehension in this country at the possible consolidation of a
great and distinct Slave Power on the American continent. The
writer has endeavoured to grapple with those arguments by
which the prevalent sympathy with the Southern Confederation
is justified or excused. It is the more necessary that the ante-
cedents, constitution, and policy, of the Southern States should be
well examined, as this aspect of the struggle in America has —
been studiously ignored by some of the most influential organs
of the press in this country. The official repudiation of slavery
by the Federal Government, and the definite proposal of an eman-
cipation scheme in President Lincoln’s Message, add force to this
consideration. The writer disclaims any pretension to originality
of argument. His aim has been to bring within small and con-
venient compass facts and conclusions that are scattered over a
wide surface, and to indicate in brief the peculiar peril to liberty
and humanity that would ensue from the constitution and recog-
nition, for the first time in history, of a Commonwealth based
upon the ostentatious violation of natural rights. If the aboli-
tion of slavery in the British Empire, and of serfdom in Russia,
are likely to be regarded by posterity as the crowning achieve-
ments of the nineteenth century, the attempted formation of a
. nation with slavery for its “ corner-stone ” will undoubtedly con-
stitute its conspicycus infamy: so 5 9% 5 Sateeeeee

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THE PROPOSED SLAVE EMPIRE,

THE NEW POLITICAL GOSPEL.

. The one idea which history exhibits as evermore developing itself into
greater distinctness, is the idea of humanity, the noble endeavour to throw
down all barriers erected between men by prejudice and one-sided views, and
by setting aside the distinctions of religion, country, and colour, to treat the
whole human race as one brotherhood, having one great object—the pure
development of our spiritual nature-—Humboldt’s Cosmos.

The ideas entertained at the formation of the old Constitution were, that
the enslavement of the African race was in violation of the laws of nature;
that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, politically. Our new Go-
vernment is founded on exacily opposite ideas: its foundations are laid, its
corner-stone rests, Upon THE GREAT TRUTH, that the negro is not equal to the
white man ; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—Is HIS NATURAL
AND MORAL CONDITION. This our Government is the first in the history
of the world, based npon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. It
is upon this that our social fabric is- firmly planted; and I cannot permit
myself to doubt the ultimate success of the full recognition throughout the
civilised and enlightened world. . . . This stone, which was rejected by
the first builders, ‘is become the chief stone” in our edifice—Mr. A. H.
Stephens, Vice-President of the Southern Confederation.

In these two extracts are described, with clearness and autho-
rity, two theories of social and political life diametrically opposed.
If the one be true, the other must be false. Ifthe civilised world
holds with Baron Humboldt’s theory of progress, then is the
avowed attempt to set up a nation based upon its subversion a
crime against civilisation. If the German philosopher's “ idea”
be in harmony with the spirit of Christianity, that of Mr. Stephens
is opposed to it. There is no medium between the two—no point
of contact—no possibility of compromise. The Vice-President of
the Southern Confederation boldly and honestly demands and
expects “the full recognition throughout the civilised and en-
lightened world” of this “great truth,” the discovery of which
has been vouchsafed to the American slave-owners of the nine-
teenth century. The civilised world ought surely to respond to
this audacious challenge.

Englishmen have been so absorbed in the details, passing»
phases and collateral issues of this important struggle—so dazed
with the military success of a Power whose peculiar organisation
almost ensured success—that they have well-nigh lost sight of
the vital issues involved. It would be wrong to doubt their abhor-
rence of slavery, for the history of the last half-century testifies
2474
f

4

to it. But that a nation which has consecrated the principle that
all men are brethren—which has, for half-a-century at least, been
in the van of peoples that have striven to give practical effect to
Humboldt’s “idea ’”—which has abolished slavery throughout its
own dominions, paid twenty millions that the oppressed might be
set free, and witnessed the rapid progress in enlightenment, civi-
lisation, and comfort of the free negroes of the West Indies—
should now trample under foot its most glorious traditions by
giving its sympathies to a Power avowedly based upon the dogma |
“that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his [the
negro’s| natural and moral condition ;”—is the most anomalous
and melancholy phenomenon of the age. How is this strange
lapse of moral sentiment to be accounted for?’ We suppose it
must be because the attention of Englishmen has been fixed upon
those considerations that affect their own industry, because the
Confederates have shown a superior organisation to their ene-
mies, because the Federals have thus far displayed incompetence
to conduct a great war, intestine divisions, an overbearing spirit,
and an irresolute, contradictory purpose; but chiefly because the
real questions at stake have been studiously concealed by many
of our most influential journals, which detest democracy far more
than slavery. It would really seem as though, in relation to this
great American contest, England were voluntarily abdicating her
position as the great champion of humanity and freedom. It
is otherwise throughout Europe. In France, in Germany, and in
Italy, the foremost intellects and all men of liberal opinions see,
what we do not, that this is a conflict between civilisation, how-
ever imperfectly developed, and barbarism undisguised, and
acknowledged in the words of Garibaldi :—*“ Human rights are
before constitutional rights. Humanity must come first; com-
mercial interests, individual prosperity, afterwards.” *

The South has undoubtedly proved successful. Her soldiers
have exhibited better fighting qualities, her generals more genius,
her population greater union, than the North. If these are sw/ffi-
cient grounds for our approval of their cause, then have we no
reason to complain that, in the name of “liberty” and “ indepen-
dence,” the slaveowners of the Confederate States are building up
a nation upon principles opposed to humanity, progress, and
Christianity. Can it be that England has gone through centu-
ries of conflict to conquer her own liberties, and at last, after she
has gained the victory, and has come to be recognised as the asy-
lum of freedom for all the world, that she sets up as the idol of
the hour, that “incarnation of heathen hardheartedness and lust”

* The general téndency of the civilised world to regard ‘‘ involuntary ser- -
vitude” as incompatible with the spirit of the age, is illustrated by the recent
aboltion of serfdom in Russia, of slavery itself in the colonies of Denmark
ite Holland, and by the recognition of the emancipation principle even in

uba.

5

(as Professor Goldwin Smith has aptly described it) which goes
by the name of the Southern Confederation ? In accordance with
the present tendencies of public sentiment, we ought to re-furnish
our Temple of British Worthies—drag down the statues of our
Howards, Wilberforces, Clarksons, and Sturges, and replace them
withthe effigies of successful violators ofnatural rights and Christian
teachings. Let us pronounce Humboldt a sentimental dreamer,
and pay all honour to Messrs. Jefferson Davis and Stephens, the
champions of the new theory of morals and government!

It must be admitted that Mr. Stephens’ plain statement utterly
demolishes the fond delusions of British sympathisers with the
South, that the Confederates are fighting for liberty, pure and sim-
ple, are likely to be obliged to mitigate or abolish slavery, or will
be at last converted by the world’s opinion. A political edifice,
wholly based upon slavery, must necessarily be an oligarchy. Its
very safety is bound up with the suppression of free speech, and
the degradation of the intermediate “mean whites.” That oli-
garchy in America is now provided with a formidable, well-
disciplined army, officered by an aristocracy trained to habits of
command, and wielded by generals of great experience and con-
summate skill. Is it hkely that a military Power thus developed
will readily tear away the foundations which underlie it, and, in
the moment of conscious strength, repudiate the theory boldly
proclaimed in its utmost weakness? Why has not the North been
successful? Partly because of the great development in her
citizens of qualities—independence, self-assertion, civic and tra-
ding habits—which, in the normal condition of society, are essen-
tial to civilisation and progress. War, it is now seen, suited the
genius of the South; and in her white vagabonds, always more
ready with the gun than the spade, and her “border ruffians,” *
well versed in the use of the bowie-knife and revolver, were the
materials for a splendid army. But we must still venture to
prefer qualities which subdue the wilderness to those which con-
quer men. As the world’s opinion, the Hon. L. W. Spratt, of
South Carolina, one of the apostles of the new Gospel, boasts :—
“They [the European nations] will submit to any terms of inter-
course with the Slave Republic in consideration of its markets
and its products.” We are sorry to believe that Mr. Spratt is not
far wrong.

The principle deliberately avowed by Mr. Stephens—and we
cannot doubt he spoke with due authority + —“separates the

*** In Kansas it was the common practice of the slave oligarchy to take
free men and tie them to trees, and demand of them to recant their principles
—to cut off finger after finger till the hands were fingerless, and then riddle
them to death with bullets.”’— Speech of Mr. Lane in Congress.

ft The declaration of Mr. Stephens is only an echo of opinions openly and
frequently avowed by Southern writers and newspaper editors during the last
ten years.

6

Southern Confederacy,” says Professor Cairnes,* “ from all previ-
ous and from all existing, examples of communities tolerating
slavery, which renders it a new fact in history, and constitutes it
unequivocally the one Slave Power of the world.” Is Europe
prepared to receive this Power into the brotherhood of nations,
and to sanction by “full recognition” an infidel and subversive
theory of government based upon a lie, and detrimental alike to
the white and black race—a theory which no sovereign, states-
man, or commonwealth has, heretofore, in the experience of man-
kind, dared to propound, much less put in practice? Have we
nothing but denunciations, daily repeated like our prayers, for a
free and great nation that has been dared to the death-struggle
with this unholy principle? and are we right to reserve all our
sympathy and encouragement for the enemies of civilisation, who
_ embody selfishness as a great theory of government, and mean-
while jeer at us as caring only for markets and merchandise ?

