FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  
ill have their own opinions as to the expediency of maintaining it. The bigots of the South may rave of the beauty of 'the institution,' and make many believe that they speak for the whole,--a little scum when whipped covers the whole pail,--but beneath all lies a steadily-increasing mass of practical men who would readily enough manifest their opposition should opportunity favor free speech. Such people, for instance, are not insensible to the enormously corrupting influence of negroes on their children. Let the reader recall Olmsted's experiences,--that, for example, where he speaks of three negro women who had charge of half a dozen white girls of good family, 'from three to fifteen years of age.' Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard before from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the streets. Upon observing me they dropped their voices, but not with any appearance of shame, and continued their altercation until their mistresses entered. The white children, in the mean time, had listened without any appearance of wonder or annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the door, they became silent.--_Cotton Kingdom_, vol. i. p. 222. The Southern _Cultivator_ for June, 1855, speaks of many young men and women who have 'made shipwreck of all their earthly hopes, and been led to the fatal step by the seeds of corruption which in the days of childhood and youth were sown in their hearts by the indelicate and lascivious manners and conversation of their fathers' negroes.' If we had no other fact or cause to cite, this almost unnamable one might convince the reader that there must be a groundwork somewhere in the South among good, moral, and decent people, for antipathy to slavery,--human nature teaches us as much. And such people exist, not only among the hardy inhabitants of the inland districts, who are not enervated by wealth and 'exclusiveness,' but in planterdom itself. There are few in the North who realize the number of persons in the South who silently disapprove of slavery on sound grounds, such as I have mentioned. Does it seem credible that nearly _ten millions_ of people should socially sympathize with some three hundred thousand slave-holders, who act with intolerable arrogance to all non-slave-holders? 'Even in those regions where slavery is profitable,' as a writer in the Boston _Transcript_ well expresses it, 'the poor whites feel the slaveocr
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
people
 

slavery

 

appearance

 

negroes

 

children

 
reader
 
speaks
 

holders

 
antipathy
 

nature


convince

 

decent

 
groundwork
 

childhood

 
hearts
 

corruption

 
indelicate
 
lascivious
 

earthly

 

conversation


manners

 

fathers

 

teaches

 

unnamable

 

planterdom

 

thousand

 

intolerable

 

arrogance

 

hundred

 

millions


socially

 
sympathize
 

expresses

 

whites

 

slaveocr

 
Transcript
 

regions

 
profitable
 

writer

 
Boston

credible
 

enervated

 
districts
 
wealth
 

exclusiveness

 

shipwreck

 
inland
 

inhabitants

 
disapprove
 

grounds