enlightenment. But, evidently, this time has not yet arrived for the
people of our Southern States, whatever may be the condition in this
respect of the more civilized and enlightened portions of mankind. Nor,
indeed, could any different disposition of the Southern people he
expected in their present social condition. One third of their
population is composed of African slaves, semicivilized, systematically
deprived of knowledge, and subjected to physical coercion, instead of
being incited to usefulness by the higher motives of self-interest and
laudable ambition. To say that this is a degraded class, is only to
recognize their supreme misfortune, and not to reproach or insult them
on account of their unhappy condition. But this degradation does not
affect them alone. It reaches their oppressors also, and involves them
in its unavoidable consequences. By that inevitable law of action and
reaction which prevails alike in moral and social as in physical
phenomena, the community which has so large a portion of its members in
a condition of ignorance and brutality, must, throughout its whole body,
partake of the degradation which exists within it, and must be affected,
by the very contact, in all its feelings, sentiments, and purposes,
through the gross and ignorant passions which such an association cannot
fail to arouse. The moral level of the whole society is lowered to the
average condition of its constituent parts. To expect the controlling
power of such a community to be accessible to reason and conciliation,
would indeed argue an utter ignorance of the whole slave system and of
its influence upon the minds and hearts of those who sustain it. War is
the normal condition of those communities which cherish slavery; and
although such an institution, misplaced in connection with the
civilization of the nineteenth century, may seem to have changed its
original nature in accordance with existing circumstances, yet, when its
purposes are thwarted, it is ever ready for military violence. It is
like a native barbarian, schooled and trained to apparent civilization,
but ever inclined, at the first temptation, to fall into his natural
habits of wild and savage life. The Southern organization has already
proved itself to be peculiarly fitted for warlike operations; it has
been correspondingly unsuited to modern industrial pursuits, except for
the simplest and most primitive of all labors, those of agriculture.
Indeed, these were