WILL THE CONFEDERATES ABOLISH SLAVERY ?

This, then, is the result of the history of slavery. It began as a tolerated,
it has ended as an aggressive, institution ; and if it now threatens to dissolve
the Union, it is not because it has anything to fear for that which it possesses
ee but because it has received a check to its hopes of future acquisition.
—tLimes.

Thus wrote the leading journal in January, 1861, at the first
blush of the American secession, and thus then thought the British
public. The lapse of nearly two years has certainly not diminished
the power of the slave aristocracy. Has the succession of remark-
able events which have since followed furnished any reason for
supposing that the Slave Power is prepared to reverse its tradi-
tional policy, or that, as soon as Federal pressure is withdrawn,
it will be ready to relax, if not remove, the bondage of the
negro? This subject is too momentous to be mixed up with
aught else. It is quite possible to admit that the civil war is in-
flicting more injury than several generations can repair, that its
prolongation is placing in peril the free institutions of the North
and lowering the standard of political morality, and that Mr.
Jefferson Davis has, as Mr. Gladstone says, “made the South a
nation,” without affecting the question whether the establishment
of a new State, with the unique aims and organisation of the
seceders from the Union, is a matter for congratulation, and
whether England should be in haste to recognise it.

It is quietly assumed by the advocates of Southern indepen-
dence that the division of the Union into two distinct nations

* The Revolution in America; a lecture by John Elliott Cairnes, A.M.,
Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Kconomy in Queen’s College,
Galway. (Price threepence.) Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co, Perhaps
the most masterly exposition, in a small compass, of the real merits of the
American struggle that has been published.

7

would be the first step towards the extinction of slavery. We
are told that when once the South has become master of its own
destinies it will, for its own interest, adopt measures for abating
the evils of slavery, and that the continual pressure of the civilised
world must eventually bring about the desired reform. Those
who urge the plea completely ignore the circumstances under
which the civil war arose, and the peculiar organisation of the
Slave States. The South seceded because, as the Times was
ready enough to admit in 1861, it was thwarted in its avowed
object of indefinitely extending slavery. Such extension was not
a matter of choice, but of dire necessity. Southerners themselves
openly confessed it. “There is not a slaveholder,” said Judge
Warner, of Georgia, and in saying this he only expressed the
general sentiment, “in this house or out of it, but who knows
perfectly well that whenever slavery is confined within certain
specified limits its future existence is doomed ; it is only a ques-
tion of time as to its final destruction. You may take any single
slaveholding county in the Southern States, in which the great
staples of cotton and sugar are cultivated to any extent, and con-
fine the present slave population within the limits of that county.
Such is the rapid natural increase of the slaves, and the rapid
exhaustion of the soil in the cultivation of those crops (which add.
so much to the commercial wealth of the country), that in a few
years it would be impossible to support them within the limits of
such county. Both master and slave would be starved out; and
what would be the practical effect in any one county, the same
result would happen to all the slaveholding States. Slavery
cannot be confined within certain limits without producing the
destruction of both master and slave ; it requires fresh lands, plenty
of wood and water, not only for the comfort and happiness of the
slave, but for the benefit of the owner.”

The conclusions arising out of this damaging confession have
been worked out with unerring logic in the treatise of Professor
Cairnes. He shows that no community in the previous history
of mankind, though tolerating slavery, has ever been organised
precisely on this basis. The Southern States have flourished
mainly by the production of cotton, sugar and tobacco, for which
white labour is not suited, or at least required. A restricted body
of large proprietors, and an unlimited supply of rude labour, are
alone needed. The white population, except for military purposes,
is an incumbrance rather than a help. Such a system is fatal to
progress. The abundance of slave labour supersedes the necessity
for the use of skilled labour or machinery. The soil is fertile and
worked till itis exhausted. There are already vast districts which
have relapsed into wilderness. Hence that need for “fresh lands”
of which Judge Warner speaks, and the pressing demand for the
perpetual extension of the area of slavery. The constitution of
society in the South is moulded by the conditions of its social life.

8

“Tt resolves itself into three classes—the slaves, on whom
devolves all the regular industry ; the slave-holders, who reap
-all its fruits ; and an idle lawless rabble, who live dispersed over
vast plains in a condition little removed from absolute barbarism.”
“Southern independence,” stripped of all illusions, means the
right of a spendthrift oligarchy, comprising a thartveth part of the
population,* to keep the remainder in compulsory poverty and
ignorance, to exhaust the soil for the sake of immediate profit,
and then to help itself ad libitum to virgin territories, in the South
and West, that the normal condition of master and slave may be
perpetuated. Slavery, therefore, is not an accidental condition,
but the “foundation” of the Southern system.

Have there ever been, or are there now, any indications that
the South is ashamed or tired of slavery? Has it not, on the
contrary, been fighting for the institution with increasing viru-
lence for several generations? For the last quarter of a century
the entire energies of the Southern leaders have been absorbed in
extending it, making it the dominant power of the Union, and
nursing into a passion what was previously but a practice defended
on the score of convenience. It is now no longer an evil to be
endured, but a gigantic system to be defended, consecrated, and
extended. We quote again Mr. Stephens :—*“ Negro slavery is
but in its infancy. . . . We ought to increase and expand
our institutions. All nations when they cease to grow begin to
die. We should then endeavour to expand and grow. Central
America, Mexico, are all open to us.” “J am,” said the Hon.
A. G. Brown, “a pro-slavery man. I believe that slavery is of
divine origin; that God decreed it from the foundation of the

world.” “ An abolitionist,” says the Southern Literary Messenger,

in a recent article, “is a man who does not love slavery for its
own sake as a divine institution ; who does not worship it as a
corner-stone of civil liberty ; who does not adore it as the only
possible social condition on which a permanent Republican Go-
vernment can be created; and who does not, in his inmost soul,
desire to see it extended and perpetuated over the whole earth as
a means of human reformation second only in dignity, importance,
and sacredness, to the Christian religion.” This language may be
set down to fanaticism, but is it not precisely the tone lately
adopted by the Reverend proprietor of Mr. Sella Martin, his sister
and children,t of De Bow’s Review, and other Southern organs ?

* The number of slaveowners was estimated at the last Census at about
350,000. Of these, 1,733 persons held no less than 350,000 slaves.

+ The Rev. Sella Martin is an eloquent young coloured minister settled at
Boston, who six years ago escaped from slavery. He was owned by the Rey.
John Dorson, a clergyman at Columbus, Georgia, “ old, rich, and greatly
respected.” While Mr. Martin was in this country a year ago some warm
friends subscribed about 500/. to enable him to redeem his sister and her two
children from slavery—the former (a mulatto) the unmarried wife of Mr.
Dorson’s son, since dead; the latter his son’s children The Rey. John

G

Do not the clergy of the South pretend to find a warrant for
slavery in the pages of Holy Writ? It is only by such arguments
that the system can be logically defended, for if it be not good in
itself why strive to extend it ?

The acts of the leaders of this unique slave-holding nation
correspond with their new theory. Therehasnotbeenthe slightest
sign of any disposition to relax the baleful domestic institution.
All the indications have been in the opposite direction. “In
Southern eyes negroes cannot have the rights of freemen.”* It
will be remembered that after the late battles in front of Wash-
ington some waggons were sent to the field at Centreville under a
flag of truce to fetch the dead and wounded. The Confederates
seized the negro drivers, but sent the dead bodies—thus violating
the laws of war rather than acknowledge that the “contraband”
had any rights.+ Nor can we forget Jefferson Davis’ proclama-
tion that all negroes found fighting against the South would be
sent back to slavery.{ Are such men likely to be conscience-
striken by diplomatic notes from a Power that is at the same time
eagerly contending for their slave-raised cotton ?

But self-interest, it is pleaded, will oblige the South, willingly
or unwillingly, to abolish slavery. Why has not that motive
hitherto prevailed? It can hardly be said that the “ domestic
institution” has been a prosperous speculation. Indebtedness is
the normal condition of the American slaveholder, and it is

Dorson, with little hesitation, sold his son’s wife and children for 2,000 dols.
He also took the opportunity of writing to Mr. Martin in June last, remind-
ing him that he had not paid what he owed to the master from whom he had
run away, and expressing reluctance at parting with Caroline (Mr. Martin’s
sister), from the fear “ that God would hold him responsible for assisting to
plunge her into moral and social ruin,” by allowing her to go to Boston,
**the den of social monsters and abolition infidels.” The “ almighty dollar,”
however, carried the day! This is a true, recent, and appalling illustration
of the moral obliquity caused by slavery, and throws a more lurid light on its
actual working than all the statements of Southern writers.

*The Richmond Despatch of October 24th says:—‘*'Two carloads of
negroes arrived in this city yesterday, by the Central railroad, direct from
Harper’s Ferry. Included in the number were men, women, and children.
They are the property of citizens of Virginia, living in the vicinity of the
Ferry, and are part of those found with the Yankees after their capitulation
to the force of General Jackson. Their masters propose to offer them for
sale in Richmond, not deeming them desirable servants after having asso-
ciated with the Yankees.”

