t they
are very hard masters. The negroes of the South have as little
sympathy for the Yankees, as their pro-slavery masters.

I have said that we all are guilty; yes, England is guilty! America is
guilty! The Northern states are guilty! The Southern states are
guilty! There is guilt everywhere! We should therefore beware how we
censure one another. Mother England furnished her American colonies
with slaves, and pocketed the money, and now she tells us, that we
have no right to that property which she forced on us, when we were a
weak and defenceless people, and could not do otherwise than obey her
commands. The eagle eyed, shrewd, and sagacious Yankees, ever alive to
all that pertains to their own pecuniary interests, with that
keen-witted penetration and over-reaching foresight, for which they
are remarkable, soon made the discovery, that slave labor in a
Northern latitude, and on a comparatively barren soil, must prove
unproductive. Hence, they strike a bargain with their Southern
neighbors. The Yankees say to the Southern planters, gentlemen, you
can employ these slaves profitably in the cultivation of tobacco and
cotton. Your climate and soil is adapted to slave labor, ours is not,
take our slaves, and let us have in return, gold and silver. It will
be a profitable investment on your part, and will relieve us of a
species of property, which, to us, is unprofitable. The Southern
planters accept their offer and purchase their slaves, and what next?
The Yankees turn around and say to the Southern men, you have no right
to hold these slaves as property. Kentucky and Tennessee might now,
with equal propriety and consistency sell their slaves to the Texan
planters, pocket the money, turn on their heels and say, why
gentlemen, it is true that we sold you these slaves, and you have paid
us for them; but you have no right to hold them in bondage. Refund our
money, cry the Texan planters. If you have sold us property which we
have no right to hold as property, refund our money? No, say the
sturdy Kentuckian and the stalwart Tennessean, not we. Help yourselves
the best way you can, we have got your money, and we shall hold on to
it. We make no children's bargains, and thus the matter ends.

If slave labor had been profitable in the North, Northern men would
have remained in possession of their slaves to the present day. No
one, I suppose, doubts it, and it is a good and sufficient reason why
they should be a little more mod