Carolina," said the pilot. "A South Carolinian, sir, is a gentleman all
over the world. It don't want nothin' further than the name of his State
to insure him respect. And when foreign folks and Northerners from them
abolition States bring free niggers into South Carolina, and then go to
comparing them to white folks, they better be mighty careful how they
stir about. South Carolina ought to've seceded last year, when she
talked about it, and sent every Yankee home to make shoe-pegs. We
wouldn't bin insulted then, as we are now. I'll tell you what it is,
Cap," said he, rather cooling off, "if our folks was only as spunky as
they were in eighteen hundred and thirty-two times, them fellers what
come here to feed upon South Carolina, put the devil in the heads of the
niggers, and then go home again, would see stars and feel bullet-holes."

The Captain listened to the pilot's original South Carolina talk, or, as
the pilot himself had called it, polished language, without exhibiting
any signs of fear and trembling at its sublime dignity; yet, finding
that the pilot had misconstrued the tenor of his answer, said, "You must
have mistaken the intention of my reply, sir; and the different manner
in which you appropriate its import may be attributed to a custom
among yourselves, which makes language offensive that has no offensive
meaning. We never carry pistols or any such playthings in my country.
We have a moral security for our lives, and never look upon death as so
great an enemy that we must carry deadly weapons to defend it. In fact,
pilot," he said in a joking manner, "they're rather cumbersome little
bits for a feller's pocket: I'd rather carry my supper and breakfast in
my pocket. Now tell us, who do you call niggers in South Carolina?"

"Why, Captain, we call all what a'n't white folks. Our folks can
tell 'em right smart. They can't shirk out if it's only marked by
the seventeenth generation. You can always tell 'em by the way they
look--they can't look you in the face, if they are ever so white. The
law snaps 'em up once in a while, and then, if they're ever so white,
it makes 'em prove it. I've known several cases where the doubt was in
favor of the nigger, but he couldn't prove it, and had to stand aside
among the darkies. Dogs take my skin, Cap, if theren't a Jew feller in
town as white as anybody, and his father's a doctor. It got whispered
round that he was a nigger, and the boarders where he stayed raised a
fuss