+ The Southern States of America are the only country in the world where
the mulattoes follow the condition of their mothers—the object being, of
course, to keep the two races perfectly distinct. The slightest taint of African
blood is there held to be a bar to freedom. j

¢ The Governor of South Carolina, in a recent edict, declares that wages
shall not be paid to slaves, and that the practice of allowing them to hire their
time must be stopped. ‘There must,” he significantly adds, “ be a distinc-
tion between the races as marked as their colours, and it must be distinctly
and universally understood that the white is the governing race, without an
exception, and without regard to disparity of intellect, merit, or acquirements.”

———- ew

10

notorious that before the outbreak of war a great part of the plan-
tations were mortgaged to Northern capitalists. Besides, in this
persistent cry for unlimited expansion we learn the failure of
slavery to promote the interests of those who are bound up with
it. But there are other questions than that of profit involved.
“It is not,” says Professor Cairnes, “simply as a productive in-
strument that slavery is valued by its supporters. It is far rather
for its social and political results, as the means of upholding a
form of society in which slaveholders are the sole depositories of
social prestige and political power, as the corner-stone of an
edifice of which they are the masters, that their system is
prized. Abolish slavery and you introduce a new order of things
and the ascendancy of the men who now rule in the South would
be at an end.”

We cannot, therefore, with many adherents of the Liberal
party, throw up our caps at the prospect of the triumph of “the
most odious form of unjust dominion which ever existed’”—as the
Southern cause is well described by Mr. J. Stuart Mill, in a re-
cent number of the Westminster Review. It may be, as Mr.
Gladstone. suggests, that it is for the interest of the negro race
that they should have to do with their own masters alone ;
though, with the fact before us, that fugitive slaves to the Free
States were rarely of late years restored, it is sophistical to say
that the whole power of the Union formally backed up the
slaveholder. But the main question is, whether the theory that —
negroes are no. better than live stock is to have room for inde-

finite expansion. “Should these conspirators,” as Mr. Mill ob-
serves, “succeed in making good their independence, and possess-
ing themselves of a part of the territories, being those which are
in immediate contact with Mexico, nothing is to be expected but
the spread of the institution by conquest (unless prevented by
some European power) over that vast country, and, ultimately,
over all Spanish America, and if circumstances permit, the con-
quest and annexation of the West Indies ; while so vast an ex-
tension of the field for the employment of slaves would raise up
a demand for more, which would, in all probability lead to that
re-opening of the African slave trade, the legitimacy and neces-
sity of which have long been publicly asserted by many organs
of the South.”

If these views have any weight, they do not suggest a very
speedy nor hearty recognition of the Southern Confederation by
free England. The present conflict is frightful almost beyond
precedent; but it may be better for the ultimate welfare of the
American continent that it should be fought out by the parties
concerned, than that foreign intervention, or the premature recog- _
nition of the South, should obtain present peace by entailing
chronic hostilities in the future. If the Czar, instead of decree-
ing the emancipation of the serfs, had decided that serfdom was

11

of Divine institution, and the corner-stone of the Russian empire,
would Europe be in haste to endorse the atrocious dogma? But
Russian serfdom is freedom itself compared with American
slavery.

THE SOUTH AND MR. LINCOLN’S PROCLAMATION.

It was open to the few thousands of slaveholders who origi-
nated the secession, and constitute de facto the Confederate
“nation,” to have met President Lincoln’s emancipation procla-
mation by freeing their own negroes, or by the promise of some —
ameliorative measures that would have satisfied the opinion of
Europe. If they had hinted at gradual emancipation, or even at
the restriction of slavery within its present limits, there would
have been a great body of Northern opinion to meet them half-
way, and only too great eagerness on this side the Atlantic to
welcome their good intentions, That would have been received
as evidence that, by separation, the Confederates desired rather
their own independence, than to tighten the bondage of several
millions of their fellow-men, and extend it over regions yet free
from the curse. But there has been no idea of the kind.* That
easy means of checkmating the North is not to be thought of.
Why overthrow a “ Divine” institution ?

If these millions of negroes are so “ cheerful and happy now;”
if they are perfectly satisfied to believe that the Almighty has
made a mistake in giving them faculties, feelings, and souls, and
that they are doomed by Divine decree for ever to be live stock,
without the rights of life, of family, of anything that humanity
holds dear—then have their owners nothing to fear from the
_ Federal proclamation. But the Southern papers conjure up the
most dreadful pictures as the result of the decree of “ Lincoln,
the fiend.” The slave “when unloosed is a savage,” say the
Richmond papers. Who has made him so, and would keep him
so to all eternity? We do not approve of Mr. Lincoln’s plan
for effecting abolition. But the mode of its reception by the
Confederates, confirms the strongest allegations of abolitionists,
and shows that the proclamation is not likely to be a mere
brutum fulmen. It has been met by slaveholders in the spirit
of slaveholders who commenced a slaveholders’ war, and we can-
not see how people with the love of freedom beating in their
veins can, in this crisis, cherish any sympathy with the South—by
which is always to be understood one-thirtieth part of the popu-
-lation—beyond the pity that must be felt for the wrong-doer
when retribution is overtaking him. Not by tardy justice to the

* Though the above was written in October last, and Mr. Lincoln’s eman-
cipation scheme has since been announced in his Message to Congress, there
are no signs as yet that the Confederates intend to demolish the “ corner-
stone” of their organisation.

12

slaves, but by threats of the most savage measures of retaliation
on the North, has the South responded to the Lincoln procla-
mation. Its provisions are pronounced to be “an outrage on the
rights of private property”—that “ property” being men, women,
and children. Those who aid and abet them in obtaining their
rights as human beings, are to be “kept in hard labour until the
termination of the war,” and “ Federal white officers training or
commanding negroes on military enterprises against the Con-
federate States, or inciting slaves to rebellion, or pretending to
free them under Lincoln’s proclamation, shall, if captured, suffer
death.”

The slave oligarchy is sternly resolved, then, to stand or fall
with its wicked institution. There is no faltering here—only
dire apprehension and imprecations of vengeance. If the slaves -
endeavour to obtain freedom under the Northern proclama-
tion, the Richmond Inquirer reminds them that “ insurrection is
their swift destruction,’ and recalls the incidents of a former —
rising, when the insurgent negroes “were hunted like wild beasts,
as they were, and were at first killed wherever found.” “Give
him [the negro] his liberty,” says the Richmond Whig, “and he
will abuse it. He must be kept where he is, and as he is, if he
is to be made useful. He must be kept down, otherwise he will
be a rebellious and dangerous subject.” This is, as we have
already shewn, the genuine, invariable, Southern creed—never-
ceasing denial of human rights to nearly four millions of God’s
creatures. We have it here in black and white from one of the
principal Confederate organs. The reprisals recommended, and
the sentiments avowed as a matter of course, are worthy of the
great Slave Power, “ whose advent certain classes in this country,
out of their exceeding love of liberty, are welcoming with jubi-
lant ecstasy into the civilised and Christian world.” *

The Confederate threats of vengeance and retaliation were of
course intended to prevent the proclamation from being carried
out after the first of January. At present, it might seem, Mr,
Lincoln’s decree will have a restricted practical effect. But the
panic of the South can scarcely be misplaced. Though the eman-
cipation edict does not recognise the abolition of slavery as a
principle, it inflicts a death-blow on the “ domestic institution,”
so far as Northern opportunity avails. In the Border States
it has met with less opposition than might have been expected.
“The Border Slave State Unionists,” says the correspondent of
the Daily News, “though as a whole they doubt the wisdom of
this measure, give the Government their hearty and uncon-
ditional support. The loyal Marylander or Kentuckian accepts
it as one of the conditions of the war. Some of them even go
further, and hail it as the only complete and efficient remedy.”

* Professor Goldwin Smith.

13

In these States the proclamation will at once loosen the slavery
system and accelerate the flight of fugitive negroes, which has
already been proceeding on a large scale wherever the Federal
armies have appeared.* And it is remarkable that in these
extensive districts we hear of no deeds of violence on the part of
the fugitives, but only of their anxiety to escape. Though Mis-
souri and Kansas now contain some thousands of free negroes,
almost every account shows their peaceable tendencies, and their
anxiety only to enjoy their freedom without thought of ven-
geance.

Nor is there any good reason for supposing, spite of alarmist
predictions to the contrary, that the proclamation will be fol-
lowed by the horrors of a servile insurrection even in the genuine
Slave States. Where are the signs of the Aceldama which is
the only thought now suggested in our leading papers, in con-
néxion with these millions of meek human beings? In the
interior, of course, there is little expectation that the slaves will
hear of the deliverance of their race promised by “ Massa Lin-
eum.” It is only on the outskirts of the Gulf States, where the
North has planted its foot, that the message can reach the negro.
And at all these places—Port Royal, South Carolina, and the
Southern stream of the Mississippi in particular—the free
negroes are already to be numbered by thousands. “General
Neal Dow, who lately commanded the Federal garrison at Fort
St. Philip below New Orleans, and had some five hundred slaves
within his lines, reports that for 70 miles between here and
New Orleans slavery is practically extinguished. In some cases
the masters hire their servants. Several masters have come here
and asked permission to hire their servants, who are at the forts,
to go and help them get in their crops. Of course I consent,
and the servants go very willingly.” He predicts as the result
of the President’s proclamation that the slaves in that quarter
“will flock to our. standard en masse.” General Phelps, also,
who commands on the Mississippi above New Orleans, speaks of
the advent of fugitives within the Federal lines in large numbers,
chiefly of negroes from Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina,
who had been sent South, “and were generally religious per-
sons.” Captain Davis reports in a similar strain of the negroes
arrived in New Orleans from the Border States, and contrasts
their intelligence with that of the resident Blacks. And here,
by the way, we may remark, is valuable proof that the intelli-
gence and religion of the negro are developed in proportion as he
approaches the North. It is in the Gulf States that true Cim-
merian darkness prevails, and where the genuine type of “the wild
beast” described by the Richmond papers is to be found. There

*It is estimated that over 200,000 slaves have escaped in Maryland, Ken-
tucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Missouri, since the war began.

