t. They are subject
to the same law that restricts the blackest slave. Where is the white
man that would not have yielded under such inequality? No! Mr. Grimshaw,
I am as true a Southerner-born and bred-as you are; but I have the
interests of these men at heart, because I know they are with us, and
their interests and feelings are identical with our own. They are Native
Americans by birth and blood, and we have no right to dispossess them
by law of what we have given them by blood. We destroy their feelings by
despoiling them of their rights, and by it we weaken our own cause. Give
them the same rights and privileges that we extend to that miserable
class of foreigners who are spreading pestilence and death over our
social institutions, and we would have nothing to fear from them, but
rather find them our strongest protectors. I want to see a law taking
from that class of men the power to lord it over and abuse them."

A friend, who has resided several years in Charleston, strong in his
feelings of Southern rights, and whose keen observation could not fail
to detect the working of different phases of the slave institution,
informed us that he had conversed with a great many very intelligent
and enterprising men belonging to that large class of "bright" men in
Charleston, and that which appeared to pain them most was the manner
they were treated by foreigners of the lowest class; that rights which
they had inherited by birth and blood were taken away from them; that,
being subjected to the same law which governed the most abject slave,
every construction of it went to degrade them, while it gave supreme
power to the most degraded white to impose upon them, and exercise his
vindictive feelings toward them; that no consideration being given to
circumstances, the least deviation from the police regulations made to
govern negroes, was taken advantage of by the petty guardmen, who either
extorted a fee to release them, or dragged them to the police-office,
where their oath was nothing, even if supported by testimony of their
own color; but the guardman's word was taken as positive proof. Thus the
laws of South Carolina forced them to be what their feelings revolted
at. And I want to see another making it a penal offence for those men
holding slaves for breeding purposes. Another, which humanity calls
for louder than any other, is one to regulate their food, punish
these grievous cases of starvation, and make the offender suffe