tyranny towards his fellows.
This gave to the social intercourse between slaves a flavor of
vulgarity and insincerity utterly incompatible with the development of
the finer instincts of personality.[344]

The essential injustice of slavery lies in withholding the legitimate
use of those means for self-development which are the inalienable
right of every creature born with potentialities for personality. It
becomes a national crime when the public conscience in any age
recognizes in a group or an individual potentialities for the exercise
of rights or the discharge of social functions with a rational regard
for the well-being of society as a whole, and yet through powerful
class interests refuses to give legal recognition to those rights. The
paradox of the slaveholder's position and the fundamental injustice of
it appear even in the slave codes and the arguments used in defense of
the "peculiar institution." The slave codes treated the slave in one
clause as a chattel, an irrational thing, and yet proceed to embody in
the same code regulations against learning to read and write, theft,
and murder, thus acknowledging that the slave is both rational and
moral. Laws against teaching slaves were passed in South Carolina in
1834, in Georgia, 1829, Louisiana, 1829, Alabama, 1830 and Virginia,
1849.

As a result of this negation of his personality the slave thought and
acted solely in terms of the social mind of the white. Hence the
prevailing idea of the slave, "massa can do no wrong."[345] The slave
had no social consciousness, no ethical code apart from that of the
white master; his self-determining powers of personality had no scope
for expression or development. He looked down with infinite scorn upon
the "poor white trash" which had no entree into his master's circle
and he pitied the free Negro because his lack of a master gave him no
social standing. To have a Negro overseer was a disgrace. Olmsted
overheard the following conversation between two Negroes: "Workin' in
a tobacco factory all de year roun', an' come Christmas, only twenty
dollars! Workin' mighty hard too--up to twelve o'clock o'night very
often--_an' den to hab a nigger oberseah_!" "A nigger!" "Yes dat's it
yer see. Wouldn't care ef it warn't for dat. _Nothin' but a dirty
nigger! orderin' 'round, jes' as ef he was a wite man_."[346] To be
sure, on the basis of this submerged status of the slave, ties of the
greatest intimacy and affection often grew up b