14

is nothing, at all events, in the above information, that suggests
the idea of negroes “ wading up to the knees in the blood of the
whites,” nor are such ‘sanguinary excesses probable, unless the
South drives its slaves to despair. Ever since the issue of the
Proclamation, we have had weekly assurance that the Con-
federates are fighting chiefly to preserve Slavery.

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERATION AND ITS
CONSTITUTION.

What do Englishmen really know of the great Slave Power
that is knocking at the door of European Cabinets to claim
admission to the brotherhood of nations? Next to nothing, we
imagine. They have seen one side of the picture and are content.
They admire the military capabilities, the discipline, the des-
perate courage, the hardy spirit of the Seceders—see that their
leaders are men of genius and resource, their people ready to
make sacrifices—and forthwith jump to the conclusion that the
South has earned for itself the right to become an independent
nation. But before we can safely decide in the case it is neces-
sary to examine the organisation of this new Power. We ma
thus be helped to a distinct impression as to the likelihood of the
South ever settling into a free nation.

The free population of the eleven seceded States is 5,581,649,
a number unquestionably large enough per se to be entitled to
independence.* The peculiarity and gravity of the case is, that
these five and a half million of men demand the right of keeping
in perpetual bondage another three and a half million of men.
No such claim as this has been made upon the civilised world
since the world began. It is clear, too, that these Southern
whites would care little for independence without that right, for
they seceded from the American Union expressly on the ground
that slavery was in danger. The South is fighting for the right
of making its own laws and for securing its independent freedom,
But it is also fighting for the unrestricted power of suspending
all law and all freedom in the case of more than one-third of the
entire population. The arguments urged by the Confederates are
logically unassailable. To deny freedom to one-third of a nation

* This is the actual white population of the seceded States, where, of
course, the 3,520,116 “chattels” go for nothing. We observe that in his
published letter to Mr. Boon, Mr. Mason has the effrontery to claim “twelve
millions” as belonging to the Southern Confederation. This large number
is attained by including not only four millions of slaves, but the entire popu-
lation of Kentucky, Western Virginia, and Missouri, none of which States
have yet seceded from the Union, or are in entire possession of the South.
The New York Tribune of November 29th says “that nearly one-third of
the population, and more than a third of the area claimed by the ee
are to day under Union control, most of it won by hard fighting within the
past year.”

15

‘would be monstrous and indefensible. But when it is contended
that that third is an inferior race, incapable of being free, and
that the negro “must be kept down, otherwise he will be a rebel-
lious and dangerous subject,” the theory of the Southern slave-
owners is found to be consistent with their practice. Is the
civilised world prepared to endorse that theory ?

This is not going back to an age of barbarism. It is a more
unique and portentous social phenomenon than the wickedest
age has evolved. Even the darkest period of the world’s history
has produced nothing that will compare with it for abnegation of
all the principles and ties that bind society together. Oh ye
Christians of England! when you are disposed to be fascinated
by the glare of Confederate valour, think what that sympathy
inevitably involves! Did the most barbarous nation of antiquity
ever hit upon the device of slave-breeding—ever make the body
and soul of man so purely a commercial speculation as that it
became necessary to shut out all light from the poor slave, and
keep him in the condition of a well-fed ox? It has been reserved
for a professedly Christian Power, legally to prostitute God’s
holiest social ordinance to the most infamous of ends. Suppose one
of our counties to be set apart for the breeding of men and women,
to be sold away at any time of life to our colonies to gratify the
lust or cupidity of settlers there. Is not the very idea almost
too revolting to be hinted at? Yet of such infamy is Virginia
the scene all the year round. Nay, slave-breeding is an essential
part of the system of slavery; and, according to the one-sided
views Christian Englishmen have been momentarily betrayed
into accepting by concealed partisans of slavery, the fact that this
slave-breeding State has been visited as it were by the scourge
of Heaven, and that many thousands of her negroes have been
rescued from pollution and the fangs of evil-minded and bloody
men, is to be moaned over as a calamity. |

Mr. Stephens spoke with literal truth when he described
slavery as the “corner-stone” of the Southern Confederation.
The constitution it has adopted is expressly designed to give a
monopoly of power to the slave-holders, and every article of the
pact constituting this new nation accepts as an axiom that the
slave is “property.” That principle is inwrought in the consti-
tution. In theory it is democratic. Every white man has a
vote. The suffrage involves no property qualification, but it
confers upon the slave-holders three votes for every five slaves
_ he possesses. The result of this provision is that the 350,000
slave-holders of the Confederate States will possess more than
two million votes in addition to their own. And when it is
borne in mind that an overwhelming proportion of the free men
of the South are dependent upon this slave-aristocracy, it must
be admitted that in this case the democratic theory is a figment,

16

and that the South is practically an all-powerful oligarchy of
slave-owners.

It is superfluous to say that there is no “abolition sentimen-
talism ” about this unique constitution. Article L; section 9,
provides as follows :— |

“No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law DENYING OR
IMPAIRING THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN SLAVES, SHALL BE PASSED.”

We would invite the attention of those who entertain the idea
that the South is merely putting up with slavery as au evil to be
endured, and eventually got rid of, to this fundamental postulate. -
Not a thought or a hint here of gradual emancipation! It is all
precisely in accordance with the sentiments expressed by every
Southérn authority. To make assurance doubly sure, other
articles provide for the free “transit and sojourn of citizens ”
with their slaves and other property in the several States of the
Confederation, and for the prompt delivery of all fugitive slaves
to their owners. So that these people have, with one or two
other alterations—prolonging the Presidency to six years, and
making the tenure of office by employés dependent on good beha-
viour—nearly copied the constitution they repudiated, because
they were beaten at the poll, only they have taken care that
unadulterated slavery shall be, as 2 never was before, emblazoned
on its front. We ask again whether it is not downright delusion
to suppose that the very cardinal feature of the separate organi-
sation of the South will ever be surrendered to external pressure.
If so, then when this Confederation, composed mainly of slave-
holders, slave-breeders, slave-catchers, slave-auctioneers, overseers
of slaves, and “mean” whites to whom labour is a degradation,
and whose highest ambition is to possess “niggers,” comes to
other nations and asks for recognition—surely it is not unreason-
able that the civilised world in the name of humanity should
hesitate to comply, or stringently insist upon conditions that will
bring the inhuman system to a certain and not distant end !

THE BORDER STATES.

Properly to understand the great contest which is raging across
the Atlantic, it is necessary to have accurate information relative
to those extensive regions, known by the name of the Border

* “Tn the cotton states,” says the Rev. W. Taylor, of California, in a re-
cent pamphlet (“‘ Causes and probable results of the ciyil war in America,”)
‘* about 47 per cent. of the population are slaves, about 51 per cent. non-
slayeowners, leaving but 4 per cent. who own the slaves and most of the real
estate, and rule the whole concern. ‘These non-slaveholders have but little
more responsibility for slavery than the slaves themselves. As for public
sentiment in the South, there is none, but such as will receive the endorse-
ment of the pro-slavery lords.

HY.

States, which separate North and South, and are mainly the scene
of hostilities. If, as is generally believed in England, the
restoration of the Union be “ chimerical’—though the Federals
refuse to admit the impossibility—then the practical object of the
war is the possession of these States. We think it will be found
that as slavery is the moral pivot on which the conflict turns, the
Border States question solves the political problem involved. The
following is a list of these States, with their population :—

Freemen. Slaves. Total.
Delaware - - - - - 110,.20 1,798 112,218
Kentucky - = - - - 930,223 225,490 1,155,713
Maryland and District of Columbia- 671,741 87,188 758,929
Missouri - A - os - 1,058,352 114,965 1,173,317
Virginia - - ~ - - 1,105,196 490,887 1,596,083
Total - : - - 3,875,932 920,328 4,796,260

With the exception of Maryland and Delaware, the whole of
these States are claimed by the South ; and it is only by includ-
ing them, as we have already pointed out, that Mr. Mason, their
Envoy, is able to make good his assertion that “the present popu-
lation of the Confederate States comprises about twelve millions of
people.” On what does this claim rest? Not upon the fact that
these States have elected to join the South—for Virginia alone
has so voted. Even in this case, it is to be observed that Virginia
at first voted down secession, and was only induced to revoke that
decision when the Montgomery Convention declared against the
re-opening of the African slave trade, in order to secure to the
“gentlemen” of Virginia the monopoly in the breeding of slaves
for the Southern market. It may be remembered also that
Western Virginia, which now contains scarcely any slaves, has
erected itself into a separate State, and joined its fortunes with
the North.

