dren eat from--belongs to me. If he didn't catch a runaway nigger
once in a while, he wouldn't see a dime from one year to another.'

'Then you have to support this man and his family?'

'Yes, what I don't give him, he steals. Half-a-dozen others poach on me
in the same way.'

'Why don't you set them at work?'

'They can't be made to work. I have hired them time and again, hoping to
make something of them, but I never got one to work more than half-a-day
at a time. It's their nature to lounge and to steal.'

'Then why do you keep them about you?'

'Well, to be candid, their presence is of use in keeping the blacks in
subordination, and they are worth all they cost me, because I control
their votes.'

'I thought the blacks were said to be entirely contented?'

'No, not contented. I do not claim that. I only say that they are unfit
for freedom. I might cite a hundred instances in which it has been their
ruin.'

'I have never heard of one. It seems strange to me that a man who can
support another can not support himself.'

'Oh! no, it's not at all strange. The slave has hands, and when the
master gives him brains, he works well enough; but to support himself he
needs both hands and brains, and he has only hands. I'll give you a case
in point: At Wilmington, N.C., some years ago lived a negro by the name
of Jack Campbell. He was a slave, and he was employed, before the river
below the town was deepened so as to admit of the passage of large
vessels, in lightering cargoes up to the city. He hired his time of his
master, and carried on business on his own account. Every one knew him,
and his character for honesty, sobriety, and punctuality stood so high
that his word was considered among merchants as good as that of the
first business-men of the place. Well, Jack's wife and children were
free, and he finally took it into his head to be free himself. He
arranged with his master to purchase himself within a specified time, at
eight hundred dollars, and was to deposit his earnings, till they
reached the required sum, in the hands of a certain merchant. He went
on, and in three years had accumulated nearly seven hundred dollars,
_when his master failed_. As the slave has no right to property, Jack's
earnings belonged by law to his master, and they were attached by the
creditors, and taken to pay the master's debts. Jack then 'changed
hands,' received a new owner, who also consented to his buying himself,
at about the