protected and reared, are indisputable facts. Interest joins with affection in promoting this unity of feeling. To the negro, it insures food, fuel, and clothing, medical attendance, and in most cases religious instruction. The young child is seldom removed from the parent's protection, and beyond doubt, the institution prevents the separation of families, to an extent unknown among the laboring poor of the world. It provides him with a protector, whose interest and feeling combine in demanding such protection. To the master, it gives a servant whose interests are identical with his own, who has indeed no other interest, except the gratification of a few animal passions, for which purpose he considers it no robbery to purloin his master's goods. In short, the Southern slavery is a patriarchal, social system. The master is the head of his family. Next to wife and children, he cares for his slaves. He avenges their injuries, protects their persons, provides for their wants, and guides their labors. In return, he is revered and held as protector and master. Nine-tenths of the Southern masters would be defended by their slaves, at the peril of their own lives. The evils of the system are equally unquestionable. That it engenders in the youth of the South that overbearing and despotic spirit, ascribed to the relation by Mr. Jefferson, is not true to the extent he alleges. The fact, that Northern men are sometimes the most exacting masters, is well known. The reason of this is that they expect from the slave the amount of work which they have received from a hireling. This he never will do, and the Southern-bred master does not look for it. The security of his place, as well as the indolence of his 1 On my father's plantation, an aged negro woman could call together more than one hundred of her lineal descendants. I saw this old negro dance at the wedding of her great granddaughter. She did no labor for my father for more than forty years before her death. nature, do not furnish the necessary stimulus. It is true, however, that the young man of the South is accustomed to rule, and even the son of a poor man, without a slave, to a certain extent, commands obedience from the negro population. The result is a spirit of independence, which brooks not opposition. Within a proper limit this is not an evil. Indulgence makes it a sin. A good consequence of this is, a more perfect equality in social life, among the rich and poor, than can be had where the menial servants are of the same color. An evil consequence is a too great sensitiveness on questions of personal honor, and a corresponding disposition to settle them "by wager of battle." An evil attributed to slavery, and frequently alluded to, is the want of chastity in female slaves, and a corresponding immorality in the white males. To a certain extent this is true; and to the extent that the slave is under the control and subject to the order of the master, the condition of slavery is responsible. Every well-informed person at the South, however, knows that the exercise of such power for such a purpose is almost unknown. The prevalence of the evil is attributable to other causes. The most prominent of these is the natural lewdness of the negro. It is not the consequence of slavery. The free negro in Africa, in the West Indies, in America, exhibits the same disposition, perhaps not to the same degree when living in a Christian community.1 Another cause is the fact that the negress knows that the offspring of such intercourse, the mulatto, having greater intelligence, and being in 'The ratio of mulattoes to blacks, among the free colored population of the Northern States, shows this to be true among them. In Maine, 51; New Hampshire, 54; Vermont, 40; Massachusetts, 34; Connecticut, 30; and Rhode Island, 24, out of every 100 were mulattoes, in 1850. See Mortality Statistics of the Census of 1850, p. 35. Bowen alludes to this vice in Liberia, but hopes it is not so prevalent, "if report may be trusted, as with the people of Sierra Leone, or of France." Central Africa, p. 32. deed a superior race, has a better opportunity of enjoying the privileges of domestics; in other words, is elevated by the mixture of blood. Her sin does not entail mis fortune but good fortune on her children. Nor does she lose any social position even with her own race. Under such circumstances the prevalence of this sin is not surprising. It is undoubtedly true, that from this cause the poor white females of the slaveholding States are not subject to as great temptations and importunities as they would be under other circumstances. That the ignorant poor, under the heating Southern sun, would compare unfavorably with those of colder climates in this particular, except for this institution, is manifested by the immorality of some ignorant districts in slaveholding States, where but few negroes are found. How far such a result counterbalances the evil admitted, can be weighed only by the great Arbiter of the universe. A social evil of no small magnitude, arising from this condition, is the imbibing by children of the superstitions, fears, and habits, of the negroes, with whom they are necessarily, to some extent, reared. The negro is not yet more than semi-civilized. The marvellous and the unearthly, ghosts, witches, and charmings, are mingled even with his religion. Great caution is necessary, on the part of the Southern mother, to protect the young child from such influences. The inability of the slave parents to control and govern their own children from the intervention of another power, the master's, has been considered an evil of this social system. Theoretically it is; practically it is not, for two reasons: first, the master never interferes with but rather encourages such government; it is an aid to him. And, second, unless the child in some way interferes with the comfort or wishes of the parent, the negro has no disposition to control his waywardness or his vices. That the marriage relation between slaves is not recognized or protected by the law, is another evil to the negro attending the system, and to a qualified extent it is an evil. In practice, public opinion protects the relation. The unfeeling separation of husband and wife, is a rare occurrence. It never happens when both belong to the same master. To regulate properly this relation by legislation, so as to prevent inhumanity on the one hand, and not to bind too much the owner's power of selling an unworthy or unruly slave on the other, requires great sagacity and prudence. It would require a prophetic vision to foretell the future of the American negro slaves. Emancipation, in their present location, can never be peacefully effected. Until the white race of the South is exterminated or driven off, it can never be forcibly effected. Amalgamation, to any great extent, is a moral impossibility. Colonization on the coast of Africa could be effected only at immense cost, and at the sacrifice of the lives of at least one-fourth of the emigrants. So long as climate and disease, and the profitable planting of cotton, rice, tobacco, and cane, make the negro the only laborer inhabiting safely our Southern savannas and prairies, just so long will he remain a slave to the white man. Whenever the white laborer can successfully compete with him in these productions and occupy this soil, the negro will either be driven slowly through the Isthmus, to become amalgamated with the races of South America, or he will fall a victim to disease and neglect, begging bread at the white man's door. CHAPTER XVIII. AFRICAN COLONIZATION. Two attempts have been made to colonize the negro in Africa. During the American war of revolution, Great Britain, to induce the slaves to join her standard, promised to all such freedom. At the close of the war, such negroes as had accepted the offer were carried temporarily to Nova Scotia, and finally colonized at Sierra Leone, on the coast of Africa. To these have been added large numbers of captured Africans found on board of slavers, which have fallen into the hands of British cruisers. No special attention has been aroused in the mother country, among the benevolent and Christians, to this colony; and so far as the same may be considered as an effort to evidence the capacity of the negro for self-elevation, it is an admitted failure. Without dwelling longer on its history, we turn to Liberia, where everything has been done which philanthropy or religion could suggest, to develop to its fullest capacity the moral and intellectual growth of the negro. Satisfied that the only condition in which the white and black races could live together, to their mutual advantage, was that of slavery to the latter, and looking to Africa, the birthplace of the negro, for a home and a grave, the friends of the negro in the United States. inaugurated an effort, in 1816, to test his capacity for a self-sustaining civilization upon its shores. The philanthropists of the entire Union joined heartily in this en |