It suits the present purposes of the Southern leaders to magnify
the doctrine of State rights. Why, then, have they invaded
Kentucky, which has declared its neutrality, or laid claim to Mis-
souri, which elected to remain in the Union? Of course it may
be replied that the course the South has taken is justified by
example—the Federal Government having ignored State rights
in the case of all the States which voted for secession. This may
be justified by military considerations, but its policy shows that
the South can readily set aside State rights when it suits its pur-
pose, and that such high-sounding pleas are a mere pretence.
The citizens of Kentucky and Missouri are not likely to put much
faith in Southern theories of right which, in their case, are openly
and flagrantly violated. At all events, we find the Southern
Envoy to England claiming dominion over States that have in a
regular and constitutional way refused to secede, and are not now,
in point of fact, in possession of the Confederates. They demand
these States simply because they are Slave States. They would
have all the slavery to themselves. We commend this fact to

B

18

the consideration of the advocates of the South. It is a collateral
proof, if such were needed, of the real aims of this newly-organised
Slave Power. ’

When uninformed Englishmen talk about the right of the
South to “independence,” they mean a very different thing from
the Confederate leaders. They have a vague idea that it will be
the stepping-stone to the abolition of slavery which, we have
shown, the South scouts as impossible and pernicious. They
think it hard that the Seceded States should not be allowed to
go free. The slaveocracy mean that all States in which there is
a slave element should be obliged to make common cause with
them. And for that, even more than their own independence,
they are now fighting. They want a great Slave Power, as their
own writers state, which will be able to hold its own against the
ever-expanding Free States. If they were formally to propose
that the war shall be terminated by the recognition, as a separate
nation, of the States only which have actwally seceded, the civi-
lised world would know what they mean. Let there be no delu-
ion in this matter. The South is doubly the aggressor. It first,
by a deep-laid and flagrant conspiracy, broke up the Union to
set up for itself; and now, because it cannot hope to stand alone,
claims, and is trying to conquer, States which have constitution-
ally refused to join it.

It is this central idea—the consolidation and extension of
slavery for their own safety as well as profit—which has ani-
mated the Confederates from beginning to end, and urges them
to grasp at the Border States. Would the numerous advocates
of the South in this country advise that the North should, not-
withstanding its abstract right, surrender these States for the
sake of peace? If not, then should they be a little more tole-
rant of Northern persistence. They are bound to examine the
subject in its practical bearings—to work the problem out.
What would that surrender involve ? The table we have given
above supplies the answer. Even including Virginia, which,
from its very peculiar trade—that of slave-breeder-in-chief for
the South—naturally possesses a larger number of human live-
stock than any other State, we find that the slaves in the Border
States are only 920,328, or one-fifth of the population ; while in ~
the seceded States (Virginia excepted) they are 3,029,229, or two-
fifths. This disparity is easily accounted for—the Southern
States are better fitted for negro labour than those of a more
northerly latitude; there are few runaways in the South; but,
chiefly, because wherever free and slave labour come into con-
tact, the latter invariably gives way. In accordance with econo-
mical, or as we prefer to say, Providential laws, slavery—es-
pecially American slavery, which is altogether a new type of
servitude—contains within itself the seeds of dissolution, As—
Judge Warner, of Georgia, says, in the extract from his speech

19

already quoted—* There is not a slaveholder but who knows
perfectly well, that whenever slavery is confined within certain
limits, its future existence is doomed.”

The North, whatever its shortcomings, honestly proposed to
destroy slavery by restricting its area, and has risked the
dissolution of the American Union for this object. The South
seceded on this special point, because its paramount object
has been to sustain the “domestic institution”—as it only
can be sustained—by an indefinite expansion of slave terri-
tory. This is nothing less than a direct aggression on
civilization. And Mr. Bentinck, the member for Kings Lynn,
forsooth ! talks of it as a struggle for “liberty!” But it is by no
means the whole of the case. The South would fain secure to
itself the Border States, because it thus hopes forcibly to arrest
the working of that Providential law by which free labour is
steadily superseding slave labour. It is notorious that, in an-
other generation, if the war had not broken out, Maryland,
Missouri, and perhaps Kentucky, would have gradually got rid
of the “domestic institution,” and become the abodes of only
freemen. If, then, the South succeeds in its monstrous scheme
of usurpation, the beneficent action of natural laws tending to
extinguish slavery in the Border States would be obstructed, if
not entirely arrested. Why then should Englishmen, who really
detest slavery in their hearts, give their sympathy to a Slave
Power that would not only perpetuate the infamy but revive it
where it is dying a natural death ?

But the possession of the Border States involves other ques-
tions besides that of slavery. Let them be handed over to the
South, and the result would be to leave to the North a mere
strip of country between the vast areas of the Confederacy in
the South and Canada in the North, and ultimately reduce her
to the position of a second-class Power, even on her own con-
tinent. Can it then be said that the Federals are so very un-
reasonable, not merely in refusing to legalise secession, but in
declining to accept a frontier which would nearly separate the
Eastern and Western States, and make the South geographically,
as well as in extent of territory, the preponderating Power of
America? Can we be surprised that they should fight to the
death against so momentous a revolution ?

Putting aside, then, the accidents and passing phases of this
mighty struggle, we find that the North is practically fighting for
free labour as against slave labour. It upholds now, as it did in
the Presidential election of 1860, the principle that 1,363,370
square miles of “ Territories” belonging to the United States, and as
yet but thinly settled, shall be free from the pollution of slavery.
In refusing to surrender the Border States to the unconstitutional
demand of men who were but yesterday citizens of the same
commonwealth, it is asserting State rights, and the principle of
free labour and free settlement.

20

Since the war began, considerable progress, both in principle
and practice, has been made in the direction of emancipation
particularly in the Border States. All slaves have been set free
in the District of Columbia, slavery has been forbidden in the
Territories, and the Federal Government have concluded a slave-
trade treaty with England. In the Border States the war has
been to a great extent, in its results, a war of liberation. One-
half the slaves of Maryland are said to have escaped, thousands
of fugitive negroes in Virginia are free, and a still larger number
have burst their fetters in Missouri. The friends of the Con-
federates here are fond of throwing in the teeth of the Federals
that they do not desire to abolish slavery. It may be so; but if
slavery be abolished by their agency, will not the whole human
family have reason to rejoice? According to the testimony of
their enemies, the “domestic institution” perishes off the soil on
which the Northern troops plant their foot. “ Wherever the
Union armies have advanced,” says the Richmond Despatch, “ the
negroes have been swept off as clear as the Eastern locusts sweep
a field of grain. Not one green or black thing is left in the line
of the Yankee march, nor in the whole country for many miles
around. The Piedmont, the Upper Valley, the [York] Penin-
sula, the country watered by the Rappahannock and the Potomac,
have been stripped of their negro population.” Nevertheless, if
the Confederates succeed, the whole of these vast regions will be
re-peopled with the slave-breeder and his live stock, and the in-
ternal slave-trade will flourish anew.

THE CONFEDERATES AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

The Confederates have, by a special article of their constitu-
tion, prohibited the slave trade, and their champions in this
country have made much merit of this supposed concession to
humanity. The provisions relating both to the foreign and the
internal slave-trade are as follows :—

Art. I., Sect. 9. The importation of negroes of the African race from any
foreign country other than the slaveholding States or territories of the United
States of America, is hereby forbidden, and Congress is required to pass such
laws as shall effectually prevent the same.

Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from
any State not a member of, or territory belonging to, this Confederacy.

It might appear that by this fundamental article the foreign
slave-trade is, for all future time, prohibited by the South. But
such a conclusion would be altogether premature. All laws must
be in accordance with public opinion, or they will, at some time
or other, be repealed or evaded. We have the best proof that
the Southerners have no objection on principle to re-open the
African slave trade, and that in the adoption of the above fun-
damental article, they were influenced by the desire to buy the
support of the slave-breeding aristocracy of Virginia, which was

21

withheld till the new Confederation had prohibited the re-open-
ing of the African traffic. In its past history, the South has
never shown any repugnance to the infamous traffic. For twenty
years after the Declaration of Independence, the slave-trade was
kept open by the Federal Government at the earnest request of
the slaveholders ; and at the end of that time was declared to be
piracy. But this law remained a dead letter, and was never ex-
ecuted upon a single offender. Captain Gordon was the first
American slave-trader ever punished, and he was hanged after
the secession of the South. The right of search, which the
Federals have now conceded, or rather volunteered, was strenu-
ously withheld up to 1861, and cargoes of African negroes, down
to a short period of the outbreak of civil war, were occasionally
landed in the South, under the protection of the local authorities.

