black slave himself. The
difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the
latter belongs to _one_ slaveholder, and the former belongs to _all_
the slaveholders, collectively. The white slave has taken from him,
by indirection, what the black slave has taken from him, directly, and
without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers. The
slave is robbed, by his master, of all his earnings, above what is
required for his bare physical necessities; and the white man is robbed
by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he is
flung into{240} competition with a class of laborers who work without
wages. The competition, and its injurious consequences, will, one day,
array the nonslaveholding white people of the slave states, against the
slave system, and make them the most effective workers against the great
evil. At present, the slaveholders blind them to this competition, by
keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves, _as men_--not
against them _as slaves_. They appeal to their pride, often denouncing
emancipation, as tending to place the white man, on an equality with
Negroes, and, by this means, they succeed in drawing off the minds of
the poor whites from the real fact, that, by the rich slave-master,
they are already regarded as but a single remove from equality with the
slave. The impression is cunningly made, that slavery is the only power
that can prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of
the slave's poverty and degradation. To make this enmity deep and broad,
between the slave and the poor white man, the latter is allowed to abuse
and whip the former, without hinderance. But--as I have suggested--this
state of facts prevails _mostly_ in the country. In the city of
Baltimore, there are not unfrequent murmurs, that educating the slaves
to be mechanics may, in the end, give slavemasters power to dispense
with the services of the poor white man altogether. But, with
characteristic dread of offending the slaveholders, these poor, white
mechanics in Mr. Gardiner's ship-yard--instead of applying the natural,
honest remedy for the apprehended evil, and objecting at once to work
there by the side of slaves--made a cowardly attack upon the free
colored mechanics, saying _they_ were eating the bread which should be
eaten by American freemen, and swearing that they would not work with
them. The feeling was, _really_, against having their labor brought i