ld from them, and which, if they obtain it at all, is the result of
their own unaided and unencouraged exertion. The more I hear, and see,
and learn, and ponder the whole of this system of slavery, the more
impossible I find it to conceive how its practisers and upholders are to
justify their deeds before the tribunal of their own conscience or God's
law. It is too dreadful to have those whom we love accomplices to this
wickedness; it is too intolerable to find myself an involuntary
accomplice to it.

I had a conversation the next morning with Abraham, cook John's brother,
upon the subject of his brother's theft; and only think of the _slave_
saying that 'this action had brought disgrace upon the family.' Does not
that sound very like the very best sort of free pride, the pride of
character, the honourable pride of honesty, integrity, and fidelity? But
this was not all, for this same Abraham, a clever carpenter and much
valued _hand_ on the estate, went on, in answer to my questions, to tell
me such a story that I declare to you I felt as if I could have howled
with helpless indignation and grief when he departed and went to resume
his work. His grandfather had been an old slave in Darien, extremely
clever as a carpenter, and so highly valued for his skill and good
character that his master allowed him to purchase his liberty by money
which he earned by working for himself at odd times, when his task work
was over. I asked Abraham what sum his grandfather paid for his freedom:
he said he did not know, but he supposed a large one, because of his being
a 'skilled carpenter,' and so a peculiarly valuable chattel. I presume,
from what I remember Major M---- and Dr. H---- saying on the subject of
the market value of negroes in Charleston and Savannah, that such a man in
the prime of life would have been worth from 1,500 to 2,000 dollars.
However, whatever the man paid for his ransom, by his grandson's account,
fourteen years after he became free, when he died, he had again amassed
money to the amount of 700 dollars, which he left among his wife and
children, the former being a slave on Major ----'s estate, where the
latter remained by virtue of that fact slaves also. So this man not only
bought his own freedom at a cost of _at least_ 1,000 dollars, but left a
little fortune of 700 more at his death: and then we are told of the
universal idleness, thriftlessness, incorrigible sloth, and brutish
incapacity of this inferior race