Only three or four years ago, there was a general agitation in
the Southern States for reviving the African slave-trade, in
which Mr. Yancey and others of the Confederate leaders took a
very prominent part in the interests of “free trade.” The facts
of the case have been recently so thoroughly recalled to remem-
brance by the Daily News, as scarcely to need further reference.
The resumption of the detestable trade was advocated in some of
the leading Southern newspapers, and by college professors and
members of Congress, not only on commercial grounds, but as a
moral and religious movement. The African Colonisation Society
was formed for the purpose of bringing negroes from the West
Coast and subjecting them to the influences of slavery, with a
view to their evangelisation and subsequent re-exportation ; and
the newspapers proved to their own entire satisfaction the great
benefit that would accrue to the Africans by being transferred
from the bonds of “ their former savage pagan masters” to those
of Christian slaveholders in America. One quotation will suffice
to put the matter beyond controversy :—“The South,” said Mr.
Lee, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry in the University of
Georgia, “has now nearly seven hundred thousand square miles
of unimproved land, and mines of vast extent and inestimable
value, which require human labour alone to render them exceed-
ingly productive. .... Fully to meet the mineral requirements
of the South will demand the labour of a million men in the
next twenty years.” In view of which facts the Professor regards
it as “providential that there should be so much unemployed
power, in human muscles, in Western Africa ”—muscular power
“which may be had at from ten to fifteen dollars as it exists in
each person ;” and then, warming with his subject, he exclaims,
“I trace the growing demand for negro muscles, bones, and brains
to the good providence of God.” Even President Davis, then a
senator for Mississippi, though he objected at the time to the re-
opening of the slave-trade by that particular State, took care to
base his opposition on special grounds, and “ not upon any general

22

theory ;” adding, “It is not supposed to be applicable to Texas,
to New Mexico, or to any future acquisitions to be made south of
the Rio Grande.” Unless, then, an entire revolution has taken
place in Southern opinion, it would be absurd to suppose that the
American Slave Power can have any moral objection to revive
the African slave-trade.

If such be the views of the South, why should it refrain from
renewing, at some future time, the odious traffic? To do this,
the Confederate Congress need not formally repeal the above
fundamental law. But if public opinion be the same under a
‘separate Commonwealth as it was two or three years ago, that
law will become a dead letter. Experience has shown, with a
superfluity of evidence, that neither government enactments nor
international treaties will suffice to ~put an end to this profitable
trade. To this very day, though we have purchased in hard coin
the co-operation of Spain to put it down, her treaty engagements
are openly violated in the case of Cuba, and no one can call her
to account. The re-opening of the African slave-trade by the
Confederates becomes, then, a question of policy and interest.
They may be deterred by the additional difficulty thrown in the
way by the active co-operation for the future of Federal cruisers
with our African squadron. But the real point is this :—If the
new Slave Power be allowed to have undisputed possession of
the vast territory to the west of the Mississippi as far as the
frontier of Mexico, and including Texas—which is as large as
France and England combined—and it was mainly to secure this
indefinite expansion that the Slave States seceded—* the labour
of a million men in the next twenty years” will be, as Professor
Lee says, absolutely required. The alternative will be, the
restriction of slavery, which, on the showing of Southern writers,
would be its gradual extinction, or its indefinite extension west-
ward, with an unlimited supply of “human muscles.” Remem-
bering the entire history and portentous growth of this Slave
Confederacy, can there be any doubt which of these alternatives
would be embraced ?

There is, indeed, a third alternative, which would be almost
equally disastrous to the interests of humanity. An abundant
supply of negroes the South must have, if it is to maintain the
slavery system. Admitting that the compact made with Virginia
will be observed, and the external slave-trade kept down in
perpetuity, the absolute need for servile labour must be satisfied
within the limits of the Confederation itself. If, then, we do
not have a revival of the African traffic with all its horrors, we
shall have a revival of the internal slave-trade with its revolting
accompaniments. ‘To either the one or the other, Englishmen—
say rather the civilised world—must have an invincible loathing. ~
As the demand for negroes increased, slave-breeding would not
be confined to Virginia or the Border States, but would become a

23

“profession ” wherever found to be profitable, and the exhausting
action of slave labour had impoverished the soil. The occupa-
tion of new territory will require more slaves—the increase of
slaves will require more territory. How, then, except by the
agency of such a convulsion as that now rocking America from
one end to the other, can we reasonably hope that the gigantic
evil will be abated? We have seen in little more than a genera-
tion, while credulous Englishmen have been patiently waiting
the extinction of slavery, the servile class in America increase at
least four-fold. We have seen it transformed from an institution
merely tolerated, to one defended from the pages of Holy Writ,
exalted as a great moral force, and guarded as a gigantic vested
interest. Leaving out of view, then, the foreign slave-trade, we
find this newly-created Slave Power making the most ample pro-
vision in its constitution adopted only eighteen months ago for the
protection of the inter-state slave-trade, the right ef transit and
sojourn throughout the South of citizens with their slaves, and
passing a special enactment for the surrender of fugitive negroes.
And, further, in order that all the Slave States should be forced
into the Confederacy, Congress is invested with powers to prevent
the slaves from any State not a member of the commonwealth
from being brought within its limits. Not only, then, is slavery
the “corner-stone” of the Southern Confederation, but every-
thing possible has been done even before it has become a recog-
nised “nation,” to provide for the augmentation of the supply of
servile labour by internal breeding and trading, that it may realise
its ambition to become a great Slave Power,

VIRGINIA—THE BLIGHT OF SLAVERY.

The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in those
colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.— Virginian
Convention, 1774.

Here are no well-cultivated farms ; 500 acres barely support a small family
of the better class of whites. . . . Slave-breeding supplies (or has sup-
plied) the purses of the upper classes, while their farms, deteriorating from
year to year, have barely yielded them the commonest “ hog and hominy”
required for the home diet of the section. All books, all music, all wines, all
luxuries of every sort, have been the product of a trade in souls—too fre-
quently of a trade in the offspring of the trader. —Letter from Fredericksburg
in the New York Times, Nov. 21, 1862.

“By their fruits ye shall know them.” The British people
seem hardly to realise the fact that the growth of their manu-
facturing system has been the means of expanding American
slavery into the greatest social phenomenon of the age. That
slavery, as developed in the Southern States, is inimical to pro-
gress, civilisation, morality, and religion—that it exhausts the
soil, paralyses the energies, and debauches the souls of men,—is
a position which may not only be sustained by argument, but

24

proved by experience. It may help to give greater definiteness
to the reader’s impressions if we endeavour impartially to describe
the actual working of that institution in one particular State.
We take Virginia as an example, because it is the oldest, one of
the largest, and the most fertile of the Slave States ; because
slavery is seen there in its mildest form; and because the events
of the war have brought the “Old Dominion,” and its capital,
Richmond, most prominently before the world. Virginia, besides,
is the only one of the Border States which has thrown in its lot
with the Southern Confederation.

In the same year that the Pilgrim Fathers stepped ashore at
Massachusetts Bay, (1619) the first importation of negro slaves in
North America took place. Some twenty black men, brought
from Africa direct, were landed in James River from a Dutch
ship, and were bought by a planter of the colony of Virginia. A
regular slave-trade gradually sprung up until, at the time of the
Revolution, Virginia contained within her borders no less than
270,000 negroes “ held to servitude.” They were employed mainly
in the cultivation of one staple, tobacco, which was increased
to so large an extent as to outrun the demands of the world, and
so exhausted the soil that large tracts of land soon became sterile.
The descendants of the cavaliers and “ gentlemen,” who were the
first settlers in Virginia, became the proprietors of large planta-
tions, formed a powerful and educated aristocracy of much the
same stamp as the old Irish landlords—lavish, dissipated, indo-
lent, and often non-resident. Side by side with a yearly increas-
ing number of slaves, there grew up, or settled, in Virginia, a
white population—the weakest, most ignorant, and poorest in the
American Commonwealth. At the reconstruction of society after
the Declaration of Independence, Virginia was among the last of
the States to revise its antiquated constitution and to surrender
the State-Church principle and the law of primogeniture, and
was only induced to accept these reforms by the eloquence and
influence of its great statesmen, Washington, Jefferson, Madison,
and Patrick Henry, who regarded them as the sole means of
averting ruin from the proprietors of the soil. The disastrous
influence of slavery upon the welfare of Virginia had already
become so manifest that emancipation was openly advocated by —
a formidable phalanx in the State Legislature ; and even before
the War of Independence was concluded, Jefferson proposed that
all negroes born after a certain time should be free. The plan
was postponed to a more convenient season, rather than rejected.
As appears from a resolution adopted unanimously by the Vir-
ginian Convention, slavery was then regarded as an evil to be got
rid of as soon as circumstances would permit.

Meanwhile a large number of the old gentry, ruined by family
pride, extravagance, and indolence, passed away, and their neglected
estates, fell into the hands of a new but energetic body of pro-

25

prietors who cultivated tobacco only in rotation with other crops,
and applied capital and science in agricultural pursuits. Virginia
seemed to be on the high road to prosperity. There was a grow-
ing influx of white labour, and a fair prospect that in the lapse of
time forced labour would cease, and that the State would become as
exclusively free soil as the States immediately north ofit. Slavery
once more blighted these improving prospects. King Cotton had
begun to assert his sway, and the successive annexation of
Alabama, Florida, and Texas, to the Union provided a boundless
expanse of virgin soil for its cultivation. The value of slaves
steadily rose, and the planters of Virginia found it more imme-
diately profitable to breed slaves for sale in the South than, by the
tedious processes of agriculture, to improve the value of their
estates. Landed property in the State diminished in worth, and
went out of cultivation, because the “gentlemen” of Virginia
chose to concentrate their efforts upon producing the largest
possible crop of human flesh to send to the new Southern cotton-
fields. Richmond grew into the slave-mart of the United States,
and it is estimated that from 1840 to 1850 no less than 100,000
head of human live-stock, valued at fifty millions of dollars, were
sent South, and that up to the outbreak of war this atrocious
export trade was going on at the rate of 15,000 slaves per annum.*

The moral effects of this change were soon visible. The eman
cipationists died out, and the advocacy of gradual abolition
became not only unpopular but dangerous. That which in 1776
had been spoken of with shame by Virginian statesmen was
nearly a century later proclaimed to be a beneficent ordination of
Providence. In 1854 we find the Richmond Hxaminer proclaim-
ing—“ It is all an hallucination to suppose that we are ever going
to get rid of African slavery, or that it will ever be desirable to
doso. . . . The negro is here, and here for ever; is our pro-
perty, and ours for ever; is never to be emancipated ; is to be
kept hard at work, and in rigid subjection all his days.” In
September, 1855, the Richmond Enquirer also described “the
existence of slavery as a permanent institution,” as being “the
true and great question of the day.” ‘The reader will hardly have
forgotten the fanatical addresses of Governor Wise, the panic that
ran through all Virginia when John Brown attempted to seize
Harper’s Ferry, and the subsequent persecution and expulsion of
every one in the State suspected of abolition.

Economically and socially, also, Virginia has suffered dis-
astrously by the revival of the internal slave-trade. All other
interests have become subordinate to that of breeding slaves. At
the Revolution she had nearly twice the population of Pennsyl-
vania, her neighbour ; in 1860, the respective numbers were—
Virginia, 1,047,411; Pennsylvania, 2,849,266! Her farms are

* Professor Cairnes in a letter to the Daily News.

26

not relatively one-third the value of those in the adjoining terri-
tory ; her unimproved land is three times that of Pennsylvania ;
her external commerce and internal communication will not bear
any comparison with those of her neighbour. While in all the
Free States every one is educated, there were lately in Virginia
126,000 young people who receivedno education except what could
be imparted by their benighted parents. The poor whites are, as
a rule, ignorant, degraded, and demoralised—despised even by the
blacks. Mr. Olmsted says he saw in Virginia “more excessively
poor than anywhere else.” To talk of liberty and independence
in connexion with them is simply ludicrous.* With abundance
of mineral wealth, and coal-fields the most extensive in the world,
a limitless supply of water-power, a rich soil and most genial
climate, Virginia, said the Richmond Enquirer, in 1852, “ from
being first in point of wealth and material power, has come down
to the fifth in the former and the fourth in the latter. New York,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio, stand above her in wealth,
and all but Massachusetts in population and political power.” It
is almost pitiable to see this sinking community clinging with
such desperation to the institution which has wrought their ruin,
as to face all the calamities of civil war rather than become
a free-labour State. But, as we know, the general sense
of the population was over-borne by a selfish oligarchy. We have
only to multiply Virginia by ten, and we have substantially a
picture of the condition to which the Confederate States will be
reduced, if they are unable to wrest from the North the right to
indefinite expansion westward.

The sole flourishing institution of the Virginians is that of

* The following is an extract of a letter written from Virginia barely
six weeks ago :—‘‘ I have often wondered how the white trash live. They ©
do not work, unless the planting of a little corn, the grazing of a horse, or
mule, and cow, and the raising of a few hogs and poultry—who run nearly
wild—may be called “work.” Still they live, and they raise many tow-
headed children, who perpetuate the unwholesome stock. I have often, I say,
wondered how they live. I have ascertained. These poor whites—ignored
by the aristocracy and despised by the blacks—exist on whisky. In this
wise :—Scratching together a few dollars (eight or ten was sufficient in time
of peace) they purchase a barrel or two of cheap whisky. The negroes—
always fond of liquor, and never honestly getting any, excepting during * the
holidays” —steal from their masters corn, wheat, and chickens. These things
they “trade” with the poor whites for drink. They will give two or three
bushels of corn or wheat, a hog, half-a-dozen chickens, for a pint of poor
liquor; and in this way the degraded white men that infest this country
exist.” ‘The same state of things exists more or less in all the cotton states,
but of course does not apply to the large towns. We have here a real test
of the value of the “‘independence” claimed with so much unction for the
poor whites who constitute an overwhelming majority of the Southern popula-
tion, excluding the slaves. ‘The Confederates have established a social and
political system, in which the poor whites have no proper place. The boon
asked in their name is, in point of fact, perpetual exclusion from a boundless
territory, where they are not wanted, and the continued supercession of their
industry by forced labour !

27

slavery. Slave-breeding, like cattle-breeding in other States, is
a lucrative occupation. The negroes, who outnumber those of
any Southern State, are, as rule, well fed, not overworked, and
mildly treated—as are live stock in general when being reared
for the market. But they are rigorously denied all instruction,
and are forbidden by law to meet together for worship, or for the
purpose of mutual improvement. Though they are encouraged
to “profess religion’—which is in their practice a compound of
fanaticism and superstition—their standard of morals is very
degraded, their habits swinish and offensive. They live in a
sensual Paradise, and have but small reverence for the marriage-
tie. Their owners, though not in general cruel or harsh, may
eowhide, hunt them with bloodhounds, or kill them at their
pleasure, and are amenable not to law, but only to public opinion
for such treatment. Every day of the week, except Sunday,
families of negroes—men and women, boys and girls—are placed
upon the auctioneers’ blocks in Richmond,* their points canvassed
like cattle, and sold singly as “lots” to the highest bidders,
with the probability that in a few days members of the same
family will be separated by hundreds of miles, and never again
see each other's faces. Nay, worse! Of that. group of sable
Africans now standing aloft before the keen gaze of hardened
slave-merchants and planters, it may chance that one will form
a member of a gang in Alabama doomed to endless cotton-grow-
ing beneath the lash; a second may find something like a home
as a body servant in a Southern family; a third may come to be
hunted with bloodhounds as a fugitive; a fourth, like the sister
of Sella Martin, may be bought to gratify the brutal lust of the son
of some Georgian clergyman, who will afterwards sell his own flesh
and blood! To perpetuate these infamies in the sacred names
of “liberty” and “independence,” the South demands to be
acknowledged as a “nation.” It is, perhaps, the crowning
feature of this crime against humanity that a great number—if
not the majority—of these traffickers in human flesh are members

* Tue Necro Marxet at Ricumonp.—The negro market has shown con-
siderable activity the present week, and prices have ranged well. At the
sale rooms of Messrs. Pulliam and Co., yesterday, a family of eight, consist-
ing of the mother and seven children, boys and girls, one in the mother’s
arms, sold for five thousand one hundred dollars, and a second family of the
same lot, consisting of a mother and four children, boys and girls, brought
two thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars. At the auction rooms of
Hector Davis, Esq., there was a large sale of single likely negro men and
women, some of the latter with children. The following is the range of
prices ;—Likely boy, 15 years old, 1,480 dols.; common woman and girl,
1,015 dols.; likely girl, 16 years old, 1,290 dols.; woman, girl, and boy,
1,860 dols ; negro woman, 780 dols.; woman and boy, 1,200 dols. ; likely
girl, mulatto, 1,320 dols., likely mulatto boy, 10 years old, 1,300 dols. ;
woman and two children, likely, 1,900 dols. ; likely farm hand (man), 1,010
dols. ; woman, cook, washer, and ironer, 600 dols. The attendance of buyers
was quite large.— Richmond Examiner, November 22, 1862.

28

of Christian churches, and have of late years—together with
their clergy—come to defend their infernal occupation from
Scripture. Thus, even in Virginia, where it is to be seen in its
mildest forms, slavery may be emphatically described in the
words of the Hon. Charles Sumner—as “barbarous in origin ;
barbarous in law; barbarous in all its pretensions; barbarous
in the instruments it employs; barbarous in consequences ;
barbarous in spirit; barbarous wherever it shows itself; while
it breeds barbarians and develops everywhere alike in the indi-
vidual, and in the society to which he belongs, the essential ele-
ments of barbarians.” *

Nearly a century ago Jefferson uttered a warning voice, and
his prophecy is now being strangely fulfilled. In reference to
the people of his own State he said, in 1787:—“<'They will for-
get themselves but in the sole faculty of making money, and will
never think of omitting to effect a due respect for their rights.
The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the
conclusion of this war will remain on us long—will be made
heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive, or expire wm a
convulsion.” Many a Virginian must, now feel that the predicted
day of retribution, though long delayed, has at length come, and
confess the bitter truth that Providence does, sooner or later, call

to account those who make merchandise of men’s bodies and
souls.

THE NEGROES OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.

“Give a dog a bad name and hang him.” ‘The picture drawn
by Carlyle of Quashee ~uatting on his provision ground, idling
all the day, and satistied with his pumpkin, is the favourite
illustration of negro habits by those who regard slavery as the
natural and happiest condition of the African race, and by those,
also, who are content to wink at slavery for the sake of its ad-
vantages. The negro (they say) is inherently apathetic, indolent,
improvident, incapable of using his mind, of exercising judgment
or forethought. He is like a child and needs a master, and if
left to his native tendencies will not work at all. If these alle-
gations, as applied to the slaves of America, were universally
true, they would not prove that the coloured race there are in-
capable of acting as free men. They would only show the
debasing influence of long-continued slavery,—that degradation
as an inferior race, denial of all rights, the suppression of all
motives for industry and self-reliance, have produced there
natural and inevitable results. The same theory was, indeed,
applied to the Celts, after centuries of oppression by the Anglo-
Saxon, but is no longer heard of now that the Irish are free

* Speech at Boston, October, 1862.

29

from these depressing influences. It is equally applicable to the
Neapolitans, or any race that has for generations been down-
trodden by despotism. To the plea of the American slaveowners
there is the conclusive reply—* You deny the negro the fruits of
his industry, you employ him as a mere machine, you shut out
from him all knowledge, you refuse to allow him to exercise
self-reliance in anything. If he be no better than an animal, you
have never allowed him to be anything else.” One might as
reasonably accuse a man, whose eyes have been put out, of being
unable to see, as admit the justice of the American slaveholders’
plea for refusing to emancipate, or ameliorate the condition of,
their slaves.*

We have already seen what the negro is able to become when
free. The British West Indies are a standing testimony to the
blessed results of emancipation. Governor Darling, of Jamaica,
states, in reference to the free negroes, that “an independent,
respectable, and, I believe, trustworthy, middle-class is rapidly
forming” in that island. “ How comes it,” we then remarked,
“that among the people who are libelled as ‘squatters’ on the
land of others, there are 60,000 families all housed in their own
cottages ; that they possess not less than 5,000 small sugar-mills’
for manufacturing their own produce; that the accumulated
property of the negroes of Jamaica, since emancipation, amounts
to 2,358,000/.; and that three-fifths of all the cultivated land in
that island is the bona fide property of the coloured people,
bought and paid for by their own industry? Is it a mark of in-
dolence and improvidence that the negroes of Jamaica have
nearly 50,000/. in the savings’ banks? and of their apathy, that
they support their own religious insti* .ons at an expenditure
of many thousands of pounds, besides contributing to the aid of
foreign missions ?”

But we need not go to the West Indies, nor even to the Northern
American States and Canada, where clergymen, lawyers, manu-
facturers, &c., of the coloured race are to be found, for proofs of
the falsehood of the plea that the negro is, under all circum-
stances, incapable, indolent, and shiftless, and to give the le to
Mr. Stephens’ “truth,” that slavery—subordination to the superior
race—is his [the negro’s] natural and moral condition.” Abun-
dant evidence that it is a libel may be found in the Slave States
themselves. No candid person would deny that, as a general
rule, slaves are childish and sensual, work listlessly, and require
continued superintendence. But is not that the result of forced
labour all the world over? Supply but the motives for industry,
and the negroes will work with diligence and perseverance. We
see this in the tobacco factories of Richmond, where they are hired
out and allowed to keep all their earnings beyond a certain amount.

_ * Nonconfoi mist, Jenuary 15th, 1862.

30

The result is that they“are able to obtain from five to twenty dol-
lars a-‘month. In the lumber trade of the Great Dismal Swamp
slaves are hired out by the year, and are credited with all they
earn over and above the sum paid to their master, and the cost
of their clothing and provisions. They are comparatively free
men. “These chattels,” says Mr. Olmsted (in “ Our Slave States”),
“were more upright and straightforward in their manner and
conversation than any field-hand plantation-negroes I saw at the
South ; two or three of their employers with whom I conversed
spoke well of them as compared with other slaves, and made
no complaints of rascality or laziness.” It is the same on
the sugar plantations of Louisiana, where the slaves work
with greater cheerfulness at “the grinding season,’ when
eighteen hours of labour is the average, than at any other
period. Why? SBecause “they are then better paid; they -
have better and more varied food and stimulants than usual,
but especially they have a degree of freedom and social pleasure,

and a variety of occupation which brings a recreation of the
mind, and to a certain degree gives them strength for, and plea-
sure in, their labour.” And Mr. Olmsted lays it down as a rule,
resulting from a wide personal observation in the Slave States,
that slaves show themselves most worthy of trust, when their
masters are considerate and liberal towards them—that in pro-
portion as incentives are offered to the negro is the value of his
industry—that the slave of the agricultural districts of North
Carolina, where hei x:-a condition of semi-freedom, is twice as
valuable as the slave on the plantations of South Carolina, with
the driver standing over him whip in hand. This result is,
indeed, so uniform, that in Cuba, where every slave has the oppor-
tunity of working out his own freedom, “emancipations are con-
stantly goig on, and the free people of colour are becoming
enlightened, cultwated, and wealthy.” And it is to be observed
that, in Cuba, a very large proportion of the slaves have been,
within the last generation, brought direct from Africa. That such
an ameliorative practice does not prevailin America, where every
slave has been born on the soil, is owing to the action of law and
opinion which decide that slavery is the “natural” condition of
the African race; or as the Richmond Examiner puts it :-—“ It is
a thing that we cannot do without, that is righteous, profitable,
and permanent, and that belongs to Southern society as inherently,
intrinsically, and durably as the white race itself.”

Nor need we cite the free negroes of Jamaica or Pennsylvania
to show that the ‘African race, even when education is denied, are
capable of intelligence and civilisation. Under even the disad-
vantages of slavery itself we find evidence of the fact.

There was no need to pretend (said a Texan slaveowner to Mr. Olmsted)
that the negro was incapable of being greatly improved. No man improved
faster under favourable circumstances. The difference between town-bred

31

and plantation-bred slaves, in point of general intelligence, was always very
striking. He had been in business intercourse for many years with a gen-
tleman whose bookkeeping and correspondence had been almost altogether
carried on by a slave, and it was admirably done ; his manner of expression
was terse, pointed, and appropriate, and his business abilities every way ad-
mirable. His owner could not possibly have obtained more valuable services
from a white clerk.

cs

The same writer gives another case in point :—

A 5k a whom I visited at Montgomery had a carpenter, who was |
remar

able for his mathematical capacities. Without having had any in-
struction, he was able to give very close and accurate estimates for the
quantity of all descriptions of lumber to be used in building a large and
handsome dwelling, of the time to be employed upon it, and of its cost. He
was an excellent workman, and when not occupied with work directly for
his master, obtained employment of others—making engagements and taking
contracts for jobs, without being required to consult his master. He had
been purchased for two thousand dollars, and his ordinary wages were two
dollars a day. He earned considerable money besides, for himself, by over-
work at his trade.

Mr. Olmsted also gives full details of the mechanism of ae
and well-managed rice plantation he visited in Georgia, whe
he found slave blacksmiths, carpenters, &c., whose workmanship
exhibited as much ingenuity and skill as that of the ordinary
mechanics of New England; a slave steward whose responsibili-
ties were greater than those of the white overseer; and slave-
engineers who attend to the steam-engine, and earn wages sutffi-
cient to keep them in comparative luxury.

_ These, it may be said, are extreme or selected cases, and
not fair specimens of American slaves in general. If so, at least
they suffice to disprove Mr. Stephens’ theory. But they are far
from being isolated proofs of the intelligence and industrial capa-
city of the negro. Everywhere throughout the Southern States
there are numbers of negroes employed in skilled trades, or
occupying positions of some responsibility, who, when they have
a chance of earning wages, exhibit unusual industry, and often-
times great aptness and intelligence. But there has lately come
before the world an extreme case which conclusively proves the

safety and policy of giving freedom to the negro. When, on the

appearance of a Federal armament, the South Carolinas were
obliged to abandon the Sea Islands, they left behind them nearly
10,000 plantation slaves of unmixed African descent, a large
proportion of whom were aged, infirm, and children. They were
about the most degraded of their race. The able-bodied amongst
them, about 4,000, were set to work on low wages, under the
auspices of the Generals, and under Northern superintendence,
first to gather in the standing cotton—more than a million of
pounds of which were picked, made up, and sold in New York
for the benefit of the national treasury. Subsequently, 14,000
acres of cotton, corn, and other provisions were planted by these
negroes under great difficulties, and in the midst of a raging war,

*

32

ith st rprising | success. Mr. J. M _MKim, ahs epi»
eeks among them, and visited all te principal islands, reports
that “t hese - Tive-long chattel slaves dehumanised in law, ‘and. f
Biot ed, in fact, to the extent of human power, when suddenly
ansformed into free labourers, go to work, and continue to work,
hg peaceably, happily, and industriously ;” these free labour negroes
a = are sober, susceptible of control, and, though the plantations are
a by purely voluntary agency and inadequately. superin-
ended, decorous' in their behaviour, and tidy in their appear-
. “On ‘the first day of the week they all go to church, or
és ratber to Sunday-school, which is generally held” in the church,
» During the week the children, to the number of 2,500, are taught,
} but on Sunday people of all ages assemble, and the ‘superinten-
dents and others act in the capacity of teachers.” A similar
work has been going on around New Orleans, at Fortress Mon-
roe, and in the, parts of North Carolina occupied by the Federal
- forces, andall the emancipated negroes are being instructed by
bandgs®of teachers from Massachusetts and other States, who
nobly given themselves to the task. Such is the interest-
ing enterprise carried on in the Southern States by those whom
English journalists, and poets who have sung of “the good time
coming,” denounce as “exterminators,” and as eager to stir up
servile insurrection and massacre in the South.
As in the West Indies before 1838, so in the Sontharn States
of America at the present time, these continual assertions as to
the irreclaimable depravity of the coloured race are simply sel-
fish, impudent, and hard-hearted excuses for refusing emancipa-
tion. That they should be reiterated by English journals is a

Ps ay. to our national reputation. It needs but that the slave-

owners of America should. be willing and just, to make emanci-
emt pation. perfectly safe, and beneficial alike to white and black.
: | eae difficulties exist not in the condition of the negro, hut int
= es a master.

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